Recommended Reading – Wednesday, September 20th

Sep 19, 2012 by Jason

Downside: After the Returns Stop Diminishing (The Daily Reckoning)

“Economists, as we have mentioned, are not able to measure quality, only quantity. They cannot distinguish a ton of steel used in a battleship from the same quantity rolled out and pressed into automobiles. They cannot tell the difference between a man who is growing wheat from one who is distributing propaganda leaflets.

But from an employment point of view, the Nazi war economy was rarely surpassed. Unemployment went down after 1933…and kept going down for the next 12 years. When the end came, Germany not only had zero unemployed workers. It had an unemployment rate that had gone deeply negative, with millions more people holding jobs than there were people in the German workforce.

How did it achieve this amazing result? Not by increasing the number of real jobs. It did it be reducing the labor force, not only in Germany, but throughout Europe.”  (Click here to read more)

The Truth Behind the Romney “Gaffe” (Laissez Faire Today)

“Cover the kids’ ears! Hide their eyes! Shuffle the weak and frail from the room! A politician running for president has uttered a heresy that brings into question the holy grail of democratic politics. Romney has failed to pretend as if the country is one big happy family that uses our glorious voting system to discover ever better ways of governing ourselves.

Which is to say that Romney made a gaffe.

You know the definition of a political gaffe: inadvertent and unscripted truth. That’s what the supposed scandal of Romney’s off-the-cuff comments amounts to. He told potential donors an unvarnished truth that everyone knows but which is not part of the official civic creed of the land of the free:

“There are 47% of the people who will vote for the president, no matter what… All right, there are 47% who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what…These are people who pay no income tax.”  (Click here to read more)

 Is President Obama’s Depression Coming Our Way? (Cato Institute)

“Barack Obama began his presidency talking about a “New New Deal,” referring of course to his hero Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s policies during the Great Depression. Those policies had the unintended effect of prolonging double-digit unemployment, principally by making it more expensive and difficult for employers to hire people. Whenever something becomes more expensive and difficult, there’s likely to be less of it. In this case, private sector jobs.

Now Obama is presiding over the worst economic recovery since the Great Depression, and if he’s elected for another term, this official “recovery” — with incomes falling faster than during the 2008-2009 recession — could turn into a crushing depression.”  (Click here to read more)

Academic Dishonesty (Walter Williams)

“Many of the nation’s colleges and universities have become cesspools of indoctrination, intolerance, academic dishonesty and an “enlightened” form of racism. This is a decades-old trend. In a 1991 speech, Yale President Benno Schmidt warned: “The most serious problems of freedom of expression in our society today exist on our campuses. The assumption seems to be that the purpose of education is to induce correct opinion rather than to search for wisdom and to liberate the mind.”

Unfortunately, parents, taxpayers and donors have little knowledge of the extent of the dishonesty and indoctrination. There are several clues for telling whether there’s academic dishonesty and indoctrination. One is to see whether a college spends millions for diversity and multiculturalism centers and hires directors of diversity and inclusion, managers of diversity recruitment, associate deans for diversity, and vice presidents of diversity. See whether colleges spend money to indoctrinate incoming freshmen with programs such as “The Tunnel of Oppression,” in which, among other things, students call one another vile racial and sexual names in order to develop “oppression awareness.” (Click here to read more)

Recommended Reading – Thursday, September 6th

Sep 6, 2012 by Jason

The Terrifying New Normal (Victor Davis Hanson)

“I’ve witnessed two of the most radical developments in my lifetime the last four years — changes far greater than those brought on by the massive new increases in the national debt, the soaring gas costs, the radical decrease in average family income, the insolvent Medicare and Social Security trajectories, or the flat housing market.

One is the fact of less than 1% interest rates on most savings (well below the rate of inflation), and the other is an epidemic of 20-something unemployment. All that is the new normal.”  (Click here to read more)

Why Government Health Care Raises Costs (Thomas Sowell)

“Insurance is all about risk. Yet neither insurance companies nor their policy-holders can do anything about one of the biggest risks — namely, interference by politicians, to turn insurance into something other than a device to deal with risk.

By passing laws to force insurance companies to cover things that have nothing to do with risk, politicians force up the cost of insurance.

Annual checkups, for example, are known in advance to take place once a year. Foreseeable events are not a risk. Annual checkups are no cheaper when they are covered by an insurance policy. On the contrary, they are one of many things that are more expensive when they are covered by an insurance policy.

