Macro; Protectionism; Abortion; Hazlitt

Macro Economics & The Free Speech Board

I’m enrolled in Macro Economics this term, from what I’ve heard the professors at my school are overwhelmingly Keynesians; the very separation of Macro Economics from Micro Economics is contrary to the Austrian School, with which I place myself, so this semester I will be posting, each week, what I learned in the class and whether I agree with it or not.

The Free Speech board has, unfortunately, only had ‘how to get better’ topics so far this year, hopefully nest week I can post about it again.

Protectionism

One of the biggest challenges I’ve faced while debating about libertarianism is related to protectionism, which basically means stopping other countries from trading with the US or stopping US companies from exporting jobs out of the US.

The biggest arguments for this, which are related, are:

Americans will lose jobs
This is a first level problem; that is, it is a problem with people only looking at the first level of the situation, but not looking further.

When jobs are exported or companies lose business as a result of foreign competition Americans will likely lose jobs, that’s how it works. However, it does not just stop there, the people don’t lose their jobs and then go live on the street and starve to death, while all other variables stay the same; the world is not just some senseless Twilight Zone episode.

After these jobs are transferred overseas Americans are allowed to move into jobs which make more economic sense (because the wages are bidding their scarce labor into them) and they probably prefer (if they liked their old job enough they would have taken a lower wage).

Also, the moving of these jobs increases the specialization and division of labor; it is similar to someone moving up the ranks in a company. Just as it would be possible and more efficient for a CEO (one who worked his way up from the bottom) to do a job in the factory, but it is too expensive and nonsensical for him to do this job when he would do a lot better running the company, it would be possible for Americans to do certain jobs but it makes more sense for those jobs to be allocated elsewhere.

Dumping

While the first argument is for stopping American companies from sending jobs out of America, the second is for instituting tariffs to keep foreign companies out of American markets (which in turn force the loss of American jobs).
It is an extremely fallacious argument to contend that it would be bad foreign companies to compete at all with American companies. Competition is the reason the free markets works well, consumers choose which ever product they feel is best suited to their needs, if that product is made by a foreign company, then so be it.

The argument with dumping is that a foreign company (supported by the government or not) will sell goods to American consumers at less than cost to gain market share, and then raise the price to levels unaffordable to Americans.

This should take, at most, a few minutes of thought before the argument is tossed away. The company in question would need to drop prices so low to completely push all other competitors out of business that not only would it be likely to ever happen, but it would take years to gain the money back, during that time there is nothing stopping the old competitors from coming back or new entrepreneurs from entering the business and competing with the dumping company. Also, I find it hard to believe a company could sustain while losing this much money to push competitors out of business.

Even if dumping did work and happened how could it logically be stopped? There is no real possible way to find the cost a company has in making something, its future goals and how it decided on its price.

Abortion

During the past few weeks I have been struggling to reconcile my beliefs against abortion and its legality with anarchism.

At first I thought there’s no way abortion can be illegal, a baby can be an unwanted presence who is an invasion and a parasite. Though many pro-lifers will deny this statement, it is technically true (in some cases, when the mother does not want the baby) and it is extremely not useful to take one sheltered look at something, without considering the other side of the argument.

If a bum walked onto someone property and stole his food and refused to leave, in libertarianism, it would be within someone’s rights to kill that man, or at the very least make him leave, which could possibly result in his death.

How then can the illegality of abortion be justified?

Let’s go back to the bum, what if the owner of the property had forced him onto the property and he had no way to escape? It would then not be legal for the owner to kill the bum.
In the same vein it should be illegal for a woman to kill the baby who she and her partner have created.

Economics in One Lesson


This book, by Henry Hazlitt, is perhaps the most prolific in leading people into the Austrian School. Hazlitt was not an economist as much as he was a journalist; he edited Mises’ Human Action and also wrote a book, The Failure of the New Economics, which refuted Keynes’ General Theory line by line.

In this book Hazlitt uses his ‘one lesson,’ which is, in a policy, to look at every outcome for all groups of people, not just the immediate outcome for one group. He then proceeds to apply it to all the popular policies of the day, which coincidentally are all pretty popular today as well.
Hazlitt’s book holds up very well today, and is a great way to introduce the free-market economics which are usually contrary to what one first thinks about policies. Plus the book is less than 200 pages long so it can be read in a couple of days or weeks, even by the busy libertarian.

Quote of the Week

It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.
– Thomas Jefferson

Dictatorial Impulses

By TJ Madison

When I first heard about Barack Obama's executive orders in his first few days as president, I really wasn't surprised. Although, five in three days is unprecedented, leftists will tell you it's necessary because "we live in unprecedented times."

Unprecedented times? I remember my mother and I driving to two consecutive gas stations in the late 1970's, only to be told by the attendant: "Sorry, we're out of gasoline!"

