@Graham: TRIPLE-like!!!

You are a gentleman and a scholar - you do an immense service to liberty with your excellent voice-talent.

Also, people should look into indiegogo and kickstarter for funding liberty-related projects... Thomasz Kaye (aka 'bitbutter') has used this technique to bring us George Ought to Help, Edgar the Exploiter and - soon - Give Me Your Ball.

Two liberty-related project ideas I have and would like to see someone pick up (but do not have time right now to develop myself) are:

1) An "Open-Source Social Order" Wiki - this would be a wiki dedicated to documenting ways that people have successfully set up arrangements of all types between themselves. Ride-share, rent sub-letting, meetings and organizations (in fact, I would like Robert's Rules of Order to be the first page in the Wiki, as it captures the essence of the whole idea), performance bonds, private arbitration methods (for example, religious or just friend-based interventions, etc.) and so on. The basic idea is to document social-order ideas and their outcomes as a way to use the power of the Internet and "copy/paste" remixing (see here and here) to accelerate the spread of the basic building-blocks of ideological self-sufficiency (that is, the capacity of people to organize their own affairs, not protectionism or anti-division-of-labor) and government-independence. Another name idea I had is "Society Without Permission."

2) A digital hawala-style monetary system... basically, using judge.me and possibly a digital token like Bitcoin in order to create a system for transferring money over long distances. For legal reasons, I think the best route would be silver and gold bullion coins (i.e. not national monetary coins or any national fiat money).

The key thing that liberty-strategy has missed is: how to internalize at least some of the benefits of free society without resort to coercive measures like taxation or other political means. We don't need to internalize all the benefits, either. We only need to internalize enough of them to make such society "profitable", that is, self-sustaining.

In line with his discussion of making the scarce abundant, I think the single most valuable and monopolized resource of all is... us! Other people. This is why project #1 above is so important. We need to learn how to work with each other without having to go to the government for permission to do so. Want to drive? Get permission. Want to sell lemonade? Get permission. Etc. Note that the vast majority of trade activities do not involve activity that would require permission in a free society (i.e. the use of someone's private property).... most of it is just talking to people and finding out what they need or want to get rid of and then arranging the sale. The sale itself might occur in one's home. Look at Craigslist, for example.

But one prerequisite to doing this without permission is having the capacity to do so. If you are going to have a society where people can form organizations as they see fit... you have to have a population where there is widespread knowledge of how to do so. That's project #1.

And the single most important economic good in terms of enabling such social organization is money. But secure storage and cost-effective transmission of money from place to place is very, very difficult to do without - you got it - going to the government for permission to do so. This is project #2. A hawala-style system is not super-fast and it's not super cheap, but it is not prohibitively slow or expensive, either. And it is nuclear bomb-proof. Countries under the most tyrannical governments on earth are precisely the areas where the hawala system is most effective and durable.

Anyway, awesome work Graham. I'm heartened every time I listen to you!

Clayton -

Have you read On Killing? Great book.

Sounds interesting. I'll see if there isn't a .pdf somewhere to be found.

One note is that I think the modern view that regulars are, well, normal is flawed. Until the time of Napoleon, the concept of regular troops - who were nothing more than conscripts - as real troops had never existed. It was unprecedented and was the omen that signified the arrival of the two centuries of total warfare we have seen since that time.

I'm not sure what you men by that regular troops pre-Napoleon were not see as real troops? You mean they were pressed into service and seen as rabble to be controlled and spent? Oftentimes that was true but all of history pre-Napoleon is a long time so we should be cautious of too many generalizations.

