Reader Mail #29

I liked this article on the Freeman, referred by Brad Spangler. Government itself is responsible for creating conditions of poverty.

There are many businesses that a poor person could run out of their home. For example, anyone with a kitchen could profitably cook food and sell it. Anyone with a car could run a part-time taxi service, such as only during rush hour. Government licensing requirements make it impractical for a poor person to spontaneously start a business. You can't legally sell food unless your kitchen meets certain standards and you pay a huge licensing fee. You can't operate as a taxi unless you pay a huge licensing fee.

If you want to start a business, the ideal way to spend only a few hours per week initially. Government licensing requirements place a huge overhead, making it very difficult for someone to start a part-time business.

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I liked this quote on Life, Love, and Liberty:

I swear, by my life and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.

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I liked this post on Check your Premises.

Look at what happened in the US: a group of influential politicians hijack the Articles of Confederation, impose their new, powerful federal government on the people and immediately attack anyone who rebels against their rule. The so-called “Civil War” was merely a continuation of this absolutist doctrine.

Contrary to popular belief, the US Constitution is actually the most clever enslavement technique ever.

Like that post said, the US Constitution was a money grab and power grab by a handful of politicians. A strong centralized government was able to put down the various tax revolts that occurred.

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This post on the Liberty Papers has an interesting bit:

Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.

Actually, it's theoretically possible that all the Mathematics you've learned is inherently contradictory. You can never be 100% sure that there's some contradiction in the laws of Mathematics that hasn't been discovered yet. In other words, it is *POSSIBLE* that true=false. There are other explanations that are more likely, but true=false should never be completely ruled out.

Anyone who says they are absolutely certain, with probability exactly equal to 1, that true != false, is IMHO insane. You can assign a truth value of 1-espilon to that statement, but never exactly 1.

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I was watching the new "American Gladiators". Like most remakes, it isn't as good as the original. I was offended to see one of the Gladiators named "Justice". Is that what most people think of "justice"? Justice is a big muscular guy that goes around beating up people?

On the other hand, there was a Gladiator named "Militia", which is an interesting name choice.

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I liked this post on Techdirt about the problem with digital watermarks. With digital watermarking, it is possible to individually tell the difference between each watermarked copy. This way, if someone makes an "illegal" copy, you know who had the original. (I put "illegal" in quotes, because intellectual property isn't a legitimate form of property.)

The problem is that you could suffer a HUGE claim if you lose your iPod and the criminal puts your files up on a filesharing site. If you are in possession of something digitally watermarked, you are facing a potential huge liability if it is stolen from you.

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I liked this post on the Libertarian Alliance Blog. The question is "Should corporations and their shareholders get limited liability protection?" My answer is "Of course not, duh!"

The founding fathers of the USA were extremely hostile to corporations. Most of the colonies were originally owned by British corporations.

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I saw someone wearing a "Bring 'free trade' to Africa T-shirt." I said "How about bringing free trade to the USA?"

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I liked this post on Scholars and Rogues. Why is it a bad idea to privatize services currently monopolistically provided by the government? Instead of having an unaccountable government monopoly, you have a private corporation with an unaccountable monopoly. In other words, nothing changes.

This only works if you *ALSO* remove the legal barriers to competition and the subsidies that corporations receive.

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I bought a gold-plated USB cable. I now have some physical gold in my possession!

Why gold-plated? Isn't silver-plated just as good? According to Wikipedia, silver is a better conductor electricity, but gold is more corrosion-resistant. Is corrosion that much of a risk for a USB cable I'm operating indoors?

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I liked this story on The Liberty Papers, but not for the reason the blog author gives. Do you remember those Duke lacrosse players who were falsely accused of rape. The prosecutor lost his law license. The Duke players sued the prosecutor for malicious prosecution and won a huge verdict. The prosecutor filed for bankruptcy protection.

On the one hand, lawyers deserve all the bad things that ever happen to them. He who lives by abuse of government power, dies by abuse of government power.

On the other hand, taking away a guy's career and life savings over one mistake is excessive. Unless the guy had a pattern of misconduct, it does not make sense to take away someone's career for one incident. This is an example of the Strawman Fallacy.

Lawyers need a license from the government in order to perform their job. Any lawyer must be continually afraid of offending the authorities, lest he lose his career.

For this reason, if an agorist is ever accused of tax evasion, he should defend himself sui juris (without a lawyer). A lawyer is "sworn to uphold the law". A lawyer is useless if your defense is "The law is illegitimate."

BTW, if you're ever falsely accused of a crime, I have the following advice. Make sure you have extensive eye contact with the jurors when testifying. If you do this effectively, it will be very hard for the jury to convict you if the charges are frivolous.

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I was looking at the CNN primary results webpage for the Republicans. The post a picture of the candidate next to the results. For all the candidates except Ron Paul, they show an airbrushed photo where the candidate is smiling. For Ron Paul, they show a non-airbrushed photo where he has a weird expression on his face.

This sort of subtle bias against Ron Paul is typical. For this and many other reasons, elections are not a valid means of establishing the legitimacy of a government.

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I liked this article on Techdirt. J. K. Rowling is using a copyright infringement claim to prevent someone else from writing a Harry Potter summary book.

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I liked this post on Overcoming Bias. It's about Internet trolls who think they're experts when they really know nothing. It identifies a troll behavior pattern:

• a lack of buy-in to the list philosophy or values
• generally low level of activity, with sudden spurts of interaction ...
• a mixture of friendly posts with a confrontational style of interaction
• the use of provocative language and sweeping generalizations ...
• a lack of in-depth understanding of the topic

Troll like to pick fights with "weaker" opponents and ignore stronger ones.

