I not only use all the brains that I have,
but all that I can borrow.
Woodrow Wilson
Give Thanks to Property Rights, the Invisible Hand and All
A trio of recommended posts. First, Ben Powell, who heads Texas Tech's Free Market Institute, penned an article of how the Pilgrims had evolved from a communal/socialist economic system, which was a miserable failure, to one where individuals were given their own plots of land, but the community no longer had an obligation to feed them. The Reason video below has a similar message.
Second, one of my favorite Austrian School economists and prominent Lincoln critic, Tom DiLorenzo, has a piece on how Lincoln nationalized state Thanksgiving holidays. DiLorenzo writes beautifully and powerfully; here are just a couple of paragraphs that grabbed my attention:
This was an obvious attempt to falsely equate “the country” with “the government” in the minds of the public. War always explodes the size, scope and powers of the state by crippling, diminishing, nationalizing, or destroying parts of the civil society and the private enterprise system.
Lincoln never attempted to explain why God would punish only Americans for the sin of slavery while ignoring the fact that some 95 percent of all the slaves that were brought to the Western Hemisphere were kidnapped and transported there by the British, Spanish, French, Dutch, and others besides Americans.Finally, there's the timeless piece by Jeff Jacoby: think of "I, Pencil" applied to your supermarket turkey; a telling excerpt:
To bring that turkey to the dining room table, for example, required the efforts of thousands of people -- the poultry farmers who raised the birds, of course, but also the feed distributors who supplied their nourishment and the truckers who brought it to the farm, not to mention the architect who designed the hatchery, the workmen who built it, and the technicians who keep it running. The bird had to be slaughtered and defeathered and inspected and transported and unloaded and wrapped and priced and displayed. The people who accomplished those tasks were supported in turn by armies of other people accomplishing other tasks -- from refining the gasoline that fueled the trucks to manufacturing the plastic in which the meat was packaged.
No turkey czar sat in a command post somewhere, consulting a master plan and issuing orders. No one rode herd on all those people, forcing them to cooperate for your benefit. And yet they did cooperate. When you arrived at the supermarket, your turkey was there. You didn't have to do anything but show up to buy it. If that isn't a miracle, what should we call it?
Adam Smith called it "the invisible hand" -- the mysterious power that leads innumerable people, each working for his own gain, to promote ends that benefit many. Out of the seeming chaos of millions of uncoordinated private transactions emerges the spontaneous order of the market. Free human beings freely interact, and the result is an array of goods and services more immense than the human mind can comprehend. No dictator, no bureaucracy, no supercomputer plans it in advance. Indeed, the more an economy is planned, the more it is plagued by shortages, dislocation, and failure.A bonus: Tom Woods' wife posted her secrets of preparing and roasting the "perfect" turkey here.
A Commentary on Pope Francis' Controversial Exhortation
Free Speech and Persuasion
Facebook Corner
(LFC). Milton Friedman was not perfect, but he was great on a lot of issues. He was an eloquent advocate of liberty and his contributions included helping end the draft. What do you think about Dr Friedman?
I liked his leadership on the free markets at a time where it was not part of academic groupthink. I have some concerns about Friedman's advocacy of certain central bank activist tactics like quantitative easing, which I find inconsistent with a market-based philosophy.
(Libertarian Republic). Documents reveal NSA monitoring online porn-viewing habits of radicals | The Libertarian Republic http://bit.ly/1brGDaR
Since when is porn a national security issue? This attitude of preemptively collecting information "so long as it's not abused" makes a mockery of our right to be left alone by the State
(Cato Institute). "A leading foreign policy scholar once described alliances as 'transmission belts for war,' mechanisms for converting local conflicts into far wider and more destructive wars. We now have a graphic example of that danger in the U.S. security treaty with Japan."
The idea that we should not get sucked into a war over disputed ownership of uninhabited islands not even our own is hardly "appeasement". The US should not be held hostage by regional disputes that are none of our business.
Catholic Libertarian group posted the above commentary on Pope Francis' exhortation.