For example Russia remained pre-napoleonic for sometime after the demise of Napoleon and fielded an appropriately pre-napolenic army made up of peasants pressed into service for life. This conscription was extremely unpopular with the peasants and anybody who ended up forced into the army must had felt himself as having been victimized. Yet it is remarkable what level of unit cohesion and professional pride units made up of such people went on to achieve. Most every contemporary observer who wrote about the battles of the Napoleonic wars took time to note the extraordinary fire discipline of the Russians. Their regiments just plain didn't break. In fact as we know, Russia with its pre-napoleonic army defeated France with its modern, levee en masse, citizen army. It turned out that when the going got really, really rough the freshly minted citizen-soldier with his thoughts on the bakery he had left behind in Boulogne just didn't care about military honor, the glory of his regiment and that kind of fare. Not nearly as much as the Russian lifer, probably a 10 or s 20 year veteran or the army, who had never known civilian life in adulthood and to whom his regimental colors were just about the only thing he had in life. We may think about them whatever we want, but fact is these people in field or in battle did not see themselves as victims, they saw themselves as fish in water. In fact we known great part of the reason why the Russians decided to put themselves in Napoleon's path at Borodino, which really didn't make sense strategically, was to appease the troops who were infuriated they were constantly retreating before the enemy and wanted to have a giant confrontation where tens of thousands of them would be blown to pieces and die painful deaths. You may say they were brainwashed, they were certainly being exploited and manipulated, but they weren't being compelled and controlled with force nearly to the extent we may imagine. It's rather interesting too because in a sense the Russian pre-napoleonic army may have been more like armies of our time than was the army of Revolutionary France. I note most significant military powers have moved away from the mass mobilization armies of the kind that fought WWII, and went (back) to the professional soldier-specialist armies.

But this is an illusion, in my opinion. The pre-Napoleonic soldier was much more like a modern special forces soldier. He generally did not "hold the lines" unless he was in some kind of virtually impregnable fortification. He killed up close and personal, he always strove to have the element of surprise, he (or at least, his commander to which he often owed only volunteer allegiance) chose his targets on the basis of his calculated ability to surprise and overwhelm them.

Of course, the rules of seige warfare were entirely different and I would argue that the logic of modern warfare is, in large part, the logic of seige warfare applied to the battlefield itself. What is a trench but a "improvised castle wall"?? Of course, artillery, rifles and rapid-fire machine-guns really and permanently altered the logic of warfare, as well. The entire concept of "holding your ground" became an exercise in suicide. A well-armed and determined enemy making a blitz push through a pin-point along "the battle-lines" with benefit of armor will always prevail... this is simply the physical law of force applied to strategy... the pin always bursts the balloon... and to pierce a much thicker balloon you need only a slightly thicker pin.

Well that specifically is just a technical point. Ultimately wars are about control of territory. The goal being for you to establish your mastery of space, and not allow for it to pass on to your competitor. Armies in the field would always try to maneuver to outflank the enemy to take it from the rear and to be in position to direct their attack toward the enemy where it was the weakest. A fort was nothing, but a position where it was impossible for the enemy to improve his position through clever maneuver. A pre-napoleonic soldier, just like the napoleonic soldier did a lot of marching as opposing forces maneuver to try to gain an advantageous position against the other, and then maybe once or twice per campaign he fought in tight formation in a brief high-intensity set-piece battle where potential for maneuver was temporarily greatly reduced, but where again the basic strategy was to extend over the enemy's flank and be in position to direct fire against him from his flank or even the rear. The basic idea was you would form up in as wide formation as you dared. You tried to be wider than your opponent and therefore able to wrap around him on one of his flanks and decimate him there.

The only thing which has changed is technology. With far more potent weapons, far better communications, and far better transport the ability to restrict enemy movement has been greatly enhanced. With greater firepower just a few soldiers can potentially prevent the movement of a great many troops. Compare the potency of a well-stocked machinegun team, with that of three guys with flinstocks. (In 1941 there was an engagement in which a single Soviet Kliment Voroshilov heavy tank held up the advance of a entire German division for an entire day.) Also with better communications and transportation dispersal of your troops over a wide front is far less problematic since you are able to shift troops and deliver reserves to where they are needed quickly. Basically what has happened is that armies are now able to deploy in extraordinarily wide "formations" that can span over hundreds, even thousands of miles. In fact they are able to make themselves so wide as to take up the entire state border and make themselves impossible to outflank. Holding the front is in fact hugely advantageous as it restricts the movement of the enemy and his potential to maneuver on you and to go around your flank. Nowadays to functionally "outflank" the enemy you must first somewhere go through it. Thus the development of spearhead strategies to breach the enemies defenses at a certain point then pour a large concentration of forces into the breach. Then it is a matter for the defender to bring his reserves in time to contain the enemy spearhead (eg by threatening encirclement) before it does serious damage and to restore a static battlefield where the ability of the enemy to maneuver is again restricted. For example in WWI in the west it was the case the armies could always dispatch reserves (by rail) to where they were needed much faster than the enemy could advance (on foot) to exploit in earnest the breeches in the front. With some basic balance of military potential a positional stalemate ensued. (It wasn't a stalemate in the east where there distances were greater and the rail network more primitive.) In WWII however an advance being made by road on motor vehicles could not always be countered in time. Giving rise to potential to, given a few enemy blunders and good fortune on your side, to neutralize a million-man army such as the French in a matter of weeks.  

