Analytics

Saturday, November 11, 2017

Post #3438 M

Quote of the Day

In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.
Albert Camus


Tweet of the Day






Image of the Day

Shelby Steele On White Guilt and Affirmative Action




Deist On the Decentralizing Information Age




Facebook Corner


(Fox News). “On the occasion of President Trump’s Asia trip, those who have spent a lifetime singing from the globalist hymnal are now suddenly American exceptionalists.” — Laura Ingraham



Trump's protectionism and nativism are abominations, economic illiteracy. and anti-American at its core.

 (Conservative Review). If the Republicans lose he House ... we know what happens next.
Trump is no conservative, and HE would be responsible for the GOP losing the midterms. I will always be NeverTrump, and I wouldn't mind his impeachment. He has already done many things to warrant impeachment.

Web Clippings

A FB Libertarian group floated a diagram of political ideologies which showed the only difference between conservativism and modern (social) liberalism is healthcare reform. (I did not collect post incidentals.)

This is a rather simplistic approach which doesn't do a reasonable job reflecting political differences; the Old Right didn't buy into FDR's policies.or international intervention. This diagram implies there are no major policy differences between progressives and conservatives except healthcare, and that's a departure from reality. I see a distinction between right-wing authoritarians and conservatives, who in this country are more classical liberals. We need to see more of a federalist construct and the size and extent of regulation in play.

Via Philosophy Now:

Post  by SecularCauses » Sun Oct 28, 2012 11:01 pm

 Marx's entire philosophy is dependent upon the labor-theory of value, which is interesting because Marx just assumed it was true, and gave no evidence to prove its existence. The basic idea is that Marx claimed when a capitalist bought supplies, like wood, metal, etc., that what the capitalist paid for the items was a fair price, and that these items could only transfer their value to the final outcome of the production process. The other item the capitalist purchases, labor, Marx treated differently. For Marx, he admitted that the capitalist paid a fair wage for the laborer's work, but claimed that the employee's work was what created surplus value, i.e., profits. That is the laborer, although being paid a fair wage, of let's say, $10.00 for his work, actually produces more than that for the capitalist, let's say, $12.00.

 Marx gives no proof for this claim; he just assumes it's true, and builds an entire theory from there. But, he does claim that since capitalists will employ ever greater technology for each worker, that profit rates will fall so low, that capitalism will die off. This is because the labor from the living workers will become a smaller and smaller amount of labor going into the finished product as the worker works with ever larger and more sophisticated machines. If this were true, however, then the highest-tech industries should have lower profit rates than farming operations that still use hand-pulled plows. It would also mean that no capitalist in his right mind would ever employ high-tech equipment, the lower-tech the better. This is empirically not the case, so Marx is wrong. The labor is not the source of profits, but the brain-power the capitalist uses in bringing resources together to provide a good and/or service. That's exactly whay a worker digging ditches and filling them back up again does not create any value, just works up a sweat.

 Therefore, since Marx provided no reason to believe in his labor-theory of value and the empirical evidence is against it, we can send Marx to the scrap-heap, along with such other outlandish beliefs, like a god named Zeus.
Not only is Marxism false, but, any socialist theory that relies upon the same false claim is also false as well.

Via Libertarianism.org:

 "What we classical liberals see clearly, and what modern progressives do not, is that all too often having a majority on their side only renders the progressive movement a tyranny of the majority. A democracy it may be, but it is not a proper government."

Quotation of the Day…

Posted: 23 Jun 2017 03:19 AM PDT
(Don Boudreaux)

Tweet

… is from page xvi of the September 22, 1992, letter that the late Paul Heyne wrote to his friend Paul Trescott, as this letter is reprinted in the Introduction to the 2008 collection of Heyne’s writings, “Are Economists Basically Immoral?” and Other Essays on Economics, Ethics, and Religion (Geoffrey Brennan and A.M.C. Waterman, eds.):

    [E]nvironmentalism has become a dogmatic, fundamentalist, persecuting religion that will keep us from ameliorating our environmental problems.

Ron Paul:

Barack Obama started with a Nobel Peace Prize and is ending his presidency with the Pentagon's Distinguished Public Service Medal.

Sounds about right for a president who bombed 7 nations and became the first in U.S. history to be at war every single day of his eight year administration.

PB Daily

Doug Casey: The Social Democratic, Christian Democratic, Socialist, Communist, and similar parties have ruled Europe since the end of World War II. They’re all pretty similar in that they promote massive welfare benefits, strong labor unions, large state bureaucracies, very high taxes, strict regulations, and an atmosphere of Cultural Marxism. Then, every few generations, the voters react and install a “fascist” regime. These keep most of the socialist characteristics, but tend to be supported by, and friendly to, Big Business. That, and they add on nationalism, xenophobia, and militarism.

Oddly, the Europeans can’t seem to imagine a libertarian alternative of private charities, limited government, minimal taxes, an unregulated economy, and intellectual/psychological freedom. It’s another reason the Continent is a sinking ship.

Forbes.

QUOTE OF THE DAY
We should always be trying to achieve greater goals when reaching our 'desired' success.
Ashton Sanders

Political Cartoon

via Libertarian Atheist on FB


Musical Interlude: My Favorite Vocalists


Dolly Parton (with Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris), "Those Memories of You"

Posted by at
Labels: , , , ,