All the paperwork, record-keeping and other things that go with having any medical procedure covered by insurance have to be paid for, in addition to the cost of the medical procedure itself.

If automobile insurance covered the cost of oil changes or the purchase of gasoline, then both oil changes and gasoline would have to cost more, to cover the additional bureaucratic work involved.”  (Click here to read more)

Freeing The Doctor (The Independent Institute)

“Of all the people in the healthcare system, none is more central than the physician. As I explain in my book Priceless: Curing the Healthcare Crisis, fundamental reform that lowers costs, raises quality, and improves access to care is almost inconceivable without physicians leading and directing the changes. Yet of all the actors in modern healthcare, none are more trapped than our nation’s doctors. Let’s consider just a few of the ways your doctor is constrained, unlike any other professional.

Sometime in the early part of the last century, all the other professionals in our society—lawyers, accountants, architects, engineers, and so on—discovered the telephone. It’s a handy device. Ideal for communicating with clients. Yet, telephone consultations are not on Medicare’s list of about 7,500 tasks it pays physicians to perform. (At least, it’s not there in a way that makes telephone consultations practical.) Private insurance tends to pay the way Medicare pays. So do most employers.

Sometime toward the end of the last century, all the other professionals discovered email. In some ways, it’s even better than the phone. But reading and responding to emails doesn’t make Medicare’s list in a practical way, either.
…
The ability to consult with doctors by phone or email could be a boon to chronic care. Face-to-face meetings with physicians would be less frequent, especially if patients learned how to monitor their own conditions and manage their own care.”  (Click here to read more)

Recommended Reading – Tuesday, August 7th

Aug 7, 2012 by Jason

Obamacare:  The Road To Repeal Starts in The States  (Cato Institute)

“States that have refused to implement the Obama health law have already blocked $80 billion of its new deficit spending. If more states follow suit, they can block the other $1.6 trillion and force Congress to repeal the law.

The law relies on states to implement two of its most essential pieces: health-insurance “exchanges” and a vast expansion of Medicaid. Exchanges are government agencies through which the law channels $800 billion to private health-insurance companies.”  (Click here to read more)

Sports Versus Politics (Thomas Sowell)

“Milton Friedman once pointed out, “A system established largely to prevent bank panics produced the most severe banking panic in American history.” Many other examples could be cited where government intervention made a bad situation worse.

But most discussions of the role of government never even reach the point of looking for empirical evidence. Today, for example, there is much gnashing of teeth in the media because Democrats and Republicans can’t seem to get together to create a bipartisan plan for government intervention to solve our current economic problems.

Those who cry out that the government should “do something” never even ask for data on what has actually happened when the government did something, compared to what actually happened when the government did nothing. That could be a very enlightening trip through the archives.”  (Click here to read more)

Tiffany’s And The Problem of Security (Whiskey and Gunpowder)

“After Sept. 11, the American system of government became crazy obsessed with security. The implementation has not only been brutal and contrary to human liberty; it has completely lacked creativity. Instead of real security, we get what’s called “security theater,” and at the expense of the customer, who feels the brunt of all the new impositions.

It was the stupidest decision ever to nationalize airport security after Sept. 11, for doing so guaranteed this result. Security is too important to be left to government. What does the cause of security have to learn from the private sector? Plenty.

I was just at a Tiffany jewelry store. If you know these places, you know that they have a serious security issue to deal with. What is the total value of the inventory? It’s a guess. It’s in the many millions, maybe tens of millions. And it’s all on display, out in the open, in a store that lives off its reputation for high-end products.

…

A security problem? I would say so! They have to protect against stupid criminals with guns and bags, but also real-life versions of brilliant criminals such as the legendary jewel thieves we meet in James Bond and Mission Impossible. This is serious business.” (Click here to read more)

All Canadians Should Be Able To Buy Private Health Insurance  (Frontier Centre For Public Policy)

“When Tommy Douglas established Canada’s first government-run health program in Saskatchewan, he did not ban private health care. A recent Ipsos Reid poll found that 76 per cent of Canadians support the right to buy private health insurance for all forms of medically necessary treatment, including cancer care and heart surgery. Extending the Chaoulli judgment to Alberta would push Canada toward adopting the superior policies of Asia and Europe. Extending it across the country would secure the right to life, liberty and security of the person for all Canadians.”  (Click here to read more)

Abundance vs. Scarcity (Mises Institute)

“Which is best for man and for society, abundance or scarcity? What! you exclaim, can that be a question? Has anyone ever asserted, or is it possible to maintain, that at the foundation of human well-being?

