[D]emocracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention;
have ever been found incompatible with personal security,
or the rights of property;
and have, in general, been as short in their lives
as they have been violent in their deaths."
James Madison
Pro-Liberty Thought of the Day
When I read this quote, I was remembering recently listening to an Econtalk with John Nye on the Depression (I found his relevant working paper here). Nye distinguishes on alternate approaches by FDR on policies to combat the Great Depression: monetary and fiscal. policy. On the monetary side, which Nye suggests was more effective, FDR effectively divorced from the gold standard, which was pointed as a "cause" (I would claim is confounding symptom with disease) for bank runs, particularly after Britain abandoned the gold standard (the idea is that going off the standard freed up fiat printing presses, essentially devaluing deposits). I don't want to go on a tangent here, but I would argue the high incidence of bank failures in the US had more to do with distinctly American counter-productive anti-competitive state and federal bank regulations, e.g., caps on bank notes and banks unable to propagate over state lines and sometimes even within states (see the Larry White Econtalk on Hayek and money). See Murphy here for a rebuttal of the gold standard as a bugaboo for the Great Depression.
What I find particularly interesting is the discussion of policies, to some extent shared by both Hoover and FDR to resort to anti-competitive manipulations to protect wages and prices, whether it's Hoover jawboning business leaders to maintain high wages (which under deflationary pressures is effectively an increase), FDR's union-friendly legislation, high tariffs protecting business profits and wages, boondoggle public works, etc. Mises' quotation above is an extension of the same concept; monopolies, with the help of the State, stave off creative destruction from smaller firms.
Just to take a modern-day example: Microsoft. Microsoft got its foothold because of anti-trust concerns about the operating system for IBM's emerging PC platform. Soon there were complaints as Microsoft started to dominate the more lucrative application suite market. What have we seen since then? A maturing PC industry; Microsoft's market share in the browser market it once dominated trails in 4 of 5 counters to Google Chrome; Microsoft trails in the explosive growth smartphone and tablet platform; it is struggling in the search engine and game system market. As the old saw goes, past results are not necessarily indicative of future performance. All this happened not because of some pushing-on-a-string "wise" government regulators, but a competitive high-tech industry.
Government Strings, Censorship and Charities
This story really annoys me. It involves the imposition of new government terms for a Florida charity to continue serving as a distributor of USDA food:
“The (person) told us there was a slight change in the contract,” [Kay Daly, executive director of the Christian Service Center] told me. “They said we could no longer have religious information where the USDA food is being distributed. They told us we had to take that stuff [e.g., portraits of Christ on the wall] down.”
Daly and her staff sat in stunned disbelief as the government agents also informed them that the Christian Service Center could no longer pray or provide Bibles to those in need. The government contract also forbade any references to the ministry’s chapel.
Daly said they were told they could continue distributing USDA food so long as it was somewhere else on the property – away from anything that could be considered religious.This is unconscionable; just to give a simple example, if I'm a retailer whom resells stamps (or lottery tickets, whatever) as a customer service and I happen to have a crucifix or a Gadsden flag on the wall, the government feels that it has the right to trump how I decorate my store? What does my decor have to do with the function of the distribution of goods and services?
It's one thing if, say, a distributor tries to sell government cheese for a profit or discriminates against potential recipients or violates some functional standard of food distribution. But the idea that a pleasant Christian volunteer reminds me that Jesus loves me and/or offers to give me a free Bible or may wear a cross necklace is not any bureaucrat's business; why should a faith-based charity (versus secular charity) be discriminated against? Why is it better if some unsmiling government bureaucrat, with a picture of Barack Obama on the wall, makes me jump through hoops to get my government cheese?
This is not to say I agree with the government's intervention, even confiscation, on our agricultural economy--whether we are talking about cheese, raisins, whatever. But I'm sick and tired of political correctness or secularism run amok. This madness does nothing to do about getting food to people whom need it; it's the arrogance of telling you if you agree to help them distribute food to the needy, you have to set aside your personal liberty at the door. These policies are anti-American at their core.
Obama Needs to Step Back From Arming the Rebel Radicals
A couple of excellent interviews with an Independent Institute analyst; I oppose activist/interventionist policy in the region. I recently commented on Facebook to a Tom Woods thread about Ron Paul's controversial rhetoric which in an oversimplified manner seems to suggest we have gotten radical element blowback for our Middle Eastern foreign policy. Ron Paul rejects this interpretation that we are somehow responsible for the attacks against our citizens on 9/11. My response is that our foreign policy has unintended consequences, and we must restrain risk-taking activist, interventionist policy, beyond core knowledge and competencies, not to mention unanticipated resource commitment.
"Alongside Night" Official Trailer
"Pressing reset on the American Revolution": great movie tagline.... I am not an Agorist, a left-libertarian counter-economist, but I welcome allies who also oppose the unholy expansion of government and its crony parasitic special-interest collaborators.
Political Humor
How Kerry unintentionally undermined Obama's war plans...
Political Cartoon
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| Courtesy of Robert Ariail and Townhall |
The Jackson 5, "I'll Be There"
