MCViewPoint

Opinion from a Libertarian ViewPoint

An economist looks at North Shore Search and Rescue

Posted by M. C. on August 10, 2024

How might, then, a competitive private mountain ownership system reduce the need for the services of NSS&R (they would be the first to welcome such an eventuality, since they want to save lives, not build an empire).

https://walterblock.substack.com/p/an-economist-looks-at-north-shore

Walter Block

British Columbia’s North Shore Search and Rescue group is a very impressive organization. Over the years they have saved the lives of numerous hikers and skiers in the mountains to the north of Vancouver. It’s a private undertaking, financed by voluntary contributions. They have their own helicopters. Dozens of highly-skilled staff pilot these vehicles, go down on ropes to pick up the wounded, whisk them off to hospitals. They have their own doctors to assist with those in need. Sometimes, all too often, weather conditions interfere with or preclude their efforts, and all they can take out of the dangerous mountainous trails are human remains, which greatly saddens them.

They are heroes, a credit to this great country of ours.

How might an economist look at this organization? One question is the dollars spent per lives saved. How does it compare with other efforts to save lives, such as efforts to quell heart disease or cancer or obesity or smoking or traffic fatalities. The goal, presumably, is to equalize this statistic across all such efforts to maximize the bang for the buck in terms of lives saved. For if one avenue is more efficient than others, more money should be allocated in that direction to maximize results.

Another consideration is to realize that specialization and the division of labour are integral aspects of the dismal science. North Shore Search and Rescue only steps in when people are in trouble. But what about prevention?

The difficulty is that private enterprise does not heretofore play much of a role in this aspect of life saving. Why? Mainly because the government owns much of land in the mountains. How could privatization help reduce the demand for the always necessary services of NSS&R?

Here are the names of some of the mountains that lie to the North of West and North Vancouver: Grouse, Seymour, Black, Hollyburn, Strachan, Unnecessary, Lions, Goat, Dam, Crown, Fromme and Lynn. Imagine a scenario where all of them were fully privatized; there would be one owner for each.

A basic finding of economics is that competition brings about a better product at a lower price. The reason we have pretty good and relatively cheap shoes, socks, bicycles, computers, heaters, air conditioners, pens, pencils, paper clips, rubber bands, furniture, ketchup, bread, etc., is because these industries are run on a competitive basis. This also accounts for why the immigration traffic was from East to West Germany, from North to South Korea, and not the other way around.

How might, then, a competitive private mountain ownership system reduce the need for the services of NSS&R (they would be the first to welcome such an eventuality, since they want to save lives, not build an empire). It would be simple. Each owner would set up his own “rules of the road” and we would then be able to determine which system better promotes the safety of skiers, hikers, bikers, snowshoe walkers, etc.

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It’s Weird to See a Retired General Scotch a Plea Bargain

Posted by M. C. on August 9, 2024

by Jacob G. Hornberger

This entire dual, competing judicial system is about as weird as weird can get, including the fact that a retired military general now wields the authority to involve himself in plea bargains in criminal prosecutions. The fact that this weird judicial system has become a normal and permanent part of American life just goes to show how the national-security establishment controls, manages, and directs the federal government, with the other three branches simply playing a supportive role. SeeNational Security and Double Governmentby Michael J. Glennon.

Given that we have all been born and raised under a national-security state form of governmental structure, no one in the mainstream press is batting an eyelash over Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin’s role in a plea bargain into which military prosecutors had entered with three men who are accused of participating in the 9/11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Walid bin Attash, and Mustafa al-Hawsawix. Austin scotched the plea bargain because it eliminated the possibility of a death sentence for the three men.

To be sure, there are some mainstream pundits who have expressed disagreement with Austin’s decision to cancel the plea bargain. But none of them question the very notion that a retired military general is making a major decision in a case involving criminal justice. That’s because the mainstream press, along with many Americans, has come to accept the normality and permanence of the judicial system that the Pentagon established in Cuba after the 9/11 attacks.

But the fact is that Austin’s role in a criminal prosecution is weird — extremely weird. A retired military general serving as U.S. Secretary of Defense has no more legitimate role in America’s criminal-justice system than he does in America’s public-school system.

