Voice For Liberty

Tag: United States government

  • The Myth that Laissez Faire Is Responsible for Our Present Crisis

    Professor George Reisman contributes the excellent (and lengthy) article The Myth that Laissez Faire Is Responsible for Our Present Crisis. I’ve had the distinct honor of attending a number of Professor Reisman’s lectures at the Ludwig von Mises Institute, and I’m slowly working my way through his monumental book Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics. Here’s a few excerpts from this article:

    “Laissez-faire capitalism is a politico-economic system based on private ownership of the means of production and in which the powers of the state are limited to the protection of the individual’s rights against the initiation of physical force.”

    Then Professor Reisman lists some of the ways in which our present system is far removed from anything resembling laissez-faire capitalism:

    The utter absurdity of statements claiming that the present political-economic environment of the United States in some sense represents laissez-faire capitalism becomes as glaringly obvious as anything can be when one keeps in mind the extremely limited role of government under laissez-faire and then considers the following facts about the present-day United States: 1. Government spending in the United States currently equals more than forty percent of national income … 2. There are presently fifteen federal cabinet departments, nine of which exist for the very purpose of respectively interfering with housing, transportation, healthcare, education, energy, mining, agriculture, labor, and commerce … 3. The economic interference of today’s cabinet departments is reinforced and amplified by more than one hundred federal agencies and commissions … 4. the Federal Register contained fully seventy-three thousand pages of detailed government regulations. This is an increase of more than ten thousand pages since 1978, the very years during which our system, according to one of The New York Times articles quoted above, has been “tilted in favor of business deregulation and against new rules.” 5. And, of course, to all of this must be added the further massive apparatus of laws, departments, agencies, and regulations at the state and local level.

    What this brief account has shown is that the politico-economic system of the United States today is so far removed from laissez-faire capitalism that it is closer to the system of a police state. The ability of the media to ignore all of the massive government interference that exists today and to characterize our present economic system as one of laissez faire and economic freedom marks it as, if not profoundly dishonest, then as nothing less than delusional.

    Then, under the heading “Government Intervention Actually Responsible for the Crisis:”

    Beyond all this is the further fact that the actual responsibility for our financial crisis lies precisely with massive government intervention, above all the intervention of the Federal Reserve System in attempting to create capital out of thin air, in the belief that the mere creation of money and its being made available in the loan market is a substitute for capital created by producing and saving. This is a policy it has pursued since its founding, but with exceptional vigor since 2001, in its efforts to overcome the collapse of the stock market bubble whose creation it had previously inspired.

    I could go on for some time with more quotes from this article, but it is well worth reading the entire piece. Please do so at The Myth that Laissez Faire Is Responsible for Our Present Crisis.

  • What We’re Learning About Ourselves

    “Soon this depressing campaign will be over, and we can reflect on what we learned from our two-month introduction to Sarah Palin. Clearly, it is more than we would have ever wished to know about ourselves.”

    “First, there turns out to be no standard of objectivity in contemporary journalism. … Second, there does not seem to be much left of feminism any more. … Third, from the match-up of Joe Biden and Sarah Palin, we discovered that our media does not know anything about the nature of wisdom — how it is found or how it is to be adjudicated.”

    As the quotes above reveal, it’s not a pleasant picture at National Review Online: An Instructive Candidacy: What Sarah Palin taught us about ourselves.

  • Beyond Bailouts Is Recommended

    I recommend BeyondBailouts.org as a place to learn about the current situation in our financial markets. From their site:

    BeyondBailouts.org is a joint venture of the National Taxpayers Union (NTU) and Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI). The purpose of the website is to educate about government’s role in our current financial difficulties, suggest reforms that address those root causes, and provide a clearinghouse for the latest analysis of the financial crisis. But most of all, it’s an outlet for Americans to contact their Members of Congress and the Administration to express their frustration.

  • Firms that made wrong decisions should fail

    So says Anna Schwartz. She co-authored, with Milton Friedman, A Monetary History of the United States. She has insight into what’s going on right now. Read the Wall Street Journal’s Weekend interview Bernanke Is Fighting the Last War.

  • John Stossel’s Politically Incorrect Guide to Politics

    Be sure to view all four parts. It’s very good. Click here for part one.

  • Photos from AFP Defending the American Dream Summit

    Photographs taken today at the Americans For Prosperity Defending the American Dream Summit in Washington, DC. I am the photographer, except for one photo in which I am the subject.

    Click here for the photos at Picasa Web Albums.

  • 1,000 to Protest Attack on Free-Market Principles at U.S. Capitol

    I am one of these people!

