Good.
Because if he does manage to hang on beyond the June elections, then the Labour Party will be absolutely destroyed next year, perhaps to the point of disappearing in 1920s Liberal fashion, never to really be seen again.
And then we can get on with destroying the Conservative party too, until there are no politicians left standing.
And then, finally, we will be able to free ourselves from their deadly embrace and rebuild western civilisation from the ruins of 150 years of blue, red, green, and yellow socialism, mostly stemming from the political works of James Mill and Karl Marx.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Why are we here? Plastic!
Did the environmentalists assassinate George Carlin?
No, perhaps not. But if you watch the video below you'll realise a lot of them will have felt like it. If you listen carefully to the section where he lays into smug white environmentalist liberals you can hear a few smug white environmentalist liberals in the background, getting their yucca thongs in a twist about it.
Marvellous.
Anyhow, that's enough waffle from me. Put your ear plugs in for the bits with all the bad language, but make sure you listen to the rest, if you haven't seen this video before. What a shame Mr Carlin couldn't be with us to taunt our enemies for a couple more decades:
BTW, if you want to see an excellent description of democracy, get through to about 1:40 of the following YouTube, to see Mr Carlin's thoughts on the subject. When you've checked that, move through to 5:20 for his thoughts on the growth of the world fascist state. Yes, his later thoughts on theft are a little more flimsy, but let's just gloss over that in our appreciation of this American genius:
No, perhaps not. But if you watch the video below you'll realise a lot of them will have felt like it. If you listen carefully to the section where he lays into smug white environmentalist liberals you can hear a few smug white environmentalist liberals in the background, getting their yucca thongs in a twist about it.
Marvellous.
Anyhow, that's enough waffle from me. Put your ear plugs in for the bits with all the bad language, but make sure you listen to the rest, if you haven't seen this video before. What a shame Mr Carlin couldn't be with us to taunt our enemies for a couple more decades:
BTW, if you want to see an excellent description of democracy, get through to about 1:40 of the following YouTube, to see Mr Carlin's thoughts on the subject. When you've checked that, move through to 5:20 for his thoughts on the growth of the world fascist state. Yes, his later thoughts on theft are a little more flimsy, but let's just gloss over that in our appreciation of this American genius:
The lowest of the low
Obviously, no-one who is employed full time by the state pays any tax. Such a person is nothing but a 100% tax eater.But some tax eaters are better than others.
State nurses may be chippy and refuse to clean MRSA off their hands, while state teachers may ruin young people's minds by filling their impressionable heads full of statist and environmentalist trash, but at least none of these people - I hope - would ever claim back from the taxpayer the five pounds they just put into a church charity box (presumably an action carried out to save face in public, rather than because it was meant in spirit).
But a British politician did.
Forget estate agents, journalists, and fractional reserve bankers. Is there any form of human life lower than a politician?
It gets very hard following the Bank of England's M4 figures, because they keep changing them regressively. For instance they claimed an M4 March figure last month of 17.6% but revised that this month to 18.2%. Because they also only release 'seasonally adjusted' figures on a provisional basis, this constant figure juggling makes month-by-month comparisons of what's going on quite tricky; though I do think we can see the general trend - the Pound in your pocket is becoming worth less every day, losing up to a fifth of its value a year, year on year (whereas it only used to lose a tenth of its value a year, a couple of years back).If we can believe them, the latest figures show that inflation last month declined slightly to 17.4%, which combined with a base rate of 0.5% gives us a current UK effective interest rate of -16.82%.
With all the news in the UK press of 'The Pound Booming' (i.e. losing value less quickly than the Dollar) and other spurious 'green shoots' nonsense, it should be interesting to see what happens to M4 over the next few months if the banks start disgorging some of the filthy lucre the UK Treasury and Bank of England have been filling them up with over the last few months.
