Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Education

If you haven't seen this yet it is a wonderfully entertaining lesson on monetary policy and Austrian business cycle theory.

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

The Most Private of Property

As a small 'l' libertarian I am philosophically "pro-choice" in terms of the ever-controversial issue of abortion.  The great Murray N. Rothbard lays it down clearly in this passage from his book, The Ethics of Liberty:
                   
   The proper groundwork for analysis of abortion is in every man’s absolute right of self-ownership. This implies immediately that every woman has the absolute right to her own body, that she has absolute dominion over her body and everything within it. This includes the fetus. Most fetuses are in the mother’s womb because the mother consents to this situation, but the fetus is there by the mother’s freely-granted consent. But should the mother decide that she does not want the fetus there any longer, then the fetus becomes a parasitic “invader” of her person, and the mother has the perfect right to expel this invader from her domain. Abortion should be looked upon, not as “murder” of a living person, but as the expulsion of an unwanted invader from the mother’s body.[2] Any laws restricting or prohibiting abortion are therefore invasions of the rights of mothers.

Many readers of this blog will agree with me on this one topic. I see abortion as an issue for a woman to decide - not for a lawmaker to decide for her. Abortion, because it involves the most private of property, is one of the most fundamental issues of property rights; I wonder, then, why many of the same people who feel that a woman's "right to choose" is protected through property rights do not apply this same principle to other complex matters such as drug use, foreign policy, and health care.


The fascist health care bill that just passed the House is a clear violation of natural human rights. Contained in this bill is law requiring every person in America to purchase from a private company health insurance. (By the way, 16,500 new IRS agents need to be hired to enforce this heinous law.) If I, for whatever reason, choose not to purchase health insurance, I will be fined - and ultimately jailed - by armed thugs. This is wrong for so many reasons, but it is most dubious in terms of my ownership of my own body: being forced, by penalty of jail, to do something to protect myself from harm is the true crime. It is not the job of elected officials to legislate what I do with my body.  Their job is to legislate what other people do with my body!  If someone hits me in the head with a bat because they want my wallet, then it's punishment time.

As I have mentioned in previous posts, laws prohibiting the use of drugs are equally wrong, for the express reason that they allow the government to tell you what you can and cannot due with your most private of property - yourself.  The list goes on and on: prostitution, laws prohibiting the sale of your organs, gambling laws, and America's foreign policy. (Talk about property theft! State-sponsored murder is the most egregious form of property rights infringement.) What's more, all of these unjust infringements are funded by  the theft of your private property - your money - through taxation.

Many see the crime in laws that prohibit a woman's natural right to choose what she does with her reproductive organs - yet refuse to recognize the crimes of a similar nature that are committed against us all on a daily basis, through innumerable laws dictating even the most mundane aspects of our lives. Am I overlooking some obvious explanation for this apparent hypocrisy?

An Austrian Economist on NPR Today!

Tom Woods is on "On Point" today discussing nullification/secession/federalism with Tom Ashbrook.  He is fantastic (Woods) and I am excited that he is being given this platform on NPR.  Its on in VT right now.  Check it out on a podcast if you can't hear it live.

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Taxman

April 15th draws near.  Everyone knows that this is the day that the Income Tax is due.  But contrary to popular belief, this is not the only tax day that Americans are subject to.

When taxes are levied on businesses, the costs are inevitably passed along to consumers - that's us!  Like it or not, we all fit into the category of consumers. (That is, unless you are living in a hut you built from the trees you cut with the ax you forged; but you wouldn't be reading this because you wouldn't have the Internet or a computer.) If I were to purchase a new tee shirt, a percentage of the cost would go toward paying a tax.  Yes, a small percentage in this one instance, but I don't only buy one tee shirt.  I also buy milk, socks, brakes for my car, paint, fishing poles, etc, etc. We are all paying taxes on all of these things.  It adds up.  More of the money I make, taken.

Now enter the most insidious and sneaky off all taxes: the inflation tax.  Say you have 10,000 dollars in a savings account, in cash.  Every time the Federal Reserve prints more money to pay off debts, to "stimulate" the economy, or to pay for the endless wars America is engaged in, that ten thousand dollars becomes worth a little less.  And a lot of money is printed.  When the supply of money increases, your savings looses value.  This is inflation.  It is an artificial function of an economy brought on by the dubious practice of creating money out of thin air by printing it. The economy is based on this fiat currency.  And right now the printing presses are working hard!  If our economy was tied to a hard currency (gold, silver), inflation would not be the issue that plagues our economy today.  I will spend more time on this topic in a future post.

About now you are saying, "Of course the right wing monster hates taxes!  He wants to see old people pushed to the streets and roads torn up!"   I ask-where are my hard earned dollars actually going?  Do you you know what a "strong national defense" costs?  Medicare fraud is a full time job for countless thieves.  Is the "War on Drugs" funding itself?  NASA!  An incredibly inefficient space boondoggle if ever there was one.  The fact that one cent that belongs to you pays for the illegal murder of some foreign person should outrage you like it does me.

So, even if you choose to be "scofflaw" and not pay the unconstitutional income tax, you are being taxed all the time nonetheless.  What are you going to do about it?

Saturday, March 13, 2010

Skeptical Libertarianism

If you can only watch a couple minutes of this, check out 1:52 through 3:40. The whole thing is worth a watch. This guy is almost right on. He is a little too hawkish for my likes, but what do I know?

Sunday, March 7, 2010

In Response

A reader commented on a reply post of mine:
"truly free markets" are no more possible than that omnipotent geek perched on a mountain top.

Truly free markets are the ideal as far as I am concerned, but I also understand that they are few and far between.  I think what I am trying to get at is that market forces are always at work, in spite of the many barriers to their smooth operation.(taxes, regulations, codes, laws, tariffs, etc.)

I presently work as a cook at a busy restaurant.  Every single day, the owner or kitchen manager is making countless decisions on how to most efficiently run the business.  If a flat of strawberries is up to $56, then they have to decide to go without them for a couple days and hope the price drops back to the $30s, or take the hit because they think the "value added" to the customers is worth the higher cost.  And that is just one example of the hundreds of ingredients, products, spices, meats that they have to make decisions on every day.  

On top of that, it takes constant innovation to the menu and changes to the special's board to keep customers coming back day after day, week after week.  It is an astonishing amount of work and every decision made is dictated by profit and loss.  So, although this market is not "truly free",  it is still very susceptible to market forces.  I have found this to be the case with most business's in the private sector. 

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Stossel Rides a Bike

I think this is a good follow up to the last post.  I find a lot of this very counter-intuitive, like the issue addressed here, bicycle helmet laws.