Anarchists and Minarchists

There is a group of people who hold individual liberty to be a value and an end in and of itself. We believe that man cannot be fully human without the capacity and freedom to chose how to lead one's life. A life of servitude and obedience to the master and to unjust authority is not the life deserving of the word human. It is rather a reduction to the level of an animal or a plant. A plant cannot draw its own path. It cannot choose which action to take in light of its circumstances. So too are the animal's choices strictly limited to its ability to adapt itself to the environment. Only humans are unique in their, in the words of Murray Rothbard, "ability to reason, to make conscious choices, to transform their environment in order to prosper, or to collaborate consciously in society and the division of labor." To reduce one's ability to chose based on one's reflections and values is to deny in part the humanity to this person.

One might hastily object that this reasoning entails also the freedom to aggress against another person or their property. But the argument does no such thing. It puts forth exactly the opposite. Every aggression is necessarily denying humanity to the person on the receiving end of the aggressive act and is therefore contrary to the argument, which states only that one person should not deny the freedom to choose to another person. The argument puts natural limits on choices where aggression against another person or property is involved.

Yet within this group of people who defend individual liberty there are factions, as there must be wherever people differ in opinion or principle. As one faction, known as the minarchists, believes that to secure individual liberty and the rights which are its corollary a government with a monopoly on force and taxation is necessary, the anarchists like to point out that this very institution is the antithesis to the principles it is supposed to be protecting and that even provided that this limited government situation should be reached, as it arguably was in the earliest hours of the American Republic, the situation is not sustainable and the institution always grows into an intrusive entity.

However, this might not be the central issue of our day. As we look around we see that the various governments round the globe in their military boots and with all-invasive powers have practically no limits on what they can or cannot do. Our society is worlds away from the ideal of either one of these two factions. Even as the ideal worlds we paint in our respective imaginations do not overlap perfectly, we should and must concede that the road we wish to travel is to a large extent the same road. We should therefore as fellow travelers join hands and may our paths then once again split in honest disagreement when our dissent can, by the blessing of all that is good, actually make a practical difference.

This is not to say we should compromise on our principles and stop advocating what we think is right. There is a difference between opportunism and pragmatism. An opportunists is a person without any principles who takes selfish advantage of any situation. A pragmatists deals with actual occurrences and tries to better the situation by working towards his ideal without having to compromise his principles. And I, for one, shall certainly never tire of conveying what I think is the proper framework of human interaction.



Matej Avsenak Ogorevc

The Next US Dictat-- Khm, I Mean President

You are probably familiar with the fact that the US Congress passed a law called National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) in 2011, which President Obama (conveniently) signed on December 31st after having first promised to veto it. Of course the veto threat was removed after the bill was changed so that, as the White House stated, "the language does not challenge or constrain the president’s ability to collect intelligence" and "incapacitate dangerous terrorists". In other words, after the bill gave more power to the President. And you thought Obama had threatened to veto because of his civil liberties concerns.

Either way, the 562 page long Act contains some language that you can easily imagine a dictator using. In fact, it does seem to lead the US down the road of presidential dictatorship. Here is section 1021:

"Congress affirms that the authority of the President to use all necessary and appropriate force pursuant to the Authorization for Use of Military Force... includes the authority for the Armed Forces of the United States to detain... A person who was a part of or substantially supported al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners, including any person who has committed a belligerent act or has directly supported such hostilities in aid of such enemy forces... The disposition of a person under the law of war... may include... Detention under the law of war without trial until the end of the hostilities authorized by the Authorization for Use of Military Force."

Notice the vague language. As rollingstone.com noted, what does it mean to be a part of? Or substantially support? What is substantial? What are associated forces and what can be meant as hostilities? What is a belligerent act? And so on and so forth. These are not trivial questions in any way. Substantial can mean almost anything. So can hostilities. Demonstrations, or even criticism can easily be interpreted as being hostile. Normally these terms would be decided in Court after due process of law but remember, we are talking about "Detention under the law of war without trial". This means that any person in the world can be indefinitely detained if the US President expresses such a will or wish. Not that this has not been the practice thus far but at least it was not codified in a Statute. 

