Chodorov: the market place is a most humane institution

"Society thrives on trade simply because trade makes specialization possible, and specialization increases output, and increased output reduces the cost in toil for the satisfactions men live by. That being so, the market place is a most humane institution." --Frank Chodorov

Copernicus: depreciation of circulating currency

"Nations are not ruined by one act of violence, but gradually and in an almost imperceptible manner by the depreciation of their circulating currency, through its excessive quantity." --Copernicus

Curry: Minimum Wage

"A person‘s right to a job is as specious as his boss‘ right to success in business. There is no right to a minimum wage, just as there is no right to success in self-employment." --Rex Curry

Alighieri: Freedom

"Mankind is at its best when it is most free. This will be clear if we grasp the principle of liberty. We must recall that the basic principle is freedom of choice, which saying many have on their lips, but few in their mind." --Dante Alighieri

Emmers: Government problems

"The task of government in this enlightened time does not extend to actually dealing with problems. Solving problems might put bureaucrats out of work. No, the task of government is to make it look as though problems have been solved, while continuing to keep the maximum number of consultants and bureaucrats employed dealing with them." --Bob Emmers

Friedman: Equality, Force & Freedom

"The use of force to achieve equality will destroy freedom, and the force, introduced for good purposes, will end up in the hands of people who use it to promote their own interest." --Milton Friedman

Gaber: Economic vs Political Power

"Always remember the difference between economic power and political power: You can refuse to hire someone‘s services or buy his products in the private sector and go somewhere else instead. In the public sector, though, if you refuse to accept a politician‘s or bureaucrat‘s product or services you go to jail. Ultimately, after all, all regulations are observed and all taxes are paid at gunpoint." --Rick Gaber

Hornberger: Taxes

"Every day, IRS agents levy liens on homes, bank accounts, and businesses; they confiscate cars, furniture, boats, and other personal property without the constitutional protections of due notice, hearing, and due process. If a person forcibly resists, government agents kill him for resisting arrest." --Jacob Hornberger

Hornberger: The Statist‘s Prayer

"O mighty state, we worship and adore you. You provide us our sustenance when we are in need—our food, our housing, our medical care, our schooling. ... You provide us our daily bread with no sweat at all. You make us good, O mighty state, because you provide welfare for the poor, the elderly, businessman, foreigners, and all others who benefit from your largess. We praise you, O mighty state. We give you thanks." -- The Statist‘s Prayer by Jacob Hornberger

Hospers: governments

"By far the most numerous and most flagrant violations of personal liberty and individual rights are performed by governments... The major crimes throughout history, the ones executed on the largest scale, have been committed not by individuals or bands of individuals but by governments, as a deliberate policy of those governments—that is, by the official representatives of governments, acting in their official capacity." --John Hospers

Mises: Action

"In the land of the lotus-eaters there is no action. Action arises only from need, from dissatisfaction. It is purposeful striving towards something. Its ultimate end is always to get rid of a condition which is conceived to be deficient—to fulfill a need, to achieve satisfaction, to increase happiness." --Ludwig von Mises

"Action is an attempt to substitute a more satisfactory state of affairs for a less satisfactory one. We call such a willfully induced alteration an exchange." --Ludwig von Mises

"The vigorous man industriously striving for the improvement of his condition acts neither more nor less than the lethargic man who sluggishly takes things as they come. For to do nothing and to be idle are also action, they too determine the course of events." --Ludwig von Mises

Huxley: A really efficient totalitarian state

"A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude. To make them love it is the task assigned, in present-day totalitarian states, to ministries of propaganda, newspaper editors and schoolteachers." --Aldous Huxley

Mises: Laissez Faire

"The consumers suffer when the laws of the country prevent the most efficient entrepreneurs from expanding the sphere of their activities. What made some enterprises develop into “big business” was precisely their success in filling best the demand of the masses." --Ludwig von Mises

