What’s with all the nihilistic, amoral, dark anti-hero leads in movies and shows? Are we supposed to treat horrible characters as pinnacles of human behavior now? The bleak content that’s crept its way mainstream over the last 10 years should concern us all. The stories we tell matter, for they influence what we believe and what values we adopt. Fortunately, a renewed appreciation for natural rights and individualism could be the antidote to the immense darkness that’s blanketed American culture as of late. That’s what we’ll get down to on this feature episode of Out of Frame.
More to the point, to borrow a leaf from Uber or Lyft, he would engage in peak load pricing: charge quite a bit for morning and evening rush hours, and very little or nothing at all at 3am. Then, traffic would move smoothly 24-7 and congestion would be a phenomenon of the past. Ditto for all other amenities, such as airport access, museums, now under government control.
I recently took a trip from Brooklyn to Vancouver, Canada via the Newark Airport. Everywhere I went, I was confronted with the Sovietization of our economy; that is, congestion, long waiting lines, interminable ones. We beat the USSR in the Cold War to be sure; however, their economic system has been quite a bit more than slightly taking over ours.
First of all, the Belt Parkway from Coney Island to the Verrazano Bridge was an adventure in bumper to bumper driving. Not only a bicyclist, nor even a moderately fast runner, but even a race walker could have beaten us. The going in Staten Island was much the same: wall to wall cars, trucks and buses, all sitting there, their occupants twiddling their thumbs in frustration.
Then the Newark Airport. You try to get through those massive TSA lines in less than 90-120 minutes; good luck to you. We are now advised to get to the airport not one hour before take-off, nor even two; three hours is now the eminently reasonable suggestion. I followed this sterling advice and was glad I did. I needed pretty much every minute of that time to get through to my plane.
Why all these massive tie-ups, Soviet style? In that country, during those times, there were massive queues for pretty much everything. We used to look down upon those poor sufferers. They faced serious waiting time for clothes, groceries, toys, you name it; there where interminable line ups. Everything was provided by government and everywhere there was congestion.
In the U.S. in contrast, this malady takes place, also, whenever the state rears its ugly head, but, happily, they are not as widespread as in that forlorn economy. During my trip to the Big Apple I also had occasion to visit two other entities organized, administered, managed, supported by, the all-loving government: the American Museum of Natural History and the Museum of Modern Art. You’ll never guess my experience there? Yes, perpetual queues. One minor detail: out of towners pay admission fees, hefty ones; locals? voluntary contributions only. I guess they don’t much want to encourage tourism.
The unprecedented success of Keynesianism is due to the fact that it provides an apparent justification for the “deficit spending” policies of contemporary governments. It is the pseudo-philosophy of those who can think of nothing else than to dissipate the capital accumulated by previous generations.
Lord Keynes’s main contribution did not lie in the development of new ideas but “in escaping from the old ones,” as he himself declared at the end of the Preface to his “General Theory.” The Keynesians tell us that his immortal achievement consists in the entire refutation of what has come to be known as Say’s Law of Markets. The rejection of this law, they declare, is the gist of all Keynes’s teachings; all other propositions of his doctrine follow with logical necessity from this fundamental insight and must collapse if the futility of his attack on Say’s Law can be demonstrated.1
Now it is important to realize that what is called Say’s Law was in the first instance designed as a refutation of doctrines popularly held in the ages preceding the development of economics as a branch of human knowledge. It was not an integral part of the new science of economics as taught by the Classical economists. It was rather a preliminary—the exposure and removal of garbled and untenable ideas which dimmed people’s minds and were a serious obstacle to a reasonable analysis of conditions.
Whenever business turned bad, the average merchant had two explanations at hand: the evil was caused by a scarcity of money and by general overproduction. Adam Smith, in a famous passage in “The Wealth of Nations,” exploded the first of these myths. Say devoted himself predominantly to a thorough refutation of the second.
