The Other Big Happening on November 2

 From Campaign For Liberty:
On the same day as the much-touted midterm election, the Fed is considering "additional securities purchases" and pumping more printed money into the economy, thus setting the stage for additional inflation.

The Fed exercises tremendous power over the lives, liberties, and economic well-being of every American.  And yet, it is an entity and law unto itself, uncontrolled by representative government, the rule of law, and the Constitution.  It exists as a mysterious hybrid of government and private entities. It has the power to print money out of thin air, "monetize the debt," inflate the money supply, and reduce the buying power of your savings.  It is not "federal" and it has no "reserves."  Its books are off the record and closed to public review, exempt from the Freedom of Information Act.   

Video: Be Harsh On Your Friends

Tea Party activist Dana Loesh says she will be more hard on Republicans who break their promises than on Democrats.  This makes sense, and she needs emulated.  Were Republicans not asleep at the wheel quite so much during the Bush II years, things would not be quite so bad as they are now.

No serious-minded critic of Pelosi, Reid, and Obama would think or say that our current fiscal mess started in January 2009.  It is now no surprise to the public what leftists and progressives in the Democrat Party envision for American society.  What the public needs to know (let's hope, wants to know) about the Republican party is that there are enough constitutionalists and classical liberals within it that we will not get a repeat of the spending and growth of government that occurred during the Republican-controlled Congress and White House of the 2000s.  This Republican profligacy laid the political groundwork for the current spend-a-thon and socialist power grabbing, and any shade of apologizing it away adds to the difficulty of restoring fiscal stability and constitutional government.

So be hard on Republicans--they need it.  We all need it.


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Meet Bill Whittle

Meet Bill Whittle from The Firewall.  He looks a bit like Jim Carey, talks like an understudy of Hayek.  Excellent!

Whittle presents the fundamentals of freedom-based conservatism, or what we more broadly call classical liberalism, in plain language and with historical perspective.   His presentations are well worth taking in and passing along.

"There's only one really progressive idea. And that is the idea of legally limiting the power of the government." 


Watch for his videos on Youtube.

"Of Football Helmets and Government Bailouts"

"This, of course, is a textbook example of what economists call “moral hazard.”  That’s a situation in which insuring against a bad outcome leads to more of that outcome precisely because the insured expects the consequences to be less severe than they would have been without the insurance." 

---From Steven Horwitz recent article, Of Football Helmets and Bailouts, appearing in The Freeman.

In a truly free, competitive capitalist environment, entrepreneurs and businesses operate within a profit and loss system.  When the risk of loss is artificially removed by government bailouts, business activity takes on unnecessarily risky behavior, behavior that leads to risk to the taxpayers and consumers.

Think of General Motors, Chrysler, Fannie and Freddie, and AIG.

The possibility of profit and loss provides the incentive to efficiently and ethically provide the masses with what they want and need.  When the possibility of loss is artificially removed the economic environment can no longer be called "capitalism" but one of "privatized profit and socialized risk."

Video: From Concerned to Scared

"People are never more sincere tan when they assume their own superiority." Thomas Sowell,
The Vision of The Anointed

 I'm going to guess the president came dangerously close to being very frank about what he really thinks of the voting public. This is not quite as direct as the bitter clingers off-the-cuff, but it is still telling:


Some interesting inferences:
1) Americans were "thinking clearly" and merely concerned citizens in 2008 when they swept the Mr. 
    Obama into office amid massive disapproval of Bush and Washington politics.

2) 2008 politics were not "tough" like they are now.  Were they "enlightened" then but darkened with
    public ignorance now?

3) When Americans push back against collectivism and assaults on their individual freedom, "facts and science [are] not...winning the day"?

Video: What Elitism Does to Freedom

This video by Bill Whittle is worthy of much time and consideration.  I first saw it posted at Hot Air and very much wanted to share here in In Real Time.

No matter what the time, country, or culture, there will always be a group of people who think they know best how to run you life than you do.  Worse still, they are bent on leveraging their elitism upon you through whatever system of government, all at the cost of individual freedom.

Whittle's observations dovetail wonderfully with Hayek's Road to Serfdom and Sowell's
The Vision of The Annointed.

Video: A Great Divide or An Awakening?

At 1:18 it is remarked how Americans disapprove of both political parties. Other polling shows that a majority of Americans think the government is too big and intrusive.