Having no gas for your car-- now that's unprecedented.

The energy policies of Jimmy Carter scarred my mother for life. Even to this day, whenever I get in her car, the gas tank is on 'E'. She's still afraid to go to gas stations.

Getting back to executive orders, you know damn well that if George W. Bush would have signed five in three days, Democrats would be screaming, "look at that tyrant, who does he think he is?"

Of the five presidents before B.O., executive orders went as follows: Bush '43' had zero in his first nine days. Caligula, better known as Bill Clinton, signed two in his first five days. Bush '41' did not sign any in his first five days. Reagan went seven days before issuing any and Carter, the worthless one, issued only one in his first ten days. Now, I'm not sure what you can take from these facts, but one thing is for certain, of all of the last six presidents, B.O. appears to be the one most ambitious to make a power grab in his first few days in office.

Now to be fair, executive orders have been in existence since 1789. However, in the nineteenth century; for a president to issue even thirty in his entire term was unusual. It wasn't until the twentieth century that pure dictatorial power of the executive went far more reaching then any Founding Father could have intended. The truth is, executive orders can have legitimate functions. Presidents can carry out their constitutional duties or direct their subordinates by executive order. But they can also be source of temptation for overly-ambitious presidents (who can that be?), by using them as a substitute for formal legislation. Thereby circumventing the constitutional process.

But, if you're Saint Barack of Chicago, the constitution doesn't apply to you anyhow. Just like it didn't apply to one of your hero's, FDR. Who carried out 3700+ executive orders! To put that into perspective, Bush II signed 282, Caligula had 364 and Reagan 381 in their eight year terms. Jimmy Carter managed 320 in only 4 years!

I will not defend any of these men when it comes to executive orders; they are all guilty of usurping power from the other branches of government. But, Barack Obama is heading towards the dictator status of FDR when it comes to abuse of power.

Now, when it comes to current controversial laws, you can easily make a legitimate case to say the Patriot Act is unconstitutional, to which I agree. However, at least it went through the legislative process.

Point being, by signing an exorbitant amount of executive orders, a president becomes a government unto himself, bypassing all the checks and balances of a representative-republic form of government.

TJ Madison is a libertarian-Republican pundit living in Fond du Lac, WI. His day job is working in the health-care industry. The preceding column is solely the thoughts of TJ Madison, and not necessarily that of anarchist, Thomas Aquinas or any other contributors to AgentsofLiberty.com.

Is Saying 'God' Now Unconstitutional?

By, TJ Madison

Here we are one week from the Presidential Inauguration, and I find it humorous what people will find time to get worked up about.

"I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States and will, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States... So help me God."

Now, if you were an intelligent American, is there any possible way, you could have a problem with any of the words in the Presidential Oath?

Well, they found an idiot that does.

With everything that's going on in this country right now, trillion dollar deficits, a war on two fronts and a long recession ahead of us, there's an atheist activist, Michael Nenow, that has made it it his own personal crusade to remove the words, "So help me God", from the January 20th inauguration of Barack Hussein Obama. A U.S. District Court Judge will actually hear this frivolous lawsuit next week.

If anything, some American should sue the President-elect, citing that his campaign promises are a direct contrast of that entire Oath. Every promise Obama has made about education, health-care, the environment and several others are, by definition, unconstitutional.

I challenge any leftist to find the words: education, health-care or the environment in the Constitution. And when you can't find them, refer to the Tenth Amendment, "...powers that the Constitution did not delegate to the United States or prohibit to the states were reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

Nenow's ultimate goal, of course, is to rid the entire public square of all things religious. While citing the 'separation of Church and state' mantra, so frequently used by the godless socialists of the left; a mantra that is not in the Constitution, Bill of Rights, Declaration of Independence or any other important historical document.

For the record, even though I do not attend church regularly, I strongly believe in God, and I don't have any problem with atheists-- as long as they have a love for individual liberty and free markets.

Groups like the American Civil Liberties Union have a lot of card-carrying members in the libertarian movement and that's fine. Though I will never understand why, seeing that the ACLU is a fraud and is no friend of liberty. Those libertarians may see it a little different however, they choose to ignore the nation our Founders wanted.

It is clear that the Founders did not want a Theocracy. However, by ACLU 'standards' of today, the Declaration of Independence could never had been ratified in it's current form with a word like 'Creator' included.

In fact, every session of Congress begins with a prayer by a preacher, who has been financially compensated by the taxpayer since 1777. So ask yourself this: if the Men who actually wrote the Constitution didn't have a problem with a paid preacher, why in the world would it be deemed unconstitutional to utter the words 'So help me God' in an inauguration?

It's not unconstitutional. It's just ridiculous and petty, like the entire leftist movement.

