If you have knowledge,
let others light their candles at it.
Margaret Fuller
As We Await the Coronation of Yellen, the Monetary Felon
Inflation is like a silent cancer, a cruel indirect regressive tax.
Who Really Rips Off the Gasoline Buyer?
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| Via Bastiat Institute and the original artist |
Yesterday I unknowingly stepped into a sore point of contention for libertarians when I wrote the following in a Facebook comment:
Every corrupt politician sees himself as the reincarnation of Robin Hood and judges his victims thieves. A tyranny of politicians bribe the many with their plunder of the few.
I, of course, did intend for readers to think of a common socialist theme that he stole from the rich and gave to the poor. It was very clear that I was not attempting to praise socialist/redistributionist politicians. I quickly found and cited a Forbes essay on the topic. I had seen various productions on the legend over the years and never really researched the legend, its origins, etc. It turns out there isn't even a consensus on whether there ever was an historical Robin Hood (or hooded Robert), and/or which parts of the legend emerged at what point in time (and/or were embellishments). I really don't want to get sucked into an arcane debate: was he a vengeful or vigilante commoner striking against an oppressive privileged/ruling class, or a dispossessed aristocrat motivated to reclaim what rightfully belongs to him and others like him, stolen by an illegitimate, tyrannical government in the absence of King Richard? It's difficult for any libertarian to accept the concept of even a benevolent monarchy... On the other hand, stealing and/or murder is wrong, and if anything the poor and other disadvantaged are even more vulnerable; would the tale work if Robin Hood was motivated by, say, his own political advantage? They might simply replace one set of tyrants for another. If the redistribution works, it only works if it's a return of their own property: taking possession of someone else's property, even a rich man's, is a criminal offense. (Of course, socialists don't agree; what they try to do is invent the disingenuous excuse that any economic success is the result of theft, say, of labor.)
For libertarians the later versions give Robin Hood motive: he is looking to recover what was illegally taken from him--and, by extension, others:
A word about Robin Hood. The left loves to think that he robbed from the rich and gave the money to the poor. In a way, that's true, but that's only half the story, and the least important half, at that. If he'd just been a mugger, he'd probably never have made Marian. In folklore and tradition, Robin Hood stole from tax collectors and he gave the money back (after a modest recovery fee) to the people who were impoverished because it had been extorted from them. Robin Hood did this, in folklore and tradition, because he himself had been cheated out of his home, his lands, his titles, and his rights, by an evil King (is there any other kind?) and the vile Sheriff Joe of Nottingham.
The reason Robin has such universal support comes from the third more thoughtful look at the issue. In the most popular telling we know, Robin doesn’t indiscriminately steal from some anonymous “rich” class, and the wealthy “victims” in the story need to be taken in the era’s context. Robin Hood’s world was a feudal one, with a strong monarchy, temporarily run by an unscrupulous Prince John, while the benevolent King Richard I (the Lion-Hearted) was away fighting in the Crusades. This backdrop is critical to Robin’s (who is loyal to Richard) motivation.Facebook Corner
The local government of the time consisted of wealthy land owners and government officials representing the crown (Prince John) and deriving their “authority,” from it. In contravention of justice, the land owners and government officials imposed abusive taxes on those who could least afford it, and the methods of tax confiscation were often brutal.
In the end the Robin Hood story is more a tax revolt, than some social wealth redistribution scheme, and this is what I believe most Americans cheer. Nowhere in the most popular telling of the legend do I recall Robin Hood espousing stealing money from honest earners to give to anyone else. On the contrary, Robin “steals” (or expropriates) money (property) from the “rich” (government) and then returns it to its rightful owners, the “poor” (the people), from whom it was originally confiscated (stolen).
(Milton Friedman group). "Vouchers give greater educational opportunity to the poor [Some argue] that private schools would tend to exacerbate class distinctions. [But] ask yourself in what respect the inhabitant of a low income neighborhood is most disadvantaged. If he attaches enough importance to, say, a new automobile, he can, by dint of saving, accumulate enough money to buy the same car as a resident of a high-income suburb. And this goes equally for clothes, or furniture, or books, or what not.
