Voice For Liberty

Tag: Capitalism

  • Burton Folsom, writer on capitalism, to speak in Wichita

    Here’s a message from AFP-Kansas and the Flint Hills Center for Public Policy.

    Please join Americans for Prosperity-Kansas and the Flint Hills Center for Public Policy for a policy luncheon in Wichita next week, featuring noted author Burton Folsom

    Thursday, March 26, 12 p.m.
    Wichita Country Club, 8501 East 13th Street

    The luncheon costs $25 per person, or $185 per table of eight.

    Contact the Flint Hills Center at 316-634-0218, or by visiting www.flinthills.org, to make a reservation by Tuesday, March 24.

    Folsom has written several books, including most recently New Deal or Raw Deal? FDR’s Economic Legacy for America (Thresshold Editions, 2008), and The Myth of the Robber Barons: The Rise of Big Business in America. He is a senior fellow with the Mackinac Center for Public Policy as well as the Foundation for Economic Education.

  • Articles of Interest

    American Capitalism, Kansas budget, Phill Kline, corn

    Obama’s Radicalism Is Killing the Dow: A financial crisis is the worst time to change the foundations of American capitalism (Michael J. Boskin in the Wall Street Journal, by way of the Hoover Institution). “It’s hard not to see the continued sell-off on Wall Street and the growing fear on Main Street as a product, at least in part, of the realization that our new president’s policies are designed to radically re-engineer the market-based U.S. economy, not just mitigate the recession and financial crisis.” Starting wth overly-optimistic forecasts, President Obama’s budget has many problems. It does, however, dramatically expand the role of government, and that may be its true aim.

    New projections suggest Sebelius’ cuts not enough to balance the budget (Kansas Liberty) “New budget projections developed by Kansas Legislative Research may force legislators to either make deeper spending cuts, including possible education funding cuts, or raise taxes to ensure the state’s budget is balanced at the end of FY 2010. The new projections, unveiled late Wednesday, showed that spending cuts and other adjustments recommended by Gov. Kathleen Sebelius will not produce a balanced budget after all.” This is not too surprising, as the economy continues to deteriorate. The fact that Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius produces budget that don’t reflect economic reality is to be expected. See Kansas Governor Not Facing Reality of Budget Crisis.

    Are the ‘ethics charges’ against Kline a justice’s revenge? (Kansas Liberty) No ethics complaint, no charges, no complainant, no time frame — does this add up to revenge by Kansas Supreme Court Justice Carol A. Beier? Freelance journalist Bud Norman‘s first piece for Kansas Liberty explains.

    Where the Obesity Grows (Washington Post) George F. Will explains the problems that corn has caused for the American diet. Does the fact that Iowa plays an important role in presidential politics (through its early caucus) have anything to do with this? Now Iowa’s former governor is secretary of agriculture.

    Mystery surrounds release of letter from Kansas Attorney Disciplinary Administrator (Kansas Meadowlark) Intrigue surrounds former Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline. Earl Glynn explains, but tells how he was stymied in his attempt to obtain documents.

  • Some misunderstand what they criticize …

    But it doesn’t stop them.

    Over at the Kansas Jackass blog, it appears there’s been a discussion about libertarianism and how it doesn’t work. I think however, that the Jackass and some of his sycophants are misinformed about a few things.

    Here’s something the Jackass wrote: “The Libertarian views the world like nature. If a lion eats a zebra, we shouldn’t interfere because that’s the way of nature.”

    This illustrates the Jackass’s lack of knowledge about being a libertarian, for one of the most important things about libertarianism is the nonaggression axiom. Quoting from Rothbard in chapter 2 of For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto

    The libertarian creed rests upon one central axiom: that no man or group of men may aggress against the person or property of anyone else. This may be called the “nonaggression axiom.” “Aggression” is defined as the initiation of the use or threat of physical violence against the person or property of anyone else.

    I would suggest that a lion eating a zebra is an act of aggression. Libertarians are opposed to violence like this.

    The Jackass also said, referring to libertarians, that he’s concerned about “the human affects of their philosophy.” But what is less human than government? As Rothbard says, from the same chapter:

    While opposing any and all private or group aggression against the rights of person and property, the libertarian sees that throughout history and into the present day, there has been one central, dominant, and overriding aggressor upon all of these rights: the State. In contrast to all other thinkers, left, right, or in-between, the libertarian refuses to give the State the moral sanction to commit actions that almost everyone agrees would be immoral, illegal, and criminal if committed by any person or group in society. The libertarian, in short, insists on applying the general moral law to everyone, and makes no special exemptions for any person or group.

    For good measure, the Jackass throws in the “we’re in this together” argument. He asks “What affect would the application of my theory have on the average person?”

    The answer is we wouldn’t be suffering under an oppressive government using paternalistic arguments to maintain its sense of necessity. Rothbard again:

    In recent decades, as the divine sanction has worn a bit threadbare, the emperor’s “court intellectuals” have spun ever more sophisticated apologia: informing the public that what the government does is for the “common good” and the “public welfare,” that the process of taxation-and-spending works through the mysterious process of the “multiplier” to keep the economy on an even keel, and that, in any case, a wide variety of governmental “services” could not possibly be performed by citizens acting voluntarily on the market or in society. All of this the libertarian denies: he sees the various apologia as fraudulent means of obtaining public support for the State’s rule, and he insists that whatever services the government actually performs could be supplied far more efficiently and far more morally by private and cooperative enterprise.

    How, may I ask, is reliance on the coercive force of government “human?”

  • Financial crisis caused by government

    Did the “excesses” of capitalism cause the current financial crisis? First, we really don’t have capitalism in the United States, at least not any reasonable semblance of laissez faire capitalism, as explained in my post The Myth that Laissez Faire Is Responsible for Our Present Crisis, based on the work of Professor George Reisman.

