The Great War
Published on 2 Jun 2018Chair of Wisdom Time!
June 3, 2018
Conrad von Hötzendorf – A Military Genius? I OUT OF THE TRENCHES
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“[Libertarians] are the great optimists of the world”
At Catallaxy Files, Australian senator David Leyonhjelm has a guest post, covering the contents of his maiden speech:
When I became the first overt libertarian to be elected to the Australian Senate in 2013, I thought I would use my maiden speech to try and sum up my world view. In this speech, I outlined why I believe the role of governments should be limited to the protection of life, liberty and private property. I tried to highlight the importance of personal responsibility, the dangers of creeping government interference, and the fundamental right to be left alone so long as we’re not harming anyone else.
If I were to give an elevator spiel to someone who wanted to know more about libertarianism, I’d simply tell them that “a libertarian believes you should be able to keep more of your stuff and be left the hell alone”. It sounds too simple to work, but it does, and that’s what is truly great about it.
When you look at nations that slash government red tape, protect private property rights and safeguard civil liberties, you see societies where opportunity abounds, people escape from poverty, and civil society flourishes.
In fact, these policies have done more to lift people out of poverty than any government program anywhere. Free markets and free trade are responsible for one of the most remarkable achievements in human history: from 35% of the world’s population living on US$1.90 or less in 1990 to 10.7% in 2013, according to the World Bank.
As I see it, those who believe in a limited role for governments and the promotion of personal freedom, aka libertarians, are the great optimists of the world. An optimist would never dream of dictating how and when someone else should do something unless it was to prevent harm to another person. An optimist would never look at someone more successful and seek to grab some of their income or wealth. An optimist would never want to see more restrictions on our everyday lives.
Conversely, people who seek to control others, to take more of their earnings, and to redistribute it according to their values, tend to have a pessimistic view. Only a pessimist could look at society and think, we need more control over the daily lives of others. Only a pessimist would think their better off neighbours should be taxed more heavily or that their hard earned should be used on even more government programs.
A lot of the people who fall on the left side of Australian politics will probably decry the fact that I think they’re pessimists. They’ll say they’re the ones with a true and caring heart, and that redistributing wealth is a lofty goal because it helps those in need. This is demonstrably false, as all the evidence shows, but I will happily admit that such people have a heart, if not brains. The old saying, “if you’re not a socialist at 20 you have no heart, but if you’re still a socialist at 40 you have no brains”, still explains a lot.
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Brand X – Nuclear Burn (1976)
aquarianrealm
Published on Nov 7, 2010AMG: Brand X were a British jazz-rock fusion outfit formed by Genesis drummer Phil Collins and Atomic Rooster guitarist John Goodsall as a side project from their regular groups. Their initial lineup also included keyboardist Robin Lumley and bassist Percy Jones (the Liverpool Scene, the Scaffold). Brand X’s debut album, Unorthodox Behaviour, was released in 1976; a live album, Livestock, and the studio effort Moroccan Roll followed in 1977. Collins left the group to concentrate on Genesis, and for 1978’s Masques, he was replaced by Al Di Meola drummer Chuck Burgi, as well as additional keyboardist Peter Robinson, who had played with Stanley Clarke. Three further albums — 1979’s Product, 1980’s Do They Hurt?, and 1982’s Is There Anything About? — followed before the group disbanded. In the mid-’90s, Lumley, Goodsall, and Jones reunited, issuing several live collections in the years to follow.
H/T to ESR for the link.
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QotD: Price controls just make things more expensive in real terms
One of the perennial, and pernicious, political ideas is that if things are “too expensive” then we can fix that by just passing a law to make them less expensive. We see this just about everywhere and its sadly not limited to the more idiot sector of the left. Although of course it thrives there. Venezuela is a complete and total mess because Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro thought they would make life cheaper by limiting prices by law. Payday lending doesn’t exist in certain states because people like Elizabeth Warren insist that interest rates should not go “too high”. Those usury laws mean that interest rates are infinite – as the lending simply isn’t available at all. And yes, people over on the right have made the same sort of mistake – Nixon tried to fix gas prices after all.
Price fixing just always leads to things getting more expensive. As David Friedman explains:
The result – that price control results in a cost to the consumer, pecuniary plus nonpecuniary, higher than the uncontrolled price – does not depend on the details of the [supply and demand] diagram. Consumers cannot consume more gas than producers produce, so the nonpecuniary cost must be large enough to drive quantity demanded down to quantity supplied. Quantity supplied is lower than without price control, so cost to the consumer must be higher.
Tim Worstall, “Memo For Would Be Price Fixers – Price Controls Always Make Things More Expensive”, Forbes.com, 2016-08-16.
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