Twisted Logic

https://www.corbettreport.com/your-children-are-being-programmed/

Is social engineering a thing?  Are children being programmed?  There is some truth to these claims.  Watch the video.

http://thefederalist.com/2017/04/03/trump-administration-not-bunch-toadies-russia/

I have made this point all along.  Nothing Trump is doing is pro Russia.  The loud claims that Trump is Putin’s puppet do not pass the smell test.  But then again, not much of what the media puts out there does.

https://niskanencenter.org/blog/can-reusable-rockets-land-enough-customers-spacex/

“SpaceX’s actions yesterday reveal how innovative the U.S. commercial space sector can be when given the opportunity and necessary breathing room to experiment. The goal now will be to transform that historic launch and landing into a frequent occurrence. As SpaceX’s CEO Elon Musk has said, the company will be ‘successful, ironically, when it becomes boring.’ For rocket landings to become that commonplace, though, we need to work to allow the demand for them.”

Side note for those who don’t know about SpaceX:  SpaceX’s is the first private company to launch satellites into space for the government, developing the booster that launched the rocket vertically, and then re-launched the same booster.  Incredible stuff.  By a private company.  Not by the State.

This is cool stuff.  And I agree with the quote.  In fact, perhaps, this is the best case study of the power of the market.

https://mises.org/blog/forget-foreign-aid-%E2%80%94-adopt-free-trade-instead

Free trade has brought economic prosperity and lifted millions of people out of poverty in a way which is unmatched in human history. Free trade not only benefits all countries involved economically but also promotes peace and goodwill between those countries. Therefore, the UK should aim to pursue free trade with countries all over the world.

Absolutely.  Free trade > foreign aid.  Both morally and economically.

https://fee.org/articles/cubans-want-capitalism/

“Cuba is sometimes idealized as a successful countermodel to capitalism. This month, however, the University of Chicago’s NORC released a study about the opinions of Cuba’s population. The findings of the poll were clear: Cubans want capitalism.”

I submit that the people of virtually all socialist countries want the same thing. Free markets > State Control.

You’ve got nice ideals Bernie, but get a reality check.  The State is not the answer.

https://theconversation.com/to-really-help-us-workers-we-should-invest-in-robots-71125

There is never a strong argument for government involvement in the market, however, there is a better argument for subsidizing robots and artificial intelligence than there is for taxing them as the economically illiterate Bill Gates would tell you.

“The stakes are high: If the U.S. government ignores or avoids globalization and automation, it will stifle innovation. Americans can figure out how to strengthen society while integrating robotics into the workforce, or we can leave the job to China.”

http://www.aei.org/publication/some-thoughts-on-equal-pay-day-an-annual-event-that-spreads-statistical-misinformation-about-the-gender-pay-gap/

I’m with Mark Perry on this one.

http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2017/april/03/does-it-matter-who-pulls-the-trigger-in-the-drone-wars/

Two important quotes:

“… there may be a window of opportunity to turn the anti-Trump rhetoric into a review of the failed policies of the last decade and a half.”

“No matter who pulls the trigger — Bush, Obama or Trump — civilian deaths are not accidental, but a policy of preventable accident. The new drone rules under Trump are simply another example.”

As Jacob Honrberger says in his blog post today

“Not only have they started the fires and poured fuel on the fires in the Middle East, they have then used those fires as the excuse to suspend civil liberties here at home, purportedly to keep us ‘safe’ from the terrorist blowback their fires produce over there. There is also the impending bankruptcy of the U.S. government owing to out of control federal spending and debt to consider.”

His blog post can be found here: http://www.fff.org/2017/04/03/just-bring-troops-home/

In the Vein of Tolerance

http://thefederalist.com/2017/03/27/political-islam-todays-anti-american-long-march-institutions/

I wish we could get out of our sound bite, 140-character world and realize what is at stake.  Here are three quotes from the article if you don’t have time or interest to read the whole thing:

“My central argument is that political Islam implies a constitutional order fundamentally incompatible with the U.S. Constitution and with the ‘constitution of liberty’ that is the foundation of the American way of life.”

“Yet the advance of political Islam manifests itself not only in acts of violence. Even as billions are spent on military intervention and drone strikes, the ideological infrastructure of political Islam in the United States continues to grow because officials are concerned only with criminal conspiracies to commit acts of violence, not with the ideology that inspires such acts.”

