End of the Republic

Philosophy of collectivism - it never works.

2010-02-16T13:24:00.000-08:00

Freedom from poverty is essentially different from the freedom of gays and lesbians to lead their own lives. What does it take to be free to marry your partner? Only that nobody else intervene. What does it take to have freedom from poverty? Does someone have to act to provide you a well paying job? Does someone have to act to provide minimal services? That would be anti-freedom as someone is FORCED into providing wages, housing, education, etc.

I want people to be free from poverty as well – and the best way to do that is to give them power over their own destiny. That means setting them free from the oppressors (government, big business, Israelis, whoever you see as an "oppressor"). The best bulwark against all three is a STRONG set of laws that protect PRIVATE property rights. Then the oppressors are disarmed because they cannot take away what you have or your right to get more and keep it, too!

There should be rules, but the rules should be outcome NEUTRAL – just to make sure that those rights are not violated – i.e. we delegate our right to use retaliatory force to an independent, objective, third party that we call government.

The battle we have to fight is the battle between individualism and collectivism. The collectivist states would be our doom precisely for due to the philosophy they embrace, not in spite of it.

Freedom vs. collectivism

2010-02-16T13:20:00.000-08:00

There are two trends in the US and a big fight is coming between those who want to bind us all together vs. those who want to keep individual freedoms alive and well.
The battle is between individualism (freedom) and collectivism.
How do we go about living our lives in a society with one another when one group (collectivists) want to tie people down and limit their freedoms while the other group wants to remain free? These are irreconcilable differences!!!!! We cannot have both in the same society!

The question is what to do next. Neither of us will likely ever shift to the other one’s point of view. So, what do we do when we are faced with this situation – especially where one of us wants a society that ties us all together and the other one wants to be free to go his own way? Those are two FUNDAMENTAL differences.

The only way to achieve peace between them is to go in the direction of freedom. In all cases of collectivism people like me are either killed, imprisoned, or exiled. In a free society, socialists and communists can exist – they can form their own voluntary organizations and participate as long as they want to whatever extent they want. The problem I have is when these same people want to use the FORCE of government to impose their values on others.

Freedom or death, mate. That is your only choice!

Do not call the US a capitalist or free market country.

2010-02-16T13:15:00.000-08:00

A free market is capitalism – not a mixed economy. A mixed economy is a mixture of freedom and controls and “dominant classes” fight to gain influence over the controls and to limit the freedom of the market (since a free market is a challenge to their current power and influence). They want to use the apparatus of the state to disarm their competitors and put chains on the market. Sounds a lot less like capitalism, when you really look at it!

The USA was a lot closer to it in the latter half of the 19th century than we are now. The progressive movement started to kill it in the decade running up to WWI. We had no central bank, the government was very small and restricted itself to its enumerated powers as laid out in the constitution (for the most part). We had no income tax. We were on the gold standard and the government did not print money. We had no public education system, etc – yet from the end of the civil war through 1920s, we had become the world’s leading industrial power and the living standards of our citizens were raised quite dramatically.

Capitalism and industrialization INHERITED the problem of exploitation of workers and eventually abolished it! It did not create it. Do you think that workers were all happy in the pre-industrial time? Do you think there was no such thing as child labor or did you forget all about the exploitative nature of the feudalist and mercantilist models?

In terms of the robber barrons – re-check your history again – note what fields they appeared in first – the ones in which they were able to get government involvement through the abuse of the interstate commerce clause and the establishment of the ICC. Second, the “trust busting” started to occur only in areas in which government was beginning to get its feet (see railroads as a primary example). This was the beginning of the end. It was not a perfect system, but we had a lot more freedom back then as opposed to today.

Regarding education, if you set up a modern factory with the skills of that workforce, you would be extremely disappointed with the results. Once again, this was a problem that was inherited by the capitalist system and eliminated because of it. The need for more highly educated people spurred the investment (private) in schools. It was the CHRISTIAN progressives who petitioned for a nationwide public system because they believed that the private school education was too secular! There was great opposition to these factory jobs back then by the early socialists and Marxists because they believe that industrialization and capital investment cost jobs and led to unemployment – rather than realize that the machines were replacing the backbreaking labor with highly skilled and better paid (due to the higher productivity) jobs. Just believing their argument, we should have close to 100% unemployment by now!

Beginning in the 1920s we started to get full scale government intervention – as we had a central bank in the US for the first time diddling with the money supply (even in spite of the gold standard). The 30s were the result of welfare statists attempting to break the rules of reality (to spend without regard to the consequences and that belief that the cure for the accumulated war debt was to extend more credit!)… How Keynesian! The 30s were made worse by the confiscation of gold and the imposition of draconian price and wage controls by FDR. As it says in the Koran, only Allah can fix prices!
The 30s were the result of governments foolishly playing with toys they had never seen before and should never have taken out of the box.

Keynesianism - in his own words.

2009-03-01T12:33:00.000-08:00

The power grabbers in Washington know more about Keynes and his theory than do the general populace. They accept this principal:

“Nevertheless the theory of output as a whole, which is what the
following book purports to provide, is much more easily adapted to the conditions
of a totalitarian state, than is the theory of production and distribution of a given
output produced under conditions of free competition and a lance measure of
laissez-faire.”

California is not alone.

2009-03-01T11:38:00.000-08:00

Municipal finances are a mess all over the United States. While municipal bonds are given "tax exempt" status (or preferential market treatment), the states cannot run their own printing presses.

Get ready to hear about how the first thing to be cut will be "essential services: education, fire, police, safety nets for the poor". I wonder why some of their non-essential services are never on the chopping block. Actually, I do not - they can easily call for more taxes if they can scare citizens with "your child will not get an education" rather than "your new bike path will not be built".

STATES WITH MID-YEAR FY2009 BUDGET GAPS
Size of Gap Percent of FY2009 General Fund
Alabama $1.1 billion 12.7%
Alaska $360 million 6.8%
Arizona $1.6 billion 15.9%
California $13.7 billion 13.6%
Colorado $604 million 7.7%
Connecticut $1.7 billion 10.1%
DC $258 million 4.1%
Delaware $226 million 6.2%
Florida $2.3 billion 9.0%
Georgia $2.2 billion 10.3%
Hawaii $232 million 4.0%
Idaho $218 million 7.4%
Illinois $4.2 billion 14.8%
Indiana $1.1 billion 8.0%
Iowa $134 million 2.1%
Kansas $186 million 2.9%
Kentucky $456 million 4.9%
Louisiana $341 million 3.7%
Maine $140 million 4.6%
Maryland $691 million 4.6%
Massachusetts$2.4 billion 8.4%
Michigan $200 million 0.9%
Minnesota $426 million 2.5%
Mississippi $175 million 3.4%
Missouri $342 million 3.8%
Nevada $536 million 7.3%
New Hampshire$50 million 1.6%
New Jersey $2.1 billion 6.5%
New Mexico $454 million 7.5%
New York $1.7 billion 3.0%
No. Carolina $2.0 billion 9.3%
Ohio $1.2 billion 4.2%
Oregon $442 million 6.6%
Pennsylvania $2.3 billion 8.1%
Rhode Island $372 million 11.4%
So. Carolina $871 million 12.7%
South Dakota $27 million 2.2%
Tennessee $884 million 7.8%
Utah $620 million 10.4%
Vermont $66 million 5.4%
Virginia $1.1 billion 6.7%
Washington $509 million 3.4%
Wisconsin $594 million 4.2%
TOTAL $51.1 billion 10.5%

National Debt Clock

2008-12-17T12:47:00.000-08:00

Added to the blog, on the left.

What happens in deflation: The real value of your debt rises. If you have debt of $1,000 and now are earning less due to deflation, your debt becomes harder to pay off.

What happens in inflation: The debt value is $1,000, but your earning increase meaning it is easier to pay the debt.

Why do you think the government is gung-ho against deflation?

Where is Midas Mulligan?

2008-12-16T15:55:00.000-08:00

Just like China, the US government is now resorting to strong-arming the banks to lend to their "preferred clients". Of course, this is Blago, but I doubt the practice would be limited to Illinois. Now, when can I get the government to force a bank to the people who want to buy my house?

From the Blog of the Cato Institute...

What's far more worrisome is Blagojevich's bizarre confrontation with the Bank of America. The day before he was arrested on charges of massive corruption, Blagojevich visited a group of striking workers at a North Chicago firm called Republic Windows & Doors. After being laid off the week before, the employees had begun a sit-in, demanding benefits they were still owed by their employer, which said it could not meet their demands because the Bank of America had cut off its financing. At this point, Blagojevich informed bank officials that unless they restored the shuttered window-and-door company's line of credit, the state of Illinois would suspend all further business with Bank of America. A few days later, the bank caved in and ponied up a $1.35 million loan.
The idea that the governor of a state as prosperous and important and sophisticated and upscale as Illinois would make this kind of threat is terrifying. Even more terrifying is that Bank of America saw no alternative but to give in. Yet even more terrifying is that nobody outside Chicago seems to have gotten terribly worked up about the situation, riveted as they are on the governor's more theatrical transgressions. But peddling a Senate seat or using scare tactics to shake down a newspaper are nowhere near so serious a menace to society as letting the government arbitrarily intervene in financial transactions between banks and creditors. A crooked governor we can all handle. But a governor who capriciously decides which commercial enterprises a bank must finance and which it can ignore is a scary proposition indeed.
Rome wasn't built in a day. But get the wrong politician in office, and you can burn it in a day.
What the grandstanding Blagojevich reportedly attempted to do in the Republic Windows vs. Bank of America set-to is precisely the sort of thing that happens in China, where the government routinely orders up bank loans to politically connected firms. Whether a failing company actually deserves financing becomes irrelevant to the conversation; the government doesn't want a company to fail, so it decides that it must not go under, even if it's run by clowns, stooges, gangsters or in-laws.

Short-term people talk deflation, but what does the market think?

2008-11-11T11:22:00.000-08:00

A post from Barron's magazine - does the US government have a "limit" to the amount it can borrow?

Barron's
UP AND DOWN WALL STREET DAILY
Uncle Sam's Credit Line Running Out?
By RANDALL W. FORSYTH
NOVEMBER 11, 2008

The yield curve and credit default swaps tell the same story: the U.S. can't borrow trillions without paying a price.

WHAT ONCE WAS UNTHINKABLE has come to pass this year: massive bailouts by the Treasury and the Federal Reserve, with the extension of billions of the taxpayers' and the central bank's credit in so many new and untested schemes that you can't tell your acronyms or abbreviations without a scorecard.

Even more unbelievable is that some of the recipients of staggering sums are coming back for a second round. Or that the queue of petitioners grows by the day.

But what happens if the requests begin to strain the credit line of the world's most creditworthy borrower, the U.S. government itself? Unthinkable?

American International Group which originally had to borrow what was a stunning $85 billion from the Fed to keep it from cratering in September, upped the total Sunday to $150 billion.

Monday, Fannie Mae reported a $29 billion third-quarter loss, far in excess of forecasts, raising the specter that the mortgage giant may need more money after the Treasury pledged to inject $100 billion in preferred stock financing in September.

Meanwhile, American Express received Fed approval to convert to a bank holding company, joining the likes of Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, that have a direct pipeline to borrow from the Fed or the Treasury's TARP, the $700 billion Troubled Assets Relief Fund.

And, of course, Detroit is looking for a credit line from Washington. General Motors (GM) Friday warned it could run out of cash next year without a government loan. GM plunged another 23% Monday, to 3.36, as several analysts helpfully recommended selling shares of the beleaguered automaker that already had lost more than 85% of their value.

Visiting the White House Monday, President-elect Obama pressed President Bush to support emergency aid for GM and other automakers. The prospect for federal aid for GM ironically weighed on its shares as one bearish analyst said the price of the bailout could be a wipeout of common holders.

Be that as it may, it's all adding up. If the late Sen. Everett Dirkson were around today, he might comment that a trillion here, a trillion there and pretty soon you're talking about real money.

Trillions are no hyperbole. The Treasury is set to borrow $550 billion in the current quarter alone and $368 billion in the first quarter of 2009. "Near-term pressures on Treasury finances are much more intense than we had thought," Goldman Sachs economists commented when the government announced its borrowing projections last week.

It may finally be catching up with Uncle Sam. That's what the yield curve may be whispering. But some economists are too deaf, or dumb, to get it.

