The Romans had a radical view of freedom, unique in the world and history, that few today can comprehend. The founding fathers understood it to some degree, they being the beneficiaries of the Spanish scholastics who recovered our ancient heritage from their Islamic betters, and passed it on through France to Scotland and England.
The Romans exercised very little direct control, peoples all over the known world welcomed the Romans as administrators. The Romans were invited into Palestine, they did not conquer it, although they eventually levelled it. England built its empire on freedom, and Thomas Sowell notes that USA blacks who emigrated from English territories ended up the wealthier segment of blacks in USA, and those blacks who emigrated from French territories ended up the poorer segment in USA. The English shared power and offered freedom, the French do not share power with the locals. (Slave rebellions were under French rule).
There are many self-proclaimed libertarians, some of which actually subscribe to the radical Roman model that is the experiential basis for libertarianism, but very often people claiming to be libertarian are simply libertine. Libertarians argue for freedom short of force and fraud, and assume an ethical responsibility to others. The libertines argue for freedom, with no ethical standards. Since they both esteem freedom, confusion between the two ensues.
Objectivism, under leader Ayn Rand, is the home of the libertine ethic. They praise the "rugged individual" who is able to heroically achieve great things, and abjure government intervention. Here again, spurning government intervention sounds like libertarian. But there is a difference.
Here is her acolyte:
Wall Street Journal reports today:
More Americans work for the government than work in construction, farming, fishing, forestry, manufacturing, mining and utilities combined. We have moved decisively from a nation of makers to a nation of takers. Nearly half of the $2.2 trillion cost of state and local governments is the $1 trillion-a-year tab for pay and benefits of state and local employees.
The hard facts are few if any of these people do work that would be done outside of government, and certainly not in the way it is done inside of government, or at the cost of government. USA is the #1 in prison population in the world, 5 times China, 12 times Germany. Most of these people are nonviolent drug offenders, but prison is a huge growth industry in USA, so we have it. And gitmo. And Abu Ghraib.
A hard problem is as the economy crumbles under this dead weight, this majority will vote for government solutions, in their self-interest, and the government solution, in history, is war.
From the Wall Street Journal:
Dr. North poses a very good question: "What changed in 1800?" He is referring to the question that no economist has quite answered, that is how did we move from a world Julius Caesar would recognize in 1800 to a world no one could foresee today? Read his article to get oriented, and then here is my answer.
By luck of the draw, or the Grace of God, vast swathes of earth territory came under the aegis of people who had very little control. Anarchy abounded. Spontaneous order and freedom broke out everywhere, with stunning advancements in all fields. North has Northern Europe as the epicenter, but it is not exclusive to white protestants. Hong Kong is and always will be Chinese, and it is the last remaining edition of this freedom.
China is experiencing a similar event, where the ration of government to people is probably the lowest on planet earth. Yes China can effect some world-class crackdowns, in cities, and does occasionally, but China has no where near the control over its people that USA and western countries do over theirs.
Relative freedom is what happened in 1800, and that is our way out of this economic disaster. Just as Christianity receded to a few Irish monasteries in the dark ages, so freedom has receded to a few small places today.
I am reading Norman Cantor's Medieval History and came across a trend he points out from the violent 900s... as Europe began to organize, churchmen with large holdings (read the book to find out how they got them in the first place) would rent out lands the churchmen could not profitably work themselves to peasants. Cantor suggests this practice gave an idea to the dukes and kings, who in turn perfected the practice into enfeoffment. (I have his 1969 edition, which is not available on amazon, but his updated edition is. Read the reviews.)
Natural law says what you can work is yours. The flipside would be what you cannot work is not yours. That is to say if you have something to which you have title, and you cannot profitably work it, it is free to be homesteaded by someone who can. Now the law does not work that way, but perhaps it should.
We actually recognize people legally assuming unused real estate in USA property law, what we call adverse possession. Say you and I have contiguous lots, and one day I put a barn on your lot, which you cannot and do not use. I do not have your permission. Everyone can see what I am doing, and you should notice. Well after ten years (in most jurisdictions), that portion I am using is mine, it is not yours anymore. In fact, even if you continue to pay property taxes, it is not yours.
Adverse possession developed in common law to settle the problem of title disputes, it is not a means of land reform or redistribution. But why not use it as such? For example, banks are sitting on a large portion of 19 million empty homes in USA, make a law if you live in a house for a year under adverse possession, it is yours, free and clear. Of course this would introduce chaos, but we have chaos now. What it would do is allow taxpayers to get something for the bailout money we forked over on these houses, and lower property values and taxes possibly enough to clear the decks enough to restart the economy.
In a free market there is rarely any waste, anything left over to throw away. We have a relative free market in food in USA. When a steer goes in for slaughter, there is nothing left over. Every bit of the cow is sold off to somebody, for something.
