A Arte da Fuga

Keynesians know your limits!

noreply@blogger.com (António Costa Amaral) — Sat, 03 Mar 2012 10:00:00 +0000

Public Schools Must Be Abolished

noreply@blogger.com (António Costa Amaral) — Sat, 03 Mar 2012 09:00:00 +0000

Santorum And Harvard Anarchist Agree: Public Schools Must Be Abolished:

To appreciate how people could be so willfully blind as to permit such a ubiquitous malevolent presence as slavery, one needs only to look at American public schools. The analogy between public schooling and slavery is presented solely to demonstrate that both are socially destructive institutions that are sustained by the belief that oppression, when it is even acknowledged, is necessary and beneficial ..

Learned helplessness is a vital feature and takes place very early when children discover that they will never be permitted to follow their passions. This is axiomatic due to the inexorably rigid curriculum, structure, and design that must accompany processing large numbers of students. Every aspect of student life is controlled, including their surroundings, what they can do, how they can act, and what and how they may think. Public school students are under constant surveillance. Hallways and classrooms are monitored. Permission must be obtained to talk, leave the classroom, and even to use the bathroom. Lockers, backpacks, and persons are routinely searched. In many schools, police patrol the building and grounds. 95% of those police carry firearms. Break times are generally shorter than what prisoners of war are required to receive under the terms of the Third Geneva Convention. In fact, public schools consistently violate Articles 17, 18, 22, 25, 26, 38, 51, 52, 53, and 99, which govern discipline, labor demands, personal effects, general health and well being, diet, and exposure to humiliation. It is remarkable that parents voluntarily subject their children to conditions that would be considered war crimes if their children were enemy combatants.

The general philosophy of public schools is that civil rights are at odds with learning. Fear, humiliation, and degradation are routinely seen as indispensable educational tools. Because schooling numerous children at the same time requires submission and conformity, social efficiency must always dictate and be the final arbiter in all decisions involving public school administration.

Consequently, obedience to authority emerges as the most important lesson that any student will learn ..

The insistence that alternatives to public schooling must be presented in any discussion that attacks public schooling is a diversionary tactic that need not be entertained. Abolition of slavery was not postponed until there was a clear vision for how to integrate millions of former slaves into society ..

Gerrymandering (5)

noreply@blogger.com (António Costa Amaral) — Sat, 03 Mar 2012 08:00:00 +0000

Na continuação de Gerrymandering (4),

Gerrymandering Explained

The Fairness Fraud

noreply@blogger.com (António Costa Amaral) — Sat, 03 Mar 2012 07:00:00 +0000

The 'Fairness' Fraud por Thomas Sowell:

.. How does allowing politicians to take more money in taxes from successful people, to squander in ways that will improve their own reelection prospects, make anything more "fair" for others?

Even if additional tax revenue all went to poor single mothers – which it will not – the multiple problems of children raised by poor single mothers would not be cured by throwing money at them. Indeed, the skyrocketing of unwed motherhood began when government welfare programs began throwing money at teenage girls who got pregnant.

Children born and raised without fathers are a major problem to society and to themselves. There is nothing "fair" about increasing the number of such children.

To ask whether life is fair – either here and now, or at any time or place around the world, over the past several thousand years – is to ask a question whose answer is obvious. Life has seldom been within shouting distance of fair, in the sense of even approximately equal prospects of success.

Countries whose politicians have been able to squander ever larger amounts of a nation's resources have not only failed to make the world more fair, the concentration of more resources and power in these politicians' hands has led to results that were often counterproductive at best, and bloodily catastrophic at worst.

Simple Rules for a Complex World

noreply@blogger.com (António Costa Amaral) — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 16:00:00 +0000

No seguimento de Simplicity is Beautiful, e embora fraquinho no que diz respeito à "necessidade" do Estado, vale a pena prestar atenção:

Exploring Liberty: Simple Rules for a Complex World

The Santa Claus Government

noreply@blogger.com (António Costa Amaral) — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 15:00:00 +0000

The Santa Claus Government:

.. I .. believe that government should be like Santa, but in another way: unseen, unheard and questionable as the whether it even exists or not. This is a model that the anarcho-curious can quite easily grab on to and help perpetuate. Surely it’s harder to convince the statists that their belief in mandatory government is false than it is to tell them that the government is actually secretly in charge of everything and everything good that the free market does is actually the government. Just like Santa Claus and the tooth fairy, children can grow up believing in government and when they come of age we can reveal to them that everything they thought the government was doing is being handled by private individuals working in the market. The statists will be happy thinking that government controls everything and will not seek to ruin our lives because they’re scared that if someone doesn’t control everything bad things will happen.