No doubt Gordon Brown and Peter Mandelson will be hoping that the green shoots last for a few months yet, and will be urging the banks to get this money out of the door, before being forced to call an election, hopefully from their point of view before this manufactured quantitative easing bubble bursts even more spectacularly than the credit crunch bubble.
Ah, those happy days of bouncing along the bottom for ten years, with money growth inflation at only 10% a year, to fund the massive boom in house prices. And look at the mess that got us into. With M4 now bouncing around 17%, to get us out of the previous bust, the future bust we are building will be quite spectacular.
Ho hum.
Latest April 2009 M4 figures.
Previous March 2009 figures.
Pound falls in value less quickly than the Dollar, Shock!
Who do you believe?
If you were to have read any British papers, at the tail end of last week, you would have thought that the recession was over and party time was here again.
Well, you can believe that if you want to, with apparently rising house prices (and all the other signs that quantitative easing has worked its inflationary magic.)
Personally, I'm going to follow The Jimster:
=> Markets set to plunge again
If you were to have read any British papers, at the tail end of last week, you would have thought that the recession was over and party time was here again.
Well, you can believe that if you want to, with apparently rising house prices (and all the other signs that quantitative easing has worked its inflationary magic.)
Personally, I'm going to follow The Jimster:
=> Markets set to plunge again
Democracy: The God of Gravy
You may wonder who your MEP is, in the European Parliament. Personally, I have absolutely no idea.
But then it's not surprising that so few of us know who our MEPs are, because except for signing on each morning for their glutinous daily allowances, few MEPs ever bother turning up for work, except to vote on laws they haven't read to stay on their party lists for future elections to this greatest of parasitical gravy train wonder lands.
Yes, Democracy truly is a God that has failed. And increasingly, the people of Europe are beginning to realise it too. Thank the Lord for the nerve of Professor Hans-Hermann Hoppe for daring to point out this drastically unpalatable truth.
Christopher Booker has more.
Hitting the target
So, what are you to do as an NHS Health Trust bureaucrat who is failing to hit the government's target to treat all NHS Accident and Emergency patients within four hours?
Simple.
You merely lock everyone out of all of your Accident and Emergency clinics until the queue inside the clinic is under four hours. You then let taxpayers in, one at a time, from the horde outside in the rain, so long as this internal clinic waiting time stays under four hours.
Job done. Bonus collected.
In the apocryphal words of Ed Balls, so what if there are urgent trauma patients lying outdoors on trolleys for hours on end, with their angry and hysterical relatives banging on the windows to get them admitted to the back of the four hour queue? That's their problem.
Welcome to the socialist NHS. The Envy of the world.
AngloAustrian Solution: Privatise the entire NHS right now and remove all government financial and regulatory involvement with health care. Could it really be any worse?
http://mises.org/Books/bureaucracy.pdf
Simple.
You merely lock everyone out of all of your Accident and Emergency clinics until the queue inside the clinic is under four hours. You then let taxpayers in, one at a time, from the horde outside in the rain, so long as this internal clinic waiting time stays under four hours.
Job done. Bonus collected.
In the apocryphal words of Ed Balls, so what if there are urgent trauma patients lying outdoors on trolleys for hours on end, with their angry and hysterical relatives banging on the windows to get them admitted to the back of the four hour queue? That's their problem.
Welcome to the socialist NHS. The Envy of the world.
AngloAustrian Solution: Privatise the entire NHS right now and remove all government financial and regulatory involvement with health care. Could it really be any worse?
Friday, May 29, 2009
What is the Ruling Class?
For a text of the excellent talk given recently by Dr Sean Gabb, at the Property and Freedom Society event in Bodrum, click the link below:
=> What is the Ruling Class?
About 150 years ago the British Communist Party, headed by Karl Marx, consisted of about 50 members. They had a simple labelling technique for targeting the enemy ruling class. Essentially, if you owned any part of the means of production, then you were fair game for the proletariat to attack and destroy.
