The Liberty Review

"No Posts"

noreply@blogger.com (JD) — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 02:05:00 +0000

...for a few days. I'm working on a side website project, a local libertarian event and a larger article. To top it off, classes start tomorrow. Seven of them.

Lots of math, Spanish, Econ and Plato. Yummy.

Read Mises in the meantime.

"Stupidity Amuck"

noreply@blogger.com (JD) — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 14:45:00 +0000

Found out about this a few weeks ago.

Enjoy this trailer, which blames capitalism for Wall Street socialism.

"Things are getting crazy when people call capitalism anything that benefits people involved in finance and stocks, by whatever means they benefit. So the bailouts become capitalism. We can't even seem to get agreement on basic terminology."

The Michael Moore film is going to be full of fallacies on capitalism. I'm confident however that people are smarter than to be influenced over a single movie. i already saw the trailer. its going to criminalize the people who received the bailouts, rather than the ones who actually gave away the American people's money, and the American people aren't stupid enough to not know the fascists in gov't & banks are the cronies.

I also hope you realize Michael Moore is a big capitalist. he's a millionaire from the money his films make, so he's the biggest hypocrite. not to mention the fact, that I'd love to see his fact if the Federal Government walked in and socialized his movies and all of Hollywood's profits.

If Michael Moore was a legitimately moral individual and consistent in his principles, he'd donate all the profits he earns from his movies to the homeless people that were made bankrupt by the "evil and greed" of "Wall Street." oh Jesus.

"Mathematical Economics"

noreply@blogger.com (JD) — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 02:24:00 +0000

Murray N. Rothbard's note on mathematical economics is the best I've ever read on the differences between Austrian and mainstream methodology.

I refer everyone to read it.

"An Early Start"

noreply@blogger.com (JD) — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 12:48:00 +0000

Done.

"SFL - ILAFL NYC Regional Conference 2009"

noreply@blogger.com (JD) — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 01:04:00 +0000

October 10th, 2009 at Alfred Lerner Hall

Columbia University, 115th & Broadway

On Saturday, October 10, 2010 the Columbia University Libertarians will host the 2nd ever ILAFL Conference.
REQUIRED REGISTRATION HERE:

Following up on last year’s inaugural conference in which representatives from the Ivy League schools came together to write a founding Constitution and prepare coordinated campus events, this year’s conference will include students from all groups interested in the ideas of liberty.

Featuring speakers from the national liberty movement, including Students For Liberty, the conference will serve as a forum for learning from experts in fields ranging from economics to history, meeting libertarian leaders, discussing current issues, and sharing advice on best practices for advancing the cause of liberty on campus.

Along with a fantastic speaker line up, the ILAFL Conference will also feature three free meals and an evening social event at a local bar/restaurant for everyone registered.

- Conference Speakers -

*Fred L. Smith, Jr. – Fred L. Smith, Jr. is President and Founder of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free market public policy group established in 1984. Mr. Smith combines intellectual and strategic analysis of complex policy issues ranging from the environment to corporate governance with an informative and entertaining presentation style. Well-known in academic and professional circles, Mr. Smith is a popular speaker at universities and conferences around the world.

*Damon W. Root – Associate Editor at Reason magazine and Reason.com, Damon Root regularly writes on legal affairs and constitutional history. A graduate of Columbia University, his writing has appeared in the New York Post, The Washington Times,New York Press, The Las Vegas Review-Journal, The Tallahassee Democrat, and other publications.

*Professor Mario Rizzo - Mario Rizzo received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. He is an associate professor of Economics at New York University. His areas of interest include Austrian Economics, Law and Economics, Microeconomics, Ethics and Economics, and the Philosophy of Science. He has authored Economics of Time and Ignorance: 1996 Intro Survey and Time, Uncertainty and Disequilibrium: Exploration of Austrian Themes. He has contributed to Real Time and Relative Indeterminacy in Economic Theory and been published in many news outlets, including Forbes Magazine and the Wall Street Journal. He is also a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, IHS and the Foundation for Economic Education.

*Christopher Maloney - Vice President of Municipal Fixed Income Management at Neuberger Berman and contributor at Mises Daily.

Professor Salerno and Peter Schiff are unconfirmed speakers as well.

It's going to be great because I'm helping organize. Open to all students. Free booze at Campo after 9 o' clock if you've attended the conference. Come drink with us until our views start making sense.

"Public Fishing Spots"

noreply@blogger.com (JD) — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 01:30:00 +0000

So I went fishing today with a few close buddies of mine.

We did our business on a State-owned pier that sat right smack in the middle of public waters that separated the landfills of Staten Island from lovely Bayridge, Brooklyn. The pier was a Veteran's Memorial and was adjacent to a botanical garden and the Belt Parkway. There was also a giant pole-like structure within a Jewish star of David that was erected in honor of September 11th, 2001. I should also mention the view. I could see the rather miniscule Statue of Liberty, an armada of oil tankers, cargo ships, yachts, sailboats and speed boats, the publically-owned Verrazano Bridge, Goldman Sachs in Jersey City, the tippy-tops of the Empire State Building, parts of the Brooklyn Bridge and all of the Battery & the Lower East Side (Wall Street). Suffice to say, the view was panoramic and breath-taking.

"Goldman Sachs is gigantic relative to Liberty. Literally."

Fishing was fun. It was. However, being it was somewhat inefficient and I noticed a couple of things:

*My friend Syed, kept catching nice flukes. He had to throw them back because they were "out-of-season", and so cops were patrolling the area with a natural tendency to ticket and fine. Why would you throw back into the water, fish, potential food that was edible, caught with merit and skill? I understood that there are issues about scarcity, and that this is the only to ensure that none of these fish are hunted into extinction, but that lead to the the next point.

*Okay, there's the animal rights argument, the fish have a right to not be overhunted and what not. That's pure crass. Fish are products, and nothing more. If we have people fishing, its implied that this is meant to be a marine holocaust for fish, and tasty meals for all of us. (I have a decisive article coming out next week on this matter where I treat the ethical framework for animal rights.)