The only downside to all this is that we will be forced to lie to our statist friends and family about what is really going on lest they become despondent and confused because they’ve just found out their whole world is a lie. You may have a friend that you really want to tell, but exposing them to the idea that they are actually responsible for their own actions and have been their entire life is a concept too shocking for most people. Just like a parent taking their hands off a kid’s bike when they’re learning to ride, it’s something that has to be done silently lest the rider lose confidence and crash. It’s up to you to keep your statist friends and family ignorant so they don’t freak out and actually try to govern us.

Estado mínimo e tirania

noreply@blogger.com (António Costa Amaral) — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 14:00:00 +0000

No Western Govt Has Ever Claimed The Power To Do This! Not Hitler! Not Stalin! Not Russia Or China!

Constituições

noreply@blogger.com (António Costa Amaral) — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 13:00:00 +0000

I No Longer Want To “Restore The Constitution”:

Consider that constitutions are pieces of paper that purport to give some arbitrary body of men the legitimacy to rob people at the point of a gun in order to supposedly secure “their liberties.” I don’t know about you, but armed robbery seems like a ridiculous way to secure someone’s “liberty”.

The Constitution codifies and legitimizes mass theft, war and the imposition of regulations upon commercial enterprise that ought not to exist in the first place. Constitutions, no matter how they are written, ALWAYS reduce individual liberty because they always seek to legitimize coercively funded State power and centralize it within some governing body.

Constitutions are not voluntary contracts that people agree to. If you happen to disagree with being robbed at the point of a gun, you have no recourse other than to die at the hands of an army of costumed men defending your property from them. Either you pay or you can resist and die. Why anyone would want to support a document that legitimizes this situation is beyond me.

Constitutions are documents created by powerful people who seek to acquire and legitimize more power unto themselves. Constitutions legitimize mass theft, extortion, war and other heinous crimes against humanity. Constitutions centralize power. Constitutions violate the non-aggression principle as they are imposed upon everyone regardless of their consent.

Religious Liberty

noreply@blogger.com (António Costa Amaral) — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 11:59:00 +0000

Imam, Priest, Rabbi: Religious Liberty and The Birth Control Mandate

Libertarians and elections

noreply@blogger.com (António Costa Amaral) — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 11:00:00 +0000

Libertarians and elections (and why it is necessary to get involved now)

Nearly all libertarians are political, but very few are in office and that’s where a lot of our problems start .. Many libertarians oppose operating within the current system, as it’s taking part in what they see as an immoral system, Now unless you have enough money to go out and start your own country in the middle of the desert or ocean away from the tax man, this is stupid and will do you no favours. In the western world if you want to be taken seriously, you have to play the politics game.

It would be a very sad thing if liberty were allowed to stagnate and turn into a cesspool of conspiracy theorists and survivalist nutjobs. It is imperative that libertarians, both prominent old ones and newcomers just discovering how terrible the government is, are vocal in their ideas and actively try to change the system for the better.

Of course it’s hard to come to terms with the fact that at least for the foreseeable future, we’re going to have to choose between the lesser of two evils, it doesn’t mean you can’t try to change things from within. Look at what Ron Paul is doing over in the US at the moment. He may not be winning but he’s got every other republican candidate talking about auditing the fed, real cuts to spending and maybe even questioning the sacred cow of military spending. Gary Johnson (arguably the more libertarian of the two) on the other hand is a possible election spoiler with his attempt to run for the Libertarian Party nomination splitting the libertarian vote and perhaps putting Obama back in for another 4 years. Thankfully in Australia, where we have preferential voting, we don’t have that problem, we can all vote for greater liberty whilst hedging our bets by preferencing the less tyrannical of the two major parties, whichever one happens to be that particular election.

Order

noreply@blogger.com (António Costa Amaral) — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 10:00:00 +0000

The Search for the Weaver of Dreams ... by Russell Roberts

The Myth of the Greater Good

noreply@blogger.com (António Costa Amaral) — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 09:00:00 +0000

The Myth of the Greater Good:

I—and most other people, I assume—grew up being taught that the end doesn’t justify the means. Basically, this is an injunction not to rationalize one’s behavior while using other people as mere means to one’s ends.

.. why is the principle that the end doesn’t justify the means absent from most discussion of government policy? Why are political measures routinely defended on the sole basis that they will bring about some good consequence that supposedly outweighs the costs (from the perspective of those who propose them)? This happens all the time ..

