Revisionist History Day, 2011

Today is Revisionist History Day, what others call Memorial Day. Americans are supposed to remember the country's war dead while being thankful that they protected our freedom and served our country. However, reading revisionist history (see a sampling below) or alternative news sites (start with Antiwar.com and don't forget to listen to Antiwar Radio with Scott Horton) teaches that the fallen were doing no such thing. Rather they were and are today serving cynical politicians and the "private" component of the military-industrial complex in the service of the American Empire.

In that spirit, I again quote a passage from the great antiwar movie The Americanization of Emily. You'll find a video of the scene below. This AP photo is a perfect illustration of what "Charlie Madison" is talking about.

I don't trust people who make bitter reflections about war, Mrs. Barham. It's always the generals with the bloodiest records who are the first to shout what a Hell it is. And it's always the widows who lead the Memorial Day parades . . . we shall never end wars, Mrs. Barham, by blaming it on ministers and generals or warmongering imperialists or all the other banal bogies. It's the rest of us who build statues to those generals and name boulevards after those ministers; the rest of us who make heroes of our dead and shrines of our battlefields. We wear our widows' weeds like nuns and perpetuate war by exalting its sacrifices....

My brother died at Anzio – an everyday soldier’s death, no special heroism involved. They buried what pieces they found of him. But my mother insists he died a brave death and pretends to be very proud. . . . [N]ow my other brother can’t wait to reach enlistment age. That’ll be in September. May be ministers and generals who blunder us into wars, but the least the rest of us can do is to resist honoring the institution. What has my mother got for pretending bravery was admirable? She’s under constant sedation and terrified she may wake up one morning and find her last son has run off to be brave. [Emphasis added.]

Enjoy the day. I'll spend some of it reading revisionist history -- Ussama Makdisi's Faith Misplaced: U.S.-Arab Relations, 1820-2001, and watching Emily.




Here's an all-too-incomplete list of books in no particular order:

• Why American History Is Not What They Say: An Introduction to Revisionism, by Jeff Riggenbach
• War Is a Lie, by David Swanson
• War Is a Racket, by Smedley D. Butler
  
• Wartime: Understanding and Behavior in the Second World War, by Paul Fussell
• Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men: A History of the American Civil War, by Jeffrey Rogers Hummel
• The Tragedy of American Diplomacy, by William Appleman Williams
• The Civilian and the Military: A History of the American Antimilitarist Tradition, by Arthur Ekirch
• The Politics of War: The Story of Two Wars which Altered Forever the Political Life of the American Republic, 1890-1920, by Walter Karp
• The Costs of War, edited by John Denson
• Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq, by Stephen Kinzer
• All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror, by Stephen Kinzer
• Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire, by Chalmers Johnson
• The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic, by Chalmers Johnson
• War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning, by Chris Hedges
• A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East, by David Fromkin
• The Gun and the Olive Branch: The Roots of Violence in the Middle East, by David Hirst
• Faith Misplaced: The Broken Promise of U.S.-Arab Relations, 1820-2001, by Ussama Makdisi

TGIF: Lawless Government

Everyone pays lip service to the rule of law. Indeed I’ve never heard of anyone rejecting it as undesirable. (It has been called impossible under prevailing circumstances but that is a different point.) So why is the principle so flagrantly violated with almost no public outrage?

Take President Obama’s intervention in the Libyan civil war. Even if we grant that he could legally enter that conflict by his own unilateral decision – a big if, which we’ll explore below – the War Powers Resolution of 1973 requires him after 60 days to cease operations or ask Congress for authorization to continue. One week ago today the clock ran out on the Libyan intervention, yet Obama has neither ceased operations nor asked for authorization.

He’s violated the law.

The rest of TGIF is here.

Thank you, Sen. Paul...

...for your attempt to hold up passage of the Patriot Act.

Lowest of Lows

When we're talking about Congress, identifying a low point is problematic. But in terms of public displays, nothing is lower than its marathon ass-kissing session the other day with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and, by implication, the Israel lobby. Simply disgusting.

The next time you hear a member of Congress (with one or two obvious exceptions) talk about freedom, justice, self-determination, and democracy, remember that scene. Palestinians need not apply.

TGIF: End the IMF

The IMF has fostered long-term dependency, perpetual indebtedness, moral hazard, and politicization, while discrediting market reform and forestalling revolutionary liberal change.

Read the rest of TGIF: End the IMF here.

Gotta Read this

Something of Kevin Carson's that I just found:

If libertarians like to think of “a fair day’s wage” as an open-ended concept, subject to the employer’s discretion and limited by what he can get away with, they should remember that “a fair day’s work” is equally open-ended. It’s just as much in the worker’s legitimate self-interest to minimize the expenditure of effort per dollar of income as it’s in the employer’s interest to maximize the extraction of effort in a given period of time.

For the authoritarian “libertarians” who believe “vox boss, vox dei,” this suggestion is scandalous. The boss is the only party who can unilaterally rewrite the contract as he goes along. And it’s self-evidently good for the owner or manager to maximize his self-interest in extracting whatever terms he can get away with. Oddly enough, though, these are usually the same people who are most fond of saying that employment is a free market bargain between equals.

For most of us who know what it’s like working under a boss, it’s a simple matter of fairness that we should be as free as the boss to try to shape the undefined terms of the labor contract in a way that maximizes our self-interests. And most of the Wobbly tactics grouped together under the term “direct action on the job” involve just such efforts within the contested space of the job relationship.

Further, these are the very methods a free market labor movement might use, in preference to playing by Wagner Act rules.

Read it all here.

After bin Laden?

So it’s imperative that we not be fooled by appearances. The policymakers will not be using bin Laden’s death as grounds to dismantle the thousand U.S. military installations around the world, to stop supporting torture-loving dictators when they serve “American interests,” to end the violations of Americans’ civil liberties, or to defund the trillion-dollar-plus national security state. That gravy train, which gives prestige to “statesmen,” shapes the global order American-style, and lines the pockets of contractors, is not going to end merely because one man was shot by Navy SEALs.

Read the full op-ed here.

Aristotle and Standup Comedy

How many comedians have one-liners about Aristotle? The only one I know of is the incomparable Shelley Berman (official site here), from whom I learned much in my youth:

Some people say Aristotle died in Chalcis, Euboea. I think Aristotle died of Chalcis Euboea.

Berman these days plays Larry David's father on Curb Your Enthusiasm. Classic Berman is here.

TGIF: No Laissez Faire There

What’s often unappreciated is that writers sympathetic to the free market have disparaged the Gilded Age as broadly illiberal and contrary to the spirit of free enterprise.

Read TGIF here.

Op-ed: Obama's Broken Guantanamo Promise

The latest leaks of classified documents, which show that the U.S. government imprisoned hundreds of men at Guantánamo Bay on the most dubious “evidence,” brings to mind the question, Why hasn’t President Obama kept his promise to close the infamous prison that will forever stain America’s honor?

Read the rest of my op-ed here.

No Clean Hands

Even if one believes in capital punishment and thinks it the appropriate penalty for Osama bin Laden, consider who ordered it and what else he has authorized in the Middle East, Central Asia, and North Africa. That's more than enough to be disgusted by the news out of Pakistan the other night.

What Intellectual Property Has Wrought

Want to know the cost of bogus intellectual property rights? Read "A Trove of Historic Jazz Recordings has Found a Home in Harlem, But You Can’t Hear Them."

An amazing collection of historic live jazz recordings is in the possession of the National Jazz Museum in Harlem, but we might never hear them. Why?

"The potential copyright liability that could attach to redistribution of these recordings is so large—and, more importantly, so uncertain—that there may never be a public distribution of the recordings," wrote David G. Post, a law professor at Temple University in Philadelphia, on the Volokh Conspiracy blog. "Tracking down all the parties who may have a copyright interest in these performances, and therefore an entitlement to royalty payments (or to enjoining their distribution), is a monumental—and quite possibly an impossible—task."

Read This Book!

