About theartfuldilettante

The Artful Dilettante is a native of Pittsburgh, PA, and a graduate of Penn State University. He is a lover of liberty and a lifelong and passionate student of the same. He is voracious reader of books on the Enlightenment and the American colonial and revolutionary periods. He is a student of libertarian and Objectivist philosophies. He collects revolutionary war and period currency, books, and newspapers. He is married and the father of one teenage son. He is kind, witty, generous to a fault, and unjustifiably proud of himself. He is the life of the party and an unparalleled raconteur.

The Freedom of Production and Trade under Capitalism (Part 3 of 10

Posted on April 18, 2023 by theartfuldilettante

TRADE

The Freedom of Production and Trade Under Capitalism (Part 3 of 10)

BY GEORGE REISMAN | APR 14, 2023

This article is excerpted from chapter 20 “Toward The Establishment of Laissez-Faire Capitalism” from George Reisman’s Capitalism: A Treatise On Economics (1996). See the Amazon.com author’s page for additional titles by Dr. Reisman.

The establishment of the freedom of production and trade implies the abolition of all government interference with production and trade. It implies, for example, the abolition of all labor legislation, licensing laws, the antitrust laws, and zoning laws. It implies the abolition of virtually all of the alphabet agencies. It also implies the freedom of international trade and migration.

An important principle that I think we should adopt in fighting for the freedom of production and trade is to show how its establishment would enable individuals to solve their own economic problems. For example, there are few more serious economic problems than mass unemployment. As we have seen, this problem is the result of the government restricting the freedom of individuals to offer and accept the lower wage rates that would make full employment possible. The restrictions are in the form of minimum-wage laws, prounion legislation, unemployment insurance, and welfare legislation. Abolishing such legislation and establishing the freedom of production and trade should be presented as the solution to this problem–as a solution that would enable the voluntary, self-interested actions of individuals to establish the terms on which everyone seeking employment could find it.

In the same vein, we must take the initiative in calling for a widening of economic freedom as the solution to the problems the United States is encountering in international trade. We must show that the inability of major American industries to compete with foreign goods is the result of government intervention, and that the remedy is not the imposition of further intervention, in the form of tariffs or quotas, but the repeal of existing intervention. For example, prounion legislation causes artificially high wage rates and holds down the productivity of labor, thereby causing an artificially high level of costs for American manufacturers. The tax system and inflation have prevented the introduction of more efficient machinery, and thus have also contributed to the artificially high costs of American manufacturers, as have numerous government regulations. Such intervention should be the target of campaigns for repeal. Obviously, this would be a fertile area for the writing of books and monographs demonstrating the general principle in terms of the specific conditions of individual industries.

Similarly, the freedom of production and trade should be presented as the means of sharply reducing the cost of housing, thus making it possible for many more people to afford decent housing. The abolition of prounion legislation, building codes, zoning laws, and government agencies that withdraw land from development (such as the California Coastal Commission) would all serve to reduce the cost of housing, as would the abolition of property taxes that support improper government activities. (As should be clear from previous discussion in Chapter 10, all of these points, of course, apply to the solution of the problem of homelessness, which is greatly exacerbated by the imposition of government requirements concerning minimum housing standards.)

The freedom of production and trade should also be explained as the means of sharply reducing the cost of medical care. As explained in Chapter 10, under present conditions the government restricts the supply of doctors and the number of hospitals through licensing. Its solution for the consequent inability of many people to afford medical care is then to pour more and more public money into subsidizing their medical bills. The effect of the government’s spending programs is to bid the price of medical care ever higher, progressively substituting new, ever higher income victims for previous victims just below them who are added to the subsidy rolls–and, of course, to reduce the quality of medical care for all groups. The obvious real solution is to end government interference in medical care and thus to make possible the largest and most rapidly improving supply of medical care that free and motivated providers can offer.

In sum, our theme must be the opposite of the one people are accustomed to. Instead of it being what new programs the government must undertake to solve this or that problem, it must be what existing government programs and activities must be stopped, in order to allow individuals to be able to act in their own self-interest. Instead of the question being “What can the government do?,” we must explain what it must stop doing that it now does, and that has caused the problem complained of.

We need to show how abolition of the antitrust laws would mean more competition, greater efficiency, and lower prices; how abolition of the Environmental Protection Agency would mean more efficient production and thus a greater ability of man to improve the external material conditions of his life, i.e., his personal environment; how abolition of the Food and Drug Administration would mean the introduction of more life-saving drugs; how abolition of medicare and medicaid, the National Institutes of Health, and all other government interference with medicine would lower the cost and improve the quality of medical care.

While fighting against all existing violations of the freedom of production and trade, a further important principle to seek to establish is the exemption of all new industries from violations of the freedom of production and trade. This, in fact, was one of the principal methods by which economic freedom was established historically in England: the significance of the restrictions imposed by the medieval guilds was steadily reduced by the exemption of new industries from those restrictions.

Appropriate Compromises

It should be realized that if the immediate, total abolition of a given policy of government intervention cannot obtain sufficient support to be carried out, it is proper to work for programs of partial liberalization as temporary compromises–provided it is done explicitly and openly, in the name of the right principles, and no secret is made of our ultimate goals, which one is always prepared to defend and whose achievement serves as the standard and purpose of any temporary compromises.