It is much less easy for the 50 attendees of the Property and Freedom Society to label their own enemy class today, because the modern ruling class is so much more fragmented these days, including people as diverse as Richard Branson, Tony Blair, and Paul Krugman.
What is it that links them all together? Because if we can irrefutably identify them, then our job of running this enemy class out of town will become so much simpler.
My own belief is that if we can directly label these people with an indelible green ink, to make it obvious who is exploiting the rest of us, then we could be as successful as that tiny group of communists were in revolving the entire world order, such that most of the principles of the Communist Manifesto are now established government policy in much of the western world.
Sean Gabb explains all of these difficult issues, and more, in the talk linked to above. It is well worth reading.
=> What is the Ruling Class?
About 150 years ago the British Communist Party, headed by Karl Marx, consisted of about 50 members. They had a simple labelling technique for targeting the enemy ruling class. Essentially, if you owned any part of the means of production, then you were fair game for the proletariat to attack and destroy.
It is much less easy for the 50 attendees of the Property and Freedom Society to label their own enemy class today, because the modern ruling class is so much more fragmented these days, including people as diverse as Richard Branson, Tony Blair, and Paul Krugman.
What is it that links them all together? Because if we can irrefutably identify them, then our job of running this enemy class out of town will become so much simpler.
My own belief is that if we can directly label these people with an indelible green ink, to make it obvious who is exploiting the rest of us, then we could be as successful as that tiny group of communists were in revolving the entire world order, such that most of the principles of the Communist Manifesto are now established government policy in much of the western world.
Sean Gabb explains all of these difficult issues, and more, in the talk linked to above. It is well worth reading.
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Marching Orders - The Property and Freedom Society
There are very few 'mainstream' Austrian men or women in England. When I say mainstream, I mean 'Misesian', in the mould of the Mises Institute in Alabama.
Yes, via the Institute for Economic Affairs, and the London School of Economics, there is a large Hayekian presence, particularly in and around London, which is probably due to Hayek's immense intellectual stature. Intellectualism is a very important commodity in the British libertarian tradition and Hayek appears to appeal much more to us Brits, mainly because of his perceived high intellectual stature, as a sort of right-wing equal to Keynes.
But is Hayek really more of an 'intellectual' than Mises? Or is this a mirage caused by the total intransigence of Mises, allied to the much greater conciliation of Hayek? Mises never really minded who disliked him so long as he held his own position in a steadfast manner, whereas Hayek was much more affable and polite, particularly when in the company of those statists who brand themselves 'Minarchists'.
Like many non-British hardcore Austrians, I find this Hayekian conciliatory approach to the state lacks the necessary jolt of caffeine to get me up in the morning. The much more uncompromising Mises is much more my cup of tea.
Unfortunately, this leads to the sad situation where the Mises/Rothbard line in England is very thin, consisting mainly of Anonymous, myself, and perhaps a few others of whom I am completely unaware, and a strong sympathy to the Misesian line from the (smaller) Libertarian Alliance, of which I am a camp-following occasional member.
Virtually everyone else belongs to a myriad of other libertarian positions, mostly statist/minarchist as summarised on the frontispiece of the Samizdata blog site:
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, 'Porcupines', Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.I used to write a long time ago for the Samizdata site, as a wild-eyed anarcho-capitalist under an assumed name, but there was not much toleration for that position, which admittedly was very fluid as I worked out where my end game was going to be on my own long road from socialism.
This wild-eyed anarcho-capitalism, combined with several other factors too boring to mention, eventually forced me to leave. Indeed, here are two Samizdata definitions for the kinds of people who recently attended Professor Hoppe's conference, including my good self [note my italics]:
Barking moonbatGiven that there is such British intellectual hostility to the Paleo-libertarian, Paleo-conservative position, as advanced by the Austrian school, particularly as advanced by Professor Hoppe, my main question to him this week was how I could help advance the Austrian (Misesian) position in England, from my relatively time-constricted position of being an armchair economist?
noun. Someone on the extreme edge of whatever their -ism happens to be.