"There is no use in deceiving ourselves. American public opinion rejects the market economy, the capitalistic free enterprise system that provided the nation with the highest standard of living ever attained. Full government control of all activities of the individual is virtually the goal of both national parties." --Ludwig von Mises

"Used to the conditions of a capitalistic environment, the average American takes it for granted that every year business makes something new and better accessible to him. Looking backward upon the years of his own life, he realizes that many implements that were totally unknown in the days of his youth and many others which at that time could be enjoyed only by a small minority are now standard equipment of almost every household. He is fully confident that this trend will prevail also in the future. He simply calls it the “American way of life” and does not give serious thought to the question of what made this continuous improvement in the supply of material goods possible." --Ludwig von Mises

Mises: Materialism

"It is a purposeful distortion of facts to blame the age of [classical] liberalism for an alleged materialism. The nineteenth century was not only a century of unprecedented improvement in technical methods of production and in the material well-being of the masses. It did much more than extend the average length of
human life. Its scientific and artistic accomplishments are imperishable. It was an age of immortal musicians, writers, poets, painters, and sculptors; it revolutionized philosophy, economics, mathematics, physics, chemistry, and biology. And, for the first time in history, it made the great works and the great thoughts accessible to the common man." --Ludwig von Mises

Jefferson: abolish it

"Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it." --Thomas Jefferson

Jefferson: perpetual debt

"I place economy among the first and most important virtues and public debt as the greatest dangers to be feared... We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our choice between economy and liberty or profusion and servitude... The same prudence which in private life would forbid our paying money for unexplained projects, forbids it in the disposition of public money. We are endeavoring to reduce the government to the practice of rigid economy to avoid burdening the people." --Thomas Jefferson

Ostrom: bureaucrats and politicians

"There is no reason to believe that bureaucrats and politicians, no matter how well meaning, are better at solving problems than the people on the spot, who have the strongest incentive to get the solution right." -Elinor Ostrom

Paine: Society & Government

"SOME writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. 

Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. 

The first is a patron, the last a punisher."
-Thomas Paine, 1776

Jefferson: Compulsory contributions

"To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical." --Thomas Jefferson

Jefferson: first principle of association

"To take from one because it is thought that his own industry and that of his father‘s has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association—the guarantee to every one of a free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it." --Thomas Jefferson

Keating: Monetary policy

"Monetary policy today is guided by little more than government fiat—by the calculations, often mistaken economic theories, and whims of central bankers or, even worse, politicians. Under such a regime, inflation of three or four percent annually has come to be viewed as a stellar monetary performance. However, under a more sound monetary system—i.e., a gold standard—such increases in the general price level would be seen as wildly inflationary." --Raymond Keating

Mises: Only to Bureaucrats

"Only to bureaucrats can the idea occur that establishing new offices, promulgating new decrees, and increasing the number of government employees alone can be described as positive and beneficial measures." --Ludwig von Mises

Mises: Bureaucracy

Ludwig von Mises: Bureaucracy

The “Progressives’” View of Bureaucratism

The “progressive” critics of bureaucratism direct their attacks primarily against the bureaucratization of corporate big business. Their reasoning runs this way:

“In the past business firms were comparatively small. The entrepreneur was in a position to survey all parts of his enterprise and to make all important decisions personally. He was the owner of all the capital invested or at least of the greater part of it. He was himself vitally interested in the success of his enterprise. He was therefore to the best of his abilities intent on making his outfit as efficient as possible and on avoiding waste.

“But with the inexorable trend toward economic concentration, conditions changed radically. Today the scene is dominated by corporate big business. It is absentee ownership; the legal owners, the stockholders, have no actual voice in the management. This task is left to professional administrators. The enterprises are so large that functions and activities must be distributed among departments and administrative subdivisions. The conduct of affairs necessarily becomes bureaucratic.