The U.S. Constitution established one judicial system. It consists of U.S. District Courts, federal courts of appeals, and the U.S. Supreme Court. It encompasses both civil and criminal jurisdiction. Under the Constitution, when the U.S. government targets someone with criminal prosecution, it must do so within the rules and constraints of the federal-court system.

In other words, the Constitution did not set up two dual, competing criminal-justice systems — one run by civilians and one run by the military.

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COVID Roundup: New Zealand Codifies Forced Injections in Martial Law ‘Pandemic Plan’

Posted by M. C. on August 9, 2024

And you thought it was over

The Daily Bell

By Ben Bartee

Under the skin is the final authoritarian frontier; as many have noted before, if you don’t have control over what is injected into your body, you don’t have freedom in any meaningful sense of the word.

If the Kiwis aren’t rioting in the streets of Auckland at this very moment, if this isn’t the straw that broke the camel’s back — either because the information space in New Zealand is so tightly controlled that they don’t know what their government is doing to them or because they are too psychologically/spiritually compromised to be bothered to do anything about it — all hope of a popular resistance may be lost.

Via New Zealand Pandemic Plan (emphasis added):

Special powers are authorised by the Minister of Health or by an epidemic notice or apply where an emergency has been declared under the Civil Defence Emergency Management Act 2002. The power to detain, isolate or quarantine allows a medical officer of health to ‘require persons, places, buildings, ships, vehicles, aircraft, animals, or things to be isolated, quarantined, or disinfected’ (section 70(1)(f)). The power to prescribe preventive treatment allows a medical officer of health, in respect of any person who has been isolated or quarantined, to require people to remain where they are isolated or quarantined until they have been medically examined and found to be free from infectious disease, and until they have undergone such preventive treatment as the medical officer of health prescribes (section 70(1)(h))…

Section 71A states that a member of the police may do anything reasonably necessary (including the use of force) to help a medical officer of health or any person authorized by the medical officer of health in the exercise or performance of powers or functions under sections 70 or 71.”

‘European Vaccination Card’ program goes live in five EU member states

Via Vaccines Today (emphasis added):

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NFL Deploys Facial Recognition Tech at ALL 32 Stadiums

Posted by M. C. on August 9, 2024

A list of who has access to all the data would be interesting.

Most sports roll over for government

By Ben Bartee

The Daily Bell

Originally published via Armageddon Prose

“And I’m proud to be an American
Where at least I know I’m free”
– Lee Greenwood, God Bless The USA

America, fuck yeah!

ARE YOU READY FOR SOME FOOTBALL?

[All-American guitar chords]

USA! USA! USA!

Via The Record (emphasis added):

The National Football League is the latest organization to turn to facial authentication to bolster event security, according to an announcement this week.

All 32 NFL stadiums will start using the technology this season, after the league signed a contract with a company that uses facial scans to verify the identity of people entering event venues and other secure spaces.

The facial authentication platform, which counts the Cleveland Browns’ owners as investors*, will be used to ‘streamline and secure’ entry for thousands of credentialed media, officials, staff and guests so they can easily access restricted areas such as press boxes and locker rooms, Jeff Boehm, the chief operating officer of Wicket, said in a LinkedIn post Monday.”

*What a wild coincidence.

Continuing:

Fans come look at the tablet and, instantly, the tablet recognizes the fan,’** Brandon Covert, the vice president of information technology for the Cleveland Browns, said in a testimonial appearing on Wicket’s website.  ‘It’s almost a half-second stop. It’s not even a stop — more of a pause.’

‘It has greatly reduced the amount of time and friction that comes with entering the stadium,’ Covert added. ‘It’s so much faster.’

The Browns also use Wicket to verify the ages of fans purchasing alcohol at concession stands, according to Wicket’s LinkedIn page.

The use of facial recognition or authentication technology, particularly when applied to thousands of people who are scanned in the course of doing their job or entering a sports stadium, has long concerned privacy advocates.

In addition to concerns about the technology being used to track people’s locations, privacy advocates and academics say that facial recognition technology intensifies racial and gender discrimination because it is more frequently inaccurate when identifying people of color, women and nonbinary individuals.”

**“Bend over and spread your cheeks so the nice man can insert the tablet for safety, Billy.” Cowboys fan Bob tells his boy. “We’re here to watch America’s Team so you can learn what it is to be a real man and a patriot.”