(coined by Perry de Havilland)
Usage:"Definition of a 'barking moonbat': someone who sacrifices sanity for the sake of consistency"
-Adriana Cronin
Although the term (often rendered simply as 'Moonbat') is very popular with conservative and libertarian bloggers who appropriately use it to describe the Chomskyite Left, it was always intended as a much more ecumenical epithet and has been correctly used to describe certain paleo-conservative and paleo-libertarians views. (also see 'idiotarian').
Idiotarian
noun. A term of abuse for an advocate of what are deemed to be irrationalist and subjectivist values that have very little reference to the workings of the real world. Idiotarians are often socialist (quintessentially Noam Chomsky), but can also be paleo-libertarian or paleo-conservative. The defining phrase of idiotarianism is "it is all the fault of the United States": this is usually applied to geopolitics but is sometimes encountered with regard to cultural issues, economic issues, environmental issues, the weather, socks lost in the laundry etc.
The term is obviously highly partisan but is in quite widespread use by many blogs. However it is not a term used exclusively by the neo-conservative 'right wing' and many well left of centre or libertarian blogs have used it describe the more surrealist wings of their particular branch of political thought.
The answer was interesting; it was to help Dr. Sean Gabb as much as possible and his work with the (larger) Libertarian Alliance. Being a constellational member of the (smaller) Libertarian Alliance, I found this a little difficult to accept at first, but he talked me round.
(If this seems a little strange, then you need simply imagine that you're in the Monty Python film, 'Life of Brian', and that I am a member of the Popular Front of Judea, and that Sean Gabb is the leader of the People's Front of Judea - Who obviously are the real splitters.)
Incidentally, not only was Sean Gabb himself present at the conference, he shared the final speaking platform with the Professor, as a pair, even making the keynote address on the nature of the enemy ruling class. So if Professor Hoppe has this much confidence in the leader of the People's Front of Judea, then the only thing this member of the Popular Front of Judea can do, is to take his marching orders and simply to accept them.
So hopefully, in the next few months or so, you may see me popping up in various places in London, under various assumed names, helping Sean Gabb in his various endeavours, should he so wish me to do so.
Time, obviously, will tell.
What to wear - The Property and Freedom Society
After an absolutely splendid week at the Hotel Karia Princess, where I have put on about a hundred pounds in weight due to being forced, forced I tell you, to live in total luxury, it's all austerity back here at Maturin Towers. The treadmills of my local gym will shortly be taking a ferocious pounding as your rather heftier correspondent knuckles back down to a decent fitness regime, to get his three-mile run time back under the British Army's regulation target of 27 minutes.
That's going to be tough, as I'm starting out from 40 minutes, but I now have an added incentive.
On the final evening of the conference, I thanked Professor Hoppe for his hospitality and for the invitation to this incredible conference, where swapping anecdotes with Professor Robert Higgs or handing a beer to Professor Guido Hülsmann were just par for the course.
Anyhow, back to that incentive. After thanking Professor Hoppe, he appraised me with those steel-rimmed penetrating eyes and said:
"If you come again, perhaps next time you will dress a little better."There was a heavy stress on the word "If", and although the comment was perhaps partially in jest, there was a definite stiletto feel to the words.
I had actually worried about this on the first evening where I turned up at the reception in full casual Englishman mode, to find a room of men and women dressed in summer suits and cocktail dresses, all looking as though they had just stepped off some rather expensive yachts. However, short of nipping out and rustling up an entire wardrobe of clothes in an Aegean holiday town, I was pretty much stuck with what I had in my suitcase.
In my day-job I usually wear the compulsory City garb of a tailored grey or blue suit, Jermyn Street shirts, and ties in various hues of cream, navy blue, and burgundy if visiting a client, plus black leather shoes and black cotton socks - It's generally a relief to cast this armour off, once outside the Metropolis.
