We Wish You a Murray Rothbard and a Stateless New Year

by Joe Siano

It came to pass that Adam first unveiled the marvels of the Invisible Hand.

Adam was followed by David, of the Tribe of Judah, who revealed the wisdom the Division of Labor and Comparative Advantage.

Menger followed soon after.  And Menger begat Böhm-Bawerk who begat Mises. 

And though Mises was a man of great vision, he would not cross into to the Promised Land of Anarchy.

And so, Mises begat Rothbard. 

Murray Rothbard was born into in the Land of Free and liberty’s flame was flickering.  Murray came of age in the in reign of Franklin and Benito and Adolf and Uncle Joe.  Each of them promised a brave new world ruled by wise men.

But Murray’s revelation was simple and absolute.  Markets could never really be free, and humanity could never fully flourish and prosper so long of the specter of the State pulled the levers and had the final word.

As Murray shared is gospel of liberty he was assailed by false prophets of the Left and on the Right.  By men who presumed to be lords and gods.  Men who aspired to hold the reigns of the kingdom, the power and the glory.

Yet Murray never veered Leftward nor Rightward.  He fixed his steady on the mountaintop, treading the path straight and narrow.

Though Murray departed this valley of tears, his spirit lives on at the citadel of liberty.  And his heirs walk the walk the earth and the internet spreading the good news.  Their numbers are legion, so I name but a few:

·         Ron – who called many to the table

·         Lew – the keeper of the flame

·         Tom – the storyteller

·         Bob – the dispeller of fallacy

·         Walter – who taught us to look at things a new way

·         Hans – who showed that a majority is still a tyranny

So, in this season of love, rebirth and renewal, keep hope alive.  Help spread the good word.  

But please don’t start a ruckus at the dinner table.

Peace on Earth, Goodwill to men.

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"Half the people are stoned and the other half are waiting for the next election.
Half the people are drowned and the other half are swimming in the wrong direction." 
- Paul Simon

The Secretary of Offense

by Joe Siano

1984 was published in 1949.

That same year, in an Orwellian coincidence, the United States’ Department of war was rechristened the Department of Defense.  Likewise, the Secretary of War became the Secretary of Defense.

Following two devastating World Wars, war wasn’t so popular anymore.  But who could argue with “defense”?  After all, doesn’t the state have the right, nay, the duty to defend its people?

However, defense was the last that Washington, DC had in in mind.  Just the next year, in 1950, America went on the offense in Korea.  No Korean government attacked or even threatened America.  Yet there we were with American troops on the ground, bombers in the skies, and lives lost.

Concurrent with the War Department’s name change, the birth of NATO would permanently station American fighting men thousands of miles from our shores in Europe.  The SEATO pact of 1954 paved the way for U.S. intervention in Vietnam and South East Asia.

And thus began the global deployment that led over 170,000 U.S. troops in more than 150 countries.  America went on offense in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East.

With our fighting forces playing offense in every corner of the globe it became evident that they were too preoccupied to protect American soil.  American meddling in the Iraq – Kuwaiti conflict and boots on sacred Saudi Arabian soil invited the catastrophe of 911. 

911 demonstrated that military adventurism was incapable of protecting everyday Americans.  Even worse, the blowback that it generates has made life more dangerous.

Our government tacitly admitted that the Department of Defense fails to defend us when they invented the Department of Homeland Security.  Homeland security?  One might think that that was the job of the Department of Defense.  Not so.  In classic Orwellian doublespeak “Defense” means “Offense”

When the legendary generals of yesteryear of went abroad seeking glory, no one called it defense.  Caesar, Pompey, Alexander called it conquest.

Let’s call a spade a spade.  As each and every football team has an Offensive Coordinator and Defensive Coordinator reporting to the Head Coach.   So too should the President have clearly delineated Offensive and Defensive ministers to reflect functional reality.

John Quincy Adams once said that America “goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy”. 

So much for that.   We are on offense.

So let’s reassign the Defense title to Homeland Security.  Then we re-brand the current Department the Defense the Department of Offense.

Our Founders counseled that “A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, being the best security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed”.  

They feared standing armies and justly so.

 Now our professional homeland defenders spy on us while the standing army spreads mayhem worldwide.

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"Half the people are stoned and the other half are waiting for the next election.
Half the people are drowned and the other half are swimming in the wrong direction." 
- Paul Simon

Let The Healers Heal And The Killer Kill

by Joe Siano

This week a New Jersey grandmother became on one of the first “beneficiaries” of New Jersey’s physician assisted suicide law.

