“Honing-in as it were on every knot and
toadstool they can discover disfiguring trunks within the forest of Canada's
chartered banks, they overlook the tremendous merits of the forest itself, and
thus manage to arrive at precisely the wrong answer to the question their paper
poses.
That question, to paraphrase it, is, ‘In
light of Canada's experience with commercial banknotes, what must regulators do
to perfect today's private digital currencies?’ Stand back a ways, ignore those
toadstools and knots, and behold that glorious old forest. The right response,
surely, is not unlike the one French businessmen famously gave to Jean-Baptiste
Colbert, France's Comptroller-General of Finances, back in 1681: leave
them be.”
If you watch a colony of ants at work, do you know what is
best for each ant at every moment? Of
course not! How then, can central
planners, who look at all of us from flyover distance, possibly know what is
best for each of us?
“The essence of all central planning
is unavoidably making 'collective' choices that forcefully override peaceful
individual choices. The problem with this substitution of local and individual
for foreign and collective choices–looking past the moral implications–is the
fundamental limitation of central planners’ knowledge and abilities.”
What mattered to our ancestors was freedom,
not the false sense of security that comes with police states, welfare states,
and overgrown military and intelligence establishments. That’s why Americans
lived without drug laws for more than a century (and without income taxation,
economic regulations, Social Security, Medicare, public schooling, central
bank, paper money, immigration controls, Pentagon, enormous standing army, CIA,
NSA, and national-security state). Too bad later Americans moved in an opposite
direction, including the adoption of drug laws, just like those in Nazi
Germany.
I cannot agree with this enough! abolish the war on drugs! Legalize
every drug and move on. The war on drugs
leads to the militarization of the police and to increased use of surveillance
equipment and hacking tools by not only national security operatives and
agencies but now local police as well.
We may initially feel safer with these tactics, but they lead toward the
KGB, Gestapo and SWAT teams that break down innocent people’s doors, escalate
conflict and make racial and other gaps in societies deeper and more hostile.
“ What mattered
to our ancestors was freedom, not the false sense of security that comes with
police states, welfare states, and overgrown military and intelligence
establishments. That’s why Americans lived without drug laws for more than a
century (and without income taxation, economic regulations, Social Security,
Medicare, public schooling, central bank, paper money, immigration controls,
Pentagon, enormous standing army, CIA, NSA, and national-security state). Too bad
later Americans moved in an opposite direction, including the adoption of drug
laws, just like those in Nazi Germany.”
“I am reminded frequently of the
ancient Greek way of war. Armor was expensive and only the wealthy and powerful
could afford it. And those with the armor stood in the front line as they were
most able to engage in the cutting and thrusting and still survive. Armor was
also heavy and they could not run away, so wars were only fought when vital
interests were at stake and they were fought to the death for most of those on
the battlefield. I fancy a
phalanx of hoplites with Warner, Cardin, Schiff, Wolfowitz, Cheney and Libby
arrayed on the front line in their fine armor manufactured by Halliburton. That
way they could have all the war they want and experience it first-hand. I doubt
they would last very long as they are both moral and physical cowards, but given
that reality, they just might think a bit harder about promoting the type of
fearmongering that will only end by sending the children of other Americans off
to war.”
“Moral
Philosophy Needs a Moral License to Offend”
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