“The present-day champions of free enterprise are romantics like the eulogists of the medieval arts and crafts. They are entirely mistaken in attributing to mammoth corporations the qualities which once were the excellence of small or medium-size business. There cannot be any question of breaking up the big aggregates into smaller units. On the contrary, the tendency toward a further concentration of economic power will prevail. Monopolized big business will congeal into rigid bureaucratism. Its managers, responsible to nobody, will become a hereditary aristocracy; the governments will become mere puppets of an omnipotent business clique.

“It is indispensable to curb the power of this managerial oligarchy by government action. The complaints about government regimentation are unfounded. As things are, there is only the choice between the rule of an irresponsible managerial bureaucracy and that of the nation’s government.”

The apologetic character of such reasoning is obvious. To the general criticism of the spread of governmental bureaucratism the “progressives” and New Dealers reply that bureaucracy is not at all limited to government. It is a universal phenomenon present both in business and in government. Its broadest cause is “the tremendous size of the organization.”3 It is therefore an inescapable evil.

This book will try to demonstrate that no profit-seeking enterprise, no matter how large, is liable to become bureaucratic provided the hands of its management are not tied by government interference. The trend toward bureaucratic rigidity is not inherent in the evolution of business. It is an outcome of government meddling with business. It is a result of the policies designed to eliminate the profit motive from its role in the framework of society’s economic organization.

In these introductory remarks we want to dwell only upon one point of the popular complaints about the growing bureaucratization of business. Bureaucratization, people say, is caused by “the lack of competent, effective leadership.”4 What is wanting is “creative leadership.”

To complain of lack of leadership is, in the field of political affairs, the characteristic attitude of all harbingers of dictatorship. In their eyes the main deficiency of democratic government is that it is unable to produce great Führers and Duces.

In the field of business, creative leadership manifests itself in the adjustment of production and distribution to the changing conditions of demand and supply and in the adaptation of technical improvements to practical uses. The great businessman is he who produces more, better, and cheaper goods, who, as a pioneer of progress, presents his fellowmen with commodities and services hitherto unknown to them or beyond their means. We may call him a leader because his initiative and activity force his competitors either to emulate his achievements or to go out of business. It is his indefatigable inventiveness and fondness for innovations that prevent all business units from degenerating into idle bureaucratic routine. He embodies in his person the restless dynamism and progressivism inherent in capitalism and free enterprise.

It would certainly be an exaggeration to say that such creative leaders are lacking in present-day America. Many of the old heroes of American business are still alive and active in the conduct of their affairs. It would be a delicate matter to express an opinion about the creativeness of younger men. Some temporal distance is needed for a correct appreciation of their achievements. A true genius is very rarely acknowledged as such by his contemporaries.

Society cannot contribute anything to the breeding and growing of ingenious men. A creative genius cannot be trained. There are no schools for creativeness. A genius is precisely a man who defies all schools and rules, who deviates from the traditional roads of routine and opens up new paths through land inaccessible before. A genius is always a teacher, never a pupil; he is always self-made. He does not owe anything to the favor of those in power. But, on the other hand, the government can bring about conditions which paralyze the efforts of a creative spirit and prevent him from rendering useful services to the community.

This is the case today in the field of business. Let us look at one instance only, the income tax. In the past an ingenious newcomer started a new project. It was a modest start; he was poor, his funds were small and most of them borrowed. When initial success came, he did not increase his consumption, but reinvested the much greater part of the profits. Thus his business grew quickly. He became a leader in his line. His threatening competition forced the old rich firms and the big corporations to adjust their management to the conditions brought about by his intervention. They could not disregard him and indulge in bureaucratic negligence. They were under the necessity of being on their guard day and night against such dangerous innovators. If they could not find a man able to rival the newcomer for the management of their own affairs, they had to merge their own business with his and yield to his leadership.

