Monday, March 27, 2006

Positive Liberty.. to steal?

Icelandic Leftists have, for the past few months, worked hard to push the false term "Positive Liberty" into the daily discussion. Wiki defines:

Positive liberty is often described as freedom to achieve certain ends, ...
Its counterpart, Negative Liberty, is, of course, the
individual's liberty from being subjected to the authority of others.
Clearly these two are opposites. The positivist defines his "liberty" as the right to certain products or services, even if it means forcing others to give up their rightful property and the labor of their bodies.

Positive Liberty is in other words the freedom to steal. There is no way around it. If my "liberty" is about access to material goods produced by others, and to be given to me through the tax-system or some other police-enforced system, then my liberty boils down to the "right" to steal.

The sales' speech of those supporting this false notion of liberty takes on many forms. A few that have popped up in the Icelandic debate are,

  1. "Positive liberty aims on giving people freedom from the oppression of the consumerism and the capitalists, but those aspects limit the individual; the liberty to use ones talents as best as possible for the sake of the society as a whole; the liberty to be an active participant in the debate and a voice to be reckoned with no matter who you are and where you come from." (expired link)
  2. "And surely [the liberty to be free from coercion] is important like the libertarians say. "The freedom to something" is, however, also important. To reach this kind of freedom, the society must be governed according to the ideals of the Left or else we have inequality of wealth where some are doomed to poverty. Those who are so unfortunate have, truth be told, no liberty to many things the mind desires. The reason is their financial incompetence, which stops them from fulfilling their dreams." (#)
  3. "Liberty, in part, is about access to material goods." (#)
Now, I'll be the first to admit that the whole political philosophy in the Icelandic debate is not an a very advanced level. It is more or less about shouting the fanciest slogans and excite the public. That's why the quotes above are a relatively easy target for the supporter of absolute (negative) liberty. Liberty, says the positivist, is about giving the Left the power of the individual's property, so it can be divided among those who are not the owners of the property, or in short: The old communist ideal reborn, while the Cold War corpse has hardly cooled down.

This positivism is hard to fight. It takes three words to say, "Divide the wealth", and receive applause and praises. It takes a little more to explain the death and destruction that follows this mentality, and describe the impracticality and ruthless lack of justice that it carries with it. But the battle must be fought. The Left's obsession with other people's money must be ended, one way or another.

Thursday, March 23, 2006

Thank you for proving libertarianism!

By reading exactly this sentence you have proved a whole branch of the political philosophy spectrum: The Austrian praxeological approach on human action and economics. If you stop now, you prove it no less than if you continue reading. And isn't that just beautiful?

Are you still reading? Good for you. How did you just prove a whole political philosophy by reading a single paragraph (or not)? Because by doing so (or not), you chose a certain action, decided you use your time, available to you because you own your own body, on something rather than something else. No-one has a pistol pointed towards you and is forcing you to read (or skip it). No-one forced you to read or not read. You chose, you acted, and thereby you prove that you are an individual, have values, a time-preference (you do one thing rather than another because you choose it), and that's pretty much all there is to say about it.

If you doubt that you chose to read this, are an individual or did something as an individual rather than as a part of "society" or "the public", then read this (wont take more than 15-25 minutes and could change the way you look at everything forever). Heck, read it no matter if you believe you prove a whole system of thought or not. It will do you good (according to my value-scale).

Tuesday, March 21, 2006

Expecting a documentary? Expect something else

Michael Moore is a funny man. So funny in fact that he can make fun of horrible things and receive millions of dollars, prizes and applause in return. Now he is working on a "documentary" about the American health care system. He is asking people to turn themselves in to talk about their grief with the system. His sales' speech in his own words:

Have you ever found yourself getting ready to file for bankruptcy because you can't pay your kid's hospital bill, and then you say to yourself, "Boy, I sure would like to be in Michael Moore's health care movie!"?

Or, after being turned down for the third time by your HMO for an operation they should be paying for, do you ever think to yourself, "Now THIS travesty should be in that 'Sicko' movie!"?

Or maybe you've just been told that your father is going to have to just, well, die because he can't afford the drugs he needs to get better – and it's then that you say, "Damn, what did I do with Michael Moore's home number?!"
Of course there is nothing wrong with what he's doing. He is creating a movie that will describe the way Michael Moore feels about the American health care system. He is a socialist, he wants to nationalize the health care system and he is making a movie to make that point. Everyone knows this. No-one really looks at his work as a document of something like for example the wild life documentaries on the National Geographic channel - not anymore. Michael Moore uses his extensive network and popular website to draw out a few of the few who have a beef with their health care system and have, for some reason or another, received poor medical care.

