It might come as a surprise to you, but once people believe in their partisan ways, whether Republican or Democrat, they are not easily swayed.
The effort it takes to overcome your personal confirmation bias is difficult. It's a lot easier to say the other team is EVIL and your team is always good. It's simple to call attention to missteps by the Other Side while four or eight years later making similar excuses for Your Side. When confronted with ideas that you know just can't be true, you experience something called 'cognitive dissonance', a mental discomfort when you realize you might be holding onto two contradictory views. The fact that so many people never receive opposing views and appreciate the reasons others would hold those views is why we experience the toxic online atmosphere where no real ideas get proposed.
Let's take the classic Man on the Street example.
I loved these videos whenever they painted Republicans against speech they thought was Obama’s (it was Bush’s) and I like this new version as well. It clearly articulates that people will value partisanship over independent critical thought. What's the biggest shame in watching people embarrass themselves? It's not that they've inaccurately credited quotes from one major party to another. No, the real shame in it all is that instead of real, genuine critical analysis of the President, we get lazy vomiting of old one-liners we get from the media talking points. Let’s hate the President for continuing drone wars and spending the National Debt and our kids into oblivion, both actual immoralities. Instead on social media we see remarks about the color of his skin (ironically enough, it's orange, but these are the same people that say we should talk about the color of people's skin) or his funny hair or his bumbling baboonish nature. Where's the progress in that? Sure, you can say he's the anti-Christ, but Republicans said the same thing about President Obama. "He's a literal embodiment of the worst parts of human nature and he doesn't actually care about the United States or its citizens". Who said that? Democrats are saying it now, Republicans said it during the Obama years. Eventually, and this might not happen for another 50 years of your life, you'll end up hating ALL of them. I hate all of them. So I refuse to fall into this category of “no no no you have to ESPECIALLY hate Trump! Come over here and loudly proclaim how much you hate Trump with us!" No thanks, I hate all of them! They all get away with the same shit. President George Bush’s wars directly attributed to the death of a million ‘brown people’. Obama continued and even extended it. Trump has shown no evidence that he’ll curtail that anytime soon. So no, I don’t give a lot of credence to whether President Trump is a blabbering idiot, or he looks orange, or he has been lying to get center stage his whole life. Let’s reframe our debate: Killing people is more important than saying rude things. If we get caught up in hating the Cheeto because it’s 'what everyone else is doing', we might get a lot of likes and reposts and shares. But it’s a disservice to real bad stuff that the media will refuse to cover. But did you hear he has ‘little hands’? Har har! Follow libertyLOL on your favorite social media sites:FacebookYoutube Tumblr Pintrest Countable: Government Made Simple Steemit blog on a blockchain Patreon Gab.ai libertyLOL's Liberty Blog RSS Feed We also run a couple twitterbots which provide great quotes and book suggestions: Murray Rothbard Suggests Tom Woods Suggests Jason Stapleton Suggests Progressive Contradictions MORE FROM LIBERTYLOL:
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The NYPD got a whopping 1,526 requests from the feds to detain immigrants in President Trump’s first year in office — and rejected them all, officials said Wednesday.
The NY Daily News Reports that every single request from the feds to detain illegal immigrants was denied last year.
If we can view this objectively, regardless of your thoughts on illegal immigration, it's illegal to be in this country without citizenship or an appropriate via. It's the law. What is Law Enforcement's duty in this case? If it's illegal, Law Enforcement should enforce the law. If we actually see deportations increasing and 'hard-working families getting torn apart' as the rhetoric goes, then people will start to get angry. If people get angry enough, we'll start demanding the laws are changed. Reports suggest though that deportation have actually decreased since President Obama left office. The larger problem is that we have institutions who don't do their job. The Sheriff or Police Department will direct law enforcement to release an immigrant when it determines the suspect is in the country illegally. This unfortunately brings subjectivity into the executive powers of Law Enforcement. If they are going to be 'law enforcers' there should be no subjectivity, that is the court's job; To be subjective and weigh evidence. So what's going on in New York? in this case, ignoring the detain requests is attributable to someone in the Police Department arguing that 'illegals are humans and it's immoral to do turn them over, they may be deported'. I don't disagree with this morality, but as previously noted, this is not the executive's job to weigh morality, it's the judicial branch's job. My question is this. If law enforcement is going to take that stance, why don't they don't also take that same stance for other victim-less crimes like braiding hair without a license, just 'slightly' rolling through a stop sign, possession of an ounce of pot, etc. It would seem that the same subjectivity which was introduced in the previous example would also lend to similar treatment for victim-less crimes which occur in your city. Methinks the difference in the two cases involves A) the future of the politically-leftist voting class at stake in the former and B) a population that can be extorted for more money to feed ever-increasing budgets in the latter. What do you think? Follow libertyLOL on your favorite social media sites:FacebookYoutube Tumblr Pintrest Countable: Government Made Simple Steemit blog on a blockchain Patreon Gab.ai libertyLOL's Liberty Blog RSS Feed We also run a couple twitterbots which provide great quotes and book suggestions: Murray Rothbard Suggests Tom Woods Suggests Jason Stapleton Suggests Progressive Contradictions MORE FROM LIBERTYLOL:
Doesn't it seem rather silly that, 11 years after the last telegram was sent, the industry is just NOW starting to see some deregulation?
