The State in the Third Millenium

This book is a treatise on government by Prince Hans-Adam II, the Reigning Prince of Liechtenstein.  That alone makes it interesting.

Prince Hans-Adam’s family has been a monarchy for centuries.  From a small age, dinner conversation has been political theory and history.  He’s been a businessman, monarch, student, and even worked as an intern in a US Senator’s office! He is overall a student of different forms of government, and offers here what he thinks the state needs to become in order for mankind to live peacefully in the third millenium.

Two mantras appear over and over: that the business of the state is “maintaining the rule of law, and foreign policy”; and that the state must become “a well-managed and solid service company run for the benefit of the people”.  He says “the state has to become a service company facing peaceful competition, and not a monopoly giving the ‘customer’ only the alternatives of bad service at the highest price or emigrating.”  He recommends that the central government be as small as possible, and that as many functions as possible be pushed to local communities.  And anything that can be done by the private sector (like the post office) should be divested (FedEx rather than USPS).

It is in this spirit that the 2003 revision of Liechtenstein’s constitution granted every community in the country the right of secession.  If the government gets too intrusive or violent, each village can vote to leave the country.  The ultimate check on Power.

The Price has one really intruiging line of thought that I’ve not seen elsewhere.  He discusses monarchy, oligarchy, and democracy as forms of government, and recommends a combination of all three as the most stable form.  At the end of the book he presents a template constitution for such a third-millenium state.  And he backs up his recommendations with history, philosophy, sociology, and more.  He really is a kind of old-world scholar.

While America’s rulers are trying to figure out how to spy on its citizens even more, in order to tighten the noose, or how to extract more wealth from the citizens, The Prince really appears to be concerned about building a humane and stable society, even if it costs him money and power.  What a nice change!

Note that Prince Hans-Adam says you can skip chapters 2-9 and go straight to chapter 10 if you are not interested in a history lesson.  I would still recommend chapter 9, but for the most part you won’t miss much if you skip chapters 2-8, except for a demonstration of the Prince’s command of the history of government throughout time.  However, if you like history, it’s a great exposition.

This book is even-handed and very learned in tone. The Prince calls no one a Nazi or a facist, and he doesn’t scream or foam at the mouth.

That’s why I’m pretty sure I’m the only person in America to read it.

Whatever Happened to Penny Candy?

Wow.  Wow wow wow.

This book is a work of genius: the author explains the business cycle, and the origin of inflation, so simply and logically.  So many people have explained this, or tried to, but I’ve never seen anything this brilliantly clear.

The book is written as a series of letters from an economist to his nephew/niece Chris.  Each letter is short, sweet, and incredibly easy to understand.  He explains inflation, the boom/bust cycle, the wage/price spiral, and many other things that you hear on the news. Even a middle-school student would have no problem understanding the concepts in this book.

And the book is chock-full of extra charts, statistics, explanations, references, etc., so that if you want to continue on learning it’s easy.

After you read this book, you’ll realize that what you hear on CNN is complete and utter nonsense (you probably suspected that already) and that the newscasters really don’t have the foggiest idea of what they are talking about.

The author has written a series of books; I might have to buy them all.

In Order To Live

Yeonmi Park is an extraordinary person telling an extraordinary story.  She was born and raised in North Korea and eventually escaped to the West.  You may have seen her video on You Tube.  If you need a good cry, watch it.

Read her story. And then tell me about the “problems” you have in the US.

Price Gouging

I think I’ve heard so many podcasts about price gouging in the wake of Hurricane Harvey, that I’m sick of the topic.  But I want to tie some of the ideas together.

After a disaster, the demand for goods outpaces supply.  Prices tend to rise. People think it would be better for the goverment to impose price controls, rather than “taking advantage” of the disaster victims.

But economists beg to differ.  Let me compare the effects of the pricing mechanism vs government intervention.