But this should not cloud people's minds more than necessary. The fact is that the American health care system is the biggest health care money machine in the world, the heart and soul of all medical research in the world, the ground from which most of the latest and drugs and medical treatments grow in, and, all things considered even, an excellent provider of excellent health care.

Of course there are faults in the system. They are many and grave. But the big picture prevails despite of them. Michael Moore wants to nationalize the health care system, and use his wittiness, millions of dollars and video recorders to make that point. Good for him. But thats just about all thats good about his cause.

Division of labor

The concept of the division of labor is a fundamental one in economics. Leftists despise it of course, but that's for obvious reasons: They don't understand the actions of man. When a headline states that Outsourcing is a win win proposition it is not just stating a result of an experience - it is stating a logical conclusion which results from the division of labor. Or in the words of Mises (bold is my doing:

If, through his superiority to B, A needs three hours' labor for the production of one unit of commodity p compared with B's five, and for the production of commodity q two hours against B's four, then A will gain if he confines his labor to producing q and leaves B to produce p. If each gives sixty hours to producing both p and q, the result of A's labor is 20p + 30q, of B's 12p + 15q, and for both together 32p + 45q. If however, A confines himself to producing q alone he produces sixty units in 120 hours, whilst B, if he confines himself to producing p, produces in the same time twenty-four units. The result of the activity is then 24p + 60q, which, as p has for A a substitution value of 3 : 2q and for B one of 5 : 4q, signifies a larger production than 32p + 45q. Therefore it is obvious that every expansion of the personal division of labor brings advantages to all who take part in it.
It takes a certain kind of human mind to deny the participants in the economy the full freedom to participate in a completely open and restriction-free market of theoretically indefinite division of labor. This certain kind of mind is a one that focuses on public popularity, voters, personal gain and power, but not on welfare and wealth increase, improvements in lives and personal liberty. Socialism is the name, death and destruction is the game.

Sunday, March 19, 2006

The Leftist's dilemma

Being a Leftist in a free market-society is a tricky thing. In order to be a successful one (that is, a one that collects a lot of votes) you need a few things to be in place:

  1. You need the filthy rich to talk bad about.
  2. You need a big group of average- or low-paid people to envy the filthy rich.
  3. You need the money of the filthy rich to spend on your favorite groups of voters.
  4. You need to tax just enough to squeeze on the filthy rich, but not too much so you don't scare them away to other countries or reduce the incentive to become rich too much.
So basically, you need a society where you can actually become rich (or not low-paid), and design the tax-code in such a way that keeps the rich within your taxing grips. This means you can not create a full scheme of redistribution because although that would guarantee a big share of the votes from the low-income voters, it would also leave you without the rich to tax for the "benefit" of the poor.

So basically, in order to keep face as a Leftist, you need to be a capitalist in practice, but a socialist in speech. And isn't that a double-moral that would keep any honest man awake at night?

Friday, March 17, 2006

Irony of statism

It is ironic that those who are the biggest demonstrators against non-Clintonian wars are also those who are the biggest fans of the State. Only governments go to wars. Only States think they have an interest in sub-doing the rulers of other States. Somehow, the Left misses that point.

Thursday, March 16, 2006

Free trade progresses

Google News search: "free trade" is becoming one of my favorite websites. It is encouraging to see the scores of countries offering and accepting free-trade agreements with each other while the WTO gradually falls victim to protests, paperwork and bureaucracy (mostly from the European Union and not helped by the USA). Or perhaps that's a good thing, because it distracts the Leftists from the bi-lateral and regional free-trade agreements (actually being made) and puts their focus on the WTO, where progress is slow at best and few hope for improvements.

Wednesday, March 15, 2006

Two good ones from Rothbard

The Mantle of Science by Murray N. Rothbard is a must read for anyone who wants to see the public debate in another perspective. Two catchy quotes:

[N]ext time someone preaches the priority of "public good" over the individual good, we must ask: Who is the "public" in this case?
Obvious answer: Some small but noisy favorite group of the politician speaking.
[I]f B thinks that the "market" is not paying A enough, B is perfectly free to step in and supply the difference. He is not blocked in this effort by some monster named "market."
Despite this, the Left usually wants the State for force the average man to pay for its demands. Immoral at best.