But today the income tax absorbs 80 or more percent of such a newcomer’s initial profits. He cannot accumulate capital; he cannot expand his business; his enterprise will never become big business. He is no match for the old vested interests. The old firms and corporations already own a considerable capital. Income and corporation taxes prevent them from accumulating more capital, while they prevent the newcomer from accumulating any capital. He is doomed to remain small business forever. The already existing enterprises are sheltered against the dangers from ingenious newcomers. They are not menaced by their competition. They enjoy a virtual privilege as far as they content themselves with keeping their business in the traditional lines and in the traditional size.5 Their further development, of course, is curtailed. The continuous drain on their profits by taxes makes it impossible for them to expand their business out of their own funds. Thus a tendency toward rigidity originates.

In all countries all tax laws are today written as if the main purpose of taxes were to hinder the accumulation of new capital and the improvements which it could achieve. The same tendency manifests itself in many other branches of public policy. The “progressives” are badly off the mark when they complain about the lack of creative business leadership. Not the men are lacking but the institutions which would permit them to utilize their gifts. Modern policies result in tying the hands of innovators no less than did the guild system of the Middle Ages.

[3. ]Cf. Marshall E. Dimock and Howard K. Hyde, Bureaucracy and Trusteeship in Large Corporations, TNEC Monograph No. 11, p. 36.

[4. ]Cf. Dimock and Hyde, loc. cit., p. 44, and the articles quoted by them.

[5. ]This is not an essay on the social and economic consequences of taxation. Thus there is no need to deal with the effects of the inheritance taxes, the impact of which has already been perceptible in this country for many years, while the above-described effects of the income tax are a recent phenomenon.

Mises: Public Firms

"The public firm can nowhere maintain itself in free competition with the private firm; it is possible today only where it has a monopoly that excludes competition. Even that alone is evidence of its lesser economic productivity." --Ludwig von Mises

Ritsos: Land of Smiles

‎"Maybe some day, through myriads of struggles and vigils and excavations inside as well as outside us, inside history and inside the future, we will arrive at the Land of Smiles, out there beyond race and religion and tradition and language, where man will recognize man as his brother, from the same smile full of self-knowledge, and all men will exchange gazes and feelings of a universally human creative offering of thanks." ~ Ritsos

Vance: Social Security

"Because Social Security is an income-redistribution program, because it is an illegitimate purpose of government, because it is unsustainable, because it is unconstitutional, and because it is incompatible with a free society, the system m

ust be abolished. To that end, it is Americans’ attitude toward entitlements that must first be changed." - Laurence Vance, The Future of Freedom Foundation http://www.fff.org/comment/com1209r.asp

Mises: depressions

"True governments can reduce the rate of interest in the short run. They can issue additional paper money. They can open the way to credit expansion by the banks. They can thus create an artificial boom and the appearance of prosperity. But such a boom is bound to collapse soon or late and to bring about a depression." --Ludwig von Mises

Lane: War

"War will end when a majority of men on this earth know that every man is free. Each person must see for himself that everyone is self-controlling and responsible. So long as any large group of persons, anywhere on this earth, believe the ancient superstition that some Authority is responsible for their welfare, they will set up some image of that Authority and try to obey it. And the result will be poverty and war."

~Rose Wilder Lane

Mencken: a gang of men

"The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can't get and to promise to give it to them."

~H. L. Mencken

@Vefessh @MartianEmpress "Happy" people of "socialist" "nations"

I might frame the issue in this way:
 Either the reportedly "happy" people of "socialist" governments, would voluntarily cooperate for the supposed social-goods as they are currently provided without the need of a "socialist" government to compel them to do so, in which case the role of the "socialist" government to compel or force those "happy" people to submit to its rules, is unnecessary, OR the "happy" people of "socialist" governments would NOT voluntarily so cooperate to provide the supposed "social-goods" *absent* the threat of force by government to compel compliance, in which case they would be happier/greater-net-satisfaction if the government did not exist.

Or more succinctly:
Either, they would voluntarily remain "socialist" in which case "their" government is unnecessary, or else they would not do so voluntarily, in which case, they would be happier/more-satisfied if the government did not exist.

Tytler: Democracy

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing, always to be followed by a dictatorship, then a monarchy."

