The Question of Value

Labor (including mental labor) does not bestow utility on an automobile; consumers do that. Rather, labor bestows utility on the disparate factors of production by transforming them into an automobile.

Op-ed: An Echo, Not a Choice

My take on Mitt Romney and the upcoming election.

With Mitt Romney’s sweep of Tuesday’s primaries, he will almost certainly be President Barack Obama’s Republican opponent in November. Romney has vowed to make the economy the chief issue against Obama, and he is sure to portray the president as an enemy of free enterprise in order to draw a contrast with himself. How fit is Romney’s claim to be a champion of economic freedom?

TGIF: Can Mutually Beneficial Exchanges Be Exploitative?

The great thing about competitive markets is not that marginal utility sets prices, but that rivalry among sellers drives prices below the level that approximates many people’s marginal utility. This produces a consumer surplus. (How far below is governed by producers’ subjective opportunity costs, including workers’ preference for leisure.) We all have bought things at a price below that which we were prepared to pay. . . . In a manner of speaking, competition socializes consumer surplus.

 On the other hand, in the absence of competition a coercive monopolist is able to charge more than in a freed market, capturing some of the surplus that would have gone to consumers. That’s a form of exploitation via government privilege.

Read the rest of TGIF here.

Tough Times for Christians in Israeli-Occupied Palestine

The Israeli government didn’t want this “60 Minutes” segment aired. Its ambassador even protested to the chairman of CBS before the exact content of the report was known. The only problem I see with Bob Simon’s report is that he says the wall “completely separates Israel from the West Bank.” In fact, as he shows, the wall snakes through the West Bank, surrounding Palestinian towns such as Bethlehem (“an open-air prison,” according to Palestinian Christians) and separating people’s homes from their farms. All in all, for an American television network, this is an extraordinarily frank report on the Israeli oppression of Palestinians.

See Juan Cole’s “Top Ten Reasons Israel tried to Censor Bob Simon’s Report on Palestinian Christians.” (HT: Hassan Al Shouli)

Recent Scribblings

TGIF: Stigmatizing Resistance to Authority
Op-ed: Barack Obama: Corporatist

TGIF: Variations on a Corporatist Theme

The latest TGIF focuses on the common corporatist philosophy held by Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. Read it here.

Happy Birthday, Tom Szasz!

Today is Tom Szasz’s 92 birthday. I hope he’s having a great day with his family. Remarkably, Tom continues to publish a book a year. His awesome work is recommended to anyone who loves liberty. It's a mistake to think his work is fundamentally about psychiatry. Fundamentally it is about the necessary integration of freedom and self-responsibility -- and their enemy the state.

You can find a sample of his writings here. Some things I’ve written about Szasz include:

“Szasz in One Lesson”

“Szasz and Rand” (Journal of Ayn Rand Studies, pdf)

I'm proud to call this great man and great libertarian my friend!

Are They Laughing at Us?

"Although Mr. Obama has made a point of not accepting contributions from registered lobbyists, a review of campaign donations and White House visitor logs shows that special interests have had little trouble making themselves heard. Many of the president’s biggest donors, while not lobbyists, took lobbyists with them to the White House, while others performed essentially the same function on their visits." --New York Times

Why Ron Paul Is Wrong on Jerusalem

Jeremy Hammond, author of the best brief introduction to the Palestine conflict, The Rejection of Palestinian Self-Determination, demonstrates that Ron Paul’s position on Jerusalem as the capital of Israel is a “betrayal of his values.”

Ron Paul’s senior adviser, Doug Weed, says the presidential candidate supports Israel’s choice for its capital. Weed reported that Paul told a a group of evangelical leaders:

The real issue here is not what America wants but what Israel wants. We have no right to choose their capital. If they say it is Jerusalem, then it is Jerusalem.

Weed then paraphrased Paul: “Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. Get over it.”

Hammond documents in detail the illegality of Israel’s annexation of Jerusalem (as well as its 1981 bombing of Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reaction, which Paul also defended):

Ron Paul’s suggestion that the U.S. should recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel is likewise a disappointing defense of lawlessness that would seem to indicate that Dr. Paul is unfamiliar with the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and rather bases his views on the establishment-approved mythical narrative, which is essentially the history as it is presented in Zionist propaganda….

It is a disturbing development in Ron Paul’s campaign to see him sounding on this issue more rather than less like his establishment opponents.

Was Trayvon Martin Standing HIS Ground?

Trayvon Martin's champions should be careful what they say about the "stand your ground" law. It's possible that Martin felt threatened by George Zimmerman and, in fear for his life, countered the threat rather than retreat.  Of course Martin had no gun, but what if he had managed to kill Zimmerman by, say, slamming his head on the pavement? He might have reasonably invoked "stand your ground."

Be careful.

Deir Yassin Day

Today is Deir Yassin Day. Anyone who seeks understanding about the unending conflict in Palestine/Israel ought to know about this massacre of 254 innocent Palestinians by the Zionist paramilitary forces Irgun (headed by future Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin) and the Stern Gang in 1948, a month before the Jewish state declared independence. Deir Yassin was among the worst incidents of the Nakba, the ethnic-cleansing catastrophe that befell the Palestinians in the creation of the state of Israel. Some 750,000 people were driven from their homes (which were then destroyed or expropriated) and were not allowed to return.