As long as a definite thing is still an economic good and not a “free good,” its supply is not, of course, absolutely abundant. There are still unsatisfied needs which a larger supply of the good concerned could satisfy. There are still people who would be glad to get more of this good than they are really getting. With regard to economic goods there can never be absolute overproduction. (And economics deals only with economic goods, not with free goods such as air which are no object of purposive human action, are therefore not produced, and with regard to which the employment of terms like underproduction and overproduction is simply nonsensical.)
With regard to economic goods there can be only relative overproduction. While the consumers are asking for definite quantities of shirts and of shoes, business has produced, say, a larger quantity of shoes and a smaller quantity of shirts. This is not general overproduction of all commodities. To the overproduction of shoes corresponds an underproduction of shirts. Consequently the result can not be a general depression of all branches of business. The outcome is a change in the exchange ratio between shoes and shirts. If, for instance, previously one pair of shoes could buy four shirts, it now buys only three shirts. While business is bad for the shoemakers, it is good for the shirtmakers. The attempts to explain the general depression of trade by referring to an allegedly general overproduction are therefore fallacious.
Commodities, says Say, are ultimately paid for not by money, but by other commodities. Money is merely the commonly used medium of exchange; it plays only an intermediary role. What the seller wants ultimately to receive in exchange for the commodities sold is other commodities.
To put this in plain English, the masses are fully responsible for their own servitude because they voluntarily allow themselves to be lied to, cheated, taxed, manipulated, controlled, beaten, ruled, and murdered by the very people they purposely place in power over them.
“The ostensible supporters of the Constitution, like the ostensible supporters of most other governments, are made up of three classes, viz.: 1. Knaves, a numerous and active class, who see in the government an instrument which they can use for their own aggrandizement or wealth. 2. Dupes – a large class, no doubt – each of whom, because he is allowed one voice out of millions in deciding what he may do with his own property, and because he is permitted to have the same voice in robbing, enslaving, and murdering others, that others have in robbing, enslaving, and murdering himself, is stupid enough to imagine that he is a “free man,” a “sovereign”; that this is “a free government”; “a government of equal rights,” “the best government on earth,” and such like absurdities. 3. A class who have some appreciation of the evils of government, but either do not see how to get rid of them, or do not choose to so sacrifice their private interests as to give themselves seriously and earnestly to the work of making a change.”
Given all that has happened over the past 233 years, and especially the past three years, one might wonder why it is so vital to scrap the U.S. Constitution, (and eliminate government rule) and to cease immediately what in many cases could be considered Constitution worship. In fact, most will take considerable offense at the suggestion that the Constitution is a heinous document and a fraud, and in great part, has been the foundation of our liberty destruction. After all, many actually believe that this politician’s dream came directly from God. This could not be so if the American masses had not been duped into believing that a piece of parchment created and drafted in secret, in the dark of night, behind closed and locked doors; and by the very worst and most depraved element of society, politicians, was meant only to expand the powers of a centralized federal (national) government to levels so extreme as to defy sanity.
What level of nonsense is evident when the majority of the supposed most intelligent beings on earth believe that a political document can save them, give and protect their ‘rights’; all based on the absurd notion that all that is necessary for individual sovereignty is that an all-powerful government follow to the letter the same ‘rules’ it created for itself out of whole cloth? Maybe this can be explained better by the master of propaganda, Edward Bernays, when he said:
“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.”
To put this in plain English, the masses are fully responsible for their own servitude because they voluntarily allow themselves to be lied to, cheated, taxed, manipulated, controlled, beaten, ruled, and murdered by the very people they purposely place in power over them.
It seems that I get correspondence daily to the effect that if only ‘our’ constitution were respected and followed, we all would be saved, lights would shine in the heavens, happiness would flourish, bells would ring, prosperity and equality would reign, and government would restrict itself and become a paternal and loving master.
The SADS truth is that the shots are working spectacularly well. And thanks to their real purpose Moderna, Pfizer, and the globally interconnected cabal of depopulationists have helped settle the issue of abortion for society. There is no need for “my body, my choice” protests or “insurrections” ladies and betamelt white knights, just go get another booster and you can throw away your rubbers for good.