TJ Madison is a libertarian-Republican pundit living in Fond du Lac, WI. The views are his own, and not necessarily those of all contributors at AgentsOfLiberty.com

My Case for Anarchy

I received this e-mail from TJ:
________

TJ Madison to me show details 7:09 AM (15 hours ago) Reply

I had an idea for you to include in your next article.

I thought you could expand on your anarchism. I believe most people have an ignorant idea of anarchy, and maybe you can explain that it's more than just lawless teenagers with bones in their nose and purple Mohawks.

Just throwing it out there.

--
tj2
Stop Creeping Socialism
http://agentsofliberty.com/

________

I am against the idea of purple Mohawks (on a purely aesthetic basis) so I thought I’d take an extra day, make this an extra-long article, and show why I believe in anarcho-capitalism. I like to separate this into two areas in my head, which I’ll call economical and moral in this article.

My Economic Reasoning

Before I begin I’d like to point out that I’m not near intelligent enough to come up with this stuff on my own, even though it may seem that way with my potentially poor explanation, and I will give some further reading at the end of this section or those who wish to see my sources and explore these theories deeper.

To start I need to explain the profit/loss measuring stick used by entrepreneurs. In a free market prices are used to dictate where scarce resources (any resource that is) are allocated, this happens when people who demand the resource more pay more for it (the resource is then allocated to those people). Through the chaos of a free-market and millions of transactions prices do a magnificent job of allocating resources to their best use, somehow in the end there is order and there are an extremely small amount of shortages, because when the demand for a certain good goes up, the price follows and as entrepreneurs are encouraged to find better ways to find the materials, or even enter the business, the higher price allows the producer to pay more for his necessary materials which allocates them away from other areas. This happens every second of the day as the market adjusts.

Because prices dictate where scarce resources need to be allocated entrepreneurs have a very easy measuring stick as to whether the market thinks the resources should be allocated in the ways they are using, this is profit and loss. If an entrepreneur is operating with a profit it means the market wants the resources to be allocated to that use, if not the then the market thinks there is a better use, and without any government intervention it just about always eventually diverts to that use (because the entrepreneur is losing money).

Before I go on here's a summary of the above: Because resources are scarce those who demand them the most pay higher prices, those higher price allows the market to allocate the resources in the best way, following this entrepreneurs will know how the resources should be allocated by their profit or loss.

The great economist Ludwig von Mises came up with the Calculation Problem Argument that said, basically, without this profit or loss measuring stick anything operating without the use of prices has no way of knowing if what they are doing is actually working.

Before going further it is necessary that the readers acknowledge that government does not operate on a profit/loss system if some area of government needs more money they give it more money through inflation of taxation, other than these two sins government has no way of getting money.

As a result of the two things in the preceding paragraphs government logically does not and literally cannot work in any way.

This does not mean there should only be government roads or defense or courts, it means that government cannot work in any way.

Moral Reasoning

Libertarianism is essentially a connecting of two things: a non-aggression axiom and property rights.

The non-aggression axiom says it is fundamentally wrong for anyone to initiate force; it is basically the Golden Rule and is a must in basically any religion.



Property rights say that every man has a right to his property, property being something with which one has mixed his labor or for which he has traded. “Thou shalt not steal,” covers this in my book.

As with the economic reasoning this logically must be taken as an absolute (for the Jews or Christians there is not a footnote after the ten commandments, explaining when to use them, they are to be used at all times).

Now, remember the two ways government can sustain itself: inflation and taxation, let’s explore these two.

First, inflation, inflation is the increasing of the money supply (many people think inflation is rising prices, this is the result of inflation, not the definition). The increasing of the money supply is essentially counterfeiting (regardless of who does it). Because this allows some people to get something for nothing I am morally against any form of inflation, and in fact believe that the abolishing of the federal reserve and return to a commodity money is what should be done, but that’s for a different article.

Second, is taxation, taxation is basically a fancy word for theft; it is the forceful taking of money. If you think there is no force involved, try not paying your taxes.

Now, combining: the fact that the only way the government can get money is by stealing, either through direct taxation or inflation, with the necessary absolutism of bringing together a non-aggression axiom with property rights in every single case it is morally impermissible for a government to exist. Even if government did somehow work economically I would still be morally against it for these reasons.

Many people simply do not take this moral argument to mind when they think about government or anarchism, the next time you think about how good the national defense is or about how good it is to have welfare, then ponder if you think it is OK that this was done, by definition, through the forceful stealing of someone else’s hard-earned money.

Conclusion

In conclusion if I have not converted you to my way of thinking I at least hope you no longer may think I am not just a lawless teenager with a purple Mohawk and a bone in my nose (well an extra one).

Further

Most of the reading I have done in this subject was done with printed articles whose links were subsequently lost, here are some of the things that survived, even if it isn’t as comprehensive as I would have liked.