However, after having attended my first Austrian-based conference, I will be fore-armed next time with the knowledge of what the civilised Austrian man is supposed to be wearing when he attends such a thing. And if you are going to wear some decent summer suits, you really ought to get your physique in the necessary trim to carry it off properly.
If of course, I ever get invited to another one! :-)
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
The Property and Freedom Society
And so the journey will shortly begin to the Hotel Karia Princess, to attend the annual conference of the Property and Freedom Society.This leaves me with a seventh pilgrimage to Auburn to get the full set of:
=> Ayn Rand's apartment where she wrote Atlas Shrugged
=> Murray Rothbard's New York apartment
=> The site of Ludwig von Mises' Vienna home
=> The quadrangle at Vienna University
=> Ludwig von Mises' New York apartment
=> The annual Property and Freedom Society conference
And don't give me that 'You're simply using Austrianism to fulfil an otherwise empty quasi-religious void in your futile and meaningless life' stuff. I am well aware of the possibility. But still, there are worse hobbies to have.
Wish me luck.
The silver lining...
C'mon you Austro doom and gloom merchants, it ain't all bad.Take the Bank of England, for instance. Their profits have quintupled in the last year, and almost reached the £1 billion pound mark.
This is a splendid achievement, don't you think?
To control and regulate an economy and make money. What fun!
And check this. For presiding over the worst banking crisis in 70 years, Mervyn King is going to get even more money, personally, than he planned for:
Mr King’s pension pot is now worth £5.4m. Both his deputy governors, Paul Tucker and Charlie Bean, have elected to receive smaller salaries and bigger pensions, following an external review of Threadneedle Street’s remuneration policies.It just keeps getting better.
Green shoots? Ha! Says the Sage of Singapore
The Jimster, the Sage of Singapore, the Duke of Alabama, speaks on the Lew Rockwell show about Obama's 'green shoots' economy.
Unmissable.
Unmissable.
Rotten to the core
It is not often that I think kind thoughts about Oliver Cromwell, the murderer of the Irish, the military dictator of the English, and the nepotistic destroyer of religious freedom that served as a spur to create America, but today I think is one of those days. Almost 360 years after this speech was delivered in the House of Commons, with Cromwell dissolving the Rump Parliament, it is amazing to think how little has changed:
“...It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place, which you have dishonoured by your contempt of all virtue, and defiled by your practice of every vice; ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government; ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and would like Esau sell your country for a mess of pottage, and like Judas betray your God for a few pieces of money.
“Is there a single virtue now remaining amongst you? Is there one vice you do not possess? Ye have no more religion than my horse; gold is your God; which of you have not barter'd your conscience for bribes? Is there a man amongst you that has the least care for the good of the Commonwealth?
“Ye sordid prostitutes, have you not defil'd this sacred place, and turn'd the Lord's temple into a den of thieves by your immoral principles and wicked practices? Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation; you were deputed here by the people to get grievances redress'd; your country therefore calls upon me to cleanse the Augean Stable, by putting a final period to your iniquitous proceedings, and which by God's help and the strength He has given me, I now come to do.
“I command ye, therefore, upon the peril of your lives, to depart immediately out of this place! Take away that shining bauble there, and lock up the doors. You have sat here too long for the good you do. In the name of God, go!”
Oliver Cromwell, Dismissing Parliament, 20th April, 1653
UPDATE: Speaker to go. Announcement at 2:30pm today. It is still unclear whether he is going to go immediately or try to hang on until the next election.
Asia will author its own destruction if it triggers a crisis over US bonds
Imagine, if you will, a thousand peasants sweating in a corn field as they scythe up this year's harvest for their Lord, the Red Baron Obama.In a fit of madness, the Red Baron rides down from his castle and informs his serfs that he is going to withdraw into his castle, lift up his drawbridge, and never open it again.