*Why are these fish even allowed to be hunted then? The truth is, the dilemma is that its a public resource, and everyone and no one own the fish. No one has homesteaded the fish, therefore no one actually rations these goods efficiently or applies any serious economic calculation to the "resources" at hands. None of these people or the government technically own the water in the riverbed either, so no one can be excluded from consuming the resources, and no one can homestead the pier and start up a business either, because its owned by the "State". There is no way to limit the consumption of fishers. I also noted that it was not equitable, because you had four or five fisherman monopolizing the premier spots of the pier for most of the day, catching yellow-spotted bass and foot long trout and even small sharks, and everyone is limited to the lesser spots. These fisherman "homesteaded" this public property, which is ironic, because no one, except a public official can push them off it. (Although this brings up a more puzzling twist. Our taxes are funneled into a system that is the local state that provides such facilities like these piers. Don't we then by logical derivative, have some right to ownership?)

*There is no economic reasoning here: no law and supply and demand to constrain the amount of resources that are consumed and stockpiled, more importantly, there is no price mechanism. If there was price on how shallow the water was, where the rarer fish are, or where they are more abundant, you will preserve fish, because you will weed out and limit demand. Its simple, as the opportunity cost rises to catch fish, the more you will restrict demand, and increase supply. More so, because everything is publically held, there are resources being foregone, facilities aren't being maintained, and its for this fundamental reason, that you have enacted so many "out-of-season" policies. It isn't because of the greedy, animalistic impulses of fishers. It's because you don't have an owner that can effectively allocate resources efficiently. This is exactly what happens in public lakes, and other public parks, public lands, etc. You have animals going extinct because of overhunting, plants dying out, and the property is abused and neglected by campers and hitch-hikers since no one is there to take care of it.

*Why is this? Well it's because the government owns the pier, the fish and well, no one owns the water. Since none of these conditions provide the premsies for private ownership, that means noone actually owns anything. It's a free for all, and hence we have a tragedy of the commons!

The answer: Private property.

Sell off these ridiculous public facilities if you want an authentic injection of stimulus into the private economy, and put them to their most efficient use. Think of the innumerable jobs and profits that are being foregone by having so many actual idle resources be used so inefficiently? This could very easily be made into a very well run business operation. I noticed that there were no food stands or advertisements all afternoon, and it was steaming hot. I know that the opportunity cost of leaving my fishing rod is me foregoing a potential fish for later to buy an ice cold bottle of Poland Spring were not as high were a vendor on the pier selling slightly higher prices than the local bodega five blocks away. Were this pier privately owned, you know that this would be just one way to finance a business. I thought up a number of ways that profit could be made, and I'm not even an entrepreneur.

Prices are the road to prosperity.

"On the Sandman"

noreply@blogger.com (JD) — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 02:28:00 +0000

Quote of the Night:

"Everytime that Mariano Rivera collects a save for the New York Yankees, Metallica's "Enter Sandman" sales rise on Zune Market Places and Apple iTunes."

"Count Faber"

noreply@blogger.com (JD) — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 00:48:00 +0000

Marc Faber is a brilliant financial guru, a shrewd investor and a fantastic economist. He is well-spoken, and he is also immensely direct in his economic consultations. I've been a big fan of Marc Faber ever since my father introduced me to the Gloom and Doom Report a few years back. His steadfast conviction to sound economics, and the wise long-term investments he advises his readers of his daily reports and other clients, is only matched by a select few in the pro-freedom, off-Wall Street community.

I think he's part Vampire. I'm unsure as to whether newsanchors are more terrified from his eery accent or his dreadfully precise economic forecasting.

;-]

"Mises University 2009"

noreply@blogger.com (JD) — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 15:06:00 +0000

I want to thank Jeffrey Tucker and the rest of good folks at the Mises Institute for publishing my first article.

Here is an excerpt:

"What is Mises University? It's the premier, educational week-long event at the Ludwig von Mises Institute that provides a systematic introduction to Austrian economics, libertarianism, and classically liberal political theory as a complete integral unit — not to mention forty other intermediate and advanced elective courses to choose from.

I am an alumnus of Mises University, class of 2009, and because of that, I'd like to provide an eager, first-hand, consumer review of Mises University. Toward this end, I'll explain why I feel those young Austrian students who have not yet applied should do so for next year — and as soon as possible!

No one has yet written a review of Mises University written for Mises Daily. A few days into the conference, I decided that I would be the first one to do so. Indeed, I felt an obligation to write, since I knew that there had to be a way to get the word out to the many potential students who might not think to apply otherwise...

...In coming to Auburn, I had assumed that Mises University was really the same as any other conference, perhaps with a greater emphasis on education. However, I was wrong about that, as were many of my colleagues who had arrived with similar assumptions. Holding true to its name, Mises University is like a mini-university. All of the lectures are given in classrooms, libraries, or halls. You have professors walking around everywhere, graduate students working on summer fellowships projects, and all of the resources of the Mises Institute campus at your fingertips.

Students who apply to Mises University are awarded a scholarship that covers dorms, food, and the entry fee. The accommodations and hospitality are wonderful: Awardees of the scholarship stay at Auburn University's Cambridge dormitory, shared with a roommate. Complimentary breakfast is available most days. Every evening after classes, there is dinner followed by either a "Mises Circle" talk or a guest speaker who delivers a speech. (Oh, and when they cater food, it is absolutely delicious — every time.) Following that, there is a social hour on the beautiful backyard patio, where drinks are made available and the conversation carries late into the night.

The social hours are an integral part of Mises University. Unlike other colleges, the professors don't rush off campus once class is over. They want to get to know you. The faculty members are all approachable, smart, and very in-tune with the needs and curiosity of the students.

One quickly grows accustomed to the generosity of the institute, as well as the warm and friendly smiles of the ever-attentive Patricia Barnett, Kristy Holmes, and Barbara Pickard. They are the behind-the-scenes triumvirate who make the week run smoothly.