Most people alive in America today have probably never had the experience of sending a telegram. There are a host of reasons for this, the main one being that the telegram stopped being fashionable decades ago as burgeoning technology replaced its use in the modern world. The very last Western Union telegram was sent 11 years ago. Over a decade too late, the FCC has finally decided to end burdensome regulations that stifled telegraph technology. As Reuters reported:
Regulations are far easier to create than they are to dismantle. As Milton Friedman said, “Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.” Yet lately, there has been an undeniable trend of repealing these types of regulations, the likes of which America hasn’t seen since the Reagan Administration. And in the spirit of giving credit where credit is due, this current regulatory rollback is due largely to President Donald Trump. Regulations are far easier to create than they are to dismantle.
Setting a New Record Ronald Reagan left many legacies during his duration in the White House. And while many were less than praiseworthy—the War on Drugs springs to mind—he did accomplish some deregulation. In fact, during the Reagan presidency, both the Federal Register and federal regulations decreased by more than one-third. And as impressive as this record surely was, it’s already been broken by Donald Trump. Upon taking office, Donald Trump signed an executive order telling federal agencies that they must cut two existing regulations for each new regulation proposed. Contained within this executive order was the demand that each federal agency create a task force with the explicit purpose of finding regulations worth slashing. This act was intended to help the newly sworn-in president reach his promise of cutting 70 percent of all federal regulations. While the talk of regulatory cuts is typical red meat rhetoric, the left was obviously less than pleased with this executive order. A coalition of left-leaning organizations even joined together in February and sued Trump on the grounds that his executive order would potentially “block or force the repeal of regulations needed to protect health, safety, and the environment, across a broad range of topics – from automobile safety, to occupational health, to air pollution, to endangered species.” But the lawsuit did not scare Trump away from his objective. When Obama had been in office as long as Trump currently has, regulations were 28 percent higher. But since taking office, Trump has repealed hundreds of these regulations. When Obama had been in office as long as Trump currently has, regulations were 28 percent higher.
And when it comes to regulations in general, the score speaks for itself. During the same point of time of their respective presidencies, Obama’s regulatory tally was at 1,737 while Trump’s is 1,241. And while Reagan’s own regulatory cuts were admirable, they still don’t compare with Trump’s if you judge them by the same timeframe. Earlier this October, Trump announced his plans to further cut taxes along with red tape that negatively impacts both businesses and consumers. According to CEI, the current level of federal regulatory burdens have amounted to nearly $2 trillion. And while business owners may pay the initial costs, it will inevitably trickle down to the consumer. When overhead costs are raised on entrepreneurs, that cost must must be made up for somewhere. And as CEI also estimates, these hidden costs can account for about $15,000 per household in any given year. As the 2017 fiscal year came to a close this month, the White House also released its initiative to cut more red tape to jumpstart the economy. Obviously, the “do nothing” method is a far cry from Obama’s overbearing regulatory intervention. However, while this rhetoric is pleasing to much of the American public, which is fed up after almost a decade of a stagnating economy, Congress has yet to act on any substantial reform in either the House or the Senate. Still, the White House has continued its efforts to encourage regulatory relief by pushing for three specific reform efforts, listed by CEI’s Clyde Wayne Crews as follows:
But what is, perhaps most interesting is how silent the media has been. Usually, the media doesn't miss an opportunity to criticize the president, making it all the more strange that these massive regulation rollbacks have managed to slip under the radar. The Importance of Economic Liberty Without economic liberty there can be no general freedom.
Just as it is important to give credit where credit is due, it is also important to acknowledge that excelling in one area does not negate one’s terrible behavior in another. The appointment of Jeff Sessions by itself is enough of a reason to be wary of Trump. Especially given Sessions’ obsession with reigniting the drug war in a time when public opinion is overwhelmingly trending in the opposite direction. Though in many capacities this makes one of Trump’s weak points similar to Reagan’s. And the Sessions issue is just one of many. Diplomacy also appears to be one of Trump’s weak points. Taunting a world leader who is threatening to use nuclear arms against your country may not be the wisest idea, but that hasn’t stopped Trump from referring to Kim Jong Un as “Rocket Man” at the height of tensions. And in general, President Trump’s hawkish foreign policy has made a mockery of candidate Trump’s non-interventionist rhetoric. But increasing economic freedom is no small feat. If there is any doubt of this, just look how long it took to deregulate the telegraph industry. Without economic liberty there can be no general freedom, which is precisely why Trump’s pushback against the regulatory state is so important. Our modern economy has no doubt been burdened by regulations that have held back the market and prevented others from even entering the workforce. So as hard as Trump is to stomach most of the time, these regulatory scale-backs are cause for celebration. Brittany HunterBrittany Hunter is an associate editor at FEE. Brittany studied political science at Utah Valley University with a minor in Constitutional studies. This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article. Follow libertyLOL on your favorite social media sites:FacebookYoutube Tumblr Pintrest Countable: Government Made Simple Steemit blog on a blockchain Patreon Gab.ai libertyLOL's Liberty Blog RSS Feed We also run a couple twitterbots which provide great quotes and book suggestions: Murray Rothbard Suggests Tom Woods Suggests Jason Stapleton Suggests Progressive Contradictions MORE FROM LIBERTYLOL:
Troll Attacks Sarah Silverman On Twitter, And Her Unexpected Response Turns Man’s Life Upside Down1/28/2018
I'm no fan of Sarah Silverman (politically) and tend to think her humor as a standup comedian relies too heavily on being blunt and crass. But when people do great things, you encourage it and spread that message.