Problem	Rising Prices	Goverment
Allocation – who gets how much of what	As prices rise, the people who really need it will be prepared to pay more. Those who don’t really need it, will wait until the price comes back down.	A committee will decide who gets what (I suppose they will interview each person individually, and come up with a 0-to-17 point scale of “neediness” that will say who needs what). If people take resources they are not entitled to, send men with guns to lock them in a cage.
Rationing – how much do you get	As prices rise, indicating scarceness, people will buy less. “Maybe I can get by with two bottles of water instead of four.” Folks who really really need it will shell out the bucks.	Using the above neediness questionairre, goverment officials will decide how much each family may have. If you try to take more than they decided for you, men with guns will lock you up in a cage. If a shopkeeper tries to delight his customers by selling them what they want, men with guns will take his money and lock him up in a cage.
Conservation	People near and far will tend to use a lot less, because it costs more. That means more on the shelf for the people who really need it.	Rationing will be enforced in the disaster zone and surrounding areas. If you take more than the goverment has deemed necessary, men with guns will lock you up in a cage.
Supply	“Hmm, I have a lot of water in my store. I could load it up in my truck, drive through flooded and possibly dangerous roads, and take it to the disaster area. It’s gotta be worth my while, though. Hey, look the price is high enough to compensate the risk. Load up the trucks!”	Goverment will designate who has to load up their supplies and take them to the disaster area. If you refuse, men with guns will take your stuff and then lock you up in a cage.
Production	Factory owners will see that the price is high, and realize they can make a few bucks by running some extra shifts to make some money.	Goverment will send quotas to factories to tell them how much extra is needed. If the factories don’t produce the required amount – you got it – men with guns will lock them up in cages.

So the market mechanism includes all voluntary actions, while the goverment solution creates criminals out of non-violent citizens and dramatically increases the amount of violence across the region.

Shopkeepers in the disaster area could, and do, donate their “windfall” profits to local reconstruction. Imagine the goodwill a store would get if the owner put up a sign saying “Windfall profits are being donated to rebuild the house of the senior citizens around the corner.”  People would come and beg him to raise prices.

In fact, many companies do not raise prices, even though it has all the above good effects, simply because they want to generate good will among their customers.  Good will is worth it’s weight in gold!  And it lasts a lot longer than windfall profits.

Every single time governments put on price controls, it results in shortages (because all the beneficial mechanisms listed above are thwarted).  So if you support price controls, you are supporting shortages of critical goods.

If you support shortages, then you support hurting and maybe killing people, including children.

So if you support price controls…you are probaby a Nazi!  🙂

The Law

Written in 1850, this incredible book discusses the proper role of the law, and how it has been perverted.  In fact, the first line is “The law perverted!”

Bastiat was a French economist in the 19th century, but the book speaks clearly to modern times.  He starts from the basic natural rights (basically life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but Bastiat is a little more concrete), and determines that the proper role of law is to protect our life, our liberty, our property from those who would take it from us.  Duh, you might say.

Then he goes on to show how politics and goverments pervert the law to favor one set of people over another, how the law becomes the mechanism for taking the life, liberty and property of innocent people.

He makes a great point that if the law had stuck to its basic responsibility, it would not be a source of much excitement. There are no big arguments about whether theft should be legalized, or murder.  Everyone “knows” these things are wrong (heck, even the Ten Commandments, from millenia ago, have the same rules).  So if that’s all the law does, what is there to fight over?  But once the law starts favoring one group over another, it sets the people against each other, everyone either trying to take someone else’s stuff or trying to keep their own stuff from being taken. Almost all social strife can be traced back to this.

This book, a mere 53 pages, was an exhilarating read for me. I’ve heard of Bastiat before, and I knew of his wit and intelligence, but this book is so logically argued and beautifully written (ok, except for the part about the old books).  I wholeheartedly recommend this book to anyone.  It is a Red Pill for the modern age.

Anatomy of the State

Rothbard’s classic about the state is mandatory reading for anyone who muses over political philosophy.  Here, Rothbard reviews the history of the state, and what the state is and isn’t.

Human beings need stuff to survive (food, clothing, shelter) and to enjoy life (phones, laptops, Air Jordans, etc.).  There are two ways to get stuff: through the economic means (meaning, produce it yourself, or trade what you produce with someone else who makes what you want), and the policitical means (meaning, take what you want from someone else forcefully).

The state is “the organization of the political means.”  The state is the only entity in society that takes what it wants coercively from others, and unilaterally determines it’s own income.

This book is a kind of “red pill”.  Rothbard, in his clear, simple, and logically forceful ways, demonstrates that the emperor indeed has no clothes.

If you think at all about the nature of government, how much obedience we owe, what kind of government is best, where did governments come from, etc., you owe it to yourself to read this 55-page book (pamplet, really).  The way you think about the public sphere will never be the same.