Oh, and in case you are still wondering: yes, Dr. Thornton is pretty tall...

...Mises University pushes young students to think critically and reassess the party line. Most significantly, it gives students the intellectual ammo to brave mainstream, academic waters. And, it connects them with a network of people they can count as their classmates and colleagues. I can say with certainty that my fellow Mises University graduates are going to return to the academic world and spread the ideas of liberty with a renewed dedication and focus.

Mises University was just one of the small steps that I and many others have to taken in our own careers and vocations for the cause of liberty. In the spirit of Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard — two great teachers who dedicated their lives to educating others —Mises University provides a venue where the accomplished Austrian scholars of today can interact with, teach, and pass on the torch to an incoming generation of academics, thinkers, and leaders of tomorrow's freedom movement..."

Kudos.

"Quote of the Week: 08.31.2009"

noreply@blogger.com (JD) — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 02:36:00 +0000

To Ronny ben David on Facebook, about two minutes ago:

"..economics is a lost academic discipline with a bad case of physics-envy..."

"A Bushism pops up in Obamanopoly"

noreply@blogger.com (JD) — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 00:30:00 +0000

I came across an article by a staff writer for the Washington Post. Here's an excerpt:

"The Obama administration will largely preserve Bush-era procedures allowing the government to search -- without suspicion of wrongdoing -- the contents of a traveler's laptop computer, cellphone or other electronic device, although officials said new policies would expand oversight of such inspections.

The policy, disclosed Thursday in a pair of Department of Homeland Security directives, describes more fully than did the Bush administration the procedures by which travelers' laptops, iPods, cameras and other digital devices can be searched and seized when they cross a U.S. border. And it sets time limits for completing searches.

But representatives of civil liberties and travelers groups say they see little substantive difference between the Bush-era policy, which prompted controversy, and this one.

"It's a disappointing ratification of the suspicionless search policy put in place by the Bush administration," said Catherine Crump, staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union. "It provides a lot of procedural safeguards, but it doesn't deal with the fundamental problem, which is that under the policy, government officials are free to search people's laptops and cellphones for any reason whatsoever."

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano yesterday framed the new policy as an enhancement of oversight. "Keeping Americans safe in an increasingly digital world depends on our ability to lawfully screen materials entering the United States," she said in a statement. "The new directives announced today strike the balance between respecting the civil liberties and privacy of all travelers while ensuring DHS can take the lawful actions necessary to secure our borders."

Why do we keep pretending last year's election meant a change in political climate?

"What is Libertarianism?"

noreply@blogger.com (JD) — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 13:29:00 +0000

Libertarianism is an ethical philosophy that holds to the non-aggression axiom.

When libertarianism is applied to the realm of politics, it maintains that the role of government should be strictly limited to the protection of the life, liberty and property of people (individuals and collections of individuals), although other libertarians like Murray N. Rothbard would later go on and argue that any form of government action is inherently coercive.

"AIG"

noreply@blogger.com (JD) — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 16:12:00 +0000

It's going through the roof. As of 12:13 P.M., ET, it's up almost 35% to 48.63!

Short the hell out of this bad bitch, its going down soon.

"Update, 9/25 + Commentary of the Day"

noreply@blogger.com (JD) — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 15:20:00 +0000

Bubbles.

As for today's subject of the day: the Federal Reserve and the bubbles it creates.

Original, I know.

Ben Bernanke was renominated as Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve Banking System. Economists like Professor Mankiw of Harvard and other famous and well-respected leaders in the field have applauded President Obama's decision, citing his decisive tactics at the helm of the Fed as a reason for preventing an economic armageddon. The odds of Congress not confirming him are far, and frankly, it really doesn't make a difference who's managing the Federal Reserve, the tools, the job description, the undelegated authority, it's still there; all of it is retained regardless of who's hand is priming the pump. I suspect there will be some fiercer opposition coming from a few select Senators and House members than what many speculate he will receive, especially since Congressman Ron Paul is no longer the lone wolf on Capitol Hill.

The talking points, the pro's and con's on the current Chairman are the following:

Pro's:

- "The academic and financial community view his management of the Fed & the crisis with shining approval."

I would dispute that we are even out of the recession as of yet, and that he has driven us in between a sharp dagger and a waterfall. In order for the Federal Reserve to start raising interest rates, that would involve a lot of the securities that banks have in their holdings to be pulled back out. This might send financial giants back into a tail spin. However, lowering interest rates anymore is starting to get unfeasible even for Ben Bernanke and the Board of Governors, otherwise they would have went ahead and done it. They understand and are fully aware of the looming threat of the "I"-word. Lower interest rates than they are now would further add to an inflationary bubble in a not so distant horizon. This is not just a farfetch'd position being chanted by gloom & doom prophets like Marc Faber and Peter Schiff, or the lot of Austrian School economists, but by all start economists as well like Martin Feldstein who wrote on op-ed on the matter for the Huffington Post not long ago, an established, self-titled, progressive online news outlet.

- "Bernanke's academic studies into the Great Depression, gives him the intellectual ammunition in dealing with the current-day woes and maladies of the economic crisis."

His dissertation was based on three loosely linked essays that dealt with the short-run microeconomic implications of credit cycles and their macroeconomic effects on the long-run business cycle. I read through some of it, but I understood very little of the mathematical operations that were in it. In a nutshell, the core of it basically "proved" the central thesis of Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz; that being that the Federal Reserve was indeed responsible for the Great Depression by raising interest rates precisely when they should have been lowered to allow an influx of liquidity into the economy. In plain English, the Federal Reserve's tight monetary policy brought about a massive contraction in the money supply that in turn facilitated the economic downturn by constraining the flow of money and credit, and that if only the blunt chairman at the time had lowered the money levies, all of the economic actors would have continued their projects and the whole catastrophic business cycle would have been averted. This is a decent articulation for the intellectual layman. It's also the explanation that that most misinformed right-wing "free-market" conservatives like Larry Kudlow adhere to, and the misinformed self-described political Left like Naomi Klein, Michael Moore, Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn feel is responsible for the "free-market" zealotry that continues to mislead the American public, as to who the actual inglorious bastards, the true capitalist whores that became greedier, and then screwed the working man.

