Laying Blame for the Economic Mess: Milton Keynes or John Maynard Friedman?

On September 2, 2009, the Financial Post published an opinion piece by Penn Bullock that asks whether or not the current economic crisis was the result of Milton Friedman’s monetarism. Casting him rightly as someone held up as a hero by libertarians, Bullock concludes:

For two libertarian champions of free markets and limited government, this legacy has the ring of a world-historic irony.

In response, I submitted the following letter to the editor of the Financial Post. From what I can tell, it was not published by that paper. Read more

The Interest Myth Exploded

I recently received a question from a reader concerning my post of October 20, 2008, entitled “Banking and Morality: 100% Reserve versus “Fractional” Reserves“. It reads as follows: Read more

Beer, Gas & Leviathan

My September 13th article and video “Canada’s 2008 Election: Green? Shift?” led one of my FaceBook friends, Alex, to make the following comment: Read more

Teacher's Pay: Merit versus Market

The National Post published an editorial today reporting that: Read more

Atlas Shrugged, Freedom, and the Reincarnation of Whitaker Chambers

In an article titled “On Libertarian Bolshevism”, conservative blogger Adam T. Yoshida argues that we see two approaches being proposed to achieve a free society that not only are doomed to fail, but also make it more difficult for a “Reactionary Libertarian” to achieve a freer society. Yoshida implies that the Reactionary Libertarian has an approach that can achieve freedom in a society that is either indifferent to, or hostile to, the goal of a free society: “going back to some older social structures and institutions”. Read more

Trudeaupia: Free Health Care for Extraterrestrials?

On the National Post’s blog, columnist Jonathan Kay reports that Justin Trudeau – son of the now-deceased former Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau (a father of Canada’s Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms) – shared with a questioner his opinion on whether Canada’s Charter would protect extraterrestrials, were they to (exist and) land in Canada. In a nutshell, he said that the Charter would apply if the alien first became a Canadian citizen. His response betrayed an ignorance of the Charter, given that several of its provisions apply even to those lacking Canadian citizenship. Read more

Inflation, the Gold Standard, and Fractional Reserve Banking

Interested in learning (or about learning more) about money and banking? Read more

With "Property Rights" Advocates Like These, Who Needs Tyrants?

In recent years, a group of land owners (mostly farmers) in Ontario, Canada has – largely under the former leadership of an electrician named Randy Hillier – become a voice deemed by the media to be worthy of news coverage. On the surface, the Ontario Landowners Association appears to be in favour of government ceasing to violate their property rights. Their signs – which can be seen all over the Ontario countryside, posted to farm fences, particularly in Eastern Ontario – read: “This is our land. STOP. BACK OFF GOVERNMENT”.

Former OLA chief Randy Hillier wearing
a tee-shirt version of the sign found
on many farm properties in Ontario.

Approximately a year ago, Hillier resigned from the management of the OLA and used his popularity among members and supporters to win himself the nomination of the Progressive Conservative (PC) party in Ontario. Many advocates of property rights were perplexed by the move, given that the PC party historically (but with the brief exception of the leadership of Mike Harris) has been Ontario’s most substantively socialist/collectivist party. It introduced the Human Rights Code, rent controls, and the provincial income tax; it banned private health insurance and set up a tax-funded government monopoly on health insurance, etc.. Rather than conclude that Hillier has given up on advocating property rights, it would appear more accurate to conclude that Hillier’s expectations are merely naive, and that he believes he can (presumably with some ongoing assistance by the OLA) transform the “red tory” PC party into a party that is in favour of government that defends rather than violates, property rights.

That he is likely to fail in his effort to turn a pig’s ear into a silk purse becomes even more obvious when one considers the decidedly mixed bag of political wants held by members of the OLA. At times, the mutually exclusive nature of these wants has become high-profile. For example, when the OLA clogged the traffic arteries of Toronto’s core at and around the Ontario legislature, the media did live radio interviews with the many people driving their tractors to the event. There were indeed some libertarian-sounding property-rights advocates among those interviewed, but such members were decidedly mixed with farmers that wanted something akin to tax-funded subsidies for failing agricultural ventures, etc. (Interesting aside: the effort to get headlines by creating a traffic jam and storming the legislature grounds with tractors got overshadowed in two ways: 1. a competing farmer association [probably supportive of the governing Liberal party] pulled the exact same stunt one week earlier, and 2. when the OLA did it, a man pulled up in a truck, babbled incoherently, poured gasoline on himself, and lit himself on fire…guess which story got the bigger headline? It makes one wonder how many “Thank-you” and “Job Well Done” cards the man received from the Liberals).

All of which brings us to the news today that the OLA is – loudly, and with a press release – threatening to “clear cut” 100 square kilometers of wooded land in Eastern Ontario. According to today’s pre-fab report by the Canadian Press (you know the sort: printed in newspapers of every stripe; just add a headline, print it in your newspaper, and pretend that you are still a source of news), the threatened clear cutting relates to a law which violates property rights so as to protect endangered species:

If an endangered bird is found on someone’s property, [the OLA's Jack] MacLaren says their property values plummet and they can no longer use part of the land for farming.