The yield curve simply is the graph of Treasury yields of increasing maturities, starting from one-month bills to 30-year bonds. The slope of the line typically is ascending -- positive in math terms -- because investors would want more to tie up their money for longer periods, all else being equal. Which it never is.

If they expect yields to rise in the future, they'll want a bigger premium to commit to longer maturities. Otherwise, they'd rather stay short and wait for more generous yields later on. Conversely, if they think rates will fall, investors will want to lock in today's yields for a longer period.

The Treasury yield curve -- from two to 10 years, which is how the bond market tracks it -- has rarely been steeper. The spread is up to 250 basis points (2.5 percentage points, a level matched only in the past quarter century in 2002 and 1992, at the trough of economic cycles.

Based on a simplistic reading of that history and the Cliff Notes version of theory, one economist whose main area of expertise is to get quoted by reporters even less knowledgeable than he, asserts such a steep yield curve typically reflects investors' anticipation of economic recovery.

Never mind that the yield curve has steepened as the economy has worsened and prospects for recovery have diminished. Like the Bourbons, the French royal family up to the Revolution, he learns nothing and forgets nothing.

As with so much other things, something else is happening this year.

The steepening of the Treasury yield curve has been accompanied by an increase in the cost of insuring against default by the U.S. Treasury. It may come as a shock, but there are credit default swaps on the U.S. government and they have become more expensive -- in tandem with an increase in the spread between two- and 10-year notes.

This link has been brought to light by Tim Backshall, the chief analyst of Credit Derivatives Research. The attraction of investors to the short end of the Treasury market is "juxtaposed with the massive oversupply and inflationary expectations of the longer end," he writes.

Backshall is not alone in this dire assessment. Scott Minerd, the chief investment officer for fixed income at Guggenheim Partners, a Los

Angeles money manager, estimates that total Treasury borrowing for fiscal 2009 will total $1.5 trillion-$2 trillion. That was based on $700 billion for TARP, a $500 billion-$750 billion "cyclical deficit," an additional $500 billion stimulus program and some uncertain amount for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

Minerd doubts that private savings in the U.S. and foreign purchases of Treasury debt will be sufficient to meet those government cash. That leaves the Fed to take up the slack; that is, monetization of the debt.

However it comes about, Backshall's charts of the yield curve and the spread on U.S. Treasury CDS paint a dramatic picture. Both the yield spread and the cost of insuring debt moved up sharply together starting in September.

Let's recall what happened that month: the Fannie Mae-Freddie Mac bailouts, the AIG bailout and the Lehman Brothers failure. The two lines continued their parallel ascent with the announcement and ultimate passage of the TARP last month. And evidence mounted of an accelerating slide in growth.

Cutting through the technical jargon, the yield curve and the credit-default swaps market both indicate the markets are exacting a greater cost to lend to Uncle Sam. And it's not because of anticipated recovery, which would reduce, not increase, the cost of insuring Treasury debt against default.

All of which suggests America's credit line has its limits.

At the beginning of the Clinton Administration in the early 1990s, adviser James Carville was stunned at the power the bond market had over the government. If he came back, Carville said he would want to come back as the bond market so he could scare everybody.

President-elect Obama may come to think Clinton had it easy by comparison.

No credit crunch here

2008-11-09T17:03:00.000-08:00

Zimbabwe's central bank is doing all it can to put liquidity into the hands of its citizens... it has been so generous, it has even started printing Z$ 1,000,000 notes (just a month after it introduced its $50,000 note)...

This table shows a condensed history of the foreign exchange rate of the 3 Zimbabwean Dollars to US Dollars:

First Dollar
Month Exchange rate
1983 1
1997 10
2000 100
Jun 2002 1 000
Mar 2005 10 000
Jan 2006 100 000
Jul 2006 500 000+

Second Dollar
Month Exchange rate
Aug 2006 650
Sep 2006 1 000
Dec 2006 3 000
Jan 2007 4 800
Feb 2007 7 500
Mar 2007 26 000
Apr 2007 35 000
May 2007 50 000
Jun 2007 400 000
Jul 2007 300 000
Aug 2007 200 000
Sep 2007 600 000
Oct 2007 1 000 000
Nov 2007 1 500 000
Dec 2007 † 4 000 000
Jan 2008 6 000 000
Feb 2008 ‡ 16 000 000
Mar 2008 70 000 000
Apr 2008 100 000 000
May 2008 777 500 000
Jun 2008 40 928 000 000
Jul 2008 758 530 000 000

Third Dollar
Month Exchange rate
Aug 2008 1 780
Sep 2008 590 000
7 Oct 2008 2 300 000
14 Oct 2008 10 700 000
21 Oct 2008 1.22 Billion
28 Oct 2008 251 Billion
8 Nov 2008 663 Trillion

Now, US monetary base figures....

These are NOT seasonally adjusted.

Date Monetary
base

Month
2007-Oct.     828373
Nov.     833052
Dec.     836432

2008-Jan.     831104
Feb.     828692
Mar.     832358

Apr.     830494
May      833974
June     839085

July     846462
Aug.     847302
Sep.     908052

Oct. p   1132799

Two weeks ending
2008-Sep. 10 849866
     24 915072

Oct.  8 988653
     22 1146416

Nov.  5p 1239747

Nice growth in the past few months, eh? If the "greedy" banks were not keeping most of that new liquidity on deposit at the Fed, it would be out as cash in our hands. It still may end up there...

J. Thyme Matz

Imperial Presidency, continued

2008-11-09T16:23:00.000-08:00

Any hopes one may have held that Obama would seek to reduce the amount of power that Bush and his earlier ilk took into the executive branch are short lived - so short they end even before he is sworn into office.

He intends to have an "immediate impact" on policy by making law using executive orders.

"President-elect Obama plans to use his executive powers to make an immediate impact when he takes office..." John Podesta, an Obama spokesman continues... "There's a lot that the president can do using his executive authority without waiting for congressional action, and I think we'll see the president do that," Podesta said. "I think that he feels like he has a real mandate for change. We need to get off the course that the Bush administration has set." Our "esteemed" ivory tower professors even get their say since these orders "have the power of law and they can cover just about anything."

Of what point is a democracy or a republic when an executive can create law that covers almost any topic?

No wonder congress has a low approval rating. Considering they have left the law-making of the country to the executive branch and delegated everything else to the bureaucracy, what are they actually doing?

J. Thyme Matz

Argentina first, USA second

2008-11-09T13:08:00.000-08:00

Argentina's governent, at risk of default, recently seized the nation's private pension funds to give the goverment access to millions of dollars of savings. The government does not plan to use this money to pay retirees or allow them to keep that which they have saved, instead it will use money to pay its current debts and current expenses. It will "give" the retirees government debt in exchange for their cash and investments. Considering its debt is already in danger of default, this is a horrible deal for Argentinian investors (and the stock market there shows the results). What can they do? It is the law to fork over your savings to the government now.

It could not happen here, right? Wrong...

According to this, not only will the tax-free status of our 401(k) be at risk, so too will the initial investments. The ultimate aim of this will be to seize your assets (cash and investments) and replace them with a government bond (an IOU). The fact that you already could have all your 401(k) investments in a government bond by choice notwithstanding. That means, your right to choose your investments will actually be taken away. Quoting from the article "Democrats will seize on the opportunity [the financial crisis] to attack a program where investors control their own destiny"

Watch for the coming inflation (another way to confiscate savings)!

J. Thyme Matz

New Zealand

2008-11-05T15:02:00.001-08:00

For those of you who are unaware (and there should not be many), my family and I have moved to Wellington, New Zealand (to put our money where our mouth is) and we felt a great deal of relief when leaving the states (like we were the last people off the Titanic watching as everyone else votes for the iceberg).

Guy Fawkes day was yesterday and it was fun to watch all the homemade fireworks displays. We heard that children used to take old shirts and stuffing (to represent the body of Mr. Fawkes) and tour the neighborhood asking for "a penny for Guy" (or something similar). I find it strange that with such a tradition there is such an antagonism to Halloween. I cannot explain this contradiction.

Big lament about being away from the states:
1) No dog - he had to stay in the states with family.
2) Nothing good to eat - this place does not have good food. Supermarkets offer very little and restaurants cater to a bland taste.
3) Related to above - no Doritos. This is the first country I have been to that has not offered a bit of Frit-o-lay!

J. Thyme Matz

Silent Majority

2008-11-05T14:52:00.000-08:00

Before anyone out there claims “mandate” or “landslide”, please take into consideration the following...

Total US Population 305,584,303

Votes for Obama 63,353,266

PCT of Total US voting for Obama 20.73%
Number of eligible voters 231,229,580

PCT of eligible voters 27.40%
Number of registered voters 169,000,000

PCT of registered voters 37.49%

Anyway you slice it, Obama does not have a mandate by these figures. He does not even come close to achieving 50% of votes of registered voters.

In fact, only 20% of the population (total) even voted for him. How do the dogmatic democrats (not political party, but blind supporters of democracy as a panacea) justify this? What does this 20% “get” out of an Obama presidency at the expense of the other 80%?
Answer: What they deserve.
Problem: They are taking the other 80% with them along for the ride.

That is the difficulty of having created the “Imperial Presidency”. Pre-FDR, a presidential election result did not matter (with few exceptions like the civil war) as the role of the chief executive was limited and not some “all-powerful, all-influencing” job (save for Lincoln and his suspension of habeas corpus which is a whole other discussion). Remember, presidents like Washington and Coolidge (“if nominated, I will not run. If elected, I will not serve”) simply moved away from this job even though they could have continued in office!

1980 – Reagan won by a lot… 1996 Clinton, too (for recent history)

Also – I want you to ALL notice how the Democrats were RED and Republicans BLUE! A reversal of today. Dems did all they could to remove the “red” from themselves (since it is the color/symbol of communism/socialism).

Ronald Reagan George Bush Republican 43,903,230
James Carter Walter Mondale Democratic 35,480,115

Bill Clinton Albert Gore Jr. Democratic 47,400,125
Robert Dole Jack Kemp Republican 39,198,755

Let alone 1936….

F. Roosevelt John Garner Democratic 27,752,648
Alfred Landon Frank Knox Republican 16,681,862

How about 64?

Lyndon Johnson Hubert Humphrey Democratic 43,127,041
Barry Goldwater William Miller Republican 27,175,754

National Republican Senate Leadership Survey

2006-06-27T11:04:00.000-07:00

I recently received a survey from the National Republican Senate Committee. The survey contained many questions that did not touch on any real issue or principle. For instance, do you think the government is spending enough on XXX program? That type of question assumes that the program is intrinsically important and deserves money. The question asked is not "should the federal government involve itself in this issue"? The question is how much to spend. In my mind, that is one the key difference between Republicans and Democrats. How much they will spend on a given program! The federal government no longer asks "should I" or "why should I", it only asks us "how much tax dollars should we spend on it?". The federal government is behaves line an adult child who still lives at home and leeches off of his parents. He no longer asks where their money comes or even if he has a right to use it. The government simply states "I want" and expects the taxpayers to pay. There is one difference though, an adult child at home still lives under his parent's roof and (supposedly) their rules. In this case, the government child sets the rules the taxpayers will live by (under threat of jail or fines). In a way, it is legalized robbery.

One final point before I attach the survey, the Republicans asked for $11 to process it even if you did not want to answer the survey or donate to their cause. I thought if a company sends you a bill for a service or product you did not ask for, it was illegal. Oh well... I guess the government can do whatever it wants... and that is what is wrong with America.

Here are the survey and the replies I am sending in.

Part 1: General Questions

In general, are you pleased with the job President Bush is doing?

No, in the name of security, he has become an even bigger threat to our liberty than the terrorists. They can strike us randomly from afar, but his actions strike at all of our daily activities from very close to home.

Which issues are most important for President Bush and the Republican Party to focus on this year? Economy? Jobs? War on Terrorism? Illegal immigration? Education? Healthcare? Abortion? Other?