(And these are the people that are called capitalists? None of these people know what capitalism is, right?)

Con's - I'd argue there are plenty more here, but alright, we're keeping it mainstream and objective from now on.
* His approach of pumping liquidity into the economy is merely storing up inflation for the future.

Absolutely true, and although he has repeatedly stated that he isn't worried about inflation is because he follows the standard economic definition of inflation that every undergraduate student learns in his economics 101 class:

"Inflation is a rise in the general level of prices of goods and services in an economy over a period of time."

However, this definition does not provide an actual explanation as to what inflation is, it merely provides a description for some unknown phenomena, a syndrome of some sort. It's like describing a cancer patient with cancerous tumor as a mass of replicating cells. I'll quote chief economist of Mann Financial and adjunct faculty member, Frank Shostak here:

"...similarly, the essence of inflation is not a general rise in prices but an increase in the supply of money, which in turns sets in motion a general increase in the prices of goods and services..."

The implications that arise from defining inflation as the mainstream does leads to a resulting mischaracterization of what inflation actually is, and as consequence, anything that leads to a rise in prices is immediately categorized as inflationary. For example, a rise in foreign oil prices or underperfoming potential GDP. Further, it removes the central banking authority as having any direct causal relationship to inflation, when the reality is that all central banks are inflationary machines, by default.

* He has not been been transparent with 2.2. trillion of TARP funds or been held accountable for his monetization of private institutions to the US public or Congress about trillions of other dollars of Fed loans to other central banks in the form of "credit swaps". This is mainly the premise by which a bipartisan coalition to sponsor Federal Reserve transparency has cultivated itself in Congress. Sound legislation has brought ideological counterparts like Congressmen Dennis Kucinich, Ron Paul, Alan Grayson, Scott Garrett, Walter Jones in the House and by Bernie Sanders and Jim DeMint in the Senate, to work together, despite with various different intentions and coming from a variety of philosophical and economic angles. They have been met with such success that the majority of the House is now sponsoring the bill, and more than a handful of the Senate as well. Other liberty-minded organizations like C4L and Audit the Fed have been campaigning heavily in support for such bills, in spite of recent mainstream objections.

* "His role in loose monetary policies and the failure to regulate the sub-prime sector helped cause the crisis."

I'm not at liberty to position this site into a conspiratorial direction. Personally, Bernanke really didn't have anything to do with the immediate crisis at hand. I would attribute the Greater Depression of 2008-20?? to his predecessor, as do many prominent Austrian economists. Why are his present loose money policies not being questioned? Relative to Alan Greenspan, Bernanke really has lived up to his nick name, "Helicopter Ben". There's already talk in the off Wall Street, Austrian circles that a new speculative bubble is forming, the result of grossly misallocated resources. This time, its very possible the bubble is appearing in U.S. Treasury notes and the stock markets (explaining the artifical growth the DJIA has experience the last few months). There's evidence that although the artificial injection of government spending is currently in the mix and may temporarily prop up government indicators (see latest BLS statistics for instance for which the stimilus is attributed), even the all-star economists are aware of an uncertain future.

Not only that, but there is also evidence to believe that another unexpected asset class is beginning to inflate: gold. As odd as that may sound, because it certainly was a shock the first time I heard it from Dr. Murphy about a month ago, it makes a lot of logical sense. People, investors, any concerned person is reasonably conscious of the Fed's inflationary policies, despite the fact that the dollar hasn't hit rock bottom as of yet, they know the possibility of higher inflation or a Zimbabwe exists. They know that the U.S. dollar is no longer a reliable unit of savings, so what's the most reliable asset in which people can put, hard money. Silver. Gold.

A simple visualization of the Fed's role in the economy.

Its hard to be sure, but I'm starting to see the accuracy of the causal-realist approach, especially when it comes to applying it in the form of goods-based economic indicators that draw from theoretical axioms. Dr. Mark Thorton, a senior fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute wrote a paper on how the skyscraper index, as developed by economist Andrew Lawrence who demonstrated an empirical correlation between record breaking skyscrapers, and the economic recession that always follows it. In this paper, Dr. Thornton shows how ,"...a theoretical foundation of “Cantillon effects” for the skyscraper index is provided here showing how the basic components of skyscraper construction such as technology are related to key theoretical concepts in economics such as the structure of production. The findings, empirical and theoretical, suggest that the business cycle theory of the Austrian School of economics has much to contribute to our understanding of business cycles, particularly severe ones...", like the Great Depression and our current economic depression. The key economic significance of such an index is that an a priori methodological approach to economics can supply theory that provides tenets for empirical work attained through observable historical evidence. (Some readers may be unfamiliar with Richard Cantillon, and so I've linked a great introductory article to his name.)

Ben Bernanke actually wasn't the only Federal Reserve officials with announcements. Yesterday, the New York Federal Reserve named Denis M. Hughes and Lee C. Bollinger as the new Chairman and Deputy Chairman, respectively, were named to the Board of Directors. Denis M. Hughes is not actually a big name in the financial world or on Wall Street, he's actually the former President of the NY AFL-CIO, the largest labor union in the State of New York. Lee C. Bollinger, is also not a person that is frequently heard in Wall Street, which is what caught my eye even more when I heard about this appointment. In fact, Lee Bollinger is extremely common almost 100 blocks uptown relative to Wall Street, in Morningside Heights, on my very own university campus. Lee C. Bollinger is the President of Columbia University, and he sits as the head of University's Senate and as a member of the Board of Trustees. Mr. Hughes is a former labor activist that received some headlines when he managed to acquire millions for the reconstruction of New York City after 9/11, and the latter is a Constitutional attorney who's made his fame arguing affirmative action cases before the U.S. Supreme Court.