Alexander Fraser Tytler (1747-1813)

Tolstoy: The Kingdom of God is Within you

"The good cannot seize power, nor retain it; to do this men must love power. And love of power is inconsistent with goodness; but quite consistent with the very opposite qualities—pride, cunning, cruelty.  Without the aggrandizement of self and the abasement of others, without hypocrisies and deceptions, without prisons, fortresses, executions, and murders, no power can come into existence or be maintained.  

'If the power of government is suppressed the more wicked will oppress the less wicked,' say the champions of state authority.  But when the Egyptians conquered the Jews, the Romans conquered the Greeks, and the Barbarians conquered the Romans, is it possible that all the conquerors were always better than those they conquered? And the same with the transitions of power within a state from one personage to another: has the power always passed from a worse person to a better one?  When Louis XVI. was removed and Robespierre came to power, and afterward Napoleon—who ruled then, a better man or a worse? And when were better men in power, when the Versaillist party or when the Commune was in power?  When Charles I. was ruler, or when Cromwell?  And when Peter III. was Tzar, or when he was killed and Catherine was Tzaritsa in one-half of Russia and Pougachef ruled the other?  Which was bad then, and which was good?  All men who happen to be in authority assert that their authority is necessary to keep the bad from oppressing the good, assuming that they themselves are the good PAR EXCELLENCE, who protect other good people from the bad.

But ruling means using force, and using force means doing to him to whom force is used, what he does not like and what he who uses the force would certainly not like done to himself. Consequently ruling means doing to others what we would not they should do unto us, that is, doing wrong."

~ Leo Tolstoy from "The Kingdom of God is Within you"

Mises: Creativity

"The creative spirit innovates necessarily. It must press forward. It must destroy the old and set the new in its place. It could not conceivably be relieved of this burden. If it were it would cease to be a pioneer. Progress cannot be organized.... Society can do nothing to aid progress. If it does not load the individual with quiet unbreakable chains, if it does not surround the prison in which it encloses him with quite insurmountable walls, it has done all that can be expected of it. Genius will soon find a way to win its own freedom."

~ Ludwig von Mises

Holt: People shaping & the slave state

"Education... now seems to me perhaps the most authoritarian and dangerous of all the social inventions of mankind. It is the deepest foundation of the modern slave state, in which most people feel themselves to be nothing but producers, consumers, spectators, and 'fans,' driven more and more, in all parts of their lives, by greed, envy, and fear. My concern is not to improve 'education' but to do away with it, to end the ugly and anti-human business of people-shaping and to allow and help people to shape themselves."

~ John Holt

Mises: Genius

"Society cannot contribute anything to the breeding and growing of ingenious men. A creative genius cannot be trained. There are no schools for creativeness. A genius is precisely a man who defies all schools and rules, who deviates from the traditional roads of routine and opens up new paths through land inaccessible before."

~ Ludwig von Mises

Nietzsche: Coldest of all cold monsters

Somewhere still there are peoples and herds, but not where we live, my brothers: here there are states.

State is the name of the coldest of all monsters ... it even lies coldly, and this lie crawls out if its mouth: " I, the state, am the people."

This is a lie! The ones who created the peoples were the creators, the hung a faith and a love over them, and thus they served life.

The ones who set traps for many and call them "state" are annihilators, they hang a sword and a hundred cravings over them.

Where there are still peoples the state is not understood, and it is hated as the evil eye and the sin against customs and rights.

The sign I give you: every people speaks its own tongue of good and evil - which the neighbor does not understand. It invented its own language through customs and rights.

But the state lies in all the tongues of good and evil, and whatever it may tell you, it lies - and whatever it has, it has stolen.

Everything about it is false; it bites with stolen teeth, this biting dog. Even its entrails are false.

Far too many are born: the state was invented for the superfluous!
Just look at how it lures them, the far-too-many! How it gulps and chews and ruminates them!

