TGIF: Police-State Progressives

TGIF: Police-State Progressives

by | Nov 15, 2024 | , , ,

Progressives see themselves as, well, progressive. But they aren't. Even at their best, in opposing the national security state, they support massive government power in other realms of life. At heart they are social engineers. They seek a "moral equivalent of war," that is, regimentation without bloodshed. They are even anti-democratic when it suits them. We can see all of this through the eyes of Ludwig von Mises. This is from his book Planned Chaos (1947; free audiobook here). Mises, of course, championed the unhampered market economy, or laissez-faire capitalism. He wrote: In the market...

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The Worker as Free Person

by | Nov 14, 2024 | ,

"In the market economy the worker sells his services as other people sell their commodities. The employer is not the employee’s lord. He is simply the buyer of services which he must purchase at their market price. Of course, like every other buyer an employer too can take liberties. But if he resorts to arbitrariness in hiring or discharging workers, he must foot the bill. An employer or an employee entrusted with the management of a department of an enterprise is free to discriminate in hiring workers, to fire them arbitrarily, or to cut down their wages below the market rate. But in...

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Labor as Commodity

by | Nov 13, 2024 | ,

For the individual actor, "as for everyone, other people’s labor as offered for sale on the market is nothing but a factor of production. Man deals with other people’s labor in the same way that he deals with all scarce material factors of production. He appraises it according to the principles he applies in the appraisal of all other goods. The height of wage rates is determined on the market in the same way in which the prices of all commodities are determined. In this sense we may say that labor is a commodity. The emotional associations which people, under the influence of Marxism,...

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Some Things Never Change

by | Nov 11, 2024 | ,

"The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt.” --John Philpot Curran, Irish statesman, 1790

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TGIF: That Was the Election that Was

TGIF: That Was the Election that Was

by | Nov 8, 2024 | , , , , , ,

One can be overjoyed by the repudiation of a candidate without being pleased with the opposing candidate's victory. This election is an occasion for that reaction. An American (or anyone actually) is perfectly justified in taking pleasure in Kamala Harris's humiliating defeat while anguishing over the intemperate Donald Trump's impressive win. As I like to say, every election has good and bad news: the losers lost but the winners won. That's where I am today if anyone cares to know. I rejoice at the defeat of Harris and virtually all that she stands for, while also realizing that some of the...

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Right Diagnosis, Wrong Prescription

by | Nov 7, 2024 | ,

The populist Sanders-left (which is actually broader because it includes Tucker Carlson and others called rightists) is partly correct and partly incorrect about what happened to the Democrats last Tuesday. They say correctly that the Democrats failed because they have taken non-elites for granted, patronizing and subsidizing some (minorities, for example) and disparaging and penalizing others (regular bourgeois working Americans of both sexes and all skin tones and ethnicities). This is usually stated as "The Democrats have betrayed the working class." This is good as far as it goes, but it...

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TGIF: Election Reflections

TGIF: Election Reflections

by | Nov 1, 2024 | , , , , , ,

The history of the human race is one long story of attempts by certain persons and classes to obtain control of the power of the State, so as to win earthly gratifications at the expense of others. --William Graham Sumner, 1883 For advocates of individual liberty, this has got to be the most depressing election in many years. (Well, at least since 2020, the most depressing election since 2016.) Full, true, laissez-faire liberalism is far from public discussion. Kamala Harris ("I'm smart and I care"), the mush-mouthed empty suit, and Donald Trump ("I'm Trump!"), the narcissistic, militantly...

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