I'm not sure what to say about this. I'm honestly vexed, besides the obvious question: Why are you appointing a union leader and a career attorney at the helm of the largest quasi-bank in the world? I suppose the answer is, it doesn't actually matter who's running these colossal apparatuses. I do think however that the media silence with regards to this appointments, and the sketchy figures, says something about the moral fiber of the managers running the show...

Stay free America, more than just the world is watching.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It's been three weeks since this blog was reinvigorated, and now it has music. I'm cutting back on the embedded videos because they deter from substance, but I'm starting to turn up the level of hyperlinks in the next few weeks because they will broaden horizons and really do put formal citations into the intellectual ashtray of antiquity. I'm attempting to limit the bombardment of short posts to three or four a week, and instead refocusing on putting out longer comments of meaty content. I've coined the latter, "blarticle": a portmanteau of two very obvious words; "blog" and "article", with the hopes of it becoming a neologism one day. Aside from today's comment, I'm also going to be honing in on events, people and ideas that I come into more direct contact in everyday life.

Comments, suggestions, hate-mail, I'll take it from you now.

Here's also my official mission statement for this site: "...To provide mindful objective analysis on similar free thinkers, and join their dissent in review countless items affecting the natural liberty of people...and offer free Criticism on nearly everything...and in addition serve as a humble bastion of relentless volleys against the evil & stupidity of the State, throughout the day and the years to come,..."

That took almost a good 60 seconds to draft, revise and publish. Thanks.

"The Most Interesting Man in the World has a position on the Two-Party System..."

noreply@blogger.com (JD) — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 16:20:00 +0000

I enjoy a decent commercial more than a "great" movie.

Where else can you find attractive women, sharp wit, music and advertise a product, all rolled into less than a minute? Nowhere.

Here a few of the very best I've encountered of late. Note: I don't have a functioning television in my house.:

;-]

"Students Rights Week?"

noreply@blogger.com (JD) — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 18:20:00 +0000

The majority of liberty-minded folk in the world usually conclude that women don't have special rights for being females, neither does your inclination to sexual preference or physical handicap grant you a right to a wheelchair or a right to some other form of entitlement. A strict "ethics of liberty" of the Rothbardian-Lockean strain would argue that you an inalienable natural right as individual to life, liberty and property.

So, does being a student give you a right to say whatever you want on campus?

Certain libertarian-minded student groups are recently teaming up with FIRE, (The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education), to bring Students Rights week to a college campus near you.

They advocate free campuses, and freedom of speech, individual liberty on campus, and yes, students rights. Students Rights week has a mixed guise of a libertarian rhetoric and U.S. Constitutionalesque feel to that many liberty-minded folk can immediately seem as warm and amenable, especially since it is being so heavily promoted in a week-long, nation-wide event by the same liberty-minded organization. I can attest that many of my fellow group members felt the same way about the event at first few glances. The week-long campaign includes delivering copies of the movie "Indoctrinate U" to libertarian groups everywhere, pocket U.S. Constitutions, free books and pamphlets courtesy of FIRE, manuals on how to engage Students Rights on their campuses! They even offer a list of expert speakers, sign-up sheets and marketing materials.

A few side notes about that movie before I advance: It's poorly made, loses focus often and has actually very little to do with actually liberty. Its inconsistent from top to bottom. It spends time focusing on affirmative action, and uses Ward Connerly being bashed at a campus as an example of anti-free speech. It seems to be beside the point that Ward isn't even a student. Then it actually shows liberal students at Columbia University voicing their opinions on campus against the affirmative action bake sale, and pushing for a progressive, multicultural change in front of the alma mater statue. It seems like freedom of speech was pretty open there, and no one denied the affirmative action people their protest. Affirmative action isn't even a real issue, its a misallocated issue that is the result of too public goods in society and government meddling!

It's a silly documentary that entirely misdirects the freedom movement with diluted perspectives on what freedom and liberty actually means. So geting onto the most important question at hand:

Why are organizations like Students for Liberty that I am personally associated with, working with FIRE?

I've looked into FIRE, they aren't a libertarian organization whatsoever. I think they're using SFL as jumping bench to gain publicity if you want to be absolutely frank about it. I think their tactics are atrocious in doing so. They actually pursue court cases that will mandate freedom on campus from the demigods of a judicial bench? How does that qualify as freedom-like to private institutions?

Quote from the site:

"FIRE effectively and decisively defends American liberties on behalf of thousands of students and faculty on our nation's campuses. In case after case, FIRE brings about favorable resolutions for these individuals who continue to be challenged by those willing to deny fundamental rights and liberties within our institutions of higher education. In addition to individual case work, FIRE works nationally to inform the public about the fate of liberty on our campuses."

What does any of that even mean? Do students have a right to smoke pot on campus, because I consider that a fundamental right? American liberties on our nation's campuses? Perhaps they are mainly referring to public universities where the U.S. Constitution can be applied, but let us not get sucked away into the semantics and the adjectives and the ooohs and aahs of "defending American liberties".

Where in the Constitution is their even a provision that permits the federal government to provide block grants to public schools? The real question that should be postulated is the one that follows: Does government even supposed to have the moral legitimacy to tax, free American people, and set up a public college system with that money? The correct libertarian position would appear to me that public schools shouldn't even exist, much in the sameway libertarians find the post office, Medicaid and Amtrak inefficient and the result of misallocated tax dollars. and if so, funded and operated at the local school level. So why are we even defending the right to free speech on institutions that ethically speaking, libertarians and liberty-minded folk should be against? It seems to me like there are plenty more pressing issues at hand that libertarians should be more actively engaged in opposing then standing in a week-long coalition defending "students rights" to freedom of speech and individual liberties on publically subsidized campuses.