"On earth there is nothing greater than I: the ordaining finger of God am I" - thus roars the monster. And not only the long-eared and the shortsighted sink to their knees!

Oh, even to you, you great souls, it whispers its dark lies! Unfortunately it detects the rich hearts who gladly squander themselves!

It wants to give you everything, if you worship it, the new idol. Thus it buys the shining of your virtue and the look in your proud eyes.

Indeed a dying for many was invented here ...

State I call it, where all are drinkers of poison, the good and the bad; state, where all lose themselves, the good and the bad; state, where the slow suicide of everyone is called - "life".

Just look at the superfluous! They steal for themselves the works of the inventors and treasures of the wise: education they call their thievery - and everything turns to sickness and hardship for them!

Just look at these superfluous! They are always sick, they vomit their gall and call it the newspaper. They devour one another and are not even able to digest themselves.

Just look at these superfluous! They acquire riches and yet they become poorer. They want power and first of all the crowbar of power, much money - these impotent, impoverished ones!

~Nietzsche
"Thus Spoke Zarathustra"

Bastiat: reform yourselves!

“Ah, you miserable creatures! You who think that you are so great! You who judge humanity to be so small! You who wish to reform everything! Why don't you reform yourselves? That task would be sufficient enough.”
― Frédéric Bastiat

Anderson: subtle & nefarious

"Political elections do not choose leaders of society.  Rather, they are an exercise in which groups of people choose individuals who will assist them in looting other groups of individuals, those folks who were unfortunate enough not to be able to elect their own political strongman. The process can be downright blatant, as is the case in African and Asian countries, or it can be relatively subtle as it is in the United States, where the trappings of 'constitutionality' and 'rule of law' hide many of the more nefarious goings on." ~ William Anderson

Browne: Income Tax

"The income tax is the biggest single intrusion suffered by the American people. It forces every worker to be a bookkeeper, to open his records to the government, to explain his expenses, to fear conviction for a harmless accounting error. Compliance wastes billions of dollars. It penalizes savings and creates an enormous drag on the U.S. economy. It is incompatible with a free society, and we aren‘t libertarians if we tolerate it." --Harry Browne

Dunne: a man that thinks men can be tur-rned into angels by an iliction

"A man that'd expict to thrain lobsters to fly in a year is called a loonytic; but a man that thinks men can be tur-rned into angels by an iliction is called a rayformer an' remains at large."
Finley Peter Dunne

Arendt: the cause of freedom versus tyranny

"No cause is left but the most ancient of all, the one, in fact, that from the beginning of our history has determined the very existence of politics, the cause of freedom versus tyranny."~ Hannah Arendt

Beck: hedged in by millions of laws

“We used to be a free people. Now we are hedged in by millions of laws. Harassed by a plague of opportunistic lawyers. Harmed by regulations meant for our protection. Unnecessarily taxed to pay for a suffocating bureaucracy. Drowning in petty paperwork. Stifled by “rights” that rarely benefit anyone.”
– Joan Beck
Columnist
Source: Houston Chronicle, February 6, 1995

Some NVC wondering

"I'm wondering if the application of NVC, isn't implicitly making a request; a request to authentically-communicate/connect. If it is necessary for the agent/administrator/prosecutor to accept the implicit request to communicate/connect, and for whatever reason, the person's pursuit of other needs, would cause them not to want to give-in to th

e request to communicate/connect, then I wonder if NVC can truly be efficacious under those circumstances. I wonder if the "magic" of NVC relies on the frequent circumstance that jackals want to be understood and/or have their feelings and needs recognized. The challenging opportunity of empathy that I am wondering about, occurs, when certain persons are in a position of power-over-others that might be so regularly exercised successfully (for their benefit), that the request to authentically-communicate/connect, challenges/threatens the needs that are being met by that power-over-others, such that, they may be unwilling, under these circumstances, to give-in to the implicit request of the NVC adept to authentically-communicate/connect. Such persons might be very committed to a strategy of breaking off communication as soon as possible, while communicating with as much amtssprache as possible."