I'm disappointed that paragraph 204 wasn't mentioned. The Pope comes out pretty hard against free markets when he says "we can no longer trust in the unseen forces and the invisible hand of the market." He then proceeds to state that we need "programs and mechanisms" that are geared to a "better distribution of income."
I agree. I think he has been unduly influenced by his exposure to the Argentinian economy. He has a populist streak as well. I do think that he sees the economy in zero-sum fashion; I find it odd that he looks at Statist solutions, given the miserable failures of the Argentinian governments.
(Libetarian Republic). Barry Goldwater was one of a kind. The people who supported him are the direct ideological ancestors of the modern Tea Party and liberty movements.
I disagree. The Old Right (e.g., Robert Taft) was non-interventionist. Goldwater was not a dove on Vietnam.
We the Individuals posted on a HuffPost piece that apparently Washington state voters approved a hike in the minimum wage to $15.
Well, the majority of voters in Washington are economic illiterates. How a majority of voters can be allowed to infringe on the rights of an employer and worker to come to a fair wage is beyond cruel: they are sentencing inexperienced or low-skilled individuals to unemployment; others may find their work hours reduced. etc.
(Milton Friedman group). "The United States had free immigration throughout the 19th century, and up until World War I really. But that was possibly because the United States was not a welfare state. When my parents came to the Untied States at the end of the 19th century, they didn't get any welfare when they got here. They were able to exist by the charity of relatives who had come here earlier. They were able to make their way in a free market, and therefore people only came here, people came to the United States to use their resources and their capacities, and were productive and help themselves and help the rest of the people who were here. But, if you have a welfare state, in which immigrants, as now, are eligible to receive relief, to receive benefits and so on, you have people immigrating, not in order to use their resources in a productive way, but as it were to be parasites on the rest of the society. And unfortunately, there are an infinite supply of people who want to live on someone else's expense. And so, the result of that is unfortunately completely free immigration, in my opinion, in a welfare state." --Milton Friedman
The federal government nationalized what had been done by mutual aid networks and fraternal organizations (cf. Beito). (And the kind of aid wasn't handouts, but rights involving reciprocity.) Past immigrants who made use of these support systems weren't "parasites". I also think that people who leave their birthplace, relatives, and customs to seek their fortune in a new country are not motivated by public handouts but to seek a better life for themselves and their children. Most economists realize a more open immigration policy is a win-win proposition for long-term economic growth. Let us reform morally hazardous public social policy, but not pursue anti-growth restrictive immigration policies.
(Bastiat Institute). We're thankful for the division of labor, the savings and investment of the billions of people that came before us, the entrepreneurship that continues to propel this world forward into new possibilities that wouldn't have existed otherwise, and the mutual benefit through voluntary exchange that helps to enrich society. Mostly, we're thankful for the liberty that each of us have that enables us to pursue our own happiness.
I'm grateful for the contributions of courageous individuals whom stand against the status quo, defend the rights of individuals against the State, add to the world of knowledge, innovate and anticipate consumer needs and desires.
Political Cartoon
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| Courtesy of Glenn McCoy and Townhall |
Once again, I started Thanksgiving by watching the Macy's parade; I didn't buy a turkey this year (one of my favorite foods) because I thought I would be on a business trip over the holiday.... Christmas has always been one of my favorite times of year--not because of presents but the traditions: the trees and carols, the various Christmas TV specials and movies, etc. (There are other things I despise like the office Secret Santa or the company holiday parties, where it always seems a couple of people get a little too drunk; luckily I haven't had to do either in years.) I have an extensive collection of holiday CD's and DVD's. Given my recent/ongoing iPod Shuffle series, I thought this holiday season I would feature my favorite tracks which I have licensed for download or have purchased CD/LP tracks. The first track is my latest favorite; I think I downloaded it in an Amazon promotion. Technically it was released 10 years ago, but I first heard it recently. Macy's vocals are spot on, and the arrangement is irresistible.
Macy Gray, "What I Want For Christmas"