The overwhelming majority of private and public campuses actually permit their students to have freedom to voice their opinions, and even if they didn't, I don't see how that qualifies it as an issue? Private colleges are run by shareholders and a board of directors. They have a right to enact the standards they see fit because its private. There are plenty of Christian campuses and Jesuit run organizations that promote a socially conservative life style by not allowing secular bands and groups to exist on campus, not allowing certain articles to run in college newspapers and banning alcohol.

This is exactly one of the marginial benefits of why having a free market system means having the freedom to choose: because we can actually pick and choose what sort of environment we want to be in, whether its tolerant and diverse of thought like at Columbia University, where the Office of Multicultural Affairs runs a variety of multicultural programs each semester, or more moderate, conservative campuses that restrict the consumption of alcohol like Liberty University or others that separate male and females in residence halls like at Fordham University. This is certainly a far more desirable alternative then the one size fits all of public colleges that spend more time arguing for these "positive" rights in the Supreme Court than actually educating. These are examples of what Students for Liberty as an organization should be playing up and highlighting, the virtues and empirical evidence that freedom and markets work, and governments don't. By allying themselves with FIRE, they hurt potential friends by alienating campuses that are not so friendly to diversity of though, but are indeed libertarian-minded, like Grove City College, which was founded extolling the principles and ideals of a free American society, and openly states on its mission statement an anti-FIRE policy, "...while many points of view are examined, the College unapologetically advocates preservation of America's religious, political, and economic heritage of individual freedom and responsibility...", they certainly have a free-minded heritage in liberty that would be of most benefit to SFL.

Furthermore, I don't see what's the net gain in SFL being allied with an organization that's effectively promoting what could be construed as an activist Leftist agenda. The problem that many libertarians mistake coming so quickly to support other pro-freedom movements, arises from confusions in the word "freedom". The word "freedom", often takes a variety of positions in everday life, like the "freedom-to-hang out" that an adolescent living under household rules earns after completing their chores. FIRE definitely has the "freedom"-like ring to it that so many civil libertarians adore, but that doesn't actually extend to society, much in the same fashion that the government can't extend the 1st Amendment into your house.

All of our natural rights, are indeed derived from property rights. You don't have a "right to freedom of speech", you have a write to start a newspaper publication and write as many op-eds as you want. You have a right to rent out an auditorium, and bash the New York Mets for being a lousy baseball team. Property rights are the crux of liberalism, and the axiom from which all other rights are derived. Ludwig von Mises treatise on liberalism starts with private property as the basis for a classic liberal society. A civilization based on peace and freedom between individuals coexisting in a market economy where the social system of the division of labor is under private ownership of the means of production. Here's an excerpt from "Liberalism":

"The program of liberalism, therefore, if condensed into a single word, would have to read: property, that is, private ownership of the means of production... All the other demands of liberalism result from his fundamental demand."

If we were to support everything that was free, then that would probably have us "libertarians" supporting proposals like "free healthcare" and "freedom from racial discrimination"? I'd argue that most modern-day, lower case "liberals" actually do have a distorted perversion of what freedom actually means. The following is the essay that shattered any preconceptions I had about libertarianism and flushed out most of the misconcepts I had remaining from my Marxist, pro-government days, which I have called, "the Early Days". Here, I quote Congressman Ron Paul, in the finest essay I have ever read:

"George Orwell wrote about “meaningless words” that are endlessly repeated in the political arena. Words like “freedom,” “democracy,” and “justice,” Orwell explained, have been abused so long that their original meanings have been eviscerated. In Orwell’s view, political words were “Often used in a consciously dishonest way.” Without precise meanings behind words, politicians and elites can obscure reality and condition people to reflexively associate certain words with positive or negative perceptions. In other words, unpleasant facts can be hidden behind purposely meaningless language. As a result, Americans have been conditioned to accept the word “democracy” as a synonym for freedom, and thus to believe that democracy is unquestionably good. The problem is that democracy is not freedom. Democracy is simply majoritarianism, which is inherently incompatible with real freedom. Our founding fathers clearly understood this, as evidenced not only by our republican constitutional system, but also by their writings in the Federalist Papers and elsewhere. James Madison cautioned that under a democratic government, “There is nothing to check the inducement to sacrifice the weaker party or the obnoxious individual.” John Adams argued that democracies merely grant revocable rights to citizens depending on the whims of the masses, while a republic exists to secure and protect pre-existing rights. Yet how many Americans know that the word “democracy” is found neither in the Constitution nor the Declaration of Independence, our very founding documents?... Few Americans understand that all government action is inherently coercive. If
nothing else, government action requires taxes. If taxes were freely paid, they wouldn’t be called taxes, they’d be called donations. If we intend to use the word freedom in an honest way, we should have the simple integrity to give it real meaning: Freedom is living without government coercion. So when a politician talks about freedom for this group or that, ask yourself whether he is advocating more government action or less.

The political left equates freedom with liberation from material wants, always via a large and benevolent government that exists to create equality on earth. To modern liberals, men are free only when the laws of economics and scarcity are suspended, the landlord is rebuffed, the doctor presents no bill, and groceries are given away. But philosopher Ayn Rand (and many others before her) demolished this argument by explaining how such “freedom” for some is possible only when government takes freedoms away from others. In other words, government claims on the lives and property of those who are expected to provide housing, medical care, food, etc. for others are coercive – and thus incompatible with freedom. “Liberalism,” which once stood for civil, political, and economic liberties, has become a synonym for omnipotent coercive government.

The political right equates freedom with national greatness brought about through military strength. Like the left, modern conservatives favor an all-powerful central state – but for militarism, corporatism, and faith-based welfarism. Unlike the Taft-Goldwater conservatives of yesteryear, today’s Republicans are eager to expand government spending, increase the federal police apparatus, and intervene militarily around the world. The last tenuous links between conservatives and support for smaller government have been severed. “Conservatism,” which once meant respect for tradition and distrust of active government, has transformed into big-government utopian grandiosity.