Following the 90/10 rule that we see everywhere in commerce - which I believe applies equally to war - we can safely say that 10% of the armed forces easily do 90% of the real work (not necessarily 90% of the killing... but 90% of the killing that matters) that brings about the desired strategic goal. For example, you can think of the forward operators that were deployed to Baghdad to call in the JDAM coordinates for dynamic strikes on Iraqi tragets of opportunity during the 2nd Gulf War invasion. Doubtless, more than a few high-ranking Iraqi generals and politicians were killed during these strikes. These deaths were far more consequential than the deaths of the goatherds-coerced-into-driving-tank whose tanks were turned into flaming canisters by Apaches along the invasion routes into Baghdad.

It may depend on time and place. If you look at something like the Battle of Moscow it was certainly a mass affair and pretty egalitarian too (in the pertinent sense). If you asked who did 90% of the work there, the answer would probably be 70% of the people who took part. Also it is the case you do not know what is going to have the most effect. You must try many things, the more you try the more likely something is going to work spectacularly. Maybe the people calling in JDAM strikes were crucial in Iraq (which was an easy war from American POV), but had they failed, as they probably have before in some other setting, somebody else would have had to step up. (Well no, ideally the Iraqis would have won, but you know what I mean.)

It was also partly the result of very shrewd innovations (originating in Prussia, I believe) in the social technology of militarizing an entire population.

Revolutionary France. The classical Prussian army was made up of criminals, empressed Polish serfs, kidnapped foreigners and captured enemy troops. OK, I am exaggerating a bit, but observers of the time note the rank and file was heavily Slavic. Prussian society of course was largely German-speaking. After Prussia fielding this army was soundly defeated by Napoleon in 1806 it begun reforming along French lines. Actually Mises writes about this in Omnipotent Government (great work of history).

First, you inculcate love of country from youth. Then, you leverage this love of country to turn otherwise "ordinary" folks who never wielded anything more dangerous than a pitchfork or an ox-cart into soldiers by the application of a "pre-molded" soldier persona onto them. You give them a standard gun, standard boots, a standard uniform and standard provisions and you roll them off an assembly line of military training and then send them out into the field to "hold the line" or some other ill-defined strategic objective whose true purpose is merely to relieve the core combat soldiers - the real professionals who do it because they love it - of intermediate strategic objectives, freeing them up to be used for capital strategic objectives, like assaulting the enemy's field headquarters or assassinating his generals, and so on.

Well if you are a government engaged in a total war you do want to maximize the use of your resources. You want to exploit your millions of regulars for as much gain as you can squeeze from them. Esspecially if you are engaged in a life and death struggle (eg Hitler vs Stalin). You would not send them on some half-BS job. You want them where they will have the most impact and ideally for everyone to be as elite as possible (subject to how long you can afford to train them).

It is different nowadays with "dirty little wars" and atomic weapons and one power global hegemony, but I don't think it really applies to WWI and II.

Just found this. Thumbs up for Penn only - not for any of these other tools.