Thus, for example, while openly advocating the full freedom of the housing industry, including the ultimate abolition of all building codes, one might participate in, or even launch, a campaign for a much more limited objective. Such an objective might be that the government be required to reduce the financial impact of meeting code requirements by an average of, say, X thousand dollars per house, and that it be guided by the advice of private insurance companies, mortgage lenders, and construction contractors in deciding which code requirements to modify or abolish in order to achieve this goal. Such a step would be helpful in reducing the cost of housing. A campaign for it, properly conducted, would help to make people aware that it was government intervention that was responsible for the high cost of housing and high costs in general. If carried out under the terms mentioned, a major value even of campaigns to accomplish such limited objectives would be that government intervention, not private business, would be made the target of restriction. Government force, rather than the profit motive of business, would come to be established in the public’s mind as the evil that must be controlled and progressively rolled back.

Similarly, if the immediate, full freedom of medicine cannot be achieved, then, as a temporary compromise–again, presented as such and in the name of the right principles–one might work to allow merely registered nurses and licensed pharmacists to begin practicing various aspects of medicine. Such liberalization would significantly mitigate the problem at hand and, at the same time, it would promote the essential principle that more freedom is the solution to economic problems. It would thus be an important step in the right direction.

The Case for the Immediate Sweeping Abolition of All Violations of the Freedom of Production and Trade

If the public possessed the necessary philosophic and economic understanding, the ideal procedure would be the immediate and simultaneous abolition of all interferences with the freedom of production and trade. This would be both on the principle of individual rights and on the principle that pressure-group warfare is inherently self-defeating. It is self-defeating in that whatever any one pressure group gains by violations of freedom made on its behalf, is reduced by what all other pressure groups gain by violations of freedom made on their behalf, and reduced by more. For example, what the workers in the automobile industry gain in higher wages resulting from the existence of an automobile workers’ union, they lose back in higher prices that they must pay for the products not only of all the unionized industries (which by itself may be very considerable), but also for the products of all industries enjoying protective tariffs or receiving government subsidies, all of which is the result of the underlying principle of government intervention. And everyone loses by virtue of the unemployment and overall reduction in the productivity of labor that result, which simply cause less to be produced and sold in the economic system. In essence what is entailed in pressure-group warfare is mutual plunder. Under such an arrangement, not only does each victim lose an amount equal to what the predator gains, but the victims produce less, with the result that there is less to plunder. The process can be pushed to the point where virtually nothing is produced and thus very little can be plundered–much less than could be obtained by honest work in a free society. The pressure-group marauders have long since carried things to the point where the real wages of the average worker are far lower than they could be.

The simultaneous abolition of as much government interference as possible would help to diminish the losses experienced by any one such protected group when its privileges were removed, and would make possible correspondingly greater gains, both in the long run and in the short run, for everyone. Thus, for example, when the wheat farmers lost their subsidy, they would be compensated by the lower prices resulting from the abolition of others’ subsidies as well, along with lower prices resulting from the abolition of protective tariffs, labor-union coercion, and minimum-wage legislation. The substantial increase in production that would result would operate further to compensate them, through a fall in prices greater than any fall in the average of incomes that might result.

The special importance of abolishing prounion legislation at the same time as minimum-wage legislation, should be obvious. This is necessary to prevent unemployed workers from having to crowd into a comparative handful of occupations at unnecessarily low wages, by opening all occupations to the freedom of competition.

* * *

It is important to understand that acceptance of the principle of laissez faire and the willingness to fight for that principle is the only safeguard of the public against the depredations of pressure groups. Each pressure group is in a position in which the comparatively small number of its members is able to have a potentially substantial gain. This gain comes at the expense of a relatively small loss on the part of each of the enormously larger number of people who constitute the rest of society. For example, if the members of a pressure group numbering, say, one hundred thousand people are to receive a subsidy of some kind, that subsidy may provide each of the recipients with $100,000 per year in additional income, while it costs each of the far greater number of taxpayers only a small fraction of that sum. In this case, the total cost of the subsidy is $10 billion (i.e., $100,000 x 100,000). If there are a hundred million taxpayers, the cost of the subsidy to the average taxpayer is just $100 per year (i.e., $10 billion divided by 100 million). The diffuse interest of the taxpayers in saving $100 per year each cannot remotely compare in strength with that of the highly concentrated interest of the pressure-group members who stand to gain $100,000 per year each. Accordingly, the pressure-group members are willing to make substantial financial contributions and to engage in intense lobbying efforts in order to get their way. Virtually no individual taxpayer, on the other hand, has a sufficient incentive to do anything to counter such assaults on the country’s treasury.

The taxpayers can acquire an incentive to protect themselves only when they view the depredations of each pressure group as a matter of the violation of a supreme political principle–namely, that of laissez faire–a principle whose violation by any one pressure group opens the gates to its violation by scores of other pressure groups. Taxpayers who would view the matter in terms of principle would recognize that pressure group warfare already costs them many thousands of dollars per year each in higher taxes and higher prices, and that there is no limit to its potential cost short of total financial ruin. If they could be led to view matters in this light, I believe that they could then easily be organized to overcome the pressure groups. By taking on all the pressure groups at once, they would have not only a powerful individual financial incentive, but they would also be able to play up all the inherent conflicts among the various pressure groups themselves, and thus obtain substantial support from within the ranks of the pressure-group members, a growing number of whom are also more and more harmed, the more widespread becomes the system of pressure-group warfare.

* * *

An appropriate vehicle for the establishment of the freedom of production and trade, whether all at once or gradually, would be the establishment of one last regulatory-type agency: the Deregulation Agency. Its powers would supersede those of any regulatory agency, the acts of state and local legislatures, and the prior legislation of Congress. In sharpest contrast to all regulatory agencies, however, its powers would be limited to the repeal of existing regulations and laws, including the narrowing of their scope in conditions in which considerations of political expediency prevented their total repeal. It would have no power to enact any new or additional regulation.

