Tags: guest content ∙ video ∙ John Seater ∙ public schools ∙ charter school ∙ Philadelphia ∙ Boys' Latin ∙ David Hardy ∙ taxes

If we're going to have a conversation, these facts must be a part of that.

Tags: clipping ∙ guest content ∙ Reason Online ∙ Ronald Bailey ∙ GDP ∙ Journal of Economic Growth ∙ regulations ∙ income ∙ John Dawson ∙ Appalachian State University ∙ John Seater ∙ North Carolina State ∙ Federal government

““There are four ways in which you can spend money.  You can spend your own money on yourself.  When you do that, why then you really watch out what you’re doing, and you try to get the most for your money.  Then you can spend your own money on somebody else.  For example, I buy a birthday present for someone.  Well, then I’m not so careful about the content of the present, but I’m very careful about the cost.  Then, I can spend somebody else’s money on myself.  And if I spend somebody else’s money on myself, then I’m sure going to have a good lunch!  Finally, I can spend somebody else’s money on somebody else.  And if I spend somebody else’s money on somebody else, I’m not concerned about how much it is, and I’m not concerned about what I get.  And that’s government.  And that’s close to 40% of our national income.””

— Milton Friedman

Tags: Milton Friedman ∙ money

The Poorest 20% of Americans Are Richer on Average Than Most Nations of Europe

““A groundbreaking study by Just Facts has discovered that after accounting for all income, charity, and non-cash welfare benefits like subsidized housing and Food Stamps—the poorest 20% of Americans consume more goods and services than the national averages for all people in most affluent countries. This includes the majority of countries in the prestigious Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), including its European members. In other words, if the U.S. “poor” were a nation, it would be one of the world’s richest.

Notably, this study was reviewed by Dr. Henrique Schneider, professor of economics at Nordakademie University in Germany and the chief economist of the Swiss Federation of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises. After examining the source data and Just Facts’ methodology, he concluded: “This study is sound and conforms with academic standards. I personally think it provides valuable insight into poverty measures and adds considerably to this field of research.”””
     — James D. Agresti

Tags: guest content ∙ clipping ∙ James D. Agresti ∙ poor ∙ wealth ∙ wealth inequality ∙ America

❝❝Once the law starts recognizing and enforcing differences, of course the rich and powerful will find ways to exploit and control the law. Of course politicos and technocrats will sell out and protect "their" companies from competition and "threats."

When the law complicates commerce, the law will be abused. This is not the fault of commerce or capitalism. This is the fault of influence peddling and politics. The only solutions are to have law control more and more, or to get law out of the way. The first way benefits established companies and government.

The second way is the only practical way to restore freedom and loosen cash flow.❞❞

— NeoWayland, comments from The 1619 Project: Scholarship Or Race Hustling?

Tags: commerce ∙ capitalism

“President Trump both cut and increased regulation.”

Tags: video ∙ guest content ∙ John Stossel ∙ Donald Trump ∙ regulation

❝❝It's not that capitalism produces no losers, it's that the free market produces fewer losers by a couple of orders of magnitude.

Notice that I am distinguishing between capitalism and the free market.

Again, I'm talking about a "bottom-up" self-organizing exchange versus a "top-down" system imposed by force. In a free market, the way to get ahead is providing what others want. In any other system, it's about controlling the system.

ANY artificial controls will be exploited by the most powerful at the expense of the weaker. Resources are diverted into controlling the rules rather than producing value.

"Moral obligations" will be used to shut competition out of the marketplace in the name of compassion, and it will be backed by government force, diverting still more resources away from the market and into government and control.

The free market has only one real justification, it has produced more wealth and more freedom for more people than anything else we have tried. The key is individual choice, not controlling the system.

In a free market, competition keeps us honest and choice is the only control that works.

---

The two most important phrases in human history:

“Let me help.”

“I can do better than that!”

---

It's not the tools, it's the results.

The free market is an example of people choosing for themselves. Government is controlling people by force.

And yes, the world is changing. It's embracing choice. That doesn't mean that the politicos and technocrats will give up power willingly. But they can't control everything that happens. Who could have foreseen the world wide web, Snicker's bars, or topless maid services? What government agency would have tolerated those things? What Congress critter would have sponsored legislation creating flash mobs, radar detectors, or fantasy football?

I want more freedom for more people today. I want more of the same tomorrow. Choice is the best way to get freedom. That's it, plain and simple. That's my objective.

---

See, you're still talking politics. "Arrange." "Cap." That's about controlling others, implying that government force will be involved sooner or later.

Why should their choice control my action? Why should my choice control your action? Why should your choice control their action?

It's not about creating the framework or tweaking the system. They've got something I want, so I have to find something they want. Voluntary exchanges between consenting adults, and no third party taking a cut or dictating rules.

---

Freedom and wealth. The Apaches could not produce steel knives, antiseptics, or a horseshoe. In one sense they were free, but they didn't have wealth. What freedom and wealth they had was taken at the expense of others.

Freedom taken at the expense of someone else is privilege and is generally recognized as a Bad Thing. Perhaps the keystone to Western Civilization is the Ethic of Reciprocity. This is what makes freedom more than a privilege grab. It also can't be imposed by another.

I'm proposing that the free market makes freedom and wealth possible while making things mostly better today than they were yesterday. So we have steel tools, paracord, duck tape, battery drills, and lights at the flick of a switch. These and seven million and thirteen other things weren't even a possibility with a hunter/gatherer culture.

Freedom is only one part of the payoff.

---

Nice things result in greater freedom.

I grow stuff in my garden, but that is not my source of food. I can go to the grocery store and find a wider variety of fruits and vegetables than I could ever hope to grow myself. My choices are increased by the store, and it couldn't happen without the free market.

A few years back I was looking at an aquaponics set-up. Beyond the design and construction, it would have taken about twenty hours a week and between two and three hundred dollars more per month. And that is if everything went right and I never left town.

Is it necessary that I use the supermarket? No, but it's a better use of my time and resources than if I tried to do it on my own. It lets me use the labor and skills of others at a minimal cost to myself.❞❞

Tags: losers ∙ capitalism ∙ bottom up ∙ self-organizing ∙ exchange ∙ top down ∙ force ∙ system ∙ resources ∙ moral obligations ∙ competition ∙ compassion ∙ wealth ∙ let me help ∙ I can do better than that

Tags: guest content ∙ video ∙ PragerU ∙ green new deal ∙ Alex Epstein ∙ abundance ∙ energy ∙ clean planet

❝❝The economic choices allowed by government to most American citizens are meant to control them, not to free them.❞❞

— NeoWayland

Tags: maxims ∙ goverment ∙ choice ∙ control

❝❝Remember when I said that economics was about the flow of value? It's like piping water in a swamp. Yes, you can clean it up the water and direct it where you want, but there is still a lot of water flowing around. The more water, the more it seeps and looks for lower ground. You can only" fix" that by draining all the water and taking away what used to be widely available.

Now let's change that phrasing that a bit.

Yes, you can clean it up the value and direct it where you want, but there is still a lot of value flowing around. The more value, the more it seeps and looks for lower ground. You can only" fix" that by draining all the value and taking away what used to be widely available.

That's a whole new different perspective. Economic activity and free markets create more value. The flow of value and value in the wrong hands threatens the central systems and the elites. As the elites see it, their best interests are served by controlling value and directing it where they see problems. They want their choice to supersede the choices of others, particularly the unwashed masses who don't know when something is being done for the Greater Good.❞❞

Tags: economics ∙ value ∙ maxims ∙ choice ∙ greater good

❝❝"Controlling" an economy is like putting plumbing in a swamp. You have to take the existing water away before you can bring water back. The plumbing always leaks and bursts because there is nothing stable to work with.❞❞

— NeoWayland

Tags: maxims ∙ economics

❝❝Beer, cheese, and bread.

These things were discovered hundreds, perhaps thousands of years ago. We don't know exactly when. What we do know is that chemistry and science in general originated because someone wanted to make beer, cheese, and bread better.

Money, measurement and accounting in general started because someone tried to figure out how many goats their grain harvest was worth.

That doesn't even count fundamentals like fire or the wheel which are still basics of our science and technology today.

Science and technology use what works. When we find something that works better, we modify our science and technology.

And yes, economics in it's pure form is a science. The problem comes when we try to use economics to do things that it can't do well. Most of this is directly traceable to government interference in the exchange.

Economics describes the flow of value. We know how value moves as long as it isn't diverted. Rather than top-down "managing the system" and diverting (and diminishing value), I'd rather see new ideas in products and services. I'd rather see incremental improvements in technology than a clumsy effort to shift money by government edict. I'd rather see lower prices than tariffs protecting the "balance of payments."

---

No, the correct phrase is that when we find something that works better, we modify our science and technology. Sometimes it's an improvement, sometimes it is a dead end. Modify is appropriate, not improvement.

Your point is wrong. The poor are getting richer, in cash, opportunities, and in available goods (at a lower cost). Cell phones are dirt cheap. Grocery stores have a better selection and sell for lower relative prices.

There is a disparity between the rate of wealth growth of the rich and poor, but the majority of people are better off. But since that doesn't cost the poor, that's hardly a problem.

Are there problems with unemployment and low paying jobs? Yes, but it's not government's job to fix that. We know that when government tries to set prices or wages, things get worse.

You want specifics, then I will give you specifics. Cut taxes so that the combined (Federal, state, local) tax on anything is no more than ten percent. Do away with the income tax and it's reporting requirements. Prevent government from spending more than it takes in, possibly by punishing the legislators. I can give you hundreds more, but all of it is unimportant until taxes get cut way back AND government spends within it's means and no more.

If I say things that are correct and they don't fit your "mental image of the world," maybe that image isn't all that clear.

---

For American history, I usually work from about 1750 CE on. For Western civilization in general, I usually work from the age of Charlemagne or the Roman republic

Now, what you are talking about is the 20th Century. That just happens to be the century of American central banking, command economy, war as an industry, active intervention in the internal affairs of other nations, massive corporations mostly unbound by local laws, and the birth of "globalism." I put "globalism" in quotes because our "elites" don't mean opening up the world to trade and cultural exchange, they mean control. Specifically deciding what is and is not allowed under what circumstances.

I group these things together because they are closely and intimately related. These are also things that you are not supposed to pay attention to, indeed most of the media constantly tries to distract people from these things. It's just taken for granted that government is supposed to handle those things and we mere citizens aren't supposed to worry.

We're conditioned from birth to accept that government is the first, last, and best solution.

Plot the events and trend lines for yourself. Increase any of these six items and the impact falls mostly on the middle class and then the poor. These changes don't affect the rich as much as those trying to become rich. Changing your financial circumstances becomes harder. Indeed, a society that puts those six factors first "locks out changes," it resists any disruption from within the system. Usually the only change that can happen starts externally. For the elites, this is not a flaw, this is deliberate design.

So when I say that government is not your friend and when the solution to almost all widespread economic problems is to get government out of the picture, it's because I know what it has done.

The truly scary part is "helping the little guy" relies on more government intervention and control. Even though that is what hurt the them to begin with. Let's fix government… with more government!

The problem for the elites is that the economy can't be controlled, not even mostly. Remember when I said that economics was about the flow of value? It's like piping water in a swamp. Yes, you can clean it up the water and direct it where you want, but there is still a lot of water flowing around. The more water, the more it seeps and looks for lower ground. You can only" fix" that by draining all the water and taking away what used to be widely available.

Now let's change that phrasing that a bit.

Yes, you can clean it up the value and direct it where you want, but there is still a lot of value flowing around. The more value, the more it seeps and looks for lower ground. You can only" fix" that by draining all the value and taking away what used to be widely available.

That's a whole new different perspective. Economic activity and free markets create more value. The flow of value and value in the wrong hands threatens the central systems and the elites. As the elites see it, their best interests are served by controlling value and directing it where they see problems. They want their choice to supersede the choices of others, particularly the unwashed masses who don't know when something is being done for the Greater Good.

Build a system insulated from the free market that "controls" value and it will always serve the elites at the expense of everyone else. Manipulate the system, tinker with it, and the elites always come out ahead.

---

“When has an economist ever been right about anything?!”

Hernando de Soto. The Other Path: The Economic Answer to Terrorism. Almost any of the Chicago school of economics. But the politicos don't like a free market approach because it reduces their power and their ability to pick "winners" and "losers" in a national economy. Of course when things go wrong, that doesn't stop the politicos and pundits from blaming economics in general and the Chicago school specifically. Even if the politicos and technocrats did the exact opposite of what Chicago school of economics experts told them they needed to do.

---

Meteorology measures and predicts the weather within limits. No one expects meteorology to control the weather. Even in a massive internal environment like a skyscraper, no one uses the tools and techniques to of meteorology to control the "weather" except in the most basic ways. Meteorology is about understanding the weather, not controlling it.

Any meteorologist who told you that he could control the weather is either a fool or a con man.

Likewise, any meteorologist who claimed he could predict the wind by measuring the humidity isn't using the right tools.

---

The Other Path tells that story. de Soto was part of the international economics team brought in to advise to Chilean government how to grow their economy and how to deal with The Shining Path's promises. It's one of the best examples of practical economics and the Chicago school specifically.

---

A word of advice. Never argue practical economics with a small "L" libertarian.

---

A good economist isn't going to promise he can control the flow of value. What he can do is tell you that diverting value reduces value.

Value isn't something that can be generated by political dictate. You have to provide something that people want. Free market competition means that over time, goods and services become better, cheaper, and more widely distributed, even as the overall value flow increases. It's all based on choice without coercion. Voluntary exchanges between consenting adults.

When you get people who don't like the choices others make and see the coercive power of government as a way to change or stop those choices, that's when things get complicated. We effectively outlaw cannabis and cocaine, but nicotine and alcohol are only regulated. Sex is okay in marriage, but not as a commercial transaction. You can make a statue of a bare breasted Liberty leading the charge, but most American beaches require covered breasts.

The economic choices allowed by government to most American citizens are meant to control them, not to free them.❞❞

Tags: economics ∙ beer ∙ cheese ∙ bread ∙ chemistry ∙ science ∙ money ∙ measurement ∙ accounting ∙ wheel ∙ fire ∙ harvest ∙ trade ∙ technology ∙ value ∙ American history ∙ Western Civilization ∙ 20th Century ∙ central banking ∙ command economy ∙ war industry ∙ foreign policy ∙ corporations ∙ globalism ∙ media ∙ goverment ∙ Hernando de Soto ∙ Chicago school of economics ∙ Chile ∙ libertarian ∙ voluntary exchange ∙ consenting adults

““Capitalism is relatively new in human history. Prior to capitalism, the way people amassed great wealth was by looting, plundering, and enslaving their fellow man. Capitalism made it possible to become wealthy by serving your fellow man.””

— Walter E. Williams

Tags: Walter E. Williams ∙ capitalism ∙ serving ∙ wealth ∙ looting ∙ plundering ∙ enslaving

❝❝The Road to Serfdom by Friedrich A. Hayek.

Basic Economics: A Citizen's Guide to the Economy by Thomas Sowell.

Economics in One Lesson: The Shortest & Surest Way to Understand Basic Economics by Henry Hazlitt.

For Good and Evil: The Impact of Taxes on the Course of Civilization by Charles Adams.

The Tragedy of American Compassion by Marvin Olasky.❞❞

Tags: Friedrich Hayek ∙ Thomas Sowell ∙ Henry Hazlitt ∙ Charles Adams ∙ Marvin Olasky

Ocasio-Cortez’s Chief of Staff: Green New Deal About Changing Economy

““Saikat Chakrabarti, chief of staff for New York representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D.), said that the Green New Deal was not about the climate, but rather about tearing down the economy and building a new one, according to a report from The Washington Post.

"The interesting thing about the Green New Deal is it wasn't originally a climate thing at all," Chakrabarti said, according to the Post. "Do you guys think of it as a climate thing? Because we really think of it as a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing."

Chakrabarti made the comments during a meeting with Sam Ricketts, the climate director for presidential candidate Jay Inslee.””
     — Graham Piro

Tags: clipping ∙ guest content ∙ Graham Piro ∙ Mark Mills ∙ green new deal ∙ Nature ∙ Saikat Chakrabarti ∙ Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez ∙ Sam Ricketts ∙ Jay Inslee ∙ economy ∙ climate change

Tags: video ∙ guest content ∙ Manhattan Institute ∙ solar power ∙ renewable ∙ nuclear power ∙ Mark Mills ∙ green new deal ∙ Nature

Tags: Google ∙ Alphabet ∙ censorship ∙ judgement ∙ approval

Cross posted at www.teknopagan.com/files/Thorium190619.html

Tags: guest content ∙ video ∙ ColdFusion ∙ thorium ∙ nuclear power ∙ cross posted

❝❝American medical costs started outpacing inflation right after Medicare and Medicaid become law. If that doesn’t convince you, remember those costs rose drastically every time the Federal government tried to “fix” the problem.❞❞

— NeoWayland

Tags: maxims ∙ Medicaid ∙ Medicare ∙ medical costs ∙ Federal government ∙ fix

Tags: guest content ∙ video ∙ PolicyEd ∙ Russ Roberts ∙ economic progress ∙ America ∙ stagnating wages ∙ poor people ∙ middle class ∙ prosperity

Tags: guest content ∙ video ∙ FreedomToons ∙ Foundation for Economic Education ∙ health insurance ∙ health care

❝❝Private property.

Take me for example. I pay for the domain name registration and the web hosting on my sites. I choose what I put there. I am no more required to give someone else access than I am required to let that someone else sell used cars off my patio or erect a Decalogue monument on my front lawn.

