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The recent ignorant ranting of politicians—the complete misrepresentation of the healthcare proposal as socialized medicine rather than statism or more accurately fascism or nationalized healthcare discredits the arguments of the supposed conservatives—and pundits about the methodical and systematic march towards socialism indicates that the arguments made by Marx and other socialists are still relevant and that an understanding of Ludwig von Mises’ argument of the impossibility of socialism as a viable form of social cooperation is of great consequence. Socialism is characterized by a particular set of means or intermediate end, the state ownership of the means of production, and an ultimate end, the end of history in which perfect social harmony will be permanently established. Social harmony is achieved by the abolition of the exploitation of the proletariat, the transcendence of the alienation of the proletariat, and, most importantly, the transformation of society from the “kingdom of necessity” to the “kingdom of freedom.” The socialists argue that, by “rationalizing” the means of production through state ownership of the various factors of production or scarce resources, material production will be advanced beyond the limited output of capitalism and, thus, humanity will be ushered into a post-scarcity utopian society; a world in which material wealth is abundant. Thus socialism, in addition to prescribing a particular set of means that require bureaucrats or central planners to control the means of production, also involves a specific set of ends, which includes the ultimate goal of social harmony or the elimination of the class structure which is achieved through the intermediate end of advancing material production to previously unimaginable levels.

Marx and other socialists attempt to demonstrate the productive inferiority of capitalism and its supposedly chaotic allocation of scarce resources. Their arguments include strong critiques of capitalism on the grounds that its method of production is “irrational,” that capitalism tends towards monopolization that produces the disenfranchisement of a growing proportion of the population, and that the disenfranchisement of a growing proportion of the population inevitably leads to the booms and busts of the business cycle which makes capitalism inherently unstable; Keynes’ psychological argument that animal spirits are the source of the booms and busts of the business cycle is not far removed from Marx’s attempt to account for the business cycle with the psychological argument of the disenfranchisement of the proletariat. Thus, the social organization of production under capitalism reflects the “kingdom of necessity,” but the social organization of production under socialism will deliver humanity into the “kingdom of freedom” where, through the rationalization of production, scarcity is overcome and material wealth is abundant. Since the utopian ideal of a “kingdom of freedom” produces an abundance of material wealth, it eliminates the need for the state to redistribute wealth; all class struggles are eliminated as society reaps the benefits of an unimagined profusion of material wealth.

Therefore, the success of the socialist project rests on the intermediate end of rationalizing production: by rationalizing production, socialism will avert the waste inherent in capitalism’s “anarchy of production,” purge society of capitalism’s tendency towards greater monopolization, eliminate capitalism’s inevitable crises, and, as such, produce an unprecedented and heretofore unimaginable increase in material wealth. The productivity gains of the intermediate end will usher in a post-scarcity era, which will provide the material preconditions for creating lasting social harmony; it will permanently establish the “kingdom of freedom.” The argument made eloquently by Ludwig von Mises against socialism refutes the premise that the rationalization of production through state ownership of the means of production will achieve the promised productivity gains; i.e., that the intermediate end of socialism is unattainable. If socialism cannot accomplish the intermediate end of advanced material production, then it cannot achieve its ultimate end: social harmony. The impossibility of the intermediate end of an unimagined abundance of material wealth precludes the possibility of a utopian post scarcity world that eradicates the historical class struggle; i.e., the apparent historical inevitability of socialism is questionable.

Mises proves that it is impossible for the socialist means to achieve socialism’s intermediate end of advanced material production because of the inability of bureaucrats or central planners to engage in rational economic calculation. Mises’ argument starts with the fact that the socialist means entail the complete abolition of the private ownership of the means of production. The absence of the private ownership of the means of production prohibits the voluntary exchange of these means of production. The lack of voluntary exchange of the means of production leads to the abolition of market prices for the means of production and, without market prices for these means of production, socialism cannot rationally allocate these means of production. Rational allocation requires that scarce resources be allocated in such a way that urgent market participant’s demands do not go unsatisfied because scarce resources have been allocated to some less urgent market participant’s demands. Under capitalism, market prices, which are demonstrated subjective preferences, enable economic calculation; i.e., market prices provide the subjective information that entrepreneurs need to allocate scarce resources towards productive activity that satisfies the needs of the most urgent demands of market participants. However, without these market prices, allocation of scarce resources towards the most urgent demands is impossible. The abolition of market prices for the means of production by socialism eliminates the very mechanism that enables market participants to rationally economize their actions. The very possibility of the rationalization of production demands knowledge of the various subjective preferences of market participants. How are bureaucrats or central planners going to allocate scarce resources? What information or knowledge of the subjective preferences or demands of market participants do they possess? Thus, a socialist economy based on the intermediate end of the supposed rationalization of the production process is impossible; i.e., socialism’s inability to rationally allocate resources and achieve the intermediate end of an unimagined abundance of material wealth precludes the possibility of realizing socialism’s post scarcity utopian world.