 

The Onion:

American Citizens Split On DOJ Memo Authorizing Government To Kill Them

WASHINGTON—Following the release of a secret Department of Justice memo this week that outlines the administration’s legal justification for killing U.S. citizens, a new Pew Research Center poll has revealed that a majority of Americans are torn over whether they support the government’s right to kill them anywhere at any time without due process. “On the one hand, I get it—it’s important for the government to be able to murder me and any of my friends or family members whenever they please for reputed national security reasons. But on the other hand, it would kind of be nice to stay alive and have, maybe, a trial, actual evidence—stuff like that,” said visibly conflicted 39-year-old Nashua, NH resident Rebecca Sawyer, who, like millions of other Americans, is split over whether secret federal agents should be allowed to target and assassinate her anywhere on U.S. soil. “I wouldn’t mind if federal officials blew up other citizens and claimed it was in the name of my safety. But it’s just that when it comes to me, I guess I’d rather not be slaughtered by my own elected officials on charges that never have to be validated by any accountable authority. This is tough.” While most Americans expressed conflicted feelings regarding the memo, the poll also found that 28 percent of citizens were unequivocally in favor of being obliterated at any point, for any reason, in a massive airstrike.

https://mises.org/community/forums/p/32935/513225.aspx#513225

 

?

 

http://www.policymic.com/articles/25753/ron-paul-chooses-hypocrisy-over-principles-in-fight-over-ronpaul-com

This is practically socialistic in nature. Surprising, as PolicyMic has put out several articles that have been overwhelmingly in support of Paul.

Watching governments twist in the wind over taxes and spending is somehow so extremely fulfilling, comeuppance and all that. Bismarckian politics running its inevitable course, and now slamming into the brickwall of reality. This is simply a pleasure to read, enjoy :)

http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2013-02-13/draconian-cash-controls-are-coming-france

"To get to the deficit target, the government had raised a slew of taxes to extract another €32 billion this year from households and businesses that are already gasping for air. Now “absolute priority” must be on bringing down spending, admonished Didier Migaud, First President of the Cour des Comptes, when he presented the report.

But spending cuts—whether corporate welfare projects or social programs—would be highly unpopular."

 

Anytime I see hot bitches like that being all cunty and indignant as if they know what they're talking about it makes me want to make a misogynistic joke about how this is why they're supposed to be in the kitchen instead of on tv...or that she can say whatever she wants if she takes that top off.

Does that make me sexist?

???

Talk about ruining a good song...

Los Angeles On High Alert As LAPD Back On Regular Duty

"LOS ANGELES—Los Angeles residents are reportedly on edge today following reports that hundreds of armed and extremely dangerous Los Angeles Police Department officers are resuming regular patrolling duties after the conclusion of Tuesday’s manhunt for rogue ex-cop Christopher Dorner. “I mean, just knowing they’re out there is terrifying—how can I feel safe when these maniacs are on the loose in my neighborhood?” said a visibly rattled Ashley Stillson, 38..."

 

I was kinda disappointed when I saw it was The Onion.

 

Just got Man, Economy, and State in the mail...who needs a weight-lifting set when you could just buy yourself two copies of Rothbard's magnum opus?

Atheism Destroyed with One Question

 

Like Bernie Sanders and Dennis Kucinich and Alan Grayson before her, Elizabeth Warren (of economic illiteracy fame) proves even socialists can be useful sometimes.

 

 

Solid proof that modern-day "progressives" adhere to what Mises said with regards to socialists being unhappy when socialists get in power who are not their friends.

 

"200,000 square meters (49 acres) of windows shattered by the shock wave from a meteor that exploded over Russia's Chelyabinsk region."

Has Krugman remarked on how lucky they are yet?

@Willy: http://mises.org/community/forums/p/8551/513996.aspx#513996

Clayton -

@ WillyTruth

I was waiting for this. thats how incredibly awesome inside baseball it is. I know you guys were too, as soon as you heard about all the broken windows. hahaha

^^Haha, awesome. Prosperity, ho!

 

Now it makes sense. I saw some conspiracy theories that it wasn't a meteor, that it was planned. Clearly, it was a plan to break a lot of windows and improve Russia's economy!

http://www.courthousenews.com/2012/06/27/47851.htm

     Alabama-based Chatom Primary Care sued Merck on Monday, the week after the unsealing of a False Claims Act complaint two relators filed in 2010.