Someone on Twitter responded to her in a way that was crude and, unfortunately, too expected these days on social media.
Instead of blocking the guy or retorting with some online snark along the lines of "Nice Twitter Account you have there, must be nice to have 14 followers" or "Typical White cis-male response, yo!", Silverman looked into the guys timeline and responded with empathy. The back and forth looks like this:
Side note: I'm from San Antonio and San Antonio is AWESOME.
I know it's hard on social media. If you've ever read the book Trust Me, I'm Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator then you understand how dangerously rampant humanity is to default to a snarky, dismissive comment. This is how we should treat each other, just like this. Almost makes me forget the time Sarah Silverman called for amilitary coup to overthrow Trump. She apologized though. Follow libertyLOL on your favorite social media sites:FacebookYoutube Tumblr Pintrest Countable: Government Made Simple Steemit blog on a blockchain Patreon Gab.ai libertyLOL's Liberty Blog RSS Feed We also run a couple twitterbots which provide great quotes and book suggestions: Murray Rothbard Suggests Tom Woods Suggests Jason Stapleton Suggests Progressive Contradictions MORE FROM LIBERTYLOL:
Unpopular Opinion: I hate people who have the 'poor' mindset.
I not only oppose government welfare, I oppose private welfare. You'd be better off burning your money than giving it to a person who lacks the drive to provide themselves opportunities. At least burning it would provide you some heat. For the last 9 years, I've been living with poor people. Why? I rent out the spare room in my home, because I'm extroverted and like having some extra spending cash. Every single one of them has been lazy and stupid. I recall one had tickets to Lollapalooza. She paid $50 each for them. They were selling for $300 each on StubHub. Her boss wouldn't give her the day off. What'd she do? Well, not the smart thing, which is go to work and sell the tickets. Nope, she calls in sick! Yeah, I'm sure that won't be remembered come raise or layoff time. Another had to borrow money from me every year for his girlfriend's birthday. Same girlfriend. Three years in a row. Sure, he always paid it back promptly, but seriously.... It happens on the same day every year! My current tenant is two months behind on rent. I offered to knock off $150 if he raked the leaves and cleaned the gutters (a $60 value). Guess what hasn't happened a month later? Guess who won't be making any more generous offers of work in lieu of rent? (Seriously, if you're looking to hire anyone in the Lake Worth area, check with me first to make sure you don't hire the guy.) He's a tow truck driver, who gets paid on commission (using his bosses equipment). He was complaining about not getting paid to be on call. I suggested he should go to his boss and ask how he could be of greater use to his boss. Explain to his boss he wants to make more money, but he understands he needs to provide value to his boss, so he is respectfully asking his boss for help in becoming a more useful employee. He looked at me like I had grown two heads. Then he went into a screed about how it isn't fair he doesn't get paid by the hour (even though his boss only gets paid a flat rate per tow). No matter how much you help these people, they will always be poor. They squander every opportunity you give them, ignore any advice you give them, and only ever think of their own short term pleasure. We should do away with all forms of charity, with the possible exception of work internships. Work opportunities will separate the wheat from the chafe. Let the rest die face down in the gutter. At least then we'd get soap and glue when we rendered down their bodies. (There's a touch of sarcasm in this paragraph... you know, for effect) Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go stand on my porch and yell at children to get off my lawn. "Get the equivalent of a Ph.D. in libertarian thought and free-market economics online for just 24 cents a day." Follow libertyLOL on your favorite social media sites:FacebookYoutube Tumblr Pintrest Countable: Government Made Simple Steemit blog on a blockchain Patreon Gab.ai libertyLOL's Liberty Blog RSS Feed We also run a couple twitterbots which provide great quotes and book suggestions: Murray Rothbard Suggests Tom Woods Suggests Jason Stapleton Suggests Progressive Contradictions MORE FROM LIBERTYLOL:
What is the purpose of Government?
