"Side by side with the word 'property' in the program of liberalism one may quite appropriately place the words 'freedom' and 'peace.'" Ludwig von Mises, "Liberalism, In The Classical Tradition"
Mises believed that property, freedom and peace are and should be the hallmarks of a satisfying and prosperous society. I agree. Mises proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that the prospect for general and individual prosperity is maximized, indeed, is only possible, if the principle of private property reigns supreme. What's yours is yours. What's mine is mine. When the line between yours and mine is smudged, the door to conflict opens. Without freedom (individual liberty of action) the principle of private property is neutered and the free market, which is the child of property and freedom and the mother of prosperity and satisfaction, cannot exist. Peace is the goal of a prosperous and satisfying society of free individuals, not peace which is purchased by submission to the enemies of property and freedom, but peace which results from the unyielding defense of these principles against all who challenge them.
In this blog I measure American society against the metrics of property, freedom and peace.
As everyone interested in politics knows, Ed Klein has written a new blockbuster called: The Amateur. Whether Klein's book is fact or rumor, it has created a political stir by resurrecting the infamous relationship between Obama and Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., Maximum Leader's former Chicago pastor and mentor.
Apparently, Klein's book has Wright hinting that at the time of their meeting, Obama was steeped in Islam and knew little about Christianity. Wright says he taught Maximum enough Christianity to get buy. Klein also has Wright saying that Maximum Leader tried to buy Wright's silence in the 2008 campaign for $150,000.
This fresh new controversy has apparently spurred some Chicago billionaire and Romney supporter, named Joe Ricketts, to form a PAC to dish this new, fresh dirt on Wright and Obama. Unfortunately, Ricketts has now changed his mind and disavowed the PAC message.
What I find interesting about this entire affair is that, according to the Los Angeles Times, Ricketts changed his mind about the same time Mitt Romney condemned the PAC effort:
Mitt Romney said Thursday that he did not approve of a proposal for a racially-tinged ad campaign from an outside group that considered invoking controversial comments of President Obama’s former pastor, telling reporters he wanted to “make it very clear I repudiate that effort.”
“I think it’s the wrong course for a PAC or a campaign,”
This sure sounds like Mitt and his PAC are communicating in some "way, shape or form." I use these words because, according to a CNSnews.com report of December 20, 2011, Mitt used these exact same words in response to a question about a PAC ad from his supporters that trashed Newt Gingrich. According to the report:
Romney refused earlier Tuesday to disavow the group's ads, saying it would be illegal for him to coordinate with the super PAC. He did say that such groups are a "disaster" and have made a "mockery" of the presidential campaign.
"I'm not allowed to communicate with a super PAC in any way, shape or form," Romney said. "If we coordinate in any way whatsoever, we go to the big house."
So Romney refuses to disavow a PAC ad that trashes Newt on the grounds it may be collusion, but has no problem repudiating a PAC ad that trashes Obama. It sure looks to me like Romney's public repudiation of the ad against Obama is communication and coordination in some "way, shape or form." Ergo, I expect the FBI to be showing up at Romney's doorstep any time now to haul him off to the big house.
OOPS! Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe there wasn't any collusion. Maybe it's just crony capitalism as usual raising its ugly head. CHECK THIS NEW YORK TIMES ARTICLE OUT. According to the Times, billionaire Joe Ricketts' plan to trash Obama didn't go over too well over at the Chicago City Hall. Why should that make a difference to Ricketts? Well, Rahm Emanuel, a rabid Obama supporter and former Obama chief-of-staff, is the current Mayor of Chicago AND, the Ricketts family owns the Chicago Cubs baseball club. This is significant because the family is currently seeking millions from the City of Chicago to renovate historic Wrigley Field:
A furor erupted in Chicago – Mr. Obama’s hometown – over the disclosure of the advertising plan. The Ricketts family, which owns the Chicago Cubs, suddenly became entangled in city politics because the Cubs are pursuing city and state assistance for a $300 million renovation of Wrigley Field.
I guess politics as usual in the big city will save Romney from being shipped off to the big house.
Does anyone else out there feel like a chump, like all these parasitic political pukes are laughing at us poor, simple, taxpaying slobs?
The worst enemy of clear thinking is the propensity to hypostatize, i.e., to ascribe substance or real existence to mental constructs or concepts.