     Those relators, Stephen Krahling and Joan Wlochowski, were Merck virologists who claim in their unsealed complaint that they "witnessed firsthand the improper testing and data falsification in which Merck engaged to artificially inflate the vaccine's efficacy findings."
     Krahling and Wlochowski claimed Merck's scheme caused the United States to pay "hundreds of millions of dollars for a vaccine that does not provide adequate immunization."
     "As the largest single purchaser of childhood vaccines (accounting for more than 50 percent of all vaccine purchases), the United States is by far the largest financial victim of Merck's fraud," according to the 2010 False Claims Act complaint. "But the ultimate victims here are the millions of children who every year are being injected with a mumps vaccine that is not providing them with an adequate level of protection. And while this is a disease that, according to the Centers for Disease Control ('CDC'), was supposed to be eradicated by now, the failure in Merck's vaccine has allowed this disease to linger, with significant outbreaks continuing to occur."
     The United States told a federal judge in April that it did not want to intervenein the False Claims case, but reserved the right to do so later.

Interesting lecture on savings (although it would more accurately be called 'time preference') and its relation to language:

Lee Doren interviews Barack Obama  (seriously)

 

Whoa.

Clayton -

Since this "sequestration" business that the Federal Gov't is totally taking super duper seriously, what's the best resource (video/article) to show a sophisticated layman that the economy will not be destroyed by the elimination of some gov't jobs on the grounds that gov't jobs are anti-productive?

The media is going to start bearing down hard on this idea, I've already seen alarmist headlines asking "Will the sequestration knock the US to a 2nd rate power" and this excerpt from Politico: "While most of Washington agrees the consequences of the sequester could be disastrous — economists have said it could cause another recession and military leaders have said it would harm national security"

 

 

 

EPIC.

"Oh my gawwwwwd."

Ugh. How can you get through these kinds of videos?

... Lulz?

MSM trying to launch an anti-Rome orgy. I have written critically of Rome and I remain critical of Rome, but not because it is a religion, nor because it "keeps secrets" - a privilege that any private organization has and ought to have. Rather, my criticisms of Rome are theological, philosophical and - to the extent that Rome mires its hands with political entanglements, openly or secretly - political. The Vatican has every right to keep its mouth shut on whatever it chooses to. It has every right to talk to whoever it chooses to talk to. The assault on this aspect of the Vatican is nothing but a continuation of the long assault of the political establishment on the Roman church insofar as it is a beacon of traditional values that impede the onward, upward march to ever greater State tryanny. Privacy - secrecy - is the foundation-stone of private property. Even if you are an atheist or non-religious, you should not welcome this assault against Rome by a bunch of tyrants seeking to expand the modern Leviathan's already Orwellian peeping powers to every nook and cranny of life.

Clayton -

Today in my history class, we split up into 3 groups of senators and debated the League of Nations and the Treaty of Versailles. I was in the group that wanted to reject it all together. The other two groups were the ones who wanted to accept it as is, and the ones who wanted to accept it with some changes. I didn't speak up,since I'm horrible at public speaking, but as I was listening, three Bastiat quotes kept coming to mind:

“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.”

 

“If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies of these organizers are always good? Do not the legislators and their appointed agents also belong to the human race? Or do they believe that they themselves are made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind?” 

 

"Away, then, with quacks and organizers! Away with their rings, and their chains, and their hooks, and their pincers! Away with their artificial methods! Away with their social laboratories, their governmental whims, their centralization, their tariffs, their universities, their State religions, their inflationary or monopolizing banks, their limitations, their restrictions, their moralizations, and their equalization by taxation! And now, after having vainly inflicted upon the social body so many systems, let them end where they ought to have begun — reject all systems, and try of liberty."

 

I must say,it was an interesting discussion. Lots of stuff about preventing war,etc. Wilson,naturally,is  regarded as a hero,a peacelover,etc. We've also been discussing imperialism this week, from what I can tell my teacher holds the Leninist theory to be the correct one.

 

Anyways,I thought that it was interesting,but not interesting enough to warrant a new thread.

Biden: No Ordinary American Is Concerned About Their Constitutional Rights, Facebook Questions are Plants

 

Such a tool.

Clayton -

No, he is a plant.

Truth: The Freedomain Radio Documentary - Teaser

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uK_AyKg0W0

Niceee...

The true meaning of public school