Having said that, if your company advertises and has built it's services on allowing people to speak or write their mind, it's hypocritical to allow one viewpoint without others provided no one advocates harming others, taking or destroying property, or breaking the law.

---

Private property still applies.

They can't do it in my place and I can't do it in theirs.

---

The road is a commons. The shopping mall isn't. The portals to the internet are provided by your ISP, not the social media.

Social media is something you choose to use. As the old saying goes, if you are not paying for the product, you are the product. Or at least your data and your access to the "cool sites" is.❞❞

Tags: private property ∙ domain registration ∙ web hosting ∙ choose ∙ speak or write their mind ∙ road ∙ commons ∙ shopping mall ∙ portals ∙ you are the product

Tags: video ∙ guest content ∙ John Stossel ∙ City Journal ∙ Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez ∙ Green New Deal ∙ United States ∙ carbon emmissions ∙ James Meigs ∙ Mark Mills ∙ Popular Mechanics ∙ Manhattan Institute ∙ wind power ∙ solar power

““Capitalism works better than it sounds. Socialism sounds better than it works.””

— Creative Deduction

Tags: Creative Deduction ∙ capitalism ∙ socialism ∙ Brian Micklethwait

““Capitalism is the only reason socialism has any money to redistribute.””

— Aprille Park

Tags: Aprille Park ∙ capitalism ∙ sociaism ∙ Brian Micklethwait

From FreedomToons

Tags: guest content ∙ video ∙ FreedomToons ∙ libertarian ∙ government ∙ debunk

Chapter One - War Is A Racket
Chapter Two - Who Makes The Profits?
Chapter Three - Who Pays The Bills?
Chapter Four - How To Smash This Racket!
Chapter Five - To Hell With War!

Chapter One - War Is A Racket

War is a racket. It always has been.

It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.

A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.

In the World War [I] a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows.

How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dug-out? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets? How many of them parried a bayonet thrust of an enemy? How many of them were wounded or killed in battle?

Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they are victorious. They just take it. This newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few -- the selfsame few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war. The general public shoulders the bill.

And what is this bill?

This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations.

For a great many years, as a soldier, I had a suspicion that war was a racket; not until I retired to civil life did I fully realize it. Now that I see the international war clouds gathering, as they are today, I must face it and speak out.

Again they are choosing sides. France and Russia met and agreed to stand side by side. Italy and Austria hurried to make a similar agreement. Poland and Germany cast sheep's eyes at each other, forgetting for the nonce [one unique occasion], their dispute over the Polish Corridor.

The assassination of King Alexander of Jugoslavia [Yugoslavia] complicated matters. Jugoslavia and Hungary, long bitter enemies, were almost at each other's throats. Italy was ready to jump in. But France was waiting. So was Czechoslovakia. All of them are looking ahead to war. Not the people -- not those who fight and pay and die -- only those who foment wars and remain safely at home to profit.

There are 40,000,000 men under arms in the world today, and our statesmen and diplomats have the temerity to say that war is not in the making.

Hell's bells! Are these 40,000,000 men being trained to be dancers?

Not in Italy, to be sure. Premier Mussolini knows what they are being trained for. He, at least, is frank enough to speak out. Only the other day, Il Duce in "International Conciliation," the publication of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said:

“And above all, Fascism, the more it considers and observes the future and the development of humanity quite apart from political considerations of the moment, believes neither in the possibility nor the utility of perpetual peace. . . . War alone brings up to its highest tension all human energy and puts the stamp of nobility upon the people who have the courage to meet it.”

Undoubtedly Mussolini means exactly what he says. His well-trained army, his great fleet of planes, and even his navy are ready for war -- anxious for it, apparently. His recent stand at the side of Hungary in the latter's dispute with Jugoslavia showed that. And the hurried mobilization of his troops on the Austrian border after the assassination of Dollfuss showed it too. There are others in Europe too whose sabre rattling presages war, sooner or later.

Herr Hitler, with his rearming Germany and his constant demands for more and more arms, is an equal if not greater menace to peace. France only recently increased the term of military service for its youth from a year to eighteen months.

Yes, all over, nations are camping in their arms. The mad dogs of Europe are on the loose. In the Orient the maneuvering is more adroit. Back in 1904, when Russia and Japan fought, we kicked out our old friends the Russians and backed Japan. Then our very generous international bankers were financing Japan. Now the trend is to poison us against the Japanese. What does the "open door" policy to China mean to us? Our trade with China is about $90,000,000 a year. Or the Philippine Islands? We have spent about $600,000,000 in the Philippines in thirty-five years and we (our bankers and industrialists and speculators) have private investments there of less than $200,000,000.

Then, to save that China trade of about $90,000,000, or to protect these private investments of less than $200,000,000 in the Philippines, we would be all stirred up to hate Japan and go to war -- a war that might well cost us tens of billions of dollars, hundreds of thousands of lives of Americans, and many more hundreds of thousands of physically maimed and mentally unbalanced men.

Of course, for this loss, there would be a compensating profit -- fortunes would be made. Millions and billions of dollars would be piled up. By a few. Munitions makers. Bankers. Ship builders. Manufacturers. Meat packers. Speculators. They would fare well.

Yes, they are getting ready for another war. Why shouldn't they? It pays high dividends.

But what does it profit the men who are killed? What does it profit their mothers and sisters, their wives and their sweethearts? What does it profit their children?

What does it profit anyone except the very few to whom war means huge profits?

Yes, and what does it profit the nation?

Take our own case. Until 1898 we didn't own a bit of territory outside the mainland of North America. At that time our national debt was a little more than $1,000,000,000. Then we became "internationally minded." We forgot, or shunted aside, the advice of the Father of our country. We forgot George Washington's warning about "entangling alliances." We went to war. We acquired outside territory. At the end of the World War period, as a direct result of our fiddling in international affairs, our national debt had jumped to over $25,000,000,000. Our total favorable trade balance during the twenty-five-year period was about $24,000,000,000. Therefore, on a purely bookkeeping basis, we ran a little behind year for year, and that foreign trade might well have been ours without the wars.

It would have been far cheaper (not to say safer) for the average American who pays the bills to stay out of foreign entanglements. For a very few this racket, like bootlegging and other underworld rackets, brings fancy profits, but the cost of operations is always transferred to the people -- who do not profit.

Chapter Two - Who Makes The Profits?

The World War, rather our brief participation in it, has cost the United States some $52,000,000,000. Figure it out. That means $400 to every American man, woman, and child. And we haven't paid the debt yet. We are paying it, our children will pay it, and our children's children probably still will be paying the cost of that war.

The normal profits of a business concern in the United States are six, eight, ten, and sometimes twelve percent. But war-time profits -- ah! that is another matter -- twenty, sixty, one hundred, three hundred, and even eighteen hundred per cent -- the sky is the limit. All that traffic will bear. Uncle Sam has the money. Let's get it.

Of course, it isn't put that crudely in war time. It is dressed into speeches about patriotism, love of country, and "we must all put our shoulders to the wheel," but the profits jump and leap and skyrocket -- and are safely pocketed. Let's just take a few examples:

Take our friends the du Ponts, the powder people -- didn't one of them testify before a Senate committee recently that their powder won the war? Or saved the world for democracy? Or something? How did they do in the war? They were a patriotic corporation. Well, the average earnings of the du Ponts for the period 1910 to 1914 were $6,000,000 a year. It wasn't much, but the du Ponts managed to get along on it. Now let's look at their average yearly profit during the war years, 1914 to 1918. Fifty-eight million dollars a year profit we find! Nearly ten times that of normal times, and the profits of normal times were pretty good. An increase in profits of more than 950 per cent.

Take one of our little steel companies that patriotically shunted aside the making of rails and girders and bridges to manufacture war materials. Well, their 1910-1914 yearly earnings averaged $6,000,000. Then came the war. And, like loyal citizens, Bethlehem Steel promptly turned to munitions making. Did their profits jump -- or did they let Uncle Sam in for a bargain? Well, their 1914-1918 average was $49,000,000 a year!

Or, let's take United States Steel. The normal earnings during the five-year period prior to the war were $105,000,000 a year. Not bad. Then along came the war and up went the profits. The average yearly profit for the period 1914-1918 was $240,000,000. Not bad.

There you have some of the steel and powder earnings. Let's look at something else. A little copper, perhaps. That always does well in war times.

Anaconda, for instance. Average yearly earnings during the pre-war years 1910-1914 of $10,000,000. During the war years 1914-1918 profits leaped to $34,000,000 per year.

Or Utah Copper. Average of $5,000,000 per year during the 1910-1914 period. Jumped to an average of $21,000,000 yearly profits for the war period.

Let's group these five, with three smaller companies. The total yearly average profits of the pre-war period 1910-1914 were $137,480,000. Then along came the war. The average yearly profits for this group skyrocketed to $408,300,000.

A little increase in profits of approximately 200 per cent.

Does war pay? It paid them. But they aren't the only ones. There are still others. Let's take leather.

For the three-year period before the war the total profits of Central Leather Company were $3,500,000. That was approximately $1,167,000 a year. Well, in 1916 Central Leather returned a profit of $15,000,000, a small increase of 1,100 per cent. That's all. The General Chemical Company averaged a profit for the three years before the war of a little over $800,000 a year. Came the war, and the profits jumped to $12,000,000. a leap of 1,400 per cent.

International Nickel Company -- and you can't have a war without nickel -- showed an increase in profits from a mere average of $4,000,000 a year to $73,000,000 yearly. Not bad? An increase of more than 1,700 per cent.

American Sugar Refining Company averaged $2,000,000 a year for the three years before the war. In 1916 a profit of $6,000,000 was recorded.

Listen to Senate Document No. 259. The Sixty-Fifth Congress, reporting on corporate earnings and government revenues. Considering the profits of 122 meat packers, 153 cotton manufacturers, 299 garment makers, 49 steel plants, and 340 coal producers during the war. Profits under 25 per cent were exceptional. For instance the coal companies made between 100 per cent and 7,856 per cent on their capital stock during the war. The Chicago packers doubled and tripled their earnings.

And let us not forget the bankers who financed the great war. If anyone had the cream of the profits it was the bankers. Being partnerships rather than incorporated organizations, they do not have to report to stockholders. And their profits were as secret as they were immense. How the bankers made their millions and their billions I do not know, because those little secrets never become public -- even before a Senate investigatory body.

But here's how some of the other patriotic industrialists and speculators chiseled their way into war profits.

Take the shoe people. They like war. It brings business with abnormal profits. They made huge profits on sales abroad to our allies. Perhaps, like the munitions manufacturers and armament makers, they also sold to the enemy. For a dollar is a dollar whether it comes from Germany or from France. But they did well by Uncle Sam too. For instance, they sold Uncle Sam 35,000,000 pairs of hobnailed service shoes. There were 4,000,000 soldiers. Eight pairs, and more, to a soldier. My regiment during the war had only one pair to a soldier. Some of these shoes probably are still in existence. They were good shoes. But when the war was over Uncle Sam has a matter of 25,000,000 pairs left over. Bought -- and paid for. Profits recorded and pocketed.

There was still lots of leather left. So the leather people sold your Uncle Sam hundreds of thousands of McClellan saddles for the cavalry. But there wasn't any American cavalry overseas! Somebody had to get rid of this leather, however. Somebody had to make a profit in it -- so we had a lot of McClellan saddles. And we probably have those yet.

Also somebody had a lot of mosquito netting. They sold your Uncle Sam 20,000,000 mosquito nets for the use of the soldiers overseas. I suppose the boys were expected to put it over them as they tried to sleep in muddy trenches -- one hand scratching cooties on their backs and the other making passes at scurrying rats. Well, not one of these mosquito nets ever got to France!

Anyhow, these thoughtful manufacturers wanted to make sure that no soldier would be without his mosquito net, so 40,000,000 additional yards of mosquito netting were sold to Uncle Sam.

There were pretty good profits in mosquito netting in those days, even if there were no mosquitoes in France. I suppose, if the war had lasted just a little longer, the enterprising mosquito netting manufacturers would have sold your Uncle Sam a couple of consignments of mosquitoes to plant in France so that more mosquito netting would be in order.

Airplane and engine manufacturers felt they, too, should get their just profits out of this war. Why not? Everybody else was getting theirs. So $1,000,000,000 -- count them if you live long enough -- was spent by Uncle Sam in building airplane engines that never left the ground! Not one plane, or motor, out of the billion dollars worth ordered, ever got into a battle in France. Just the same the manufacturers made their little profit of 30, 100, or perhaps 300 per cent.

Undershirts for soldiers cost 14¢ [cents] to make and uncle Sam paid 30¢ to 40¢ each for them -- a nice little profit for the undershirt manufacturer. And the stocking manufacturer and the uniform manufacturers and the cap manufacturers and the steel helmet manufacturers -- all got theirs.

Why, when the war was over some 4,000,000 sets of equipment -- knapsacks and the things that go to fill them -- crammed warehouses on this side. Now they are being scrapped because the regulations have changed the contents. But the manufacturers collected their wartime profits on them -- and they will do it all over again the next time.

There were lots of brilliant ideas for profit making during the war.

One very versatile patriot sold Uncle Sam twelve dozen 48-inch wrenches. Oh, they were very nice wrenches. The only trouble was that there was only one nut ever made that was large enough for these wrenches. That is the one that holds the turbines at Niagara Falls. Well, after Uncle Sam had bought them and the manufacturer had pocketed the profit, the wrenches were put on freight cars and shunted all around the United States in an effort to find a use for them. When the Armistice was signed it was indeed a sad blow to the wrench manufacturer. He was just about to make some nuts to fit the wrenches. Then he planned to sell these, too, to your Uncle Sam.

Still another had the brilliant idea that colonels shouldn't ride in automobiles, nor should they even ride on horseback. One has probably seen a picture of Andy Jackson riding in a buckboard. Well, some 6,000 buckboards were sold to Uncle Sam for the use of colonels! Not one of them was used. But the buckboard manufacturer got his war profit.

The shipbuilders felt they should come in on some of it, too. They built a lot of ships that made a lot of profit. More than $3,000,000,000 worth. Some of the ships were all right. But $635,000,000 worth of them were made of wood and wouldn't float! The seams opened up -- and they sank. We paid for them, though. And somebody pocketed the profits.

It has been estimated by statisticians and economists and researchers that the war cost your Uncle Sam $52,000,000,000. Of this sum, $39,000,000,000 was expended in the actual war itself. This expenditure yielded $16,000,000,000 in profits. That is how the 21,000 billionaires and millionaires got that way. This $16,000,000,000 profits is not to be sneezed at. It is quite a tidy sum. And it went to a very few.

The Senate (Nye) committee probe of the munitions industry and its wartime profits, despite its sensational disclosures, hardly has scratched the surface.

Even so, it has had some effect. The State Department has been studying "for some time" methods of keeping out of war. The War Department suddenly decides it has a wonderful plan to spring. The Administration names a committee -- with the War and Navy Departments ably represented under the chairmanship of a Wall Street speculator -- to limit profits in war time. To what extent isn't suggested. Hmmm. Possibly the profits of 300 and 600 and 1,600 per cent of those who turned blood into gold in the World War would be limited to some smaller figure.

Apparently, however, the plan does not call for any limitation of losses -- that is, the losses of those who fight the war. As far as I have been able to ascertain there is nothing in the scheme to limit a soldier to the loss of but one eye, or one arm, or to limit his wounds to one or two or three. Or to limit the loss of life.

There is nothing in this scheme, apparently, that says not more than 12 per cent of a regiment shall be wounded in battle, or that not more than 7 per cent in a division shall be killed.

Of course, the committee cannot be bothered with such trifling matters.

Chapter Three - Who Pays The Bills?

Who provides the profits -- these nice little profits of 20, 100, 300, 1,500 and 1,800 per cent? We all pay them -- in taxation. We paid the bankers their profits when we bought Liberty Bonds at $100.00 and sold them back at $84 or $86 to the bankers. These bankers collected $100 plus. It was a simple manipulation. The bankers control the security marts. It was easy for them to depress the price of these bonds. Then all of us -- the people -- got frightened and sold the bonds at $84 or $86. The bankers bought them. Then these same bankers stimulated a boom and government bonds went to par -- and above. Then the bankers collected their profits.

But the soldier pays the biggest part of the bill.

If you don't believe this, visit the American cemeteries on the battlefields abroad. Or visit any of the veteran's hospitals in the United States. On a tour of the country, in the midst of which I am at the time of this writing, I have visited eighteen government hospitals for veterans. In them are a total of about 50,000 destroyed men -- men who were the pick of the nation eighteen years ago. The very able chief surgeon at the government hospital; at Milwaukee, where there are 3,800 of the living dead, told me that mortality among veterans is three times as great as among those who stayed at home.

Boys with a normal viewpoint were taken out of the fields and offices and factories and classrooms and put into the ranks. There they were remolded; they were made over; they were made to "about face"; to regard murder as the order of the day. They were put shoulder to shoulder and, through mass psychology, they were entirely changed. We used them for a couple of years and trained them to think nothing at all of killing or of being killed.

Then, suddenly, we discharged them and told them to make another "about face" ! This time they had to do their own readjustment, sans [without] mass psychology, sans officers' aid and advice and sans nation-wide propaganda. We didn't need them any more. So we scattered them about without any "three-minute" or "Liberty Loan" speeches or parades. Many, too many, of these fine young boys are eventually destroyed, mentally, because they could not make that final "about face" alone.