The duties of our national government and its executive and legislative branches are clearly defined in Article I and Article II of the U.S. Constitution. The powers of both branches are clearly limited only to those listed in the Constitution with the 10th Amendment: “The powers not delegated to the United States (national government) by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people”. Since the topics listed in Part 1 of your survey are related to topics not listed as powers reserved for our national government, neither political party has the right to regulate the economy, create jobs, provide a public education, provide healthcare, or restrict access to abortion. If illegal immigration is a problem, the fault must lie with the executive branch for its relaxed enforcement of existing laws. The head of the executive branch is the President of the USA and he should take full responsibility for the execution of his duties. My personal opinion about immigration is the following: Immigrants who wished to seek greater freedom and better economic opportunities founded this country. If the President seeks free trade of goods and services, it is a contradiction to seek to limit the free movement of people as well. Regarding the war on terrorism, the administration’s focus on the export of democracy is faulty. We should have focused on the export of freedom. Democracy is a tool that can be used in the cause of freedom, but also in the cause of tyranny if freedom is not properly protected. Please recall that democracy is what resulted in the death of Socrates and the election of Hitler in Germany.

Part 2: Economic Agenda.

Do you agree with the liberal Democrats who want to reverse President Bush’s tax cuts?

I have not heard of any “liberal” Democrat who wants to reverse the tax cuts. According to Merriam-Webster Dictionary, a liberal is one who supports liberalism or “theory in economics emphasizing individual freedom from restraint and usually based on free competition, the self-regulating market, and the gold standard [and] a political philosophy based on belief in progress, the essential goodness of the human race, and the autonomy of the individual and standing for the protection of political and civil liberties”. I have yet to meet a true “liberal” Democrat or Republican. Tax cuts should be made permanent and rules should be established to prevent the government from taxing its citizens. The 16th Amendment should be repealed.
How important is a balanced budget?

If the Republican Party wants to become the flag bearer of freedom, it needs to focus its efforts on reducing the size of the national government and its impact on the lives of citizens. It needs to eliminate most government programs and taxes and should minimize (if not eliminate) any government intervention in the economy. Under President Bush (like Clinton before him), the national government has increased in size and taken great strides toward increasing its own power at the expense of individual rights. With the support of both parties, this government has become more authoritarian over the past century and is moving closer and closer to totalitarianism. Balancing the budget would be a good start to restricting the scope and size of government.

Should the Republican Party push for additional tax cuts to further stimulate the economy?

Both parties should work toward the elimination of taxes completely and the repeal of the 16th Amendment. Both parties should work toward a way to finance the government in a free society without taxation.

Do you think we should fix the federal tax code so that it is simpler and fairer?

The tax code should be fixed permanently, like one would fix a dog – to make it impotent.

Which of the following is the most important priority? Creating more jobs? Balancing the budget? Growing the economy so the stock market rises? Making tax cuts permanent? Fixing the tax code?

There should be a strict separation between economics and state – just like there is between church and state and for the very same principles.

Part 3: Retirement Security.

Some Democrats have been lobbying for government-run health care in the United States. Do you support a plan that would hand over your health care to the federal government? And President Bush wants to modernize and strengthen America’s health care system by giving Medicare recipients more health care choices and the access to affordable prescription drugs. Do you support his Medicare reform plan?

The Constitution does not delegate power to the national government to create and maintain a national health care system nor a national retirement system. To demonstrate a commitment to freedom, the Republican Party should sponsor bills aimed at eliminating the Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid programs. In addition, if you think that the current system of doctors, hospitals, and medicines are expensive, how do you think it will be made cheaper when we add a bureaucratic management layer on top of the doctors, hospitals, and medicines?

Part 4: Homeland Security

Do you think our nation is too dependent on foreign oil?

Our nation does not trade for foreign oil. Individual companies and individual citizens make these trades to their mutual benefit. If domestic conditions restrict domestic supply, we will turn to foreign sources of a product. The best solution is to remove any regulations and restrictions on domestic supplies and get the government out of the business of regulating voluntary economic transactions between its citizens and between its citizens and citizens of other countries.

As the world’s most powerful nation, President Bush believes that the United States has a special responsibility (to whom?) to help make the world more secure. Do you support President Bush’s vision for protecting our nation that includes both opposing and preventing violence by terrorists and outlaw regimes, as well as fostering an era of good relations among the world’s great powers?

The Republican Party and President Bush have done a horrible job at protecting its citizens. They have both allowed the U.S. Government to become the biggest threat to our civil liberties. The threat posed to our liberties by the national government is larger than the threats of the terrorists. The government controls our economy, or money, and is creeping into control over financial transactions, telephone conversations, and other personal decisions (abortion and gay marriage for instance). Should the government wish to protect its citizens, it would work to maintain the freedoms at home and bring justice to both domestic and foreign nationals who would seek to harm us. The government should PROTECT our rights. As soon as it requires us to surrender liberty in the false name of security, it has become just as evil as the terrorists it seeks to destroy.

The current government has not only actively sought to destroy individual liberties and privacy domestically, it has also greatly blundered internationally. My family supported the invasion of Iraq. Any free country has the right to invade any slave pen and liberate it – provided that it does not enslave the people itself and provides the former slaves with freedom. President Bush should recall, “Fifty-one percent of a nation can establish a totalitarian regime, suppress minorities and still remain democratic.” Erik von Kuehnelt- President Bush provided them with Democracy – which is NOT freedom, thus he spurred terrorism and sectarian violence.

Do you favor the death penalty for terrorists found guilty of killing innocent Americans?

Should the guilty have received due process promised to them in our Constitution, they should receive the death penalty. Those who do not respect the individual rights of others do not deserve to have their own individual rights respected.

What further steps – if any – should we take to safeguard our homeland?

Abroad: start from scratch in Iraq. As hard and embarrassing as it will be, we need to give them freedom first. Then let them choose the form of democracy they need to protect those freedoms. With a guarantee of freedom, violence there will decrease and the US will be seen as a force for good.
Domestic: We must protect our citizens WITHOUT reducing their freedoms or infringing upon their liberties. The covert operations that monitor financial and phone records should cease immediately and the national government should work to limit its power and influence. The biggest threat to the homeland no longer is foreign invaders or terrorists it is our own government.

Part 5: Foreign Policy

Today, on the continent of Africa, over 30 million children have the AIDS virus. Do you support President Bush’s plan to provide $15 billion in emergency relief to turn the tide on the global effort to combat AIDS?

No. I do not support any plan that redistributes wealth. I support tax cuts and tax eliminations that allow US citizens to keep all of their hard earned money. If Africa and AIDS are a concern to us, we will privately ensure that they get the funds they need – and I am sure it will be more than $15 billion. The most democratic thing we can do is let people “vote” with their own dollars. Give (at least) the $15 billion back to us and let us decide what to do with it.

Should the United States provide more humanitarian aid to foreign countries?

No. The United States government should not provide any aid to foreign countries. The United States should merely allow its citizens to provide their own funds in aid to causes they support. The immense outpouring after the tsunami and Hurricane Katrina proves our capacity for generosity.

Part 6: Family Agenda

Do you believe that every American should have access to quality healthcare?

The question is misleading. Of course, every American should have access to quality healthcare. Does that mean that a quality healthcare professional has to see every American that seeks care at his/her office? Of course not! His supply of healthcare services is limited. Anyone who meets his professional requirements as a patient (both ability to pay and ability to be a good patient) has access to his office. As such, we already have equal access. If people are unable to pay, there are charities and other forms of assistance. If we guarantee health care for all, we enslave the healthcare professionals who can no longer earn their livelihoods like the rest of us – in a free market place.

Should we put an end to lawsuit abuse that is draining our economy, ruining our healthcare system and costing jobs?

Yes. Common sense and justice needs to be restored to our judicial system. Little justice is served when the restitution mostly goes into the hands of lawyers. Multi-million dollar awards for perceived slights or actual malpractice are not justified. How much is a life worth? In many cases, a life is worth less than a case of discrimination against a person. How can one person be awarded a few hundred thousand in a wrongful death suit, but another be awarded millions when his corporation is found guilty of discrimination? One easy way for reform is to have the loser and his legal team pay the court costs. This will eliminate many frivolous lawsuits and, hopefully, make justice easier to achieve.

Do you support President Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” act – which is an absolute commitment to closing the achievement gap so every child can receive a quality education and the act is producing real results for every child?

No. The U.S. Constitution does not delegate power to the national government to create and maintain a public education system under federal control. Control over each child’s educational needs should be left to the parents and the teachers, not an impersonal bureaucrat. Please restore sanity to our education system by removing Stalin understood that “"[State-run] education is a weapon, whose effect depends on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed”. Privatizing all education in the US would also resolve the national debates over “intelligent” design, evolution, the pledge of allegiance and a myriad of other issues as parents would choose the schooling for their children. No one would be forced to pay school taxes to educate their child in a way they see as unfit.

Do you support a plan that would allow parents to decide which school their child attends?

Yes. It is called the elimination of public schools and a full privatization of our educational system.

Do you support President Bush’s faith-based initiative that would increase the tax benefits for donating to religious or community charities?

No. Even using tax law to benefit certain religious organizations is a violation of the separation of church and state. It is an evasion of that principle and should not be allowed. Eliminate all taxes and let people choose freely if they will donate to any charity (religious or otherwise).
Part 7: Social Issues

Do you support the protection of traditional marriage – between a man and a woman?

Protection from what? My marriage is not threatened at all by the ability of one man to marry another man. Their personal decision to marry or nor does not impact my life at all, nor does it threaten the relationship I share with my spouse. Individual citizens marry other individual citizens. The federal government should not force itself into those decisions. The federal government needs to protect ALL of our rights and not restrict them. A law banning same-sex marriage creates a group of second-class citizens who do not share the same rights as the rest of us. Finally, there is no scientific or rational evidence to prove some sort of social ill as a result of same-sex marriages. The only impetus for this bill is religion, plain and simple. A law based on religious morals violates the separation of church and state.

Should the United States ban human cloning?

No. Cloning human cells can yield significant advances in curing disease and enhancing/extending the quality of life. Any law that limits a scientist’s ability to improve or extend life is morally wrong.

Should we continue to fight for law-abiding individual’s 2nd Amendment Rights?

So, you do know what the Constitution is – at least whenever it benefits your own agenda. Of course, you should fight to protect our rights as guaranteed by the Constitution. That means accepting the good with the bad. Do your job to secure all of our rights, which includes the rights delegated to the people by the 10th Amendment. Once you do that, you will realize that many of the issues listed above simply will not be any of your business.

Part 8: Campaign

Do you agree that defending and strengthening our Republican Majority in the U.S. Senate is critical to passing President Bush’s agenda and fighting for America’s future?

No. At this point, the Republican majority’s support of President Bush’s agenda only expands the federal government’s power over the individual and has had horrible consequences for individual rights. At this point, both are a threat to America’s future.

Do you believe that building the Republican Party at the local grassroots level is key to strengthening our Senate Majority from Democratic filibustering?

Who cares? Republican Party tyranny or Democratic Party tyranny. Each is tyranny. We do not have a choice for freedom.

Will you support the NRSC’s efforts to build a foundation of grassroots support for President Bush and his agenda for a stronger, safer, and more prosperous America?

No. Not as long as a FREE America is not mentioned in your list of goals, and I can see that it is conspicuously absent.

Will you help to continue to build a strong foundation of Republican grassroots support for President Bush and his agenda by making a generous contribution to the NRSC today?

Absolutely not! I find it insulting that even if one does not wish to participate in the survey YOU sent out without asking us first and even if we do not wish to donate you CROOKS still ask for $11 to cover the cost of redistributing/tabulating the survey.

THE REPUBLICAN SENATE IS FILLED WITH FAT CATS WHO WILL NOT GET MY VOTE COME NOVEMBER. I REALIZE (AS A RESULT OF THIS SURVEY) THAT, SHOULD YOU (OR THE DEMOCRATS FOR THAT MATTER) WIN THE ELECTION, IT IS US AMERICAN CITIZENS WHO WILL END UP LOSERS.

Inflation

2006-06-22T05:07:00.000-07:00

From dictionary.com:

in·fla·tion ( P ) Pronunciation Key (n-flshn)n.
The act of inflating or the state of being inflated.
A persistent increase in the level of consumer prices or a persistent decline in the purchasing power of money, caused by an increase in available currency and credit beyond the proportion of available goods and services.

The only institution that can cause an increase in available currency and credit beyond the proportion of available goods and services is.... the FEDERAL RESERVE.

Nobel Laureate and professor Milton Friedman says, "[I]nflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon, in the sense that it cannot occur without a more rapid increase in the quantity of money than in output." In other words, increases in money supply are what constitute inflation, and a general rise in prices is the symptom.