The mandate of this agency would be to ferret out all regulations of any federal, state, or local government department or agency, and all federal, state, and local laws, that violated the freedom of production and trade. Ideally, the agency would possess the power to render any or all of them null and void. As a minimum, the enabling legislation for the agency should require it, within a fairly short period of time, such as three years, to reduce the cost of government interference in the economic system as a whole by a minimum of 50 percent. (This figure would not apply to spending for social security, welfare, and public education, which would follow the less-radical reduction schedules explained below.) Further reductions of at least 2 percent per year would be achieved thereafter, until the full freedom of production and trade was established. If, for Constitutional reasons, the agency could not be given the power to supersede federal legislation, its tasks would include the annual submission to Congress of the necessary legislative proposals for the repeal of existing federal laws.

Copyright 1996 George Reisman. All rights reserved. The encyclopedic Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics is a required reference for every Capitalist’s library. Reisman’s treatise is now available in two volumes: Volume I (focuses on microeconomic issues) and Volume II (focuses on macroeconomic issues).

Articles in this Series

Toward the Establishment of Laissez-Faire Capitalism (Part 1 of 10)
Privatization of Property: Importance of Fighting on Basis of Principles (Part 2 of 10)
The Freedom of Production and Trade Under Capitalism (Part 3 of 10)
Capitalism and the Abolition of the Welfare State (Part 4 of 10)
Abolition of Income and Inheritance Taxes Under Capitalism (Part 5 of 10)
Establishment of Gold as Money (Part 6 of 10)
A Pro-Capitalist Foreign Policy (Part 7 of 10)
Separation of State from Education, Science, and Religion (Part 8 of 10)
A General Campaign at the Local Level for Laissez-Faire Capitalism (Part 9 of 10)
The Outlook for the Future of Capitalism (Part 10 of 10)

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GEORGE REISMAN

George Reisman, Ph.D., is Pepperdine University Professor Emeritus of Economics and the author of Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics. See his Amazon.com author’s page for additional titles by him. Visit his website capitalism.net and his blog atGeorgeReismansBlog.blogspot.com. Watch his YouTube videos and follow @GGReisman on Twitter.

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The Capitalist Society and a Political Program for Achieving it

Posted on April 18, 2023 by theartfuldilettante

unwillingness to acquire a sufficient combination of knowledge of political philosophy and economic theory, above all, of economic theory. Remnants of the mind-body dichotomy in their thinking prevent them from fully grasping the intellectual–indeed, the profoundly philosophical–value of a subject as “materialistic” as economics. To be successful, the advocates of capitalism must immerse themselves in the study of economic theory.

The Capitalist Society and a Political Program for Achieving It

The capitalist society we want to achieve is a society in which individual rights are consistently and scrupulously respected–in which, as Ayn Rand put it, the initiation of physical force is barred from human relationships. We want a society in which the role of government is limited to the protection of individual rights, and in which, therefore, the government uses force only in defense and retaliation against the initiation of force. We want a society in which property rights are recognized as among the foremost human rights–a society in which no one is made to suffer for his success by being sacrificed to the envy of others, a society in which all land, natural resources, and other means of production are privately owned. In such a society, the size of government would be less than a tenth of what it now is in terms of government spending. Most of the government as it now exists would be swept away: virtually all of the alphabet agencies and all of the cabinet departments with the exceptions of defense, state, justice, and treasury. All that would remain is a radically reduced executive branch, and legislative and judicial branches with radically reduced powers. To the law-abiding citizen of such a society, the government would appear essentially as a “night watchman,” dutifully and quietly going about its appointed rounds so that the citizenry could rest secure in the knowledge that their persons and property were free from aggression. Only in the lives of common criminals and foreign aggressor states would the presence of the government bulk large.

If these brief remarks can serve as a description of the capitalist society we want to achieve, let us now turn to a series of political proposals for its actual achievement. I group the proposals under seven headings: Privatization of Property, Freedom of Production and Trade, Abolition of the Welfare State, Abolition of the Income and Inheritance Taxes, Establishment of Gold as Money, Procapitalist Foreign Policy, and Separation of State from Education, Science, and Religion. Under each of these heads, I develop specific issues and programs each of which deserves to be fought for and which, in being fought for, would serve to promote the spread of our entire political-economic philosophy.

Copyright 1996 George Reisman. All rights reserved. The encyclopedic Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics is a required reference for every Capitalist’s library. Reisman’s treatise is now available in two volumes: Volume I (focuses on microeconomic issues) and Volume II (focuses on macroeconomic issues).

Hasn’t the Earth Warmed and Cooled Naturally Throughout History

Posted on April 18, 2023 by theartfuldilettante

Hasn’t Earth has experienced cold periods (informally referred to as “ice ages,” or “glacials”) and warm periods (“interglacials”) on roughly 100,000-year cycles for at least the last 1 million years. The last of these ice age glaciations peaked* around 20,000 years ago. Over the course of these cycles, global average temperatures warmed or cooled anywhere from 3° to perhaps as much as 8° Celsius (5°-15° Fahrenheit). It was partly through their attempts to understand what caused and ended previous ice ages that climate scientists came to understand the dominant role that carbon dioxide plays in Earth’s climate system, and the role it is playing in current global warming.