In the government hospital in Marion, Indiana, 1,800 of these boys are in pens! Five hundred of them in a barracks with steel bars and wires all around outside the buildings and on the porches. These already have been mentally destroyed. These boys don't even look like human beings. Oh, the looks on their faces! Physically, they are in good shape; mentally, they are gone.

There are thousands and thousands of these cases, and more and more are coming in all the time. The tremendous excitement of the war, the sudden cutting off of that excitement -- the young boys couldn't stand it.

That's a part of the bill. So much for the dead -- they have paid their part of the war profits. So much for the mentally and physically wounded -- they are paying now their share of the war profits. But the others paid, too -- they paid with heartbreaks when they tore themselves away from their firesides and their families to don the uniform of Uncle Sam -- on which a profit had been made. They paid another part in the training camps where they were regimented and drilled while others took their jobs and their places in the lives of their communities. The paid for it in the trenches where they shot and were shot; where they were hungry for days at a time; where they slept in the mud and the cold and in the rain -- with the moans and shrieks of the dying for a horrible lullaby.

But don't forget -- the soldier paid part of the dollars and cents bill too.

Up to and including the Spanish-American War, we had a prize system, and soldiers and sailors fought for money. During the Civil War they were paid bonuses, in many instances, before they went into service. The government, or states, paid as high as $1,200 for an enlistment. In the Spanish-American War they gave prize money. When we captured any vessels, the soldiers all got their share -- at least, they were supposed to. Then it was found that we could reduce the cost of wars by taking all the prize money and keeping it, but conscripting [drafting] the soldier anyway. Then soldiers couldn't bargain for their labor, Everyone else could bargain, but the soldier couldn't.

Napoleon once said,

“All men are enamored of decorations . . . they positively hunger for them.”

So by developing the Napoleonic system -- the medal business -- the government learned it could get soldiers for less money, because the boys liked to be decorated. Until the Civil War there were no medals. Then the Congressional Medal of Honor was handed out. It made enlistments easier. After the Civil War no new medals were issued until the Spanish-American War.

In the World War, we used propaganda to make the boys accept conscription. They were made to feel ashamed if they didn't join the army.

So vicious was this war propaganda that even God was brought into it. With few exceptions our clergymen joined in the clamor to kill, kill, kill. To kill the Germans. God is on our side . . . it is His will that the Germans be killed.

And in Germany, the good pastors called upon the Germans to kill the allies . . . to please the same God. That was a part of the general propaganda, built up to make people war conscious and murder conscious.

Beautiful ideals were painted for our boys who were sent out to die. This was the "war to end all wars." This was the "war to make the world safe for democracy." No one mentioned to them, as they marched away, that their going and their dying would mean huge war profits. No one told these American soldiers that they might be shot down by bullets made by their own brothers here. No one told them that the ships on which they were going to cross might be torpedoed by submarines built with United States patents. They were just told it was to be a "glorious adventure."

Thus, having stuffed patriotism down their throats, it was decided to make them help pay for the war, too. So, we gave them the large salary of $30 a month.

All they had to do for this munificent sum was to leave their dear ones behind, give up their jobs, lie in swampy trenches, eat canned willy (when they could get it) and kill and kill and kill . . . and be killed.

But wait!

Half of that wage (just a little more than a riveter in a shipyard or a laborer in a munitions factory safe at home made in a day) was promptly taken from him to support his dependents, so that they would not become a charge upon his community. Then we made him pay what amounted to accident insurance -- something the employer pays for in an enlightened state -- and that cost him $6 a month. He had less than $9 a month left.

Then, the most crowning insolence of all -- he was virtually blackjacked into paying for his own ammunition, clothing, and food by being made to buy Liberty Bonds. Most soldiers got no money at all on pay days.

We made them buy Liberty Bonds at $100 and then we bought them back -- when they came back from the war and couldn't find work -- at $84 and $86. And the soldiers bought about $2,000,000,000 worth of these bonds!

Yes, the soldier pays the greater part of the bill. His family pays too. They pay it in the same heart-break that he does. As he suffers, they suffer. At nights, as he lay in the trenches and watched shrapnel burst about him, they lay home in their beds and tossed sleeplessly -- his father, his mother, his wife, his sisters, his brothers, his sons, and his daughters.

When he returned home minus an eye, or minus a leg or with his mind broken, they suffered too -- as much as and even sometimes more than he. Yes, and they, too, contributed their dollars to the profits of the munitions makers and bankers and shipbuilders and the manufacturers and the speculators made. They, too, bought Liberty Bonds and contributed to the profit of the bankers after the Armistice in the hocus-pocus of manipulated Liberty Bond prices.

And even now the families of the wounded men and of the mentally broken and those who never were able to readjust themselves are still suffering and still paying.

Chapter Four - How To Smash This Racket!

Well, it's a racket, all right.

A few profit -- and the many pay. But there is a way to stop it. You can't end it by disarmament conferences. You can't eliminate it by peace parleys at Geneva. Well-meaning but impractical groups can't wipe it out by resolutions. It can be smashed effectively only by taking the profit out of war.

The only way to smash this racket is to conscript capital and industry and labor before the nations manhood can be conscripted. One month before the Government can conscript the young men of the nation -- it must conscript capital and industry and labor. Let the officers and the directors and the high-powered executives of our armament factories and our munitions makers and our shipbuilders and our airplane builders and the manufacturers of all the other things that provide profit in war time as well as the bankers and the speculators, be conscripted -- to get $30 a month, the same wage as the lads in the trenches get.

Let the workers in these plants get the same wages -- all the workers, all presidents, all executives, all directors, all managers, all bankers -- yes, and all generals and all admirals and all officers and all politicians and all government office holders -- everyone in the nation be restricted to a total monthly income not to exceed that paid to the soldier in the trenches!

Let all these kings and tycoons and masters of business and all those workers in industry and all our senators and governors and majors pay half of their monthly $30 wage to their families and pay war risk insurance and buy Liberty Bonds.

Why shouldn't they?

They aren't running any risk of being killed or of having their bodies mangled or their minds shattered. They aren't sleeping in muddy trenches. They aren't hungry. The soldiers are!

Give capital and industry and labor thirty days to think it over and you will find, by that time, there will be no war. That will smash the war racket -- that and nothing else.

Maybe I am a little too optimistic. Capital still has some say. So capital won't permit the taking of the profit out of war until the people -- those who do the suffering and still pay the price -- make up their minds that those they elect to office shall do their bidding, and not that of the profiteers.

Another step necessary in this fight to smash the war racket is the limited plebiscite to determine whether a war should be declared. A plebiscite not of all the voters but merely of those who would be called upon to do the fighting and dying. There wouldn't be very much sense in having a 76-year-old president of a munitions factory or the flat-footed head of an international banking firm or the cross-eyed manager of a uniform manufacturing plant -- all of whom see visions of tremendous profits in the event of war -- voting on whether the nation should go to war or not. They never would be called upon to shoulder arms -- to sleep in a trench and to be shot. Only those who would be called upon to risk their lives for their country should have the privilege of voting to determine whether the nation should go to war.

There is ample precedent for restricting the voting to those affected. Many of our states have restrictions on those permitted to vote. In most, it is necessary to be able to read and write before you may vote. In some, you must own property. It would be a simple matter each year for the men coming of military age to register in their communities as they did in the draft during the World War and be examined physically. Those who could pass and who would therefore be called upon to bear arms in the event of war would be eligible to vote in a limited plebiscite. They should be the ones to have the power to decide -- and not a Congress few of whose members are within the age limit and fewer still of whom are in physical condition to bear arms. Only those who must suffer should have the right to vote.

A third step in this business of smashing the war racket is to make certain that our military forces are truly forces for defense only.

At each session of Congress the question of further naval appropriations comes up. The swivel-chair admirals of Washington (and there are always a lot of them) are very adroit lobbyists. And they are smart. They don't shout that "We need a lot of battleships to war on this nation or that nation." Oh no. First of all, they let it be known that America is menaced by a great naval power. Almost any day, these admirals will tell you, the great fleet of this supposed enemy will strike suddenly and annihilate 125,000,000 people. Just like that. Then they begin to cry for a larger navy. For what? To fight the enemy? Oh my, no. Oh, no. For defense purposes only.

Then, incidentally, they announce maneuvers in the Pacific. For defense. Uh, huh.

The Pacific is a great big ocean. We have a tremendous coastline on the Pacific. Will the maneuvers be off the coast, two or three hundred miles? Oh, no. The maneuvers will be two thousand, yes, perhaps even thirty-five hundred miles, off the coast.

The Japanese, a proud people, of course will be pleased beyond expression to see the united States fleet so close to Nippon's shores. Even as pleased as would be the residents of California were they to dimly discern through the morning mist, the Japanese fleet playing at war games off Los Angeles.

The ships of our navy, it can be seen, should be specifically limited, by law, to within 200 miles of our coastline. Had that been the law in 1898 the Maine would never have gone to Havana Harbor. She never would have been blown up. There would have been no war with Spain with its attendant loss of life. Two hundred miles is ample, in the opinion of experts, for defense purposes. Our nation cannot start an offensive war if its ships can't go further than 200 miles from the coastline. Planes might be permitted to go as far as 500 miles from the coast for purposes of reconnaissance. And the army should never leave the territorial limits of our nation.

To summarize: Three steps must be taken to smash the war racket.

1. We must take the profit out of war.


2. We must permit the youth of the land who would bear arms to decide whether or not there should be war.


3. We must limit our military forces to home defense purposes.

Chapter Five - To Hell With War!

I am not a fool as to believe that war is a thing of the past. I know the people do not want war, but there is no use in saying we cannot be pushed into another war.

Looking back, Woodrow Wilson was re-elected president in 1916 on a platform that he had "kept us out of war" and on the implied promise that he would "keep us out of war." Yet, five months later he asked Congress to declare war on Germany.

In that five-month interval the people had not been asked whether they had changed their minds. The 4,000,000 young men who put on uniforms and marched or sailed away were not asked whether they wanted to go forth to suffer and die.

Then what caused our government to change its mind so suddenly?

Money.

An allied commission, it may be recalled, came over shortly before the war declaration and called on the President. The President summoned a group of advisers. The head of the commission spoke. Stripped of its diplomatic language, this is what he told the President and his group:

“There is no use kidding ourselves any longer. The cause of the allies is lost. We now owe you (American bankers, American munitions makers, American manufacturers, American speculators, American exporters) five or six billion dollars.

If we lose (and without the help of the United States we must lose) we, England, France and Italy, cannot pay back this money . . . and Germany won't.

So . . . ”

Had secrecy been outlawed as far as war negotiations were concerned, and had the press been invited to be present at that conference, or had radio been available to broadcast the proceedings, America never would have entered the World War. But this conference, like all war discussions, was shrouded in utmost secrecy. When our boys were sent off to war they were told it was a "war to make the world safe for democracy" and a "war to end all wars."

Well, eighteen years after, the world has less of democracy than it had then. Besides, what business is it of ours whether Russia or Germany or England or France or Italy or Austria live under democracies or monarchies? Whether they are Fascists or Communists? Our problem is to preserve our own democracy.

And very little, if anything, has been accomplished to assure us that the World War was really the war to end all wars.

Yes, we have had disarmament conferences and limitations of arms conferences. They don't mean a thing. One has just failed; the results of another have been nullified. We send our professional soldiers and our sailors and our politicians and our diplomats to these conferences. And what happens?

The professional soldiers and sailors don't want to disarm. No admiral wants to be without a ship. No general wants to be without a command. Both mean men without jobs. They are not for disarmament. They cannot be for limitations of arms. And at all these conferences, lurking in the background but all-powerful, just the same, are the sinister agents of those who profit by war. They see to it that these conferences do not disarm or seriously limit armaments.

The chief aim of any power at any of these conferences has not been to achieve disarmament to prevent war but rather to get more armament for itself and less for any potential foe.

There is only one way to disarm with any semblance of practicability. That is for all nations to get together and scrap every ship, every gun, every rifle, every tank, every war plane. Even this, if it were possible, would not be enough.

The next war, according to experts, will be fought not with battleships, not by artillery, not with rifles and not with machine guns. It will be fought with deadly chemicals and gases.

Secretly each nation is studying and perfecting newer and ghastlier means of annihilating its foes wholesale. Yes, ships will continue to be built, for the shipbuilders must make their profits. And guns still will be manufactured and powder and rifles will be made, for the munitions makers must make their huge profits. And the soldiers, of course, must wear uniforms, for the manufacturer must make their war profits too.

But victory or defeat will be determined by the skill and ingenuity of our scientists.

If we put them to work making poison gas and more and more fiendish mechanical and explosive instruments of destruction, they will have no time for the constructive job of building greater prosperity for all peoples. By putting them to this useful job, we can all make more money out of peace than we can out of war -- even the munitions makers.

So...I say,

TO HELL WITH WAR!

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GFC Lessons Not Learnt

““In reality, the real causes of the financial crisis lie deeper; to problems going back a century. In the early 20th century, the American government faced an alarming problem. The Russian Revolution of 1917 terrified government officials. They believed that to deter the rise of communism, more Americans needed to become invested in the system of private property: the best way to make the average American a good capitalist was to make him a homeowner.

The federal government thus began insuring bank mortgage lending, thereby expanding finance available for middle class consumers. But there was a catch: any new housing must be racially segregated to gain federal insurance. No insurance was to be extended to African-American purchasers or to white purchasers moving into African-American neighbourhoods. This practice, known as “redlining” of neighbourhoods, largely provided home ownership for whites while denying it for African-Americans.

Unable to own their own home and forced into poor quality neighbourhoods, African-Americans missed out on generations of wealth-building opportunities. As house prices rose over time, the gap between minority and white household wealth grew greater. So by the time President Bill Clinton was inaugurated in 1993, he faced a familiar problem—too few low-income and minority Americans owned their home. Clinton was under enormous pressure from housing activists to radically expand homeownership. Activist groups were particularly critical of banks’ strict underwriting standards for home loans, such as requiring high credit scores and solid downpayments. They claimed these higher standards disproportionately hurt low-income earners and minorities. Their answer was to wield the power of the federal government to force the mortgage market to loosen its underwriting standards, so that more and more marginal borrowers could qualify for a home loan. Prominent community activist Gale Cincotta made this clear, testifying before Congress in 1991, that “lenders will respond to the most conservative standards unless [federal government agencies] are aggressive and convincing in their efforts to expand historically narrow underwriting”.””
     — Daniel Press

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Now, see, I was going to make nice here and just touch on the subject.

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Mark Penn: FBI Trump-Russia investigation shows deep state was worse than we thought

The Shutdown Is Providing Evidence Of Private Businesses Making Government Obsolete

The shutdown’s real lesson: Government has taken hostage too much of the economy

Political Nightmares Multiply for Europe Ahead of Davos

Feds Can't Force You To Unlock Your iPhone With Finger Or Face, Judge Rules

The Game of Pseudo-Authenticity

Supreme Court to Consider Whether Police Can Order Blood Draws from Unconscious Drivers

Public Disdain For Russia Probe Intensifies, Trump Approval Climbs — IBD/TIPP Poll

Trump's Terrible Record on Property Rights

California prohibits gender-based auto insurance: report

Democrats Failing to Control Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green Revolution

Second Thoughts On Pot

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US approved thousands of child bride requests

Oh My: Catholic Archdioceses Admit Wuerl Knew Of McCarrick Abuse Allegation In 2004

Philly residents defy the city’s controversial ‘soda tax’

Inside Facebook’s ‘cult-like’ workplace, where dissent is discouraged and employees pretend to be happy all the time

5 Things To Do About Our Culture’s Antagonism Against Men

Gab Promotes Bitcoin as 'Free Speech Money' to Over 850,000 Users

The Recession Will Be Unevenly Distributed

How Facebook Borrows From the NSA Playbook

5 reasons why there’s still no end to the shutdown

The only acceptable answer: “None of your f(ornicating) business!”

Who gave National Review the power to excommunicate?

Employee at Ford Office Fired After Disagreeing With Transgender Post

Majority Preservation Act

Nobel secretary regrets Obama peace prize

This Reporter Took a Deep Look Into the Science of Smoking Pot. What He Found Is Scary.

Carriers Swore They'd Stop Selling Location Data. Will They Ever?

Cory Doctorow: Disruption for Thee, But Not for Me

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Union Scum: Seasonal UPS Workers Had Paychecks Taken By Local Teamsters Chapter In Boston

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New Studies Show Pundits Are Wrong About Russian Social-Media Involvement in US Politics

Imagine if We Paid for Food like We Do Healthcare

How Should Facebook (and Twitter, and YouTube, and...) Decide What Speech To Allow?

The angry lawyer who went on a racist rant that went viral got kicked out of his office space — and his week is only getting worse

Angela Merkel: Nation States Must "Give Up Sovereignty" To New World Order

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A Holiday Mystery: Why Did John Roberts Intervene in the Mueller Probe?

NY police say 'Muslim Community Patrol' car not sanctioned by them

New Documents Suggest The Steele Dossier Was A Deliberate Setup For Trump

Yellow Vests Becoming World Wide Movement

France: Year's 1st yellow vest event brings tear gas, fires

Eminent Domain: The Wall’s Other Problem

Must Writers Be Moral? Their Contracts May Require It

The New Congress and the Rolling Catastrophe of the US Body Politic

Fact check: What's a 'national emergency,' and can Trump declare one to get his wall?

Movies for Libertarians: Little Pink House

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The Vaccination Debate

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Monument Valley closed due to ‘cult activity'

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Batkid saved San Francisco five years ago, and his cancer's been in remission ever since

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❝❝First, let's acknowledge that almost no one becomes a billionaire without active government intervention. Whether it's a patent, the existence of a corporation, or the exclusive right to sell colored sugar water, you can't concentrate money on a large scale without government.