This means that price rises cannot be caused by greedy businessmen, Arab sheiks, unions, or any other group. These groups could cause a rise in the price of specific goods or services, but not a general price rise.

Inflation acts to redistribute wealth from creditors to debtors. Should I loan you $1,000 and, during the term of the loan, the Fed increases the money supply and causes inflation, you will pay me back with dollars that can buy less (have reduced purchasing power). Who is the largest debtor in the country? Uncle Sam.

Inflation is simply another form of taxation - one under the control of unelected officials.

The cure: repeal legal tender laws and eliminate taxes on transactions involving precious metals. Let the people choose what has value - objectively. This is a much better option than letting the government steal from us.

J. Thyme Matz

Muse of the day 3-27

2006-03-27T12:33:00.000-08:00

Isn't it ironic that making our Constitution a "living document" had the effect of killing it?!

Been a while

2006-03-23T06:27:00.000-08:00

It is very unfortunate that I have been away from my post here for some time.
Lots has changed recently and I would like to find the time to come back to this - I will need to make the time!
Anyway, for today all I will say is that you should all please watch "V for Vendetta".

J. Thyme Matz

Von Mises Institute Part IV

2005-01-23T08:47:00.000-08:00

The final presentation, “Rothbard’s Economics of Taxation: Where the Mainstream Went Wrong” was a lecture by Mr. DiLorenzo about the common justifications for taxation. He started by paraphrasing John C. Calhoun’s idea that taxes create two classes of people/institutions. The first is the “tax payer” who funds government programs and the second is the “tax eater” who benefits as a result of the redistribution of wealth. Calhoun echoed Franklin's sentiment on my first post claiming that taxation would inevitably lead to class warfare and the end of our Republic. Calhoun also disparaged what he referred to as “naïve defenders of the Constitution”. Calhoun said that people who just trusted the government to adhere to the letter of the law would be very disappointed. Any statist can use demagoguery to encite the voting majority and find a way around restrictions. I say that totalitarians can only exist as parasites. The totalitarian parasite, be it a democratically elected totalitarian like Hitler or a despot like Hussein, depends on the revenue it drains out of its populace. What would a tax revolt do to a despotic regime? Speaking of demagoguery, Mr. DiLorenzo took the opportunity to levy an insult against President Bush. I do not support the President, but I found his remark inappropriate and, to use his term a "low" blow.
Moving on, he showed how Rothbard’s work debunked some economic theories used to justify taxation such as the idea of “public goods” or externalities. The main reason used to tax people to pay for "public goods" or externalities is because we want to eliminate problems like moral hazard or free riders. He asked if the minor problems of moral hazard or free riding exceed the problems that our tax and spend policies have created like the looming Social Security and Medicare shortfalls and our national debt. Using taxation to "solve" these problems has only created even larger problems for us to deal with. When discussing the definition of public goods he asked what is meant by “volunteerism”. Each of us may be tempted (under a free system) to leave the costs of public goods to our neighbors. In other words, we are content to let someone else pay for the costs of clean air, trash removal, and other so-called public goods. Thus, the community argues that taxation should be forced upon all of its members to ensure that we each pay our "fair share" for the benefits we receive. Statists argue that this is voluntary since the “community” came to this decision. However, Rothbard argued, if the effort is voluntary, how come there are police and courts used to punish people who do not participate? In addition, Statists hide behind the idea of democracy to justify their actions. Of course, people can change policy by electing different representatives the next election. However, then all we end up with are large interest groups fighting it out to avoid being the "tax payers" in hopes of becoming "tax eaters". Readers of my blog know that my position (based on personal experience) on democracy can be summed up in two words: mob rule. Just because I choose to participate in the democratic process does not mean I have “volunteered” to participate in whatever program the community deems in its own best interest. DiLorenzo provided the example of a sailor who has been conscripted to serve in the navy to benefit his community (a national draft - either for volunteer (Kerry's plan) or military service). His service is not made voluntary just because he does not jump off the ship and commit suicide. His mere presence on the ship everyday does not mean he gave his consent to be there. Such is the case with “community decisions”. Rothbard claims that the only a unanimous decision creates real volunteerism. Furthermore, Rothbard claims that a true majority rarely exists in policy making anymore. Instead what comes out of our capital, state house, or local government are “package deals” (see earlier discussion on the 17th Amendment). Minority representatives trade their votes now in exchange for support on their own issues later (this was made much easier by the direct election of Senators who are now no longer responsible to their state legislatures). The policy that emerges is a combination of things the minority is willing to sacrifice now in order to (hopefully) achieve something else in the future.

Let me summarize the conference quickly. The conference did make me want to learn more about some issues, but I do not feel as if I learned anything new during the presentation. However, I did feel some validation of my previous research. I asked my wife to acquire a copy of the Constitution of the Confederate States of America for me as a Christmas present so I can read some of the “free trade” items that were included. I also had purchased Mr. DiLorenzo’s book about Lincoln and now I am very interested in reading it and will move it up in my pile of things to read. I will finish the Federalist Papers and Cato Letters first. Although my comments may seem overly critical (perhaps due to government tax policy on good reviews), I want to state that I am very glad that I attended the conference and I hope the Von Mises Institute continues to provide free presentations to those who are interested in listening. A tax revolt would be a good thing for this country, but it needs a proper moral and intellectual basis. The elements of the intellectual basis were presented in the conference, but in an unorganized way. The moral arguments were lost in attempting to portray southerners as “free traders” when, in fact, their economy was primarily based on the involuntary servitude of their fellow man.

J. Thyme Matz

Von Mises Conference part III

2005-01-23T08:27:00.000-08:00

The third lecture was by Dr. Mark Thornton. The lecture was called “Thank Goodness for FDR’s Tax Cut”, which was interesting because I did not think that FDR enacted any tax cuts. He started with four bullets: 1> Taxation is theft. The statistics 45% of American GDP is paid in taxes was mentioned a few times during the conference. 2> “Thornton’s Law” (the author's own economic theory) which states that taxation reduces the amount of real goods and services produced. 3> Taxes produce waste and distortion as resources are diverted from their most efficient use toward government use and 4> he asked the question “is it all worth it”? By this he means: "What is it that government does so well it deserves 45% of our national income? What would not be done if the government did not intervene?" He never did answer these questions. I feel that would have made for a good debate and would have allowed for some audience participation! I noticed he made a slight error in reason in his presentation. He asserted that taxes lead to lower standards of living and higher rates of poverty as people are left with less resources to provide for their daily needs after paying taxes. However, he then asserted that people would be wealthier in the absence of taxation. Here he is incorrect. People would keep the wealth that they earned in the absence of taxation and thus would have a higher standard of living, but NO NEW WEALTH is actually created in the absence of taxation. People earn the same amount of income, they would just be able to keep it all.

FDR’s "tax cut" was really a shift in the way the government received its revenues. In the 1920’s, local and state governments used property taxes as the primary source of revenue. When the depression hit, the proportion of property taxes to income nearly doubled and people became upable to pay their property taxes. The tax revolts that followed were mainly local in nature and community oriented due to the nature of property taxes. The tax revolts were a but different from the type we usually think of. People who could not pay their property taxes had their lands seized to be acutioned off. The auction participants turned out to be locals (or friends of the disposessed person) who bid the price down very low and purchased the property for a nominal fee and then gave it back to the original owners – essentially restoring the land to the owner and wiping out his property tax debt. In addition, prohibition in the 1920’s was partially the result of the income tax being created in 1913. The government could now raise money from the income tax and was no longer dependent on excise taxes on liquor. However, the depression led to a sharp decrease in government revenue through the income tax. FDR suddenly became anti-prohibition (played the game of politics) because a re-instatement of legal alcohol also meant a re-instatement of excise taxes to help fill the treasury. Repeal of prohibition was a “win-win” situation. The repeal led to a new source of revenue for the government and significantly lowered the price of alcohol for consumers (who no longer had to pay black market prices). The “tax cuts” of FDR were not real cuts at all, but were shifts in what was taxed and who paid it. The un-stated warning of this lecture is that tax reform does not necessarily lead to a lowering of taxes across the board. The reform just yields new winners and losers in the redistribution of wealth managed by the government.

Dr. Cantor made the next presentation. Dr. Cantor appeared to be a rare breed. He was a self-professed “non-Marxist” English teacher. I have never before encountered a pro-market, anti-welfare state English professor. While his discourse was a bit long-winded at times, he blended in some humor. His lecture was called “Taxation and Literary History, or Who Killed John Keats”? He cited the many taxes on paper, on windows, and on candles that succeeded in keeping people illiterate and uneducated. After all, how can people read without light or when paper is prohibitively expensive? As these taxes were reduced, the amount of periodicals increased exponentially and illeteracy rates dropped. Of course, taxes still played an important role in what was printed and who was allowed to print. An advertising tax was levied on the amount of advertisements published in a paper. The clever publishers found a way to get around this by inventing the “puff piece” or a quasi-news article that was quite flattering of the subject. “Good reviews” of works of literature were similarly not taxed. The government quickly caught on and started taxing good reviews. Newspapers quickly started publishing their disgust and disdain for recent publications, including those of the late Mr. Keats. The bad reviews quickly filled Keats’ heart with sorrow (as his lungs filled with fluid from the disease he had) and he came to a sudden end. Of course, tax policy did not literally kill Keats, but Mr. Cantor appeared to enjoy presenting the story anyway!

Mr. Fogal, CFP made a quick presentation called “How to Outwit the Tax Police While Supporting Freedom” which highlighted the use of various trusts (including charitable trusts with the Mises Institute listed as the recipient). While informative, I am not sure how many in the audience are actually in the position to use some of that advice.

Lew Rockwell came followed with his presentation called “The Dangers of Tax Reform”. He asked which we thought leads to civilization: taxes or production/trade? Which would lead toward a more friendly relationship between men? Is voluntary trade for mutual benefit more likely to yield friendly relations or will forcing them to give a portion of their wealth to others create strong brotherly bonds?
He said that a Value Added Tax (VAT) or a national sales tax, would have to amount to be between 20-40% of the value of the product to earn the same amount of money as the current income tax system provides. He did not mention the effect this would have on prices or wages. He also did not mention the effect it would have on people living on fixed incomes. Older Americans who live on interest, dividends, and pensions would suddenly find that their savings would be wiped out! They may have budgeted their life savings on current inflation trends and certainly do not expect a 20-40% price increase as a result of a VAT. He also mentioned the danger of the “political elite” offering to phase out the income tax as it implements the new taxes but then conjuring up a national crisis to keep all forms of taxation as permanent. He also warned of the potential for a large portion of economic activity to move underground to avoid paying the taxes. Of course, this would invariably lead to government spies, informants, and police to enforce the taxation and limit the activities of the underground economy. He said it would lead to a war of “government against the people”.
The same argument was levied against social security reform. The “privatization” plans currently being discussed involve what appears to be mandatory savings. Essentially, the savings would be compulsory (just like taxation) and the government would still be in charge of determining how the money is invested and how it would be distributed (someday/somehow). Of course, the partnership between government and Wall Street seems to be a match made in corruption heaven. After all, this plan will be deemed TBTF (financial lingo for Too Big To Fail) and questions about how to insure the “savings” will be raised. He asks, why does the government not trust us to manage our own money? I mean, the reform could simply be a reduction in payroll taxes. Each of us could then decide what to do with our own money. Are we not the best judges of our own situation? Why is the government a better judge of how our money should be used? He concluded stating that any offer to “raise” or create a tax of one type in exchange for a reduction or elimination of another tax (or form of tax) is just too risky. His idea for reform: only lower or eliminate taxes. Good luck with that plan! I am all for it, but I do not see how it is to be done.
Someone in the audience next to me said that his presentation was depressing. The presentation was filled with warnings and dire predictions but offered little hope. Of course we are all interested in lowering or eliminating the burden taxation places on us. I guess some of us were just hoping that the conference would provide us with some tools or offer us different ideas about how to go about doing it.