Site Updates

I’ve changed the appearance of the main site. I tried to make it look cleaner and changed the positioning of some aspects.
With the update I created a new poll which asks the reader’s take on anarchy after taking in my arguments, please vote in the poll and then comment on this article with your take.
Also, the short book series will be back next week as my next recommended book goes along with the upcoming economic topic.

Quote of the Week

“On the free market, everyone earns according to his productive value in satisfying consumer desires. Under statist distribution, everyone earns in proportion to the amount he can plunder from the producers."
-Murray Rothbard

New Years Resolution: How About More Liberty!

By, TJ Madison

My father was right.

As long as I can remember, My Dad (Pops Racer) always made sure he went to bed BEFORE midnight on New Year's eve. It was his way of letting us know that it was a waste of time to stay up, just to see the calender change to January. One could chalk it up to spite, but actually, for as long as I can remember, he's never been up past ten o'clock on any other day of the year, so why should New Years Eve be any different?

Because! It was New Years Eve! The calender is no-longer going to say 2008 anymore. It will be 2009 now! Can't you see how exiting that is?

It took me about 35 years into my life, but now I know how 'lame' those statements really are.

I think it still could be exciting for a teenager to stay up, waiting for the countdown until midnight with their siblings. It's sort of like believing in Santa Claus when you're a child. When you get in your 20's, it's just another reason to drink and be stupid. Like people in their 20's need another reason to drink and be stupid, they already have St. Patrick's Day, their birthday, all their friend's birthdays, and every Friday and Saturday night of the year.

That's at least 120 days per year to get drunk and act stupid. And if you're attending a major university, you can double that number of the times to be drunk and stupid; or as Pops Racer would say: P.U.D. (pissed-up drunk).

I'm not sure how Pops felt about New Year's resolutions, though. I imagine it would be the same as what he thought about New Year's in general. And if that is so, then he would be proud of me for not bothering with New Year's resolutions. Because when has one ever been kept? For me, never. So I stopped making them about five years ago.

I think the best I ever did was to avoid mayonnaise until the middle of February. And if you knew me, you'd realize what an accomplishment that really was. However, I've now discovered that totally depriving yourself of something you enjoy is foolish. Do I use the same amount of mayo that I used to? No. I learned to make a sandwich taste just fine with a little bit. Let's just say, that when I die, the cause of death will not be 'too much' mayonnaise!

Let me say one more thing on the subject: It's OK to have a resolution to improve your life, but why do you have to wait until the beginning of a new year? It's just as easy to start at the beginning of a week, or the first of any month. Because when your current New Year's resolution fizzles out January 22, don't wait until January 1st of 2010 to make an improvement to your life, try again February 1st.

All of that being said, I'm going to make some resolutions, not for me, but for my fellow citizens and co-workers.

Why? Because I'm sick of the 'nanny-state' politics that are devouring our precious individual liberties in every corner of this great land. For example, even smaller cities and towns are turning to more and more government intrusion on personal freedom. In big cities it has already been lost: no smoking, no trans-fats, no driving with cell phones, no driving without seat belts, random 'checkpoints' by the police for drunk drivers and so on.

I'm actually able to listen to Chicago radio stations in my small Wisconsin city, while listening to the traffic report one of the highways had a back up of a couple of miles. No big deal, right? It is Chicago after all. Well, the back up of cars was created by a police checkpoint to-- wait for this-- make sure drivers had their seat belts on!

What the bigger cities of America have succumb to, is indeed frighting, however, more scary, it's coming to our smaller towns and cities. Brought to you mainly by leftist do-gooders who can't mind their own business. I know this because, I work with people like this, and people sit on our Common Council who want this tyranny.

Now, people in our city lost the freedom to smoke in restaurants three years ago. In 2008, the local people lost the freedom to smoke in bars and taverns.

Yes, bars and taverns! Aren't bars generally 'seedy' type places where certain people can go to fulfill some of their elementary vices, such as drinking, smoking, maybe a fling with someone you just met, among other things.

So let me get this straight, you're now able to go to a bar of your choice, drink alcohol and destroy your liver, eat a cholesterol filled pizza that clogs your arteries, take a girl home (that you just met) and possibly end up with several disease's, and gamble a sizable portion of your paycheck. BUT, GOD FORBID, you should leave the establishment with a trace of 'second-hand' smoke in your system. A choice you made before going in there. (For the record: this writer thinks the affects of 'second-hand' smoke are greatly exaggerated for political purposes. And even if I'm wrong about that, nobody puts a gun to your head to go into a bar).

So in 2009, if you have any power to make laws, or persuade lawmakers, make a New Years resolution to side with individual liberty before siding with the majority that wish to take it away.

TJ Madison is a pundit living in Fond du Lac, WI. He describes his views as a libertarian-Republican who is fighting creeping socialism on a daily basis.