Tag: freedom

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Economics Political Video Link

Rothbard’s America’s Great Depression, Chapter Ten

Chapter ten covers the events of 1931. Basically, after massive state intervention didn’t fix the problem in 1929 or 1930, Hoover gets the great idea that more government intervention will fix the problem in 1931 and 1932… with disastrous results.

Up until 1930, Hoover had (at least) resisted the swan song of massive government control over the economy and huge federal relief programs. During 1930, that resistance waned and set the stage for the rest of the depression.

Alternative places to watch the video are on Odysee, BitChute, and YouTube.

Get my full notes here.

References

(FYI, Rothbard cites a bunch of defunct journals and magazines in this chapter that are practically impossible to find outside of university library archives these days, but I did my best.)

Anderson, Economics and the Public Welfare
https://archive.org/details/economicspublicw0000ande/page/n3/mode/2up

Clark, Central Banking under the Federal Reserve System…
https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/title/central-banking-federal-reserve-system-314

Aldrich, The Causes of the Present Depression and Possible Remedies
https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Causes_of_the_Present_Depression_and.html?id=iijIAAAAMAAJ

Dorfman, The Economic Mind in American Civilization…
https://mises.org/library/book/economic-mind-american-civilization-1606-1865-volume-one

Bernstein, The Lean Years…
https://archive.org/details/leanyearshistory0000bern_f7p8/page/n5/mode/2up

Warren, Herbert Hoover and the Great Depression
https://archive.org/details/herberthoovergre0000warr_f2d0

Hayes, Activities of the President’s Emergency Committee for Employment
https://books.google.com/books/about/Activities_of_the_President_s_emergency.html?id=7QHJAAAAMAAJ

Congressional Record 75, including January 11, 1932
https://archive.org/details/sim_congressional-record-proceedings-and-debates_january-04-19-1932_75/page/1654/mode/2up

Monthly Labor Review 32 (1931), including p. 834
https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/title/monthly-labor-review-6130/april-1931-608201?page=62

Wolman, Wages in Relation to Economic Recovery
https://books.google.com/books/about/Wages_in_Relation_to_Economic_Recovery.html?id=Vh1QAQAAMAAJ

Angly, Oh Yeah?
https://books.google.com/books/about/Oh_Yeah.html?id=rTWMAAAACAAJ

Salary and Wage Policy in the Depression
https://archive.org/details/salarywagepolicy0000unse/page/n3/mode/2up

Harrod, The Life of John Maynard Keynes
https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.462199

(I had no luck finding any electronic resource for the very old Barron’s issues referenced in footnote 17 on page 270)

Putnam, Is Wage Maintenance a Fallacy, in Journal of the American Bankers’ Association
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015086750646&q1=putnam&start=1

Divine, American Immigration Policy
https://archive.org/details/americanimmigrat0000divi/page/n7/mode/2up

Abbott, Public Assistance
https://archive.org/details/publicassistance0001edit/page/n3/mode/2up

Schlesinger, The Crisis of the Old Order, 1919-1933
https://archive.org/details/ageofrooseveltcr0000unse/page/n3/mode/2up

Fusfeld, The Economic Thought of Franklin D. Roosevelt
https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Economic_Thought_of_Franklin_D_Roose.html?id=tRZUQwAACAAJ

Monthly Labor Review 33 (1931) containing p. 1341-1342
https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/title/monthly-labor-review-6130/june-1931-608203?page=10

Wendt, The Role of the Federal Government in Housing
https://www.huduser.gov/portal/sites/default/files/pdf/Federal-Government-in-Housing.pdf

Nash, Herbert Hoover and the Origins of the RFC
https://www.jstor.org/stable/1892269

Monthly Labor Review 33 (1931), containing pages 1049-1057
https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/title/monthly-labor-review-6130/november-1930-608195?page=9

Frederick, Readings in Economic Planning
https://search.worldcat.org/en/title/228876
alternate link:
https://www.google.com/books/edition/Readings_in_Economic_Planning/Xo_XAAAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0&bsq=frederick%20%22readings%20in%20economic%20planning%22

Loth, Swope of G.E.
https://archive.org/details/swopeofgestoryof00loth/page/n5/mode/2up

Donham, Business Adrift
https://archive.org/details/businessadrift0000wall

Coit, Mr. Baruch
https://archive.org/details/mrbaruch00coit_0

The Magazine of Wall Street including December 14, 1929, unfortunately I could find no better link…
https://www.google.com/books/edition/_/QKxLAQAAIAAJ?hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjU6OH-gd-IAxWCkO4BHXobAEIQre8FegQIAxA1

Tugwell, The Democratic Roosevelt
https://archive.org/details/democraticroosev00tugw

Stocking, Stabilization of the Oil Industry…
https://www.jstor.org/stable/46

Watkins, A Planned Economy Through Coordinated Control of Basic Industries
https://www.google.com/books/edition/A_Planned_Economy_Through_Coordinated_Co/aOcyHAAACAAJ?hl=en

Categories
Essay Philosophy Political

First Thoughts on “Political Violence”

Seeing a lot of people, including libertarians, oddly enough, pronouncing these blanket oppositions to what the corporate media calls “political violence.”