There are ideological divides in the country, as there are in societies free enough to allow divergent public discourse on what is good and just.  The divide that is widening in America is between Americans outside the Beltway grounded in the reality of unsustainable debt, and politicians inside the Beltway who create for themselves their own universe of make-believe economics and math.

Madison famously quipped that "If men were angels, no government would be necessary..." (Federalist 51).  If politicians exercised common sense, no Tea Party would be necessary.

"As Much Unemployment As We Pay For"

From BBC News: A trio of economists were awarded the 2010 Nobel prize for economics. 

Their specialty that garnered the world's most prestigious award?  "[H]ow unemployment, job vacancies and wages are affected by regulation and policy."

From the Academy itself: "One conclusion is that more generous unemployment benefits give rise to higher unemployment and longer search times."


It's official, or officially recognized by The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, at least: Extending unemployment benefits extends unemployment. 

In his essay, Keynesian Myths, an essay in Making Economic Sense, Murray Rothbard gives us this to consider:

"Government interference, in the form of minimum wage laws and compulsory unionism, creates compulsory unemployment, while welfare payments and unemployment 'insurance' subsidize unemployment and make sure that it will be permanently high.  We can have as much unemployment as we pay for." [Emphasis added.]

What are the chances our Nobel laureate president will take note of The Academy's conclusion.



 

Video: Flannel Shirts, Fake Steel Workers, and Voters

The most telling portion of this video is the statement that, in the end just before an election, campaigns look to tap into emotion and get voters to vote against something rather than for something.

Advertisers will only try to sell you what they think you will buy.  In the next couple weeks it will be telling to see how much slide-of-hand and actual substantive campaign ads pop up.  This election cycle has a higher percentage of voters paying attention. 

It would be good to make politicians and their campaign managers realize we're looking for substance.

Videos: Notice a Difference?

What's the difference between government protests in Europe and in America?

In Europe, people take to the streets to protest cuts in government spending and reductions, real or perceived, in the entitlement cradle-to-crave nanny state. And all this in spite of the fiscal reality that such a government overreach has produced deficits their societies cannot sustain. The folks in the streets want more spending, more government, more of the cradle-to-grave nanny state.

Here's France:


And here are the Greeks:


Americans, on the contrary, have taken to the streets to protest government spending, the deficit, and to demand a reduction in the size and scope of government in their lives. They protest against big government, not for it. Americans, by and large, have a preference for individual freedom and an inherent suspicion of intertwining their individual fates with the caprice of government largess. It is the cultural effect of our unique history: it is how we are hard-wired as a people.

Here is the Tea Party:


That is quite a difference, one worth keeping in mind when discussing what is "mainstream" and what is "extreme" in American thinking.

Video: Big Business, Monopolies, and "Big Green" Environmentalism

"The myth is widespread and deeply rooted that big business and big government are rivals---that big business wants small government." Timothy Carney, The Big Ripoff: How Big Business and Big Government Steal Your Money

PJTV presents an excellent exposition on the relationship between the environmentalist movement, big business, and the regulatory agencies of the federal government. (I cannot embed the 11 minute video directly onto this post, so click here to link to it.)

The standard public perception about big business and big government is that the two are always opposed, locked into an adversarial relationship.  Not so.  As Timothy Carney (in his excellent book quoted above) points out, the history of big government is the history of big business and vice versa.  One complements the other as potential competitors are crowded out of or prevented entry into the market due to overly burdensome regulations and taxes.   Thus, lower prices, higher quality, and more choices for the consumer leave the market, too.

Classical economists have long pointed out that in a strictly free, competitive environment, it is nearly impossible to build and maintain a monopoly over competitors.  When the government is big enough and interventionist enough to squash out potential competitors, they will do so ostensibly for the public good.

Not all corporations are slimy monopolists colluding with the federal government.  The ones that do not deserve respect and our business. The ones that do are certainly not worthy of the name "capitalists" for capitalism implies competitive and open pursuit of wealth in an open and free market, not cornering markets through covert manipulation of government regulatory agencies.  

The broader point is that monopolies simply do not occur due to lack of regulation in a "free market capitalism"; they arise from and are solidified by excessive government intervention in the economy.  And companies that play the game properly deserve the title of monopolists. 

In context of this video, consider that former energy company Enron heavily lobbied government to sign onto the Kyoto Protocol--an international treaty rife with burdensome regulations on energy companies.

More recently and related to PJTV's Big Green topic, General Electric and numerous other corporations have spent millions lobbying Congress to pass the ominous Cap and Trade legislation.