Over at least the past million years, glacial and interglacial cycles have been triggered by variations in how much sunlight reaches the Northern Hemisphere in the summer, which are driven by small variations in the geometry of Earth’s axis and its orbit around the Sun. But these fluctuations in sunlight aren’t enough on their own to bring about full-blown ice ages and interglacials. They trigger several feedback loops that amplify the original warming or cooling. During an interglacial, sea ice and snow retreat, reducing the amount of sunlight the Earth reflects; warming increases atmospheric water vapor, which is a powerful greenhouse gas; permafrost thaws and decomposes, releasing more methane and carbon dioxide; and the ocean warms and releases dissolved carbon dioxide, which traps even more heat. These feedbacks amplify the initial warming until the Earth’s orbit goes through a phase during which the amount of Northern Hemisphere summer sunlight is minimized. Then these feedbacks operate in reverse, reinforcing the cooling trend.

*Correction. An earlier draft mistakenly said that the last of these ice ages ended about 20 thousand years ago. The glaciation phase peaked around that time. The Grindlewald Fluctuation began in 1650 and ended in the early 20th century, and so ALL of our calculations reflect warming from that period.

NDAA.gov

Clarence Thomas—the Most Persecuted Black Man in America

Posted on April 17, 2023 by theartfuldilettante

Liberty Nation News

Or

The left revives its hatred.

By: Graham J NobleApril 17, 2023 – 7:30 amArticles, Opinion, Politics

| Opinion News Article

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BeyondWords

If there’s one man aside from Donald Trump who enrages the left so much that the establishment media just can’t let go of their obsession with linking him to ginned up scandals, it is Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Recently, the associate justice has come under considerable fire for having, over a period of many years, accepted “personal hospitality” from his billionaire friend, Harlan Crow. This “personal hospitality” came in the form of gifts and expensive vacations that Thomas did not report. Contrary to what is being claimed by those whose only real concern is the establishment of an ideologically driven progressive Supreme Court majority, none of that was illegal. Ethics or the rule of law plays no real part in the persecution of Clarence Thomas. He represents so much of what the left despises, both as a man and as a jurist.

Is It a Game or Law?

Democrat politicians and the wider progressive movement have made a big deal out of celebrating all things black. They have now even taken to spelling the word with a capital “B.” But there are few people in America for whom they harbor more disdain than black conservatives. This mindset was demonstrated perfectly by Joe Biden himself during a 2020 interview with radio host Charlamagne tha God. The presidential candidate cut the interview short, and Charlamagne suggested they set up a second round at a later date because “we’ve got more questions.” Mr. Biden responded, “You’ve got more questions? Well, I tell you what, if you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black.”

The clear implication – and it is arguably something that all progressives believe – is that blacks have a duty to vote Democrat; any who don’t should not even be considered black. Little wonder that Clarence Thomas, the second black man ever to serve on the Supreme Court and debatably the most conservative of all the nine current justices, is so intensely disliked by people on the left.

From Poverty to Pariah

Thomas was born in Pin Point, GA, in 1948. When he was two years old his father abandoned the family. When he was seven, he and his brother were sent to live with his grandfather. He later entered a seminary school as the only black student. Rising from poverty and racism to become an assistant attorney general in Missouri, chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), and then a judge on the US Court of Appeals in Washington, DC, Thomas seemed to be exactly the kind of figure the black community would consider a role model for its youth. But even back in those days, he was universally despised by the left and already had attracted a cadre of media critics.

Anita Hill (Photo by Leon Bennett/Getty Images)

Clarence Thomas has served on the Supreme Court since 1991. He was appointed by then-President George H.W. Bush. Thomas was heavily criticized for his work at EEOC because he wouldn’t aggressively promote affirmative action. “I don’t believe in quotas,” he once said. “America was founded on a philosophy of individual rights, not group rights.” Had he been white, Thomas would have been branded by the left as a racist. The fact that he was black was hugely inconvenient.

During his confirmation hearings for the Supreme Court, Thomas was faced with accusations of sexual harassment by Anita Hill. When Thomas was at the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, he hired Hill as a special assistant. Hill claimed Thomas began harassing her soon after she took the job. However, when Thomas went to the EEOC, Hill went with him. The alleged harassment was not physical in nature. Hill claimed Thomas repeatedly asked her out on dates and spoke with her graphically about sex. Thomas denied the accusations.

Hill testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Republicans subjected her to quite an ordeal and Hill, along with a lot of others, felt the committee chairman had failed to protect her from some inappropriate questioning. That chairman was none other than Sen. Joseph R. Biden.

The FBI investigated the matter and submitted its report to the committee and to the White House, which concluded that the accusations were “unfounded.” The committee sent Thomas’s nomination to the Senate floor without a recommendation after a 7-7 committee vote on whether to recommend Thomas’s confirmation. He was confirmed, anyway, by a narrow party-line vote.

Standing in Their Way

Clarence Thomas (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Arguably, this was the left’s most terrifying nightmare, a black conservative on the Supreme Court. Worse still, many years later, President Donald Trump gets the chance to nominate three more conservative justices. Since then, progressives and Democrat politicians have been desperate to regain control of the Court. Clarence Thomas is their main target.

A recent report from ProPublica on Thomas’s relationship with Harlan Crow has sent many media outlets into a frenzy. Washington’s most famous left-wing newspaper, along with NBC, MSNBC, The Los Angeles Times, Vanity Fair, The Boston Globe, and more, have run with the story. By not reporting the gifts from Crow, Thomas may have taken advantage of a loophole in the reporting rule for Supreme Court justices. Something that can be considered “personal hospitality” is not reportable.