Is He Not in the Loop?

In Tuscaloosa Obama said he's never seen such devastation. Doesn't the Pentagon show him the bombing reports?

Talking Education on Reason TV

The Freeman, May 2011

Debt Ceiling Shattered April 15

Much attention is directed to the approaching congressional vote on raising the debt limit, which makes the following mysterious.

According to the U.S. Treasury, the $14.294 trillion limit was exceeded on April 15. See it for yourself here.

The latest figures to the penny:

Total Public Debt Outstanding

April 14: $14,270,792,119,184.89

April 15: $14,305,336,580,992.11

April 18: $14,309,159,097,877.65

April 19: $14,320,468,555,091.68

HT: Ken Sturzenacker

Splitting Hairs

If you teach people that government is indispensable to security, don't be surprised if they also believe that government is indispensable to social security. Good luck trying to explain the difference. (Calling the latter, but not the former, socialism does not work.)

TGIF: Saving the Welfare State

Why does everyone think Washington is plagued by excessive partisanship? The contest over how to address the fiscal debacle says otherwise: Both divisions of the uniparty (Democrat and Republican) agree that the warfare-welfare state must be saved. It’s the means not the end that divides them.

The rest of TGIF is here.

Question for Randian IP Advocates

The Randian case for intellectual "property rights" is that all value-productive action (which is necessary for life) proceeds from a creative idea, and therefore all property is ultimately intellectual property. Deprive a person of the exclusive right to his idea and you attack the very foundation of life.

That case prompts a thought experiment: Imagine a primitive tribe in which one member does painstaking research on which wild berries are good for human consumption and which are not. (The Randian case emphasizes that such knowledge is not automatic as it in the case of lower animals, but has to be discovered by intellectual effort.) He learns through his work that when he eats one particular berry he gets healthier and more energetic -- better in every way. He also discovers that other berries are best avoided. The rest of the tribe observes and takes notes.

Question: Under Randian IP law, would the others need the innovator's permission before they may consume the healthful berries? Or does the innovative have an exclusive right to the fruits of his effort. (Pun intended.)

If not, why not?

Think Dialectically

The title of the post is the advice my old friend Chris Matthew Sciabarra would surely give about proposals to change or abolish Medicare and Medicaid. It means holding the full context at the front of one's mind. These programs certainly violate the rights of the people forced to finance them and make the recipients dependent on the political class while discouraging independence and mutual-aid solutions. But they are parts of a system that has other, interlocking components. Focusing only on abolishing Medicare and Medicaid commits the serious offense of overlooking all the ways government (at all levels) cartelizes and restricts the provision of medical care and insurance against medical expenses. Licensing is pervasive, and myriad other controls and privileges impede competition, innovation, and entrepreneurship. Libertarians must emphasize this during every discussion of Medicare and Medicaid or they will appear to be advocating that vulnerable people be thrown into the nightmare that the reigning medical and medical-insurance "markets" can be and often are. We must also teach the public about mutual-aid societies and "lodge practice," which enabled poor people to obtain quality medical care during an earlier period in American history. (Also see Roderick Long's article on lodge practice.)

Unfortunately, too many libertarians imply (without quite saying) that these rigged markets are already free and, moreover, that they are the best in the world. I can't imagine a worse position for libertarians to take these days.

If we don't insist on freed medical and insurance markets, we will have no chance to make headway in the public debate. Potential allies who care about the vulnerable will be alienated, and we will be looked on as ... conservatives.

P.S. It should go without saying that this principle applies across the board.

TGIF: Had Enough Yet?

It’s hard to be optimistic that the mountebanks running the government will do anything sensible in the near future. Until there is a deep rethinking about government, the public will not accept the near-term drastic budget cutting required to head off a fiscal crisis, much less the longer-term structural steps needed to prevent a repetition of what we’ve been through. People will need to understand that while the wish for “social security” in an uncertain world is entirely reasonable, the route to it is not Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security – which tether people to the political class — but freed markets and voluntary mutual aid.

Finally, the fiscal problem needs more than a fiscal solution. People would be less attracted to government succor if the barriers that raise the cost of initiative and independence – including self-employment taxes, medical care restrictions, occupational licensing, land restrictions, and protection of entrenched economic interests from competition – were removed, freeing individuals to find their most satisfying places in the market without having to kowtow to power and privilege.

The rest of TGIF is here.

Op-Ed: Emperor Obama

We were warned. “Who can deny but the president general will be a king to all intents and purposes, and one of the most dangerous kind too; a king elected to command a standing army.... The President- general, who is to be our king after this government is established, is vested with powers exceeding those of the most despotic monarch we know of in modern times.... I challenge the politicians of the whole continent to find in any period of history a monarch more absolute....”

The rest is here.

Show Us the Evidence

President Obama says he had bomb Libya to prevent Col. Qaddafi from massacring the people of Benghazi. Really? Where's the evidence that this was in the cards? Steve Chapman says it runs against the claim. But Obama asks for trust, and his Progressive supporters are mostly willing to give it.

Read about it here.

First Define Your Terms

I don't mean to make Sean Hannity apoplectic, but I don't "love my country." Why not? Because I don't know what the hell that means and I don't sign on to things without knowing the terms.

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.8

Still Making No Sense

Barack Obama says the Libyan intervention is necessary to save innocent civilians from slaughter. He also says that since Qaddafi is the source of the threat, he has to go. But, Obama adds, the U.S. military cannot directly effect regime change (no boots on the ground) because that would "splinter" the coalition (NATO and Arab League) that he takes so much pride in.

This makes no sense. Is the coalition an end in itself? Why should the humanitarian mission that Obama says motivates the intervention take a back seat to the coalition's preservation? If keeping the coalition intact means the deaths of many civilians, what kind of humanitarian mission is this?

That Obama's case for taking sides in this civil war is riddled with such unanswerable questions is a sign that he is not leveling with the American people. The reason he cannot level with them is that he's trying to do incompatible things: serve the interests of the Empire, create a legacy as a humanitarian, and keep his Progressive base in line. (The base might go for a humanitarian mission as long as it's part of an "international" effort.)

This intervention has nothing to do with humanitarianism -- which is not to say that would justify U.S. involvement. This is about the U.S. government's claim to be the ultimate keeper of order in the world, with "order" being whatever condition serves the political-economic interests of the ruling elite.

On Antiwar Radio

Scott Horton's latest interview of me on Antiwar Radio is here.

Geraldine Ferraro: For the Record

Geraldine Ferraro was not the first woman nominated for vice president to win an electoral vote (or, Joe Lieberman, the first Jewish person to be such). That distinction goes to Toni Nathan, who was on the 1972 ticket of the Libertarian Party. The LP ticket of John Hospers and Nathan won a Virginia electoral vote when Roger MacBride, a Nixon elector, broke ranks and voted for them in that state's electoral college balloting. MacBride went on to head the ticket in 1976.

Rizzo on Libya

Mario Rizzo's "Libya and the Rule of Law" is not to be missed.

Rizzo makes many good points, and any self-described advocate of limited government who supports Obama's Libyan intervention must answer them or shut the hell up. As Rizzo notes, the NATO treaty signed by the Senate after World War II says specific things, none of which would make NATO an all-purpose global police force at the disposal of the American president whenever the humanitarian impulse hits him. This intervention is an outrageous breach of the rule of law that everyone pays homage to, and there should be legal consequences for the perpetrator. That means impeachment.

The Problem

Many people -- maybe most -- have a presumption against war. The problem is that their ideological framework enables them to knock the presumption down with a feather.

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.7

Unsorted Thoughts on Libya

Jacob Sullum put it well when he wrote, “Obama claims 'we cannot stand idly by when a tyrant tells his people that there will be no mercy.' Yes, we can, and we often do."

I’d only add this: Some of “our” best friends have been tyrants (sometimes called prime ministers and presidents) who treat “their” people without mercy or justice. Must I really name them?