Moral and ethical arguments aside, using doctors to terminate life is a misallocation of resources.

The Association of American Medical Colleges projects a shortage of “up to nearly 122,000 physicians by 2032 as demand for physicians continues to grow faster than supply”.  They assert that about 96,000 additional doctors are needed right now.

Training a physician takes between 7 to 15 years and costs more than $1.1 million .  This not include the opportunity cost of them working in alternative professions.

It seems shameful to put these precious individuals, so assiduously trained in in the science and art of healing, to work killing people.  America is awash in well-schooled killers.

The United States Armed Forces employs nearly 2.2 active duty and reserve military personnel.    This includes some 72,000 Special Forces warriors. 

In contrast to physician training, Special Forces training takes a little over a year plus boot camp.  These highly trained warriors eventually cycle back to civilian life – many in search of gainful employment.

America’s Finest could easily relieve America’s healers of life termination chores.  In fact, I am sure that they would do it swiftly, quietly and painlessly.  That’s what they do.

Is using our plentiful armed forces personnel to kill civilians any less ethical than using our precious healers?  I say not.

Since assisted suicide is regarded as a humanitarian enterprise, it is logical extension of America’s policy of humanitarian intervention.

Humanitarian intervention is the War Party’s sales tool for soft selling invasion and killing – all in the name of protecting foreign peoples from their own governments. 

If soldiers killing people abroad is a humanitarian endeavor, how can it be less so here at home?

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"Half the people are stoned and the other half are waiting for the next election.
Half the people are drowned and the other half are swimming in the wrong direction." 
- Paul Simon

King George, Honest Abe & LeBron

by Joe Siano

This past week King James was roundly excoriated for coddling the successors to Chairman Mao.

I am no fan of Communism and neither is the King.  What Beijing is doing in Hong Kong has nothing to to do with Communism and everything to do with Statism.

What the People's Republic of China is doing to its most prosperous city is nothing different than what King George did to his rebellious Colonies and what President Lincoln did to the seceding Southerners.

Britain’s thirteen American Colonies had enjoyed over a century and a half of self-government when the King and Parliament endeavored to meddle in America’s affaires.  Until then, Parliament had neither legislated for nor taxed the Colonies.  When they did, the colonials chaffed and resisted.  The British pushed back.  This led to more resistance, more pushing and ultimately war and bloodshed.

Edmund Burke recognized that the Colonies had evolved their own culture, traditions and modes of  governance.  They deserved independence if they wanted it, he maintained.  The King saw things differently.  He was jealous of his domain and waged eight years of war killing tens of thousands to hold onto what he believed was rightfully his.

The beloved Abe Lincoln was a sectional president.  He won 40% of the popular vote and carried no Southern States.  As President, Lincoln pursued the interest-based policies of his party.  His government imposed tariffs which disproportionately fell on the South.  The tariffs paid for public investments which typically benefited the North.

Southerners saw the writing on on the wall.  Demographics were destiny.  The sparsely populated agrarian South would never defeat the densely populated industrial North is a national election.  Thus, the Southern states were doomed to unending Northern exploitation.

The handed in their resignation.  They would shake hands with the North, agree to disagree and go their separate ways as friends.

The South had its own economy, culture and traditions.  The Constitution was widely regarded as a voluntary compact among independent nation states from which any member may voluntarily withdraw.  Many abolitionists agitated for Northern secession.

Honest Abe did not agree.  Southern taxes were central his program of Northern improvement.  So like King George before him, Lincoln went to war, killing 620,000 of his countrymen to maintain Washington’s revenue stream.

And so it is with Hong Kong.  Milton Friedman tells the story of the miracle of Hong Kong – a island considered to be worthless, that became a commercial juggernaut.  

Like the American Colonies and the Southern states, Hong Kong also had its own economy, traditions and culture apart from the Mainland.

Like King George in yesteryear, Beijing is tightening the screws.  Like the American colonists, Hong Kong is resisting and one thing is leading to another.  It has nothing to do with Communism.  It has everything to do tyrants – be they kings, presidents or dictators – protecting what they see as theirs.

The story is as old as the Bible.  Pharaoh hated the Israelites living in Egypt, but he refused to let go.   The Hebrews were cheap labor that he could not give up.  One thing led to another.  Pharaoh finally relented after the Slaughter of Firstborn.   The he recanted and sent his army to recapture the escaped slaves.  (That army would drown in the Red Sea.  Score one for the good guys.)

