Essays

The Government’s Us? Not Last Time I Checked

"In a speech last month about proposed gun control legislation, President Obama decried opponents’ attempts to encourage 'suspicion about government.' 'The government’s us,' he responded. 'These officials are elected by you. They are constrained as I am constrained, by a system that our founders put in place.' But if government were 'us,' why would we have ever needed a Bill of Rights or defense attorneys? In order for the government to be 'us,' and for its elected officials to be our 'representatives' in any meaningful sense, a number of prerequisites would have to be met." Continue reading →

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Detlev Schlichter: Is present monetary policy rational?

"Deflation is not such a bad thing if you have to live on your savings or a modest, nominally fixed payment stream. Additionally, reshuffling the economy’s deck of cards could also offer opportunities. Tearing down the old structures and allowing the market to price things honestly again, according to real risks and truly available savings, may at first cause some shock but ultimately bring new possibilities. The present monetary policy is inherently conservative. It bails out those who got it wrong in the recent crisis at the expense of those who didn’t even participate in the last boom." Continue reading →

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How Congress Puts Itself Above the Law

"Some apparently have faith in the high moral character of their elected officials and argue that we shouldn't have to enact a constitutional amendment to make sure Congress follows the same laws all Americans do. Yet history shows that is definitely not the case. Over the decades, Congress has passed innumerable statutes that regulate every aspect of life in the American workplace, then quickly exempted themselves. Critics advance the rather sensible and straightforward proposition that U.S. lawmakers should live by the same laws they impose on private employers and state and local elected officials." Continue reading →

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Bill Bonner: Americans pose a bigger threat to themselves

"With the numbers before us, you'd think we would at least stop wasting time and money protecting ourselves from terrorism and other bugaboos. The US 'security' budget, all in, is a fabulous sum -- about $1 trillion a year. It seems foolish. The return on investment is paltry. By comparison, suicide prevention - as near as we could make out - is barely a footnote in the federal budget, only about $56 million a year. This despite the fact that the risk to the typical reader posed by himself is about 1,000 times greater that the risk from 'terrorists.'" Continue reading →

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Cheating to Learn: How a UCLA professor gamed a game theory midterm

"Morally, of course, games can be tricky. Theory predicts that outcomes are often not to the betterment of the group or society. Nevertheless, this case had an interesting result. When the students got carte blanche to set the rules, altruism and cooperation won the day. How unlike a 'normal' test where all students are solitary competitors and teachers guard against any cheating! What my class showed was a very 'human' trait: the ability to align what is 'good for me' with what is 'good for all' within the evolutionary games of our choosing." Continue reading →

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The “Chechen Connection”, Al Qaeda and the Boston Marathon Bombings

"Media reports carefully overlook the historical origins of the Chechnya jihadist movement and its pervasive links to US intelligence. The fact of the matter is that the jihadist movement is a creation of US intelligence, which has also led to the development of 'political Islam'. While the role of the CIA in support of the Islamic jihad is amply documented, there is also evidence that the FBI has covertly equipped and incited would be terrorists within the US. The CIA’s agenda starting in the late 1970s was to recruit and train jihadist 'freedom fighters' (Mujahideen) to wage 'a war of liberation' directed against the pro-Soviet secular government of Afghanistan." Continue reading →

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The American Hiring Paradigm Is Broken

"Before the economy crashed, I was able to grow a local Spanish-language newspaper into a regional Spanish-language entertainment magazine published throughout 2 states. My company enjoyed such robust growth primarily because I staffed it with great people who contributed to specific company goals. I found these great employees not by seeking applicants with X years of experience in Y roles, but rather by seeking applicants who made the best case that they could contribute to the objectives I outlined. With this approach to talent acquisition, sifting through resumes was easy: I just looked for accomplishments." Continue reading →

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Publishing Atrocity: The 1963 Edition of Human Action

"This is the fiftieth anniversary of one of the most scurrilous incidents in academic publishing. The victim was Ludwig von Mises. The perpetrator was Yale University Press. This travesty was quite self-conscious. The editor knew exactly what he was doing. He was in control. Mises was not. This was how establishment liberalism worked in 1963. Today, ebooks, PDFs, and other technologies have broken the hold of traditional paper-based publishers. You can download the 1949 edition for free. But there was a time when they called the shots. Mises found out just how completely they called the shots at Yale University Press in 1963." Continue reading →

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The Permanent Overclass’s Propaganda System: A Century In The Making

"Two major social engineering projects were underway: one, the manufacture of ideology, largely the initiative of philanthropic foundations (and the social sciences), and the other, public relations as a modern form of propaganda. Through the educational system, the social sciences, philanthropic foundations, public relations, advertising, marketing, and the media, America and the industrialized states of the world developed a unique and complex system of social control and propaganda for the 20th century and into the 21st. It is imperative to recognize and understand this complex system if we are to challenge and change it." Continue reading →

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Jim Bovard: How ‘Food for Peace’ Hurts Foreign Farmers

"The United States government is the world's largest food donor but its aid consistently wreaks havoc abroad. The Obama administration is pushing reforms that could slightly reduce the number of Third World farmers bushwhacked by American food dumped into their marketplaces. But there is scant enthusiasm in Washington for any fix of a program that is beloved by many special interests. The U.S. launched the Food for Peace program in 1954 during the Eisenhower administration, largely to dispose of embarrassing crop surpluses that had been encouraged by federal farm programs. The annual cost to taxpayers? Last year, it was roughly $1.5 billion." Continue reading →

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