Imagine a time before kings, presidents, or prime ministers, before the formation of society and civilization. This is what philosophers call a "state of nature". In this thought experiment, people lived freely, without rules or formal laws. But what exactly does this state look like? For 17th century philosopher Thomas Hobbes the state of nature is a war of all against all. Mankind’s basic nature is fear, insecurity, death, and turmoil. And from this constant terror, People decided to surrender some basic rights to a sovereign entity, or what he called The Leviathan. If one was, say, fed up with the theft of his potions, the state could pass laws to protect his goods or help him receive some sort of reparation. This protection is important for a number of reasons, but the most significant is that laws, and their enforcement, keep constant anxiety at bay. For 18th century Swiss-born french philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the state of nature is rather different than that conceived by Hobbes. Rousseau sees natural man as independent, solitary, and peaceful. Rousseau thought people were much better off without government. With the creation of agriculture, private property, and the division of labor, however, came inequalities. Unequal access to resources created tension, enmity, and envy. People started to become aware of their limited material situation and lack of upward mobility. They became aware of their 'unfreedom'. This led Rousseau to claim that “Man is born free and is everywhere in chains.” While both philosophers describe the state of nature as a sort of beastly existence absent any morality, they disagree on some fundamentals. Rousseau sees the Hobbesian model as leading to despotism, in which people have no choice but to turn to a third party to secure basic needs. Consequently, they do not freely choose their leaders. Rousseau argues that rather than choosing leaders out of fear, people choose to give up some power and rights, at least so that citizens can be equal. Rousseau dictated that decisions ought to be made for the sake of everyone, instead of a few. This would require that people follow a rule of law that they would follow on their own anyway. For Rousseau, people are better without government because society means unfreedom and oppression. Whether out of fear or for the sake of equality, the consent to be ruled is called the social contract. So listeners I ask, “Who has it right?” Do people need to be kept in line or should they remain free to do as they wish? Follow libertyLOL on your favorite social media sites:FacebookYoutube Tumblr Pintrest Countable: Government Made Simple Steemit blog on a blockchain Patreon Gab.ai libertyLOL's Liberty Blog RSS Feed We also run a couple twitterbots which provide great quotes and book suggestions: Murray Rothbard Suggests Tom Woods Suggests Jason Stapleton Suggests Progressive Contradictions MORE FROM LIBERTYLOL:
I’ve always said Jeffrey Tucker is my favorite living communicator of libertarian thought. I've read Bourbon for Breakfast and Bit by Bit: How P2P Is Freeing the World, but not yet read his new book Right-WingCollectivism: The Other Threat to Liberty. Recently (ever since the blood and soil speech, oddly), Jeff Deist has also been hitting me in the exact same way Tucker does. Dr. Jordan Peterson, author of 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, also strikes me as someone who needs to be listened to and read frequently. I’ve been trying to figure out why these three have that effect on me, and I think I finally understand with all the discussion and drama of Hans-Hermann Hoppe this past week. These gentlemen provide context and they humanize what are otherwise merely concepts and theory to my overly-rational brain. They catch me right in the feels. For instance, when someone sidewalk chalked pro-Trump slogans overnight all over campus at Emory University during the election season, I had the same reaction that any hyper-rational person would have. (SPOILER ALERT: I did not feel 'threatened' and less safe) It took an article from Jeffrey Tucker, who happened to be at that campus on that day and experienced the culture there first-hand, to soften my stance, and he’s helped me see social justice sympathizers through his lens and understand them better. Neither he nor I is a social justice warrior by any stretch of the imagination, but it sure helps to know how they think. Likewise, Jeff Deist helps humanize the right. Nationalism has always repulsed me. The idea that there’s some moral mandate to be loyal to blood or soil is completely foreign. I'm an active duty military member and bleed Red, White and Blue. But I also hate getting 'Thanked' for my service and find our foreign policy abroad to be quite despicable. I think most people don't fit into the basic Left and Right categories, there's much more nuance in the world. I think back to my sixth grade teacher, who told us on the first day of school that he would lead us in the pledge of allegiance to the US flag but that he’d pick a student to lead the pledge to the Texas flag because he refused to say it. I just can’t fathom how someone can come to that sort of conclusion. I mean I’m no cuck for Texas either, but at least that hunk of soil is close to home! But Deist helps me understand it. Like Tucker with the SJWs, Jeff Deist explains the mode of thought and feeling that collectivists on the right experience in a way I’ve never heard before and in a way that really resonates with me. (Incidentally during the recent Hoppe/Rachels drama that only libertarians are following, Jeff Deist mentioned in correspondence to Chase Rachels, author of A Spontaneous Order, that Hoppe's wife is Muslim, which started this train of thought and also happened to soften my view of Hoppe. Also, the drama is dumb, don't waste your time looking it up.) I think liberty lovers should drop the divisive internet drama, that's the "Team Mentality" that Democrats and Republicans compartmentalize people into. Keep reading and growing. Read Tucker, Read Deist, and listen to Dr Jordan Peterson lectures. Get educated and keep pushing others to do the same. Follow libertyLOL on your favorite social media sites:FacebookYoutube Tumblr Pintrest Countable: Government Made Simple Steemit blog on a blockchain Patreon Gab.ai libertyLOL's Liberty Blog RSS Feed We also run a couple twitterbots which provide great quotes and book suggestions: Murray Rothbard Suggests Tom Woods Suggests Jason Stapleton Suggests Progressive Contradictions MORE FROM LIBERTYLOL:
MLK Jr. Would Not Accuse Trump's "shi*thole" Comment as Racist, but "Racial Ignorance" (DMR)1/13/2018
I know that I'm going to start a firestorm with this post, but I think that this is a conversation worth having. It seems that not a day passes that headlines don't carry news of accusations of racism. To be sure, racism certainly is alive and well; I do not want to give the impression that I'm downplaying that reality. It is alive, and it cuts more than one way.