Nevertheless, Democrats are having their “we’ve got him now” moment, just as they did with Trump’s two impeachments, the special counsel investigation into his alleged links to Russia – that never existed – and, more recently, with his indictment in Manhattan. There are calls to investigate Clarence Thomas, but no one should be laboring under the illusion that this is about the law or ethics. It is only about controlling the highest court in the land. Trump is fond of saying, “They are not after me, they are after you. I’m just standing in their way.” Clarence Thomas could make the very same observation.

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Privatization of Property: Importance of Fighting on Principle

Posted on April 17, 2023 by theartfuldilettante

POLITICS

BY GEORGE REISMAN | MAR 27, 2023

Privatization of Property: Importance of Fighting on Basis of Principles (Part 2 of 10)

The privatization of property is the most fundamental aspect of a procapitalist political program. In addition, its discussion is well suited to illustrate strategy and tactics applicable to the pursuit of all aspects of a procapitalist political program.

Privatization would ultimately require the sale of all government-owned lands and natural resources (with such limited exceptions as the sites of military bases, police stations, and courthouses), which presently include the greater part of the territory of many of the Western states and almost all of the territory of Alaska. It would entail the sale of TVA and all other public-power facilities, the sale of Amtrak and Conrail, the post office, the public schools, universities, and hospitals, the national parks, and the public highway system. It would also entail the establishment of the airwaves as private property and of private property rights under the sea and in outer space.

Those of us who work to establish capitalism must always be aware that the privatization of all of these things is part of our ultimate goal and we must be sure that all new adherents we gain fully understand and support the whole program of privatization, as well as all the other essential aspects of our program. No secret must ever be made of the full, long-range program and its goal of complete laissez-faire capitalism.

In the present situation, I believe that the most important aspect of privatization to concentrate on is that of the federal government’s vast landholdings, in particular where oil, coal, and timber are concerned. Closely connected with this should be the urging of the extension of private ownership to undersea mining operations. These aspects would make it possible to link the campaign for privatization with an assault on the environmental movement, which has replaced socialism as the leading threat to material civilization. Such linkage would provide the opportunity to reestablish the rightful connection between capitalism, on the one side, and science, technology, economic progress, and the supreme value of human life on earth, on the other side. This connection has been concealed for many years because of socialism’s usurpation of the mantle of progressivism. Linkage of the campaign for privatization with an assault on the environmental movement would be instrumental in reestablishing capitalism in the minds of the public as the system of progress and improvement advocated by men of reason, and the opposition to capitalism as the manifestation of ignorance, fear, and superstition. A further major aspect of the linkage should be a continual hammering away at the appalling state of contemporary education and the ignorance of its graduates, including almost all of today’s politicians, government officials, and journalists. The environmentalist and socialist opposition to capitalism should be portrayed as exactly what it is–a movement to return the world to the Dark Ages and a system of feudal privilege. Privatization of education, of course, should be urged as an essential aspect of the rebirth of education.

Other, narrower campaigns for privatization that might profitably be conducted early on would be ones for the privatization of the post office, the airwaves, and the New York City subway system. Postal service and cellular-telephone channels are already private to varying degrees. In these two cases, privatization would merely be a matter of carrying forward something that already exists to an important extent.

The New York City subway system would be a good candidate for an early privatization campaign, because it should be relatively easy to explain how the establishment of private ownership would create an incentive for the subway’s management to want to attract customers and thus to improve the cleanliness, safety, and efficiency of the system. Such a campaign would represent our going on the offensive in the country’s leading bastion of collectivism and making large numbers of collectivists aware that the comfort of their daily lives depended on the acceptance of the principle of private ownership of the means of production.

Each of these individual campaigns would, of course, have to be focused on its own particular set of concretes. But if, at the same time, they were also based on the principle of the economic superiority and moral rightness of private ownership, the cumulative effect would be to tend to establish that principle as correct in the public’s mind. Thus, provided they were conducted in the name of our basic principles and used as the opportunity for explaining those principles, success in such lesser projects would help in someday putting us in a position in which we could accomplish the objective of privatization completely.

We should certainly not expect that we would quickly win any of the campaigns for privatization, even the least among them. On the contrary, for a very long time we would almost certainly lose them all, over and over again. Indeed, we should expect for some time to be written off as cranks and even ridiculed for our views. Nevertheless, if we fight every concrete issue on the basis of correct abstract, general principles, our efforts will never be wasted. We will be successful even though we fail to win our particular objective of the moment. We will be successful because we will have propounded and helped to spread our principles. As a result, we will have gained new adherents, who will have been attracted to our principles. In addition, those who waged the campaign will have become more skilled in the defense of their principles. Thus, we will have gained the basis for conducting campaigns over the same issue, and over a wide variety of other issues, on a stronger foundation in the future. We will be embarked upon a policy of progress in intellectual influence analogous to the process of capital accumulation and economic progress.

If we are successful in making continual progress in our intellectual influence, we cannot fail ultimately to possess major intellectual influence and therefore correspondingly major political influence. To achieve the most rapid possible success, our objective should be to accomplish in terms of intellectual influence the kind of rate of progress achieved economically by Japan and other contemporary East Asian countries that began in the most humble material conditions. If we could succeed in that, then even though we may begin today in the most humble conditions in terms of size and influence, within a matter of decades we would become a major intellectual force.

As part of the same point, I want to stress that a major feature of every political activity we engage in is that it must provide easy opportunities for any new supporters it attracts to become exposed to our entire philosophy. The individual campaigns, such as the ones I have just described, must not only be waged on the basis of the appropriate abstract principles, but they must also provide ready exposure to the main books and publications of our philosophy. This does not mean that handing out copies of Human Action or Atlas Shrugged is the first or most prominent thing we do in such a campaign, but it does mean that we are very interested in making every receptive individual we meet aware of the existence of these books and in getting him to read them and the rest of our essential literature.