“We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal.”

https://mises.org/blog/why-angela-merkel-hates-tax-competition

More states means more competition - for people, enterprise AND tax policy.  Increased competition is always and everywhere good for the individual.  Brexit is good for competition, as would be the break up the EU, the US, China, Russia, etc into more smaller nations.  Things that make you go, “Hmmm.”

Common Sense

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fj4CQmBbDsk

Three takeaways:

1.                   Let the investigations uncover and implicate before we jump to conclusions

2.                   Calm down. The US has meddled in 81 elections (that we know of – so almost certainly underestimating) in the last couple decades.

3.                   Be careful what you wish for.

https://fee.org/articles/why-free-immigration-is-the-moderate-common-sense-position/

I watched the whole debate the other day and thoroughly enjoyed it.  I side with Caplan. 

1.                   Individuals have rights.

2.                   States or collectives do not have rights. 

3.                   Individuals do not derive their rights from being a part of the group. 

4.                   Immigration being completely free is in fact the moderate point of view.

“Far from being utopian, saying ‘Immigration is a human right’ is just the moderate, common-sense position that when natives and foreigners voluntarily interact, strangers are morally obliged to leave them alone unless the overall consequences are clearly awful.”

I confess this is one area in which my thinking has changed radically.  I used to be for strong borders but now I question the very premise of believing the state has a true power at all. My ideology continually evolves to an increasingly unwavering view of private property and individual rights.

http://www.fff.org/2017/03/28/national-security-state-wiretap-trump/

If you refuse to believe that Trump was not wiretapped by the intelligence departments, you need to read this. 

1)                  No, we don’t have proof.  We may eventually, we may not.

2)                  The Intelligence Communities do listen to everyday Americans regularly.

3)                  Based on 2) and regardless of any wild conspiracy theories, we can say with confidence that it is likely they did listen in on Trump.

4)                  And they have lied, and will continue to do so, when asked to testify on this topic.

How people fail to see this is beyond me.  

The Problem with Power? Power itself.

http://www.dictionary.com/wordoftheday/

Dictionary.com word of the day for today is throttlebottom – “a harmless incompetent public office.” 

AV à Nearly all public offices are throttlebottoms.  The scary part is when they seize to be throttlebottoms due to the harmfulness of the office.

http://blog.independent.org/2017/03/23/is-a-national-government-necessary-for-national-defense/

I have always been amazed that people think the world is going to take us over if we didn’t have the national government providing national defense.  Yes, it could happen but this eventuality is certainly far from clear.  And in any event, it would not happen before we had a chance to respond.   Numerous small and infantile countries around the world remain independent from the USA, Russia, Germany or any of their neighbors.  Quite frankly, it is possible that most countries would simply say, “Wow, thank God the US isn’t intervening in our affairs.  We should embrace our mutual sovereignty.”

AV à I read this quote of the day on the Future of Freedom Foundation daily email.  It hits home that the Constitution was known to be imperfect and thus was able to be amended.  These amendments were set up in such a way minimize the risk of changing the Constitution to enable tyranny.  If we change the Constitution through the judiciary we set ourselves up for future failure even if it is easier and helpful today.

“If, in the opinion of the people, distribution or modification of the constitutional powers be in any particular wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment in the way which the Constitution designates. But let there be no change by usurpation; for though this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed. The precedent must always greatly overbalance in permanent evil any partial or transient benefit which the use can at any time yield.”

– George Washington, Farewell Address [September 26, 1796]

https://mises.org/library/are-central-banks-worthy-trust

As C. Jay Engel tells us in this article, the problem isn’t the abuses of the Federal Reserve. Rather, it is the Federal Reserve itself.

“Carney characterizes himself as wanting to issue a hard crack down on the ‘bad apples,’ but the solution should simply be to eradicate any possibility of these bad apples getting these positions in the first place. How can a bad apple fill a bureaucratic position that does not exist?”