One Second After

This gripping novel follows the fate of a small, rural town in North Carolina after an EMP (electromagnetic pulse) attack on the US.  After the EMP hits, there is no electricity, no cars, no phones, no radios, no trains, no planes.  Thrown back 150 years into the past, the community struggles to survive over the next year.

The book is a page-turner, and some really horrible things happen to people.  And some people become really horrible things.  But it really makes you think about how our intricate web, woven by the free market, keeps everyone alive, and how without it most of us would be dead pretty quickly.

It also made me think of a joke I heard recently.  Suppose you are stranded on a island with an American.  You ask him what his profession is, and he replies “graphic designer.”  That’s the moment you know you are going to die.

Our Society is Sick

It seems to me that our (US) society is developing a severe form of mental illness. It seems to be no longer possible to have a rational discussion with most people; as soon as they find out that you disagree with any single one of their policial opinions, they start foaming at the mouth and screaming at you.

For example, try saying to a conservative friend, “Gee, I don’t think we should start a war with Russia.” Response: “What??? You must be a Putin-lover! You must support killing children! You must be a Nazi!”

Or, say to your left-wing friends, “Gee, I really don’t think the Paris Accord is the best framework.” Response: “What??? You are not a believer in climate change! You support killing children! You must be a Nazi!”

So much for rational, adult debate and exchange of ideas. Now is the age of Cultural Marxism, which basically says: you belong to a team of (completely) like-minded people. People who disagree with you are The Enemy, and must be destroyed at all cost, even the cost of innocent lives. There is no reasoning with these corrupt priests of Evil; we can never understand each other and war is the only response. Shoot first, ask questions later. Guilty until, and even if, proven innocent.

Sorry, that’s not the world I want to live in. Those who disagree with me are my teachers, not my enemy.

I saw a blog once with a tag line that I really wanted to steal. It said “If everyone is thinking the same, then someone is not thinking.”

What are Nazis, Anyway?

If you ask most people what defines a Nazi, they’ll be like me and say “Well, it’s those guys we fought in WWII that killed Jews and destroyed Europe.” True enough, but what actually are their beliefs? What’s the philosophy? I did a few minutes of research and found this.

• Intense nationalism
• Police state rule
• Racial purity
• State control of education
• Basically, it appears to be fascism plus extreme nationalism and racial hatred.

Then, for kicks, I looked up fascism, because honestly, I really don’t know what it is, either. But I do now:

• All actions are for the state
• Nationalization of assets (“we know what to do with your money better than you do”)
• The needs of the state outweigh the needs of the individual
• A Great Leader, who embodies the “Will of the People.” Therefore everything the Leader does is correct (because he is the people’s “will”).
• Society is run like the military (it’s more “efficient”)
• Government and business work together (corporatism)
• Authoritarian culture
• Central economic planning
• So basically, another violent form of socialism. National Socialism seems like Fascism plus an element of racial superiority and hatred. A breakdown of the principles is here.

Libertarianism

Recently some libertarians (apologies to Europeans; what you call “liberals” we call “libertarians” here in the US) have been called fascists and Nazis. Given that libertarianism seeks always to reduce the power of the goverment, and free the individual from coercion, and abhors violence (the core principle that the entire philosophy is built on is called “the non-aggression principle”), it’s pretty clear that libertarianism is pretty much the diametric opposite of fascism or Naziism. Every single one of the core principles listed is horrifying to a libertarian. Yet some people call libertarians Nazis. It looks like the Triumph of Total Ignorance is finally at hand.

Actually, I think the modern, contemporary definition of both Nazi and Fascist is “anyone who disagrees with me on any point at all.”

Old Timey Religion

It’s bizarre to me how much the rhetoric sounds like old-time religion. Let me just pick on climate change because it’s so easy. When you say “Gee, I really don’t think the Paris Accord is the best framework,” a likely response is “Unbeliever! You do not believe in the Holy Doctrine of Climate Change! Blasphemer! You must be cast out of the community of believers, lest your evil infect the innocent!” And similarly with right-wing causes – go tell a conservative “I’m not convinced that violent illegal immigrants are actually our biggest problem,” and be ready to be the subject of an exorcism.