* * *

Articles in this Series

Toward the Establishment of Laissez-Faire Capitalism (Part 1 of 10)
Privatization of Property: Importance of Fighting on Basis of Principles (Part 2 of 10)
The Freedom of Production and Trade Under Capitalism (Part 3 of 10)
Capitalism and the Abolition of the Welfare State (Part 4 of 10)
Abolition of Income and Inheritance Taxes Under Capitalism (Part 5 of 10)
Establishment of Gold as Money (Part 6 of 10)
A Pro-Capitalist Foreign Policy (Part 7 of 10)
Separation of State from Education, Science, and Religion (Part 8 of 10)
A General Campaign at the Local Level for Laissez-Faire Capitalism (Part 9 of 10)
The Outlook for the Future of Capitalism (Part 10 of 10)

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Privatization of Property: Importance of Fighting on Basis of Principles (Part 2 of 10)

The privatization of property is the most fundamental aspect of a procapitalist political program

California Gasoline Price Gouging Bill Does Not Address Root Problem

California’s gasoline prices are higher than the rest of the country because of the state’s taxes and regulations.

Capitalism and The Exploitation of Third World Countries

To then accuse capitalism of causing the poverty — while in the very act of eradicating it — is to commit both a historical error and a profound injustice.

Victor Davis Hanson: The Biden 10-Step Plan for Global Chaos

Posted on April 16, 2023 by theartfuldilettante

Editor’s Note: Victor Davis Hanson has questions. Some of the answers are a bit interventionist for me, but the overall message is sound. Why? Because it’s clear the Biden-Harris regime is intending to take down the United States of America. For those who still need convincing, it’s easier to see it when you look at the situation as a whole rather than looking to each individual “mistake” and thinking that it’s due to “incompetence.”

The biggest mistake we could make as America First patriots is to assume the Biden-Harris regime is failing. By our standards, they are failing miserably. But if their goal is the destruction of our nation, which I believe it is, then their track-record so far is stellar.

Being a Democrat with bad policies is common. But when EVERYTHING an administration does takes us in the wrong direction, we have to question their motives. I believe they are working on behalf of the globalist elite cabal to bring for the “Liberal World Order.” To do that, they need the United States to drop to the level of the rest of the world… or disappear completely. With that said, here’s the article by Victor Davis Hanson:

Why is French President Emmanuel Macron cozying up to China while trashing his oldest ally, the United States?
Why is there suddenly talk of discarding the dollar as the global currency?
Why are Japan and India shrugging that they cannot follow the United States’ lead in boycotting Russian oil?
Why is the president of Brazil traveling to China to pursue what he calls a “beautiful relationship”?
Why is Israel suddenly facing attacks from its enemies in all directions?
What happened to Turkey? Why is it threatening fellow NATO member Greece? Is it still a NATO ally, a mere neutral, or a de facto enemy?
Why are there suddenly nonstop Chinese threats toward Taiwan?
Why did Saudi Arabia conclude a new pact with Iran, its former archenemy?
Why was Egypt secretly planning to send rockets to Russia to be used in Ukraine, according to leaked Pentagon papers?
Since when did the Russians talk nonstop about the potential use of a tactical nuclear weapon?
Why is Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador bragging that millions of Mexicans have entered the United States, most of them illegally? And why is he interfering in U.S. elections by urging his expatriates to vote for Democrats?
Why and how, in just two years, have confused and often incoherent President Joe Biden and his team created such global chaos?

Let us answer by listing 10 ways by which America lost all deterrence:

1) Biden abruptly pulled all U.S. troops from Afghanistan. He left behind to the Taliban hundreds of Americans and thousands of pro-American Afghans. Biden abandoned billions of dollars in U.S. equipment, the largest air base in central Asia—recently retrofitted at a cost of $300 million—and a $1 billion embassy. Our government called such a debacle a success. The world disagreed and saw only humiliation.

2) The Biden administration allowed a Chinese high-altitude spy balloon to traverse the continental United States, spying on key American military installations. The Chinese were defiant when caught and offered no apologies. In response, the Pentagon and the administration simply lied about the extent that China had surveilled top-secret sites.

3) In March 2021, at an Anchorage, Alaska mini-summit, Chinese diplomats unleashed a relentless barrage at their stunned and mostly silent American counterparts. They lectured the timid Biden administration diplomats about American toxicity and hypocrisy. And they have defiantly refused to explain why and how their virology lab birthed the COVID-19 virus that has killed tens of millions worldwide.

4) In June 2021, in response to Russian cyber-attacks against the United States, Biden meekly asked Russian President Vladimir Putin to at least make off-limits certain critical American infrastructure.

5) When asked what he would do if Russia invaded Ukraine, Biden replied that the reaction would depend on whether the Russians conducted a “minor incursion.”

6) Between 2021 and 2022, Biden serially insulted and bragged that he would not meet Muhammad bin Salman, the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, and one of our oldest and most valuable allies in the Middle East.

7) For much of 2021, the Biden administration made it known that it was eager and ready to offer concessions to re-enter the dangerous Iran nuclear deal—at a time when Iran has joined China and Russia in a new geostrategic partnership.

8) Almost immediately upon inauguration, the administration moved the United States away from Israel, restored financial aid to radical Palestinians, and both publicly and privately alienated the current Netanyahu government.