Second, money depends on movement. Money stuffed in a mattress is just lumpy nesting material. It's cashflow that makes economies work. Yes, that dingus sells for $350, but there is the raw material cost, the manufacturing costs, the overhead costs like salaries and government fees, and so on. Very few things have a profit margin of ten percent, and most are well under five. So that dingus sells for $350, but most likely it cost the company about $333 to make and distribute. Money has to circulate or there is no value anywhere.

Third, you can't overlook competition. Well, at least not without government suppressing it anyway. A company has to compete for employees, just as employees have to compete for jobs. Multiple employers mean better wages and benefits. Regionally, multiple employers means that a town or city is less subject to the whims of a single company or the demands of a single industry.

As far as there being too few jobs, that kicks into government intervention again. In a healthy economy, there will usually be more jobs than employees.

Fourth (and this is the really important bit), companies expand by providing better quality goods and services cheaper, faster, and with more distribution than the competition. This instability is the keystone to the whole process. If a company can't compete, it loses money. More accurately, resources (including employees) are freed to other companies.

Companies want shortcuts, so they lobby and change the law rather than create new products and services. If a large company can pull it off, it's usually much cheaper. Again, this is government intervention. Short of government protection and favor, the only way a company can stay in business is by being at least as good as it's competition.

---

I should add that digital services and products throw a spanner in the works. On the one hand you have companies like Google offering "free services" by selling your data. On the other hand you have companies like Disney selling movies produced 25, 30 years ago for $20 a pop. We're still working out how all this will work in the long run.❞❞

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❝❝There's also climate change. Some treat it very much as a religious issue, right down to attacking dissenters as heretics. Using the law to compel belief is wrong.

After all, if it is Divine Will, how can mere humans dare question it? Which gives non serviam some very interesting implications. By some interpretations, the absolute demands of monotheism may be less about the Divine and more about the political power of princes, potentates, and priests.

It's easy to laugh at those crazy monotheists until you see some demands of the RadFems, the trans activists, the environmental groups, the redistributionists, and anti-hate speech types. Always, Always, ALWAYS there is a Grand Cause that demands total submission and absolutely no denial "for the greater good."

Anytime you see "thou shalt not dissent," it should be a flashing red strobe and a triple siren.

---

Kosher certification for restaurants is one private alternative for food safety that has worked. One author, L. Neil Smith, suggested in one of his novels that insurance companies would do a better job with driver's licenses because they are liable if something happens. Obviously these are not the only possibilities. But with government, we end up with only one Official Solution® allowed.

Personally I prefer the free market and competition. And by free market, I mean no government to pick winners or losers, and no government to give advantages over others. Just voluntary exchanges between consenting adults. Many companies especially international ones owe their competitive advantages to special privileges from governments and/or government regulation and control.

The only times I think government should intervene is to protect life, liberty, and property. Beyond that, the only role I see for government is enforcing contracts and agreements, but even that could be done privately.

But that is just me.

I do believe that Meddling in Other's Lives For Their Own Good is one of the great evils unleashed on humanity.❞❞

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If money was really speech, there would be no legal limit to campaign donations.

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This is the problem.

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❝❝Carbon neutrality is a fallacy cooked up so that developing nations would not have to face the same "standards" as industrialized nations and to create a parasite market based on a fictional commodity.❞❞
     — NeoWayland

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“Native Americans Realize Entrepreneurship Dream”

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❝❝Did I ever mention how the income tax isn't designed to produce revenue, but to spy as needed on American citizens?

---

Yep.

You can start with how the IRS is the "go to" agency whenever someone does something the Federal government doesn't like.

You can continue with the fact that your employer and any financial institution you do business with are required "under penalty of law" to report any transactions on demand. There's a reporting threshold for "as they happen," but the IRS still has the (questionable) power to demand any and all going back for years.

Speaking of penalty of law, have you read that bit on the 1040? In fact, take a close look at the entire form. It doesn't say you are required to report your income, it just says that it must be accurate reported on the form before you sign.

No one, including the IRS understands the tax code. It can be manipulated and interpreted as needed. And remember, the first few levels of the tax courts are administrative courts run by the IRS with their own rules of evidence. The presumption of innocence doesn't apply. You have to prove the IRS wrong, and then you might get your seized money back.

By definition, a "standard" deduction means taxes are too high.

---

What, you wanted it stated in the authorizing law?

Everything I said was drawn from truth.

From Al Capone on, the IRS has been used against those the Federal government doesn't approve of. Or occasionally found politically inconvenient. Any other uncovered crimes are just a bonus.

Reporting financial transactions have proven so useful in so many cases that it has become literally the reason the IRS exists.

The 1040 form is unusually and carefully worded.

Since at least the 1970s, IRS agents and supervisors have been shown to have a very focused knowledge of the tax code and an appalling ignorance about the rest.

The IRS does have it's own court system with it's own rules of evidence. And you are not presumed innocent until proven guilty.

More importantly, look at how Presidents have used the tax code against their enemies.

---

Al Capone went to jail for tax evasion because they couldn't get anything else to stick.

You tell me, if you were a prosecutor and you knew you had a guilty man and you had the evidence, would you want to charge them with murder or tax evasion?

Prove me wrong instead of labeling it conjecture and innuendo. It's right there, I showed you were to look.

Remember, it took amending the Constitution to make a Federal income tax legal.

---

Going after him for tax evasion wasn't even part of the plan.

Pay attention, because that is a critical point.

Did you know that the IRS was used to enforce Prohibition?

That was a critical point too.

I understand your confusion. Many assume that Government is a Good Thing. It's not commonly acknowledged that taxes can be some of the worst abuses of government authority. Might I suggest Adams' For Good and Evil: The Impact of Taxes on the Course of Civilization as a starting point?

---

No I am not.

I'm stating that law is not good in and of itself, and that law is more likely to be abused than not.

For example, people are usually taught that the progressive income tax in particular is a way to get the rich to pay "their fair share." That's not true and it never has been. We know that whole histories industries have grown up to help people use tax loopholes. What's more, we know that politicos and technocrats benefit from selectively applying the law.

Which returns to my comment, that the income tax as designed is intended to spy on American citizens. It's not uniformly applied. It's subject to change and political influence. And the majority of the public is locked out of changes. And for what? A mala prohibita law. Not paying taxes is does not harm someone, it's just bad because government has declared it to be bad.

The graduated income tax has done more harm and destroyed more freedom than any other law in American history. "Innocent under proven guilty" stopped because of the income tax and no longer applies in American law.

I should have warned you. Never argue taxes with a libertarian.

---

Yeppers.

That standard deductions line makes people think. And it should.

That's usually when I point out that if they are getting a refund, they just gave the government an interest free loan.

---

Oh my, that's just so adorable!

Look at it this way.

Taxable income = 100 dollars
Standard deduction = 17 dollars
"Taxed" income = 83 dollars

You are still paying taxes. It's only on paper that there is a difference. They messed with the rate, not with the tax.

They lie.

Don't even get me started on itemized deductions.

ETA: I'm the one with the line of "by definition, a standard deduction means taxes are too high." I'm proud of it, so I want credit.

---

Yep, and the claim stands.

The politicos and technocrats are playing word games to convince people that the IRS is looking out for the little guy.

They don't reduce the tax, they tell you that there is a standard deduction.

Speaking of which, let's look at that word standard. As in, everyone gets it. If it were really about "giving something" to someone with lower income, you'd think the deduction would be less for higher incomes. But then it wouldn't be a standard deduction.

Nope, we give everyone a standard deduction.

And that certainly looks like taxes are too high.

---

The fact is that the government hides to actual tax rate to make people think they are getting something for nothing.

The tax rate is too high, so they play word games.

The graduated tax is another issue.

The point is, the mere existence of a standard deduction means that the standard is to deduct. Hence, by definition and the admission of the government, taxes are too high.

---

That's the same form that is worded to hide the fact that they don't care about you paying your taxes as much as they don't want you to lie about it and make sure that it is correct, right?

The whole thing is deceptive from the payroll deduction to the falsity that a progressive tax that impacts higher tax brackets more to which deductions may be allowed this year if you are lucky enough to know about them.

Not to mention the undeclared interest free loan that many make to the government every year without realizing it.

If it were really just about the income, the whole thing could be done on half a postcard.

Including the instructions.

---

But this US doesn't do it simply. The code is created to distract, to obfuscate, to hide what government wants.

It's not about the revenue.

It's about tracking the flow of money. Something which isn't authorized by the Constitution.

The whole business of a "standard deduction" is just another way to confuse citizens and convince them that they are getting something for nothing.

It's three card monte by government regulation. You aren't supposed to look close.

Meanwhile there is a surveillance system that is the envy of tyrants all over the world. And Americans accept it even as they complain about it.

---

Tax income, but not track money.

The 16th was a product of the time, and NO ONE at the time expected it to be used against the poor and the (emerging) middle class. It was sold as a way to make the rich pay "their fair share." I'm pretty sure that if people knew then what the income tax would become, there would have been another revolution.

The graduated income tax was intended to foster class envy. At that point, the upper class did not have the political clout to protect themselves.

Don't you find it interesting that a sales tax doesn't require nearly the administration that an income tax does?

Don't you find it even more interesting that no one understands the tax code and just accepts that is how it is supposed to be?

And then there is the fact that in the name of "protecting" the poor, they still have to declare their income under penalty of law.

---

As I said and have shown, the American income tax system is more about spying on the American people than producing income.

All you are doing is saying that the system is necessary.

---

One of the things I quickly learned as a Corporate Clone is that the budget expands to consume the sales income. It's always easier to spend someone else's money.

Remember I said that taxes are too high.

Still, I stand by my point. The spying on the American public is more important than the revenues.

---

If you state a tax rate and then give everyone a "standard deduction," then taxes are too high.

Taxes are too high for many other reasons, but I agree that distracts from this argument.

---

A standard deduction goes to everyone, not someone on a graduated scale.

Deductions have nothing to do with a graduated tax, especially since most deductions go to the middle and high end income groups.

---

It's not a reduction of tax on graduated income, it's deliberately confusing what the rate is.

Which isn't necessary for the higher ends of the income scale who can afford to have someone do their taxes. On the very high end, that means hiring a professional accountant to minimize tax liability.

Deductions are not intended to help the poor. Even if they are standard.

Of course the easiest thing of all would be actually lowering the tax without deductions.

---

Not true.

The modern version of the income tax started as a class tax. It was not expanded to a mass tax until WWII. Even then (in 1944), the "standard deduction" started as ten percent of taxable income. When the standard deduction was changed to a flat fee, that fee deliberately wasn't linked to the rate of inflation. Which means that over time, people on the lower end of the income scale paid more. But that wasn't the justification in 1964 when the deduction was changed from a percentage to a fee.

Because the fee amount wasn't linked to inflation, inevitably people started falling through the cracks. Meanwhile the income tax provided an unprecedented (and expanding) monitoring of cash flow (not the economy). That monitoring power could not be sacrificed.

And that is where the Earned Income Tax Credit came from. A direct payment from government that did not interfere in the existing tax structure or the government's ability to monitor cash flow. If anything, it expanded the latter.

---

And if you lower taxes, you don't have to lie about deductions to convince people that they are getting something that they are not. The actuality is that it's easier to manipulate a fee than a percentage all while hiding that people are paying more and getting less while being told what a Good Thing it is.

Reagan signed the expansion of the EIC, but it was originally created in 1975. It's also constitutionally questionable.

---

And if you eliminate the standard deduction and lower the tax rate to 8%, they pay less.

Manipulating the process is not the answer.

---

Um,yes.

Because now we are going to talk about the unintentional side effects of a graduated tax system.

Higher taxes aren't just absorbed by businesses and those with more income. The higher costs are passed on. In the case of a business, that means higher prices. In the case of an individual, that means they will buy less, which means few jobs creating or selling.

All this results in lower economic opportunity overall, but especially on the margins. That in turn means that those trying to increase their income will be most affected, especially if they are on the lower end of the income scale.

These are well known second order effects. Look them up.

Simply put, modifications and exceptions to the rules usually benefit those most able to influence the system. Or, as I like to put it, government authority tends to be used against those least likely to resist.

The more complex and convoluted a law is (any law), the bigger negative impact it has on the lower levels of income.

---

Extra rent and utilities due to displaced costs $50 per month or $600 per year.

Extra costs of food $15 per month or $180 per year.

Extra costs of clothing and miscellaneous $60 per year.

Company downsizing and freezing salary, adjusted for inflation $200 per year.

Just for the stuff I've listed, $1040 additional costs per year due progressive and distributed taxes.

---

Taxes are costs. They certainly aren't revenues to the people who are paying them.

The costs I provided were approximately middling. See, it's not just the amount of the tax that is shifted. It's also the cost of collecting and administering the taxes. Not to mention all the other costs of government, from the salary of Congressional pages to the paperclip allowance in the Department of the Interior.

Economies are based on the movement of value, we usually talk cash flow as a shorthand. The movement of value acts a lot like water. You can block it off, you can divert it, you can tap it, and you can channel it. Every change influences the whole system, you can't isolate one bit from the other without removing the cash flow. Think water pressure and you're close to the mark. The more you mess with the pluming, the more unstable the system becomes.

Governments tend to use the myth that the economy can be managed and controlled. But it is a myth. The only reason some governments can get away with it is because the cash flow is usually high enough to compensate for the really stupid things.

But if the goal is more money and not lower taxes, then the people with the lowest cash flow (i.e. water pressure) will be most impacted by any changes.

That's why lower taxes alone is a false and misleading measurement.

---

If you reduce taxes and costs go up, then there is no benefit to a "standard deduction"

Manipulating the system at a higher cost is going to hurt the people the deduction is supposed to help. The government sells a line, "We're going to reduce your taxes." But the politicos never admit the obvious, it's going to cost more.

Revenues are not neutral, that is another lie. There is an increased cost to administer the system. Any changes in process will increase this cost. And government has no incentive to reduce this extra cost.

So in the name of compassion, the system screws the people least likely to resist.❞❞

Tags: spying ∙ taxes ∙ IRS ∙ tax code ∙ tax courts ∙ politicos ∙ Prohibition ∙ income tax ∙ technocrats ∙ goverment ∙ standard deduction ∙ Constitution ∙ Al Capone ∙ economics ∙ movement of value ∙ cash flow

❝❝ahem

Government Is Not Your Friend.

When government acts, there will always Always ALWAYS be less liberty afterwards.

Do we really want politicos and technocrats deciding what is and is not available based on a morality that was defined between the two AM sex party and the prayer breakfast?

==>Obligatory libertarian rant over. We now return you to your regularly scheduled comments.<==❞❞
     — NeoWayland

Tags: maxims ∙ government is not your friend ∙ politicos ∙ technocrats ∙ 2 AM sex party ∙ prayer breakfast

Tags: PragerU ∙ guest content ∙ video ∙ net neutrality

Tags: video ∙ guest content ∙ PragerU ∙ liberal ∙ Left ∙ Dennis Prager ∙ capitalism ∙ conservatism ∙ racist

““Let me help.””
     — as explained in The City on the Edge of Forever, Star Trek The Original Series

““I can do better than that!””
     — some anonymous hominid far back in time

Tags: Star Trek ∙ I can do better than that ∙ let me help ∙ human ∙ history

❝❝That is a phenomenally inaccurate and simplistic view.

---

"Run by blacks…"

They are run by Democrats who have spent the last 50+ years telling minority groups that they are victims and don't have to be responsible.

Gods, the absolute last last thing you should do is blame skin color.

Do you want to make things worse?

---

Of course you're blaming skin color.

Those "heritable characteristics" vanish when you start adjusting for quality of education, early childhood environment, and family support.

Next time read the disclaimers and qualitifications qualifications.

---

Yes, yes they do. Check the studies again. Better yet, follow it to the inevitable conclusion. If the "heritable characteristics" exist and are not modified by environmental factors, then by your logic "blacks" are inherently inferior.

Think about that very carefully.

---

The fact that you are relying on IQ tells me quite a bit.

The IQ tests are culturally biased. What's more, studies from the late 1970s forward have shown that the tests are sub-culturally biased. Those scores are significantly linked to quality of education, early childhood environment, and family support.

Yes, those things I mentioned earlier.

What's more, there's evidence of an inner-city sub-culture that is adamantly against doing well in school or on tests.

---

Look, here's the problem.

You're defining people by skin color, no matter what their individual accomplishments.

Benjamin Banneker, Frederick Douglass, George Washington Carver, Daniel Hale Williams , Booker T. Washington, James West, John J. Jasper, Daniel "Chappie" James Jr., Thomas Sowell, Huey P. Newton, Carter G. Woodson, W. E. B. Du Bois, Malcolm X, those are just some of the remarkable American men I remember off the top of my head.

---

Those averages only matter if you've allowed for all other factors.

For example, how many sub-Sararan sub-Saharan nations have a free market based economy? How many recognize the rights of the individual?

I already told you a third theory. There are significant cultural and environmental differences. What's more, put any skin color in unfavorable circumstances and watch how fast the "average" drops.

---

Unless a government recognizes & defends individual rights, corruption follows as surely as night follows day.

Those white South Africans you mention had special privilege and exploited people because they had the power to do so. When things changed, there was no living memory of anything except special privileges. The corruption stayed and the exploited targets changed.

A version of the same problem is happening in those Democrat controlled cities that you incorrectly insist on labeling "black run." Recognized rights have long given way to special privilege, and no one remembers anything else.