On the necessity of economic theory to explain economic causal connections

A response on Facebook:

 "So I saw your post liked by my friends wall yesterday and was disappointed to see people still not believing WWII or the New Deal got us out of the Depression.

It did get us out of the depression. That and the New Deal. I've argued this with neo-cons and Austrians many times before. From where do you think all

those new orders for business came from? The private sector? They were all for the war. And the men were drafted into the army which is just another way of giving them welfare, the jobs they left behind being taken by previous unemployed. And we have kept this war spending until the present, mostly to keep the economy humming.

Explain to me the unemployment going down when the war started, explain to me GDP going up, explain to me the jobs created by the war time build up AND the New Deal if neither helped."

 

My response:

 

There can be no causal explanation for singular events/facts without the use of a theory that explains that causal connection. In this case, a faulty theory is employed to incorrectly connect events such as "WWII" and "the New Deal" with an

assessment of economic progress. Only the employment of an economic theory could causally connect these events; the fault of the theory employed to connect them, rests in an acceptance of the theoretical proposition that involuntary/non-consensual interactions, where one party compels an interaction through violence, coercion or theft, benefits both parties. Economics is the study of how humans act under conditions of scarcity, to improve their satisfaction with their condition; a bomb may improve the condition of the factory owner who produces the bomb, it may improve the satisfaction of the workers of the bomb-factory and ancillary businesses supporting the factory, but it does not necessarily improve the satisfaction of the person being bombed; it does not improve the satisfaction of the property owners whose property is destroyed by the bomb, and there is little guarantee that those taxed to pay for the production of the bomb, are in any way benefitted by the bombs production. The fault of the theory employed to support the causal connection of "WWII" and "the New Deal", is that it embraces the Broken Window fallacy; a rock thrown through the window, may generate improve the satisfaction of the window-repairman, and the window-maker, but it is a reduction in the satisfaction of the window owner and is also a reduction in the possible satisfaction of any other number of persons the window-owner may have done business with, had she not had to pay for the repair of the window. Taken to its fullest implication, this faulty theory would imply that if a nuclear holocaust would occur, then there would be an increase in "GDP" because of the "war spending"

Mencken: Government

All government, in its essence, is a conspiracy against the superior man; its one permanent object is to oppress him and cripple him. If it be aristocratic in organization, then it seeks to protect the man who is superior only in law against the man who is superior in fact; if it be democratic, then it seeks to protect the man who is inferior in every way against both. One of its primary functions is to regiment men by force, to make them as much alike as possible and as dependent upon one another as possible, to search out and combat originality among them. All it can see in an original idea is potential change, and hence an invasion of its prerogatives. The most dangerous man, to any government, is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable, and so, if he is romantic, he tries to change it. And even if he is not romantic personally he is very apt to spread discontent among those who are. . . .
The average man, whatever his errors otherwise, at least sees clearly that government is something lying outside him and outside the generality of his fellow-men—that it is a separate, independent and often hostile power, only partly under his control, and capable of doing him great harm. In his romantic moments, he may think of it as a benevolent father or even as a sort of jinn or god, but he never thinks of it as part of himself. In time of trouble he looks to it to perform miracles for his benefit; at other times he sees it as an enemy with which he must do constant battle. Is it a fact of no significance that robbing the government is everywhere regarded as a crime of less magnitude than robbing an individual? . . .
What lies behind all this, I believe, is a deep sense of the fundamental antagonism between the government and the people it governs. It is apprehended, not as a committee of citizens chosen to carry on the communal business of the whole population, but as a separate and autonomous corporation, mainly devoted to exploiting the population for the benefit of its own members. Robbing it is thus an act almost devoid of infamy. . . . When a private citizen is robbed a worthy man is deprived of the fruits of his industry and thrift; when the government is robbed the worst that happens is that certain rogues and loafers have less money to play with than they had before. The notion that they have earned that money is never entertained; to most sensible men it would seem ludicrous. They are simply rascals who, by accidents of law, have a somewhat dubious right to a share in the earnings of their fellow men. When that share is diminished by private enterprise the business is, on the whole, far more laudable than not.
This gang is well-nigh immune to punishment. Its worst extortions, even when they are baldly for private profit, carry no certain penalties under our laws. Since the first days of the Republic, less than a dozen of its members have been impeached, and only a few obscure understrappers have ever been put into prison. The number of men sitting at Atlanta and Leavenworth for revolting against the extortions of government is always ten times as great as the number of government officials condemned for oppressing the taxpayers to their own gain. . . . There are no longer any citizens in the world; there are only subjects. They work day in and day out for their masters; they are bound to die for their masters at call. . . . On some bright tomorrow, a geological epoch or two hence, they will come to the end of their endurance. . . .

