Apropos Austrian Aphorisms - All Comments

re: If you don't like it...

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re: Senator Obama Introduces Legislation to Protect 'Community Organizers'

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re: A proper gander at the FairTax

C Le Master — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 23:55:42 GMT

Also, this was not mentioned: As everyone here probably knows, a trade is one saying what you are offering to me is more valuable than what I am offering you, and vice versa. So by putting money into the economy, you are helping others out. Why be penalized for a good deed. Also, one man's business may be a service requiring the purchase of only one item every now and then and he makes $100,000 a year or less. Another man may do concrete work, and have to pay for steaks to set up, wood for forms, concrete, sealer, stamps, color, and labor. All of these things will be taxed. He may make $500,000 on papers at the end of a year, but only takes home less than the man making $100,000, and is being taxed a lot more than he is and penalized for helping society and the economy. All taxation is unfair; there should be no government to fund anyway, especially one that forcefully takes our money. "Government is the negation of liberty"- Mises.

re: The best real-world argument for private roads?

thedo — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 19:47:21 GMT

People can be excluded from roads today, despite roads being public. I do not buy this casual dismissal of my (stupid; ridiculous) suggestion.

re: The best real-world argument for private roads?

stevenspadijer — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 02:05:51 GMT

And you don't know who you're speaking to or who is behind the screen- but if I did, and I didn't like them, I, as Der Fuhrer, would expell them from my realm. Isn't that how the royal prerogative came about?

What a ridiclous suggestion; the difference between roads and the net is publicness. The internet is too private a creature to allow for transparency of not only from where one is going, but to where and with whom.

re: The best real-world argument for private roads?

Keith Ackermann — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 07:45:16 GMT

Users can't go where they want. I cannot route this message around the NSA's Narus equipment.

Who would own the private roads? Could I?

Could I own the street my house is on?

Could I only allow certain people to travel on it?

Could I prohibit people from getting to their house?

What about the pipes under my road?

What if I don't want a manhole in my road?

Wouldn't buying a house be difficult if I changed the rent for the water pipes under my road quite often?

I could severely restrict the freedom of my neighbors.

Private roads are the dumbest idea since the Federal Reserve.

All you have to do is chip in a few bucks and all those hassles go away. Set a flat rate that is half of the upkeep, and when the roads become intolerable to where everyone agrees they need fixing, then raise the rate for a year and fix them.

re: The best real-world argument for private roads?

thedo — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 15:07:10 GMT

I guess my post was directed more toward a complex network of private roads because many, at least in my discussions with them, believe a network of roads as we have today would be too complex and expensive for private owners to manage. Yet the Internet gets by just fine.

re: The best real-world argument for private roads?

MatthewWilliam — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 04:02:08 GMT

I read the title of this thread and clicked the link with glee. I felt badly let down. I'm actually looking for real life examples of private roads, here are two:

en.wikipedia.org/.../Long_Island_Motor_Parkway

en.wikipedia.org/.../91_Express_Lanes

re: If you don't like it...

Keith Ackermann — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 07:04:36 GMT

I think the problem boils down to the all-or-nothing faceoff. The state cannot prevent anyone from being a free rider. As long as that is true, but services are still being rendered, then everyone would want to be a free rider - ala socialism, but without the inputs.

Since the services would cease to exist, and with no organized plan for an alternative system, anyone who wanted the services are now SOL.

Someone should be working on the plan. We can start now:

Who should own the road you live on now?

What should be done with the mentally ill, infirm, and handicap people incapable of finding gainful employment?

There's a ton more, but I'm tired.

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re: My one rule for government action

Mac — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 11:09:10 GMT

Good rule thedo

Hayek, if I remember rightly, thought the same.

Cheers

re: Imagine

DanielMuff — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 03:01:47 GMT

I fail to understand why a statist would want something that the market does not or already has enough of. For example, why do we need Obama to take money from the private sector to fund "green techonology" when the private sector does not want or already has enough "green techonology"?

re: My first exposition of the modern war propagandists

Mac — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 22:01:06 GMT

That is hysterical. I can only imagine what the reader thought, or Richard Doak.

And post the satire when you're done.

cheers

re: The prescience of Hazlitt

stevenspadijer — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 11:49:56 GMT

I find Henry Hazlitt's views to be particularly perceptive. I suppose his journalistic flair allowed him to see things that most economists could not.

Interestingly, though, Hazlitt argued the gold standard could generate the same boom bust cycle (in housing) as fiat currency.*

If you compare what is happening in America today *due to government comission rather than omission and what happened in Australia in 1890 *under free banking* - the results were the same: massive unemployment and deflation.

According to Hazlitt:

"...Thus according to Hazlitt, banks continued to lend funds above the amount of gold held in their vaults. It is here that the “boom” begins. Hazlitt outlines a hypothetical scenario in which banks lower their reserve ratio to 50 percent. With twice the lendable funds, banks are “now suddenly free to extend more credit. They can, in fact, extend twice as much credit as before. Previously, assuming they were lent up, they had to wait until one loan was paid off before they could extend another loan of similar size. Now they can keep extending more loans until the total is twice as great. The new credit plus competition causes them to lower their interest rates. The lower interest rates tempt more firms to borrow, because the lower costs of borrowing make more projects seem profitable than seemed profitable before.

Hazlitt thus found in such credit expansion a cause of the business cycle, which he thought could occur even with “free banking,” because banks would be pressured by competition constantly to lower their reserve ratios. While inflation under free banking would be substantially less than under government-managed credit expansion, it would persist nonetheless. Because of his profound dislike of inflation, regardless of the source, Hazlitt favored a “pure” gold standard, or a 100 percent reserve requirement. To secure this, Hazlitt advocated strict government regulation of required reserves. Any expansion of credit above the amount of gold held in reserve was fraudulent, and as such, should be prosecuted by government authorities, he wrote in The Inflation Crisis, and How to Resolve It..."

www.thefreemanonline.org/.../hazlitt-on-gold

This is exactly what happened in 1890 - competition induced banks to lower there reserves and interest rates, igniting an artifical boom. So, my point is the free market - without a regulated market WHICH ENSURES A 100% GOLD STANDARD - can share the same limitations (ie a depression) as a government commissioned bank which gives poor people mortgages it could not afford even in the best of times :-)

* Mind you - credit is actually created before fiat currency is printed excessively - look into the endogenous theory of the money supply, which I one point I think Austrians are lacking and Keynesians have the upper hand. Remember credit can act as reserve desposits :-)

re: The apathy non-vote

alansmithee — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 23:36:00 GMT

just cuagt your blog on mises.org.

just wanted to give my 2c on the voting/apathy issue. to me it is apathetic in large part to vote, because by doing so one passively affirms 'the system', by taking the bold step and not voting one essentially can make the moral claim, i do not consent to these wrongnessisms.

you capured this here: "It doesn't matter whom you vote for, just vote!" this is the apathetic compliance with a system gone bad where as providing reasoned argument (moral or otherwise) as to why you dont vote is to resist apathy, to resist the false dichotomy that covers up bi-partisan compliance with state building.

so yeah, most non-voters are indeed apathetic, and one can understand why, but it is also a mistake to accuse all non-voters of being apathetic.

yours,

alansmithee.