This is another case of people failing the Bastiat test–looking only at the bare surface level of such a policy, and failing to account for its secondary effects.

Worse yet, these oppositions actually seem to preach from a moral perspective, and not merely a strategic one. Yet another blundering oversight.

Because what kinds of activities do you have to disavow in order to oppose “political violence?”

Continue reading “First Thoughts on “Political Violence””
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Political Video Link

Free Speech Needs Decentralization

Governments are attacking free speech and privacy hard these days. We’ve got horrifying anti-speech laws in the U.K., Telegram CEO Pavel Durov arrested in France, and threats coming from governments all around that people who create platforms that make privacy accessible to regular people will be blamed and jailed for the actions of others.

We even have a Vice Presidential candidate here in the U.S. who has said, “no guarantee to free speech on misinformation or hate speech.”

There are all kinds of problems with these actions, and people need to fight back to hold onto their free speech rights and privacy.

Continue reading “Free Speech Needs Decentralization”
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Economics Essay Philosophy Political Video Link

There’s Always Another Awful Idea…

I was inspired by part of a Lew Rockwell speech that was posted at the Mises Institute website last week!

Today, I’m talking about the dangers of positivism in economics. Basically, in complex systems like the economy, you need a logical, causal framework to evaluate ideas. A purely positivist (i.e., each idea must be tested empirically) approach can be disastrous.

Why? Because empirical testing of uncontrolled systems can lead to counterintuitive and non-generalizable results!

The temptation to fiddle endlessly becomes a source of wealth for the fiddler and a source of poverty for everybody else.

Knob Dial GIFfrom Knob GIFs

Not only are there unlimited legions of bad ideas to “test,” there are an equally unlimited number of statistical tests to apply to the subsequent data, and a finite confidence interval means some of those statistical tests will give you false positives!

Anyway, check out the video up top, and the show notes here.

This video is available on Odysee and BitChute.

Categories
Essay Political

A Positive Feedback Loop of Power-Grabbing

Check out my latest article over at the Tenth Amendment Center, examining the fundamental idea by Locke that “it is unreasonable for men to be judges in their own cases.”

This simple idea, and our failure to keep our government accountable to it, is the root of many of the problems we’re dealing with today.

Categories
Culture Creation Economics Philosophy Political

A Small Epiphany?

I saw this post today and I feel like I had a bit of an epiphany.

As silly as it might sound, I’ve been trying to put up reasonably original stuff, without repeating myself too much. Kind of a “dissertation” attitude toward posts.

Honestly, it’s caused me more often than not, to tell myself it’s not worth saying something that’s been said before.

Continue reading “A Small Epiphany?”
Categories
Economics Essay

Corporatism v. Consumer Sovereignty

Section 4 of Chapter 15 of Mises’s Human Action is called “The Sovereignty of the Consumers.” Mises talks about the unhampered market economy and how that democracy, in which “every penny gives a right to cast a ballot,” might be more democratic than any government could ever hope to be. This passage got me thinking about these concepts, and how the state impedes them.

Continue reading “Corporatism v. Consumer Sovereignty”
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Political Video Link

Sources and Propaganda

For God’s sake, cite your sources and watch out for people who don’t cite theirs!

There’s a short clip of Klaus Schwab running around the libertarian social media sphere where he’s talking about the danger of libertarianism.

It’s being touted as this great proof that the totalitarians are running scared, so I tried to find the original video.

I did, and it is not what they’re telling you, as much as I hate to say it.
Link to the original video.
Link to the same speaker, same topic, one year later.

Check the video above, also available on BitChute.

Categories
Essay Philosophy Political

Rothbard: 1, Fuzzy Language: 0

Ludwig von Mises Institute, CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

I’ve just started reading Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind and I found a lovely example of how fuzzy language obscures what the state is and how it differs from “society.”

Continue reading “Rothbard: 1, Fuzzy Language: 0”
Categories
Essay Political

Galvanizing Liberty Lovers

We liberty-lovers face a powerful and dangerous foe: the modern state. Yet we seem to end up fighting each other more often and more angrily. It’s a fact that in an ideological movement, small differences are crucial, but we really should try to be smart enough to avoid infighting as much as we do.

Consider: the two major parties are split into two or three different wings, but they mostly aim their invective across the aisle–at least in public. Libertarians and other adversaries of the state aim nearly as much at each other as they do at the state and its flunkies.

Continue reading “Galvanizing Liberty Lovers”