Furthermore, the NDAA may be understood as allowing indefinite detention of US citizens also. It's true that the Act contains the language that "Nothing in this section shall be construed to affect existing law or authorities relating to the detention of United States citizens...", but, as the tenthamendmentcenter.com explains, "there is no Supreme Court case providing the necessary protection preserved by the law’s provision that “existing law or authorities” are preserved." NDAA also includes "The requirement to detain a person in military custody under this section does not extend to citizens of the United States." But again, as per the tenthamendmentcenter.com "This section says that the administration is not REQUIRED to keep a U.S. citizen or legal resident alien in indefinite military custody. But it does not prevent the administration from doing so."

No wonder the political race for the White House is so fierce. Up for grabs potentially is a military dictatorship of the world. Nice!

Matej Avsenak Ogorevc 

Mitt and His Love for Students

"We're also gonna have our loan program so that people are able to afford school", said Mitt Romney, the presidential hopeful, in the last debate. No surprises there but it might be a good idea to reiterate just how toxic this student loan bubble has been.

Now typically when you borrow money from your friend, what do you say to them? Give me some money so that I can afford this or that? Of course not! You tell them "give me some money because I can't afford this or that. When you don't have your own money to pay for something, that's precisely when you can't afford it. And the fact that you have to borrow money for it proves exactly this. When you borrow money it doesn't magically reverse this and make you afford it. It means that you still can't afford it and that you will have to make sure you can afford it at the point of time in the future when you have to return the loan.

Of course students don't benefit from any of this and it doesn't make schooling affordable. It does the opposite. When government gives or guarantees student loans it makes it possible for Universities to jack up prices. So it makes schooling even less affordable. Naturally. The old story of government programs - they tackle a problem, make it worse and then blame everyone else for the outcomes. And then at the end students are graduating with mountains of debt and very few jobs out there with which to pay off the debt. Today student loans in the US are north of $1 trillion, which is higher than credit card debt. Great, congratulations!

But I'll tell you who does benefit from all these loans. The banks. They love it!



Matej Avsenak Ogorevc

The Workings of Income Taxation

When you think about it there is no consensus on how much money people should give up for the so-called common things to be administered by the government. You pay what you are told because you know that if you don't (and get caught) you'll be sent to jail.

Rather, the way it works is that the people in the government decide how much of our money they want to spend and then send us the check. The rest they graciously allow us to keep. But the higher claim on our money, and also our property life, obviously goes to the government because they can change the rules and the amounts any time at penalty of incarceration. We don't keep the portion of our income that is not taxed away because there is an agreement among people that this amount is right. We keep as much as we do because the government tells us how much we may keep and because keeping any more would likely bring the full wrath of the gun and the badge od the State.

Frank Chodorov in his book The Income Tax: Root of All Evil gives us the naked truth about the matter:

"The government says to the citizen: "Your earnings are not exclusively your own; we have a claim on them, and our claim precedes yours; we will allow you to keep some of it, because we recognize your need, not your right; but whatever we grant you for yourself is for us to decide."

This is no exaggeration. Take a look at the income-tax report that you are required by law to make out, and you will see that the government arbitrarily sets down the amount of your income you may have for your living, for your business requirements, for the maintenance of your family, for medical expenses, and so on. After granting these exemptions, with a flourish of generosity, the government decides what percentage of the remainder it will appropriate. The rest you may have.

The percentage of the appropriation may be (and has been) raised from year to year, and the exemptions may be (and have been) lowered from year to year.¹ The amount of your earnings that you may retain for yourself is determined by the needs of government, and you have nothing to say about it."