The best brief introduction to the Nakba is Jeremy Hammond’s The Rejection of Palestinian Self-Determination.

In a not unrelated story, Israel has barred from entry Günter Grass, the NobelPrize winning German poet for his poem “What Must Be Said,” which is about the danger to peace from Israel’s nuclear arsenal. As Israel and the United States edge toward war with Iran, which is not thought by them to be building even one nuclear weapon, it is worth recalling that Israel has an arsenal of several hundred warheads, including submarine-based nukes.

The Martin Case and “Stand Your Ground”

UPDATED April 14, 2012

It is mystifying why Florida’s “stand your ground” law is even discussed in the context of Trayvon Martin’s fatal shooting by George Zimmerman on February 26. The law bears no relation whatever to the case. It says simply that a law-abiding person who is attacked “has no duty to retreat and has the right to stand his or her ground and meet force with force, including deadly force if he or she reasonably believes it is necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony.”

Where’s the connection to this case? According to his own 9-1-1 call, Zimmerman says he pursued the unarmed 17-year-old Martin before shooting him dead.  Zimmerman was not standing his ground.

And he uttered a racial slur (“fucking coon”) in reference to Martin, who was black, while following him and still on the 9-1-1 call. Why he is not under suspicion of murder by the authorities is curious to say the least.

[UPDATE: A prosecutor's affidavit filed after Zimmerman was charged with second-degree murder states that Zimmerman said "these f------ punks" in his 911 call rather than the racial slur that had been reported earlier and that I heard in an enhanced recording played on television. However, the Associated Press reported: "In yet another passage in the affidavit that caught the attention of those watching the racially charged case, prosecutors said Zimmerman 'profiled' Martin just before the shooting. The document did not elaborate, and a spokeswoman for special prosecutor Angela Corey on Friday refused to explain it."]

As Roderick Long points out, some cable television pundits can’t make up their minds whether the killing was consistent with a law they don’t like or unlawful, which would enable them to condemn the authorities for letting Zimmerman remain at liberty.

Latest Scribblings

TGIF: The Ubiquity of Economic Phenomena

Op-ed: Defusing the Middle East Would Lower Gas Prices

Latest Scribblings

Op-ed: “Obama’s Iran Policy Commits Him to War”

TGIF:  “The 99% and the 1%”

The War on Gaza

Israel and its apologists will blame Palestinian militants for the latest flare-up of violence in the Gaza Strip, but no one disputes that relative quiet was broken when an IDF airstrike last Friday killed Zuheir al-Qaisi and Mahmoud Al-Hannani of the Popular Resistance Committees. Palestinians, though reportedly not Hamas, responded with rockets into southern Israel. At least 18 Palestinians have been killed so far by Israeli airstrikes, including a 12-year-old boy. The Israeli military said three Israelis were wounded in the more than 90 assaults from rockets and mortars.

The Israeli military said it targeted the men because they had plotted an attack in Israel that took place in August and were planning another attack. The first claim can't be true, casting doubt on the credibility of the second.

One cannot properly judge these recurring incidents without keeping in mind the full context. The Gaza Strip, which Israel has controlled since 1967, has been blockaded by the Jewish state since 2007, after Hamas won elections there. The Israeli government restricts the flow of goods into Gaza, and one Israeli official has joked about putting the people there on “a diet.” Efforts to break the embargo by human rights activists have been met by force, most egregiously in the 2010 Mavi Mamara incident in which Israeli commandos boarded the ship and killed nine activists, including a young American citizen, Furkan Dogan. Smuggling of goods through tunnels across the Egyptian border has mitigated some of the hardship from the embargo.

In 2008-2009 the IDF killed more than 1,200 Palestinians in Gaza during a three-week air and ground assault known as Operation Cast Lead.

As for the larger context, many residents of Gaza are refugees or children of refugees driven out of their ancestral villages by Zionist paramilitary forces in 1948 in an effort to establish the Jewish state with as few Arab residents as possible. See my previous post “Gaza, Sderot, and Najd.”

In other words, the context is one in which the Israeli government is the oppressor and the Palestinians in Gaza, which amounts to a large concentration camp, are the oppressed. Israel could bring an end to the rockets on civilian neighborhoods by ceasing its unjust treatment of the Palestinians in Gaza, as well as in the West Bank and Israel.

For more, read Gideon Levy's Haaretz analysis, "Way to Go, IDF!," Ali Abunimah's "'Mowing the lawn': On Israel’s latest massacre in Gaza and the lies behind it," and Max Blumenthal's "Israel's bogus case for bombing Gaza obscures political motives."

The Purpose of Government

The idea that "the purpose" of government  is or ever was the protection of rights is a fetter on the libertarian mind, holding it back from embracing the full logical implications of its premises. As earlier libertarians understood, the purpose of the State was/is the exploitation of honest labor (including that performed by entrepreneurs).

Jews in Tehran

Twenty-five synagogues in Tehran.  Several Jewish hospitals serving people of all faiths. Anti-Semites in Iran? Funny, they don’t look it.

Jewish Life Thrives in Iran

How can this be? Does Mahmoud Ahmadinejad not know there are 25,000 Jews in Iran?

Bibi Lies

The incomparable Max Blumenthal on Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech before AIPAC and his position on Iran.

deLiberation

Some interesting things going on at deLiberation. Check it out.