9) In serial fashion, Biden stopped all construction on the border wall and opened the border. During the 2019 Democratic presidential primary, Biden made it known that illegal aliens were welcome to enter the United States—some 6-7 million did. He reinstated “catch and release.” And he did nothing about the Mexican cartel importation of fentanyl that has recently killed over 100,000 Americans per year.

10) In the last two years, the Pentagon has embarked on a woke agenda. The army is short by 15,000 in its annual recruitment quota. The defense budget has not kept up with inflation. One of the greatest intelligence leaks in U.S. history just occurred from the Pentagon.

The Pentagon refused to admit culpability and misled the country about Afghanistan and the Chinese spy balloon flight. The current chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff called his Chinese communist counterpart and head of the People’s Liberation Army to advise him that the U.S. military would warn the Chinese if it determined an order from its commander-in-chief, former President Donald Trump, was inappropriate.

This list of these self-inflicted disasters could be easily expanded.

But the examples explain well enough why our emboldened enemies do not fear us, our triangulating allies judge us unreliable, and calculating neutrals assume America is in descent and too dangerous to join.

Yet without America, the result is a new Chinese order in which, to quote the historian Thucydides, “The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”

Article cross-posted from our premium news partners at The Epoch Times.

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Libertarians on the New Multipolar World: Why the U.S. Must Change

Posted on April 16, 2023 by theartfuldilettante

In my previous column, I discussed the views of what I dubbed as the “Hot-headed” faction of the “Anti-China Party” in the U.S., who believe that the conflict in Ukraine is hindering Washington from focusing on China. Meanwhile, as you may recall, the “Hot-headed” faction supports leaving the defense of Ukraine and Europe more broadly to European powers. I also mentioned that the “Hot-headed” faction is skeptical of European assistance in the event of a U.S.-China conflict.

The arguments put forth by the “Emergency” faction are also voiced by American Libertarians. However, unlike the “Hot-headed” faction, Libertarians do not want the U.S. to engage in foreign wars based on these arguments. According to Libertarians, who base their beliefs on the principles of the founding fathers of the U.S., the U.S. should not go out searching for monsters to destroy by venturing into foreign lands and seas.

Libertarians also believe that the U.S. should limit its defense spending and military aid to other countries. Senator Rand Paul is the strongest voice for Libertarianism in the U.S. Congress. Libertarians clash with strict Trump supporters on the issue of ending “endless wars.” They are also highly contentious with Neoconservatives and Globalists. According to Libertarians, neither “Ukraine” nor “Taiwan” are of any concern to U.S. national security. Libertarians, who emphasize that the U.S. is engaged in a “proxy war” with Russia in Ukraine, see the escalation of the conflict as too risky for the U.S. Libertarians, who argue that giving Ukraine the green light for NATO membership provokes Russia, believe that the U.S. must accept its role in starting the war, begin talks with Russia, and push Kyiv towards peace.

While strongly criticizing the occupation of Ukraine, Libertarians argue that American policymakers should approach this issue not as a global moral crusade, but as a European security issue. According to Libertarians, U.S. “Cold War/Atlanticist” policies have led Europeans to be lax about European security and defense. Washington should change its policy to force Europe to take the initiative.

According to Libertarians, warning that the Biden administration’s policy of weakening Russia will make Moscow more dependent on Beijing, the U.S. should not risk a nuclear war with Russia. The ultimate goal of the U.S. should be to integrate a peaceful Russia into the international system.

Libertarians also hold similar views on Taiwan and China. They emphasize that a conflict with China would drag East Asia into war, which would then continue to escalate, cause a global economic crisis, and even endanger Americans in their own country. Libertarians support Taiwan’s right to self-determination, but this support does not require the U.S. to risk a war with a nuclear power like China. According to libertarians, Taiwan is crucial enough for Beijing to take any risk. However, being more than 12,000 kilometers away from the US, Taiwan is not important for America’s security and direct defense. The libertarians point out that China’s acquisition of Taiwan will not make U.S. territories more vulnerable.

Yeni Safak

Totalitarianism through Your Local Bank

Posted on April 12, 2023 by theartfuldilettante

The federal government and the IRS are reportedly ordering banks to call and ask “customers” about their personal business. “Why did you withdraw that much? When are you planning to withdraw money again? What are you doing with the money?”

No rational business would ever do this to their customers. In a free, unregulated market it would be impossible. But when the government uses its power to instill monopoly control on all of the banks, then this is what happens.

It’s the beginning of what’s called social credit.

Communist China already has social credit. Totalitarian regimes have always done this kind of thing; but modern technology combined with government control of the banking industry, has raised it to a new level. I believe it’s already starting in America.

We all know what a credit score is for purposes of taking out loans, buying a house or buying a car. If you have a credit score of 700-800 or higher, it’s a reflection of the fact you pay your debts and are in pretty good shape, financially.

A social credit score is when an entity or agency seeks to evaluate the decisions you’re making; the values you hold; and your political, religious or otherwise philosophical kinds of attitudes and viewpoints. The agency (i.e. the government, either directly or acting through a “private” though highly regulated business, like a bank) scores you based on what IT considers to be desirable or undesirable.

These are none of the government’s business. But I believe it’s what’s behind the banks now doing this, since the banks would never be doing this without the pressure or consent of the federal government, who regulates nearly everything that a bank does.

I don’t wish to call out banks for this. I don’t wish to blame this on capitalism, profit or “greed” because those are not the offenders here. Like I said, in a free market this could never happen, not for long and not without your being able to easily find a bank who didn’t pry into your business like this.