Empire apologist Jeffrey Goldberg excuse this under the label “strategic hypocrisy.” “We’re all he adults,” he says. In other words, those who demand principled consistency are immature.

***

Anyone who thinks that Obama’s intervention in the Libyan civil war is motivated by humanitarianism is clearly unfamiliar with the history of U.S. foreign policy. Please do some reading. I modestly suggest that here’s a good place to start. On Libya specifically see Pepe Escobar’s analysis. There’s plenty more at Antiwar.com.

***

Imagine that Abraham Lincoln were doing today what he did 150 years ago to prevent the South from breaking away from the Union. Would Obama (or another past president), as head of a hypothetical superpower, have intervened to stop him? Or would he have assisted Lincoln in his violence against the secessionists? It would have depended on the particular interests of the ruling elite.

***

Why do the media insist on calling what the U.S. government has done a “no-fly zone”? It was far more than that from day one, unless Qaddafi has figured out how to make tanks and soldiers fly.

***

The mildest thing you can say about the Libyan intervention is that it's unconstitutional. And the war powers act is a joke.

***

Republicans lie us into wars with the word "security." Democrats lie us into war with the word "humanitarian." That’s the two-party system: a choice between two rationalizations for empire.

***

A NATO war is a U.S. war. NATO has always been an American tool. The Supreme Commander, Europe, is an American admiral. This is not a handoff. It’s a smokescreen to serve Obama’s political interests.

***

The Arab League is a bunch of autocratic nations led by Saudi Arabia, one of America’s staunchest client states. The League’s request for a Western-imposed no-fly zone in Libya means little. It is reasonable to suspect the request was part of a deal involving the Saudi intervention on behalf of the king of Bahrain, who is violently putting down a popular majority Shiite uprising. Besides, most Arab leaders despise Qaddafi. He has insulted them in the past. He’s called some of them “women” because of their robes.

***

Pro-Obama commentators, the ones on MSNBC in particular, have disgracefully taken the easy way out. Instead of examining the issues involved in the intervention, they prefer to mock Republicans as flip-flopping hypocrites. Granted, they’re flip-flopping hypocrites (with one exception). But what about the intervention?! Rachel Maddow’s commentary was the most ridiculous. Obama is different from her predecessor, she said, because he was reluctant to intervene. How do we know? The White House keeps telling us, she said. Seriously! She also said that one of the best things Obama did was not to give solemn explanation to the American people from the Oval Office like all his predecessors did when they intervened in a foreign country. Really!

Do these people ever listen to themselves?

***

Why doesn’t Obama bribe Qaddafi to move to Afghanistan and make him president?

***

Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki apparently has Obama’s okay to violently put down popular protests against his regime. Democracy is in the eye of the beholder.

***

Why are the Chinese rulers willing to lend the U.S. government money to intervene in Libya (and all the other countries it’s intervening in)? Please stop!

***

I have an idea for a constitutional amendment. Before the U.S. government gets involved in any foreign matter, the public must vote on the name. Operation Odyssey Dawn is ridiculous. Someone said it’s the name of a stripper.

Op-Ed: Obama's Imperial Adventure

President Obama’s entry into Libya’s civil war can be criticized on many levels: The mission as explained is incoherent; Congress was not asked for a declaration of war as the Constitution requires; events in Libya do not affect the security of the American people; bombing another oil-rich Muslim country aggravates the conditions that create anti-American terrorism; killing innocent civilians is nearly inevitable; the rebels’ motives are unclear; mission creep happens; war unleashes unforeseen, uncontrollable forces; the government is already deep in debt, and more.

All these objections are valid — and any one of them should have been enough to scotch the plan.

The rest of the op-ed is here.

TGIF: A Victim of the State

Bernard von NotHaus is a victim of State oppression. One hopes his conviction is overturned and he remains a free man. I for one feel safer with him doing what he does than with Ben Bernanke doing what he does.

Read the full TGIF here.

The Freeman, April 2011

The Freeman marks the 150th anniversary of the start of the American Civil War with articles by Jeffrey Rogers Hummel, Burton Folsom, Bradley Birzer, and Joseph Stromberg.

See the issue here.

Left-Libertarianism at Bleeding Heart Libertarians

The new blog Bleeding Heart Libertarians has two left-libertarians among its regulars: Roderick Long and Gary Chartier. Here are their opening shots:

"Whence I Advene" by Roderick Long
"Embracing Markets, Opposing Capitalism" by Gary Chartier

Good stuff!

Op-ed: Muslim Radicals Strike at U.S. Foreign Policy

U.S. Rep. Peter King's recent hearing on the domestic radicalization of Muslims was an act of misdirection. While King, a New York Republican, no doubt exaggerates this phenomenon, he might as well have held a hearing on why objects drop when let go. The answer is obvious. The violence the U.S. government inflicts on the Muslim world is the source of hostility to America. If it’s true of people in the Middle East and North Africa, why wouldn’t it also be true of Muslim Americans?

Read the rest of the op-ed here.

UN Authorizes War

"He who mounts a wild elephant goes where the wild elephant goes."

I thought of those words of Randolph Bourne, the Progressive who became disillusioned by his fellow Progressives' enthusiasm for U.S. entry into World War I, when I heard that the UN Security Council, led by the Obama administration, voted to authorize "all necessary measures" to protect civilians against Libyan Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.

All necessary measures.

Advocates of liberty, not to mention of decency, wish the Libyan people the best in their courageous struggle against the brutal bastard Qaddafi, but that is no justification for U.S. intervention, even under UN cover. A hundred reasons could be cited, but two points should suffice: The government has no moral right to insert the American people into another Mideast war. Moreover, whatever the Obama administration does will have the foreseeable even if unintended effect of killing and maiming innocent people. When you go to war you release an evil, unpredictable genie from the bottle, and it's difficult to put him back in. In the meantime you do a lot of damage. We need no more enemies in the Muslim world. The U.S. government has wreaked enough havoc -- has spilled enough blood -- there to last a long while.

John Quincy Adams has been quoted in similar contexts countless times, but evidently not enough. America, the then-secretary of state said in 1821,

goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy.

She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all.

She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.

She will commend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example.

She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom.

The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force....

She might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit....

If those words ever really described America, they certainly haven't for a long while. So let's work for a future in which that description applies. We must rise in protest to prevent the Nobel Peace Prize-winning president from making more war.

TGIF: A Revolutionary for All Seasons

If it hasn’t been done already, I hope someone is translating Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man (particularly part 2) into Arabic. People rising up against dictators throughout the Middle East and North Africa should be reading that book; it will come in handy when they’ve driven the dictators from power (as in Egypt and Tunisia) and are wondering what to do next. (It wouldn’t hurt for Americans to read it.)

Read the rest of TGIF here.

Larry White on Gold and Free Banking

It doesn't get any clearer than this.

TGIF: Free the Children, Cut the Budget

Will School be separated from State any time soon? Unlikely. The public-school industry, including the unions and all the vendors selling things to school districts, is big, rich, and powerful. The education-industrial complex surely rivals the military-industrial complex in its capacity to consume tax revenues.

But if for no other reason, the dismal fiscal condition of the states makes this a good time to talk about separation. It certainly won’t happen if nobody ever mentions it.

Read the rest here.

Op-Ed: Stay out of Libya

American presidents have sought to police the globe for generations. What has it gotten us? Endless war abroad, and big government and economic hardship at home. Instead of being a beacon of liberty, the country is a symbol of militarism and death. Obama, the fraudulent peace advocate, has followed the same interventionist course. He should not be allowed to extend it to Libya.

See the rest here.

Ethics 101

No one has the right to bargain with thieves for a bigger share of the loot.

TGIF: The Wisconsin Labor Brouhaha

[E]ven free-market advocates with a natural sympathy for labor in the corporate state find it hard to side with government employees. How can one sympathize with state school teachers when the government should have nothing to do with education? This doesn’t mean teachers are bad people, but they do the work of a bad system, and their unions are among the most powerful lobbyists in any state capital.