Orwell certainly was right about the use of meaningless words in politics. If we hope to remain free, we must cut through the fog and attach concrete meanings to the words politicians use to deceive us.
We must reassert that America is a republic, not a democracy, and remind ourselves that the Constitution places limits on government that no majority can overrule. We must resist any use of the word “freedom” to describe state action. We must reject the current meaningless designations of “liberals” and “conservatives,” in favor of an accurate term for both: statists.

Every politician on earth claims to support freedom. The problem is so few of them understand the simple meaning of the word."

Why don't we just support free everything then? I believe, that having FIRE in a free-market society, would act as a consumer protection group, or an advisory board that would make policy reccommendations for campuses across America, much in the same way we have hundreds of magazines, institutes & consumer product committees that try out and test vehicles and consumer goods and issue reviews and commentaries on them. While I support a free environment on campuses personally, I don't see that as a role for a libertarian/freedom movement oriented group to be in league with.

I'm sorry, but I know that organizations such as SFL are still starting out, but I don't feel that they have to resort to being the jumping pad for the propoganda of Student Rights organization. Students for Liberty is an excellant organization, that is well-run, and is increasing in numbers, but I feel that by highlighting certain rights, we dilute the core message of liberty, and misdirects the intentions that an an organization of this nature is supposed to be for. I think I'm bringing up more than reasonable objections to libertarian organizations that have noble intentions and excellant prospect in exerting greater influence across campuses.

Call it intransigence, I call it being principled.

Stay free, America. More than just the world is watching.

Disclaimer: This commentary does not necessarily represent the position taken by any of members of the Executive Board or the Board of Directors of SFL.

"Dilapidated Idiots"

noreply@blogger.com (JD) — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 16:16:00 +0000

To Masood - "Anyone that uses the word 'dilapidated', a boat analogy and calls their head of state a diluted minister, deserves a bottle of wine, or at the very least, a worthy blog post."

"Ron Paul Stays On Message"

noreply@blogger.com (JD) — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 18:18:00 +0000

Ron Paul Stays On Message: "On the 'Cash for Clunkers' program that gives government aid for people trading in old gas guzzlers, which will then be destroyed: a bad idea because it destroys a vital market for the poor.

'A new driver or new worker needs a cheap car,' Paul said.

On the release of two American journalists by North Korea to former President Bill Clinton: a 'wonderful' confirmation of Paul's contention that the U.S. should talk to and trade with North Korea.

'Despite this ranting about 'don't talk to them, invade them, bomb them'... it is just great to show you can talk to people no matter how bad they look,' Paul said in a recent interview."

"An Honest Smile"

noreply@blogger.com (JD) — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 14:15:00 +0000

He's the only Congressman that can smile like that because he knows his conscience is clean of any foul deeds.

=]

"On Vaughn"

noreply@blogger.com (JD) — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 15:05:00 +0000

As my last post made clear, I've always been an admirer of Vince Vaughn. I think he has the most realistic delivery of lines than anyone I've ever seen. Now I found another reason to like him.

Not only that but read the following review he gave of Ron Paul's upcoming book on Amazon:

"Everyone must read this book -- Congressmen and college students, Democrats and Republicans -- all Americans. The Federal Reserve, which serves private banks, has compromised our economy and is undermining our freedom. It can and must be stopped now. Ron Paul shows us how and why we must end the Fed. Read this book!"

- Vince Vaughn

"On Movies"

noreply@blogger.com (JD) — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 15:52:00 +0000

"...I'd rather read through the worst novel ever written than sit through the best movie ever made..."

The Cigarette-Smoking Man to Bill Mulder, "Musings of the Cigarette-Smoking Man'

Movies don't satisfy me for the most part. I find more release from looking at my father's golden retriever perform auto-analingus from across the room, or watching the NYM infielders drop game-ending pop ups.

A lot of people, particularly Syed Hossain, find my opinions of movies annoying. They also find my "in-movie commentary" as much a pestilence as I am forced to swallow down there unbridled silence. If you are with someone, and you are bearing witness to scenes that are absolutely ridiculous, or hysterically stupid, you have an obligation to make remarks during the film, while it is actually playing; not just retain these mental notes for use later. I find arching my head back for 3 hours to eat inflated prices of cancerous-inducent food that tastes like crap with a bunch of strangers in uncomfortable seats isn't the best usage of my time. Especially when you're with friends! Why would you go spend time with friends at a movie theater? Yes, you are physically sitting next to them, but your mind is fused into a screen. I actually think going out to the movies on legitimate "dates" is a catastrophic idea, I've never done it. Why would you want to spend the few hours you have with the woman you're trying to court, NOT paying attention to her?

Generally speaking, I find watching movies in cinemas to be unpleasurable and I'm not a big fan of doing it. Aside from trashing Keynesians and the State, my other muses in life consist of New York Yankees, jazz, family time and unprotected sex with multiple partners.

For the most part, it's my amateur opinion to say that the majority of films I've watched in my life were complete, disastrous flops and were probably produced as a result of a bunch of misallocated resources. There is a system I devised that I use to rate how much I like or dislike films. I've adopted a neoclassical approaching in translating my internal, subjective ordinal rankings of satisfaction that I receive from watching bad movies descending from 100 (highest) to 0 (least) into a numerical scale of cardinal values, using a utility function.

Only an Austrian will catch that last joke.