---

I didn't say anything about it not being their fault. I specifically said Democrats "have spent the last 50+ years telling minority groups that they are victims and don't have to be responsible."

Not so long ago, the Republican idea of race relations was to get out of the way and tell people to take responsibility. That's no longer the case.

I don't care about blame. I just care about fixing the problem. And you are making things worse.

You're making the Democrat case for them. You're saying that "blacks" will fail if left to themselves.

---

You mean other than the examples I gave you?

If you are interested in statistics, try the upward mobility of "blacks" between 1900 and 1960, before government interfered. The welfare statistics and the rise of single mother families are particularly telling. These have been well documented.

On the whole, two parent households do better over time. When the immediate cost of having children is reduced by government intervention, then a single parent household is less likely to move up the economic ladder.

---

I told you some of what was necessary for a society's success. Recognition and protection of individual rights. A free market economy. Those things are rare.

Those things are also not dependent on skin color.

I don't recognize "black" societies, I recognize human societies. Almost every single time when someone talks about "black" societies or "black"nations or "black" cities, it's about racism.

There's one race and it's human.

---

I said no such thing.

I talked about political systems designed to exploit victimhood and grant privilege.

That has almost nothing to do with skin color and everything to do with denying rights.

---

People designed those systems. Generations of people over centuries, trading, interacting, arguing, fighting, failing, and trying again. It wasn't because of one skin color even if you could define "white."

---

Because I said that people designed the systems, for good or ill?

Because I pointed out that it took generations?

Because I pointed out that you can't define "white" anymore than you can define "black?"

You lost this one the second you used skin color as a substitute for individual merit.

---

You haven't managed to identify any significant differences that aren't environmental in nature.

Instead, you keep focusing on skin color, a poor indicator under the best of circumstances.

There are hundreds of other factors, starting with how many parents the child has and if the child is raised in a loving environment. That doesn't even include the social factors I've already touched on.

As long as you focus on skin color, you're just perpetuating the problems.

The only way the question is reduced to a binary condition is by focusing on insignificant measurements such as skin color.

---

We've already established that IQ is culturally biased. There are also strong indications that IQ is sub-culturally biased as well. That means that part of what IQ measures is cultural conformity.

That's assuming that IQ is a relevant measure of intelligence to begin with. There are theories that one measurement of intelligence isn't nearly enough.

Like it or not, you have to allow for environmental and cultural factors in IQ scores.

---

Me and about two thirds of the researchers studying the possibility.

I suggest you do a web search for IQ cultural bias.

---

First, it's not the "warrior gene." A variant is popularly (and inaccurately) referred to as the "warrior gene." Technically the variant produces less MAMO MAOA .

Second, the evidences seems to show that the people with a low level of MAMO MAOA show higher levels of aggression when faced with social stressors such as ostracism, exclusion, or overwhelming loss.

You know, environmental factors.

ETA: Sorry about that, spell check fixed something I didn't want fixed.

---

With environmental factors, yes.

Would you like a list of genetic variations that are activated by environmental stressors?

---

I don't lie.

You keep stressing differences that derive from environmental factors.

Yet you keep blaming skin color.

---

Remember when I mentioned "family support?" Have you accounted for the incredible cultural pressure to succeed at schools and testing?

---

Yep, Obama was all about skin color. And his solutions worked out just so well for everyone, right?

There's a line I've been throwing around for a couple years now.

❝There were so many patting themselves on the back and proud that a black man had been elected President that no one bothered to ask if a good man had been elected President.❞

---

The politics are a much bigger part of the problem than the skin color.

It's the politics I blame.

---

And there's your problem.

You think it's about America.

It's about freedom.

---

Who said anything about pretending it's not there?

I'm disputing why it is there.

---

Actually I did. I talked briefly about incentivizing single parenthood and telling minorities that they are perpetual victims and how they don't have to take responsibility.

---

No, it wasn't the same environment.

I specified "telling minorities."

Politics are bad enough, but the politics are of victimhood are just despicable.

---

Because they don't have the same incentives.

Do you have any idea how much has been written and spoken about this over the last sixty years?

You might start with Goldwater's objections to the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

---

I believe they are indoctrinated to believe that they could only be victims no matter what.

---

Talked with more than a few. Slept with a couple.

I'm a bilagáana born on the res. I grew up next to the Diné, the Hopi, and the Havasupai. Spent a lot of time in Phoenix, Tucson, San Diego, and Albuquerque.

Still want to lecture me on the "races?"

---

Gods, you really are so ignorant that you can't be bothered to do a web search.

Roughly translated, bilagáana means "white man." There's more to it than that, especially for one born on the reservation. I'm what happens when Louisiana farming stock takes root in the Four Corners region.

---

Check again.

I never denied cultural differences, I just pointed out that they alone don't determine IQ or aggression.

---

I don't think I've done it in this thread, but I have pointed out that there is one race and it's human.

"Peoples" is a completely different concept and doesn't usually rest on minor genetic differences. The term is slightly more accurate than tribes.

Go back and reread what I wrote on this thread. I started by pointing out that what was being passed off as racial and genetic differences were actually due to environmental and cultural factors.

---

Ah, someone is making the right points.

First, IQ is not an objective measurement. One of my favorite examples is the Diné, their culture doesn't recognize time and distance as linear. With the possibility of multiple intelligences, things get more complicated. Gross motor coordination doesn't translate to spatial mathematical. Yes, I know the theory has problems like leaving out fine motor control, but this isn't the place.

We've not defined intelligence very well. There's a difference between following a recipe and walking in a kitchen just to whip up amazing food. IQ tests look for proven solutions, not for that creative spark. Sometimes that mostly works, sometimes not.

One set of parents can produce a musical genius, a good accountant, and a total slacker. It's impossible to say if a specific genetic line might produce. We know from domesticated animals that some traits will probably breed true, but we have to allow for environment and chance. We can't say that this family always produces good Rotarians and never any gamers. We can't say that every puppy from that Labrador will be good with kids. If you expand it to a group, the uncertainty grows too.

---

Interesting. You get to keep your preconceptions but I have to give mine up.

Okay, let's go back to basics. Part of science is eliminating variables.

The people we're comparing, are they on the same economic level? Did they have the same number of parents? Did they attend the same or comparable schools? Are they married? Do they have the same number of kids? Is their debt level the same? Is their education level the same? Do they live in the same or comparable neighborhoods?

We know that every single one of these environmental factors can influence someone's mental abilities, their tastes, their chosen activities, and their obligations.

And these are just the big ones.

Otherwise you're comparing apples from last year to next year's bananas. There's no way to establish a baseline.

There's no real comparison until you can account for most of the major variables.

---

I'm telling you (again) that until you can account for environmental differences, your measurements are useless.

There's a difference between a Walmart special and a finely made bookshelf. You can't just say that the one that is forty-one inches wide is better than the thirty-five inch one. You don't have enough information to judge.

---

It's a trick question.

It presupposes that there aren't any other variables that matter.

At the very least, acknowledge that the quality of schools makes a difference.

Mona Lisa Vito: It's a bullshit question.

D.A. Jim Trotter: Does that mean that you can't answer it?

Mona Lisa Vito: It's a bullshit question, it's impossible to answer.

D.A. Jim Trotter: Impossible because you don't know the answer!

Mona Lisa Vito: Nobody could answer that question!

D.A. Jim Trotter: Your Honor, I move to disqualify Ms. Vito as a "expert witness"!

Judge Chamberlain Haller: Can you answer the question?

Mona Lisa Vito: No, it is a trick question!
     — My Cousin Vinny

---

From my second response to you on this thread, I've pointed out again and again that you can not eliminate cultural and environmental factors.

The differences that you chose to highlight directly resulted in part from the culture and environment.

These are facts that we know and can easily be verified through a web search.

Children from single parent households tend to do worse at school and hold lower paying jobs.

Children from abusive households tend to do worse at school and hold lower paying jobs.

Single parent households tend to stay at lower income levels.

Some schools fail so much that most of their students can't read, write, or do basic math.

If children don't have enough to eat, they don't do well in school.

If people don't have shelter, they tend to have more health problems.

How much did environment and culture play a part? There is no way to know unless you can eliminate variables.

There's no comparison unless you can account for most of the major variables. This is true in science. This is true in statistics. This is true in life.

Your question makes no sense because there can be no comparison.

---

But you haven't presented evidence.

You've gone out of your way to dismiss the very idea that the culture and environment can have any possible influence on the differences you chose to highlight.

All you've done is lay out a premise that presupposes that no other factors can change what you choose to measure.

It's not science. It's not statistics. It's not even logically verifiable.

It's just prejudice.

---

You don't have evidence. You have observation, but you haven't shown cause or correlation because you have not allowed for environmental and cultural factors.

It's not even a matter of "interpretation." You've deliberately chosen one measurement and claimed that it defines the whole discussion. Can you say selection bias?

---

You can put tomato seeds in a salt shaker for nine months. That doesn't mean you'll be harvesting.

---

But I don't blame skin color at all. That's when I talk about this at all. Most people don't want to deal with uncomfortable truths.

I talk about politics, history, and the lies of government. Also basic economics and self-ownership.

---

Self-ownership and responsibility are a big part of what I write and talk about.

I also talk about strategy that exploits the politics of victimhood. I point out that the people who don't accept those lies from politicos and technocrats do better over time. Usually better than their parents. Which used to be a measurement of success in this nation.

A significant number of politicos (easily more than half) use the message that people are victims and their friend, the government, can help.

I tell people that government is not your friend, no matter how much the politicos say that it is.

That's not making excuses. That's showing that most politicos want problems they can stage manage. The politicos can't do that by solving problems.

---

It's a loaded question.

The premise is insufficient.

---

Neighbor, you're telling me that I am dealing in absolutes when I just listed seven major variables that we know affect intelligence and ability. These variables change everybody no matter what their skin color, nationality, sex, or ice cream preference.

---

I can stop you with nothing more than a few words.

Think about it. You're taking offense at what I write on a website when all I am really saying is "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights…"

You would deny that?

---

I'm not defending today's mess.

I've written against it.

But (and this is the important bit), you're still defining people by skin color instead of what they are individually.

There's a phrase about "content of their character" that comes to mind.

---

I know, you keep defining people by skin color.

---

Tell me, what nationality are "blacks?"

If a "Chinese" has been granted American citizenship, when does he stop being "Chinese?" Three seconds after? Three generations? When he changes his name to Jones?

If Jesus Fernandez was born in Michigan and barely speaks Spanish, is he "Mexican?"

Or American?

---

I didn't say anything about stopping the Left with words.

I said I could stop you.

And I have.

---

Think you so?

Look at what's happened.

I've held my own against you and your "friend." Along the way, we've discussed history, psychology, morality, biology, and ethics. We've done it in real time for a few hours, and right now you are focused on taking me down, not in proving that "blacks" are inferior.

And all you can do is tell me that I don't deserve my citizenship.

You got stopped.

---

"The fact that blacks are not us."

Pretty sure my neighbors would disagree. Pretty sure your neighbors would too.

---

"Wait until your neighbors are Hindus, Muslims, Mexicans, or Asians."

Um, they are.

---

I could ask my across-the-street neighbor, but I'm pretty sure she's happy with her husband. I don't know their kids that well.

---

Because they are us.

The commonalities outweigh the differences.

These barriers, these labels that people like you keep using, they separate us. The labels keep us apart.

❝Those are the same stars, and that is the same moon, that look down upon your brothers and sisters, and which they see as they look up to them, though they are ever so far away from us, and each other.❞
     — Sojourner Truth

---

The Hopi are surrounded by all sides by the Diné. Can you tell me the genetic differences between the Hopi and the Diné? Good luck, because they've been intermarrying for a long time.

So what are their national characteristics?

As I said, I'm an American. I'm a mix. Part of my ancestry is Irish, part of it is English, part of it is Creole, part of it is German, part of it is Russian, and there's probably stuff on both sides of the bed that isn't officially acknowledged.

What are my national genetic characteristics?

I'm pretty sure I could father a child with any fertile human female if we tried hard enough. That's sort of how the species works.

And that's the important thing. We're one species, one "race." Throw us together and those distinctions fade. We get down and funky. We rut. We mix our genes.

It doesn't stop there. Ideas mix too. We argue with each other. We try to one up each other. We try. We look at what the other guy is doing. We borrow what works and tweak it a bit.

Synchronicity and syncretism happen, no matter how much you want "purity."

---

I'm not trying to change the labels.

I'm pointing out the truths.

Those labels are controlling your life.

---

"Truth and lies don't miscegenate."

Miscegenation has nothing to do with truth and lies and everything to do with sex and children.

Truth is subject to change. There was a time when people thought the speed of light was infinite. Now we know it's about 186,000 miles per second. In a vacuum. Put it through an atmosphere or water and it's something else.

We're human. That humanity matters more than any "racial" difference. It's why there are children of "mixed race." As time and people go on, the differences fade.

Until we meet a new population and it starts all over again.

I don't lie. I serve veritas.❞❞

Tags: Democrats ∙ minorities ∙ victims ∙ responsibility ∙ skin color ∙ cyberscare ∙ heritable characteristics ∙ MAOA ∙ cultural differences ∙ intelligence ∙ environment ∙ IQ ∙ culturally biased ∙ education ∙ family ∙ individual rights ∙ schools ∙ Republican ∙ two parent households ∙ single mother households ∙ human ∙ race ∙ racial discrimination ∙ racial identity

Ever notice when someone picks a scapegoat, it's because they think the scapegoat can't fight back?

Tags: guest content ∙ video ∙ Lauren Southern

I'm not something less, I'm something else.

Tags: bureaucrats ∙ power ∙ government ∙ voters ∙ exploit ∙ government is not your friend ∙ advances ∙ culture ∙ technology ∙ plastic surgery ∙ kidney machine ∙ capitalism ∙ poverty ∙ competition

For something with no moral relativism, there's an awful lot or relative morality going on.

Tags: John Stossel ∙ Social Security

Tags: culture ∙ video ∙ guest content ∙ Thoughty2 ∙ music ∙ Beatles ∙ harmonic complexity ∙ timbre ∙ timbral diversity ∙ homogenized ∙ pop music ∙ orchestra ∙ loudness ∙ Keyboard ∙ drum machine ∙ sampler ∙ computer software ∙ creativity ∙ originality ∙ similar ∙ melody ∙ rhythm ∙ Patrick Metzger ∙ millennial whoop ∙ familiarity ∙ lyric intelligence ∙ Flesch Kincaid Readability Index ∙ Max Martin ∙ Lukasz Gottwald ∙ hook ∙ dynamic range compression ∙ dynamic range ∙ risk ∙ brainwash ∙ saturation ∙ mere-exposure effect

Tags: Apple ∙ Alex Jones ∙ inforwars ∙ YouTube ∙ Facebook ∙ Twitter ∙ islamist ∙ anti-Semitism ∙ Antifa ∙ anti-white ∙ hypocrites ∙ choice

❝❝No, they are not monopolies.

When I sit down at a computer, I don't have to go through Facebook to check the weather or see what is happening at this site. If I wanted to message someone on my iPod or iPad, I don't have to use Twitter.

With AT&T, if you were in an area covered you had no choice. It was your regional Bell company and AT&T or nothing. The breakup fixed that, you could choose your phone company. And today, if I am not in range of the right cell tower, my phone still works as long as I am in range of a cell tower.

Facebook, Twitter, Google, Apple, all got big by offering something the competition did not have. No one was forced. Competition is the only way to reduce their hold. And the competition, like all competition, has to offer something more than "just as good as."

For a while, iOS and macOSX had software hooks so that Facebook and Twitter had easier access. That's no longer necessarily true, some of Apple's customers didn't want their data shared by companies that weren't trustworthy.

Government intervention is the last thing we need. There are already politicos who complain about "fake news" that isn't fake, it's just not what the politicos want you to think about. From the news in the last couple of days, it seems Twitter is going after conservative and libertarian users. Do we really want a world where government decides what may and may not be said?

Oh, one other thing. Monopolies rely on government support and intervention. Start regulating and you just planted a monopoly.

---

I agree it's a mess.

To get a site, you have to register a domain name. Then you have to get server space. If you use a company like Wordpress, you agree to carry their ads on your site in exchange for a reduced rate or free use on their server space. If you go on your own, you find a web host (like MacHighway) and you have more control over the site and advertising.

Think of it like a storefront that you have to rent. Depending on the terms of the lease, that is how much service your "landlord" provides and how much you provide to your visitors.

If Twitter provides the ability to block people you don't like, I agree that it should be available to ALL users. But the platform is not public property. The "landlord" can block out who they want when they want. But they shouldn't be shielded from the consequences of their actions. They are liable if they provide different services and benefits to their users. If it's a "free" service, then all "free" users should have the same benefits as all other "free" users. The "landlord" can ban conservatives, but if they allow conservatives (or one specific high profile conservative), then that person should have the same rights and benefits.

ETA: The real question is if the platform should ban offensive content and how that should be defined.❞❞

Tags: virtue signaling ∙ Facebook ∙ Twitter ∙ Apple ∙ server space ∙ Google ∙ iOS ∙ domain name ∙ macOSX ∙ competition ∙ government intervention ∙ fake news ∙ politicos ∙ conservative ∙ libertarian ∙ government ∙ Wordpress ∙ MacHighway ∙ lease ∙ offensive

❝❝There was a late night bull session I attended. One very drunk person announced, very authoritatively, "Socialism is jealousy."

Then she passed out.

She may have had a point.