Thanks to Moderna and Pfizer, the panic over the recent SCOTUS decision to return the issue of abortion back to the states is without substance, if not constitutionally then thanks to “following the science”, conceptually.
Constitutionally, the court decision is just the beginning of a new federalism war, a new current thing that will be politically useful as a midterm variant of concern while also assisting the interests of globalists in destroying states’ rights to commandeer the nation more than they already have.
Everybody and his brother, sniffing the possibility of government money (both state and federal), is going to set up a 501c3 that accepts grants and straight funding, to assist women to travel to a state that permits abortions.
The press will run gripping human interest stories on the efforts. Somebody will call it THE NEW UNDERGROUND RAILROAD.
“Women who can’t get abortions in their home states are basically SLAVES. And they have to flee to exercise their natural rights…”
What about Globalists? Think it through. In trying to erase national borders and set up one system of governance for the planet, which route is easier? Capturing the US federal government, or also battling against 50 States with their own powers?
Someone is going to claim a) slavery would still be the law of the land were it not for the federal government, and b) the right to an abortion is in exactly the same situation now.
The constitutional disagreement is just the legal front in a debate bleeding hypocrisy from coast to “clump of cells” coast. The nauseating “my body, my choice” mantras everywhere have made a spectacular resurgence while curiously absent the previous two years in regards to clot shots, in which case it was your body, their choice, or “Your body, no choice”.
Want to keep your job and employee subsidized family healthcare?
Get poked twice with an experimental shot only authorized for emergency use that doesn’t work as claimed where the corporation has legal immunity or get bent. Go on then, roll up your sleeve, and don’t be SADS about it.
The SADS truth is that the shots are working spectacularly well. And thanks to their real purpose Moderna, Pfizer and the globally interconnected cabal of depopulationists have helped settle the issue of abortion for society. There is no need for “my body, my choice” protests or “insurrections” ladies and betamelt white knights, just go get another booster and you can throw away your rubbers for good.
Both generous companies in collaboration with the federal government have taken it upon themselves to continue the work of planned parenthood with mandated and coerced mRNA treats. Operation Children of Men has launched with tremendous success over the past 18 months and the first returns are now coming in from Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, and the UK. There will be no need for abortions soon, as there will be fewer and fewer fetuses, and babies to abort. The “vaccines” are doing all the heavy cutting now.
Indeed, if we ignore that inflation is currency devaluation that can be corrected by well-timed comments from Treasury as is, we can’t ignore that what the Fed vainly presumes to take away via “rate hikes” will be made up for by global credit inflows.
It’s too easily forgotten by the deep and not-so-deep in thought that production is all about the getting. Goods and services always flow. Everywhere. Without regard to embargoes and sanctions.
To be clear, if you’re producing you’re getting.
In the 19th century, England was at war with seemingly every European power of that time at varying times, but the British people still consumed European plenty as though it had all been produced in Manchester. Really, what serious non-British producer in Europe or elsewhere was going to let wars or political decrees of the sanction kind deter profitable engagement with well-heeled customers? The very notion….
Yet this very notion continues to permeate policy and economic commentary. It’s possible it’s something in the water at the New York Times, or just the people Bret Stephens is bumping into, but his commentary about Russia and Ukraine before the invasion indicated backsliding on the thought processes of this always excellent-to-read writer, and normally clear thinker.
Stephens was of the view that the U.S. could utilize banks to cut off the flow of dollars to Russia (yes, Russia is dollarized to some degree as most backwards countries are), but might be careful in doing so. Why? Because Russia could cut off flow of its energy supplies to Europe. And winter was coming….No, none of this was going to happen. The economy is global.
Let’s talk real stuff. For one, there was no way the Russians were going to sit on their energy. Not only would doing so be the same as giving up market share, but doing so would bankrupt Russia the country along with many businesses inside. The oil and gas were going to flow, period. And when market goods flow, there’s no accounting for their final destination. Put in an easily understandable way, while the U.S. has an embargo against Iran, iPhones and other U.S. plenty are still all over Iran. Get it?