Would the working conditions of state workers become intolerable if their unions were restricted? Not likely. But if they did, would it really be so bad if state governments had trouble finding employees?

The rest of TGIF is here.

The Freeman, March 2011, Online Now!

to TheFreemanOnline

Op-ed: When Will George W. Bush Be Tried for His War Crimes?

We should take a small measure of satisfaction in former President George W. Bush’s cancellation of his trip to Switzerland after human-rights groups threatened to bring legal action against him for authorizing torture.

See the full op-ed here.

The Law of Cost, cont’d.

More from Philip Wicksteed, The Common Sense of Political Economy:

We can now see how "cost of production," which is simply and solely "the marginal significance of something else," directly affects the quantity of anything produced, and thereby indirectly affects its price, so that there is a constant tendency for prices to conform to cost of production; that is to say, for the price of the thing I make and the price of the thing I might have made instead of it to coincide….

Another U.S. Veto of Palestinian Rights

From the New York Times:

The Obama administration vetoed a United Nations Security Council resolution on Friday condemning Israeli settlement building in occupied territory as illegal, choosing not to alienate Israel and risking the anger of Arabs... But the American ambassador, Susan E. Rice, said the veto should not be misconstrued as American support for further settlement construction, which the United States opposes [!]. The issue should be resolved through peace negotiations, she said, and not mandated by a binding resolution.

What nonsense! Israel has shown no interest in negotiations that take the rights of Palestinians seriously. It hasn't even been willing to halt all settlement construction during negotiations. Its occasional so-called freezes were never more than slow-downs. Keep in mind that the settlements are being built on stolen land. (Also see this.)

The Obama administration, like its predecessors, sure has a funny way of showing it supports freedom and human rights in the Middle East. We can be sure that the Egyptian people and the rest of the Arab and Muslim world is paying attention.

TGIF: There's Got to Be a Better Way

What’s so remarkable about events in the Middle East is that a significant number of people who had felt powerless looked around at what they’d seen every day of their lives and thought for the first time: “It doesn’t have to be this way.”

When will Americans do that?

Read the rest of TGIF here.

The Law of Cost

For anyone who thinks that costs do not govern value and price, hear Philip Wicksteed, the British "Austrian," thoroughgoing subjectivist, and critic of Alfred Marshall (not to mention admired by Mises). From The Common Sense of Political Economy:

In no case can the cost of production have any direct influence upon the price of a commodity, if the commodity has been produced and the cost has been incurred; but in every case in which the cost of production has not been incurred, the manufacturer makes an estimate of the alternatives open to him before determining whether, and in what quantities, the commodity shall be produced; and the stream of supply thus determined on fixes the marginal value and the price. The only sense, then, in which cost of production can affect the value of one thing is the sense in which it is itself the value of another thing. Thus what has been variously termed utility, ophelemity, or desiredness, is the sole and ultimate determinant of all exchange values.

Glenn Beck, Call Your Office

"We as a nation must move towards God, not away from God."
No, not the Muslim Brotherhood. Tim Pawlenty at CPAC.

Egypt Today

Good to see the tyrant, Mubarak, out of there. It is something to celebrate, indeed. But now the army is in charge. Here's hoping the Egyptians "won't get fooled again." Do they fully appreciate what they've experienced the last few weeks? They peacefully abolished the government. Must they institute a new one? They shouldn't assume the answer is yes.

As Americans, our task is to do what we can to stop the U.S. government from further interference in Egypt and the region. Forty years of backing Egyptian autocrats is quite enough. But there is little doubt the U.S. government will work hard to influence the writing of a constitution in order to exclude the Muslim Brotherhood and others it does not like. It will also meddle with whatever elections are held. Keep an eye on the National Endowment for Democracy, an arm of the government that exists almost entirely to influence other countries' elections. (Imagine if a foreign government were doing that here!)

The U.S. government of course will dangle big sums of money in front of the new powers that be to get them to toe the line, and the treasure will be hard to resist. Ideally, the Egyptians will tell the Americans to keep their filthy money (which is also a tax-subsidy for the U.S. military-industrial complex), institute radical free-market reforms (including land reform and dispossession of crony capitalists), and go their own independent way. We can dream, can't we?

I know it is not to be expected any time soon, but the U.S. government should end all economic and military subsidies to each country in the region, starting with Israel (which did not want to see Mubarak or Suleiman go) and Egypt. Such an infusion of wealth has many bad effects, and one of the worst is that it enables the recipients to disguise their failings and escape responsibility (at least for a while). They should all have to stand on their own feet and rectify the injustices they have perpetrated. This of course includes the Israeli government's crimes against the Palestinians. Justice for the Palestinians would remove a huge obstacle to tranquility and progress in the region. Moreover, as long as the U.S. government is seen as an accomplice to those crimes -- which it is -- the American people will be associated with the oppression of Arabs and Muslims. We must not tolerate that any longer.

Good luck to the Egyptians. I rejoice in their triumph. How remarkable that they could drive out the dictator without firing a shot. Ideas do indeed rule the world. Even in the United States.

TGIF: What Egyptians Are Teaching the World

In Egypt the powers that be continue to defy the peaceful throngs in the streets. Yet their rulers’ clumsy efforts to mollify the courageous people remind us of something usually overlooked about the nature of political power, namely, that ideas, not force, ultimately rule, for as Jeffrey Rogers Hummel says, ideas determine the direction in which people aim their guns.

This was well known to the sixteenth-century French political philosopher Étienne de La Boétie, author of The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude, in which he wrote that to rule, tyrants require the cooperation of their subjects. It is doubtful that many Egyptians have read Boétie, but in filling Tahrir (Liberation) Square unarmed, they seem to have grasped his thesis. Here is an appropriate excerpt for the occasion...

Read the rest of TGIF here.

TGIF: Wrong Lesson from Egypt

Looks like I forgot to post a link to last Friday's TGIF. "Wrong Lesson from Egypt" is here.

The Danger in Egypt

The biggest danger facing the Egyptian people now is the real possibility that the U.S. government, in collusion with the ruling goons and key Egyptian "opposition" figures, will hijack the nascent revolution in order to "protect American interests." Of course, that means the interests of the ruling elite, Israel, and the Israel lobby. The good of the Egyptians themselves counts for squat. The Americans hope to permit enough window-dressing "reform" to placate the people without really changing anything. Forms and faces may be altered, but substance would be the same. The people will be screwed, the American taxpayer will keep paying, and U.S. policy will continue along its merry imperialist path, with all the risks to innocents that entails.

Let us hope that the Egyptians see through this fraud and resist. How soon before we see American flags burned in the streets of Cairo and Alexandria?

Obama and Clinton again show themselves as loyal guardians of the Empire.

It's Not Really a Peace Treaty

Throughout the Egyptian uprising, the 1979 American-brokered deal between Israel and Egypt has been called a "peace treaty." This is highly misleading. While Israel attacked Egypt in 1956 and 1967 (not to mention many border incursions), Egypt never sought war with Israel. Egyptian King Farouk's belated and half-hearted action (with ill-trained and poorly equipped forces) when Israel declared independence in 1948 -- after the UN created the state in defiance of the overwhelming majority of the indigenous population -- was aimed partly at protecting Palestinians from violent expulsion from territory coveted by Israel's leaders. (Three quarters of a million Arabs were driven from their homes. Many defenseless villagers were slaughtered. The UN plan included an inferior Palestinian state, but Israel and the king of Transjordan made sure that did not happen. Egypt's entry into the war was also intended to thwart Transjordan's territorial ambitions.)

Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser made several attempts to normalize relations with Israel in the 1950s but was rebuffed. His successor, Anwar Sadat, offered to talk peace in the early 1970s but also was rebuffed. The October 1973 war was Egypt's modest attempt to regain a foothold in the Sinai, which Israel had conquered in 1967. The operation was not aimed at Israel itself. Sadat realized war was too costly for his poor country, and he sought better relations with the United States, having expelled Soviet advisers a few years earlier.