The economy is not a thing. It is not some kind of machine, like an automobile, that requires an operator. The economy is a "mental construct." It's a euphemism for 300 million individuals in this country engaged in social cooperation, i.e., engaged in trade with one another. That kind of cooperation should kind of run itself, shouldn't it? Maybe that's what you meant, but you sure didn't articulate that meaning.
Here's how Mises articulates it in his most famous work, Human Action:
There are two different kinds of social cooperation: cooperation by virtue of contract and coordination, and cooperation by virtue of command and subordination or hegemony...Where and as far as cooperation is based on command and subordination, there is the man who commands and there are those who obey his orders...
...What differentiates the hegemonic bond from the contractual bond is the scope in which the choices of the individuals determine the course of events. As soon as a man has decided in favor of his subjection to a hegemonic system, he becomes, within the margin of this system's activities and for the time of his subjection, a pawn of the director's actions...
...In the frame of a contractual society the individual members exchange definite quantities of goods and services of a definite quality. In choosing subjection in a hegemonic body a man neither gives nor receives anything that is definite. He integrates himself into a system in which he has to render indefinite services and will receive what the director is willing to assign to him. He is at the mercy of the director. The director alone is free to choose. Whether the director is an individual or an organized group of individuals, a directorate, and whether the director is a selfish maniacal tyrant or a benevolent paternal despot is of no relevance for the structure of the whole system.
Ron, I know you can't say all that in a 20 minute TV "debate." The box of rocks you're debating wouldn't understand it anyway. But you could get the point across that individuals acting in an economy should rightfully be FREE TO CHOOSE, free to trade as they wish, on their own terms, not on terms set by a central authority, most especially not on terms set by political parasites in Washington, DC.
Krugman can't imagine 300 million individuals trading amongst themselves on their own terms without adult supervision by parasitic politicians:
KRUGMAN: You can’t leave the government out of monetary policy. If you think we’re going to let it set itself, it doesn’t happen. If you think you can avoid the government from setting monetary policy, you’re living in the world that was 150 years ago. We have an economy in which money is not just green pieces of paper with faces of dead presidents on them. Money is a part of the financial system that includes a variety of assets – we’re not quite sure where the line between money and non-money is. It’s a continuum.
Isn't it obvious Krugman is functioning barely one notch outside the realm of gibberish? Because today individuals are not free to choose, free to cooperate by contract, due to the hegemony of political parasites the world over, Krugman can't imagine ever returning to a time 150 years ago when individuals were largely free to cooperate by contract, i.e., to manage their own affairs free from parasitic intervention.
Krugman is such a moron he admits he doesn't know exactly what money is, but at the same time he wants the central, political parasite -- the government -- to set "monetary policy!" The box of rocks doesn't believe individual traders, cooperating by contract, could originate and create money without the intervention of a parasitic authority.
Here's what Mises has to say about that in Human Action:
If it is assumed that the conditions of the parties concerned are improved by every step that leads from direct exchange to indirect exchange and subsequently to giving preference for use as a medium of exchange to certain goods distinguished by their especially high marketability, it is difficult to conceive why one should, in dealing with the origin of indirect exchange, resort in addition to authoritarian decree or an explicit compact between citizens. A man who finds it hard to obtain in direct barter what he wants to acquire renders better his chances of acquiring it in later acts of exchange by the procurement of a more marketable good. Under these circumstances there was no need of government interference or of a compact between the citizens. The happy idea of proceeding in this way could strike the shrewdest individuals, and the less resourceful could imitate the former's method. It is certainly more plausible to take for granted that the immediate advantages conferred by indirect exchange were recognized by the acting parties than to assume that the whole image of a society trading by means of money was conceived by a genius and, if we adopt the covenant doctrine, made obvious to the rest of the people by persuasion.
Krugman, let me state this in simpler terms you might be able to understand: Even prisoners can figure out on their own that cigarettes are money behind bars! They don't need a "genius" tyrant like you to explain it to them and force it upon them!
You want more Krugman drivel? Consider this Krugman explanation of the Great Depression:
KRUGMAN: The reality is it was a market economy run amok, which happens, happens repeatedly over the past couple of centuries. You do need...I'm actually a believer in the market economy, I’m a believer in capitalism. I want the market economy to be left as free as it can be, but there are limits. You do need the government to step in to stabilize. Depressions are a bad thing for capitalism and it's the role of the government to make sure they don't happen, or if they do happen, they don't last too long.