That said, I think that the frequency of knee-jerk, reactionary accusations of racism against people for equivocal remarks causes society to be far too sensitive and even unable to recognize true racism when it manifests. (In other words, if everything is racist, then nothing is racist.) It diminishes attempts to address indisputable and/or egregious displays of racism, thus undermining the very goal it means to achieve. Yes, I have in mind Donald Trump's calling Haiti and African nations "sh*tholes." To be sure, I am NOT excusing that remark. Should he have said it? Absolutely not. Was it Presidential? No. Was it a racist remark though? I'm not so sure--certainly not sure enough that I think it should dominate headlines as such. Trump is a tactless man with a small vocabulary, and the preponderance of the evidence indicates that he communicates this way on a broad range of topics, including on many that are not even tangentially related to race. Furthermore, he did not proactively bring up Haiti or African nations, and he probably wasn't talking only about them (Central America also apparently was an intended target). His remarks were in response to their being mentioned both in the immigration bill and orally in the meeting.
Additionally, Trump's remarks were not directed at individual people, nor were they directed at specific demographics. They were quite clearly directed at countries--at geographic political entities. As far as I can tell, this is how Trump conveys that he believes that these are countries with significant problems.
In order for that to be a racist idea, it would need to be discriminatory and wrong. It isn't though. There is a reason that Americans aren't beating down the doors of Africa in an attempt to move there. It is invariably true that Haiti and a large number of African nations have problems that would lead many good, accepting, open-minded people to think--perhaps in different words--what Trump said. Race and tribal warfare. Religious violence. Rape as a weapon. Infanticide. Economic and kinetic warfare against populations by their own governments. Apartheid (until appallingly recently). Extremely high unemployment rates. The use of women and children as instruments of terrorism. Abject poverty. AIDS. Do these describe all of Africa? No. Do they apply to all African countries? No. One or a combination of them do, however, apply to a too-large number of African countries--disproportionately so. There is much to love about Africa. The picture there is far from universally negative, but it remains true that problems like these are relatively more prevalent there. This is not to say that there is anything lesser or inadequate about Africans themselves. There isn't. They are victims of extremely poor governance and of circumstances that frequently are beyond their control. They need our help. Alleged Trump racism isn't what's causing these problems though. Extractive, kleptocratic leadership in many African countries is the primary cause of these problems. (For example, can one really look at the Congo and at its horrendous leadership and objectively believe that only racism could possibly cause someone to develop a negative opinion of it?)Additionally, Trump's remarks were not directed at individual people, nor were they directed at specific demographics. They were quite clearly directed at countries--at geographic political entities. As far as I can tell, this is how Trump conveys that he believes that these are countries with significant problems. Trump should not have said what he did for many reasons, including the reality that it will probably harm our relations with some African countries. The remark was cold and unwarranted. Was it racist though? I don't think that we can say for sure that it was. I agree with Martin Luther King, Jr: Trump's remark probably wasn't a sign of racism. Rather, it was probably just a sign of "racial ignorance." Follow libertyLOL on your favorite social media sites:FacebookYoutube Tumblr Pintrest Countable: Government Made Simple Steemit blog on a blockchain Patreon Gab.ai libertyLOL's Liberty Blog RSS Feed We also run a couple twitterbots which provide great quotes and book suggestions: Murray Rothbard Suggests Tom Woods Suggests Jason Stapleton Suggests Progressive Contradictions MORE FROM LIBERTYLOL:
Here's something to consider regarding the U.S. economy.
The pace of job creation slowed dramatically in Obama's last year, and it slowed even more during Trump's first year. (I point this out to show that job creation generally has very little to do with a President's policies even though all Presidents will take credit for gains and blame someone else for losses.) These days, we are constantly bombarded with one politician or another claiming that his or her new policies, regulations, or tax plans will "create new jobs." Why should we renegotiate trade deals? "Create new jobs." Why should we cut taxes? "Create new jobs." And on and on.
While creating new jobs isn't a bad thing, of course, a lack of jobs also isn't a problem facing our economy right now. There are more than 5 million unfilled jobs in our economy--employers literally cannot fill them all. The problem, therefore, isn't too few jobs; rather, the problem is too few workers. There simply are not enough participants in our labor force to fill even those jobs that are currently available.