Nietzche: Coldest of all cold monsters

"There are still peoples and herds somewhere, but not with us, my brothers: here there are states.
The state? What is that? Well then! Now open your ears, for now I shall speak to you of the death of peoples.

The state is the coldest of all cold monsters. Coldly it lies, too; and this lie creeps from its mouth; "I, the state, am the people."

It is a lie! It was creators who created peoples and hung a faith and a love over them: thus they served life.

It is destroyers who set snares for many and call it the state: they hang a sword and a hundred desires over them.

Where a people still exists, there the people do not understand the state and hate it as the evil eye and sin against custom and law.

I offer you this sign: every people speaks its own language of good and evil: its neighbor does not understand this language. It invented this language for itself in custom and law.

But the state lies in all languages of good and evil; and whatever it says, it lies -- and whatever it has, it has stolen.

Everything about it is false; it bites with stolen teeth. Even its belly is false.

Confusion of the language of good and evil; I offer you this sign of the state. Truly, this sign indicates the will to death! Truly, it beckons to the preachers of death!

Many too many are born: the state was invented for the superfluous!

Just see how it lures them, the many-too-many! How it devours them, and chews them, and re-chews them!

...It would like to range heroes and honorable men about it, this new idol! It likes to sun itself in the sunshine of good consciences -- this cold monster!

It will give you everything if you worship it, this new idol: thus it buys for itself the luster of your virtues and the glance of your proud eyes.

It wants to use you to lure the many-too-many. Yes, a cunning device of Hell has here been devised, a horse of death jingling with the trappings of divine honors!

Yes, a death for many has here been devised that glorifies itself as life: truly a heart-felt service to all preachers of death!

I call it the state where everyone, good and bad, is a poison-drinker: the state where everyone, good and bad, loses himself: the state where universal slow suicide is called -- life."

~ F. Nietzche

Will Anarchy help me find a girl-friend?

A rather lonely young gentleman asked the question on Facebook, "Will anarchy help me find a girl-friend?" and I thought that it was a rather interesting question; here is my response:

We should not ignore the fact that institutions of coercion have social repercussions; the powerlessness felt by persons coercively forced to interaction with institutions of domination can create conditions in which the victims are frustrated or angry about the maltreatment they have received and those unprocessed feelings and unmet needs can be transferred to other, less powerful parties. The violence being transferred, may be transferred again, in a causal-chain of violence. The regular/predictable nature of the violence and coercion of *institutions* of domination imply a regular/predictable initiation of these causal-chains of violence, which would imply that without those arbitrary initiations of violence in a regular/predictable occurrence, we might expect to see a net reduction of feelings of powerlessness, frustration, fear, anger, alienation and depression in the individuals belonging to the set of all individuals, as well as less relational stress/anxiety in small sets of persons in social relation, as well as a net reduction in social violence. Which is to say, on the whole, people would be happier and be able to interact socially more productively, if absent institutions of dominations (ie: the State). Which is to say, the probability of finding/discovered productive social relationships that might lead to coital pairing, would be remarkably improved, absent the State.