In all these cases and more, those who proffer the government policy seem to think that all they need do is identify a consequence as the “greater good” and the discussion is over. The end justifies the means ..

.. there are always costs to—and therefore victims of—any government action. Government is force, and “[c]oercive intervention . . . signifies per se that the individual or individuals coerced would not have done what they are now doing were it not for the intervention” (Murray Rothbard, Power and Market). ..

The proponents of such measures never tell us why the benefits they aim for are more important than the benefits other people will have to do without. But of course they couldn’t tell us: The benefits are incommensurable.

Furthermore, apart from the material loss, the victims’ progressive loss of freedom is real both in the immediate instance as well as with respect to the precedent set for future government action (the slippery slope). Intervention begets intervention as policy makers try to clean up the mess their previous actions created.

.. considerations apart from the end are highly relevant—such as the injunction never to use another person as a mere means. To ignore those considerations is to mock human dignity and countenance the slave principle.

That’s basic to how we ordinarily think about morality. But politicians and those who leech off their power flout this insight as a matter of course.

Censoring the past

noreply@blogger.com (António Costa Amaral) — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 08:00:00 +0000

Ezra Levant: Larry Miller Is Right & Irwin Cotler...well don't get him started

BÓNUS: Censoring Hitler — and the past

Simplicity is Beautiful

noreply@blogger.com (António Costa Amaral) — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 07:00:00 +0000

Principles of Law: Simplicity is Beautiful:

The U.S. Constitution is a model of simplicity. You can read the whole thing in under a half hour. And that is the secret of its success. It doesn’t need to outline the specifics of agricultural or trade policy. That’s Congress’ job.

The EU’s de facto constitution runs well over 200 pages. Where the U.S. Constitution paints with a broad brush, the European Union fills in every last detail. Most countries, including the U.S., are turning to this top-down model and rejecting the Constitution’s more bottom-up approach.

The reason is a shift in the intellectual climate. Negative rights are out of fashion now. Positive rights are all the rage. Negative rights are the kind that pervade the U.S. Constitution: don’t hit other people, don’t take their stuff, don’t break your contracts. Don’t, don’t don’t.

Positive rights do sound nice, but in practice they are profoundly illiberal. That is because positive rights often contradict each other. If I break a bone and my doctor has a legal right to be on vacation, one of us has to have our positive rights violated. That means someone has to decide. Someone with a lot of power. Life and death, in some cases. A government with the power to make those kinds of decisions is very powerful indeed. Positive rights systems require large, powerful governments. Rights violations are both frequent and arbitary.

Negative rights have no such conflicts. That’s a big reason why the U.S. Constitution is so simply constructed .. The majority of the document is about placing strict limits on those powers. When the people are left alone, they largely prosper. Let them build from the bottom up. The view from the top on down is too distant to catch the necessary details.

In the law, as in so many other areas, simplicity is beautiful.

Brown M&Ms

noreply@blogger.com (António Costa Amaral) — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 23:59:00 +0000

Brown M&Ms from Van Halen

dismantling corporatism

noreply@blogger.com (António Costa Amaral) — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 23:00:00 +0000

Romney’s “Free Enterprise System”: As Statist as Stalin’s Five-Year Plan:

.. it was deliberate collusion between the state and big business, especially in the 1850s and the Gilded Age, to set up a centralized corporate economy. There simply wouldn’t have been an economy dominated by large manufacturers and wholesalers serving a single national market, were it not for things like railroad land grants and other subsidies to make long-distance distribution artificially cheap, and the pooling or exchange of industrial patents to cartelize markets. Not to mention gunboat diplomacy to make sure overbuilt U.S. industry could operate at capacity.

This was a top-down revolution, in which the state was very much involved ..

The managerial/professional New Class of corporate managers was first recruited from industrial engineers after the Civil War, and around the turn of the 20th century the new corporate-state alliance gave rise to other centralized institutions (bureaucratic charitable foundations, universities, large urban public school systems) that served as auxiliaries to the corporate state either by processing human resources for it, or by mitigating the human casualties of corporate rule (e.g., managing the underclass through the welfare and prison systems).

And now, after 150 years of this .. it’s in the process of being dismantled by human action. Despite the system’s attempts to indoctrinate us to the contrary, we are not powerless. We’re in the midst of another Great Uprising .. And unlike the last time, this time the technological revolution has put the advantage on the side of the Uprising. This time it’s us building the revolution, and the corporate state finds itself fighting a desperate rearguard action to stop us.