Yes, this has been asserted, and is maintained every day; and I do not hesitate to affirm that the theory of scarcity is the most popular by far. It is the life of conversation, of the newspapers, of books, and of political oratory; and, strange as it may seem, it is certain that political economy will have fulfilled its practical mission when it has established beyond question, and widely disseminated, this very simple proposition: “The wealth of men consists in the abundance of commodities.”  (Click here to read more)

Recommended Reading – Thursday, August 2nd

Aug 2, 2012 by Jason

How Times Have Changed (Walter Williams)

“Having been born in 1936 has allowed me to witness both societal progress and retrogression. High on the list of things made better in our society are the great gains in civil liberties and economic opportunities, especially for racial minorities and women. People who are now deemed poor have a level of material wealth that would have been a pipe dream to yesteryear’s poor. But despite the fact that today’s Americans have achieved an unprecedented level of prosperity, we have become spiritually and morally impoverished compared with our ancestors.

Years ago, spending beyond one’s means was considered a character defect. Today not only do people spend beyond their means but also there are companies that advertise on radio and TV to eliminate or reduce your credit card and mortgage debt. Students saddled with college loans have called for student loan forgiveness. Yesterday’s Americans would have viewed it as morally corrupt and reprehensible to accumulate debt and then seek to avoid paying it. It’s nothing less than theft. What’s worse is there’s little condemnation of it by the rest of us.”  (Click here to read more)

Counsel of Despair?  (The Independent Institute)

“If the government props up unprofitable firms with bailouts and cheap loans and subsidizes unemployed workers with extended unemployment-insurance benefits and other income supports, it only obstructs and delays the necessary restructuring of the economy’s resource allocation. Although it may appear to be relieving people’s pain—and, indeed, it is doing so for those fortunate enough to receive booty at the public’s expense—it is only ensuring that by falsifying the price and profit signals that tell economic actors how to act most rationally in the society’s long-term benefit, it is preserving an economically irrational allocation of resources and thereby planting a time bomb that will explode later in the form of an even worse bust.

Thus, what seems to be governmental “compassion” is scarcely true compassion, but only a spurious assistance to some at the present expense of others and, ultimately, to the detriment of almost everyone. The true counselors of despair are those who insist that the government act even though the government cannot act constructively and its actions will, at best, only produce short-term improvement in the patient’s symptoms while ensuring that in the long term, he will fall victim to an even more painful malady. If the patent is bleeding, it is scarcely compassionate to attach government leeches so that he loses blood even more rapidly. The true counselors of despair are those who hope against hope—and historical experience—that the government can and will act constructively.”  (Click here to read more)

Who Are The 1 Percent (Thomas Sowell)

“It was either Adolf Hitler or his propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, who said that the people will believe any lie, if it is big enough and told often enough, loudly enough. Although the Nazis were defeated in World War II, this part of their philosophy survives triumphantly to this day among politicians, and never more so than during election years.

Perhaps the biggest lie of this election year, and the one likely to be repeated the most often, is that the income of “the rich” is going up, while other people’s incomes are going down.”  (Click here to read more)

Taxes and Beer

Jul 27, 2012 by Jason

From Casey Research’s ‘Daily  Dispatch‘

Suppose that every day, ten men go out for a beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100.

If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:

The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.

The fifth would pay $1.00

The sixth would pay $3.00

The seventh would pay $7.00

The eighth would pay $12.00

The ninth would pay $18.00

The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.00

So that’s what they decided to do. The men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day the owner threw them a curve.

“Since you are all such good customers,” he said, “I’m going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20.00.”

Drinks for the ten men now cost just $80.00.

The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes, so the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free. But what about the other six men – the paying customers? How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get their “fair share?”

They realized that $20.00 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody’s share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer. So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man’s bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay.

And so:

The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings).

The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33% savings).

The seventh now paid $5 instead of $7 (28% savings).

The eighth now paid $9 instead of 12 (25% savings).

The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings).

The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings).

Each of the six was better off than before! And the first four continued to drink for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings.

“I only got a dollar out of the $20″ declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man, “But he got $10!”

“Yeah, that’s right,” shouted the seventh man. “Why should he get $10 back when I got only two? The wealthy get all the breaks!”

“Wait a minute,” yelled the first four men in unison. “We didn’t I get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!”

The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.

The next night the tenth man didn’t show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn’t have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!

And that, boys and girls, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore. In fact, they might start drinking overseas where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.

For those who understand, no explanation is needed.