Where to begin?!?!?! How about I allow Mises to explain to Krugman just what this "market economy" is that Krugman believes in:
The market economy is the social system of the division of labor under private ownership of the means of production. Everybody acts on his own behalf...There is in the operation of the market no compulsion and coercion.The state, the social apparatus of coercion and compulsion, does not interfere with the market and with the citizens' activities directed by the market...The market is not a place, a thing, or a collective entity. The market is a process, actuated by the interplay of the actions of the various individuals cooperating under the division of labor. The forces determining the --continually changing--state of the market are the [p. 258] value judgments of these individuals and their actions as directed by these value judgments. The state of the market at any instant is the price structure, i.e., the totality of the exchange ratios as established by the interaction of those eager to buy and those eager to sell. There is nothing inhuman or mystical with regard to the market. The market process is entirely a resultant of human actions. Every market phenomenon can be traced back to definite choices of the members of the market society.
Krugman, trust me. You DON'T believe in a "market economy!" You covet a market run by "geniuses" like yourself who know how to "stabilize" it, to keep it from running "amok" and to "make sure" depressions and recessions "don't last too long."
Good grief! Has this idiot been asleep the last six years, or, for that matter, the last hundred?!?!?
Lastly, consider this absurdity:
KRUGMAN: You really think that people – that’s not what I, that’s not my understanding of the law - but do you really think people use dollar bills only because the federal government isn't allowing them to use other stuff?
Well, yeah...! Duh!! Trying paying your federal income taxes with "other stuff" and see where it gets you. Why not empty your head and try paying your taxes with a box of rocks, you numbskull!
I can't go on!... Writing this post is too brutal, too painful. It's like...it's like talking to a box of rocks. And lest Krugman accuse me of favoritism, I will end with a quotation from Ludwig von Mises in Human Action that is absolutely naive, incorrect and absurd:
For two hundred years the governments have interfered with the market’s choice of the money medium. Even the most bigoted étatists do not venture to assert that this interference has proved beneficial.
Sorry, Ludwig. Even you could not foresee an idiot etatist as bigoted as Paul Krugman. I know...I know. They gave him your Nobel Prize! Well, they're idiots too.
Now for the best thing about the "Paul vs Paul" debate: Trish Regan!
Good for George. I respect an individual's success in the free market.
George Clooney is also a social activist. He advocates for gay rights. He wants "to stop and prevent mass atrocities" throughout the world, most especially in the Sudan and in Darfur.
Good for George. It's a free country. I'm against mass atrocities too.
George Clooney is also a political activist. He is wildly progressive and liberal. He supported Barack Obama in 2008 and is working to reelect Barack Obama in 2012. Both in 2008 and in 2012 he donated the maximum amounts allowed by the law to Obama's campaigns. He has also donated in-kind services to Obama, such as the use of his house. He is regularly pictured in the news media in conference with President Obama. Apparently, his donations have captured the President's ear. Just the other day he raised $15-million for Obama's campaign through one PAC or another. He's probably raised two or three times that amount for Obama and leftist PAC's in the last six years.
Bad for George. This is how we know he is "dim." But it's still a free country, even for dim bulbs.
These are Republicans, sitting in convention in 2008. They oppose Obama's politics, his social and economic policies and virtually everything he stands for and has done as President. They want with all their hearts to defeat Obama in 2012. They raise and donate millions to defeat the President.
Everyday I read political blogs written by committed conservatives who despise progressive/liberal/leftist social and economic policies. I am also such a blogger. My fellow bloggers and I would give our eye teeth to defeat Obama in 2012. Many of us also donate our hard-earned cash to that effort.
Last year George Clooney produced, directed, wrote and starred in a film called: The Ides of March. Ironically, in the film Clooney plays a naive political idealist who is disillusioned when the Presidential candidate he's working for turns out to be a pompous, lying, hypocritical, backstabbing, demagogic, political whore. The film grossed about $41-million dollars (USA) for Clooney and friends. Also last year Clooney starred in a film called: The Descendents. That film grossed about $83-million (USA).
$124-million for two films. Not bad. I saw both films. They were very bad. Tickets for my wife and I cost me about $40. I figure in the last 10 years I've spent maybe $300-$400 bucks on films George Clooney had a hand in making. My wife's probably spent two or three times that much!