So those who would insist that our rights be limited are advocating that other people, usually those in government, have the authority to violate our rights, that some people be in control over other people in disregard of their rights. There is no escaping this conclusion. Those who are naively thinking that "limiting" rights will just happen, by way of some cosmic power instead of human beings who would want to control others, need to realize that they are supporting involuntary servitude, plain and simple.

Hi!

I love your products but would also love to see a chemical-free, non-bleached, non-chlorine, natural paper product for the office. There is no reason why office paper has to stay so white!

I know many businesses, small and large, that would pay for paper of this kind.

Thanks!
Don

...

The gift of Austrian economics in part is to provide with a scientific explanation via marginal utility about how this process works. Absent marketplace competition and the invisible hand, there is simply no way that capital will find the appropriate channels. It is impossible. State planning simply cannot determine where money should flow with any certainty - though in fact the state planning process is not really concerned with such things, being basically a political apportionment.

...

We would urge readers of the Daily Bell to seek out the work of such free-market philosophers as Tibor Machan because the rational appraisal of state duties is at the heart of the conversation about freedom. One can hardly be a responsible citizen in our estimation (and many are not) without considering these issues. Machan has spent a career enumerating them and we are grateful for his efforts in this area and for the publications by him and his colleagues that continue to shed light on the important and controversial boundary line between "citizen and state."

...

A recent discovery -- in October of 2009 -- has been suppressed by the main stream media but has been circulating among the "big money" brokers and financial kingpins and is just now being revealed to the public. It involves the gold in Fort Knox -- the US Treasury gold -- that is the equity of our national wealth. In short, millions (with an "m") of gold bars are fake!

We need to reinvent money democratically at the grassroots level, along with a communications network. Then when the local community is active and aware enough to control local government -- local government could issue its own currency. Ideally monetary reform encourages land reform, a shift in priorities, recognition of our interdependence with the natural world, nurturing healthy relationships between people locally and throughout the world.

The plain fact that no politician in history has ever understood is that the market requires no altruism for everyone to benefit.

On Tuesday last I had the singular pleasure of showing Portland to the world-renown Catholic author Piers Paul Read. In between five radio and newspaper interviews, and a book signing, we had time to meet a long list of Catholic movers and shakers, as well as dine at a few fine establishments and have some serious discussions.

I just finished reading his book, "The Death of a Pope," and it is remarkable for the apologetic angle: it brings up most of the controversies that Catholics are facing today within the Church, and presents both sides -- ultimately letting the reader make up his mind. I recommend it.

He's on EWTN's Catholic Answers today at 4:00 PM PST, he'll be in San Francisco on Sunday night (http://www.ignatius.com/death-of-a-pope-book/event-rsc/pprflyer_sanfrancisco.pdf), and actually at St. Sebastians in Greenbrae on June 4th (http://www.ignatius.com/death-of-a-pope-book/event-rsc/pprflyer_greenbrae.pdf).

Check out his website for more:

http://www.deathofapope.com

And he's on Facebook at:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Piers-Paul-Read/82996687222?ref=ts

"we see that we fought against fascism,
communism, we watched socialist countries throughout
the world just languish while we prospered based on
free enterprise and individual freedom."

You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is about the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it.

Dr. Adrian Rogers
1931 - 2005

Please oppose H.R. 875, H.R. 759, and all other similar legislative proposals.

It is extreme hypocrisy for the government to claim that it can keep food safe for consumers.

Here are the primary objections to these bills and other bills of the same ilk.

1. It is not constitutional for Congress to write laws outside of the powers delegated to it by the Constitution (Article I). There is no mention of a 'food safety administration' in Article I. Congress does NOT possess the power to regulate food production.