Israel was the recalcitrant party, since it did not intend to give up the Palestinian territories seized in 1967 or recognize the rights of Palestinian people to their own country. But President Jimmy Carter badly needed an accomplishment for his fading presidency and saw an opening: a "peace treaty" between Israel and Egypt. He bribed the two parties, pledging close to $5 billion a year (much of it in military aid) to the two of them, and got his photo-op with Sadat and Israeli PM Menachem Begin shaking hands.

The result was a "peace" that would have most likely existed anyway, since Sadat did not want war. (The deal likely sped up Israel's exit from the Sinai, which Israeli leaders didn't want anyway.) But there were other, not so good results: Egypt's betrayal of the Palestinians and its subordination to the Israel-influenced U.S. Congress, which now held the purse strings to Egypt's annual aid package. The largest country in the Arab world now could be counted on to do America's/Israel's bidding, including torturing people for the CIA and policing the the Gaza Strip border. It also gave Israel assurance that Egypt would not interfere with its periodic onslaughts against Lebanon and the Palestinians, and its land seizures in the West Bank and East Jerusalem..

The deal cost Sadat his life, but Hosni Mubarak picked up where his predecessor left off, toadying to the U.S./Israel. The next president of Egypt will probably not be eager to be a junior member of that alliance. That is American and Israeli officials are in no rush for change, despite what the throngs in the Egyptian streets want.

See more details by Alison Weir. On the nature of the Palestine/Israel dispute see this.

Supreme Irony

How ironic that the U.S. and Britain once saw the Muslim Brotherhood as the religious-right counterweight to secular Arab nationalism and leftism.

Obama Backs Dictator

From Al Jazeera:

Frank Wisner, a special envoy for Barack Obama, the US president, has said Hosni Mubarak "must stay in office to steer" a process of gathering "national consensus around the preconditions" for the way forward.

This Revolution Will Do Until the Real Thing Comes Along

Neoconservatives like Charles Krauthammer warn that the popular uprising against U.S.-financed Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak could easily become a victory for radical Islamists. The neoconservatives scoff at assurances that the Muslim Brotherhood has traded violence for a constructive role in Egyptian society and democratic politics. Indeed, the neocons argue, the Brotherhood, as the best-organized force in Egyptian society (representing up to 30 percent of the population), is in the ideal position to seize the popular movement, betray the people, and install a theocratic state in the post-Mubarak era. With Egypt as a base of operation, goes the narrative, the Islamists would spread their ideology to the rest of the region through terror and subversion, with terrible consequences for the West.

Is there any merit to this analysis? Perhaps. No one can predict such things; revolution is a radically uncertain process. Nevertheless, one should not casually assume that Egypt is like Iran of 1979 or Afghanistan post-Soviet invasion. That sounds more like neoconservative fear-mongering than hard-headed speculation. (The more fevered of that ilk see the Egyptian uprising as the first step toward constructing a global caliphate that would include the United States. See Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity for details On the Brotherhood, see this and this.)

To be sure, revolution has its risks. Yet the neoconservatives seem oblivious of the risks in the “solution” they would like the Obama administration to impose on the Egyptians. Krauthammer prefers “an interim government led by the military.” He writes in “Toward a Soft [sic] Landing in Egypt”:

The military is the best vehicle for guiding the country to free elections over the coming months. Whether it does so with Mubarak at the top, or with Vice President Omar Suleiman or perhaps with some technocrat who arouses no ire among the demonstrators, matters not to us. If the army calculates that sacrificing Mubarak (through exile) will satisfy the opposition and end the unrest, so be it.

The overriding objective is a period of stability during which secularists and other democratic elements of civil society can organize themselves for the coming elections and prevail.…. The key is the military.

Krauthammer's confident tone is no comfort. Is there no danger in an army takeover? Has there never been a brutal military dictatorship? The Egyptian military may be respected by the people, but it has also been the source of dictators, including the hated Mubarak. And why should the Egyptians accept Suleiman in the “interim”? He was Mubarak’s chief torturer and a tool of the U.S. government’s criminal “extraordinary rendition” policy. How easy it is for Krauthammer, sitting safely in the United States, to propose that the Egyptians submit themselves to any U.S.-conceived plan. Can he guarantee it will deliver freedom? One can’t help suspecting that freedom for the Egyptians is not his priority. In fact, he knows the risks his proposal entails, but he calculates that they all fall on the Egyptian people. What he seeks to avoid is risk to "U.S. interests," that is, to the American government's domination of the Middle East.

In calling on the U.S. government to work behind the scenes to impose such a “resolution,” the neocons display the same big-power presumptuousness that has caused most of the problems that emanate from the Middle East today. The imperialist mentality endures, with each incident of blowback furnishing the excuse for the next oppressive manipulation.

The dangers that admittedly loom in Egypt stem from the moderate nature of the Egyptian people’s aims. They seek merely to change the structure and personnel of the government. The essence of the State – the apparatus of organized violence – would remain intact. As long as the State exists, there is a danger it will be seized by a military strongman, by theocrats, or by some other brand of oppressor.

In other words, the only true revolution is one aimed at abolishing the State – an anarchist revolution. (Peaceful, of course.) That’s the best hope for avoiding a revolution gone wrong.

Of course the Egyptians do not yet have an antistate mindset, so in throwing off the Mubarak dictatorship they indeed run the risk that something worse could follow. Yet they apparently think it’s a risk worth taking. Under the circumstances, that position seems reasonable. The American people can help them by demanding that "their" government keep hands off.

This revolution will have to do until the real thing comes along.

The American Conservative: Libertarian Left:

My article "Libertarian Left: Free-Market Anti-Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal" is now online at The American Conservative.

Op-ed: The Unraveling of U.S. Mideast Policy

The blow to U.S. foreign policy by the popular uprising in Egypt cannot be overstated. The Egyptians’ demand that Hosni Mubarak, who has ruled Egypt with an iron hand and billions of American taxpayer dollars, step down is unquestionably a major setback to the U.S. governing class and its plans for the Middle East. Since the end of World War II, critics of U.S. policy have warned that defying the people of the region in favor of authoritarian ruling elites was doomed to failure. As things now begin to unravel, we see that those critics were right.

Read the rest of the latest op-ed.

The U.S. Fallback Policy for Egypt

For might makes right,
And till they've seen the light,
They've got to be protected,
All their rights respected,
'till somebody we like can be elected.

Op-Ed: Ron Paul and Ralph Nader on Corporatism and War

What is American politics coming to? I just watched a joint interview with Ralph Nader and Rep. Ron Paul — and they were mostly on the same side! Nader has spent his life promoting government intervention in the economy. Paul has spent his life promoting the free market and minimal government. For the two of them to discuss making common cause is something extraordinary.

And yet it makes total sense. What’s so exciting is that their common cause shines the spotlight right where it’s needed: on corporatism — the constellation of government policies that primarily benefit wealthy and well-connected business and banking interests at the expense of the rest of us.

Here's the op-ed.

TGIF: Obama's Corporatist Big Plans

“We need to out-innovate, out-educate, and out-build the rest of the world,” Obama says.

How repulsive! The liberal vision isn’t a zero-sum Olympic rivalry among nation-states, with governments alternately cajoling and cudgeling their populations to perform. It’s a positive-sum world where individuals, not countries, compete and cooperate in pursuit of their well-being within a division of labor and harmony of interests, unobstructed by governments and their sanctioned monopolies — and oblivious of political boundaries.

The rest of TGIF is here.

Op-ed: Obama Has Nothing to Teach China’s Hu

“President Obama ... gently but pointedly prodded China to make progress on human rights,” reports the New York Times.

The irony should not escape us. The head of the U.S. empire, which for years has committed a variety of atrocities abroad and widespread surveillance at home, lectured President Hu Jintao of China about human rights. You can’t make this stuff up!

The full op-ed is here.

TGIF: Wrong Questions

Ask not what your "country" can force other people to do for you. Ask who benefits from what you do for your "country."