It took ten paragraphs for The Record — I’m happy they reported on this at all, so credit where it’s due — to ever mention any privacy concerns or potential for this technology to violate civil liberties

And then, when it finally gets around to it, the paper must note that the essential issue is that it’s racist and sexist, glossing over the more fundamental problem of the machines turning everyone into techno-serfs.

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From Caracas to Paris and Puccini, Zelensky’s acultural clowns are in retreat

Posted by M. C. on August 8, 2024

Venezuela has the world’s largest oil reserves and NATO and its North London fellow travelers have inflicted untold sufferings on all Venezuelans because it wants to rob Venezuela’s oil.

Declan Hayes

Although Russian soprano Anna Netrebko now heads Myrotvorets’ list of assassination targets, before making any informed comment on her case or that of a gaggle of Venezuelans and Belarusians who have also found themselves in NATO’s cross hairs, we must first acquaint ourselves with the 101s of Venezuelan, Russian and Belarusian society as well, of course, as to how the opera and related worlds work.

Netrebko is a Kuban Cossack, who worked her way up from being a lowly janitor to being an international operatic superstar, and good on her for that and for, in her role as a global superstar, meeting Russian President Putin on several occasions. For any NATO shill, who thinks any such meeting is suspicious, all they need to do is look at the Paris Olympics, where politicians of all stripes are brown nosing their athletes in the hope that some of their sheen might rub off on their brown noses.

Although Netrebko has stated that she would have preferred that the Ukrainian war had not occurred, she is also on record as stating that it is what it is and that forces, other than her, must conclude it. Although elements of the Russian Duma, as well as the Nazi nutcases, who sit in the Ukrainian Parliament, have both denounced her, and though NATO’s fascistic European Parliament has sanctioned her, Netrebko has quite rightly described those NATO shills forcing her to express her political position as “human shits.”

She’ll get no argument from me on that or, I imagine, from Ivan Litvinovich and Viyaleta Bardzilouskaya, the two Belarusian athletes, who respectively won gold and silver medals at the Olympics and who thereby put to shame the “human shits” of under-performing Ukraine, who tried to dehumanise them and their Belarusian compatriots.

Although Netrebko likewise just wants to do her operatic thing, because Netrebko won’t call for the murder of Russian civilians NATO, as the mafia would say, wants her gone.

Norman Lebrecht, NATO’s go-to idiot on such matters, has called our attention to the fact that Netrebko has been booked to star in a new Tosca production in January of next year in Rome’s eternal city and, to add insult to NATO’s injury, that “the half-banned Russian soprano” is also due to perform in Florida in February 2025.

Although the Ukrainian Nazis are having a canary about all this, the fact of the matter is Netrebko has Puccini‘s Tosca gig well and truly sewn up. Because the Rome gig is to celebrate the 125th anniversary of the first performance of Tosca, it would be unthinkable for anyone, except for the Nazis of Ukraine and their North London fellow travelers, to even entertain the idea that the performance would go ahead without Netrebko being centre stage.

Opera, even more so than all similar arts, works on their tried and trusted maxim that the likes of Callas, Cabellé, Caruso, Corelli, Netrebko and Pavarotti get the limelight and the rest get the leftover peanuts. Without Netrebko, you cannot have Puccini. Simple as!

If all of that is too highbrow for you, just think how the Chinese recently rioted because Messi did not play in a friendly against them. But Messi is a footballer, not a circus performing bear, there to do tricks and handstands, even if the Chinese, who paid fortunes to see him, thought otherwise. Just as the Chinese went to see Messi, so also do the Italians, the Vatican’s big wigs and Rome’s diplomatic corps go to see the Kuban Cossack, Anna Netrebko. It is as simple as that.

And, as with the Kuban Cossacks, so also with the Venezuelans, who are not performing monkeys either, contrary to what these same NATO charlatans might wish.

A case in point is 43 year old Venezuelan conductor and violinist Gustavo Adolfo Dudamel Ramírez, who is currently the music director of the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and who is scheduled to become the Music and Artistic Director of the New York Philharmonic in 2026. To see how steeped Dudamel is in the music of Venezuela and beyond, recall that his father is a trombonist and a voice teacher of some note, and that Dudamel himself began his ongoing involvement with El Sistema, the famous Venezuelan social action music programme, at the age of five.