---

I'll go you one farther. There are studies that show primates have a strong sense of fairness. Some other studies show the fairness idea is linked to play in wolves and coyotes. I've seen speculation but no mention of studies that the idea exists in elephants as well. Taken together, these may indicate that it is part of the biology, at least for social animals.

---

I'd say it relies on control and orientation in time. Given that it's extremely difficult to control other's behavior except through force, someone who is past-orientated will choose coercion and false signals. Especially if their behavior was controlled in the past.

Future orientation and risk taking are more likely to depend on cooperation. Especially if one doesn't have the resources to pull off the future alone.

Going forward, power with beats power over. But someone stuck in the past won't see that. As for the "leaders," they're gaming the system and don't practice what they preach. "But just do as I say, don't do as I do," as the old Genesis song says.

---

❝Everyone who lives in America is a socialist to some degree.❞

True. But did they choose, or was it chosen for them "for the greater good?" In many cases before they were born? Did they ever have an alternative choice? Were they even allowed to think about it?

That's how socialism works. It's always involuntary except for those calling the shots.

❝It’s just that the rank and file among us don’t have $12 billion to buy votes from farmers we’ve screwed over.❞

If he had bought votes, the farmers wouldn't be screwed, would they? You've moved beyond mixing metaphors here, you're mixing conspiracy theories.

---

Your premise about vote buying is wrong. There's plenty to criticize about Trump's tariff strategy (which I've done), but there was no vote buying. That's the problem with most of the accusations against Trump. The loudest people ignore what Trump has done and blame him for things he hasn't done. You can't buy votes after the fact. And you keep overlooking all the other people adversely affected by the tariffs.

I used the word choosing because we are supposed to live in a representative government. Socialism removes choice. Socialism removes freedom. Socialism removes prosperity. The only reason why the United States works economically is because of the partial free market. The free market works. The free market works better than anything else in history. The only reason Americans can afford even partial socialism is because of the abundance produced by the free market.

So are Americans socialist? Yes, but not from choice. Someone had to do it to them. Someone had to lie to them about what they could get. Someone else had to pay the bills. Would Americans choose socialist programs? I don't think they would if they understood the costs.

I didn't claim you wrote anything about choice. I asked about choice. That's not words in your mouth, that's a question you don't want to answer.❞❞

Tags: sociaism ∙ choice ∙ primates ∙ fairness ∙ prosperity ∙ freedom ∙ wolves ∙ coyotes ∙ elephants ∙ biology ∙ control ∙ orientation in time ∙ coercion ∙ false signals ∙ future ∙ past ∙ power with vs power over ∙ involuntary ∙ bought votes

Tags: memes ∙ guest content ∙ capitalism ∙ corporatism ∙ competition ∙ company ∙ goverment

Tags: video ∙ John Stossel ∙ ReasonTV ∙ plastic ∙ child ∙ projects

““Four things have almost invariably followed the imposition of controls to keep prices below the level they would reach under supply and demand in a free market: (1) increased use of the product or service whose price is controlled, (2) Reduced supply of the same product or service, (3) quality deterioration, (4) black markets.””
     — Thomas Sowell

Tags: Thomas Sowell ∙ price controls ∙ demand ∙ supply ∙ quality deteriotes ∙ black market

Tags: Hernando de Soto ∙ clear title

❝❝You are aware that you just tried to shame me into keeping quiet and not offer a dissenting opinion, aren't you?

It's only shame if I accept the premise.

I did not deny that discrimination and oppression takes place.

Now, let's look at what I actually did.

I said people had tried to shame and shun me because of my sexuality, faith, and politics.

You know, like you tried to do.

I didn't proclaim my victimhood gave me the power to command others.

You know, like you tried to do.

It's only shame if I accept the premise.

I refuse to give blanket special privilege because of proclaimed victimhood.

If an individual wants help, I'll give what I think I can. If a vague class demands constant unquestioned deference because of some poorly defined list of potential offenses that may have been committed on alternate Tuesdays, I'll probably laugh.

The World needs heroes more than it needs victims.

I despise the politics of victimhood. That always ALWAYS means a hierarchy and oh so carefully deciding who has it worse. It's never about injustice, it's about injustice shown to a particular class. Injustice against other groups gets downplayed if not ignored entirely.

For example, I gave three reasons. You picked sex sexuality. Not just sex sexuality, but sexual politics as it applies to your letter salad. So heterosexual feminists don't rate high on your victim scale. And you treated all those carefully defined letters as One Monolithic Block, as if the needs and desires of the transfolks matched those of the gay bears.

You're not a hero because someone hurt your feelings or didn't give you what you thought you deserved. Heroes overcome adversity.

---

Yes, you did attempt to shame me. It's kafkatrapping, specifically invoking model A and model C. It was old when Alinsky wrote about it, under a different name of course. The goal of shaming is to morally prevent me from speaking or writing. It attempts to manipulate guilt of both the target and the spectators.

You're right, I don't know you. Nor should what you have experienced have any influence on my behavior. Unless you're expecting my guilty pity to overcome my beliefs and self-interest.

Even now you are ranking comparative victimhood as if that is what defines people. That is what intersectionality does, isn't it? It's all about the victimhood. Emphasizing the victimhood isn't going to do anything except create a pity party. It's not particularly healthy and it isn't a practical solution.

There are radical feminists who routinely try to shame and shun men all the time. Starting with allegations that America is a "rape culture" and that any PIV sex is rape by it's very nature.

You'll never get social justice because people don't agree on what it means.

You obviously don't know me or you'd know that I carefully think about everything I write. I pride myself on it. You have a problem in that my thoughts don't slavishly follow what you think is important.

I've seen people called heroes over hurt feelings. So have you. I've also seen people cashing in on the ordeals of others. So have you.

You chose to respond to my post. I had done you no harm. All I did was challenge your belief. You don't know who I am or what I've done. You don't know who I've helped or who I've hurt. All you know is that you think I should not be allowed to speak or write my opinion.

---

Pardon, but you're deigning to respond so you can prove a point. You're not doing me any favors and the act comes across a little hollow.

Yes, you did try to shame me. You're not the first or thirteenth or thousandth person to try. You don't get to set the terms of my shame.

Of course I want a better world. What I may not want is a better world on your terms. That's not because of my politics, it's because I'm human.

Yep, I did bring up self-interest because it's a major reason for people's behavior. You're not having this discussion because you're feeling selfless. You've convinced yourself you're doing it for the Greater Good.

Speaking of self-interests, one reason why private alternatives become better, cheaper, and faster is because of competition. A public program doesn't have the incentive to improve so it can keep and get more business. But that is a long subject well beyond the scope of this discussion. I will point out that if something is cheaper and more available, that means that more people can get it if they want it.

I'll also point out that the free market, voluntary transactions between consenting adults, has done more to raise people out of poverty than anything else in history.

Just so you know, I was born on the Navajo reservation and I've spent much of my life near it or the Hopi reservation. I've also lived in Phoenix, Tucson, Los Angeles, Provo, and Albuquerque among other places. I know about "people of color," but mine go beyond your definition.

And that brings us up to women, doesn't it? I knew my first strong woman from before I was born. Your issue here is not that I don't have empathy, it's that I don't have the empathy that you approve of. Actually the radical feminists I was talking about called themselves third and fourth wave. When I can, I regularly seek out people who disagree with me. No one person and certainly no one group has all the answers.

I didn't pass judgement on sexual assault and harassment. I said that power from victimhood is not a good thing and heroes overcome adversity.

You yourself cited the experiences of others to justify fighting injustice. So yes, you're cashing in and you know people who have done so.

You chose to confront my "hypocrisy" but you haven't proven it. It may not match your opinion, but that is a different issue.

By the way, asserting that I have a "privileged position" is kafkatrapping Model P.

Isn't it interesting how you can tell me that my ideas are flawed but you think I can't tell you the same?

Before you proclaim that US Aid is the answer to all the World's problems, you might ask yourself how much of it actually gets through the many corrupt levels of government? That's the essence of libertarianism you see. It's not that we don't care, we just don't see government as an effective way to deliver what needs to be done.

If I see a victim, I don't want them to stay a victim.

I didn't put the web addy up for you. ❞❞

Tags: shame ∙ shame game ∙ competition ∙ Navajo reservation ∙ Phoenix ∙ Provo ∙ Albuquerque ∙ Tucson ∙ Los Angeles ∙ kafkatrap ∙ victimhood ∙ social justice ∙ self interest ∙ empathy

❝❝Pardon, but the media set the stage for their own demonization well before Trump's election. No, not everyone of them and not most of them. But the shift from news to liberal-opinon-passed-off-as-news has been going on for decades now. In the mission to present "THE truth," the media has forgotten that there is often more than one truth and that truth needs something more than passionate writing.

Anyone remember supply-side economics? The common narrative is that it was a product of the Reagan administration and that it was a catastrophic failure. But truth shows that Kennedy tried reducing taxes and regulations first. And under both Kennedy and Reagan, it boosted the economy. But that is not what the media says.

The common narrative is that people of faith demand that minorities be suppressed. Unless of course you are a minority person of faith who depends on government protection. But truth shows that Christians (yes, Christians) made American pluralism possible and even to this day are among the strongest defenders of religious freedom. In some minority communities, local churches are bedrock. Good luck finding that in the news today.

The common narrative is that conservatives mistreat and suppress women. But one truth that #MeToo has demonstrated is that certain (scumbag) high profile liberal politicos and celebrities gave lip-service to feminism so they could take sexual advantage. Many more liberals than conservatives in fact. But the stories that we get are that liberals Are Taking Steps while conservatives could care less.

In all these cases and many more, conservatives and conservative ideas are disparaged while the press presents liberal ideas as the Only Practical Solution. Never mind that many of those liberal ideas don't work and make things worse. After seeing that happen again and again, conservatives naturally distrust the media. They don't see the stories where their ideas and beliefs are celebrated. Those stories with a NEUTRAL bias are hardly ever there. The press passes itself off as mainstream when it isn't, and goes out of it's way to avoid stories that show conservatism in a good light.

As for libertarianism (CLASSIC liberalism), we get labeled as the kookiest of the those scary alt-right types. Never mind that isn't who we are. Never mind the merit of our ideas. No, we're the dangerous nutcases that you dare not listen to.

When the press shows that it can't be trusted with even some truths, why should the press be trusted? They demonized themselves long before Trump did.❞❞

Tags: freedom of the press ∙ demonization ∙ Donald Trump ∙ supply-side economics ∙ John F. Kennedy ∙ Ronald Reagan ∙ people of faith ∙ Christians ∙ pluralism ∙ religious freedom ∙ women ∙ #MeToo ∙ feminism ∙ conservative ∙ liberal ∙ libertarianism ∙ press ∙ media bias

Under what circumstances does the state or the people have the moral authority to compel someone to act against their beliefs?

Tags: kosher ∙ pork ∙ BBQ ∙ equality ∙ past wrongs ∙ equal rights ∙ granting privilege ∙ denying rights ∙ moral authority ∙ freedom ∙ Eric July ∙ discriminate ∙ mala in se ∙ mala prohibita ∙ goverment

We're so conditioned to accept public schools as a Good Thing™ that we resist looking at options.

Tags: public schools ∙ politicos ∙ technocrats ∙ private alternative ∙ private sector ∙ competition ∙ school year ∙ internet ∙ education ∙ quality of life ∙ Alexis de Tocqueville ∙ Republicans ∙ Democrats ∙ Clinton administration ∙ Obama administration ∙ affordability ∙ private companies ∙ choice ∙ truth

❝❝As far as the world's reserve currency, as a whole that's a bad idea. I doubt that Trump sees that, but competition is good. This is one instance where he is doing the right thing by accident.

---

Yes, Trump is contributing to the debt, but so has every national politico since the "reform" of 1974. The continuing resolutions instead of actual budgets and the exploding bureaucracy are creating greater problems than Trump did. Both also predate Trump's election.

Meanwhile, that has nothing to do with the (BAD) idea of a single reserve currency or fractional banking. Both of which by their very existence distort the free market and introduce instability. But that is another topic or six.

---

The aging population is a problem because a) government promised that it could provide better, more reliable retirement income than the private sector, b) government mandated contributions, thereby reinforcing the idea that Government Knew Best when it came to retirement and driving out many private sector alternatives, c) government mismanaged the funds it collected, and finally the REALLY Big One, government borrowed against those funds without payback.

A good smartphone can get up to the minute currency exchange information, along with futures markets, stock markets, index funds, and football pools. Understand this, the only "practical" reason for a single reserve currency is so the government producing the currency can control the economy.

None of which has anything to do with the Korean negotiations of the impact of Chinese trading.

ETA: I should warn you, some libertarians spend a lot of time studying economics.

---

When people are told that they will be taken care of because it is their right, they stop paying attention to the numbers. That's true with pensions, Social Security, health care, public schools, roads, the post office, and clean water. I call it Somebody Else's Problem after a fictional FTL drive introduced by the late Douglas Adams. On the other hand, if they have to take responsibility, they pay closer attention. Just as one example, why should there be a mandatory retirement age? Just as interesting now that you brought it up, the current interest on savings accounts is artificially low because of government currency manipulation. It doesn't even beat the rate of inflation. Basically if you put money in a bank, you're losing money.

I'm not saying that the U.S. didn't benefit when the dollar was unquestionably the single reserve currency. That tends to happen with monopolies. I'm saying that competition and the free market can do better, with less government control and more choice and more benefits for people.❞❞

Tags: reserve currency ∙ fractional banking ∙ 1974 ∙ reform ∙ budget deficits ∙ budget process ∙ football pools ∙ aging population ∙ retirement income ∙ private sector ∙ mismanaged ∙ borrowed ∙ smart phone ∙ currency exchange ∙ futures markets ∙ stock markets ∙ index funds ∙ single reserve currency ∙ Somebody Else's Problem ∙ Douglas Adams ∙ pensions ∙ Social Security ∙ health care ∙ public schools ∙ roads ∙ post office ∙ clean water

Tags: Clear Energy Alliance ∙ Mark Mathis ∙ video ∙ wind power ∙ Minnesota ∙ increased costs ∙ carbon emmissions

❝❝I never expected Trump to do anything except disrupt.

Pardon, but you're making the same mistake they did. You think that if the right person was in charge, everything would be okay.

Government is not your friend.

---

We will have a government regardless - until we replace it. The replacement may or may not work as well, it may or may not get better, but the ability to replace is inherent in the promise of America.

We've not had a "better" government in decades. Good government is not measured by how much government controls, but by how much it doesn't. It's no accident that America's greatest advances come from places that government doesn't regulate.

Sometimes (and more times than we'd like to admit), the best way to fix something is to replace it. Sometimes the only way to replace something is to destroy it. It works that way with food, clothing, houses. It works that way with cars, companies, and marriages. And yes, sometimes it works that way with government.

---

There is some opinion that NASA exists to keep other (and particularly American private interests) out of space. There a fair-to-middling novel Kings of the High Frontier, that explores that. I'm rereading it right now.

We understood the principles behind the internet years before. AT&T had adopted some of them years before to keep long-distance phone calls from being interrupted. Even after the internet became public, the real driver for bandwidth and video compression was porn. Netflix owes it's existence to horny men looking for naked pictures.

Building roads has always been easy. Maintaining roads is the hard part. There government has failed so much that "infrastructure" is a code word for raising taxes.

My faith is in the free market, not consumer capitalism.

Trump is changing things (and disrupting things), but he's only a small part of what is happening.

---

First of all, they were poor before Trump was even a candidate. And they weren't helped by Obama's war on the coal industry. If you read the article, state and local authorities had a hand in there too.

I haven't looked at this in depth, but I know there wasn't much of an economic base to begin with. Despite what is claimed, that's not something that any government can create. At a minimum, it requires good ideas and private investment.

Oh, and the jobs vanishing overseas? That's something the Democrats and Republicans share the blame for.

---

Like Venezuela?

I could give you pages of proof, but long story short, central control distorts the economy. The more pressure focused in one area, the bigger the disruption. On a small enough scale, you may escape second and third order functions. But if you are using a healthy economy to support massive intervention, you are pretty much guaranteeing those second and third order disruptions.

Think of it like tapping a water main without turning down the pressure. It will give way, it will require replacement, and while it is being fixed most of the system will have to be shut down. The only question is when.

---

I'm not a conservative.

I picked Venezuela because in just a few short years socialism destroyed a robust, expanding, petroleum based economy.

Your other examples aren't exactly socialist either. They are more progressive than the US, but they have not nationalized their means of production. Unlike say, Venezuela.

---

Have you taken a closer look at the Obama Administration? Cronyism, emotional appeal, basically everything that Trump does except it was (mostly) within the system.

Government is not your friend.

---

I repeat, have you taken a look at the Obama administration? A good, long, hard, unbiased look? Have you seen how many of his contributors benefited?

Nor is the Obama administration alone.

This is what annoys me. You're all set to blame Trump and the GOP for crimes against humanity all while excusing the crimes and excesses of the Democrats. And you are still calling for more government control.

Now if you really want, we can match abuse of power against abuse of power. I can tell you horror stories about Congresscritters and technocrats. I can show how almost everything you've been told about economics is designed to confuse you and keep you quiet. I can prove that almost everything government tells you is a lie just to convince you that government is necessary and that one flavor of politics is better than the other.

---

How about I tell you truths instead?

Government is not your friend.

Politics is about control, not truth, not compassion, not liberty, and not funding.

There's no Man on a White Horse riding to the rescue. You shouldn't trust anyone who looks like that because they are cosplaying.