The rest of TGIF is here.

TGIF: Value, Cost, Marginal Utility, and Bohm-Bawerk

Does cost of production determine price or does price determine cost of production? In the world of economic caricatures, the classical economists (Smith, Ricardo, et al.) took the former position, the Austrians the latter. Specifically, the Austrian view supposedly is that that demand driven by marginal utility determines the price of consumer goods, which is then imputed backward to the factors of production.

But like all caricatures, the picture is an imperfect reflection of reality.

The rest of TGIF is here.

Who Are You Going to Believe: Me or Your Eyes?

Jared Lee Loughner's high-school girlfriend, Ashley Figueroa, told ABC News she does not think Loughner is mentally ill. ""I think he's faking everything," she said.

This prompted Salon.com to comment:

Figueroa is not a doctor, and these claims conflict with the opinion of top doctors in the field of psychiatry.

Well, sure. I can't imagine why we would take more seriously the judgment of someone who actually knew him intimately not long ago over a bunch of self-serving psychiatrists who never even met him.

Nothing Natural about It

The sharp historical division between labor and capital ownership is not a natural emergent feature of the market economy but largely the conscious result of government privilege.

U.S. Government Repeals Law of Noncontradiction

"U.S. plans for presence in Iraq after pullout"
Washington Post, Jan. 14, 2011

Szasz in One Lesson

(First posted in 2006, and now amended. The relevance to the Tucson massacre is self-explanatory.)

This is something I came up with some time ago to summarize a good deal of what Thomas Szasz, a great libertarian and hero of mine, has been saying for half a century.

If neuroscientists discovered that mass murderers and people who claim to be Jesus had different brain chemistries from other people, most everyone would accept this as evidence that they suffered from a mental illness/brain disorder (MI/BD) and that this disorder caused their behavior.

If neuroscientists discovered that homosexuals had different brain chemistries from heterosexuals, far fewer people would accept this as evidence that they suffered from a MI/BD and that this disorder caused their behavior.

If neuroscientists discovered that nuns had different brain chemistries from everyone else, very few people would accept this as evidence that they suffered from a MI/BD and that this disorder caused their behavior.

If neuroscientists discovered that married men had different brain chemistries from bachelors, no one would accept this as evidence that they suffered from a MI/BD and that this disorder caused their behavior.

Clearly, a difference in brain chemistry per se is not enough to make people believe that someone has a MI/BD. It takes more. Why, then, would a difference in one case be taken as evidence of MI/BD, while a difference in another case would not be? The obvious answer is that people, including psychiatrists, are willing to attribute behavior to mental illness/brain disorder to the extent that they disapprove of that behavior, and are unwilling to do so to the extent they approve of, or at least are willing to tolerate, that behavior. (Psychiatry once held that homosexuality was a mental illness. That position was changed, but not on the basis of scientific findings. Science had nothing to do with the initial position either.)

In other words, the psychiatric worldview rests, not on science or medicine, as its practitioners would have us believe, but on ethics, politics, and religion. That would be objectionable only intellectually if that were as far as it went. Unfortunately, it goes further, since the practitioners and the legal system they helped shape are empowered:

• First, to involuntarily “hospitalize” and drug people “diagnosed” as mentally ill and thought possibly to be dangerous to themselves or others, and

• Second, to excuse certain people of responsibility for their actions (for example, via the insanity defense).

Postscript: I'm often asked which one of Thomas Szasz's two dozen books I'd recommend to someone unfamiliar with his work. I suggest Insanity: The Idea and Its Consequences. This highly readable book covers most of his views on psychiatry, mental illness, and the Therapeutic State, with responses to his critics along the way. Of course, after that, you'll want to read the rest.

Not Polarized Enough

The ruling elite's line that politics today is "too polarized" is self-serving bunkum. Politics is not nearly polarized enough! The two parties are really divisions of a single statist uniparty. There is no prominent anti-statist party that is taken seriously by the mass media, which is little more than the PR department of the uniparty system. Internecine contests over who holds power is not true polarization, since the two sides do not represent the poles of any fundamental controversy.

Let's trade faux polarization, which only serves the interests of power, for the real McCoy.

Do as We Say, Not as We Do

How eerie it was to see Barack Obama and Janet Napolitano talk about nonviolence and civility last night. Aren't they the same Barack Obama and Janet Napolitano who are running a super surveillance state at home and a homicidal empire abroad?

The Dangerous Aftermath

We should be concerned that in the wake of the massacre the usual voices are calling for a beefed-up mental-health system, which means it would be easier for government to lock people up in "facilities" and drug them against their will for being "weird" though they've committed no crimes. Thomas Szasz has made the libertarian case against such detention for 50 years. It's time we paid heed.

The Austrians and the Classicals

It is not without wisdom that Lionel Robbins says, in his introduction to Wicksteed’s Common Sense of Political Economy, “a very good case could be made out for the view that, with all their differences, the systems which seem to make the clearer break with the past are, in fact, nearer in spirit to the classical system than those which have preserved more closely the classical terminology and apparatus.” The system making the clearer break, of course, is that of Austrian economics. The one more closely preserving the classical terminology is that of Alfred Marshall.

--George Reisman
"Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk’s 'Value, Cost,
and Marginal Utility'" (pdf)

Take It to the Limit

As I see it, the early American free-market anarchists -- I'm thinking of Benjamin Tucker and the people around his magazine, Liberty -- erred when they attributed profit, rent, and interest per se to the State, rather than argue that the amount of profit, rent, and interest collected is magnified through government privilege and monopoly.

But I'd rather have a thinker go too far in attributing evil to the State than not far enough. After all, Tucker et al. did not call on government to abolish profit, rent, and interest. They merely predicted their disappearance when the market is freed.

Value, Price, and Cost of Production

[T]he less the material and labor that the production of a jacket costs, the more jackets, of course, can one produce with the means of production available. Thus the more completely can the need for clothing be satisfied. And thus, other things being equal, the lower will be the marginal utility of a jacket. The technical conditions of production are, therefore, to be sure a cause of the value of goods lying further back, a "more ultimate" cause, than marginal utility.

--Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk
"Value, Cost, and Marginal Utility" (pdf), 52-53

Op-ed: Afghanistan: War of Choice Not Necessity

In August 2009 Obama declared before the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Afghanistan “is not a war of choice. This is a war of necessity.” Is that true?...

Anand Ghopal, who has covered Afghanistan for both the Wall Street Journal and Christian Science Monitor, reports that after the Taliban government fell in Kabul in 2001, members of the ruling group, resigned to Afghanistan’s new situation, expressed a willingness to surrender to U.S. forces. The surrendering Taliban leaders offered not to participate in politics if the new government would not arrest them. “But [but U.S.-picked leader Hamid] Karzai and other government officials ignored the overture — largely due to pressures from the United States and the Northern Alliance, the Taliban’s erstwhile enemy,” Ghopal added. The surrendering Taliban were subject to “widespread intimidation and harassment.... Many of the signatories of the letter [offering surrender] were to become leading figures in the insurgency.”

Read the full op-ed, "Afghanistan: War of Choice Not Necessity."

TGIF: The Importance of Subjectivism in Economics

For an exchange to take place, the two parties must assess the items traded differently, with each party valuing what he is to receive more than what he is to give up.

Read the rest of TGIF: The Importance of Subjectivism in Economics.

Op-ed: Why WikiLeaks Leaks Matter

Why should anyone care about the secret diplomatic cables WikiLeaks has disclosed? So what if State Department bureaucrats say unflattering things about other world “leaders”? Some people may be asking those questions in response to WikiLeaks’s latest disclosures. Okay, they say, leaks about atrocities on the battlefield (such as the first WikiLeaks disclosure, the “Collateral Murder” video) tell us something we should know about — the gross misconduct by U.S. military forces, condoned by the command all the way up to the president of the United States.

But diplomatic cables? Who cares?

We all should care. The documents serve as a timely reminder that the people who collectively call themselves “the government” are professional liars.