J. Thyme Matz

VMI Conference Part II

2005-01-23T08:09:00.000-08:00

The second lecture was DiLorenzos Lincolns Tariff War. The main tax pointed out in this lecture is the Morrill Tariff of 1861. Please see the link for a good description of the tariff, its historical significance, and some common misconceptions. We should remember, however, that the origins of the conflict lay not just in the election year of 1860 but in its preceding years as well. It is important to note (from that link) the following information:
The Morrill Bill had been put over to the next session in the Senate, and became an issue supported by the Republicans in the election of 1860. In the new session, after several southern senators had already vacated their seats, the Morrill Tariff was passed 1861 February 28, and was among the last bills signed by President James Buchanan. Historians are not unanimous as to the relative importance which Southern fear and hatred of a high tariff had in causing the secession of the slave states, but there has been a growing tendency to lay more emphasis on it than formerly. Of the declarations of secession, only Georgia's mentions economic issues. South Carolina's address to the other slave-holding states discusses taxes, but expounds at greater length on the South's new minority position, and on slavery.

What did the Morrill Tariff protect? It protected Northern Manufacturing concerns. Northern industry was not very competitive compared to its European counterparts. In other words, northern businessmen and (more importantly) northern labor earned higher profits and wages than they would have in the absence of a protective tariff. The north did not develop manufacturing because they were better educated, more talented, or had any distinguishing characteristics from their southern brothers. The north had no slaves and thus was labor poor. To compensate for this disadvantage they became capital rich which led to the development of manufacturing concerns. The south, with its free labor pool, devoted its resources to the development of labor-intensive (capital poor) industries such as agriculture and was dependent on the export of cotton and tobacco. The export-dependent south was disproportionately hurt by the protectionist tariffs. Why was the south hurt disproportionately? The north was able to charge higher than market prices for their products hurting southern consumers and leaving the rest of the world was less able to afford southern goods (not to mention any retaliatory trade practices resulting from US policy). To say that the tariff was the cause of the War to prevent Southern Secession is to ignore the reason why the south was disproportionately affected by the tariff, why the south was economically different from the north, and the words of the Southerners themselves. (Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Texas declaration of secession all mention the issue of slavery first!). My notes here are timely as I see that another of the speakers at the conference has a lecture about the economics of the Civil War on the events page of the Mises Institute. Perhaps the Mises Institute is losing its focus.

The rest of the lecture covered the Nullification Crisis. It would have been more interesting if the actual Constitutionality of nullification had been discussed. At least the nullification crisis was a tax revolt and fit within the framework of the conference. Mr. DiLorenzo quoted Jefferson Davis (with some admiration) as calling the North an "exploitive economic system". How he somehow did not manage to mention the hypocrisy of this is something I still puzzle over. After all, how can the Institute claim to promote the "economics of freedom" while giving slavery a free pass? He claims to support the morality of free trade, but I did not once hear him condemn the morality of slavery. Instead he went on an elongated attack on President Lincoln. Lincoln, you see, was not actually the man our public schools texts present. Lincoln played the game of politics. He was attempting to become President of the United States and he was a professional politician. This means he pats people on the back with one hand while stabbing them with a knife held by the other. Lincoln played the game just as Bush, Clinton, and any other professional politician does. So, Lincoln pretended to be for slavery on one hand (demonstrating support for a Constitutional Amendment to keep the federal government out of slave issues and keeping it a state decision) and moving against it at the same time by attempting to keep slavery out of the Western Territories soon to become states.

I think the problem with this lecture was that Mr. DiLorenzo attempted to define the Civil War entirely in terms of a tax revolt led by honest, hard-working southerners against an evil northern regime headed by a statist president. After all, he claimed, the southerners just wanted to trade freely with the rest of the world and the tariffs prevented them from reaping all of the rewards they could earn from free international trade. The fact that the source of their product was slave labor did not seem to concern him at all.

I have one more issue with the conference. The speakers demonstrated a sense of, for lack of better words, intellectual superiority. I heard repeated (and perhaps some deserved) slurs against public schools and public education. The speakers attempted to separate themselves (and their enlightened audience) from "average Americans". Perhaps they should examine their audience? Mr. Rockwell also mentioned the "political class" and the "privileged elite" quite often. I can sniff the vitriol of class warfare even without the use of the terms "bourgeois" or "proletariat". I wonder what message he is attempting to convey using those terms or if he thinks any good can come of it. And was he not part of the "political class" during his lifetime? From the looks of his website, he seems to have become the "privileged elite" he denounces.

Part III to come soon!

J. Thyme Matz

Von Mises Institute Conference Part I

2005-01-20T13:46:00.000-08:00

I decided to take advantage of a rare opportunity this past weekend. Just a few hours from my house the Von Mises Institute was holding a conference entitled The Trouble with Taxation. Von Mises was an economist belonging to the Austrian School and a student of F.A. Hayek (whose books like “The Road to Serfdom” and “Constitution of Liberty” have greatly influenced me). My research in Hayek led me to Von Mises and I have enjoyed the Institute’s free distribution of copies of his works. He was a brilliant economist who is conveniently overlooked. During my readings of the Von Mises blog I discovered the conference and decided to attend. After all, I would be able to meet people who had studied political philosophy. In addition, I figured that this was a far more convenient method of discovering what sort of people and studies the institute attracts (as opposed to traveling to their headquarters in Auburn to the dismay of my ‘Bama fan brother).

Let me start by saying that, overall, I was disappointed by the presentations of the conference. I can only wonder at what may have been has the original speaker not been forced to miss the conference due to an injured back. The Von Mises Institute replaced him with presentations by Thomas DiLorenzo (author of “The Real Lincoln”), Mark Thornton, Paul Cantor, James W. Fogal, CFP, and Llewellyn Rockwell. I do not know if they were attempting to patronize to a decidedly southern crowd (the conference was located in Charlottesville, Virginia) and perhaps to the Jeffersonians (the conference was sponsored by SEI, Inc. and the Thomas Jefferson Institute and held only a few miles from Monticello) or maybe they have all been heavily influenced by the Institutes home of Alabama. DiLorenzo was a larger-than-life Southern Apologist. He continually referred to the Civil War as the “War to prevent Southern Secession” and one of his lectures was actually titled “Lincoln’s Tariff War”, which I guess is another way for him to avoid using the term "civil war". I will detail my lecture notes and his errors in reasoning in the next post. The audience was a mix of older gentlemen (who seemed to be pro-south/anti-Lincoln and anti-tax but little else) and college students from the University of Virginia or other nearby institutions. The main theme of the conference was tax rebellion. The conference started by reminding us of the fact that the Revolutionary War was a tax rebellion. The next thing they did was to attempt to convince us that the Civil War was also (centrally) a tax rebellion. One of the final lectures warned us of the dangers of the tax reform proposals of the second Bush administration (the text of which has since appeared on Lew Rockwell’s web-page). Let me say that I did not see anyone in the audience who openly supported the government’s current (or past) tax policy. Indeed many were angry (and rightfully so). The biggest disappointment (even above the Southern rhetoric) was the fact that the speakers did not propose a single method of channeling that anger into political action. In fact, Rockwell’s speech was entirely depressing. He painted a grim picture of Bush’s proposal but did not suggest any alternatives other than eliminating the income tax which, based solely on his word and the groups outrage, does not seem a likely solution. To sum up, the speakers were merely “preaching to the choir” and detailed the “Trouble with Taxation” but did little to suggest how we may find a solution to the trouble without living in a fantasy world. If you are interested, the Von Mises Institute has placed some audio/video of the conference on the web.

Mr. DiLorenzo made the first presentation titled “Taxes in American History”. He discussed three major tax revolts in the history of the United States (1776, 1861, & 1913). He described the American Revolution in terms of a revolt against the oppressive taxes of the English Empire. He listed the Molasses Act of 1733, the Navigation Acts, the Sugar Act of 1764, the 1765 Stamp Act, the 1767 Townshend Acts, and the 1773 Tea Act as taxes that led directly to the war for independence. I doubt any serious scholars would deny these facts. In fact, the Constitution of the United States and the Articles of Confederation each had clauses that addressed some of these issues directly (i.e. The Second and Third Amendments are a reaction to the Townshend Acts).
He then discussed the Whisky Rebellion and described it as one of the first challenges to the new Constitutional Federal Government. He lamented that modern texts describe the Rebellion as a victory of the central authority over the tax-dodgers when, in reality, Washington and his troops did not collect any new taxes and only a few members of the rebellion were even tried and none found guilty of any crime. He proudly described how Jefferson and his supporters defeated Hamilton and managed to lower tariffs and other excise taxes and (most importantly) government spending (mainly through cuts in military spending).
The second tax revolution (Mr. DiLorenzo’s apparent favorite) was the War to Prevent Southern Secession. He described how Lincoln (as well as our current President) used war as an excuse to engage in tax reform. Despite the fact that it was unconstitutional at the time (the 16th Amendment was came into being in 1913) Lincoln enacted a tax on income. He also started a tax on inheritance and enacted withholding tax and even resurrected many of the requirements of the Stamp Act. DiLorenzo listed the supporters of the income tax as farmers who were disproportionately hurt by the tariffs on farm tools and farm equipment. The lectures did hammer home the concept that each tax has its winners and losers. Farmers were hurt by the tariffs, which, in turn, benefited domestic manufacturing concerns. The agricultural and export dependent South was hurt by the tariffs that benefited the industrial North. He mentioned he had a lot more to say about the tax revolt that followed Lincoln’s taxes in a subsequent lecture. (He seems to have confused cause and effect here. He claimed that the war was used to justify Lincoln’s new taxes (to pay for war expenses), but at the same time the taxes (high tariffs) were the basis for the South’s reason for the war in the first place).
The revolution in 1913 was not the same as the other tax revolutions. In the previous two revolutions, Mr. DiLorenzo talked about how the tax-payers were rebelling against an unjust system of taxes. The 1913 revolution was a result of the Progressive Movement and led to the 16th and 17th Amendments and the unfortunate end of federalism with the creation of a strong central government and weak state governments. The collection and distribution of income taxes by the central government made states dependent on handouts from Washington DC and the direct election of Senators made them less responsible to their own State Legislatures and gave them more leeway to trade their votes to benefit other districts in return for votes to benefit their own pork projects. In effect, the revolution of 1913 and its income tax led to the destruction of “Civil Society” (volunteerism, charity, and family) and replaced it with the “Welfare Society”. The income tax also made war easier to finance, drained resources that could have been used for savings and investment (meaning slower developments in future productivity and wage growth) and established the concept that the government’s claim to an individual’s productive efforts is primary (the government takes its money out of our income first and hopefully will then grant us enough of the spoils to allow us to survive).

Lecture 2 Notes will be posted shortly.

J. Thyme Matz

Ahead of the curve?

2005-01-05T10:49:00.000-08:00

Today I found this article by Walter Williams (a famous economist and professor at George Mason University). I think it touches on some of the themes I have raised in my blog and arrives at some of the same conclusions. The link is from Capitalism Magazine. It is a great blog. Check it out!

J. Thyme Matz

Quote of the day!

2005-01-05T07:39:00.000-08:00

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largess of the public treasury. From that time on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the results that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. -- Sir Alexander Fraser Tyler

Law vs. The Rule of Law

2005-01-02T05:41:00.000-08:00

The term "Rule of Law" has been thrown around a lot these days. I have heard President Bush use it. I heard UN Secretary General Annan use it many times last year. Given the context of their speeches I doubt either of them actually understand the difference between law and rule of law.
The rule of law requires the absolute supremacy of regular laws as opposed to the influence of arbitrary power, and excludes the existence of arbitrariness of perogative, or even the wide discretionary authority on the part of the government according to the classical definition of Mr. Dicey in The Law of the Constitution. What does this mean in practice?
Take, for example, a government of unlimited power (or a powerful regulatory agency). The government or agency can pass whatever law it desires. In other words, the government can make anything legal or illegal on any whim. First off, this makes planning for the future very difficult for its citizens and businesses. Private institutions have no idea what practices they engage in will still be sanctioned legally tomorrow. Private institutions would have to spend billions of dollars to lobby regulatory agencies and governments to keep certain practices legal and to influence the law in a way that is favorable to them and against their competitors. Does this sound at all familiar?
Let me give you a very clear example of the difference between law and the rule of law. Each day your local authorities could convene and pass a law regarding the definition of the colors on the traffic light. Today green means go. Tomorrow it could be yellow, red, or even green again depending on the whim of the authorities. Each day they pass the law and it becomes official legislation. Each day there is a new LAW comes into existence. What happens on the roads? Do people find out about today's new color schemes? What if they do not? The result would be horrible car wrecks at every intersection as people either were uninformed about the law or were just unable to remember the day's particular configurations. In other words, laws would exist but there would be no rule of law.
Another example would be if the government passed a law against murder but then never attempted to find any suspects and bring them to trial and provide justice. The law against murder would be on the books but nobody would be deterred from committing the crime because they would always get off and remain free. The law would exist, but there would be no rule of law. The same situation exists whenever there is a law that is enforced arbitrarily. When there is no way to tell who will be prosecuted nor when, the law loses its overall effectiveness.
Is the USA (and the rest of the world) becoming more ruled by laws and less ruled by rule of law? That should be one question an active mind asks as it views the nightly news and reads the papers.