The Republicans and the Democrats are about equally as guilty for the mess we're in. Each will blame the other, then you for not caring enough. Each will want more money and more power.

There's no objective difference between the party on the right and the party on the left. The only difference is who gets screwed now and who gets screwed tomorrow.

Blame Trump. Blame Obama. Blame Smith. It doesn't matter because government is the problem.

Government is not your friend.

---

Obama didn't reduce the debt. He reduced the deficit. That means the government didn't overspend as much as it had in previous years. Oh, and by the way, they printed more currency to "cover" some of the difference which raised the inflation rate and the interest on the national debt.

Trump didn't nuke North Korea. He responded to provocation, as Presidents at least as far back as Kennedy have done. And by the way, the Norks are willing to negotiate now.

I don't remember seeing anything about Trump going after gay marriage.

Before you defend the ACA, take a look at the costs of healthcare starting when Medicare became law. It's no accident that the costs have exceeded inflation every year since. Thanks to the ACA, dozens of states are scrambling to try to cover healthcare costs. Some are opting out of the program. Legally they aren't supposed to, but there is no way they can cover costs.

I'm not familiar with Golden Valley.

Only Congress can decriminalize marijuana. Since they are exploiting an opioid crisis created by government action, I don't expect them to act soon. Basically when Obama's DoJ stopped enforcing marijuana law, they were breaking the law.

The cities and counties who have the strictest gun laws are the same cities and counties who have the highest rate of gun crimes. Pay specific attention to Chicago and Baltimore. Most of those areas have had Democrat administrations for decades.

"Vote Democrat." Why? So we can fall off the left side instead of the right side?

Government should be smaller than absolutely necessary.

---

You mean the multinational corporations who pay both sides but mainly the left ones to pass laws and regulations that benefit them and shut out competition?

You mean the alt-right is a bigger threat than unaccountable race hustlers and movements like BLM who focus on events that fit the narrative and exclude things like "black" on "black" crime in the major cites?

You mean like the attacks on Christianity that happen just because someone professes their faith?

And let's not forget all those people who are only too willing to tell "white" people what they can and cannot say, what they can and cannot think, what they can and cannot do, because of "white privilege."

Government is playing all sides (not both sides, all sides) against each other, and the politicos just keep getting taxes and more power.

Like I told you before, if you want to keep the people you distrust from having power over you backed by government force, the only sure way is to drastically reduce government power. That way you can't mess with them and they can't mess with you.

---

But it is possible.

Thomas Paine wrote in Common Sense: “Society is produced by our wants and, government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices.”

Milton Friedman wrote: “Government has three primary functions. It should provide for military defense of the nation. It should enforce contracts between individuals. It should protect citizens from crimes against themselves or their property. When government-- in pursuit of good intentions tries to rearrange the economy, legislate morality, or help special interests, the cost come in inefficiency, lack of motivation, and loss of freedom. Government should be a referee, not an active player.”

James Madison said: "There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations."

People are perfectly capable of making their own decisions. Those choices won’t always be ones you agree with. Sometimes those choices will be bad ones with terrible consequences. Still, freedom is based on choice. Without choice, there is no freedom. Without freedom, we aren’t human.

You are perfectly capable of making your own decisions. That is your right, that is what makes you human, and f*ck all to anyone who tells you different.

KYFHO now and forever. The only protection you should get is the certainty that NO ONE ELSE can use government to control you.

But, if you expect that right for yourself, you’d better damn well defend if for others. Even if you don’t like them. Even if you don’t trust them. Especially if you don’t trust them. Otherwise you will lose your choice.

Otherwise you will lose your freedom.

It’s simple. If you want to live free, you can’t meddle in other’s lives.

The second you start meddling is the second you sacrifice your own rights.

“The greater good” is just as big a tyranny as “for you own good.”

You only think it’s fantasy because that is what you’ve been taught by those benefitting from the current power structure.❞❞

Tags: Donald Trump ∙ disrupt ∙ government is not your friend ∙ NASA ∙ space flight ∙ internet ∙ AT&T ∙ Venezuela ∙ socialism ∙ Obama Administration ∙ abuse of power ∙ national debt ∙ North Korea ∙ Obamacare ∙ Congress ∙ marijuana ∙ opoid crisis ∙ DoJ ∙ gun control ∙ network ∙ infrastructure reforms ∙ Netflix ∙ pornography ∙ Barack Obama ∙ coal power

Tags: CDC ∙ opoid crisis ∙ Earth Hour ∙ Human Achievement Hour ∙ Hillary Clinton ∙ DNC ∙ Cambridge Analytica ∙ healthcare ∙ hospital ∙ rural Americans ∙ Dodd-Frank ∙ Congress ∙ David Hogg ∙ Scott Walker ∙ Wisconsin ∙ welfare ∙ #MeToo ∙ due process ∙ Jann Wenner ∙ YouTube ∙ gun videos ∙ Facebook ∙ regulation ∙ Larry Krasner ∙ DA ∙ Philadelphia ∙ CLOUD Act ∙ Nobel Prize ∙ Barack Obama ∙ commercial real estate ∙ bubble ∙ Mary Magdalene

❝❝Government action displaces private action. If government does something, it's not because they do it more efficiently or more humanely or whatever the justification is. It's because government uses the law and the implied use of force to keep anyone else from doing it.

We know that choice and the free market work because even a partial free market over time delivers things faster, cheaper, and with a wider distribution. The same can't be said for government❞❞
     — NeoWayland

Tags: maxims ∙ government action ∙ private action ∙ force of law ∙ choice ∙ faster ∙ cheaper

Headlines that don't merit their own entry

Tags: Obama campaign ∙ VA ∙ Robert Mueller ∙ CFPB ∙ bullying ∙ parenting ∙ Elizabeth Warren ∙ social media ∙ FISA ∙ Carter Page ∙ DoJ ∙ Cambridge Analytica ∙ Trump campaign ∙ anthrax attacks ∙ wheelchair ∙ Facebook ∙ New York ∙ Congressman ∙ Second Amendment ∙ revolt ∙ California ∙ sucession

Headlines that don't merit their own entry

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Headlines that don't merit their own entry

Tags: mental illness ∙ diversity ∙ viewpoint ∙ debt ∙ Peter Strzok ∙ diversity training ∙ Cambridge Analytica ∙ Michael Flynn ∙ Rudolph Contreras ∙ FISA ∙ currency collapse ∙ qualified immunity ∙ mental health reform ∙ Wells Fargo ∙ scam ∙ Irish ∙ immigrants ∙ California ∙ Northstate ∙ Jefferson ∙ China ∙ walk out ∙ Women's March ∙ Obamacare ∙ healthcare ∙ aIr traffic control ∙ Russian hack ∙ Trump campaign ∙ Facebook ∙ vitamins ∙ false charges ∙ City That Ate A Country

Tags: Congress ∙ Hungary ∙ sociaism ∙ women ∙ Obamacare ∙ Stephen Hawking ∙ Clinton campaign ∙ Fusion GPS ∙ Mit Romney ∙ Obama campaign ∙ retail ∙ shoppers ∙ returning mechandise ∙ database ∙ EU ∙ United Nations ∙ mass migration ∙ House committe ∙ no collusion ∙ television networks ∙ Florida ∙ Iowa ∙ TIGER Program ∙ government ∙ banned ∙ female bartenders

Tags: China ∙ censorship ∙ debt ∙ YouTube ∙ conservatives ∙ liberal ∙ libertarian ∙ DCCC ∙ Laura Moser ∙ Parkland ∙ gun control ∙ victim disarmament ∙ drought ∙ snow ∙ Obamacare ∙ states ∙ Tenth Amendment ∙ NRA boycott ∙ virtue signaling ∙ assault weapon ∙ California ∙ Seth Rich ∙ free internet ∙ China ∙ censorship ∙ nomination ∙ Chuck Schumer ∙ racism ∙ Marvin Quattlebaum ∙ schools ∙ Google ∙ guns

Tags: religious tolerance ∙ China ∙ internet ∙ Billings ∙ Donald Trump ∙ homeless ∙ Los Angeles ∙ Second Amendment ∙ Pittsburgh ∙ Amazon ∙ Italy ∙ EU citizens ∙ Euroscepticism ∙ mass migration ∙ Derry ∙ Republican ∙ Democrat ∙ BuzzFeed ∙ gun control ∙ Robert Mueller ∙ Facebook ∙ Southern Poverty Law Center ∙ marijuana ∙ Calaveras County ∙ Google ∙ censorship ∙ Dick’s Sporting Goods ∙ virtue signaling ∙ public schools ∙ Parkland ∙ shooting ∙ Barack Obama

Headlines that don't merit their own entry

Tags: Delaware ∙ gender ∙ Brussels ∙ taxes ∙ CNN ∙ Florida ∙ banks ∙ bailouts ∙ school shooting ∙ R.S. McCain ∙ Jeff Sessions ∙ FISA ∙ tech companies ∙ conservatives ∙ jail ∙ FTC ∙ ISP ∙ net neutrality ∙ progressives ∙ Arizona ∙ Obamacare ∙ rape accusation ∙ Texas

❝❝The free market is built on two very simple principles. The first is the voluntary exchange of goods and services between consenting adults. The second is hardly ever acknowledged but just as important. Someone will see something and think "I can do better than that!" Most will fail, some spectacularly. But the ones who succeed change everything. There's no way to tell who will succeed in the free market now or in the next decade. It can't be controlled or predicted. Nor should it be.❞❞
     — NeoWayland

Tags: maxims ∙ voluntary exchange ∙ consenting adults ∙ I can do better than that ∙ controlled ∙ predicted

Headlines that don't merit their own entry

Tags: Obama administration ∙ Loretta Lynch ∙ personal freedom ∙ Jeff Sessions ∙ e-verify ∙ pain patients ∙ charter school ∙ science ∙ bones ∙ fat cells ∙ ∙ Marvel Studios ∙ Disney ∙ Pledge of Allegiance ∙ Black Panther ∙ extortion ∙ State Department ∙ L.L. Bean ∙ Oklahoma ∙ State Of The Union Address ∙ net neutrality

Tags: forensics ∙ Jimmy Genrich ∙ prison ∙ GE Capital ∙ Harvard ∙ gender based ∙ Taliban ∙ Congress ∙ Adam Schiff ∙ FISA ∙ transparent ∙ Federal Reserve ∙ DJIA ∙ bubble ∙ Security Agencies ∙ FBI ∙ State Department ∙ #MeToo ∙ immigration ∙ Canada

Headlines that don't merit their own entry

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Tags: FBI ∙ DoJ ∙ Carillion ∙ Barack Obama ∙ terrorist attack ∙ bad cops ∙ budget process ∙ Rand Paul ∙ Senate ∙ surveillance ∙ police union ∙ police privilege

Headlines that don't merit their own entry

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““Every government program will be more expensive and more expansive than anything you had in mind when you proposed it. It will be applied in all sorts of ways you never dreamed of.””
     — Harry Browne, Principles of Government

Tags: Harry Browne ∙ goverment ∙ expensive ∙ expansive

Headlines that don't merit their own entry

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Tags: ordinary ∙ illegal ∙ Donald Trump ∙ United Nations ∙ israel ∙ homicide ∙ Chicago ∙ liberal policies ∙ wealth effect ∙ income equality ∙ blockchain ∙ voter fraud ∙ police union ∙ electric bikes ∙ healthcare

Tags: israel ∙ UNESCO ∙ Christmas card ∙ bitcoin ∙ regulation ∙ charity ∙ volunteers ∙ healthcare ∙ University of Minnesota ∙ Christmas ∙ humor ∙ Santa Claus

Tags: calendars ∙ sex workers

What does it say about Bill Maer? - updated

Tags: maxims ∙ mutual ∙ voluntary ∙ exchange ∙ consenting activities ∙ consenting adults ∙ regulation ∙ license ∙ legislature ∙ economic disparity ∙ KYFHO

Odd tactic from the Grand and Glorious Imperious Leader

Tags: Diné ∙ oppress ∙ Native American ∙ capitalism ∙ borrow ∙ Voting Rights Act of 1965 ∙ Western Civilization ∙ pluralism ∙ choice ∙ responsibility ∙ clear title ∙ Hernando De Soto ∙ American Dream ∙ government ∙ Amerindians ∙ the Rez ∙ victimhood

“Protectionism at play? Politicians say food trucks are "unfair competition" for restaurants.”

Tags: ReasonTV ∙ video ∙ John Stossel ∙ regulations ∙ government ∙ guest content ∙ food truck

Headlines that don't merit their own entry

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Tags: corruption ∙ Obamacare ∙ Indiana ∙ fine ∙ property rights ∙ Roy Moore ∙ election ∙ healthcare ∙ speech wars ∙ #MeToo ∙ Facebook ∙ California ∙ Supreme Court ∙ eggs

❝❝When the NFL players are on the field, that's not their time. They're being paid millions to play and put on a good show. That's millions by the fans in the stands and the viewers on TV. The NFL is selling a product, it's not something holy. If the fans and viewers don't like what they see, they will take their money elsewhere. And then where will the players be? Off the field on their own time, who cares what the players think? That's their time. Off the field, they have to prove their ideas just like anyone else. But when the players made their paid time political time, they destroyed their own brand.❞❞
     — NeoWayland

Tags: maxims ∙ NFL ∙ paid ∙ time ∙ fans ∙ viewers

As it exists right now, local, state, and Federal governments allow and protect area specific telecommunications monopolies.

Tags: net neutrality ∙ cable service ∙ telephone ∙ network ∙ unused capacity ∙ monopoly ∙ goverment ∙ regulation ∙ competition ∙ Facebook ∙ Google ∙ Twitter

❝❝I've taken stands for gun rights, alternative sexual practices, the value of the family with men and women role models, religious choice, the free market, and good movies.❞❞
     — NeoWayland

Tags: maxims ∙ gun rights ∙ sex ∙ family ∙ men ∙ women ∙ religious choice ∙ good movies

❝❝Competition breeds progress and encourages honesty.❞❞
     — NeoWayland

Tags: maxims ∙ competition ∙ progress ∙ honest

❝❝At this point, I don't think anyone can stop the collapse. Nor do I think that's bad. There are how many laws on the books? How many regulations in the Federal Register? We've been conditioned to depend on government to help us. Cut spending, but not national defense. Cut spending, but not aid to Israel or Saudi Arabia. Cut spending, but not Social Security. And some banks and unions are Too Big To Fail.❞❞
     — NeoWayland

Tags: regulations ∙ cut spending ∙ national defense ∙ israel ∙ Saudi Arabia ∙ too big to fail ∙ maxims

❝❝Media has every right to exist.

Media does not have the right to be trusted.❞❞
     — NeoWayland

Tags: media ∙ Right ∙ trust ∙ maxims

❝❝The best thing that government can do to lower the prices of medical care is get out of medical care and medical insurance. There's a lot of reasons, but at it's core politicos and technocrats have no incentive to contain costs, make a profit, and get a bigger market share. Competition means that companies have to make things cheaper, faster, and more available or they will lose business. Today's smart phones have more computing capacity than the Cray 2 did in 1985, they are more reliable, more capable, cheaper, more available, and a lot more profitable. That's what 30 years of the free market and competition without government interference will give you. Government has shielded the medical industry and the medical insurance markets from the very things that would make medicine better.❞❞

Tags: government ∙ medical care ∙ medical insurance ∙ market share ∙ competition ∙ smart phone ∙ Cray 2

❝❝OK, taxes. According the the OMB, the top 20% of taxpayers pay 95% of income taxes. In 2015, the WSJ reported that the top 20% paid 84% of income taxes. In 2015, the top .1% (yes, that's one-tenth of one percent) of families paid 39.2% of income taxes. In 2015, all but the top 20% of taxpayers paid more in payroll taxes than they owed in Federal income tax, effectively giving the Federal government an interest free loan. Meanwhile, the bottom 20% of taxpayers have the Earned Income Tax Credit, a negative income tax. The government pays them. The thing is, smart rich people don't stuff their money in mattresses. They put it to work. If their money doesn't earn more than the rate of inflation, they've lost money. So they look for ways to maximize returns. Stocks, bonds, and mutual funds are the most common methods. This pumps money back into the economy. Lower prices, more companies hiring, and better distribution of goods and services are direct results. In other words, cutting taxes at any level gives people more choices and more economic power. It's not cutting taxes for the rich, it's cutting taxes. If you like, I can show how a progressive tax system locks people into income tiers and suppresses the natural movement up in income.❞❞

Tags: OMB ∙ Wall Street Journal ∙ income tax ∙ Federal government ∙ inflation ∙ competition ∙ progressive tax systems

❝❝I believe that the free market is the most potent force for organizing and creating yet discovered by humans. It cannot be managed, predicted, directed, or controlled.

It rests on choice without coercion. And to keep customers happy, you have to at least do as well as your competition, better if you want to expand.❞❞
     — NeoWayland

Tags: free market ∙ organize ∙ create ∙ managed ∙ predicted ∙ directed ∙ controlled ∙ choice ∙ coercive power ∙ competition ∙ maxims

❝❝It's no secret that I believe that free market ideas apply to any human exchange.

Free to choose. It's not just for economics anymore.❞❞
     — NeoWayland

Tags: choice ∙ choose ∙ maxims

❝❝I believe that competition makes us honest. I believe that the "free market" applies more to just products and services, it applies to ideas and creeds and politics and practically anything else human. I believe that no one person and no one group has all the answers.

And yes, I know I've said all that before. But for me, it's as certain as the Earth beneath my feet and the stars above my head.