When the government gets involved, externalities are charged off to the taxpayers. GE will not pay for any of the disaster in Sendai, the Japanese taxpayers and affected people worldwide will pay. In fact, GE pays no taxes whatsoever. In fact, they get billions in bailouts. The storage of spent fuel is a taxpayers problem. AS our cost, GE can design big nuke without figuring in the cost of spent fuel rods, which are dangerous form one million to six MILLION years. Absolute madness.
The mini-nukes have a spent fuel that is dangerous for 300 years, still long, but an improvement over a million years. A free market would make Toshiba include that cost in its price. Therefore, Toshiba would work to get that number down, or find some industrial use for the waste. In a free market we would likely have nuclear power, there would just be no nuclear waste.
In USA, since we have big govt/big business, Alcoa was able to avoid storing the dangerous flouride after making aluminum, it worked with public health depts and cities to put it in the drinking water.
As government workers say, "one solution to pollution is dilution." Right, dilute it into drinking water.
Here is an excellent quote from a Dr. Gary North article today :
We want you to pass laws against companies that offer lower-priced goods to buyers. Such offers reduce our profit margins. We want to maximize our net profit by keeping retail prices high. We cannot keep innovative forms out of the market, but you can. We want you to pass laws against the sale of goods unless these firms agree not to sell at prices lower than those set by our organization.
The public is being exposed to low-quality goods that put people in danger. If the legislature stands idly by, allowing inexperienced and unqualified producers to exploit the ignorance of the public, the common man will be exposed to serious risks. The best way to protect the public is to require all products to meet basic standards of quality, and to require all producers to be certified by law. The government should set basic standards and require all producers to meet them.
Because the by-product is used in weapons. What if nuke power plants were designed without that requirement? Why, they would be quite safe!
With the disaster in Japan, there has been a run on the muller tubes that are the guts of a geiger counter. A muller tubes is a gas filled cylinder that makes a clicking sounds as ionizing radiation passes through. It make the click click click sounds you hear when someone passes a wand over something tested.
Since govts are reticent about offering facts, people need to verify radiation levels on their own: in general such as in the air, and specifically, that mess of vegetables. Every maker in the world is sold out. Factories will not expand productions right now, because this disaster will pass, and what to do with the excess production capacity after the disaster?
The solution is price gouging.
People in Japan will pay an exorbitant amount for a geiger counter right now. How much? Well, a Japanese ebay would tell you. Say they go for $100 normally, and stores are selling them for $10,000 each on an auction site. The the whole world would know they are going for $10,000. At that price, the maker can see if he opens a second line, he can cover the cost of the second line with the sales of 1000 at $10,000. So he goes into production, and sells at an exorbitant price. Is he gouging?
A geiger counter will save lives. People have money, but a shortage of geiger counters. One geiger counter can get very busy in nuke disaster. The fellow who paid $10,000 for his may very well check 1,000 edibles, water, food, air, etc, and charge $10 a pop to the general public to test foodstuffs, and recover his cost in say a week. People will be glad to pay.
When the disaster has passed, the fellow can either put the geiger counter up for sale on ebay now, or save it for the next time a GE nuke fails, and make a killing off of it.
The first thing we need in a disaster is price gouging, it signals the demand, and organizes the means of production to solve the crisis. Let the people in the disaster decide of the price is too high, if the seller is doing something odious, let the consumers decide if they appreciate the effort after the disaster has passed.
Anti-gouging laws are counter-productive, and leaves people at the mercy of the government in a disaster, such as at Katrina in NOLA. The first responders in a disaster are the price-gougers, and they do more good than anyone else at relieving suffering.
When pensions won't cover anywhere near costs, when inflation is killing your ability to pay, to have a significant portion of your warehouse devoted to things people need and want will prove a great hedge. Organic tinned imported fresh butter will shoot up in price just as everything else does. And you can always trade butter for something you need if cash is not possible. It seems to me that a fundamental part of any asset allocation should be something devoted to self-employment. If and when things go more south, to have something to trade. Anyone with any money should be in some sort of business, too. Is it not true, that in addition to what investments you have, you also maintain a small business selling ideas? A renaissance in small business is not just a good idea, it is a part of the solution to our current woes.
A friend emails me to suggest we turn Seattle Teachers College into a money-maker along the lines of these USA accredited colleges, mere fronts for immigration scams. Too late. These kinds of things have gone on for decades, but only now are they being reported in the media. This means crackdown ahead.
STC is premised that in fact a crackdown is ahead, and about the only way to make money in education will be limited to... wait for it... providing an education. Imagine that!
As usual, read the comments for even better points than the msm writer is able to make.
We need a New Hong Kong in USA so innovative doctors can practice without harassment. The young doctor has is one of but many which would solve the problem of accessible health care crisis.