The Red Baron then disappears within his walls, to a call of triumphant trumpets.
What is to happen to the peasants? Well, if we are to believe Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, of the Daily Labourgraph, they are going to starve to death.
Because they need the Baron to consume the vast bulk of the corn in the field. Without him to do this consuming, they will find no outlet for their production, and therefore they will enter a fatal liquidity trap.
But then, one mad peasant, called Petrus Shipmeister, steps forward from the huddling mass and asks the following daring question in his rough Austrian accent:
"Hey guys, vy don't vee just let that idiot rot? Vy don't vee just eat zis corn ourselves and become the main consumers for our own productive effort?"
"No," cry out two English peasants, Conway and Bootle, who have been receiving a secret stipend from the Baron for years, to preach obedience to the peasants. "Can you not see that without the needs of the Baron's table, the import and export flows will be impaired and the corn multiplier will be destroyed? We must keep working and then throw the corn in sacks over the wall, to keep the Baron going until his madness leaves him."
"No," say the rest of the peasants. So they threw Conway and Bootle over the wall instead and continue to become the wealthiest and happiest peasants for miles around, selling off excess corn to surrounding markets and using the subsequent capital injection of gold to improve their corn output, until within a few years they are the richest, healthiest, and best fed men in the kingdom.
After a few years, one of these new merchant-peasants is standing beside his newly invented mechanical thresher, innovated out of the saved corn capital. He looks up at the forbidding walls and dares to ask the question, "I wonder what happened to the Baron?"
All of the peasants look up at the high walls of the castle. For a few years they had been afraid of the Baron sending out his twelve heavily-armed knights and stealing their corn again, thus sending them back into subsistence. But now they are quite heavily armed themselves, after diverting some of their corn profits into defensive pikes and crossbows.
"Screw him! Der Baron ist ein Loser" says Shipmeister, who is now hailed as a patriot and a hero, despite his rough Austrian accent.
And so they all lived happily ever after.
Except the Baron. Who had long been dead, due to his stupidity and self-imposed isolation.
Hat tip to Matt.
Monday, May 18, 2009
Papieren, bitte! Schnell!
For the first time in my life a government official recently stopped me at a passport checking booth and made me stand aside.
My state passport was then taken away to an office to be examined within.
Ten minutes later, my state passport was then returned, after about another twenty people had been 'processed' past me, all of them looking at me with a mixture of empathy mixed with a feeling of wondering whether I was a terrorist, an illegal immigrant, or a criminal.
No explanation. No apology. No, "I hope we haven't caused you any inconvenience, sir". Nothing. Just a, "you can go through now" dismissal and a call of "next!".
Despite knowing that I had done absolutely nothing wrong and that I was carrying nothing that could in any way be questioned, I was surprised by the amount of adrenaline that was pumping through my veins before I was finally allowed through the passport barrier.
With the amazingly draconian 'terrorist' laws that are now routinely used on people who fail to fill their garbage bins 'correctly', the stupidly imaginative things that can run around your mind in an international airport, surrounded by armed police and mirrored windows, is quite amazing, if you are left to stew long enough.
It is at this kind of point that you realise just how small you are compared to a state, which is supposed to be there to be your servant and which you are forced to pay for, for your own good, and just how fragile your grip on your own life could become if some petty official decided to enjoy themselves by making life unpleasant for you, for "looking at them in a funny way".
Even if, in their own terms, you have done nothing wrong.
I got just a tiny taste of what it must be like in a full-on police state, when the door gets knocked at 3am in the morning.
I also wondered whether the authorities in question are deliberately holding up passport queues in order to smooth the introduction of biometric passports. But that would be a foul and reprehensible thing, wouldn't it, for a government to deliberately cause inconvenience to its citizens to get them to go along with a government policy few of them want?
Oh what a joy it must have been, pre-1914, for an Englishman to have sailed around the world without a passport, an invention which was necessitated by the creation of the modern welfare-warfare state.