We need our ideas challenged. We need to argue with each other and wave our fingers under each others noses.

We don't need violence in the streets.

We don't need scapegoats.

And we don't need people using some undefined Moral Authority to prevent others from speaking.❞❞

Tags: competition ∙ honest

Headlines that don't merit their own entry

Tags: Amazon ∙ Whole Foods ∙ water ∙ taxation ∙ pension ∙ National Flood Insurance ∙ speech wars ∙ Berkeley

“The smallest minority is the individual…”

Tags: ReasonTV ∙ Athens ∙ Sarajevo ∙ Sochi ∙ Rio de Janiero ∙ Beijing ∙ Montreal ∙ video ∙ guest content

Headlines that don't merit their own entry

Tags: ACLU ∙ Venezuela ∙ Russia ∙ speech wars ∙ Mike Pence ∙ CNN ∙ white supremacy ∙ Congress ∙ Fourth Amendment ∙ affirmative action ∙ Trump administration ∙ Iran ∙ webcams ∙ security ∙ UC Berkeley ∙ TSA ∙ privacy

Never slaves & never Nazis

Tags: clipping ∙ Michael Reilly ∙ thorium ∙ Dave Mosher

“Fighting Neo-Nazis and the Future of Free Expression”

Tags: Jeremy Malcolm ∙ Cindy Dohn ∙ Danny O’Brien ∙ Electonic Frontier Foundation ∙ speech wars ∙ First Amendment ∙ GoDaddy ∙ Google ∙ Cloudflare ∙ clipping

““Why should a city, state, or federal government put statues in public parks? Doing so addresses no plausible market failure, while using taxpayers funds and, as demonstrated tragically over the past few weeks, generates controversy, polarization, and violence. Thus governments should take down all statues, regardless of their political implications.

This is not “erasing” history but instead leaving it where it belongs, in the hands of private actors and mechanisms. Historians, textbook authors, universities, learned societies, the History Channel, and many other individuals and organizations can all present their own views of history and battle for the hearts and minds of the public. Government statues are government putting its thumb on the scale, which is one step down the slippery slope of thought control.””
     — Jeffrey Miron, Statues

Tags: Jeffrey Miron ∙ statues ∙ government ∙ history ∙ thought control ∙ clipping

"American healthcare might not be the best world, but it is the most expensive."

Tags: guest content ∙ video ∙ Adam Ruins Everything ∙ hospital ∙ healthcare ∙ corporatism

Headlines that don't merit their own entry

Tags: EPA ∙ NLRB ∙ mass transit ∙ self driving car ∙ school choice ∙ vote fraud ∙ Charlottesville ∙ speech wars

Headlines that don't merit their own entry

Tags: Wisconsin ∙ taxpayers ∙ Foxconn ∙ government ∙ speech wars ∙ politicos ∙ re-election ∙ technocrats ∙ prostitution ∙ cartel ∙ piece of the action ∙ women ∙ Maggie McNeill ∙ New York Times ∙ climate change ∙ Google memo ∙ Democrat corruption

“The minimum wage increase is especially hurting businesses in Flagstaff as they deal with increase costs”

Tags: video ∙ guest content ∙ ABC15 Arizona ∙ minimum wage ∙ unintended consequences

Competition drives the free market, to keep customers companies have to make things better than their rivals and better than what they themselves did yesterday.

Competition is what the "single payer" eliminates in the name of efficiency, yet over time competition means that products and services will be better, faster, and cheaper.

There is no incentive to improve under a government controlled system. There is overwhelming incentive to pay off legislators and technocrats for favorable treatment.

---

I'm usually correct.

Except when I'm wrong… *grins*

Jokes aside, you probably agree with me on economics, smaller government and (most) individual rights. We won't agree on religion, personal morality, and sexuality. I hope we can agree on honor.

I hang out here to keep me honest and so I can see how conservatives think. And occasionally to keep you honest *wink* and keep you from taking yourself too seriously.

---

I just get very tired of watching people who should know better lump all members of a group into a monolithic block who is out to destroy their way of life and must be Stopped for the Good of Humanity™

The ironic thing is many of the people who complain loudest about it being done to them are only too willing to turn around and do it to someone else.

I've seen pagans do it to Christians, "blacks" do it to "Hispanics," Republicans do it to Democrats, and women doing it to men.

And vice versa.

You know what? It's not the label shouting and doing things, it's the individual person. Until you deal them as individuals rather than as a subset of a label, you have walled yourself off.

Not them. You.

---

Thinking about it just now, that raises a fascinating question.

Which is worth more, a moral code handed to you or one earned through personal experience?

---

I'm not asking you to follow my code.

I'm not even asking you to allow me to follow my code.

I'm telling you that I won't follow your code just as you would tell me that you won't follow mine.

Now we could find what we agree on and work from there, or you could spend effort telling me why your enlightenment requires my sacrifice.

I think the former would be more productive, but I would enjoy your frustration at the latter too.

Tags: competition ∙ make things better ∙ rivals ∙ yesterday ∙ incentives ∙ government ∙ economics ∙ smaller government ∙ individual rights ∙ religion ∙ personal morality ∙ sexuality ∙ honor ∙ honest ∙ conservatives ∙ monolithic block ∙ Christians ∙ pagans ∙ blacks ∙ Hispanics ∙ Republicans ∙ Democrats ∙ women ∙ men ∙ moral code ∙ enlightenment ∙ sacrifice ∙ Crux Files

Somehow I don't believe this.

Tags: RussiaGate ∙ CIA ∙ Donald Trump ∙ Seymour Hersh ∙ Afghanistan ∙ Trump administration ∙ climate alarmist ∙ Europe ∙ nergy providers ∙ law of unexpected consequences ∙ Venezuela ∙ Intervene ∙ civil forfeiture ∙ Center for American Progress ∙ Heritage Foundation ∙ Cato Institute ∙ Obamacare ∙ healthcare ∙ consumer choice ∙ insurance ∙ National Security Advisor ∙ H.R. McMaster ∙ Clinton campaign ∙ Hillary Clinton

People look for better value if it's their own money at stake.

Tags: public dime ∙ value ∙ healthcare ∙ housing ∙ dinner ∙ birth control ∙ abortion ∙ gender transition treatment ∙ aid for families dependent children ∙ health insurance ∙ food stamps ∙ ☆

Tags: guest content ∙ video ∙ ReasonTV ∙ John Stossel ∙ license ∙ bottlenecker

“There is a war against cars in America. Regulators want Americans out of cars and onto trains, buses, and bicycles. Why? Because of what cars represent -- freedom. Automotive expert Lauren Fix ("The Car Coach") explains.”

Tags: cars ∙ government ∙ CAFE ∙ Barack Obama ∙ electric vehicles ∙ PragerU ∙ car culture ∙ Lauren Fix ∙ video ∙ guest content

Tags: video ∙ guest content ∙ Penn Jillette ∙ libertarianism ∙ who cares ∙ taxes ∙ Donald Trump ∙ Hillary Clinton ∙ weed ∙ cannabis ∙ Kurt Cobain ∙ Bernie Sanders ∙ Gary Johnson ∙ voluntary ∙ life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness

❝❝If I don't share your faith, I shouldn't be bound by it. If you don't share my faith, you shouldn't be bound by it.

This is parity. It can be derived from what Christians call the Golden Rule. It's also called the Ethic of Reciprocity and is arguably the keystone of Western Civilization besides being found in nearly every culture on Earth. Behavioral studies show that a rudimentary form exists in higher mammals. Fair is fair.

One of my "party tricks" is showing that you can build an entire moral, ethical, and legal system based on nothing but the Ethic of Reciprocity. No "Higher Law." No use of force except in defense. No one faith and no one group raised above all others never to be questioned.

Just treating each other as we would want to be treated. Nothing more, nothing less. Live and let live.❞❞

Tags: faith ∙ parity test ∙ Christians ∙ Golden Rule ∙ Western Civilization ∙ ethic of reciprocity ∙ fair is fair ∙ Higher Law ∙ live & let live

Headlines that don't merit their own entry

Tags: clipping ∙ Karl Bode ∙ net neutrality ∙ throttle ∙ Verizon Wireless ∙ T-Mobile ∙ Wall Street ∙ competition ∙ Sprint ∙ FCC ∙ reddit

Our heroes are defined by what they have done and how they inspire us.

Tags: Crux Files ∙ Robert A. Heinlein ∙ Lawrence W. Reed ∙ certainty ∙ perfection ∙ government ∙ promises ∙ good intentions ∙ price distortions ∙ prudent person ∙ Congress ∙ new regulations ∙ second order consequences ∙ third order consequences ∙ feedback loop ∙ politicos ∙ loan game ∙ free money ∙ something for nothing ∙ Second Amendment ∙ neither help nor hinder ∙ Christians ∙ outsourced wages ∙ industrial nations ∙ free to choose ∙ Judeo-Christian ∙ Christianity ∙ Constitution ∙ E pluribus unum ∙ one from many ∙ united we stand ∙ codified law ∙ public morality ∙ religious system ∙ The Moral Authority ∙ personal morality, ∙ multiple faiths

“The End of Cash; The End of Freedom”

Tags: clipping ∙ Ian Welsh ∙ government ∙ taxes ∙ cash ∙ freedom ∙ India ∙ cash business ∙ France ∙ terrorism ∙ electronic payments ∙ track ∙ control ∙ surveillance ∙ electronically ∙ PayPal ∙ Visa ∙ Mastercard ∙ Wikileaks ∙ Left

❝❝Private property is the the foundation of prosperity, as explained in Hernando de Soto's The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else. Without private property, there can be no free market. Without a free market, the economy is screwed. The climate alarmist movement exists to redistribute wealth "for the greater good."❞❞
     — NeoWayland

Tags: private property ∙ Hernando de Soto ∙ The Mystery of Capital ∙ climate alarmist ∙ redistribute wealth ∙ for the greater good

Tags: video ∙ guest content ∙ PragerU ∙ Bob McEwen ∙ healthcare

“Net Neutrality Supporters Should Actually Hate the Regulations They're Endorsing”

Tags: clipping ∙ Andrea O'Sullivan ∙ FCC ∙ net neutrality ∙ Open Internet Order ∙ loophole ∙ ISP ∙ ISP filtering

Tags: guest content ∙ video ∙ Stefan Molyneux ∙ net neutrality

“A whimsical animated short film based on Russ Roberts's poem about emergent order and the supply of bread”

Tags: Russ Roberts ∙ video ∙ guest content ∙ freedom ∙ invisible hand ∙ prices

All evidence shows that the New Deal prolonged what should have been a short term correction. Not to mention that government actions created the crash to begin with. Things like manipulating the price of gold, restricting the amount of currency, and messing with import/export taxes.

Tags: New Deal ∙ unemployment ∙ Great Depression ∙ Keynes ∙ FDR ∙ free market ∙ Truman

Almost nobody bothers to ask if the screws should exist in the first place.

Tags: Constitution ∙ right vs. left ∙ Donald Trump ∙ Hillary Clinton ∙ Bill Clinton ∙ Robert A. Heinlein ∙ attacks ∙ government ∙ none of the above ∙ IRS ∙ DOJ ∙ Clinton Foundation ∙ charity ∙ parity test ∙ companion

Which means under the 10th Amendment, Obamacare is illegal.

Tags: ballpoint pens ∙ Lasik eye surgery ∙ heirloom tomatoes ∙ government ∙ capitalism ∙ free market ∙ ballpoint pens ∙ iPad ∙ NASA ∙ moon shot ∙ groceries ∙ Milton Friedman

Surprising history

Tags: guest content ∙ video ∙ Old West ∙ prostitution ∙ Adam Ruins Everything

“A libertarian tech revolt”

Tags: Henry Hazlitt ∙ 1968 ∙ Thanksgiving ∙ famine ∙ 1623 ∙ William Bradford ∙ Massachusetts ∙ guest content

“You Are Still Crying Wolf”

Tags: 1967 ∙ video ∙ animation ∙ Scrooge McDuck ∙ currency ∙ money ∙ Disney ∙ cIrculate ∙ salt ∙ salary ∙ trade ∙ civilization ∙ inflation ∙ economics ∙ financial discipline ∙ taxes ∙ economy ∙ guest content

Animated classic from 1948 shows the politics of disunity

Tags: 1948 ∙ video ∙ animation ∙ Harding College ∙ choice ∙ freedom ∙ isms ∙ utopia ∙ John Q. Public ∙ free enterprise ∙ history ∙ capitalism ∙ managment ∙ auto industry ∙ Great Depression ∙ statist ∙ union ∙ private sector ∙ private property ∙ disunity ∙ class warfare ∙ race hatred ∙ intolerance ∙ working together ∙ guest content

“German Streets Descend into Lawlessness”

Tags: skimmed ∙ Ivanka Trump ∙ Nordstrom ∙ Donald Trump ∙ political correctness ∙ enlightenment ∙ election ∙ clipping

corporatism

❝A politico-economic system in which most power is held by large corporations, often mistakenly called capitalism. This is the current governing system of most of the world❞
     ➣ www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=corporatism

If your business model depends on government intervention, you'll ignore the "customer" and focus on manipulating and controlling the government. That's how to get a bigger profit under corporatism.

corporate social responsibility

❝economic, legal, ethical, and discretionary expectations with society has of it's corporations and institutions at any given point in time❞
     ➣ www.academia.edu/419517/Corporate_Social_Responsibility_Evolution_of_a_Definitional_Construct

As hard as it may be for some to believe, corporations have absolutely zero social responsibility. A corporation is responsible to it's shareholders first and last. The way that a company keeps and makes more customers is by selling what the people want in a way that is equal to or maybe a bit better than the competition. That brings more profit which means the owners are happy. Anything else is literally the price of doing business.

Companies don't care, people should. If you don't like what a company sells or how it does business, go to the competition. Under no circumstances should you get government to make a company do what you want. That leads to corporatism, and that means neither the government nor the company has any reason to listen to the likes of you.

There are three rules that companies should keep in mind. If done right, following these rules can put a company in the top twenty percent.

• Competition keeps us honest.
• Always do what you promised.
• Try to deliver more than you promised.

A company is responsible to it's ownership. Customers are the ones who pay the bills. Sometimes the real customer is the government, see corporatism.

Just some things to think about.


p.s. It looks WAY better on the other site.

Tags: corporatism ∙ corporate social responsibility ∙ competition ∙ promise

from her campaign. She gives speeches where the press is closed out.

The two national parties have have designated "free speech" areas away from the action during the last few nominating conventions.

How easy it will be to put up the IR gizmos and not worry about any embarrassing videos on YouTube?

Of course the major news organizations will have exemptions. For the good of the nation, you see. Just because the news will be more spoon-fed when there aren't a bunch of angry citizens questioning the Official Story® with their own footage, well, that shouldn't be an issue, should it? The press will always look out for the little guy, right?

So don't complain, Citizen, this is for your own good. It's for the Nation. It's for security. It's for the American Spirit. It's for your freedom. Your own government will tell you so.

Relax Citizen, it won't hurt.

Much.

And after a while, you won't even notice.

Maybe I am overreacting.

The patent is real. The rest is speculation.

So far.

Tags: Apple ∙ concerts ∙ sensetive events ∙ police ∙ IR gizmo ∙ disable camera ∙ camera kill switch ∙ First Amendment ∙ for your own good ∙ Hillary Clinton

Maybe it's not about making Americans safer.

Tags: Brexit ∙ free trade ∙ Warren Meyer ∙ racism ∙ skimmed ∙ UK ∙ clipping

““The sky is not falling, and when the dust settles, Britain's decision may very well prove to be a pivotal event in the reshaping of global relationships and trade that will, in the final analysis, benefit all of us.””
     — Gary Johnson, You Can Look at Brexit as a ‘Catastrophe’ or an ‘Opportunity’

Tags: Brexit ∙ libertarian ∙ Gary Johnson ∙ free trade ∙ skimmed ∙ UK ∙ clipping

Originally published at Technopagan Yearnings

Tags: cable service ∙ bank ∙ ISP ∙ cusomer service ∙ local ∙ government screw-up ∙ politicos ∙ technocrats

❝❝Most of the ordinary are already great.

Even their day to day actions produce wonders.

That orange juice in your fridge and in fridges all over the country? Absolutely wonderful and put there by everyday people doing everyday things.

That smartphone you use? We were barely reaching for it twenty-five years ago. Made possible by ordinary people wanting things just a bit better than they were yesterday.

That food bank downtown? It's only there because some folks decided to make things a little easier for their neighbors.

All great things. All wondrous things. All made possible by ordinary people.❞❞

Tags: ordinary ∙ orange juice ∙ fridge ∙ smart phone ∙ food bank ∙ commenting

But here’s the thing. They make no secret of their opinion. If they think I am wrong, they tell me and they tell me why.

Tags: RSM ∙ Twitter ∙ conservative ∙ thou shalt not dissent ∙ commenting ∙ short ∙ The Other McCain

The FBI won’t stop at one iPhone.

The FedGovs won’t stop at ten thousand smart phones.

Tags: FBI ∙ Apple ∙ Real ID ∙ privacy ∙ iPhone ∙ smart phone ∙ Total Information Awareness

Keep law simple and absolute.

Tags: technology ∙ John Gruber ∙ Matt Rosoff ∙ cable service ∙ internet services ∙ short ∙ skimmed

Mind you I still wasn’t getting the service I paid for, but it was so much better than what I’ve had for the last few months. I almost caught myself sending them a thank-you.

Tags: choice ∙ Cable One ∙ net neutrality ∙ Netflix ∙ Apple ∙ last mile problem