This category covers posts with political content.
When politicians make over-the-top declarations, or even when they say especially callous things, it is important to remember that any blowback their glib statements bring down will hit not them, but more likely the people they are seen to “represent.”
The end of the book came almost as a surprise. Chapter 16 is very short and is mostly focused on a gross misunderstanding of the meaning of “specialization.”
Full show notes here.
Right now, populist conservatives are enjoying a well-earned resurgence. The massive state overreach by totalitarian leftists has given them an opportunity to make some changes.
Full show notes here.
My latest article published by the Mises Institute is another look at MMT, only this time we’re taking a completely different route.
My article:
https://mises.org/mises-wire/mmts-barely-hidden-totalitarian-bias
Have you ever heard of the infamous German Foreword to Keynes’s General Theory? In it, he basically admits his system is best-suited to one with centralized, totalitarian control of the economy. Without such control, the government can only partially implement Keynes’s recommendations, and utopia remains just out of reach–so long as liberty is permitted.
My very rough notes here.
This video available at Odysee, YouTube, and BitChute.
I was honestly a little worried from some of the talk I had heard about the most recent episode of the Joe Rogan Experience, with Jordan Peterson.
I sat down and watched the whole thing, and ended up being pleasantly surprised.
Chapter 13 is titled “The Collectivist Wages System” and it is a tissue of faulty comparisons, bad conclusions stapled to obsolete theories, and nonsensical figures attached to shifting goalposts.
Chapter 12 is supposed to be Kropotkin’s answers to objections, but (perhaps unsurprisingly) he only goes after a few cursory criticisms and even his answers to those are seriously flawed.
Full show notes here.
Practically every argument Kropotkin makes is even better satisfied by private property, free markets, and voluntary exchange.
There are even some terrifying positions he takes that basically confirm that his “voluntary associations” are simply the coercive state with a prettier name. They have the potential to be even more tyrannical than the most callous private employer.
This video available on Odysee, YouTube, and BitChute.
Intro quote is from “Kropotkin’s Ethics and the Public Good,” by Williamson M. Evers:
https://mises.org/journal-libertarian-studies/kropotkins-ethics-and-publc-good
Article reference:
“Sweatshops: A Way Out of Poverty,” an interview with Benjamin Powell
https://mises.org/mises-daily/sweatshops-way-out-poverty
Intro music edited from a piece by Music for Video, courtesy Pixabay:
https://pixabay.com/users/music_for_video-22579021/
A man was walking through a lonely forest one day, when he saw a tiny sapling. “This sapling,” he said, “will someday become a great bush that will grow many delicious berries. Perhaps I should try to make sure it survives.”
We’re speedrunning these chapters of Kropotkin’s book because they’re basically repetitions of the same mistakes and fallacies again and again, only applied to different types of goods.
Full show notes here.
Chapter 4 is titled “Expropriation,” and (perhaps unsurprisingly) it is another chapter of assertions not backed up by significant arguments.
Full show notes available here.