- What if there really were mutants, X-Men style?
- Adam Smith’s anti-imperialism. Grab a cup of tea or coffee.
- More environmental destruction in China. We saw the same type of thing happen in eastern Europe and Russia during the Cold War. This destruction is also rampant in post-colonial states that have largely adopted a Leninist approach to state-building. This may just be part of a harsh learning curve that comes with economic development. After all, the property rights regimes that the West now has in place took hundreds of years to develop, and they could all be much, much better. On the other hand, it seems as if Beijing is undertaking many projects without even thinking about the consequences, much less the claims to property by its citizens that are already in place.
- Has the Fed Been a Failure? If you read one thing this weekend, let it be this.
- More on militias and the second amendment, by –Rick (check out his blog here)
GDP: Who Needs It?
“For so it is, oh my Lord God, I measure it, but what it is that I measure I do not know.” –St. Augustine
Gross Domestic Product (GDP) gets a lot of attention these days. It’s fair game for bloggers, talking heads, perhaps your local barber. While most agree that higher GDP is better than lower, there are problems, some better-known than others. Some theorists have considered the concept hopeless, such as Austrian economist Oskar Morgenstern, who called GNP (the predecessor to GDP) “primitive in the extreme and certainly useless.” Lamenting the idea that the whole of a nation’s economic activity could be captured in a single number, he said that “very few men, even few economists, or should I say regretfully, especially economists, have a real appreciation and understanding of the immense complexity of an economic system.”
Let’s get the formal definition out of the way. GDP is the market value of all final goods and services produced in a particular country in a given year. The federal Bureau of Economic Analysis computes this number and releases it quarterly. The level of GDP is used as a basis for evaluating other things, like the national debt, which currently stands at about 85 percent of one year’s GDP in the United States. GDP growth rates are closely followed. These are inflation-adjusted, seasonally adjusted, and annualized, and are of course supposed to tell us how well the economy is doing.
Simon Kuznets gets credit for the first serious attempt to calculate national income figures, publishing his first work on the subject in 1941. Following in his footsteps, calculation of GDP and other “national income accounts” has become a core area of the economics profession. The explosion of economic and financial news has thrust GDP into the limelight in recent years. Continue reading
From the Comments: Militias and the Second Amendment
Longtime reader (and blogger) Hank Moore has been on a roll lately. In response to a condescending (and fact-free) comment made by a Leftist concerning gun rights, Hank responds with this:
That is very interesting that you would bring up the militia. Were you sincere and knowledgeable on this matter you might know that THIS, the militia, more properly to keep the militia from becoming a rabble and to circumvent the need for a standing army, was the main point of the Second Amendment. Not gun ownership.
The right to own whatever you could legally acquire without causing harm to someone by way of that acquisition was (and is) already an inalienable right, protected not only by the Constitution’s very structure (negative law) but by the Ninth and in a sense Fourth and Tenth Amendments as well.
The Second Amendment threw in that much-hyped line about the right to bear arms precisely so people like you wouldn’t interpret “well-regulated militia” as anything other than what it was (FYI, it had absolutely nothing to do with “conquering the frontier”). That is, a group of local men banding together when the need arose to protect what’s theirs (including their guns). But that is exactly what you have done. Misinterpreted it. But not because the language of that particular Amendment is so unclear (although I do wonder if their is a language barrier between collectivists and people who like to mind their own business, and no I don’t refer here to that obnoxious limey Piers Morgan’s pretentious accent), but because as a whole, the document the Constitution has fallen into disuse. In the era of positive law and positive rights, why even have one?
The answer is so that you (the politician or the lobby or the activist) can appeal to people who know deep down that arbitrary power is morally reprehensible, and thus bitterly cling to some semblance of a social contract; but who still have stupid ignorant ideas (by this I mean gun-control) that they want to shove down everyone else’s throat. Oh, and our founders wouldn’t know what you meant by military style weapons. Do you mean the military-style weapons that they used to defeat the British and would have been mercilessly slaughtered without? Or do you mean today’s military-style weapons that only certain classes of benign uniformed government-employees are permitted to own under your reading of the Second Amendment?