I would like to extend this line of thinking one step further:

à Abuses of power (and the resulting force) are not the problem.  The problem is power (and force) itself.  If we eradicate the State there is no power and with no power comes no abuse.  Humans can live and trade freely with one another with the freedom to associate (or not!) with whomever they like.

http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2017/03/ai-warfare-help-offense-defense.html

Does artificial intelligence benefit the attacker or defender more in war?  I have no idea.

http://www.aei.org/publication/wednesday-evening-links-11/

Mark Perry at Carpe Diem blog:

“Could this be the Future of Medicine? It’s called direct primary care, and it works like this: Instead of accepting insurance for routine visits and drugs, these doctors charge a monthly membership fee that covers most of what the average patient needs, including visits and drugs at much lower prices

Update: Here’s a great example of a direct primary care practice in Kansas, NeuCare, with monthly membership fees of $55 for adults, $75 for seniors, and $130 for families (2 adults, 2 children) that include clinic visits, routine lab tests, flu shots, communications, etc. House calls are $50, after hours $100.”

http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2017/03/video-this-is-what-healthcare-looks.html

This is sad.  This is what socialism looks like.  This is what happens when you make healthcare a public right.  This is where the Obamacare & Ryancare roads lead.  This is bad for every single American.

http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2017/03/bill-kristol-slams-trumpcare.html

Unfortunately, I agree with Bill Kristol.

“The health care bill doesn't

a) lower costs,

b) improve insurance,

c) increase liberty, or

d) make health care better.

So what's the point?”

The Misery of Day Light Savings Time

https://fee.org/articles/daylight-saving-began-as-war-time/

A few quotes, "government’s attempts at controlling time and the implementation of daylight saving time was started to support war. Daylight saving time (DST) or “Fast Time” as it was first introduced in the United States in 1918 was signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson in order to support World War I. Seven months later it was repealed by the majority of the states. Until President Franklin D. Roosevelt instituted year-round “War Time” in 1942. That’s right, even daylight saving time was instituted and enforced to promote war."

"There are also parallels between government’s control and manipulation of time and currency. Regardless of the government's manipulation, changing the time of day does not mean that there's more time in a day, nor does printing more dollars mean an increase in buying power. In fact, government intervention in time and currency creates more problems than anything."

This Should Strike Outrage

As it pertains to the raid in Yemen that resulted in the death of a Navy SEAL, the Pentagon just finished investigating the Pentagon and unsurprisingly, the Pentagon found no wrong doing from the Pentagon.

Now some part of the government will likely look into what the CIA -and its surveillance techniques and we can preliminary conclude the government will find no wrong doing by the government.

The American people don't seem as upset about this as they should be...

North Korea Benefits from Free Trade in America

https://fee.org/articles/trump-is-right-government-surveillance-is-wrong/

We should not be surprised Trump flip flops on this.  He never espouses any consistent ideology.

https://fee.org/articles/freedom-benefits-everyone-even-those-who-dont-have-it/

Free markets benefit everyone, including people who are not free.  The power of the free market is unfathomable to man.  This is part of the reason so many despise it and turn away from it.  Think about it!

Quote of the Day from page 43 of F.A. Hayek’s seminal work The Road to Serfdom

“The idea of complete centralisation of the direction of economic activity still appalls most people, not only because of the stupendous difficulty of the task, but even more because of the horror inspired by the idea of everything being directed from a single centre. If we are nevertheless rapidly moving towards such a state this is largely because most people still believe that it must be possible to find some Middle Way between ‘atomistic’ competition and central direction. Nothing indeed seems at first more plausible, or is more likely to appeal to reasonable people, than the idea that our goal must be neither the extreme decentralisation of free competition, nor the complete centralization of a single plan, but some judicious mixture of the two methods. Yet mere common sense proves a treacherous guide in this field. Although competition can bear some admixture of regulation, it cannot be combined with planning to any extent we like without ceasing to operate as an effective guide to production. Nor is "planning" a medicine which, taken in small doses, can produce the effects for which one might hope from its thoroughgoing application. Both competition and central direction become poor and inefficient tools if they are incomplete; they are alternative principles used to solve the same problem, and a mixture of the two means that neither will really work and that the result will be worse than if either system had been consistently relied upon. Or, to express it differently, planning and competition can be combined only by planning for competition, but not by planning against competition.”

Bottom line:

-                      Nobody really wants Centralized Control or Socialism

-                      But free markets and socialism work against each other.  So “moderates” mixing the two ideologies will fail.

-                      The best answer is in complete and total free markets and free trade. 

-                      There is no such thing as unfair trade.  All trade is, by definition, fair when it is free.

https://danieljmitchell.wordpress.com/2017/03/06/foreign-aid-undermines-economic-development-and-subsidizes-bad-policy-in-developing-nations/

I saw a great line in this article by Dan Mitchell:

“Foreign aid: When you take the money from poor people in a rich country and give it to the rich people in a poor country.”

Hits the nail on the head.