Cutting tax rates and reducing regulatory burdens are important (though spending should be cut as well in order to keep these things from piling up more debt for us), but these will not solve the labor force problem. What can we do then? One avenue is to enact policies that increase the labor force participation rate. This is frequently cited as one justification for the need to reform our welfare system. Indeed, our welfare system does need to be reformed: it is too expensive and does not do enough to encourage its recipients to reenter the workforce. That said, increasing the labor force participation rate is a short-term solution--a Band-Aid. Why? Because that means increasing the number of workers out of the population that currently exists. Therein lies the real problem: regardless of our labor force participation rate, the absolute size of our potential labor force is now shrinking. In order for the labor market to continue growing organically, each American woman must have MORE than 2.1 children. That hasn't been the case in this country in a long time, and as of today, each American woman has an average of only 1.5 children. That means that our organic labor force is shrinking--more and more older people and fewer and fewer younger people.
For a while now, the overall size of our labor force has been growing because of immigration. Americans no longer have enough babies to keep it growing, so we've used immigration to grow. Now immigration is quickly falling off as well, so not only will our labor force resume its overall shrinking, but our population as a whole will begin to shrink. This will mean slower economic growth (perhaps even stagnation eventually), lower government revenue, more debt (all else equal), and standards of living that either don't rise or that rise only very slowly.
If we want to lower our debt, increase our standard of living, increase the rate of economic growth, and increase government revenue without increasing tax rates, then we must ensure that our labor force continues to grow. (This is especially true when one considers how much larger China and India's labor forces are than our own, something that could give them a considerable advantage over us over the long term.) Thus, there really are only two types of policies that we should be pursuing to this end: those that encourage families to have more babies and those that encourage more immigration.* *Caveat: "More immigration" doesn't mean no-holds-barred, beat-down-the-borders immigration. It means tailoring immigration quotas annually to the needs of our economy and issuing visas based on these needs. Follow libertyLOL on your favorite social media sites:FacebookYoutube Tumblr Pintrest Countable: Government Made Simple Steemit blog on a blockchain Patreon Gab.ai libertyLOL's Liberty Blog RSS Feed We also run a couple twitterbots which provide great quotes and book suggestions: Murray Rothbard Suggests Tom Woods Suggests Jason Stapleton Suggests Progressive Contradictions MORE FROM LIBERTYLOL:
We are a monthly book club for anyone who wants to learn more about Libertarianism. We will discuss each book's chapter/section in separate posts, so everyone will be able to read along at their own pace. We typically also focus on books which are available for free so that everyone can participate.
Join the Private Facebook Group and follow us on Twitter as we seek to learn more about Libertarianism. Liberalism is Mises's classic statement in defense of a free society, one of the last statements of the old liberal school and a text from which we can continue to learn. It has been the conscience of a global movement for liberty for 80 years. This new edition, a gorgeous hardback from the Mises Institute, features a new foreword by Tom Woods. It can also be downloaded here. Ch1, pgs. 18 -26 From Tom Wood's Forward: “The liberal sets a very high threshold for the initiation of violence. Beyond the minimal taxation necessary to maintain legal and defense services—and some liberals shrink even from this— he denies to the state the power to initiate violence and seeks only peaceful remedies to perceived social ills. He opposes violence for the sake of redistributing wealth, of enriching influential pressure groups, or trying to improve man’s moral condition. Civilized people, says the liberal, interact with each other not according to the law of the jungle, but by means of reason and discussion.” Intro. Mises: “If it is maintained that the consequence of a liberal policy is or must be to favor the special interests of certain strata of society, this is still a question that allows of discussion. It is one of the tasks of the present work to show that such a reproach is in no way justified . . . In the customary rhetoric of the demagogues these facts are represented quite differently. To listen to them, one would think that all progress in the techniques of production redounds to the exclusive benefit of a favored few, while the masses sink ever more deeply into misery. However, it requires only a moment’s reflection to realize that the fruits of all technological and industrial innovations make for an improvement in the satisfaction of the wants of the great masses.” While Mises endeavors to explain liberalism rationally, he says that you can't explain anti-liberalism that way because they are not rational. He calls it Fourierism - a kind of neurosis that is basically envy. Ch 1 The section on property reminded me a lot of what Rothbard wrote in New Liberty. Not surprising since I am sure Rothbard cited Mises a lot. On Freedom: “Muddleheaded babblers may therefore argue interminably over whether all men are destined for freedom and are as yet ready for it. They may go on contending that there are races and peoples for whom Nature has prescribed a life of servitude and that the master races have the duty of keeping the rest of mankind in bondage. The liberal will not oppose their arguments in any way because his reasoning in favor of freedom for all, without distinction, is of an entirely different kind. We liberals do not assert that God or Nature meant all men to be free, because we are not instructed in the designs of God and of Nature, and we avoid, on principle, drawing God and Nature into a dispute over mundane questions. What we maintain is only that a system based on freedom for all workers warrants the greatest productivity of human labor and is therefore in the interest of all the inhabitants of the earth.” The section on Peace reminded me of . . . I really liked section 2, talking about how by nature individuals will seek out beneficial relationships through mutual exchange. It's not that we believe that business is benevolent, but that like Adam Smith had said: it is not from their own generosity that the butcher and baker offer their service but of their own livelihood. Former President Obama has repeatedly tried to infer cryptography is a threat to the /people/ if government doesn't have a skeleton key to everyone's digital house and digital papers by saying "Everyone is walking around with a swiss bank account in their pocket." The first time I heard him say it out loud some years ago now, I thought to myself "that sounds expletive ideal!" . The answer to the underlying and ongoing incessant plea by government to give them permission to do what they are already doing without permission, spying on the /people/, is of the form PRIVACY SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED. Given that the governments have proven themselves without honor and have violated any trust or hope thereof to defend from plunder in the act of plundering themselves, privacy