We should get back to those times as quickly as possible. That is why I particularly like Michael S. Rozeff's 'Airport Freedom Day', in his brilliant new article.
My state passport was then taken away to an office to be examined within.
Ten minutes later, my state passport was then returned, after about another twenty people had been 'processed' past me, all of them looking at me with a mixture of empathy mixed with a feeling of wondering whether I was a terrorist, an illegal immigrant, or a criminal.
No explanation. No apology. No, "I hope we haven't caused you any inconvenience, sir". Nothing. Just a, "you can go through now" dismissal and a call of "next!".
Despite knowing that I had done absolutely nothing wrong and that I was carrying nothing that could in any way be questioned, I was surprised by the amount of adrenaline that was pumping through my veins before I was finally allowed through the passport barrier.
With the amazingly draconian 'terrorist' laws that are now routinely used on people who fail to fill their garbage bins 'correctly', the stupidly imaginative things that can run around your mind in an international airport, surrounded by armed police and mirrored windows, is quite amazing, if you are left to stew long enough.
It is at this kind of point that you realise just how small you are compared to a state, which is supposed to be there to be your servant and which you are forced to pay for, for your own good, and just how fragile your grip on your own life could become if some petty official decided to enjoy themselves by making life unpleasant for you, for "looking at them in a funny way".
Even if, in their own terms, you have done nothing wrong.
I got just a tiny taste of what it must be like in a full-on police state, when the door gets knocked at 3am in the morning.
I also wondered whether the authorities in question are deliberately holding up passport queues in order to smooth the introduction of biometric passports. But that would be a foul and reprehensible thing, wouldn't it, for a government to deliberately cause inconvenience to its citizens to get them to go along with a government policy few of them want?
Oh what a joy it must have been, pre-1914, for an Englishman to have sailed around the world without a passport, an invention which was necessitated by the creation of the modern welfare-warfare state.
We should get back to those times as quickly as possible. That is why I particularly like Michael S. Rozeff's 'Airport Freedom Day', in his brilliant new article.
Untax Day
The brilliant Michael S. Rozeff stuns Maturin Towers with his amazing ideas for holidays in the free future of humanity, circa 2100.Superb.
The article above is almost, but not quite, as good as one he wrote a while ago on the nature of the state as an organized contractual agency, parts I and II.
In fact, if you ever get any spare time on your hands, you can do a lot worse than to read through the entire Rozeff archive.
Outstanding.
So whatever happened to the deflation bogeyman?
Mr Liam Halligan wonders what happened to the terrors of prices falling, like they did throughout the nineteenth century.
Jeremy Clarkson and smug people
Good old Jezzer. Always there when you need to attack the smug beardies who want to tell all the rest of us how to live our lives.
If you read his latest piece on Honda's latest 'Hybrid' car, you will see that he doesn't like it. A lot.
Of course, he is also right to say that hybrids will go the way of airships, i.e. into the recycle bins of history.
The future of transport is hydrogen, not as they used it in the Hindenburg, but how they use it in liquid form in Honda's very own Clarity.
What I'm wondering though is what excuse governments will use to massively tax liquid hydrogen, when we've all switched across from gasoline (mostly because of the heavy tax)? I suppose they'll worry about that later, as most governments have absolutely no idea how to cope with their burgeoning welfare and pensions super black holes, never mind how to scrape revenue out of future transport solutions.
But it will be amusing to see how once they have forced us all into liquid hydrogen cars, to escape their theft on gasoline duties, they manage to persuade us to also shell out for that, too, without a major war to introduce the initial high taxes, which then never come down afterwards.
Wars are great for taxes and for bossing people about. Which is why as long as we have government, we will continue to have them.
(BTW, check out the comments on Jezzer's piece. It would appear he hit his target when he was talking about smug conceited beardies.)