Anybody out there care to answer Hank’s questions? Well done! Here is Hank’s blog one more time. Do check it out.
How to Make the New Year Better
Many economists and financial analysts are making conjectures about when the recession will bottom out and how strong the recovery will be. The speed of recovery depends on the policies of government world wide. With the best policies, the economy could recover within three months. With bad policies, such as occurred during the Great Depression, the economy could stay down for years.
One bad policy that made the depression worse was the erection of trade barriers. The US enacted a high tariff in 1930, and other countries also restricted imports, and world trade broke down. Companies that sold goods abroad could no longer stay in business. Farmers suffered as foreigners could not buy their crops.
Unfortunately, many countries today are repeating this policy error. The German philosopher Hegel was right when he observed that governments do not learn from history. Indonesia is requiring new licenses and taxes for imports. Russia has raised tariffs on imported cars and food. India has levied a tariff on imported soybean oil. The chiefs of each country think that they are protecting their home industries, but they are ignoring the lessons of the Great Depression, as trade limitation is contagious. If political pressure induces them to do something, a money subsidy is preferable to a trade barrier, since that does not distort prices as much. Continue reading
Sharon Presley’s Newest Projects
So, I have been begging Dr. Sharon Presley to blog with us here at NotesOnLiberty for about a year now, and largely for one big reason:
She is a rock star within the libertarian movement. She has been an anarchist and an individualist feminist since before I was born, and she has always pointed out to a largely male-dominated quadrant of American politics (the libertarian one) that the movement has been shooting itself in the foot by not being more inclusive to women. She’s right, of course. Most of the women that I talk to about politics (which is a small sample, I usually try to stay on target) think libertarianism is bad ass once it has been explained to them in a coherent, progressive manner (like we do here at NotesOnLiberty).
Since she has been an activist for so long, she has a long CV filled with top-notch editorials and journal articles, as well as a number of books (which you can find to the right of this post).
She also has a different academic background than most libertarians, which is something I can appreciate as an anthropology major. A psychologist by training, Dr. Presley, has spent a lifetime helping people free themselves from various types of control.
Right now she is currently the managing editor of Free Voices: A Magazine of Anarchist Thought, the executive director (and co-founder) of the Association of Libertarian Feminists, and has recently launched another magazine project called The Free Woman Magazine. Needless to say, she is a very busy woman and I certainly understand if she doesn’t have the time for our humble blog, but it would be awesome if/when she join(s) us! In the meantime, do be sure to check out her other projects, as they are vital to maintaining the spontaneous and decentralized nature of the libertarian movement.
PS: here is a great article that she recently linked to on her Facebook page.
What I Did Not Write About Enough in 2012
Climate change
Nothing new there. Alarmists keep lying, making up data, cherry-picking data, exaggerating grossly the consequences of what does happen on the climate front. Not really worth dealing with. Instead, go to the “What’s Up With That” blog every so often. There is a direct link to it on the front of this blog and here also, is the link: Masters, McKibben and Droughting Thomases.
It’s not exactly a dead horse though; it’s a new religion that will find its place among others and perhaps, next to the “Maya Calendar End of the World” cult. Or, maybe not, or maybe, it’s a little more: It looks like one of those widespread but lightly held beliefs. It may become soon like the rule that you don’t walk under a ladder. It might influence legislation yet, but, I think not in a major way. I believe we got off easy.
Belief in global warming plays an important role in my life though. It helps me separate in seconds those who are real skeptics, like me, from those who merely play at pretending to be skeptics in order to glean the social benefits of such skepticism.
And, in case you are wondering, here is my current understanding: There is no warming that is global, and of significant duration, and that’s man-made, and that constitutes an emergency for humankind. Continue reading
Petaluma
Here is a poem I like:
No asphalt here, all concrete streets,
cracked, torn and rattled,
above centuries of adobe mud.
I’m from Petaluma and I never know
How to handle being home. Continue reading
Around the Web: Leftist Edition
1. Of Flying Cars and the Declining Rate of Profit. David Graeber takes a swipe at the discipline of economics. Does he have any valid arguments, or is it all hearsay?