I wonder: Do some people consider someone who says "Taxation is theft!" to be a "weak" opponent? After all, "Taxation is theft!" is obviously false, according to "conventional wisdom". Similarly, someone arguing "The Federal Reserve is Evil" appears to be, by default, a fool.

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I liked this post on American Awakening. "Planned Parenthood" is essentially a population control technique. It helps make sure that the poorest people don't have many children.

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Redpillguy says:

You may find this interesting.

http://perfecteconomy.com/

That was somewhat interesting. I'd seen it before. They're still short of the true correct conclusion: "Who needs a government at all?"

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Blogger really should let you enter arbitrary text strings in the "time and date" field.

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Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "The Debate Ceiling Scam":

I still do not understand how private security firms (hired guns), landlords, warlords could not emerge and seize power without resistance in a anarchist society. The guy who can hire the most men and weapons would be the most powerful authority?

That has already happened. A group of people have seized an absolute monopoly of violence and political authority. Free market competition will prevent such a situation from occurring. Enslaving people via violence is actually incredibly unprofitable.

Could a free market degenerate into a monopoly again? Yes. Would it be likely? I think not. There *NEVER* has been a true free market in an agricultrual society. There always was a king/warlord/invader.

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "The Debate Ceiling Scam":

I got that gem from majorityrights.

Are you referring to the above comment?

I don't consider a university-funded discussion of politics to be impartial or useful. Of course a red market employee will say "government is necessary". What else would you expect them to say?

Ineffabelle has left a new comment on your post "Reader Mail #28":

You wrote "You don't see all the productive jobs these people would be doing instead, if they didn't have to keep fixing infrastructure. Remember, when you "create a job" via taxation, theft, or waste, you're taking away other productive work that person would have done." I would add the sentence "In a free market".
In an oligopolistic fasco-capitalist market, there is a relatively fixed number of opportunities to create wealth through the oligopoly. So this kind of "churning" is a sort of welfare program for people who would otherwise be unemployed in an oligopolistic market. This is explicitly a part of the Keynesian program.

Assuming a non-free market, "creating work/waste" can be productive. In the current economic system, a certain amount of poinless jobs are needed to ensure that there is enough work for the average person to do. These pointless jobs help circulate money to the poor people.

A truly free market would be a better arrangement for almost everyone.

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "The Real Nazi Threat":

There is another interpretation of Hitler...that he was allowed by the bankers to rise and create a war...because wars can benefit bankers, they can alter social conditions and remove impediments to their interests.

see: http://hitlerdvd.com/

Yes, I've read about that explanation also. I liked "Hitler was using a sound monetary system, therefore he was evil".

redpillguy has left a new comment on your post "The Real Nazi Threat":

Controlling both sides of the debate is a standard CFR trick. Here's an interesting documentary on the mass media and the CFR which controls them:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6632255652046262625

Seemingly "anti establishment" people are members of the CFR, the Bilderberg group, or both, or are known to be "insiders". For example, Bill Moyers who made the scathing docu "Buying the War" and Jim Lehrer, are CFR members. Noam Chomsky, a leftie anti-corporatist, worked with Henry Kissinger in their younger days to establish a "grassroots" commie movement. And of course, the CFR is populated with both Republicans and Democrats.

I've heard about that as well. There really are only two sides to the debate, from my point of view. If the question is "Should there be a government?", there are only 3 possible answers: 'Yes', 'No', or 'Maybe'. All mainstream information sources have an implied "Yes, there should be a government" hidden assumption.

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "The Real Nazi Threat":

Exactly the same theat as that posed by the Iranians. Note the comparisons to Hitler.

Iran is one of the few countries that uses a sound monetary system, from what I've read. Perhaps that's the reason they're such a high priority for elimination?

TZ has left a new comment on your post "The Real Nazi Threat":

Well done FSK.
I think your analysis of the German situation is very acurate.

As a double benefit to the Owners of the World, Social Credit and Monetary Reform were hot topics in most of the Commonwealth countries at the time, and the war certainly put an end to that direction of public interest too.

Score:
International Finance 1
Reality Economics 0

Even if corrupt forces cause the world to use "corrupt economics" that does not discredit the existence of "True Economics".

BTW, what do you mean by 2+2=7?

I was sick when I was thinking 2+2=7. At the time, it seemed to be the simplest explanation consistent with my observations.

Try and convince me that 2+2!=7. I'm aware of the usual "proof" that 2+2=4, but you can't ever be exactly 100% sure there isn't a hidden contradiction somewhere.

CK has left a new comment on your post "The Real Nazi Threat":

Dr. Prof Hjalmar Schacht seems to be the person who took Germany from being a basket case in 32 to a juggernaut by 38. It appears that he was in control of Nazi economic policy during that period.
Here is a wikpedia on him
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hjalmar_Schacht

That's believable. The true work was done by one of Hitler's advisors, instead of Hitler himself.

Anthony has left a new comment on your post "Hyperinflation - Could it Happen in the USA?":

Hyperinflation is a scary scenario, but that's why I'm buying gold as fast as my college kid's budget will allow.

That's a reasonable hedge. Silver also works. Remember: With a gold or silver investment, your inflation-adjusted return should be 0% minus transaction costs and storage costs.

Peter T. has left a new comment on your post "Real GDP Growth Has Been Negligible Since 1990":

What sense does it make to use money supply as an index for inflation? None I think. It seems natural and sensible for money supply to increase roughly proportionally to GDP. Therefore by deflating GDP growth by money supply growth it would be expected to get a result of approximately zero.

Even though I'm sick, I can still identify pro-State trolls. If the uninflation-adjusted GDP grows in lockstep with the money supply, that means real GDP is constant. The CPI is biased and understates the true inflation rate. That's the reason it's correct to use money supply instead of the CPI. I don't even use M3, which is no longer published. I use M2, which doesn't include all of the foreign dollars and large-denomination CDs.