So, returning to LeBron, and his friends at the NBA at Nike.  He is no Communist.  Nor is he a friend of liberty.  Good King James is just another crony capitalist who stands with liberty when it pays and with oppression when it pays better.

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"Half the people are stoned and the other half are waiting for the next election.
Half the people are drowned and the other half are swimming in the wrong direction." 
- Paul Simon

Wasted Labor Day

 by
Joe Siano

Labor, along with Land, Capital and Entrepreneurship, is but one of the factors of economic production. However, it is the only one to get its own holiday.

Labor is the voluntary sacrifice of one’s time, effort and energy in exchange for things that an individual believes will improve his condition.

Slavery is forced work performed for other’s benefit under threat of punishment. 

For 2019 Government expenditures account for about 36% of U.S. GDP. That’s 36% of work earnings forcibly extracted from Labor goods and services of dubious value.  Thus the typical American worker can be said to be two-thirds free man and one third slave as he cannot legally earn a dollar without 36 cents taken from him.

I’d call that slavery.

Investopedia defines GDP as “the total monetary or market value of all the finished goods and services produced within a country's borders in a specific time period” as measured by consumer spending.

Murray Rothbard objects that:

 “Spending only measures value of output in the private economy because that spending is voluntary for services rendered. In government, the situation is entirely different ... its spending has no necessary relation to the services that it might be providing to the private sector. There is no way, in fact, to gauge these services.”

In the same article Christopher Casey at Mises elaborates:

 “The absence of voluntary action renders prices impotent, and without true price discovery, benefits cannot be ascertained. This does not mean all goods and services provided by government would cease to exist; rather, some production (e.g., hospitals, schools, roads, etc.) would revert to the private sector.”

Casey is being generous.

In The State, Franz Oppenheimer delineates the difference between free market exchange and government appropriation and redistribution: 

There are two fundamentally opposed means whereby man…is impelled to obtain the necessary means for satisfying his desires. These are work and robbery, one’s own labor and the forcible appropriation of the labor of others…I propose…to call one’s own labor and the equivalent exchange of one’s own labor for the labor of others, the “economic means”…while the unrequited appropriation of the labor of others will be called the “political means.”

We understand that government expropriated dollars are used employ workers in innumerable unproductive, counterproductive and destructive ventures that we would never voluntarily assent to.  But even when spent on useful items such as the above mentioned schools, hospitals and roads, Public Choice analysis demonstrates that government  officials bureaucrats allocate resources with an eye on what best serves their interest – not the taxpayers.

This Labor Day, imagine if you will, how better life would be if 36% of your earnings were restored to you to invest and spend as you see best.  How much better would life be If the fruits of you labor were not frittered away on useless wars, citizen surveillance, cumbersome regulations, make work projects and political giveaways? 

Freeing ourselves from the snares of state enslavement  will not be easy, Like Milo Minderbinder’s M&M Enterprises in Catch-22, “everyone has a share”.  Milo was a fictional World War II mess officer who bought from and sold to everyone, including the enemy, for the benefit of all while he grew rich.  As with government spending, each of us gets his or her little slice of the pie and in unwilling to let go his or her little bit while others get theirs.

However, there may be a silver lining in the storm clouds that lie ahead.

Lately, we hear much about how a new day of economic reckoning is at hand.   Never forget that a crisis is a terrible thing to waste and that the principle of creative destruction applies to whole economies as well as businesses and industries.

Perhaps a phoenix of freedom can rise from the ashes of the coming train wreck.  It is our job as liberty warriors to help lead the way.

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"Half the people are stoned and the other half are waiting for the next election.
Half the people are drowned and the other half are swimming in the wrong direction." 
- Paul Simon

Vote Yourself A Free Electric Car - Save the World

by Joe Siano

One thing is clear from the Democratic debates.  We have only about ten years before climate meltdown.

The challenge is how to break Joe and Jane Sixpack of their addiction to high horsepower vehicles powered by cheap fossil fuels?

The slam dunk solution is a FREE ELECTRIC CAR FOR EVERYONE! 

Everyone loves a free car.  Just ask Oprah.

I offer this policy proposal to any candidate who will take it.  The one who does will find him or herself to driving all the way to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

The FREE ELECTRIC CAR FOR EVERYONE! platform is a sure winner.  It scores big on every Progressive agenda item.