"Magnificent" = 99-100

"Decent" = 40-98.99999999

"Shit, terrible, fucktastic" or someother expletive in Spanish = -10,000,000 - 39.9

Here's a list of the worst of the worst that I could think of, there's so many more:

Sicko
The Preacher's Wife
Titanic
Wall-E
Saving Private Ryan
Deep Impact
Bowling for Columbine
Angels and Demons
War of the Worlds
Godfather, Pt. II
Schindler's List
Amadeus
Iron Man
Hitch
Conspiracy Theory
Borat
The Departed
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
World Trade Center
Transformers I & II
Mulan
Aladdin
The Lion King
Billboard Dad

I also put the following films in my bag of all-time best, in no particular order:

Wedding Crashers
Star Wars
Antz
Up
Bobby
American Gangster
Charlie Wilson's War
Gangs of New York
The Darjeeling Limited
Mission to Mars/Red Planet
A Clockwork Orange
The Lord of the Rings
Annie Hall
Recount
The Matrix
Wall Street
Old School
Flubber
Thank You For Smoking
There Will Be Blood
Godfather, Pt. III
The Bank Job
The Dark Knight
Enemy of the State/Minority Report
X-Files: Fight the Future
Evolution
Glengarry Glen Ross

And if you want an example of action packed, unrealistic, science fiction movie done right, watch The Dark Knight.

"...Picking away at "In Defense of Libertarianism"..."

noreply@blogger.com (JD) — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 21:59:00 +0000

Sometime last year, the Columbia Daily Spectator had a blarticle titled "In Defense of Libertarianism", written to no surprise by someone who clearly does not understand libertarianism. He makes a fairly unbiased, but albeit, misinformed analysis of the pros and cons of the libertarian doctrine. I speculate that the impetus for writing it was a mixture of the CUL blog and the growing freedom movement, especially since it has been more vocal in the past couple months.

I was upset by this blog post. Not that I dislike libertarianism from appearing, in an blog post, media is always good. Despite a few flaws here and there, I can actually swallow this.However, the writer makes one comment towards the end, which showed me he had studied libertarianism more than I perceived:

"Well, not really. That's a facile, straw-man understanding. Libertarians aren't anarchists (at least, not the smart ones)-they understand that some government is necessary just to make people get along. How much government? A police force seems necessary. A defense force probably, as well. Other institutions? Perhaps. But does the government know what crops should be grown, and when and where and how much, let alone what farmers should do the growing? Libertarianism predicts what experience shows: over-regulation is a recipe for naught but pork-barrel cronyism."

It's a pretty loaded statement he makes (which I highlighted in bold) because if he's read most serious libertarian papers, he would have realized that the "smartest" libertarians are indeed anarchists. That's because most libertarians follow the non-aggression axiom, and the logical deductions that are derived from that principle is that you can't support a coercive monopoly of law and public security.

"Un-American Dissent; Where did it go?"

noreply@blogger.com (JD) — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 18:42:00 +0000

Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer wrote an op-ed in USA Today titled "Un-American Dissent". Here's an excerpt if you don't want to read all of it:

These disruptions are occurring because opponents are afraid not just of differing views — but of the facts themselves. Drowning out opposing views is simply un-American. Drowning out the facts is how we failed at this task for decades.

Since when is it an "un-American" to attack pending public policy?

The words "American" and "dissent", should be synonymous and interchangeable. To be "American" is to "dissent" from the majority. It means having a natural inclination in being a stern skeptic of every memo and report that the Federal government proposes, and of every single policy the politician claims will benefit his or her constituents; every use of judicial, legislative and executive excercise is met with It means retaining a substantial degree of individual liberty, and adhering to moral virtue of responsibility to oneself, family and community. America was conceived in liberty, in dissent to lack of political representation, endless taxation, expropriatoin of land and home. The tyrannicalisms of British Crown and the inflation of the Royal Bank of England, were all foreign mishaps on the free peoples of the thirteen colonies.

America was the first legitimate experiment because for the first time, it was founded on the crux of a new principle: liberty. Liberty is the natural state of man to be free, dissenting from toxic ideas, and moving towards healthier ones. War, inflation, slavery, taxation, business cycles and regulation, are all products of the State, not of free people, free minds and free markets. Patriotism should be defined not as heraldry to the American government, but as a perpetual opposition to any variety of Statist expansion into the lives of free peoples. Government has not changed, but the people have. Where is the anti-war movement now? Where did it go? Did it pass underneath the phalanxes of "hope" and "change"? What is change? The voices of the fallen have been drowned out by the sheepish blabber of "hope" and "change".

It was not un-American to attack the prior executive administration and Congress, and it isn't un-American to attack this one. In fact, it would be un-American to abstain from doing so. When Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer write that to dissent is "un-American", send them and the rest of the crony parasites leeching off the American people and on the payroll of the elitist corporofascist scumbags, to St. Petersburg, or San Francisco.

Stay free America, more than just the world is watching.

"Godless Colombian Druglord"

noreply@blogger.com (JD) — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 16:24:00 +0000

Much to my stereotypical Colombian heritage, I make a cameo as a cocaine dealer in my friend's upcoming independant film. Take a sneak peek at the promotional trailer.

Update** --> This promo edits all of the meaty content of my minute-long discourse in the film.

Disclaimer: (As a short political sidenote, the DEA sucks, we should legalize everything, including whatever substance Chuck Finley mixes up one day.)

"Early call: Teixeira for MVP"

noreply@blogger.com (JD) — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 16:30:00 +0000

I knew after Sunday night's game this article and this article would surface on the internet.

Some of the comments suggested that Tex was insufficiently capable of edging out the award from Morneau. However all these articles failed in their assessment of Mark Teixeira for completely diregarding the fact that he is a superior first baseman to Morneau, and not only to him, but to every other first baseman in the American League. Mark has had a career year at first base, and he is almost surely a lock for the highly respected Golden Glove Award for his position. His fielding percentage is .999, he's been involved in 85 double plays and he's committed one error all year. How many runs, or potential runs for that matter, has Mark prevented? Not only that, Morneau current AL-leading run production, hasn't translated into a first-place team, despite having another potential MVP candidate in the batting lineup every single night. Last time I checked, the team with the best record in baseball usually went on to playoffs. Thank god for some sanity in the local New York press.

We'll revisit this critical issue after the post-season ends with a further analysis of who's my pick for American League MVP. As for the other league, who cares, right? (Pujols is hitting 83 homeruns, driving in 200 runs and batting over .400 for the first time since Ted Williams did in the late 1940's.)