J. Thyme Matz

An introduction to social justice

2004-12-29T14:34:00.000-08:00

I have not been blogging for a while... my bad. I will "get back on the horse".

I wanted to discuss the topic of social justice. Social justice is defined in two different ways these days. There are those who think social justice will be achieved when we have equal educational opportunities for all, equal access to social services (health care, pensions, etc.) or (on a more extreme side) even equality of outcomes. On the other hand are those who believe that social justice simply means equality before the law.
The two definitions of social justice are mutually exclusive. If the country is to practice the first theory of social justice (equal opportunity, etc.), then the government (or other agency designed to dispense social justice) necessarily has to treat those who are better off (have more opportunities) differently than those who it deems are "in need" of assistance. In other words, the government does not view all people as equals. It views some people as the chattel it uses to obtain resources and others as recipients of the redistributed "opportunities". The government does not start with the premise of "all people are equal" - think about it. If the government started with the premise of "all people are equal", then there would be no need for any form of redistribution of wealth or of opportunity. Those who support this theory of social justice do not want all men on an equal footing before the law. They want the law to be enforced differently for different people. Some will benefit from the law and others will have to pay the cost.
The other definition of social justice only treats people as equal before the law. Neither equality of opportunity nor equality of outcome are important. Essentially, this theory comes from the idea that mankind is not perfect in the execution of his judgment. If we were all perfect (and made perfect decisions), then our outcomes would all become equal in the long run. We are not perfect beings. Some people will make better decisions than others. Some people will make their own opportunities. The result is an unequal distribution of ideas, wealth, and chance. The unequal distribution of intelligence and the ability to put it to a productive use leads directly to inequality in "material terms". Where does the government fit in this realm? Its only role is to make all citizens equal in its eyes. It merely protects them from theft, fraud, or any kind of coerced wrong-doings. All citizens are equal in its eyes. What I mean to say is that all citizens are equally worthy of its protection. This theory of social justice does not benefit the many at the cost of a few. At the same time it does not benefit the few at the cost of the many. The government benefits all equally. As for who pays the cost, I will write a small blog on public finance in a free society shortly.

What kind of society would you like to live in? One where the government (and its use of force) can treat some people differently than others or one in which we are all looked upon as equal citizens?

The Matz

2004-12-06T15:54:00.000-08:00

Seems like Mr. Individualist is up to something! Probably drank too much Ethiopian wine. Lucky guy!

On some fun

2004-12-06T15:35:00.000-08:00

I have been a little remiss in updating this site and responding to questions as of late. I am doing some research on a few issues and points raised in prior discussions. I am also enjoying the holidays and my family and friends.

Thanksgiving was pretty sweet. I really like it when there is no vomit involved with Thanksgiving. My brother came into town from Indianapolis. It was wonderful to spend a few days with him. I had a really good time. I think he did, too!
My sister came down from Baltimore with her friend for the evening. I felt a little bad for her because she does not eat pork and since our turkey was slathered in bacon and stuffed with sausage....
My friend Sanju made a re-appearance after about 5 years. We saw him a few weeks before Thanksgiving and invited him over. I think he had a good time hanging out with us after all these years. He and I share the same birthday too!
My other friends came over with their newborn baby. I got to hold him for sometime. I feel I had a lot to be thankful for.
My take on Thanksgiving is this: It is a celebration of our production. Over the entire year we have worked really hard. Thanksgiving is the time of year to have our friends and family over and celebrate the fact that we can have a Tur-duck-hen. Why? Because we have worked hard to acquire it. Nobody gave it to us. Even our relationships with our friends and family are the result of working to maintain them and make them flourish. We earned all of that food and all of our friends! Thank you Turkey day!

My company's holiday party is coming up and my wife will miss it. She is going out of town on behalf of her work.... Talk about a role reversal. As a result, I invited my sister to the Christmas party. Call me a dork if you want. I think I have another thing to be Thankful for: I have two wonderful women who can stand me long enough to go out for an evening!

I would also like to take this opportunity to introduce a friend of mine from around the world: Mr. Individualist. I met him last January while in Ethiopia. I was so glad to encounter a similar mind. I hope to have him over to my house one day - perhaps for Thanksgiving. We always had good discussions and I do miss his company and support. It is difficult to find people who THINK in our line of work. I think I will post a picture of him next!

Let's see.... Where have I been. This will quickly catch up all of you who are not up to date with all of my travels.
Japan
Malaysia
Singapore
Mozambique
South Africa
Cape Verde
Angola
France
Belgium
Curacao
Suriname
Barbados
Guyana
Ecuador
Dominican Republic
St. Kitts & Nevis
Germany
Ethiopia
Egypt
Jordan
Luxembourg

I hope to visit a lot more soon!
Now - to post that picture!

J. Thyme Matz

On the electoral college

2004-11-13T07:42:00.000-08:00

Americans paid a lot of attention to the electoral process after the 2000 election and during the build up to Mr. Bush's victory two weeks ago. The general ignorace about the system should offer us a wake up call. People have been duped into believing that this country is a democracy. I think that many were shocked to hear that the results of the popular vote did not matter in 2000 - it was only the electoral college vote that counted.

While there was great outrage (especially on behalf of the statists-collectivists), there was little discussion about the electoral college process itself. I was surprised to find last week that few Americans knew about the origins of the electoral college system, why such a system was favored over direct elections, or even how the members of the electoral college are picked and who they are.

When people went to the polls on November 2 they were not actually voting for Kerry or Bush. They were actually choosing which elector will be sent to their state capitals the Monday following the second Wednesday in December (leaving time enough for a Gore-Bush recount). Their votes are sealed and sent to the Vice-President who opens them before Congress on January 6.

Each state has the same number of electors as it does representatives in both houses of Congress. As a result, each state will have 3 electors at a minimum (two based on its constitutional allotment of senators and at least one based on population). Presently, the electoral college (like both houses of Congress) has 538 members (535 for the states and 3 awarded to Washington DC).

Why would our founding fathers choose this system over a that of a direct democracy? To be fair, some of their reasons are out-dated. For instance, they were worried that citizens around the country would not have access to sufficient information about all the candidates. Travel and communication were slow in the late 1700's and there was concern that people would only vote for their "regional" or "local" candidates. If that occured, no Presidential candidate would have had a majority sufficient enough to have run the country. They feared that frequent challanges would destroy the system. The founding fathers thought it best to have a few people with access to all the information required represent the interests of their state. At the time, the Electoral College was insurance that the President would have a wider geographic appeal.

Technology has brought this country together. We now travel all over and communicate with people on opposite coasts. The parties put their best candidates forward to discuss the issues and we can all watch the "debates". The Electoral College is no longer needed to deal with "geographic isolationism".

However, the Presidential election should not be turned into a "winner-takes-all" election just yet. The Electoral College still serves an essential function - its primary purpose. Our founding fathers were able to grasp the concept that a numerical majority can just as easily create tyrrany as a single dictator. For instance, a majority could vote to enslave a minority group. The majority in Athens put Socrates to death (so much for the right to life!). The majority of the German Parliament gave power to Hitler. The majority of the voting citizens in Washington Grove decided that they did not want to respect the 1st Amendment.

What were the battle-ground states in the 2004 election? Florida, Ohio, Iowa, New Mexico, New Hampshire... Some of them were populous and some were not. Why did the politicians spend little time fighting for the votes in the most populous states like California, New York, or Texas? Under a direct, winner-takes-all election - the candidates would only focus their attention on states like California, New York, and Texas. Florida, Pennsylvania, and Ohio would get some attention as well - but Iowa, New Mexico, Hawaii, New Hampshire, and Missouri would be ignored - as would any other small state. The issues concerning the citizens of Manhattan, Malibu, and West Palm Beach would become paramount. The issues of the people in Des Moines, Concord, or Kansas City would become overlooked.

Of course, the majority cannot be ignored (a candidate required the majority to win - in most cases). Their issues are heard and discussed and debated in the national events. The Electoral College acts to ensure that other voices are heard as well.

J. Thyme Matz

On Socialized health care

2004-11-09T16:02:00.000-08:00

Socialism is defined as "Any of various theories or systems of social organization in which the means of producing and distributing goods is owned collectively or by a centralized government that often plans and controls the economy. " The economic systems that were based on socialism are and have been dismal failures. The Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, North Korea, and to a certain extent even today's Western Europe apparently have not provided would-be American central planners with enough evidence. Apparently, these planners just think "my gang can do it better".

Why would anyone propose that health care should be "produced and distributed collectively" or that our health decisions should be made by a "centralized government"? Health care should be produced by a doctor who makes decisions based on each individual situation after consulting with the patient. Why would anyone argue that a bureaucrat should stand between them and tell the doctor what he can/cannot do and tell the patient that he may have to wait years before he can get treatment?

Take the recent example of former President Clinton's emergency bypass surgery. President Clinton was able to get his heart surgery done practically immediately (3 days) in the United States. Under Canada's vaunted system, he would have had to wait 24 days to see a cardiac specialist. He then would have had to have waited another 2 weeks for the surgery. I guess the Canadian bureaucrats do not consider emergency bypass surgery to be a life-and-death matter. Mr. Clinton is even more fortunate he is not a Swede. A recent survey there showed that it can take 11 months for a diagnostic heart x-ray and then another 8 months for surgery. An estimated 1,000 Swedes a year die of heart disease because they cannot get the care they need on time. No wonder so many people come to the United States for surgery. Even though he owed his life to the American system, Clinton was not on TV later thanking the private system that gave him the attention he needed when he needed it. Of course, I am sure that government officials (an ex-Presidents) would never have to worry about this. Someone will push the red-tape aside for our public "servants". I hope that kind of system never comes to the US - a system in which those with "pull" are treated quickly while the rest of us have to resort to prayer. I do not want to see a world in which everyone has to depend on politicians for their health care. I prefer the world in which people rely on their own judgment and that of their chosen health professional.

Why, in the words of Mr. Clinton, has this country started to believe that "health care should be a right, not a privilege"? Many of the "big issues" (high costs, drug shortages) that people complain about have been caused by government involvement.

Here is a common sense question: Do you think health care will be less expensive when we add a new government bureaucracy on top of the current system? We have to consider that a government managed health system will require thousands of administrators and cost reviewers, rationing controllers, payment processors, equipment purchasing approvers, medical record collectors, price controllers, and physician inspectors - all of whom will have to draw two paychecks a month and have to have offices, computers, and all the other tools they will demand to do their job.

The evidence to demonstrate this already exists. The nation used to spend (pre-Medicare), on average, about 5% of its GNP on health care. Now it spends about 15%. In addition, the price of health care used to rise just about the same as other price increases. Prices for health care only started to rise faster than other prices in 1967. One site shows us the annual rates of inflation in the USA. We then just can look at the increase in health care costs (posted by the "Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Office of the Actuary: Data from the National Health Statistics Group." Each large increase in health care prices compared to the rest of inflation occurs 2 years after the government's expansion of coverage and "reform" to the system.

There is a clear reason for this: Let us take the hypothetical example of the government subsidizing food (after all, we die if we do not eat - certainly if health care is a "right", food should be as well). Not many people would choose to go to McDonalds when the government is picking up the tab. Demand for Chateau-Briand, caviar, lobster and truffles would increase. Of course, restaurants and supermarkets would be happy. They would be able to serve the most expensive products to everyone. Restaurants and groceries would be able to give everyone the service that was once considered luxurious. Chefs would be able to create any delicacy they desired. Supermarkets would cease to make "generics". The media would not longer have reports of people starving around the holidays. After all, the government is picking up the tab.
We eat what we want. We get fat. The government sees an increase in the number of obesity related health issues.