Tuesday, March 14, 2006

Free Trade finds a way

Encouraging news:

Multilateral negotiations aimed at ending trade and customs barriers are expected to last several more years and they face fierce opposition by anti-globalization campaigners.

Those countries wishing to proceed at a faster pace have mostly opted for the bilateral and regional route. (#)
It seems free trade is starting to act the way life does in Jurassic Park, "[trade] always finds a way". While the anti-capitalist movement of the world (Greenies, Reds, Leftists, Statists) gather up for protests during world-leader meetings, the real free-trade agreements are being made on a country-to-country basis.

Monday, March 13, 2006

A thing to remember

To complain that 10 percent earned too large a percentage of our income is to forget that they actually earned 100 percent of their own income. (#)
Unless, of course, in the case of the State, where a 100% of the income is stolen, no matter where some or another percentage of the total income came from.

Leftists: Encourage War!

Each war is also an internal emergency situation, and an emergency requires and seems to justify the acceptance of the state's increasing its control over its own population. Such increased control gained through the creation of emergencies is reduced during peacetime, but it never sinks back to its pre-war levels. (#)
Few question the observation that the historically biggest increase in State expansion in post-medieval times happened in the years after World War I and II. While engaged in war, the countries of the Western world gradually nationalized their schools, hospitals, infrastructure and utility services and have hardly let go since.

Put in another way: Everything the Left says is "public service" and must remain in State hands is in State hands because of the "emergency situation" created by war.

Put in yet another way: If it wasn't for war between governments, the Left would remain in its proper place - minimal and out of the way. But instead wars broke out and the Left got to see its dreams come true, with the State expanding without resistance during times of war, death and destruction.

But even worse than this pay-off war has for the Left is the denial of the Left of the fact that it in reality wants war, and needs it to gain ground. Somehow the Left beliefs it can have a big, great and powerful State but only in some areas but not others. A big, powerful State should remain in the school- and hospital-business and stay of the killing-business, the Left says. This is an ideological and a historical self-illusion. War is a friend of the Left and the Left knows it.

Perhaps this can explain the harsh opposition from the modern-Left that comes up whenever a non-Clinton president engages in a war outside his own borders, while the Right in some way accepts the reasons given by the Clintons when they go to war? Does the Left simply have a bad conscience?

Saturday, March 11, 2006

State science

State Science is Bad for Your Health:

But the public doesn't know that tobacco use appears to be associated with many positive long-term health outcomes, including lower incidences of Alzheimer's and certain cancers. At this time, such conclusions don't have the weight of the results of rigorous research precisely because studying smoking for positive health outcomes won't be funded. The hypothesis itself is simply too politically incorrect.
Also, among other thoughts:
Alzheimer's disease. Similarly [to Parkinsons's disease], the frequency of this degenerative mental disorder has recently been found to be as much as 50%less among smokers than among nonsmokers for example, by the H studies reviewed in the International Journal of Epidemiology in 1991.
On a related issue (obesity):
But the notion that our expanding waistlines have put us on the verge of a calamitous offensive against our health care system simply isn't borne out by the evidence. And so these incessant calls for immediate, large-scale government interference in how we grow, process, manufacture, market, prepare, sell, and eat our food ring hollow, hyperbolic, and needlessly invasive.
Maybe the whole public panic about health related problems is just another tool of the State to help it expand itself? Like global warming, moral hazards and other such home made issues.

Tuesday, March 07, 2006

Health and insurance in a free society

Does a free society mean the death for the sick and the poor? Far from it. The problems of health care and its provision are not market-related. The are a State-created problem. A brilliant analogy from a brilliant man serves as a good start to explain why:

For those who believe that consumer safety would be hurt under such an open, competitive system (a free market in healthcare), let me use an analogy. Suppose you were to say, "Look, some people have crummy Chevy cars, which are less safe and less comfortable. This falls short of our goal that all consumers get only the best. Therefore we should insist that all cars live up to the standards of a BMW or a Mercedes." Would we all wind up with the comfort and safety of driving luxury cars? Of course not. Many of us would have to resort to bicycles or go on foot. If all cars had to be luxury cars, very few of us would be able to ride in any sort of car. With respect to doctors, a similar situation has been put in place. We have basically outlawed all Chevy doctors who focus on the less expensive minor health problems (which is, in fact, all that most people have) and are forced instead to use Mercedes doctors who charge Mercedes prices even for ailments that can be fixed by people with significantly less training. (#)
A few question arise that are easily answered:

But what about the medium well-doing individuals that actually do need the luxury car, for example because of a difficult and/or rare sickness?
This is an easy "problem". Many have cars. Most of those have insurance. If a poor car-owner with a standard insurance hits an expensive car (by accident), his insurance will most likely cover it. The insurance market actually wants the unexpected and unanticipated, because why else would people buy insurance? The unexpected creates and incentive for the normal, average guy to buy an insurance (why else would he?). Those who actually become beneficiaries are the random statistic that creates the whole (hopefully profitable) market for rare-case and difficult illnesses.