It seems Stephens’s New York Times is now getting it. In a report last week, Victoria Kim, Clifford Krauss and Anton Troainovksi wrote that “When the United States and European Union moved to curtail purchases of Russian fossil fuels this year, they hoped it would help make the Russian invasion so painful for Moscow that Russian President Vladimir V. Putin would be forced to abandon it.” From there they acknowledged that such a scenario was “remote at best,” and that other countries in the closed economy that is the world economy like China and India had “swooped in to buy roughly the same volume of Russian oil that would have gone to the West.” You think? Do you think some of what’s sold to “China” and “India” hasn’t already found its way to the Europe that Putin was allegedly going to starve of oil and gas? Figure that during WWI the U.S. embargoed Germany only for U.S. trade with Scandinavian countries to soar. Coincidence? Think again. Trade with Germany never stopped if you seek a clarity.
Seriously, how did serious people gloss over the economics of this so blithely? And it wasn’t just Stephens. His former colleagues at the Wall Street Journal claimed that European countries were now going to suffer their mindless pursuit of green energy with Russia’s invasion in full swing. Oh yes, that’s right. Market actors were just going to kiss off one of the world’s biggest zones of prosperity? More realistically, markets always work around the decrees of political types.
What impact did Leonard Read, the founder of the Foundation for Economic Education, have on the libertarian movement? Join FFF president Jacob G. Hornberger and Citadel professor Richard M. Ebeling as they examine the life of this libertarian luminary.
Government does not give excess reserves as social programs. Government takes away from existing and future wealth of the economy via currency printing, taxation, spending and debt, but math never works for those who believe extractive and confiscatory policies will work.
RE: The Janet Yellen reference below. The WSJ used to treat her every utterance as wisdom from God. A trip to the comments section revealed the readers weren’t fooled.
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Treasury secretary Janet Yellen admitted that the chain of stimulus plans implemented by the US administration helped create the problem of inflation. “Inflation is a matter of demand and supply, and the spending that was undertaken in the American Rescue Plan did feed demand,” Yellen admitted. Of course, Yellen went on to say that the spending was appropriate due to the collapse of the economy as governments were trying to prevent a recession.
This reminds us of a few of the problems of disproportionate government intervention and the negative impact on the middle class. The misguided massive lockdowns were imposed by the government. Countries that had strict testing, like South Korea and other Asian and European countries, kept the economy working and the pandemic under control. However, the problem is larger and deeper. Central banks and governments have exhausted all demand-side policies at the expense of the middle class by eroding real wages and deposit savings.
Even worse, governments created a larger inflationary spiral by maintaining all “pandemic relief” packages even after the reopening, well beyond the recovery. They expected a spectacular aggregate demand increase and they got it. Now the result is higher inflation and lower economic growth. But government size and deficit spending remain.
Everything that government spends is paid by you. There is no free money. Even for the recipients of benefits in constantly depreciated currency. Inflation, the tax on the poor.
Governments do not avoid recessions through spending, they simply make the accumulated problems larger by constantly adding debt that central banks monetize via quantitative easing. This uncontrolled increase in M3 money supply (a broad money proxy) leads to asset inflation first and everyday goods price inflation afterwards. Both consequences lead to inequality and a constant deterioration of the purchasing power of the currency, making salaries in real terms lower.
Central-planned money creation is never neutral. It disproportionately benefits the first recipients of money, government and those with assets and debt, and negatively impacts those with a monetary salary and some savings in cash deposits, which dissolve over time. No socialist excel spreadsheet can erase the fact that massive deficit spending financed with newly created money destroys the poor and the middle class. They may say that government spending goes to social programs that benefit the poor, but that does not happen. Social programs in a constantly devalued currency become irrelevant, inefficient, and worthless while at the same time the wrongly named welfare state condemns a substantial proportion of the population to being hostage clients of government plans.