But what happens once the bill arrives? We will discover that we are spending so much of our GNP on food that there was little room for other economic activity. (Remember the numbers on health care since the 60's?). The cost of this program would dominate our federal and local budgets. In order to cut costs, the government would have to start to regulate who could eat what and when and where. Instead of getting the chateau-briand immediately, we would now be "wait-listed" and someone would go over our file to make sure that we actually needed to eat it. In addition, to reduce the cost of obesity related health care, the government also created a "national nutrition czar". He dictates what we are allowed to eat. The system has turned from one in which we were free to do as we pleased without regard to cost to one controlled by government command. We end up with the production and distribution of health care and food being planned and controlled by a centralized governmental authority. Just what the socialists wanted!

Of course, those egalitarian proponents of a national health care system are right in one respect. A national health care system will create more equality in this country - an equality of suffering.

J. Thyme Matz

2004-11-08T16:46:00.000-08:00

He is part dog and part Ewok. Reagan tucks himself in for a good night's rest.

On the flu shot shortage.

2004-11-08T15:24:00.000-08:00

What do we really know about the flu shot shortage? Do we know that the flu shot is successful in preventing the spread of the disease?

The answer is no, at least according to the Centers for Disease Control.
The chief of the CDC's influenza branch states that: "There is no systematic follow-up to see, to document whether the general population who receives a flu vaccine is infected by a flu virus, because it's an impossible task. I mean, we have 80 million doses or 70 million doses given and it would be impossible to follow up."

How well does the flu shot protect the "at risk" groups then? Last year there were 152 deaths among children caused by the flu. Is this a historical low? Has increased immunization led to a decrease in the number of children killed by the flu? The CDC answers: "Because the number of influenza deaths in children has not been tracked before, it's not possible to compare the number of deaths in children this year with previous years."

If you think these admissions by the CDC are shocking take a look at these numbers. In 2002, the CDC claimed that 20,000 people nationwide could be killed by the flu. Even though it does not track the effectiveness of the vaccine, the CDC was still inspired to make a prediction for 2003: 36,000 people would die of the flu. What caused this huge leap in their estimates remains a mystery. Even Ms. Cox states that "most cases of flu-like illnesses about 80% in fact are caused by 'many other pathogens.'" So, the CDC has no evidence that the flu shots prevent anything. The CDC follows their amazing lack of research by admitting that many of the deaths they attribute to the flu may, in fact, be caused by something else. Still, some CDC advisors boldly predict this year that up to 70,000 could be killed.

The CDC is intent on hyping the flu epidemic. Apparently, the goal is to just vaccinate everyone, even if they have no proof of the vaccine's effectiveness. The CDC is obsessed with marketing the flu shots. In order to "inspire" everyone to get a flu shot, they hype un-researched numbers. A presentation by Dr. Nowak, the Associate Director for Communications of the National Immunization Program describes "recipes" (his word, not mine) for generating interest in the flu vaccine program. In the recipe, Dr. Nowak notes that the "perception or sense that many people are falling ill" or the "perception or sense that many people are experiencing bad illness" is an important part of generating demand for the vaccine.

The CDC admits that it does not have the science to back its claims that the flu vaccines are essential (especially beyond "at risk" groups). Yet the CDC, along with the national and local media, seem intent on spreading fear about the flu and spreading a false sense of confidence in the efficacy of the vaccine.

If the "needle pushers" were to let science dictate reality and restrain themselves from scaring the public needlessly, we would not have an "artificial crisis". I guess the CDC does not trust people to make their own, educated choices.

The fear mongering about the flu vaccine is a wonderful example about the mentality of the bureaucrat. Even though they have little to no information to back up their claims, they still think they know better than the average person and they are not afraid to use the coercive power of the government to enforce their "ideals". My prediction: soon children will be prevented from attending classes unless they have proof of a flu vaccine.

J. Thyme Matz

Democracy - a tyranny of the motivated minority

2004-11-06T16:04:00.000-08:00

Some would argue that a supporter of pure-capitalism should, by nature, support pure democracy. After all, is not democracy a "perfectly competitive political system"? The arguement follows that capitalism is perfect competition between individuals economically. Under capitalism, each individual works in his own interest and uses his labor or invested capital in such a way as to increase his own wealth. If this is the economic system I advocate, why do I not support a political system that mirrors this economic activity? Is this a contradiction?

Well, for starters for a pure democracy to work, we must all be very interested in public affairs. Reality is that we spend much of our time on our own private activities: our jobs, our homes, and our family. We do not spend a large portion of our time concentrating on who is running the government and thinking about the long-term implications of their decisions. In addition, the size of government makes it impossible to track. The larger the government becomes, the more difficult it is to follow effectively. That leaves less time for family, jobs, and friends. Even a small government like Washington Grove requires many volunteers and a handful of elected officials (each with their particular area of expertise). Even a professional political expert could understand only a small fraction of what the government does.

What encourages people to vote in a situation such as this? We can only understand so little of our government even if we devote a lot of our time and resources to tracking it. Is it not best to "leave it up to the experts in their field"? To put it another way, government, by its very nature, does not encourage full political participation. We can ask ourselves a simple question: if voting does not cost us anything, how come so few people do it? The answer is that there is a cost to voting, especially if one is an "educated" voter.

How does the government then encourage participation? It uses its lack of transparancy to its own advantage. The people who vote are often motivated by the temptation of using the coercive power of the state for their own benefit. They can vote themselves "concentrated benefits". The costs are diffused among the rest of the population. In other words, a motivated few can vote themselves money and power and hardly anyone in the general population will notice a decrease in their own money and power becuase the losses are spread accross the entire population. In reality, instead of getting the will of the majority in these issues, we get the will of a "motivated minority".

The town of Washington Grove is a great example of this. The town is a pure democracy: one voting age citizen=one vote. Does this work in practice? Do the majority show up to vote? Or does a motivated minority take over the agenda? Last March (before the war in Iraq began), the town held a referendum. A few statists wanted the town to pass an offical (town government) statement against the war. According to the 2000 Census the town's population was 515. 115 of them are under the voting age. That left around 400 voting age adults. The final vote approving the resolution was 59-12 (a total of 71 voters). In other words, about 18% of the population voted (and only about 15% voted for the resolution).

Why I voted against the resolution has nothing to do with my position on the war. My vote had everything to do with my position on individual rights. I do not believe that any government has the right to make opinion statements on behalf of its citizens. What is next? Will they make proclamations on abortion, on gay marriage, etc.? 11 states recently did make statements like that and sacrificed individual liberties in the process. I also do not think that 15% of my neighbors should have the power to make a statement on my behalf without my authorization. Let us be clear: this was not an official town policy. The vote was about some neighbors enforcing their political opinions on others. In my presentation, I requested that they make the resolution a petition: "The following citizens of Washington Grove think..." vs. "The town of Washington Grove declares..."

About 80% of the population was not motivated by the potential loss of their freedom of speach. Many of those were probably did not have the resources to follow our small town government. Or, perhaps they did not want to stand against their neighbors and create rocky relations. The point is that they have a choice to vote or not in a pure democracy. They chose not to vote (and they have to live with the consequences of that choice). But take a look at the situation from a different perspective. We have a super-majority of the population who does not feel "worse off" as a result of the town proclamation. They do not really think to deeply about the principle established by allowing the government to make decisions for them, especially when the town has no input into the final decision to go to war or not. However, the motivated minority is able to push their agenda through the government. The minority is able to satisfy their whims (I still am not sure what their true goal was - they could have more easily conveyed their message by using a privately organized petition than public resources.) They must have had some other purpose beyond their desire to communicate their anti-war sentiment.

OK, my town is only a small community. How does this play out on the national scale? Well - 59,459,765 people voted for Bush. The USA has a population of 294,695,623 as of tonight. In other words, Bush got the support of just a little more than 20% of the total US population. (Of course the percentage will slightly increase when we substitue the percentage of eligible voters for the total population.) The fact remains that Bush won only the support of a motivated minority in this country (not the 51% he claims gives him political capital).

What motivated this minority to vote Bush? What costs will it impose upon us over the next 4 years? How much more freedom will we lose?

J. Thyme Matz

2004-11-02T16:02:00.000-08:00

Here is "Indiana Matz" in the Siq in front of the Treasury in Petra, Jordan.

Helen Keller's sight was much better than you think

2004-11-02T15:52:00.000-08:00

"Our democracy is but a name. We vote? What does that mean? It means that we choose between two bodies of real, though not avowed, autocrats. We choose between Tweedledum and Tweedledee."

Helen Keller

Does that not seem a fitting quote for today?

An introduction to positive vs. negative rights

2004-11-02T15:32:00.000-08:00

"How can we live in freedom and maintain that we are entitled to *anything* that we can't get without the labor of others? Remember, if we are entitled to the labor of others, that makes slaves of those others." [Marilyn vos Savant, Parade Magazine, 12/31/95 ([Marilyn vos Savant is listed in "The Guiness Book of World Records" Hall of Fame for the "Highest IQ".)]"

The logic of the above quote is clear. If humans are "entitled" to any produced good, then the workers who produce that good are required to do so. They have no choice in the matter. Illustrations of this are the so-called "rights" to an education, housing, a minimum standard of living, and health care. Of course, the teachers, construction workers, and doctors would be paid, they would not be "slaves" in the tradition sense. On the other hand, they would have little freedom in their jobs. Their jobs would be controlled by a regulatory bureaucracy established to ensure that the public's rights are not being violated. For instance, those workers would find that they are limited with respect to pay, mobility, and the ability to make individual decisions along with their clients. The workers in those fields may not be allowed to strike. In Belgium, many doctors quit or left the country to practice elsewhere to protest the strict conditions imposed upon them by the bureaucrats. Instead of asking the doctors and patients what could be done to improve things, the Belgian goverment simply drafted all doctors into military service. Essentially, the lives of the doctors in Belgium became property of the state.

The "new rights" are called "Positive Rights". The name refers to the fact that these "rights" require a positive action on behalf of another agent in order not to have them violated. A doctor must be present and he must exercise his ability for us to receive our "right to health care". A teacher must exist and must use his skills for us to receive a "right to an education". They must do their job, and do it correctly, or someone's "right" will be violated.

The "old rights", freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, freedom of speech, and property rights are called "Negative Rights". These rights are "negative" because they only require that others do nothing. I can speak freely on this blog, but no-one has to read it. I can worship freely as long as no one takes an action to prevent me from doing so. Essentially, negative rights impose no obligations. If you agree with the concept that everyone has the right to freedom of speach, what do you have to do? You do not have to listen to them, but you cannot stop them from talking.

"Positive rights" create a society of slaves and masters.

How can we apply this to our country's policies today? Anything that people think of as a "entitlement" could be considered a "positive right". What have people done to EARN these things they are "entitled" to. Merely existing does not guaruntee a person a healthy life. Being born does not provide one with a claim check on the efforts of others. Any policy in this country that non-voluntarily brings people together and imposes an obligation on one to be paid to the other brings us one step closer to slavery.

Our Republic cannot last with slavery as one of its key philosophies.

JTM

2004-11-01T16:15:00.000-08:00

Reagan is taking some time to contemplate the meaning of "Treat"

Liberal, Conservative, or just plain confused???

2004-11-01T15:34:00.000-08:00

I recently sent this as an e-mail to the Washington Grove town e-mail list. What is Washington Grove? I live in the town of Washington Grove, Maryland: http://www.washgrov.sailorsite.net/

This little town seemed like the ideal community to settle into and raise a family. It appeared peaceful and full of wonderful eccentrics. My wife and I were to discover that the town is run by "mob rule". It is a pure democracy, the kind this nation's founders warned us about. There is also a great undercurrent of "white guilt" which guides the town policies. The ruling clique are horrified that they were born white Americans with some ability and they want to serve the sentence for their crimes. Unfortunately, it is not enough for them to just punish themselves. They have to punish everyone else who may have the misfortune to come accross their path. More on Washington Grove later. For now, it is enough to know that they would classify themselves as "liberal".... even though they have no idea what that word really means. Off to the e-mail I sent:

_____________

Evidently some of you are confused. You are not sure what to call yourselves. I just witnessed it on an e-mail with the following signature:

Liberals and damn proud of it!
It is evident to me that there are quite a few people who do not know what a liberal is. Let's go to the dictionary and find out!
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=liberal

A: Not limited to or by established, traditional, orthodox, or authoritarian attitudes, views, or dogmas; free from bigotry.
B: Favoring proposals for reform, open to new ideas for progress, and tolerant of the ideas and behavior of others; broad-minded.
C: Of, relating to, or characteristic of liberalism.