Clooney is a popular Hollywood figure. I assume many, many of my Republican and conservative friends and bloggers have contributed similar amounts to Clooney's Hollywood empire over the years. Be honest, folks. Republicans and conservatives go to movies too!
What are we thinking? By day we rail against Obama's reelection with heartfelt and intelligent rants. By night we stupidly give our hard-earned cash to George Clooney, so he can, in turn, give it to Obama's reelection campaign!
Folks, this is YOU and ME...
Ludwig von Mises, Economic Policy, p. 9–10:
It is not the Hollywood film corporation that pays the wages of a movie star; it is the people who pay admission to the movies. And it is not the entrepreneurs of a boxing match who pay the enormous demands of the prize fighters; it is the people who pay admission to the fight.
The many to whom capitalism gave a comfortable income and leisure are yearning for entertainment. Crowds throng to the theatres. There is money in show business. Popular actors and playwrights...live in palatial houses with butlers and swimming pools. ...Yet Hollywood and Broadway, the world-famous centers of the entertainment industry, are hotbeds of communism. Authors and performers are to be found among the most bigoted supporters of Sovietism...
...Under capitalism, material success depends on the appreciation of a man’s achievements on the part of the sovereign consumers. In this regard there is no difference between the services rendered by a manufacturer and those rendered by a producer, an actor or a playwright. Yet the awareness of this dependence makes those in show business much more uneasy than those supplying the customers with tangible amenities...
...People long for amusement because they are bored. And nothing makes them so weary as amusements with which they are already familiar. The essence of the entertainment industry is variety. The patrons applaud most what is new and therefore unexpected and surprising. They are capricious and unaccountable. They disdain what they cherished yesterday. A tycoon of the stage or the screen must always fear the waywardness of the public. He awakes rich and famous one morning and may be forgotten the next day. He knows very well that he depends entirely on the whims and fancies of a crowd hankering after merriment. He is always agitated by anxiety. Like the master-builder in Ibsen’s play, he fears the unknown newcomers, the vigorous youths who will supplant him in the favor of the public.
It is obvious that there is no relief from what makes these stage people uneasy...Communism, some of them think, will bring their deliverance. Is it not a system that makes all people happy?...
...It may be fairly assumed that none of the Hollywood and Broadway communists has ever studied the writings of any socialist author and still less any serious analysis of the market economy. But it is this very fact that, to these glamour girls, dancers and singers, to these authors and producers of comedies, moving pictures and songs, gives the strange illusion that their particular grievances will disappear as soon as the “expropriators” will be expropriated...
...But it is noteworthy to remember that no other American milieu was more enthusiastic in the endorsement of communism than that of people cooperating in the production of these silly plays and films.
I appreciate Ludwig von Mises' cogent analysis of the "glamour girl" mindset. Yet, I tend to believe there is another, simpler explanation of why rich celebrities endorse socialism and yearn for the federal parasites in Washington to raise taxes on the wealthy and redistribute the seized spoils to the "Poor" and the "Old" and the "Sick" and to the "Hungry children." That explanation is GUILT and ENVY.
Many of these babied, wealthy, Hollywood "has beens" look back on their life and wonder "Why me?" Why am I so fortunate, so privileged, so rich? Yes, I've worked hard, but I truly enjoyed every second. I would do it again in a heartbeat. Wealth and celebrity came easy to me. Wealth and celebrity are a matter of luck.
Yes! That's it! I was simply lucky! Other poor slobs are not so lucky. Therefore, the lucky must contribute a portion of their wealth to the unlucky! It's just common sense!!
Of course, I could voluntarily contribute to the unlucky common people through private charities -- and I do. But that's just me! What about other lucky bastards like me who are even more rich than me but who are ignorant or selfish? These lucky, ignorant and selfish rich individuals must be forced by the central authorities in Washington to contribute a portion of their wealth to the unlucky too! It is only fair!
Besides, I'm not saying that we rich, lucky bastards have to give everything we have to the unlucky masses. If we all gave a little, we could still enjoy the lifestyle we've earned by all of our hard work and the unlucky ones would benefit.
The rich, lucky Republican bastards, like those selfish, evil Koch brothers are the worst. I hate them!! They are the richest of the rich, the luckiest of the lucky! Yet they show no compassion, no heart whatsoever! Anyway, why should the Koch brothers be allowed to be richer than me? Did they work harder than me for what they have? Are they better persons? Do they have a bigger heart? Are they more loving?