It makes me wonder whether humans just need that sort of mental framework – now that most people don’t really have religion as a big part of their lives, they imbue their political opinions with the same sort of moral righteousness. Honestly, I don’t know, I’ll leave that to the sociologists and psychologists.

What We Value

What is even sicker is what we get offended about and what we don’t. Let’s take a look.

What Outrages and Incenses Us	What Doesn’t Really Bother Us
Trump made fun of a woman’s looks.	Trump gave weapons to Saudia Arabia, where a woman can be gang-raped, arrested, beaten, and forced to marry her rapist, all for the crime of leaving her home without a man.
Trump tried to get a 90-day ban on travel to the US from certain countries.	The US has bombed most of those countries at some time in the last 15 years, and is still bombing some of them.
Impolite comments about transexuals.	In the last 15 years we’ve killed tens of thousands of innocent civilians in the Middle East, and ignited wars that have killed millions of others, destroyed entire countries, and created millions of refugees.
Police shoot about 300 black people a year.	About 50,000 black men are in jail, locked up in cages, having their lives ruined, for drug offences.
America has a couple hundred Neo-Nazis.	America has 5% of the world’s population and 25% of the world’s prisoners.
The swastika, the symbol of people who killed about 20 million innocent people.	The hammer and sickle, symbol of the people who killed about 100-150 million innocent people.
Rich people are rich.	The Fed just orchestrated the largest transfer of wealth in history, from poor people to rich people, over the last 10 years.
People saying words that are on the “forbidden” list.	Officials steal billions of dollars each year using civil asset forfieture, usually, of course, from poor people.
Some people don’t want to tear down a Robert E Lee statue.	Obama, in a ramp-up of the Bush foreign policy, bombed the Middle East every single day of his 8-year term, dropped 16,000 bombs in 2016 alone, and blew up something like 8 wedding parties. Trump is doubling down and looking to break those records.
Climate change might cause the deaths of millions a hundred years from now.	Millions of people are dying right now in the Middle East due to conflicts we started.

This is not to say that the stuff in the left-hand column is excusable; but to me the stuff in the right-hand column is so much worse that it’s not even comparable.

I will ask a question: if tomorrow, Trump made offensive comments about transexuals, and also killed a thousand innocent civilians in Afghanistan, which one do you think would get the most press coverage? Where would the outrage go? Be honest with yourself. Then ask yourself, what does that say about our moral compass as a society?

Cultural Revolution

About 20 years ago, I was really interested in Chinese history and culture and I read a lot about the Chinese Cultural Revolution. This has to have been one of the most evil, most horrifying, and most despicable episodes in human history. Neighbors turned against neighbors and over a million people were killed.

For several months now, what’s been going on in the US has reminded me more and more of the Cultural Revolution. Not that we are in any sense close to the same madness, but there are similarities: beliefs are more important than words, words are more important than actions (if you save the lives of children, but then say you don’t like Mao, you are dead). Dragging people into the square for self-criticism (literally in China, figuratively here). The shoot-first, question-later mentality. Ideological purity above all else. The feeling from the revolutionaries that’s it’s ok to injure or kill innocents, as long as it’s in service of the Great Cause. People terrified to disagree with anything said, no matter how riduculous (like backyard steel furnaces – although technically, that was the Great Leap Forward).

I kept thinking that I was imagining things, but recently I heard an interview where someone said the current environment reminds him of the Cultural Revolution. So I’m not the only one. Now I’m really scared.

Death of Journalism

Have you noticed that journalism doesn’t exist anymore? For example, in Charlottesville, most reports on the incident were a couple of sentences. Then an examination of President Trump’s comments. Then review the reactions to the President, then the reactions to the reactions. Then what McCain said about Pence’s reaction to Feinstein’s comments about what Tillerson said about Trump’s comments on what they said on CNN. Then, on to the panel, who comments on the incident. Then reactions to the comments. WTF, is this journalism?

I did read one article about that incident, where the author watched and re-watched every video on the march, called people who were there, talked with independent media who covered it, talked with Charlottesville police, and refused to present anything as fact unless he could get at least two independent sources to verify it or he could verify it himself on the videos. And, the author had no apparent ax to grind, he tried to limit himself to facts. The article was quite a jolt – I’m so not used to actual old-style journalism anymore.

Conclusion

I think you can guess the conclusion to this article. If you disagree with any of the points above, then you must be…a Nazi!