I have noticed that there are quite a few in the Grove who are limited to traditional and orthodox ways. In my encounters, I have found the town to be ruled by authoritarian attitudes and views. Many of the "hot button" issues raised in this forum seek to protect the Grove from reform, progress, or radical change. Nor is the town free from bigotry, it may be tolerant of racial issues, but there are many who are against any new ideas. I bet there are quite a few people out there wishing that I would move out of town. Broad minded? That does not seem to fit either. There is a clique in town and either you agree with all of its ideas, or you are not welcomed in the community. As a matter of fact, I remember that the silencing of opposition was the FIRST thing proposed at a certain town meeting. Broad minded people like to engage in educated discussion - not just "cheerleading" on the sides like practically all of the recent "political posts".
So, what is this "characteristic of liberalism"?
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=liberalism
A: The state or quality of being liberal.
B: A political theory founded on the natural goodness of humans and the autonomy of the individual and favoring civil and political liberties, government by law with the consent of the governed, and protection from arbitrary authority.
C: An economic theory in favor of laissez-faire, the free market, and the gold standard.

This definition is more of the "political liberal" variety. Is it what you thought it was going to be? I do not think the people who claimed to be a liberal in their e-mail are actually proud to be "in favor of laissez-faire, the free market, and the gold standard". I do not think they believe in "the natural goodness of humans" (do we not destroy the environment, greedily cheat each other, etc.?) nor do they favor the "autonomy of the individual" (if they did, they would not be for such things as a national health care system, the social security system, or any other governmental redistribution program). Of course, "government by law with the consent of the governed" must be a foreign concept to many in the Grove. My political liberty was stolen from me as the town decided to speak on my behalf without my authorization. If the Grove can take that sort of action, then there is little protection from arbitrary authority. In fact, was there not a debate a few months back about people who violate town code and are not punished? Why are some allowed to get away with violations and others pursued? I detect a certain arbitrariness in the manner the town governs itself. The Grove may have laws, but it does not have rule of law - nor does it have the complete consent of the governed.
So, Liberalism is IN FAVOR OF LAISSEZ-FAIRE, THE FREE MARKET, and THE GOLD STANDARD. It favors INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS (and their corresponding responsibilities). It is a "live, and let live" attitude. Certainly not the attitude of a people who want a national health care system. Not the attitude of a people who want an Amendment against gay marriage. Not the attitude of a people who would force an official government anti-war resolution upon all of its citizens. It is not the attitude of Democrats, Republicans, nor is it a characteristic of the town government. It is DEFINITELY not a characteristic of quite a few people on this list who think themselves as "proud liberals".
__________________________
How about Conservative?
A: Favoring traditional views and values; tending to oppose change.
B: Traditional or restrained in style: a conservative dark suit.
C: Moderate; cautious: a conservative estimate.
Of or relating to the political philosophy of conservatism.
Traditional views and values.... Opposing change. These seem to be KEY features of the Grove. Opposition to the changes on nearby land. Closing down the bridge or part of Washington Grove lane. Preserving the appearance of the Grove and its buildings. Holding old-fashioned values and not having a strong desire to reconsider them. The Grove is traditional and restrained in style. I think this description is more applicable to many Grove residents.
conservativism : a political or theological orientation advocating the preservation of the best in society and opposing radical changes
Seems that the people in the Grove have decided that their lifestyle is the "best in society" and should be preserved. I think that there are quite a few residents who are opposed to radical changes.
________________
It seems to me, if the shoe fits, wear it. And wear it proudly. But do not call yourself something that you are not. If the Grove wishes to conserve its nature and resist change (even ideological change) - then admit it. Be proud of what you are: Conservatives.
I hope I made it obvious that the meaning of "liberal" and "conservative" has gotten lost over time. Historically, the conservatives were those who wished to maintain the aristocracy and government by a select few. They wished to "conserve" the old ways of doing things. The liberals wanted freedom. They desired freedom in politics and economics. They fought (and died for) individual rights and for freedom of action. You may think to yourself "but the definitions in the dictionary do not describe either political party today". You are correct. There is a word to describe the political attitudes/philosophy of all the major political parties today: (https://mail.imf.org/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=totalitarian)
I am only going to set the record straight.
Justin Matz
A LIBERAL (according to the real definition of the word) and proud of it.

(Other resource)Mirriam-Websterhttps://mail.imf.org/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary%26va=liberal%26x=15%26y=13 https://mail.imf.org/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary%26va=liberalism https://mail.imf.org/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary%26va=conservative (Also includes this as definition: a : tending or disposed to maintain existing views, conditions, or institutions)
https://mail.imf.org/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?va=conservatism (Also includes: a : disposition in politics to preserve what is established b : a political philosophy based on tradition and social stability, stressing established institutions, and preferring gradual development to abrupt change)
Hyperdictionaryhttps://mail.imf.org/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.hyperdictionary.com/search.aspx?define=liberal https://mail.imf.org/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.hyperdictionary.com/search.aspx?define=liberalism https://mail.imf.org/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.hyperdictionary.com/search.aspx?define=conservative (Includes: Opposed to liberal reforms).http://www.hyperdictionary.com/search.aspx?define=conservativism

_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+

Words have meanings. I would prefer if people used those terms correctly.

JTM

It appears Americans have adopted statism

2004-11-01T15:01:00.000-08:00

Everyday I am stunned. I am shocked at how quickly people just take to statism. Our elections tomorrow yield only horrible outcomes. Perhaps, at one time, elections presented us with clear choices. We could choose between liberty, a democratic process, and economic freedom and the darker forces of oppression, central-planning, and dictatorial control. I wish we could have such an election now - it would be nice to hear the sound of liberty. Instead, the side for liberty has been silenced. The only choices presented to us for tomorrow (on the Maryland ballot) are George "Patriot Act" Bush, John "National, socialized health" Kerry, David "make the earth such a pristine place by making it impossible for man to live there" Cobb, Michael "we should just pick up all of our toys and shut ourselves inside our borders" Badnarik, Michael "I love God more than Bush does" Peroutka, and Ralph "I can ruin anything with pseudo-science, or even just by showing up" Nader. There are a few write-in candidates. It is really difficult to tell that they are even running for the highest public office in the land. There are not even any web-sites dedicated to their causes.

So, which of those candidates stands for freedom? Which one will defend this Republic, this whole Republic (i.e. not just the one's who are their supporters)? What happened to principles? All out the window. What we are left with is, as South Park crudely put it, is a choice between a giant douche and a turd sandwich. I will stand up for my principles. I could never bring myself not to vote. And I can never bring myself to abandon my values so easily. I will write in "No Confidence" tomorrow for many of the major positions up for grabs. I recognize that there will never be such a thing as the "perfect candidate". However, is a "good candidate" too much to ask for?

The nation has accepted the idea that the government has a role in regulating our lives. The nation's creators disagreed and attempted to create a system of checks and balances based on a constitution that treated the people as sovereign. The Constitution limits the power of the government, not the people. The Constitution also applies only within the public sphere. Its application to private relationships (marriage, abortion, employment, and trade) in recent decades is something to lament. Notice that each of the Amendments included in the Bill of Rights restricts only PUBLIC action - not private action. (http://www.archives.gov/national_archives_experience/charters/bill_of_rights_transcript.html)

Judicial activism and the "make-it-so" attitude have broken the meaning of those words and twisted them around so much that we can even believe that they are "open to interpretation".
What part of "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances" is confusing?
Does this "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people" mean anything anymore?

A presidential debate on principles would have been interesting:
One one side - freedom, on the other side statism.
Instead of asking how to defeat terror and protect this nation without restricting the rights and freedom of the people, the candidates differed on what rights to restrict and how much to restrict them.
Instead of asking if a national, socialized plan for health care should even be undertaken, the candidates resorted to a scuffle on what types of things to fund and how much.
Instead of making a decision on social security and discussing the fact that it is a Ponzi Scheme, the candidates instead bickered on "how to save it". What about ENDING it?
Americans no longer choose between living free or dying. They bicker amongst themselves about the best method of suicide.

JM

Let us get down to business

2004-10-31T07:02:00.000-08:00

Here are some ideas of American patriots:
"As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy." Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)

"When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic." Benjamin Franklin

I think that we can see a common theme here. We are in trouble once people discover that the majority can dictate fiscal policy. No matter what the cause, public schools, national health care, or social security - the impetus behind the vote is to tax others and redistribute their wealth. This country is evenly divided between Republicans/Democrats. Each of them represents their respective interest groups who will be the beneficiaries of any redistribution of wealth. Both parties have easily conned their followers into believing that they can deliver jobs, education, and health care at NO COST. How will this be done? Taxing other interest groups. For instance, the Democrats promise health care for those who cannot afford it. They plan to pay for this by taxing those who can afford it. In other words, they plan on turning the more affluent people into slaves for the less affluent. People are suckered into this. They are suckered into this idea of "free health care" or "free social security". The word free is incorrect. It is a lie. More correctly it is "no cost (to yourself) health care" as someone else gets stuck with the check. These same people who clamor for national health care would probably think it is unethical to go to a fancy restaurant, find a lady sitting nearby wearing expensive jewelry, and stick her with your food bill. However, the principle is the same!!! What is different about those two situations? You cannot argue that health care is a right because people need it in order to survive! What about food? Do people not need that to survive?

Government redistribution has polarized this nation. Each party represents its own "chosen recipients" and own "forced donors". If you want to "bring this nation together", the best thing to do is end all programs that redistribute wealth. Cease turning some people into slaves and others into masters. (I also care to emphasize here that the only thing that can turn a slave into a master in numerical superiority at the polls - morality, ethics, and reason be damned). After all, why would people want to be friendly to each other if they are always looking at each other either as a looter or a potential meal ticket.

Back to what Franklin said. The end of the Republic is at hand. One of the main causes: Government intervention.

The Matz

First Entry

2004-10-31T06:38:00.000-08:00

Well, this will be a little experiment in blogging/writing. I would like to see where this goes and what it could lead to. Those of you who know me understand that I can be a tiny bit political. I am not just into any issues. I enjoy discussing the philosophy behind the politics. I enjoy discussions of epistemology, metaphysics, and ethics. My wife, Heather, and I agree that it is not sufficient to just have a position on an issue. A person must be able to explain why they support a cause and how they arrived at their conclusion. In addition, we find contradictions unacceptable. We have come to the conclusion that we should strive to eliminate the contradictions in our lives, both in terms of politics and also in terms of the way we administer our daily affairs. With respect to the above statements, I would appreciate any identifications of contradictions from the readers of the blog. If you can find one, please point it out. Perhaps I have not explained myself clearly enough or perhaps I need to re-evaluate my position (something I am certainly willing to do).

In this blog, I would like to communicate some of my philosophy. For instance, after watching the movie "I ♥ Huckabees", I came up with the idea of: First you have to shed yourself of the everything. Then you have to shed yourself of the nothing. Then you will discover that you are something. It is a simple matter of the identification of the fact that YOU ARE which is important.

Do not be confused. I am sure that if you read my posts for a while, you will be able to understand it.

My other hobby is history. I love to examine historical trends - especially in the realm of ideas. We live in a time where the ideas that led to the birth of this nation are about to be abandoned. The ideas have almost entirely been forgotten. They have been replaced with "better sounding" concepts that do not stand up to scrutiny, but have a "sound byte" quality about them. People are easily lured into ideas such as egalitarianism and democracy. Those concepts sound nice, especially when compared to concepts such as capitalism and republic. However, we will find that the switch from a republican form of government to a democratic form of government (and I am not referring to either of the major American political parties) has clear disadvantages and is a great threat to freedom. Equally, egalitarianism is an evil concept. If we think about how we are to achieve it, we can see how it limits freedom and, in fact, punishes ability. Again, I am just introducing the idea here - it will be more clearly explained in future blogs.

So, if you are not bored already, you can have a little "reality show" peep into my life and my ideas as you read these blogs!

Quick info:

Myself:
Justin Matz
Age: 30 years old
Family: Wife: Heather Bea Matz, Dog: Reagan (Scottish Terrier), Parakeets (Lucky, Oscar, Jasper, Har White, and Earl Gray), Hermit Crabs, a Beta fish (Fred), and many other fish in a community tank.
More to come soon.