The problem in America today is that the government, especially the federal government, is wildly and — in my view — irredeemably out of control. It’s beyond repair. The governors, mayors, “President” and permanent, one-party bureaucrats are drunk with the psychological equivalent of LSD, cocaine or heroin. The more they get, the more they abuse it. And the more horrible they become.

Protect yourself. Defend yourself. Dissent and passively resist wherever, whenever possible. Try to educate people in your families or lives who are still voting for these totalitarian sociopaths to stop doing so. It’s not an issue of left versus right; Republican vs. Democrat. It’s an issue of tyranny versus freedom.

Under the free republic that most of us still kind of assume we live under, the government is accountable to the people. The government is a means to the end of protecting the rights of the people — to their private property, to the values they choose to raise their children with, to their rights to freedom of speech, due process and to owning weapons of self-defense. NONE of these rights are honored or respected by today’s tyrants.

Government, increasingly, is acting like a criminal itself. You and I define criminals as fraudsters, thieves, rapists and killers. Increasingly, our government is acting and speaking like the criminal himself. And as for REAL criminals — they’re letting them go. Crime is rampant in big cities run exclusively by left-wing tyrants whose district attorneys are openly sending criminals back into the public while arresting or intimidating people who show up at a peaceful rally to see President Donald Trump, or who question that transgenderism is really a thing, or whether children should be given surgery (without parental consent) to alter their genitalia before they’re legally permitted to vote, join the military or have a cocktail.

It’s hard to imagine anything more sinister than today’s federal government (and many state governments) unless you start to conjure up images of 9/11 terrorists who in a similar (though temporary) way brought civilization to a halt. These Democratic Communists (and their RINO accomplices) are like terrorists with unlimited power, power that those 9/11 terrorists could only dream of holding.

Once you grasp this fact, you’ll have no problem when your bank starts calling you, at the behest of the IRS or other federal agencies, to find out what you’re spending your money on, and why.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

What Happens to a Country that Loses its Mind

Posted on April 11, 2023 by theartfuldilettante

To see biological males win “woman of the year” awards and others compete against women in sports, and at least one paid to promote sports bras, it’s obvious the American mind has slipped a few gears. But our current troubles are about more than celebrating what is clearly a mental illness that needs to be treated. We have lost our way almost entirely across the board.

The locus of our insanity, one could argue, is Washington, D.C. The federal government developed a habit long ago of spending beyond its means. But the foolishness has reached new levels.

The federal debt is heading to $31.7 trillion like a freight train at full throttle with no brakes. Spending is outpacing revenue by more than $1.5 trillion. Social Security is headed for collapse sooner than its appointed guardians had expected, but the collective vision among our “leaders” on the Potomac doesn’t go beyond the next election. So nothing is done.

Despite the obvious problems, the Democrats want to tax higher and spend more. The supply of vacuity seems endless.

Washington is also at the axis of weaponized government. Free speech is being crushed, dissent from the left’s political agenda is considered an imprisonable offense, and court rulings are to be ignored if they offend progressive sensibilities (yes, we know, two words that don’t belong together). The Democrats see the IRS not as just a revenue collector but also as a truncheon with which to discipline those who refuse to live under their boots. Parents who grouse at school board meetings? They are of course terrorists who must be watched.

It’s no coincidence that we’re living in riotous times. The damage seems to build with every news cycle. But to listen to the Democrats and their communications department, also known as the mainstream media, the only riot in U.S. history was on Jan. 6, 2021. In their twisted minds, rampaging, killing, burning, and looting in the name of George Floyd, or some imagined resistance to fascism, are just benign elements of mostly peaceful protests. Democrats have even contributed money to bail out the “protesters.”….

Issues and Insights

David Stockman on Imperial Washington: the New Global Menace

Posted on April 11, 2023 by theartfuldilettante

There is no peace on earth today for reasons mainly rooted in Imperial Washington — not Moscow, Beijing, Tehran, Damascus, Mosul or the rubble of what remains of Raqqa. Imperial Washington has become a global menace owing to what didn’t happen in 1991 (when the USSR collapsed). At that crucial inflection point, Bush the Elder should have declared “mission accomplished” and parachuted into the great Ramstein Air Base in Germany to begin the demobilization of America’s war machine.

So doing, he could have slashed the Pentagon budget from $600 billion to $250 billion (2015 $); demobilized the military-industrial complex by putting a moratorium on all new weapons development, procurement and export sales; dissolved NATO and dismantled the far-flung network of US military bases; reduced the United States’ standing armed forces from 1.5 million to a few hundred thousand; and organized and led a world disarmament and peace campaign, as did his Republican predecessors during the 1920s.

Unfortunately, George H. W. Bush was not a man of peace, vision or even middling intelligence.

He was the malleable tool of the War Party, and it was he who singlehandedly blew the peace when, in the very year the 77-Years’ War ended with the demise of the Soviet Union, he plunged America into a petty argument between the impetuous dictator of Iraq and the gluttonous emir of Kuwait. But that was none of George Bush’s or America’s business.

Furthermore, George H. W. Bush should never be forgiven for enabling the likes of Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Robert Gates and their neocon pack of jackals to come to power — even if he eventually denounced them in his doddering old age.

Alas, upon his death, Bush the Elder was deified, not vilified, by the mainstream press and the bipartisan duopoly. And that tells you all you need to know about why Washington is ensnared in its Forever Wars and is the very reason there is still no peace on earth.

Even more to the point, by opting not for peace but for war and oil in the Persian Gulf in 1991, Washington opened the gates to an unnecessary confrontation with Islam and nurtured the rise of jihadist terrorism that would not haunt the world today save for forces unleashed by George H. W. Bush’s petulant quarrel with Saddam Hussein.

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