What about the absolutely poor and devastated that have long-term difficult diseases?
Again an easy "solution". The quote above illustrates the health care that a free society would offer. There would be a whole lot of "okay" doctors and good ones that either can't or don't want to cure only the rich and famous. The market for health care in a free society would be enormous. And the wealth of the average person would be tremendous compared to the system we recognize today. And historically, the lack of State-interference in the market of health care means the presence of a vast number of volunteer, charity and non-profit health care institutions. When we aren't told the State solves the problems of the poor, individuals step in. And they do a better job. And the absolutely poor and devastated would be a tiny minority group that wouldn't create any kind of burden for the society of individuals as a whole.

But the important thing to keep in mind is the effects a State-regulated and -provided health care has on the actions of the rational individual. If you give away free candy, people eat more candy. When you give away "free" health care, more people get sick. This is the fundamental problem with collective systems of any kind. They create a demand for the otherwise undemanded or less-demanded. They make healthy individuals sick, to name one thing. And when everybody is sick all the time, everybody needs doctors all the time, and everyone pays the price (in all aspects of the term "price").

Monday, March 06, 2006

Hurray for more free trade!

El Salvador becomes first Central American nation to join free trade pact with US (via):

El Salvador on Wednesday became the first Central American nation to join a regional free trade agreement with the United States.
Truly good news for the country. Both countries actually. Of course there are downsides: Both countries have all kinds of restrictions and extra-demands, but the important thing is that an agreement was reached. Politicians can sometimes agree on something despite of politics.

Criticism from both El Salvadorians and American Democrats reflects the benefits of this free-trade agreement. From El Salvador:

But about 3,000 people marched elsewhere in the capital, San Salvador, to protest the agreement, which they say will hurt local farmers, street vendors and organized labor faced with competition from cheaper goods or with tighter restrictions on sales of counterfeit goods.
From USA:
Democratic critics contended the deal would expose US workers to unfair competition from low-wage nations and move more manufacturing jobs overseas.
This kind of criticism boils down to one concept: Division of labor. El Salvador will "steal" manufacturing jobs from Americans, and Americans will "compete unfairly" in prices on advanced consumer goods. American taxpayers will subsidize the agricultural goods for the people of El Salvador, and the people of El Salvador will gain jobs, increase domestic competition for labor and move forward towards a richer society.

In the end, both will be happy. Even while buying the soon-cheaper goods and services from their free-trade partner while complaining about each others unfair advantages.

Sunday, March 05, 2006

Welfare - whose welfare?

What is welfare?

[M]ost 'welfare' is simply transferring cash from and too the same people at different stages of their lives. (#)
The now-in-ruins Western welfare system is a stubborn myth but a one that will soon be a historical monument. How soon is a little uncertain. The Left is good at making up new problems for the State to fix, global warming being one of the newest ones. These new Leftist-hobbies must be fought with teeth and claws when they pop up. So much is certain. The rest will kill itself off with repeated failures to provide the promised goods.

Thursday, March 02, 2006

A note on capitalism

Never too often mentioned is the essence of the following quote:

The truth, which real economists, from Adam Smith to Mises, have elaborated, is that in a market economy, the wealth of the rich—of the capitalists—is overwhelmingly invested in means of production, that is, in factories, machinery and equipment, farms, mines, stores, and the like. This wealth, this capital, produces the goods which the average person buys, and as more of it is accumulated and raises the productivity of labor higher and higher, brings about a progressively larger and ever more improved supply of goods for the average person to buy. (#)
This simple truth is out of reach for those who focus on present consumption and spending of wealth. The Left does not grasp the term "capital" and "investment", but is obsessed with money and consumer goods. And to top the irony, the Left blames the Right for only thinking about money! I love to hate their sincere and utmost stupidity, too be frank.