But let a poor family in a slum have a gifted child and let it set such high value on his or her schooling that it is willing to scrimp and save for the purpose. Unless it can get special treatment, or scholarship assistance, at one of the very few private schools, the family is in a very difficult position. The "good" public schools are in the high income neighborhoods. The family might be willing to spend something in addition to what it pays in taxes to get better schooling for its child. But it can hardly afford simultaneously to move to the expensive neighborhood." --Milton Friedman
We have a de facto public school monopoly where only the middle/upper class families can afford legitimate school choice. Education, like healthcare, is like any other market. It thrives on competition and innovation, not futile, megalomaniac bureaucratic planners. The idea of lower-income parents finding their children captive consumers to failing public schools is morally unconscionable. We already know in many school systems a significant number of teachers send their own children to private schools. A policy that condemns gifted lower-income children to failing public schools is a mockery of the concept of equality of opportunity.
This is beautiful. *Individuals* volunteering themselves for the sake of another individual. Gives me a lot of faith in people, and reaffirms my stance in spontaneous order.
I know what spontaneous order is, what I don't see is where that comes into play here. If someone is about to DIE, you don't need someone's permission to attempt to save it. Plus there was a chance it could end horribly but in that situation you either freeze or you act.
All he is saying here is that people responded to accomplish an end that planners could not anticipate or compel human action.
(Jeffrey Tucker). We have crossed the boundary that lies between Republic and Empire. If you ask when, the answer is that you cannot make a single stroke between day and night; the precise moment does not matter. There was no painted sign to say: "You now are entering Imperium. - Garet Garrett
1917. That s when the law changed to allow our central bank to buy gov bonds to finance the war...
I think the banks could and/or were mandated to buy Treasuries as reserves well before then, and I think banks also saw government borrowing as a profitable line of business in a sluggish economy. However, the income tax did provide a ready stream of new federal revenue enabling an expanded military.
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| Via LFC |
(Bastiat Institute) Remember the saying "It's a free country"? You never hear that anymore.
We have a standing bureaucracy, a standing military, and a Congress paid to tax, spend and make rules and regulations. In other words, it hasn't been free since the get-go.
(LFC). Which was a greater moral crime and why: Slavery in America or Harry S Truman's nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
Slavery was a knowing contradiction of the unalienable rights of American residents. I disagree with the decision to drop the bombs because of the nature and extent of civilian casualties and Japan was already in an unsustainable position, reeling from conventional attacks, Russia's entry into the war, and the ability of the US military to redeploy resources from the European theater. (I do want to say that I have other issues with WWII such as the firebombing of Dresden and Tokyo; there were far too many civilian casualties on our own hands.) It's difficult to weigh the differences but to the extent that the bloodiest war in US history, the Civil War, was, in part, launched to resolve the slavery issue, including its own morally unconscionable civilian casualties, I would lean to the former.
(LFC) Somebody posted this on our wall. How would you respond (without saying "dont feed the trolls")?"
China is arguably more laissez faire then any country in the west. What do you think of the conditions in which they live?
I posted a comment recently on this issue. China is hardly laissez faire--they are on their twelfth 5-year plan, which is about as Statist as you can get. Financial freedom is negligible; state-owned assets account for at least 30-40% total. They manipulate/undervalue their currency and poorer Chinese struggle with high cost-of-living inflation. And, of course, they persecute people having more than one child, and the government/party does not tolerate political dissent. Challenge the troll to go to any published index of economic freedom and find even one placing China in the top 50% of nations.
Political Cartoon
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| Courtesy of the original artist via LFC |
My iPod Shuffle Series
Mark Schultz, "He's My Son". This is one of those songs that profoundly moved me the first time I heard it (and I bought a copy of the album); although I have no children of my own, the song speaks to the universal theme of a better world for our children. Schultz, a Christian music industry performer, explained that as a youth minister at a Tennessee church, he had come to know Martin, diagnosed with leukemia, and his parents, Louise and John; he struggled for months to come up with a way of explaining the helplessness and despair of the grieving, loving parents and their moving prayers to God and claims that one day the Lord inspired him with the song that seemed to write itself.