going forward will be kept by intellectual strength. This is not a request, this is an action a person takes, or doesn't take: responsibility for their own digital information security. If you didn't read the chapter you probably won't get how that all relates together in terms of the shenanigans they've been up to since his observations were originally written. Trusting the other end to hold all the keys and the data has proven unwise, hasn't it? Ch 1, pgs. 27-41 I have some qualms about how Mises frames the discussion on equality. He finds fault with nineteenth century liberals (here I think we can substitute Thomas Jefferson though Mises noticeably does not call him out by name) because they argued for the equality of all men on the basis of natural rights theory. Mises argues that is preposterous because all you have to do is look at people to see they are not equal. But when Jefferson said all men are created equal he certainly did not mean that all men are identical. Since he rejects equality as a reason for giving equal treatment under the law, he therefore resorts to making utilitarian arguments. He basically says that elites best not deprive the poor and working class of equal treatment because they are outnumbered and will meet resistance - usually bloody. However, you will recall that in New Liberty, Rothbard will argue that it is a mistake to make utilitarian arguments and that we must always argue from first principles. In section five Mises argues that the luxuries of today inevitably become the necessities of tomorrow. I am glad to know that in the future we will all fly first class, have yachts, chauffeur driven limousines, and luxury boxes at the ballpark. Section Six: “In requiring of the individual that he should take society into consideration in all his actions, that he should forgo an action that, while advantageous to him, would be detrimental to social life, society does not demand that he sacrifice himself to the interests of others. For the sacrifice that it imposes is only a provisional one: the renunciation of an immediate and relatively minor advantage in “exchange for a much greater ultimate benefit. The continued existence of society as the association of persons working in cooperation and sharing a common way of life is in the interest of every individual.” In Section Seven, everyone should see the problem with this: “There is, to be sure, a sect that believes that one could quite safely dispense with every form of compulsion and base society entirely on the voluntary observance of the moral code. The anarchists consider state, law, and government as superfluous institutions in a social order that would really serve the good of all, and not just the special interests of a privileged few. Only because the present social order is based on private ownership of the means of production is it necessary to resort to compulsion and coercion in its defense. If private property were abolished, then everyone, without exception, would spontaneously observe the rules demanded by social cooperation.” Mises here to me seems to be arguing that anarchism is incompatible with private property. Of course, most of us now understand this to be incorrect and the present-day Mises Institute could be called the Anarcho-Capitalist Institute. Mises writes: “Liberalism is not anarchism, nor has it anything whatsoever to do with anarchism.” He may be right about that, which is why Rothbard used the term libertarianism to describe anarcho-capitalism and deliberately distinguished it from liberalism which he viewed as a sort of proto-libertarianism. Mises goes on this same line to a sickening degree in Section Eight. When reading this I thought of this meme, but in place of "proud conservative" I guess you could photoshop Mises' face.
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Ch 1, pgs. 42-59
Mises confuses me again in Section Nine: “The champions of democracy in the eighteenth century argued that only monarchs and their ministers are morally depraved, injudicious, and evil. The people, however, are altogether good, pure, and noble, and have, besides, the intellectual gifts needed in order always to know and to do what is right. This is, of course, all nonsense, no less so than the flattery of the courtiers who ascribed all good and noble qualities to their princes.” That I agree with completely. However, he closes that same section: “Only a group that can count on the consent of the governed can establish a lasting regime." So he begins by criticizing democracy and closes by praising it. In between he seems to be making another utilitarian argument in favor of democracy. Section 10 I like. Basically he argues that fascism at the time of his writing was popular because it was a response to the evils of Bolshevism. “Many people approve of the methods of Fascism, even though its economic program is altogether antiliberal and its policy completely interventionist, because it is far from practicing the senseless and unrestrained destructionism that has stamped the Communists as the arch-enemies of civilization” He was very prescient here: “But when the fresh impression of the crimes of the Bolsheviks has paled, the socialist program will once again exercise its power of attraction on the masses.” Section 11: Found this depressing considering it was written several decades ago: “Other countries do not go so far, but nearly everywhere some restrictions are imposed on the sale of opium, cocaine, and similar narcotics." Mises argues that once you concede government the power to prohibit certain substances you have lost the argument that they should not be able to prohibit certain reading material. Section 12: He makes another utilitarian argument. The state should be tolerant of religious beliefs, not because every individual has freedom of conscience, but says Mises, because intolerance will lead to social unrest by persecuted religious. We of course today would prefer no state around to be tolerant or intolerant of anything. Section 13 Mises wrongly suggests that suppression of conduct detrimental to the social order requires a state. As we saw from Rothbard though that is not the case at all. Ch 2, pgs. 60-84 In The Organization of the Economy, Mises points out the difference between redistributing capital among the working class and the communal ownership of property, but of course rejects both. In "The Impracticality of Socialism" he says that while the common criticism that “most men will not exhibit the same zeal in the performance of the duties and tasks assigned to them that they bring to their daily work in a social order based on private property" is correct, it does not get at the heart of the matter: “What renders socialism impracticable is precisely the fact that calculation of this kind is impossible in a socialist society.” In Sections 2 and 3 Mises says that since the world is not a paradise, people like to direct their unhappiness at the institution of private property and that governments by their very nature always attack private property. Below is a perfect example of that from a recent interview with New York City Mayor DeBlasio. Mises says that while many people today understand that private property can not be dispensed with completely, they think government intervention is necessary to even the playing field. He explains though how every single government intervention in the voluntary exchange of goods and services can only make the market less efficient i.e. Back to Hazlitt's consequences seen and unseen. "Get the equivalent of a Ph.D. in libertarian thought and free-market economics online for just 24 cents a day."