For those who do not understand, no explanation is possible.

Recommended Reading – Tuesday, June 16th

Jun 26, 2012 by Jason

Good People  (Whiskey and Gunpowder)

“What does it mean to be a “good person”?

One hears the term fairly often. So and so is a good person. Or the plural – they’re good people. But what ismeant is rarely defined. It is accepted that we’re all talking about the same thing – but if you look at it a little bit, very often we’re not. Because many of us seem to have a view of goodness that is completely at odds with the concept of goodness as defined by others.

The liberal Democrat, for example, thinks of himself as a good person because he expresses concern for others, typically those less well-off than others. He wants to “help” – but his goodness (as he defines it) does not manifest itself via himself personally helping those he believes are in need. He does not invite the homeless into his home (or even his garage). He invites them into your home.

He does not “give” of his own time – or money. Rather, he demands that others be made to “give” of theirs. Which of course does not strike him as oxymoronic – let alone vicious. This good person will not feel bad about demanding that some be enslaved for the benefit of others – so long as the former are “deserving” (as defined by the good person) and the latter are “paying their fair share” (again, as defined by the good person).”  (Click here to read more)

Prudence is a Virtue (Fraser Institute)

“Back when my paternal grandparents were alive, they lived with thrift as their constant companion and spent little more than necessary, splurging only on others.

Every spring, my grandmother would can a plethora of fruits and vegetables from her Okanagan garden. In anticipation, she saved every plastic bag for use in canning. As a kid, I thought it odd behaviour. But of course, I had no knowledge then of the shortages she, her siblings and parents endured in the Soviet Union in the 1920s before they emigrated to Canada.

More generally, beyond their initial mortgage, I don’t think my grandparents ever bought anything on credit. They would have been surprised by the recent tendency to borrow money against one’s home equity to finance renovations or vacations. They and much of their generation aimed to pay their mortgage off as soon as possible and to stay out of unnecessary debt.”  (Click here to read more)

 A Political Glossary (Thomas Sowell)

“”Since this is an election year, we can expect to hear a lot of words — and the meaning of those words is not always clear. So it may be helpful to have a glossary of political terms.

One of the most versatile terms in the political vocabulary is “fairness.” It has been used over a vast range of issues, from “fair trade” laws to the Fair Labor Standards Act. And recently we have heard that the rich don’t pay their “fair share” of taxes.

ome of us may want to see a definition of what is “fair.” But a concrete definition would destroy the versatility of the word, which is what makes it so useful politically.

If you said, for example, that 46.7 percent of their income — or any other number — is the “fair share” of their income that the rich should have to pay in taxes, then once they paid that amount, there would be no basis for politicians to come back to them for more — and “more” is what “fair share” means in practice.

Life in general has never been even close to fair, so the pretense that the government can make it fair is a valuable and inexhaustible asset to politicians who want to expand government.” (Click here to read more…and click here for Part II and here for Part III)

When Your Credit Card Stops Working (The Daily Reckoning)

“In a late, degenerate system — whether it is socialism, capitalism, or whatever — half the population tries to live at the expense of the other half. In America today, they succeed. More than half the people get money from the government.

The other half is forced to spend much of its time trying to keep the zombies at bay. They hire tax accountants to help them avoid taxes. They hire estate lawyers to try to get their wealth to their heirs rather than to the zombies’ heirs. They move from a high tax state to a low-tax state. They dodge. They duck.”  (Click here to read more)

My blogging slowdown…

Jun 13, 2012 by Jason

My attention has been on other matters for the last few weeks and I have not been able to post as regularly as I would like.

Myy family and I are preparing for a big move this week and my attention has been on preparing to move.  I am hoping to pick things up, as far as blog posts go,  in the next week or so.

Recommended Reading – Thursday, May 24th

May 24, 2012 by Jason

Sweden’s Secret Recipe  (Frontier Centre For Public Policy)

“When Europe’s finance ministers  meet for a group photo, it’s easy to spot the rebel — Anders Borg has a ponytail and earring. What actually marks him out, though, is how he responded to the crash. While most countries in Europe borrowed massively, Borg did not. Since becoming Sweden’s finance minister, his mission has been to pare back government. His ‘stimulus’ was a permanent tax cut. To critics, this was fiscal lunacy — the so-called ‘punk tax cutting’ agenda. Borg, on the other hand, thought lunacy meant repeating the economics of the 1970s and expecting a different result.