The Expansion of Federal Power

noreply@blogger.com (António Costa Amaral) — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 22:00:00 +0000

FDR, The New Deal, and The Expansion of Federal Power with Authors Burton and Anita Folsom

Why Is There a Euro Crisis?

noreply@blogger.com (António Costa Amaral) — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 21:00:00 +0000

Why Is There a Euro Crisis? por Philipp Bagus:

Today's banks are not free-market institutions. They live in a symbiosis with governments that they are financing. The banks' survival depends on privileges and government interventions.

Europeans politicians want the euro to survive. For it to do so, they think that they have to rescue irresponsible governments with public money. Banks are the main creditors of such governments. Thus, bank stocks soared.

The spending mess goes in a circle. Banks have financed irresponsible governments such as that of Greece. Now the Greek government partially defaults. As a consequence, European governments rescue banks by bailing them out directly or by giving loans to the Greek government. Banks can then continue to finance governments ..

In order to support the banking system during the crisis and to limit the number of bankruptcies, central banks had to keep interest rates at historically low levels. They thereby facilitated the accumulation of government debts. Consequently, the pressure on central banks to print the governments' way out of their debt crisis is building up.

Instead of allowing the market to react to credit expansion, governments increased their debts and sacrificed the value of the currencies we are using. The remedy to the distortions caused by credit expansion would have been the fast liquidation of malinvestments, banks, and governments. As the innocent users of the currencies are paying for the bailouts, it is difficult not to be a liquidationist.

the Morality and Role of Capitalism

noreply@blogger.com (António Costa Amaral) — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 20:00:00 +0000

Na continuação de The Evolution of Liberalism,

Douglas Rasmussen on the Morality and Role of Capitalism

Northeast Passage

noreply@blogger.com (António Costa Amaral) — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 19:00:00 +0000

Was the Northeast Passage first navigated in 1660?:

David Melgueiro, a Portuguese navigator, might have been the first to navigate the Northeast Passage (known now as Northern Sea Route), between 1660 and 1662, more than 200 years before Adolf Erik Nordenskjöld, who did it in 1878.

Sobretudo interessante...

China and Transportation

noreply@blogger.com (António Costa Amaral) — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 18:00:00 +0000

China and Transportation: What We Can Learn In The United States

White Rose Society

noreply@blogger.com (António Costa Amaral) — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 17:00:00 +0000

White Rose Society:

The White Rose (German: die Weiße Rose) was a non-violent, intellectual resistance group in Nazi Germany, consisting of students from the University of Munich and their philosophy professor. The group became known for an anonymous leaflet and graffiti campaign, lasting from June 1942 until February 1943, that called for active opposition to dictator Adolf Hitler's regime.

The six most recognized members of the group were arrested by the Gestapo and beheaded in 1943. The text of their sixth leaflet was smuggled by Helmuth James Graf von Moltke out of Germany through Scandinavia to the United Kingdom, and in July 1943 copies of it were dropped over Germany by Allied planes, retitled "The Manifesto of the Students of Munich."

Arquivo dos panfletos

Ron Paul @ Arizona

noreply@blogger.com (António Costa Amaral) — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 16:00:00 +0000

All Of Ron Paul's Highlights At The GOP CNN Arizona Debate
part 1 | part 2

Corporatism Is Not the Free Market

noreply@blogger.com (António Costa Amaral) — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 15:00:00 +0000

Corporatism Is Not the Free Market:

The managerial state has assumed responsibility for looking after everything from the incomes of the middle class to the profitability of large corporations to industrial advancement. This system . . . is . . . an economic order that harks back to Bismarck in the late nineteenth century and Mussolini in the twentieth: corporatism.

In various ways, corporatism chokes off the dynamism that makes for engaging work, faster economic growth, and greater opportunity and inclusiveness. It maintains lethargic, wasteful, unproductive, and well-connected firms at the expense of dynamic newcomers and outsiders, and favors declared goals such as industrialization, economic development, and national greatness over individuals’ economic freedom and responsibility. Today, airlines, auto manufacturers, agricultural companies, media, investment banks, hedge funds, and much more has [sic] at some point been deemed too important to weather the free market on its own, receiving a helping hand from government in the name of the “public good.”

.. dysfunctional corporations that survive despite their gross inability to serve their customers; sclerotic economies with slow output growth, a dearth of engaging work, scant opportunities for young people; governments bankrupted by their efforts to palliate these problems; and increasing concentration of wealth in the hands of those connected enough to be on the right side of the corporatist deal.

Daniel Hannan @ CPAC

noreply@blogger.com (António Costa Amaral) — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 14:00:00 +0000

Full Speech Daniel Hannan at CPAC 2012 » The Right Scoop