2. The Red and the Black. This is an insightful essay by a doctoral candidate in history over at Cornell. His thesis: profit is the motor of capitalism. What would it be under socialism?
3. What happens when a right-libertarian takes a gander at left-libertarianism? An insightful essay, that’s what. Among the gems:
Now, a note: there are two kinds of things that don’t make sense:
1. pure crap
2. things that make sense but use a framework that’s a bit more nuanced than the one you’re used to.
4. Its Time for Gulf Colonialism. No summary of Leftist contributions would be complete without an ode to anti-imperialism. This one is short, sweet and to the point.
From the Comments: Red State Blue State Edition
Now that I have a trusty laptop again, I can answer questions and discuss comments a bit more efficiently. Hank Moore asked the following question in response to a link I provided on Left-wing secessionist sentiment:
That California piece was good. What’s your take on the whole red states mooching off the blue states thing? I keep hearing this whenever the secession question comes up. Those few libs who don’t want to confiscate Texas from the Texans say “good riddance, you’re a tax burden anyways!”
It doesn’t quite fit into my version of the conventional wisdom for some reason. [1] Are the blue states paying more than their “fair share” simply because they are underrepresented and thus the fault is the constitution, or [2] is it because they already have large populations they naturally attract big businesses in spite of the fact they aren’t as friendly to free enterprise, and because of this there is more tax revenue to be collected? [3] And then there’s the fact that some red states may in fact still be feeling the effects of being on the losing side of the Civil War (scorched earth warfare, unconditional surrender, reconstruction). These are the three possible explanations that fit with my way of thinking. Maybe its just that I’m cherry-picking “evidence” for a conclusion I’ve already arrived at.
Any thoughts?
All three of Hank’s reasons are good, but I’d like to zoom in on the last one about the Civil War. I think has the gist of why many red states are poorer than blue states, but with a couple of tweaks. Continue reading
Santa Brought Me A Laptop
…so expect more posts from yours truly this year. In case you guys didn’t know, I was robbed over the summer while living on the streets and attending summer school. It was a tough situation, but I’m on track to graduate debt-free from school, so boo-freaking-hoo for me.
I hope you guys stick around for another year. We launched this consortium just under a year ago and we’re excited and proud of what has become of it so far.
Take a look at the recommendations page, as it just received (another) overhaul. Also be on the lookout for more bloggers this year. We’ve got a bunch of academic economists, a historian, a law professor and an academic psychologist-turned-anarcho-feminist who have expressed interest in our humble project.
The most popular blogger (at least in terms of views) was Dr. Delacroix. Here are three of our readerships favorites (again, at least according to views):
Rounding out the Top 5 Most-Read Blog Posts were “Celebrating Chevron’s Profits” by Dr. Gibson and “Colonialism: Myths and Realities” by yours truly.
I’d also like to extend my sincere gratitude to Hank Moore for helping the consortium to launch its Facebook page. Without his support we wouldn’t be where we are today.
I’d like to thank everybody who has chimed in and added his or her own two cents as well. I know you certainly help me flesh out my thoughts on everything. Here’s to an amazing 2012 and a rollicking 2013.
America and Firearms (Explained to Overseas Readers)
The other day, I am watching the news on TV5, the international French language network. I am doing this to get away from the spectacle of the impending economic disaster in the US where I live. This is shortly after the massacre of school children in Connecticut. One item draws my attention: The cute, airhead French female announcer (or “anchorette”) states that last year about 28,000 people in the US lost their lives to guns.
Here we go again, I think. More half-assed information that is worse than no information at all. I have witnessed European media disseminating misleading information about the US for more than forty years. This time again, I have to intervene to help overseas of observers of the international scene who want to know about reality and who might happen to read this blog.
I can’t tell you how often I have witnessed the following: European commentators making sarcastic, superior comments about some American event or custom, or some American way of doing things and then, their society adopting uncritically the same American event, or custom, or way of doing things ten years later, or even later. Right now, for example, I would bet you anything that one of the novelties on French radio is 1990s American popular music. That would be especially true on the channel that calls itself without batting an eye-lash, “France culture.”