Three years on, it’s pretty clear who was right. ‘Look at Spain, Portugal or the UK, whose governments were arguing for large temporary stimulus,’ he says. ‘Well, we can see that very little of the stimulus went to the economy. But they are stuck with the debt.’ Tax-cutting Sweden, by contrast, had the fastest growth in Europe last year, when it also celebrated the abolition of its deficit. The recovery started just in time for the 2010 Swedish election, in which the Conservatives were re-elected for the first time in history.

All this has taken Borg from curiosity to celebrity. The Financial Times recently declared him the most effective finance minister in Europe. When we meet in his Stockholm office on a Friday afternoon (he and his aide seem to be the only two left in the building) he says he is just carrying on 20 years of reform. ‘Sweden was a textbook case of European economic sclerosis. Very high taxes and huge regulatory burden.’ An economic crisis in the early 1990s forced Sweden on the road to balanced budgets, and Borg was determined the 2007 crash would not stop him cutting the size of government.”  (Click here to read more)

Recommended Reading – Tuesday, May 22nd

May 22, 2012 by Jason

Big Lies In Politics (Thomas Sowell)

“The fact that so many successful politicians are such shameless liars is not only a reflection on them, it is also a reflection on us. When the people want the impossible, only liars can satisfy them, and only in the short run. The current outbreaks of riots in Europe show what happens when the truth catches up with both the politicians and the people in the long run.

Among the biggest lies of the welfare states on both sides of the Atlantic is the notion that the government can supply the people with things they want but cannot afford. Since the government gets its resources from the people, if the people as a whole cannot afford something, neither can the government.
There is, of course, the perennial fallacy that the government can simply raise taxes on “the rich” and use that additional revenue to pay for things that most people cannot afford. What is amazing is the implicit assumption that “the rich” are all such complete fools that they will do nothing to prevent their money from being taxed away. History shows otherwise.”   (Click here to read more)

What Happens When ‘Free’ Is Unaffordable  (Acton Institute)

“I think that the kinds of protests we are seeing in Quebec might be the inevitable end of the logic of the welfare state. The logic goes something like this:

Education is a right, and should be free, or the next best thing to it. In order for it to be “free,” it must be administered, or at least underwritten, by the state, because we know that the only way to make something appear to be free is to requisition the necessary funds via taxation. This is, in fact, precisely the rationale for the existence of the modern welfare state, in which in the context of the Netherlands, for instance, it is understood to be “the task of the state to promote the general welfare and to secure the basic needs of people in society.”

Education is a right (per the UN Declaration), is constitutive of the general welfare, and a basic need. Thus it must be “fully guaranteed by the government” (to quote Noordegraaf from the Dutch context regarding social security, mutatis mutandis).

The upheavals we are seeing, then, are what happen when we can no longer sustain such guarantees. They are what happen when “free” becomes unaffordable and unsustainable.”  (Click here to read more)

To The Class of 2012   (The Daily Reckoning)

“Many college grads of today could hardly be called intellectuals. Many have hardly used their brains at all. Some have merely spent the last four years learning a few tricks and the latest jargon of a trade. Marketing, for example. Or journalism. Marketing evolves so fast that whatever you learn here will be mostly obsolete by the time you get a job. If you ever get a job. Besides, the important points could be picked up in a few weeks on the job anyway.

As to journalism, there are a few skills you need to know, which you could pick up in an afternoon; the rest is undifferentiated. You look. You ask questions. You think. And you tell the world what you come up with. No college necessary. In fact, college may hinder you. Instead of using your own eyes and your own brain, and developing your own way of looking at things, you spent your best years in class absorbing the claptrap du jour of the mainstream media.

Others among you have read popular novels or a few history books. You think you know something. Maybe you call yourself a historian. Or perhaps a literary critic. My advice is to keep that to yourself. You have paid a lot of money for something that millions of other people — just as smart as you are — do for a hobby or past-time. There’s not much real knowledge in either of those things…just opinions and ideas which are more vanity and entertainment than genuine learning.

Same thing for those who have spent years studying ‘politics’ or ‘economics.’ Drop the pretense that you know something. You don’t. All you have is a full plate of opinions…most of them preposterous…and most of them indigestible by a thoughtful person.”  (Click here to read more)

Recommended Reading – Wednesday, May 16th

May 16, 2012 by Jason

Green Grief  (Liberty Unbound)

“Despite sad sagas of emperor penguins disappearing as Antarctica allegedly melts (allegedly because of our greedy species’ greenhouse gas emissions), a recent story reports that more studies — ones that use satellite imagery to count the nattily attired birds — reveal that the penguins are doing just fine. By former estimates, there are about 270,000 to 350,000 of the waddling beasts. Now it appears that in reality, there are 595,000 of them! The aerial survey discovered a whole flock of new colonies. If the ice is melting, it doesn’t seem to be harming these birds.

