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One issue is that government spending does not represent the will of the consumer but is instead the consumptive decisions of bureaucrats. But what if, in the area of natural defense, the consumer wanted less national defense than was required and then the bureaucrat would spend? in that case the bug would become a feature.
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They can be banned, but where is the benefit, aside from to the bureaucrats who get paid to enforce the ban and the sanctimous thrill of forcing people not do things they want to do? Unlike other types of intervention, such as a tariff, which while still over all to be harmful to the economy, that at least has the dubious merit of benefiting a producer
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That's right. Offer them an allowance of $10 a week. Then offer them $2 to do a chore. When they do the chore, take $10 out of their piggy bank, cut off their allowance and accuse them of cheating the system.
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Bans on alcohol, drugs and prostitution are bad (bad in the sense that they benefit only the bureaucrats who enforce these prohibitions and cause losses of utility to consumers and losses of profit opportunities to producers) and pollution has very real and definite victims, especially once you do away with this idea of the state owning lakes etc.
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Then to teach your kids about taxation and wealth redistribution randomly take stuff away from them and give it to the kid down the street. Punish them for harshly for minor transgressions and when they object tell them that ignorance is not an excuse and if they don't like it they can move to Detroit.
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One can observe historically the impact of a large influx of gold on an economy, specifically with regards to Spain during their period of conquering south america etc. It created a false prosperity, high inflation and an eventual bust. Resources were malinvested near the coastal town where all this gold was coming in. Rothbard discusses this in austrian
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Hong Kong & Botswana are too important relatively recent examples as well. Economic freedom, property rights, fiscal restraint on the part of their government.
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Every crime has a victim and every action which is criminal but has no victim or the victim is some vague collective is not really a crime, that is to say it may be malum prohibitum but not malum in se. The victim is the person who is hurt by the criminal action and it is on their behalf that justice must be carried forth. The victim was hurt, and therefor
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The primal point of any justice mechanism is to create costs for certain (bad) decisions so to dissuade prospective wrong-doers from becoming actual wrong-doers. Deterence? Rothbard raises an important problem here. A lot of people will steal an apple from a push cart, but not so many will murder someone. Ergo, by your conception of the legal system
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"How do you make the victim of carjacking whole when the car has already been dismantled and sold, and the criminal has no assets to payback the victim?" Indentured slavery. "Or the victim of rape? I don't think she'll be capable or interested in raping back her dignity." Indentured slavery, or death would be fine with me