“Ah”, you might infer, “the OLA is objecting to the endangered species legislation, saying that it violates their property rights”. Well, sadly, no. The Canadian Press explains that:

[McLaren] says that’s not fair because the government doesn’t offer to compensate those landowners.

Might I suggest changing the OLA’s sign a bit: “This land is our land. STOP. Back off government...unless you come with gifts of money taken forcibly from other people“.

This is yet another example of people wanting “freedom for me, but not for thee”, and it all results from wanting freedom for the wrong reasons. The rightness of defending ones control over ones own land is properly founded on the necessity of that control if one is to use the land in accordance with ones own rational decisions about its use. In other words: property makes it possible for one to live a rational (hence productive and happy) life. Asking for “compensation” from the government in exchange for the violation of ones own property is not a call for freedom. It is a call to push the costs of tyranny onto someone else’s shoulders. It is not a defence of property: it is a call to tax others and hand the loot over to landowners; it is a call to violate other peoples property; it is a sanctioning of government violations of property; it is a call for the government to protect landowners from the effects of tyranny, by imposing additional tyranny other others.

If the OLA is successful in their bid to loot other Ontarians, one can only hope that they spend a few bucks on a copy of Atlas Shrugged (and that they actually read it), so that they can realize, before it is too late, just how badly they are defeating their stated goal.

Tribalist/Conservative Watch #2

Today, the Barrie Examiner reported that Ontario’s Progressive Conservative Party leader, John Tory, was in Barrie on Saturday. He made the following comment, among others, which I submit for your interpretation:

The McGuinty government isn’t making it very attractive to do business in Barrie…

This implies that, according to conservative ideology, government should pass laws or spend money in an attempt to encourage persons to open/keep businesses in a given community. In other words: according to conservative ideology, the government should centrally plan the economy. This, incidentally, is one of the reasons why you will hear John Tory use the weasel term “free enterprise” (which simply refers to private businesses operating within a centrally planned economy) but not the term “free market” (which refers to a market that is not centrally planned, but shaped by the production and consumption choices of individuals).

The advocate of a free market complains not that the government has not made things “more attractive” to business, but that the government has not “eliminated legal disincentives” to business.

ADDENDUM:

One might ask: “Well, surely the same can be said about the Liberals, so why aren’t you picking on them?”

My answer is: Ontario liberals are openly socialist/corporativist/collectivist.  They’re not trying to fool anyone about their ideology.  In contrast, the conservatives – who likewise are socialists/corporativists/collectivists – try to win the support of capitalists and individualists by using weasel words and by condemning the liberals for being opposed to tax or spending cuts.  Yet, all the while, its a matter of documented fact that the conservatives have raised, not lowered taxes, and have increased government involvement in non-governmental things (like health care), not decreased it.  As a result of this dishonesty and political cross-dressing, the conservatives have achieved three main things:

1. people have been deceived into believing that they are at the “right” end of the political spectrum, even though that is false;

2. the size and existence of the conservatives’ parties have ensured that voters have two choices: socialism/corporatism/collectivism dressed up in red, or socialism/corporatism/collectivism dressed up in blue.

and

3. people have come to associate the word “conservative” with: dishonest, bait-and-switch, say-one-thing-and-do-the-oppositism; with “secret agendas”.

If Ontario voters are going to have the ability to vote for a sizable party that is not socialist/corporativist/collectivist, the the socialist/corporatist/collectivist party that pretends to be a capitalist/individualist party must be exposed as what it really is: pro-socialism, pro-corporatism, pro-collectivism, and willing to falsely claim to be capitalist/individualist in order to ensure that no actual party of capitalism/individualism is believed to be necessary.

Tribalist/Conservative Watch

As reported by Canadian Press, just the latest bit of tribalist ideology from the leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario:

Critics say the McGuinty government has done little beyond giving lip service to the issue. Progressive Conservative Leader John Tory said the initiatives so far are just the “bare minimum to look like they’re acting.”

That would create thousands and thousands of jobs and produce hundreds and hundreds of millions in revenue that could be applied to a whole variety of things,” he said. “They’re doing none of that.”

That’s right folks. According to conservatives in Ontario, the purpose of a strong economy is: to raise more revenue for the government to seize and spend on “a whole variety of things”.

Tribalist/Conservative Q&A

Q. Isn’t the improvement of my own standard of living the purpose of improving my own income?

A. Don’t be silly. The purpose of improving your productivity and income is to give the government more money with which to buy your vote.

Q. Don’t I try to earn more partly to secure myself a fund for rainy days?

A. Nope. Taking care of you in bad times is the government’s job.

Q. Don’t I try to earn more so as to pursue my own happiness?

A. How can you think about your own happiness when others are in discomfort?!

All of which self-serving altruism brings to memory this excerpt from Ayn Rand’s “What is Capitalism?” (the first essay in her book Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal):

Now consider the alternative – the tribal society, where all men throw their efforts, values, ambitions, and goals into a tribal pool or common pot, then wait hungrily at its rim, while the leader of a clique of cooks stirs it with a bayonet in one hand and a blank check on all their lives in the other.

…to be continued…and continued…and continued…

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