Read the rest of "The WikiLeaks Leaks Matter."

Setting the Price

Someone once said that economics is about price formation. The price of a reproducible good is set between two boundaries. The upper limit is governed by subjective marginal utility. I don't want to pay more for a product than it's worth to me, meaning: I will not forgo something of I value more in order to obtain something I value less. Neither will anyone else. Luckily the price is not set (in the long run) by utility. Why is this a good thing? Because I and everyone else I know love consumer surplus. We want maximum value at minimum sacrifice.

Under freedom of entry and open competition -- without government privilege or monopoly -- the price can be expected to be driven down from the upper boundary toward the lower boundary.

But what governs the lower boundary? The floor can't be zero because by and large people don't produce goods in order to give them away. They intend to sell them. So the lower boundary must be greater than zero. What determines that amount?

Talk amongst yourselves.

Choose Your Statism

Look, I’m not a social democrat or a welfare statist. If you’re looking for someone to promote the German model in the U.S., it ain’t me. But if you call yourself a libertarian, don’t try to kid anybody that the American system is less statist than the German one just because more of the welfare queens wear three-piece suits. And don’t kid yourself that, given equal levels of statism, most Americans wouldn’t prefer the kind where they have guaranteed healthcare and six-week vacations. Come on, I would — after all, if we’re choosing between equal levels of statism, of course I’ll take the one that weighs less heavily on my own neck.

--Kevin Carson
"Neoliberalism: All the Taxes of Social Democracy,
None of the Fun"

Center for a Stateless Society

My take on Thomas Geoghegan's Were You Born on the Wrong Continent? is here.

Freedom Is at Hand!

Reported by ABC News, Dec. 30:

The Republican leadership presented a summary of the new rules [House] Wednesday morning, revealing a number of strict -- and in a few cases unprecedented -- changes to the way Congress will be run. To underscore their point, they will kick off their reign as the majority by doing something that remarkably has never been done before: They will read the Constitution, all 4,543 words of it, including all 27 amendments, aloud on the chamber floor....
Keeping with the theme, Republicans will also require every new bill presented on the House floor to cite which article in the Constitution authorizes the enacting of such legislation, a nod to the Tea Party, which made the Constitution a tenant of its movement throughout the midterm election cycle.

Antifederalists were reported to be spinning in their graves.

Why Left-Libertarianism Matters

Left-libertarianism is motivated in part by indignation over the historical power disparity between workers and owners of capital. Nonleft-libertarians respond that there is no disparity in the free market. Left-libertarians agree. The difference is that nonleft-libertarians often talk about the present capitalist world as though it were the freed market. (This is what Kevin Carson calls "vulgar libertarianism" and Roderick Long calls "Right-conflationism.")

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.5

Should Labor be Paid or Not?

Good stuff from Benjamin Tucker, Liberty, April 28, 1888; reprinted in Instead of a Book, by a Man Too Busy to Write One (1893/1897):

In No. 121 of Liberty, criticising an attempt of Kropotkine to identify Communism and Individualism, I charged him with ignoring the real question whether Communism will permit the individual to labor independently, own tools, sell his labor or his products, and buy the labor or products of others. In Herr Most’s eyes this is so outrageous that, in reprinting it, he puts the words the labor of others in large black type. Most being a Communist, he must, to be consistent, object to the purchase and sale of anything whatever; but why he should particularly object to the purchase and sale of labor is more than I can understand. Really, in the last analysis, labor is the only thing that has any title to be bought or sold. Is there any just basis of price except cost? And is there anything that costs except labor or suffering (another name for labor)? Labor should be paid! Horrible, isn’t it? Why, I thought that the fact that it is not paid was the whole grievance. Unpaid labor has been the chief complaint of all Socialists, and that labor should get its reward has been their chief contention. Suppose I had said to Kropotkine that the real question is whether Communism will permit individuals to exchange their labor or products on their own terms. Would Herr Most have been so shocked? Would he have printed that in black type? Yet in another form I said precisely that.(131 ¶ 1)

If the men who oppose wages—that is, the purchase and sale of labor—were capable of analyzing their thought and feelings, they would see that what really excites their anger is not the fact that labor is bought and sold, but the fact that one class of men are dependent for their living upon the sale of their labor, while another class of men are relieved of the necessity of labor by being legally privileged to sell something that is not labor, and that, but for the privilege, would be enjoyed by all gratuitously. And to such a state of things I am as much opposed as any one. But the minute you remove privilege, the class that now enjoy it will be forced to sell their labor, and then, when there will be nothing but labor with which to buy labor, the distinction between wage-payers and wage-receivers will be wiped out, and every man will be a laborer exchanging with fellow-laborers. Not to abolish wages, but to make every man dependent upon wages and to secure to every man his whole wages is the aim of Anarchistic Socialism. What Anarchistic Socialism aims to abolish is usury. It does not want to deprive labor of its reward; it wants to deprive capital of its reward. It does not hold that labor should not be sold; it holds that capital should not be hired at usury.

But, says Herr Most, this idea of a free labor market from which privilege is eliminated is nothing but consistent Manchesterism. Well, what better can a man who professes Anarchism want than that? For the principle of Manchesterism is liberty, and consistent Manchesterism is consistent adherence to liberty. The only inconsistency of the Manchester men lies in their infidelity to liberty in some of its phases. And this infidelity to liberty in some of its phases is precisely the fatal inconsistency of the Freiheit school,—the only difference between its adherents and the Manchester men being that in many of the phases in which the latter are infidel the former are faithful, while in many of those in which the latter are faithful the former are infidel. Yes, genuine Anarchism is consistent Manchesterism, and Communistic or pseudo-Anarchism is inconsistent Manchesterism. "I thank thee, Jew, for teaching me that word."

The More Things Change...

From the Washington Post:

The president's recently departed budget director is joining Citigroup.

The New York Federal Reserve Bank's derivatives expert is joining Goldman Sachs.

And numerous investigators from the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission are joining Wall Street's top law firms.

The vast overhaul of financial regulations and the renewed intensity of investigations into white-collar crime has been a boon for regulators, prosecutors and financial policymakers looking to cash in on their government experience and contacts.

In recent months, prominent officials from the White House, Justice Department, SEC, banking regulators and other agencies, both federal and state, have been walking through the proverbial revolving door to join Goldman, Citi, other financial companies and top law firms in Washington and New York.

The corporate state is alive and well.

Did I Mention...

... that the January-February issue of The Freeman is now online? Contributors include James Bovard, Wendy McElroy, Joseph R. Stromberg, David K. Levine, Warren Gibson, Isaac Morehouse, Douglas Rogers, and a cover story on war as economic stimulus by Steven Horwitz.

Enjoy!

Merry Christmas

Peace & Anarchy on Earth.

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.5

Well, Mr. Moore?

See update below.

Cuba banned Michael Moore's 2007 documentary, Sicko, because it painted such a "mythically" favourable picture of Cuba's healthcare system that the authorities feared it could lead to a "popular backlash", according to US diplomats in Havana.

The revelation, contained in a confidential US embassy cable released by WikiLeaks , is surprising, given that the film attempted to discredit the US healthcare system by highlighting what it claimed was the excellence of the Cuban system.

But the memo reveals that when the film was shown to a group of Cuban doctors, some became so "disturbed at the blatant misrepresentation of healthcare in Cuba that they left the room".

Castro's government apparently went on to ban the film because, the leaked cable claims, it "knows the film is a myth and does not want to risk a popular backlash by showing to Cubans facilities that are clearly not available to the vast majority of them."

The rest of the Guardian's story is here.

UPDATE: Moore replies:

Sounds convincing, eh?! There's only one problem -- the entire nation of Cuba was shown the film on national television on April 25, 2008! The Cubans embraced the film so much so it became one of those rare American movies that received a theatrical distribution in Cuba. I personally ensured that a 35mm print got to the Film Institute in Havana. Screenings of 'Sicko' were set up in towns all across the country. In Havana, 'Sicko' screened at the famed Yara Theater.