    The Wall Street Journal article How Government Created the Financial Crisis: Research shows the failure to rescue Lehman did not trigger the fall panic explains more in these excerpts:

    Many are calling for a 9/11-type commission to investigate the financial crisis. Any such investigation should not rule out government itself as a major culprit. My research shows that government actions and interventions — not any inherent failure or instability of the private economy — caused, prolonged and dramatically worsened the crisis. … The realization by the public that the government’s intervention plan had not been fully thought through, and the official story that the economy was tanking, likely led to the panic seen in the next few weeks. And this was likely amplified by the ad hoc decisions to support some financial institutions and not others and unclear, seemingly fear-based explanations of programs to address the crisis. What was the rationale for intervening with Bear Stearns, then not with Lehman, and then again with AIG? What would guide the operations of the TARP? … Massive responses with little explanation will probably make things worse. That is the lesson from this crisis so far.

  • Leave the New Deal in the history books

    Saturday’s Wall Street Journal contains an editorial (Leave the New Deal in the History Books) that contains a summary of the effect of the New Deal:

    President Roosevelt came to office much as Barack Obama will, shouldering an economic crisis that began under his predecessor. In 1933, Roosevelt’s first year, unemployment hit nearly 25%, as people lost jobs and homes in towns across the country. Believing that government played a key role in restarting growth, FDR, within his first 100 days as president, created an alphabet soup of new agencies that mandated actions or controlled public spending and impacted private capital flow within the U.S. economy.

    At first, it seemed to be working. After four years of FDR’s policies, joblessness declined to 14.3% — still very high but heading in the right direction. Then things turned for worse again: By the fall of 1937, the U.S. entered a secondary depression and unemployment began to rise, reaching 19% in 1938.

    By 1939 Roosevelt’s own Treasury secretary, Henry Morgenthau, had realized that the New Deal economic policies had failed. “We have tried spending money,” Morgenthau wrote in his diary. “We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. … After eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started. … And an enormous debt to boot!”

    Mark Levey, the author of this editorial, argues that New Deal spending programs and higher taxes prolonged the Great Depression. Government “work” programs don’t work.

    What should we do? Mr. Levey says: “The quickest way to strengthen the credit system and begin the end of this crisis is to get money into the economy for true job creation, and not into government work programs. The way to do this is to slash taxes. … Capital flows would be in the hands of those who are driven to build businesses and permanent jobs efficiently instead of pushing that capital through a government pipeline with endless amounts of friction.”

  • The bailout reader

    The events taking place in the financial market offer an illustration of the soundness of the Austrian theory of money, banking, and credit cycles, and Mises.org, which has long warned of precisely the scenario playing itself out today, is your source not only for analysis of these events but also the economic theory that helps explain what is happening and what to do about it. There are many thousands of articles available, and also the full text of thousands of books as well as journal articles.

    The Bailout Reader at the Ludwig von Mises Institute continues to be the best place to learn about the economics behind the current crisis.

  • Global warming rope-a-dope

    Walter Williams reports that the science behind global warming is not as solid as alarmists and zealots present it to be.

    The scientists, not environmental activists, include Ivar Giaever, Nobel Laureate in physics, who said, “I am a skeptic. … Global warming has become a new religion.” Kiminori Itoh, an environmental physical chemist, said warming fears are the “worst scientific scandal in the history. … When people come to know what the truth is, they will feel deceived by science and scientists.” … Atmospheric physicist James A. Peden, formerly of the Space Research and Coordination Center in Pittsburgh, said, “Many [scientists] are now searching for a way to back out quietly [from promoting warming fears], without having their professional careers ruined.”

    The problem is, as Williams says: “The global warming scare has provided a field day for politicians and others who wish to control our lives. After all, only the imagination limits the kind of laws and restrictions that can be written in the name of saving the planet.” And once laws are in place, Williams says, they’re very difficult to remove, no matter how strong the evidence is of their harm.

    Global warming alarmists pursue their agenda with zeal, and usually with no consideration as to the harmful effects of their policies. If uncontrovertible evidence that global warming is a mistake were to appear, would it make any difference to them? Of course not. Their crusade, which in reality is a thinly-disguised campaign against capitalism, would continue.

    For Dr. Williams’ column, see Global Warming Rope-a-Dope.

  • I, Pencil turns 50!

    The Foundation for Economic Education has a new version of I, Pencil to celebrate its 50th anniversary. Click here to view the announcement and read this short book.

    I’ve written about I, Pencil in the past.

    I, Pencil is one of the most important and influential writings that explain the necessity for limited government. A simple object that we may not give much thought to, the story of the pencil illustrates the importance of markets and the impossibility of centralized economic planning.

    The size and scope of government, both at the national and local level, has been growing. Now our country is entering a period where the possibility of even larger and more intrusive government, growing faster than it has been, is very real. Those who love liberty must keep principles like those illuminated in I, Pencil at the forefront of debate.

  • Jeff Fluhr decided

    A few weeks ago in the post Jeff Fluhr’s Decision I wrote that the the new president of the Wichita Downtown Development Corporation had a choice to make: “Mr. Fluhr needs to decide if he’s on the side of open and transparent government, or whether he’s in favor of crony capitalism and the good ol’ boy network.”

    When Mr. Fluhr testified at yesterday’s Sedgwick County Commission meeting, I learned the answer. It’s crony capitalism, all the way.

    Background: As defined by Wikipedia, “Crony capitalism is a pejorative term describing an allegedly capitalist economy in which success in business depends on close relationships between businessmen and government officials. It may be exhibited by favoritism in the distribution of legal permits, government grants, special tax breaks, and so forth.”