You can find a great discussion on taxation from a libertarian perspective in Thomas DiLorenzo's lecture at the 2011 Mises University:

Nigel Farage on Why He Thinks Angela Merkel Is Dangerous

A bit of an insight on who the eurocrats are and what their agenda is.

Thanks again to EPJ.

Ron Paul in a Very Candid Interview As Usual

I'm just gonna leave this here.

Thanks to EPJ.

Tom Woods on the Fed, Gold, Moral Principles, and Much More...

Ok so you've opened this link and came to this website, I thank you very much. You have enough curiosity to have done it. Great! Now if you have just a bit of interest in the topics mentioned in the title click on the video. This guy is amazing, trust me! Read below for the credentials of Tom Woods.

Thomas E. Woods, Jr., is a senior fellow of the Ludwig von Mises Institute and creator of Tom Woods’s Liberty Classroom. He holds a bachelor’s degree in history from Harvard and his master’s, M.Phil., and Ph.D. from Columbia University. He is the author of eleven books, most recently Rollback: Repealing Big Government Before the Coming Fiscal Collapse and Nullification: How to Resist Federal Tyranny in the 21st Century.

This is his website.

Public Private Partnerships or Fascism?

Economicpolicyjournal.com has a post about what our betters apparently have in store for us:

"The nation’s major internet service providers by year’s end will institute a so-called six-strikes plan, the “Copyright Alert System” initiative backed by the Obama administration... The plan, now four years in the making, includes participation by AT&T, Cablevision Systems, Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Verizon... The internet companies may eliminate service altogether for repeat file-sharing offenders, although the plan does not directly call for such drastic action."

 But fear not, Hillary Clinton cometh to the rescue to calm things down:

"The problems we face today will not be solved by governments alone. It will be in partnerships - partnerships with philanthropy, with global business, partnerships with civil society."

If you head over to Wikipedia and type in "fascism" in the search box this is one of the things you can read (my bold):

Economic policies

Further information: Economics of fascism

Fascists used to promote their ideology as a "Third Position" between capitalism and Bolshevism.^[237] Italian Fascism involved corporatism, a political system in which the economy is collectively managed by employers, workers, and state officials by formal mechanisms at the national level.^[238] Fascists advocated a new national class-based economic system, variously termed "national corporatism", "national socialism" or "national syndicalism".^[35] The common aim of all fascist movements was elimination of the autonomy or, in some cases, the existence of large-scale capitalism.^[239]
According to Bruce Pauley, Fascist governments exercised control over private property but did not nationalize it.^[240] However, according to Patricia Knight, they did, with the Italian Fascist government coming to own the highest percentage of industries outside the Soviet Union.^[241] The Nazis also nationalized some business.^[242] In fact, the "Twenty-Five Point Programme" of the Nazi party, adopted in 1920, demanded "the nationalization of all businesses which have been formed into corporations."^[243] Other scholars noted that big business developed an increasingly close partnership with the Nazi and Fascist governments as it became increasingly organized. Business leaders supported the government's political and military goals, and in exchange, the government pursued economic policies that maximized the profits of its business allies.^[244]

Hip hip hurray for public private partnerships. Mussolini would be proud.



Matej Avsenak Ogorevc

A Joke for Economists

Walter Block of Loyola University, New Orleans, has it:

There were 3 prisoners in the Soviet Union and as prisoners do, they swapped stories as to why they were in jail. The first guy says "well, I got to work late and they accused me of cheating the State out of my labor services." The other guy says "I got to work early and they accused me of brown nosing." And the third guy said "I got to work every day exactly on time and they accused me of owning a Western wrist watch."

There were 3 guys in jail in the US due to anti trust violations and the first one said "well I am in jail because I charged higher prices than everyone else and they accused me of profiteering." The second guy said "I got in jail because I had lower prices than everyone else and they accused me of predatory price cutting." And the third guy said "well I charged the same prices as everyone else and they accused me of colluding." 

But Dr. Block says it better, watch it here (the joke starts at 30:20):