The tendency of Europeans to copycat the United States is so pronounced that it even affects social pathologies, the last thing you should want to imitate. Accordingly, it seems that the French expression for “serial killer” is: “serial killer.” N.S. ! (Would I make this up?) Continue reading
What is a Fair Share of Taxes?
What is fair is different from what is just. What is just is determined by the ethic of natural moral law as expressed by the universal ethic. The universal ethic prescribes that all acts, and only those acts, that coercively harm others, are evil. Justice is the implementation of the universal ethic in law. Justice is applied by prohibiting and penalizing evil acts, and by keeping all other acts free of restrictions or imposed costs.
The premises from which natural moral law derive are the biological independence of thinking and feeling, and the equal moral worth of all human beings. Thus a foundation of justice is equality before the law. People with equal conditions should be treated the same.
Equality implies that all persons are equal self-owners. If one person imposes his will on another, the victim becomes a slave, and the tyrant becomes a master, in violation of equality. Self-ownership implies that one fully owns one’s labor, and therefore any tax on wages or the products of labor, or the spending of wages, violates self-ownership, and is unjust. Continue reading
The Mystique of Hedge Funds
Hedge funds are controversial these days. Though it’s unlikely that the average citizen or the average congressman could say just what hedge funds do, many are certain they must be reined in by additional regulation because they can—and do—cause widespread damage to our financial system. Almost everyone takes it for granted that regulation of some sort is the solution, ignoring the possibility that at least some of the problems are actually caused by regulation.
What is a hedge fund? The name implies hedging, a strategy that reduces risk. If you bet on several horses in a race, you are hedging your bets—spreading your risk. You can buy gold to hedge against inflation. You can sell interest-rate futures to hedge the risk that rising interest rates would pose to your bond portfolio.
The first hedge fund was created in 1949 by Alfred Jones. He believed he could pick stocks that would outperform and those that would underperform the overall market. But Jones didn’t know where the overall market was going, so he would buy his expected outperformers and sell short the expected underperformers. He thereby insulated his portfolio from general market moves, which would affect about half his holding positively and half negatively.
Most present-day hedge funds don’t do much hedging, but the name persists. Instead, they engage in a bewildering variety of trading methods, including buying on margin (using borrowed funds) and selling short (selling borrowed assets so as to profit from a price drop). They trade stocks, bonds, options, currencies, commodity futures, and sophisticated derivatives thereof. Some try to anticipate global political or economic events, while others seek opportunities in specific industries or companies. Continue reading
Forward to the Failed Past
Some politicians like to use the slogan, “forward.” Sometimes it is more emphatic: forward!
But one may well ask, forward to what? Time and the current of events are always moving us forward already, so evidently the forward-seekers want to change the existing flow sideways. The slogan “forward” has often been used by those who seek greater state-imposed collectivism. As propaganda, “forward!” sounds better than “leftward!” or “towards ever greater statism!”
Several publications of socialist parties during the 1800’s were titled “Forward.” Lenin continued this tradition when he founded the Bolshevik newspaper “Vpered” (or “Vperyod”), which is “forward” in Russian. German socialists had already published the periodical “Vorwärts,” and the German national socialists continued the use of the slogan. Several communist and socialist parties still use “Forward” as the title of their publications. Continue reading
The Pigou Club
Professor N. Gregory Mankiw of Harvard University initiated and hosts “The Pigou Club” of economists, journalists, and politicians who have favorably written about pollution levies as an efficient way to reduce emissions. Arthur Cecil Pigou was the economist who was the first to deeply analyze externalities (uncompensated effects on others) in his 1920 book The Economics of Welfare.
Pigou proposed a levy on negative external effects equal to the social cost, so that buyers and users pay the full social cost of products. The most common applications are tolls to prevent traffic congestion, parking meters that vary by time of day, and pollution levies.
The policy of charging those who create negative externalities is named Pigouvian, or Pigovian. Mankiw advocates higher gasoline taxes, but that would also tax those car owners with cars that run quite cleanly and are driven in roads that are not congested. The best Pigovian policy is to focus the charge on the negative element such as harmful emissions. Continue reading
Notes On Liberty 