Ch 2, pgs. 85-94
In section seven Mises argues that we have nothing to fear from natural monopolies. Reminded me of this Tom Woods episode I would summarize section six as that capitalism is not perfect, just better than any other economic system conceivable. Reminded me of this:
Ch 3, pgs. 105-117
Section 3.1 is brief, but I think complex. Mises argued that for classical liberals, there is no divide between domestic and foreign policy: The same principles that apply to one apply to the other. And I would summarize that principle as non-interventionism: no intervention by government in the domestic economy and no intervention by government in the affairs of foreign governments - i.e. Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none. So far, so good, but Mises goes on to extol the virtues of cosmopolitanism vis-a-vis nationalism. Also fine. But he then argued a that national unity is itself a product of liberalism. THAT seems to conflict a bit with the point he just made, and quite a bit with the book we read by Tom DiLorenzo where he made the case that DISUNITY within a nation is a force for good when it comes to libertarianism and advocated secession and nullification as tools to advance liberty. Ch 3, pgs. 118-141 Section 3.4 Mises argues that ethic conflicts within heterogeneous nations can only be avoided when said nation completely adopts a liberal program. As per Rothbard though: Ch. 4, pgs. 155-169 We often hear complaints that libertarianism does not advance due to some failure or another in tactics or strategy on the part of libertarians. In Section 4.1 Mises dismisses that concern saying that liars and tricksters need tactics and strategy but that if people can't see the truth for themselves there is no hope for them. Mises goes even further: “Most people do not have even the intellectual endowments required to think through the—after all very complicated—problems of social cooperation, and they certainly do not have the will power necessary to make those provisional sacrifices that all social action demands.” Well that is certainly downer, leaving all political activity completely useless. (He makes that explicit in the next section). I am left wondering what is the point of his even writing and publishing books if he believes that? Ch. 4, pgs. 170-187 Section 4.3 "There are, therefore, only two parties: the party in power and the one that wants to be in power . . . As their demands are, in principle, limitless, it is impossible for any one of these parties ever to achieve all the ends it envisages . . . Every party seeks, nevertheless, to attain to such influence as will permit it to satisfy its desires as far as possible, while also taking care always to be able to justify to its electors why all their wishes could not be fulfilled." Certainly seems apropos today regarding the GOP's failure to repeal ACA, defund Planned Parenthood etc. Section 4.4. "Society cannot, in the long run, exist if it is divided into sharply defined groups, each intent on wresting special privileges for its own members” To me that is almost like saying "Society can not in the long run exist. Period." Mises I think unwittingly makes the case for radical individualism. Or It's saying politics will cause society to cease, if we keep it up. Section 4.5 he returns to the idea that liberals must fight force with ideas not counter-force. Section 4.6. He returns to the idea that critics of liberalism will claim that liberalism is the special interest of capitalists, but that that is false because capitalism ultimately benefits not just one class of people, but everyone. In a liberal system property rights belong to all, not just to capitalists. Ch 5 In Chapter Five, Mises argues that the enemies of capitalism have lost the debate that alternatives to capitalism can lead to greater material wealth, so they have moved the goalpost and now claim that material wealth is a societal ill. Mises replies though that a return to primitive asceticism would result in the deaths of billions of people. "Liberalism is no world view because it does not try to explain the cosmos and because it says nothing and does not seek to say anything about the meaning and purpose of human existence . . . It seeks to give men only one thing, the peaceful, undisturbed development of material well-being for all." Summary As I mentioned a few times in earlier chapters, my beef with Mises is that he is a minarchist. That is a step backward after having read Rothbard. Rothbard and Hoppe take the foundation established by Mises to its next logical progression. I know it is not really possible, but it would be great if we could read books in historical order of their logical progression toward anarchy-capitalism. If you want to read the precursors of Mises, the first appendix of this book is a good place to start. Join the Private Facebook Group and follow us on Twitter as we seek to learn more about Libertarianism. 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