Not!!!
So make them pay!!!!
What this poor, pathetic, conflicted soul does not understand, and what Mises points out, is that the production of wealth is not independent of the means by which it is distributed. Her simple-minded advocacy of socialism may soothe her feelings of guilt and envy, but it inevitably makes us all poorer by destroying the very thing that allowed Cher to produce her wealth in the first place: private property and the freedom to pursue it and accumulate it for herself.
IN THE BEGINNING God created the heavens and the earth and made himself Maximum Leader of both, and called Himself "Obama."
When Obama began creating the heavens and the earth, America was a shapeless, chaotic mess, with the evil Spirit of Bush brooding over the darkness.
Then Obama said: "Let there be light." And Solyndra appeared. And Obama was pleased with it, and divided Americans into Greens and Skeptics. He made the Greens "winners," and the Skeptics "losers." Together with the Greens, Obama forged the first day of fundamental change.
And on the second day, Obama rested.
Then Obama said: "Let the dark vapors of America separate to form "rich" and "poor." And let the poor be above and the rich below. And let there be class warfare between the two. This all happened on the third day.
And on the fourth day, Obama rested.
Then Obama said: "Let the safety net beneath the poor be expanded by $-Trillions so that unprecedented deficits will emerge." And so it was. And Obama named the $-Trillions "stimulus," and the safety net "student loans" and "food stamps" and "unemployment compensation" and "American Opportunity Tax Credit" and "Race to the Top" and "Pell
Grants" and "The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act." And Obama was pleased. And he said, "Let the stimulus burst forth and produce every variety of lobbyist bearing seed money for My re-election, and let this seed money produce handsome fund raisers in my image like George Clooney." And Obama called the fund raisers "bundlers." And so it was, and Obama was pleased. This all happened the morning of the fifth day.
That afternoon Obama rested again.
Then Obama said: "Let the too-big-to-fail bankers rise from the slime of the earth and join the poor in the heavens." He ordered the US Treasury to rain money upon them. Obama said: "Let them now make loans to small businesses and write mortgages to individuals in need." But the loathsome bankers tossed meaty bonuses to themselves and told Obama to pound sand. Obama was not pleased. So He smote the bankers, seized General Motors, fired its CEO and gave the car company to Richard Trumka who built the Chevy Volt, the most expensive Fire Hazard in the short history of creation.
And Mrs. Obama rested.
Then Obama gazed upon 20-million illegal aliens and called them "undocumented immigrants." And so these migrants could vote for Him, He called voter ID laws "racism." And so these new constituents could be fruitful and multiply, He performed the miracle of the loaves and fishes and created a cap on their health insurance costs but no cap on their medical benefits. He called this miracle "ObamaCare" after himself. And then He created money out of nothing and called it "debt," and piled this debt in mountains up to the sky. And then Obama created patsies to pay off that debt and called these patsies "children."
And Mrs. Obama was pleased, so she rested again.
But He was not yet finished. Obama said: "Let there be a Surge in Afghanistan!" And the Taliban quaked in fear. Then He created radar and worked under it to nullify the 2nd Amendment, sending thousands of machine guns to Mexico. This pleased Obama...until Solyndra went bankrupt and "Fast and Furious" made the New York Times. Obama was unhappy.
So he rested again.
Then Obama said: "Let the earth bring forth every kind of animal." And Navy Seals appeared. And Obama used them to smote Bin Laden dead in a gutsy move. And Obama was pleased again and, feeling his oats, He promised Putin better things to come. He basked in the warmth of the Arab Spring and created the Buffett Rule. And Obama was pleased with what he had done.
So Obama rested again.
And finally Obama said: "Let there be men and women made in the image and likeness of their Maker." He called the first man "Trayvon" and the first woman "Julia." And then He said: "Let there be hope and change in My new world, and an end to white racism." And he called this new way of thinking and acting "fairness."
And to celebrate this new world of fairness, Obama rested again.
But the new men and women He had created in his image quickly grew restless. They Occupied Wall Street, set fire to businesses and broke bank windows.
So Obama gathered his thoughts as he rested once more.
Then, at the eleventh hour on the seventh day, in order to occupy the Occupiers and to help himself get re-elected, Obama fiddled with Labor Department statistics and created...JOBS!
[Apologies to the Author of The Book and to those who took the photos that I found in Google Images.]