    Amidst Market Unrest, Americans for Prosperity Gathers Citizens to Protest Big-Government Power Grab

    WASHINGTON – About 1,000 citizens will gather in front of the U.S. Capitol on Friday to participate in a free-market call to arms by the grassroots group Americans for Prosperity (AFP). Amidst market uncertainty, and just weeks away from a crucial election, the crowd of citizens from 38 states around the nation will protest a looming big-government power grab and rally to the defense of free-market, limited government principles. The rally will kick-off at 2:30 p.m. on Friday, October 10, in front of the Capitol reflecting pool at the Grant Memorial.

    “Big-government supporters are on the attack – the free market and our American way of life are the targets,” said AFP President Tim Phillips. “This rally is a call to arms for those who believe government is the problem, not a solution. The one-thousand citizens who will rally in front of the U.S. Capitol represent millions more Americans across the country who believe in free-market principles.”

    Who: Americans for Prosperity
    What: Rally to defend the free market, protest big government power grab
    When: 2:30 p.m.; Friday, October 10
    Where: Grant Memorial, in front of the Capitol reflecting pool

    Even as candidates and elected officials are busy blaming economic uncertainty on Wall Street “greed” and deregulation, the rally is part of AFP’s grassroots campaign to expose government policies that have ushered in market unrest and promote free-market solutions. The citizens participating in the Capitol Hill rally will also attend AFP Foundation’s October 10-11 Defending the American Dream Summit at the Marriott Crystal Gateway — the nation’s largest gathering of free-market conservatives committed to changing the policy landscape on issues such as taxes, spending, and unfettered markets. Americans for Prosperity is a co-sponsor of the Summit. Visit www.DefendingtheDream.org for a full agenda.

    “We are standing together to send a powerful message that free markets and pro-growth economic policies deliver the American Dream,” Phillips concluded. “Class warfare attacks are camouflage for a far-left, big-government agenda that will shut down our economic engines. Our rally will send a compelling reminder to lawmakers of the belief in more limited government, low taxes, and less spending, shared by millions of Americans.”

  • Earmarks are (not) OK

    In a Wichita Eagle letter, writer Prem N. Bajaj of Wichita makes the case that Earmarks are OK. But only by tortured reasoning, in my opinion.

    First, he states: “Earmarks finance local projects that the community is unable to support.” I ask Mr. Bajaj this question: Where, if not from community, does money for earmarks come from? If you consider just two parties — your local community and the federal government — earmarks may seem like a great thing. Free money! Who doesn’t want that? But communities across the country lobby for and get earmarks too, and they may be represented by congressmen more skilled at obtaining earmarks than ours.

    At best, earmarks might be a wash, where each community receives earmarks equal to what it sends to Washington. But even if this were the case, why have Washington involved at all? Each community could keep its own money and spend it as it sees fit, without subjecting itself to the waste and corruption inherent in the present earmark process.

    Then he writes this: “The money comes from the taxpayers, and they are the beneficiaries.” Mr. Bajaj writes as though relying on government, rather than markets and the private sector, leads to greater wealth. In fact, the opposite is true. The incentives that government faces and responds to are not the same as the private sector, where waste and inefficiency are punished. Not to mention failing to supply what consumers really want to buy.

    A few quotes from economist Thomas Sowell seem appropriate at this time:

    “This was all before politicians gave us the idea that the things we could not afford individually we could somehow afford collectively through the magic of government.”

    “If you have been voting for politicians who promise to give you goodies at someone else’s expense, then you have no right to complain when they take your money and give it to someone else, including themselves.”

    “Mystical references to ‘society’ and its programs to ‘help’ may warm the hearts of the gullible but what it really means is putting more power in the hands of bureaucrats.”

    “The first lesson of economics is scarcity: There is never enough of anything to satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.”

  • Our problem is the manager of our money

    Judy Shelton makes this case in the Wall Street Journal editorial Loose Money And the Roots Of the Crisis:

    Think of it: Nothing is more vital to capitalism than capital, the financial seed corn dedicated to next year’s crop. Yet we, believers in free markets, allow the price of capital, i.e., the interest rate on loanable funds, to be fixed by a central committee in accordance with government objectives. We might as well resurrect Gosplan, the old Soviet State Planning Committee, and ask them to draw up the next five-year plan.

    “There are numbers of us, myself included, who strongly believe that we did very well in the 1870 to 1914 period with an international gold standard.” It would be easy to dismiss this statement as a quaint relic from Mr. Greenspan’s earlier days as an Ayn Rand acolyte; his article on “Gold and Economic Freedom” appears in her 1966 compendium “Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal.” But Mr. Greenspan said it, rather emphatically, last October on the Fox Business Network. He was responding to the interviewer’s question: “Why do we need a central bank?”

    Whatever well-intentioned reasons existed in 1913 for creating the Federal Reserve — to provide an elastic currency to soften the blow of economic contractions caused by “irrational exuberance” (and that will never be conquered, so long as humans have aspirations) — one would be hard-pressed to say that the financial fallout from this latest money meltdown will have less damaging consequences for the average person than would have been incurred under a gold standard.