Moving quickly to the other pole of the Earth: polar bears are also in great demographic shape. The bears have been centerpieces in some of the most lurid global warming tales: remember the infamous shot of a miserable looking polar bear clinging to a tiny ice floe. Because of such tales, the US put polar bears on the endangered species list. This, in spite of the fact that the beasts are far from cuddly — they are one of the few predators with a taste for human flesh, especially the human liver (with or without Fava beans).

But another recent story reports that in the crucial Nunavut region of Canada, the polar bear population — which in 2004 had been estimated at around 935 (22% lower than estimates made 20 years earlier), and was projected to fall even further, to 610 animals by 2011 — has now been more accurately counted. The Canadian government did aerial surveys and found 1,013 cute but vicious carnivores in that region alone. The population, far from dwindling, seems to be thriving, despite global warming and illegal hunting. (polar bear pelts fetch up to $15,000 in Russia and China, and about 450 bears are illegally killed each year). Despite the heat and the hunters, the polar bear population now appears to have reached the highest peak ever recorded — something like 25,000 across the Canadian Arctic.

Reports such as these are continually coming in. They may be the reason that no less a green guru than scientist James Lovelock, the fellow who came up with the whole “Gaia Concept,” now admits that his earlier warnings about a rapidly heating, life-killing earth were alarmist.”  (Click here to read more)

The Moral Infrastructure (Thomas Sowell)

“The “Occupy” movement, which the Obama administration and much of the media have embraced, has implications that reach far beyond the passing sensation it has created.

The unwillingness of authorities to put a stop to their organized disruptions of other people’s lives, their trespassing, vandalism and violence is a de facto suspension, if not repeal, of the 14th Amendment’s requirement that the government provide “equal protection of the laws” to all its citizens.

How did the “Occupy” movement acquire such immunity from the laws that the rest of us are expected to obey? Simply by shouting politically correct slogans and calling themselves representatives of the 99 percent against the 1 percent.

But just when did the 99 percent elect them as their representatives? If in fact 99 percent of the people in the country were like these “Occupy” mobs, we would not have a country. We would have anarchy.”  (Click here to read more)

Hayek’s Tolerant and Pluralistic Vision   (Foundation for Economic Education)

“Once we agree on the rules, we need not agree on the ends to live peacefully with one another. The liberal society is “means-connected” and not “ends-connected.” Markets enable us to disagree peacefully while each pursues his or her own way.

But notice that to sustain this kind of society, we must be willing to tolerate differences with others. We have to recognize that our freedom to achieve our ends comes at the cost of allowing others the same, even if we find those ends distasteful. In the words of FEE’s founder, Leonard Read, we must be willing to accept “anything that’s peaceful.” This is what Hayek means when he says a free society is a “pluralistic society.

Compare this to socialism or fascism. These systems require a single hierarchy of ends; according to the theory, the collective decides which ends will be pursued and which not. When resources are allocated centrally, pursuing our own individual ends is impossible. Our particular ends must be subordinated to the priorities of the State or collective. The result is not the peaceful disagreement and tolerance of the liberal order, but constant fighting over the reins of power in order to achieve one’s ends at the expense of others. We turn the positive-sum game of the market into the zero or negative-sum game of State power.”  (Click here to read more)

The Crisis of Interventionism  (Mises Institute)

“The interventionist policies as practiced for many decades by all governments of the capitalistic West have brought about all those effects which the economists predicted. There are wars and civil wars, ruthless oppression of the masses by clusters of self-appointed dictators, economic depressions, mass unemployment, capital consumption, famines.

However, it is not these catastrophic events which have led to the crisis of interventionism. The interventionist doctrinaires and their followers explain all these undesired consequences as the unavoidable features of capitalism. As they see it, it is precisely these disasters that clearly demonstrate the necessity of intensifying interventionism. The failures of the interventionist policies do not in the least impair the popularity of the implied doctrine. They are so interpreted as to strengthen, not to lessen, the prestige of these teachings. As a vicious economic theory cannot be simply refuted by historical experience, the interventionist propagandists have been able to go on in spite of all the havoc they have spread.

Yet the age of interventionism is reaching its end. Interventionism has exhausted all its potentialities and must disappear.”  (Click here to read more)