The lesson? Be skeptical of anything originating within the U.S. government. It's also fair to ask why the Guardian did not check the veracity of the cable.

Beware the Campaign for War against Iran

The American people were stampeded into war against Iraq through a shameless propaganda and disinformation campaign led by government officials and facilitated by prominent newspapers. We must not let the same thing happen with Iran.

Read the full op-ed here.

TGIF: A Boost for the Managed Economy

More important, all players in the game have revealed themselves to be interventionists. (Okay, we knew this already but confirmation is nice.) Regardless of party, they see the economy as something to fix by turning a knob here, pulling a lever there, and stepping on a pedal over yonder in order to get the desired performance: higher consumer spending, lower unemployment, increased investment, and so on. It’s as though the economy were a machine in need of adjustments and a few quarts of oil. But an economy is not a machine. It’s a network of people engaged in myriad exchanges of goods and services –pursuing end-oriented activities informed by subjective values and expectations. Such information is largely unavailable to politicians, bureaucrats, and their economic advisers.

Read the full TGIF here.

About Those English Student Protests

The best thing I've read about the English student protests against reduced government subsidies for higher education is here. In "A Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Waste," Kevin Carson writes:

Aren’t these just a bunch of spoiled brats, throwing a tantrum when they’re cut off from the taxpayer teat?

Not exactly.

British students, like those in America, are hit from two directions under the state capitalist model: First, by government interventions that inflate the amount of the “education” commodity they’re forced to consume in order to make a decent living. And second, by government interventions that inflate the cost of procuring it.

So government has placed students in a double bind in which relying on government tuition subsidies is the only way out.

What does Carson propose?

The answer, first, is to eliminate all state-mandated licensing and credentialing, all college and technical school accreditation, and to dismantle higher education as a conveyor belt for processing human raw material for delivery to the appropriate HR department.

Educational offerings should be driven, on a demand-pull basis, by the desires of students, while all the state-created artificial scarcities that cause the wage labor market to be a buyer’s market should be eliminated.

Second, we should eliminate the high-overhead, cost-plus culture that predominates in the university (as in all other large institutions of state capitalist society).

There's more. So read the full article.

TGIF: "F" as in Fed

The Federal Reserve, America’s fatally conceited monetary central planner, is not terribly popular these days – which is cause for hope – and now we have a report card on the entire Fed era that strongly supports the view that we’d be better off without it. At the very least, as the authors suggest, the burden of proof is squarely on the shoulders of those who would retain the Fed.

The report card comes in the form of a working paper from the Cato Institute: “Has the Fed Been a Failure?” by George A. Selgin, William D. Lastrapes, and Lawrence H. White.

The rest of TGIF is here.

Anarchists Launch WikiLeaks Mirror, Assistance Program

For Immediate Release

12/05/10
POC Thomas L. Knapp

Media Contact:
media@c4ss.org
530-618-C4SS

Technical Contact:
admin@c4ss.org

ANARCHISTS LAUNCH WIKILEAKS MIRROR, ASSISTANCE PROGRAM

December 5th — “Censorship has always been wrong and irresponsible,” says Brad Spangler. “Now it’s another thing: Impossible.”

Spangler, director of the Center for a Stateless Society, announced on Sunday that the Center is now mirroring Wikileaks — an international whistle-blower site which reactionary elements in the US government have worked assiduously to suppress over the last week — and encouraging and assisting others in doing likewise.

“I feel [US Secretary of State] Hillary Clinton’s pain,” says Spangler. “Wikileaks’ release of 250,000 diplomatic cables previously hidden behind a state secrets wall has been tremendously embarrassing to her, not to mention implicating her in an international identity theft scheme that looks a lot like Watergate and the Zimmerman Telegram rolled into one.

“But embarrassment or not, state officials have no right to hide their misdeeds from the people who foot the bill, in money and blood, for government actions. Nor, now, do they have the power to do so.”

Using custom software developed by C4SS web administrator Mike Gogulski, the mirror site (wikileaks.c4ss.org) updates daily from Wikileaks’ servers regardless of where those servers are located.

C4SS is also making the software publicly available and encouraging others to mirror Wikileaks as well. “This is an opportunity for those who support freedom of information to take action,” says Gogulski. “We particularly hope to see people and organizations with greater resources than we dispose of — the Electronic Frontier Foundation, for example, or US Representative Ron Paul’s IT staff — making use of those resources, and of the tool we’re offering, to settle this issue once and for all.”

“The toothpaste is out of the tube and we intend to keep it out of the tube,” says Spangler. “This information will remain publicly available to anyone who cares to look it over.”

Why the Latest WikiLeaks Leaks Matter

Why should anyone care about diplomatic cables? So what if State Department bureaucrats say unflattering things about other world “leaders"? Some people may be asking this in response to WikiLeaks' latest disclosures. Okay, they say, leaks about atrocities on the battlefield (such as the first WikiLeaks disclosure, “Collateral Murder,”) tell us something we should know about – the gross misconduct by U.S. military forces, condoned by the command all the way up to the president of the United States.

But diplomatic cables? Who cares?

We all should care. The 250,000 documents serve as a timely reminder that the people who call themselves “the government” are professional liars. Lying is what they are paid to do. The biggest lie of all is that they do it in the people's interest. U.S. government officials have reacted to the latest document dump as though Julian Assange has struck at the very heart of the State. No surprise there -- because he has! When Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says the disclosures are an "attack on the world," she is really saying it's an attack on her world -- the world of power, of legal murder and plunder.

When American (mis)leaders profess confidence in the Afghan president and his government, while saying privately they are incompetent and corrupt -- stealing hundreds of millions of Americans' dollars -- that’s the people’s business – at least as long as they are compelled to bankroll the government’s lethal adventures.

When American (mis)leaders praise and encourage the Mexican government’s efforts in the criminal “war on drugs,” while privately believing they're practically worthless, that’s the people’s business – at least as long as they are compelled to bankroll that evil crusade, which harms Mexicans and Americans.

When American (mis)leaders bomb Yemen while conspiring with the Yemeni dictator to portray the murderous campaign as the act of Yemen’s government in order to make it more palatable to the Yemeni people, that’s the people’s business – at least as long as they are compelled to bankroll that imperialist policy.

When other countries' officials implore American (mis)leaders to bomb Iran, that is the people’s business – at least as long as they are compelled to bankroll militarism and suffer the “blowback” such an action would produce.

And on and on and on.

Sure, the American people already “know” at some level that their (mis)leaders and (mis)representatives are liars. Everyone laughs at the riddle asking how you know when a politician is lying: “His lips are moving.” But that knowledge too often fades deep into the background as the people are distracted or put to sleep by the solemn mendacity that issues from the politicians mouths on a daily basis.

So WikiLeaks performs a critical service by reminding us what those sanctimonious mountebanks really are. (The Guardian lists the key points of the cables here.)

Some will say that government couldn't exist without duplicity. I take them at their word.

Inflation Doesn't Pay the Government Like It Used to

Jeff Hummel and I have an opinion piece at Forbes.com by that title. Read it here.

TGIF: "A Free Market in Banking? Not Even Close"

Between the state and national governments, there has always been substantial regulation of money and banking in the United States.

Read TGIF: "A Free Market in Banking? Not Even Close" here.

Why Not, Indeed!

 If all our emails, however personal, are to become subject to the scrutiny of the government, why shouldn’t all the government’s emails, however sensitive, become subject to the scrutiny of us? If we can’t plot to blow up the Houses of Parliament without their knowledge, why can they and Saudi Arabia plot to blow up Iran without ours?

Allan Baker

Kettering, Northamptonshire

Published in the Guardian.

HT: Jim Bovard

Op-ed: TSA Intrusion Is One Price of Empire

How gratifying to see Americans increasingly angry at the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) for using offensive full-body scans and frisks in its latest production of what security expert Bruce Schneier calls “security theater.”

The rest of the op-ed is here.