If you read his latest piece on Honda's latest 'Hybrid' car, you will see that he doesn't like it. A lot.
Of course, he is also right to say that hybrids will go the way of airships, i.e. into the recycle bins of history.
The future of transport is hydrogen, not as they used it in the Hindenburg, but how they use it in liquid form in Honda's very own Clarity.
What I'm wondering though is what excuse governments will use to massively tax liquid hydrogen, when we've all switched across from gasoline (mostly because of the heavy tax)? I suppose they'll worry about that later, as most governments have absolutely no idea how to cope with their burgeoning welfare and pensions super black holes, never mind how to scrape revenue out of future transport solutions.
But it will be amusing to see how once they have forced us all into liquid hydrogen cars, to escape their theft on gasoline duties, they manage to persuade us to also shell out for that, too, without a major war to introduce the initial high taxes, which then never come down afterwards.
Wars are great for taxes and for bossing people about. Which is why as long as we have government, we will continue to have them.
(BTW, check out the comments on Jezzer's piece. It would appear he hit his target when he was talking about smug conceited beardies.)
The Hotel Karia Princess
For some strange reason, which I haven't worked out yet, Professor Hans-Hermann Hoppe has invited your humble correspondent to the annual conference of the Property and Freedom Society, held on the Aegean, in Turkey, starting this week, at the Hotel Karia Princess.
The plane flies out on Wednesday, and we'll be out there for seven days.
I have absolutely no idea what to expect, except what I have gathered from Sean Gabb's posts about the experience.
As far as I am aware, Dr Gabb is not a full-time Austrian, yet he treats these annual events as something akin to visiting heaven.
So Lord alone knows what I'll make of it.
I only hope I have at least one thing worth saying, if anyone speaks to me, and that if I do dare to open my mouth in a public debate, that I can ask a question worth asking, I don't embarrass myself, and generally that I don't let the English side down. I am also hoping to meet any other English Austrians there, to see if there's more of us than just me and Anonymous.
Yes, two is better than one, but more would be better!
So, in the meantime, will I get a second invitation next year? Well, who knows. I think the best policy will merely be to enjoy this experience first and foremost, and then to let the Gods (i.e. Professor Hoppe) work that one out later.
Just visiting heaven once in a lifetime ought to be enough for most people.
BTW, if you're going, I'll be travelling under a false name to protect the innocent. However, I will be the one in Istanbul airport wearing the Murray Rothbard T-shirt.
(Although this may be one of those rare occasions outside North America, when more than one person is wearing a Murray Rothbard T-shirt within a 500-mile radius, so if you get confused, I'm the one who also looks just like Tom Cruise.)
The plane flies out on Wednesday, and we'll be out there for seven days.
I have absolutely no idea what to expect, except what I have gathered from Sean Gabb's posts about the experience.
As far as I am aware, Dr Gabb is not a full-time Austrian, yet he treats these annual events as something akin to visiting heaven.
So Lord alone knows what I'll make of it.
I only hope I have at least one thing worth saying, if anyone speaks to me, and that if I do dare to open my mouth in a public debate, that I can ask a question worth asking, I don't embarrass myself, and generally that I don't let the English side down. I am also hoping to meet any other English Austrians there, to see if there's more of us than just me and Anonymous.
Yes, two is better than one, but more would be better!
So, in the meantime, will I get a second invitation next year? Well, who knows. I think the best policy will merely be to enjoy this experience first and foremost, and then to let the Gods (i.e. Professor Hoppe) work that one out later.
Just visiting heaven once in a lifetime ought to be enough for most people.
BTW, if you're going, I'll be travelling under a false name to protect the innocent. However, I will be the one in Istanbul airport wearing the Murray Rothbard T-shirt.
(Although this may be one of those rare occasions outside North America, when more than one person is wearing a Murray Rothbard T-shirt within a 500-mile radius, so if you get confused, I'm the one who also looks just like Tom Cruise.)
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