2. The army of inspectors this bill (H.R. 875) would create would not be able to complete their tasks as this bill outlines them -- it would violate the Fourth Amendment, which safeguards Americans' right to protection from unreasonable searches and seizures.

3. We already have too many government bureaucracies that deal with food and agriculture. The USDA and FDA obviously can't keep us safe; an additional inept government agency won't be any different. Congress is seriously asking the taxpayers to foot the bill for ANOTHER useless alphabet soup ABC government organization? Not only can we as a country not afford it, but we already know that the FDA and the USDA cannot keep our food safe. It is a heinous lie to claim that a new bureaucracy could.

4. We already have a system to ensure food safety. It's called the free market. Government needs to back off its over-regulation of the food industry. For too long our politicians have been listening to special interests and corporations, and ignoring the demands of the consumer. The free market possesses the most influential means for regulating food safety, but clowns in Washington D.C. continue to aid and abet the evildoing food giants.


Instead of these bills, we need to pass a law that will ensure mandatory labeling of genetically engineered and genetically modified foods. People have a RIGHT to know before they are used as guinea pigs for multinational conglomerates!

Instead of these bills, we need a law that legalizes all farmers everywhere to test their cows for Mad Cow Disease if they so desire.

Instead of these bills, we need to promote small farmers that make commitments to local, healthy, sustainable crops.

Personally, I obtain as much of my food as possible either from what I grow myself or directly from the farmers. Are you trying to tell me that inserting a hopelessly inept government agency in between me and my food is going to increase my safety?

Don't make me laugh.

Thank you for doing the right thing, the legal thing, the constitutional thing -- oppose these bills!

I would just like to point out, that if you READ Article VI (2) of the US Constitution, treaties DO NOT "trump" the Constitution.


It says, "This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding."

Thus there are two parts to the "supreme Law of the Land," the first part being:

"This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof" -- that is, the U.S. Constitution and all Constitutional law which duly flows from it and is legislated in accordance with it;

and the second part being:

"all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States."

Together, these two parts are the "supreme Law of the Land," and by "supreme" it is clarified that they over rule any thing in the States' constitutions or laws.


In practical terms, then, this means that if we can never sign a treaty that would abridge the people's freedom of speech, or if such a treaty was signed, it would not be valid or constitutional.

“Firearms are second only to the Constitution in importance; they are the peoples' liberty's teeth.”

~George Washington

If it is, as I suspect, purely political, the whole idea of minority status should be scrapped, because we ARE all politically equal in this country. Some folks' personal foibles prevent them from acting on the premise of total political equality, but it is a REAL construct, backed up by law and legal precedent, while political "minority status" is not Constitutional OR logical. In fact, every "legal" attempt to elevate behavior to protected status is, on it's face, un-Constitutional.

You can't point out that we are all going to die when your readers are suits and your advertisers depend on Greater Fools investing. Yet even given that, I couldn't help but think what optimistic fools they were when I came across an October '08 issue at the library free magazine rack. Page 52 had a graph depicting the Dow and how much value it had lost over the last century. A decline of 89% during the Great Depression. 42% during the early '70's oil embargo. 33% October '87. A mere 17% decline when LTCM went under in '98. The Dot Com bust saw a loss of 34%. And the housing bubble through last fall saw the Dow down 21%. The graph was screaming out how safe we were since we were so far from the declines of the Great Depression. Now, fast forward to February 2009. The Dow has lost just under a shade of 50%. That is worse than the '70's oil embargo. And over half way to the losses in the Great depression.

...

As Earth faces global cooling, both troglodyte right-wingers and lachrymose left-wingers find Al Gore’s simmering-planet hypothesis increasingly hilarious...

...

— Commentator Harold Ambler declared ... added that Gore “owes the world an apology for his actions regarding global warming.” He called Gore’s assertion that “the science is in” on this issue “the biggest whopper ever sold to the public in the history of mankind.”

...


— “Not only is it false that human activity has any significant effect on global warming or the weather in general, but for the record, global warming is over,” retired Navy meteorologist Dr. Martin Hertzberg wrote on carbon-sense.com.

The physical chemist and self-described “scientist and lifelong liberal Democrat” added: “The average temperature of Earth’s atmosphere has declined over the last 10 years. From the El Niño Year of 1998 until January 2007, it dropped a quarter of a degree Celsius. From January 2007 to the spring of 2008, it dropped a whopping three-quarters of a degree Celsius. Those data further prove that the fear-mongering hysteria about human-caused global warming is completely unjustified and is totally counterproductive to our nation’s essential needs and security.”