1.       Climate Change – This is obvious. ‘Nuff said.

2.       Jobs – All FREE ELECTIC CARS will be domestically produced.  This hits Trump where it hurts.

3.       Unions – All cars must be UAW made from steel made by the United Steel Workers with ore mined by UMWA (Take that, Donald!)

4.       Diversity – This Union Labor must comply with Federally mandated minimum quotas for ethnic minorities

5.       Inclusiveness – As with the above the FREE CAR workforce will contain an equitable representation of the LGBTQ community

6.       Livable Wage – All workers in the Free Production Change will receive at least a $50 hurly wage with annual COLA adjustments

7.       Universal Healthcare – Full health care benefits will be given to all FREE CAR workers

8.       Universal Healthcare 2 – All FREE CAR drivers will be covered by FREE CAR INSURANCE – which also provides for medical coverage to anyone injured in or by a FREE CAR

9.       Immigration – Not only will all Undocumented Aliens receive a FREE CAR but all immigrants on their way here will no longer need to walk or pay disreputable thugs to transport them.  They will be drive to America in their brand-new FREE CAR!  What a country.

10.   Infrastructure – America will need to build infrastructure to charge all these new electric cars.  Obviously, this workforce must meet all the unionization, diversity and inclusivity requirements of the above workers.   They will also be paid the same $50 minimum hourly wage along with all benefits.

11.   Job Security – Jobs will be secured as new cars will be needed as Teens achieve driving age.  Also, all 5-year old vehicles will be scrapped and replaced with more technologically advanced / higher efficiency models

12.   To Each According to His Needs – FREE CARS will be given only to those earning less than $200,000 per year (Household income) and / or less than $2 million in assets (including home value).

13.   From Each According to Ability / Tax the Rich – The FREE CAR BONANZA will be funded by taxing the indolent, greedy, rapacious and exploitive One Percent.

Bernie and the AOC crew implore their party to Go Big.  This is as big as it gets.  The winning ticket.

David Axelrod counsels that Democrats must reclaim the “Yes We Can!” spirit.

If anyone tells you that the government cannot give everyone a FREE CAR, just look him in the face and say, “Yes we can, you fascist”.

This, my friends, is the Audacity of Hope.

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"Half the people are stoned and the other half are waiting for the next election.
Half the people are drowned and the other half are swimming in the wrong direction." 
- Paul Simon

The Children’s Crusade

by Joe Siano

Our  empire is in distress.

The Washington Times reports that the Pentagon cannot find enough adults willing to kill and be killed.  It is considering adding 16-year-old children to serve in the armed forces.

For a kid of sixteen drawing a regular military paycheck sure beats flipping burgers, mowing lawns or babysitting.

At sixteen you cannot:

• Vote
•  Legally incur debt
• Consume alcoholic beverages
•  Be prosecuted for a crime
•  Make love with your 18-year boyfriend or girlfriend

Nonetheless, good old Uncle Sam feels that you are plenty old enough to be blown to smithereens .

One reason for the military manpower shortfall might be the Trump administration’s crackdown on  non-citizens and immigrants swerving in our armed forces.   This can’t be another attempt at job-protectionism.  Evidently, soldiering is not a popular  career choice for adult Americans want.

In the Nineteenth Century, Otto von Bismarck invented the welfare-warfare state.  He doled out cradle to grave social services to create a docile citizens who would make willing cannon fodder for Germany’s martial ambitions.

This German model was successfully imported to America during Progressive Era.  For a solid century, it helped to people America’s missionary wars of democracy.

With this people pipeline drying up and immigrant warriors non grata, it’s time for out of the box thinking.  Thus, I offer this suggestion to the Pentagon.

Americans of Left, Right and Center persuasions will agree that we have an unwanted baby problem.  An unwanted pregnancy problem.  An unaffordable child problem. 

With these lemons we make lemonade.

I propose that the United States offer a substantial enlistment bonus to any mom who will enroll her infant in any branch of the armed forces. 

Her heretofore resented and unloved progeny will live privileged lives of safe housing, nutritious food, top notch education, physical conditioning and skills training.  Her child will thrive with the discipline and self confidence that only a martial upbringing can instill.

Momma gets a payday.

And the Empire gets its Unsullied, its Clone Army.

 

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"Half the people are stoned and the other half are waiting for the next election.
Half the people are drowned and the other half are swimming in the wrong direction." 
- Paul Simon