...

“The so-called ‘consensus’ on man-made global warming is not holding up,” Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., told his colleagues Jan. 8. “It is becoming increasingly clear that skepticism about man-made global warming fear is not a partisan left versus right issue.”

So-called “global warming” has accomplished the impossible: It has united liberals and conservatives in laughter.

Redistribution of money from people who create wealth to the parasite class will only accomplish more of what the last 40 years has: a permanent welfare class and welfare voting block that ensure one party welfare state rule. There is no real difference between Bush and LBJ and contrary to the communist’ gnashing of teeth, Bush has grown government, not reduced it. In doing so he didn’t even manage to make the trains run on time. Obama will be no different, though he will have to go to war in Pakistan instead of staying in Iraq to keep the tottering empire together. At least Obama has sense enough and intelligence enough to recognize and to be scared of what lies ahead, though the outcome will be the same if he doesn’t slash the size of government, military included.
Due to the infection that FDR started and virtually every administration has nurtured in order to get and stay elected, even the sainted Reagan, we have a welfare and warfare state that is out of control and about to consume itself, and you and me along with it. In less than a decade, assuming the currency doesn’t collapse before then, “social spending” and military spending will be unsustainable and if taxes are raised to 100% levels, there will not be enough money to pay for Obama’s wish list.

Socialism, whether packaged under a D or R label will not work and hasn’t worked anywhere on the globe. All that can be done now is wait for the rotting carcass to fall over and start over.

Posted by:NoParasitesPlease

December 10, 2008 2:13:06 PMRespond ^

"This report shows that some of our country's largest companies and federal contractors, many of which are household names, continue to use offshore tax havens to avoid paying their fair share of taxes to the U.S. And, some of those companies have even received emergency economic funds from the government," Dorgan said. "I think we should take action to shut down these tax dodgers, and we will be introducing legislation to do just that."

For the past four years we've opposed (and only occasionally supported) policies associated with Republicans in general, and President Bush in particular. Some have assumed from this that we're anti-Republican, anti-Bush, and pro-Democrat.

Now we have the opposite problem. The Democrats have gained control of Congress and the White House. We've responded by opposing coercive Democratic proposals. As a result . . .

Some people jump to the conclusion that we're anti-Democrat, anti-Obama, and pro-Republican. Again, nothing could be further from the truth.

What we are, and intend to remain, is consistent.

Once again, we believe all politicians, of all parties, are fundamentally unqualified to decide how other people should live. We do not believe in top-down social engineering by Republicans, Democrats, or anyone else. We believe in critical thinking, limited, decentralized power structures, individual liberty, and personal responsibility.

“When we fought for these rebates for American workers, we had visions of these checks spurring local businesses and encouraging our regional economy in places like South Oakland. I’ve been shocked to find out some of my constituents have been having a high time on Uncle Sam’s dime. I’m tired of these [expletive] students crying foul about student loans and increasing costs, and then when you throw ‘em a bone every now and again, they go and try to smoke the damn thing,” lamented Doyle.

When Bush II entered the White House, courtesy of the SCOTUS, he found a full treasury, bases and vassals all over the world, and little or no opposition to American hegemony. Obama is facing a prospect of a world in which opposition to and resentment of the American Empire are substantial; vassals are few and unreliable; and the government debt so big it defies comprehension. The American economy is tottering, while foreign governments that were willing to fund U.S. credit expansion are increasingly reluctant to continue doing so.

All of Obama's cabinet secretaries and advisors are old Washington hands, from VP Joseph Biden to Hillary Clinton taking over Foggy Bottom. By the looks and sounds of it, Barack Obama's inauguration in January will actually be the Clinton Restoration, at home and abroad.

Two economists, Andrew Mountford and Harald Uhlig, recently examined the history of Keynesian fiscal stimulus, and reached similar conclusions -- it doesn't seem to work.

[Their results:]

- an unexpected tax cut is the best fiscal policy to stimulate the economy

- deficit-financed government spending doesn't stimulate the economy very much

- increased government spending crowds out private investment

[W]e join the great twentieth-century economists in opposing the Federal Reserve System, which has reduced the value of the dollar by 95 percent since it began in 1913.