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America’s election meddling will finally be its own sword to fall on

Posted by M. C. on August 8, 2024

For the United States, the prize in Ukraine has always been the opportunity to fight Russia without committing one dead western soldier. This may change.

Arguably, the best example of U.S. election meddling, especially for one which has so spectacularly backfired on the U.S., has got to be Ukraine. Both in 2004 and 2014, the U.S. created a revolutionary movement and pumped an estimated 4bn USD into it, just to unseat the Russian-leaning incumbent Viktor Yanukovych.

Martin Jay

“Interventionism” could simply be called “western-backed coup”. Since the end of the WWII, the U.S., it is reported, has meddled with the elections of 81 countries and so it should come as little surprise that it tried its best to topple Nicolás Maduro, as it had previously in 2019 under Trump. U.S. election meddling though has changed considerably since the end of the Cold War. Previous to 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell, the U.S. was quite brazen about toppling left-wing dictators it hated or supporting right-wing candidates with their campaigns. Most notably its dirty tricks were seen as early as 1948 when it did all it could in Italy to oust a communist government. Later on, in the 80s, while the Cold War was still running and Soviet troops were in Afghanistan, the U.S. gave the contras in Nicaragua 18m USD in profits from the illegal arms sales to Iran, which ultimately led to Daniel Ortega being overthrown in a 1990 election. In the same year, Vaclav Havel was backed to the hilt in Czechoslovakia to be enthroned as a western leader in the first democratic elections to be held there.

The U.S. also backs campaigns to reinstate their puppets, when they lose one in a fair, democratic election. In 1986, for example, in Haiti, the U.S. lost Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” who was the incumbent president and a great ally of the West. Later on, his successor was finally overthrown when another friend was installed after years of a nefarious campaign. Sometimes they threw money at their own favoured incumbents who would be useful idiots to them. In 1996, the Clinton government lent 10m USD to Boris Yeltsin for his own campaign, a staggering amount of money at that time. Other times, they would pump money into campaigns run by opposition groups to oust the incumbent who was considered an enemy of the U.S., disregarding any pretentions of democratic collective conscience. In 2000, five years after the Serbs had been bombed into submission in the Yugoslav War by an illegal air strike campaign – which came about when Bosnian Muslims staged a false flag attack on their own people in a Sarajevo marketplace – the U.S. went all out to fund campaigns for all opposition groups in Serbia which finally led to those groups using the same dictator type tactics when the polls were counted by giving Milosevic to leave quietly with his life, or face the same consequences as Romania’s Ceausescu. The Serbian leader later was to mysteriously die in 2006 while held in prison at a specially convened war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in the Netherlands.

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The U.S. Faces Multiple Crises: Who is Running the Government?

Posted by M. C. on August 8, 2024

The people that are, aren’t saying.

Glenn Greenwald

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Tim Walz for VP? Are they serious?

Posted by M. C. on August 8, 2024

He’s big on transgender treatments for kids. He’s essentially making Minnesota a sanctuary state for transgenderism.

Choosing Tim adds fuel to the hypothesis that the Deep State/Globalists want Trump to win, so they can initiate a fall and winter of Floyd across the country.

https://substack.com/inbox/post/147449840

Jon Rappoport

(This article is Part-15 in a series on US Election Campaign Season; for Part-16, go here; for Part-14, go here.)

That’s like hiring Lenin to sell used cars.

As Governor of Minnesota, Tim fiddled while Minneapolis burned in the Summer of Floyd.

He said Biden was fit as a fiddle a few days before old Joe backed out of the race.

Make a list of Woke causes and Tim will sign on to every one.

He’s big on transgender treatments for kids. He’s essentially making Minnesota a sanctuary state for transgenderism.

Choosing Tim adds fuel to the hypothesis that the Deep State/Globalists want Trump to win, so they can initiate a fall and winter of Floyd across the country.

Gavin Newsom is drawing up his Presidential plans for 2028.

Tim’s wife is quite something, too. She said she left the window open during the Floyd riots in Minneapolis so she could smell burning tires. She liked the smell and what it meant.

Kamala plus Tim. Since the people put crazy Joe and Kamala in office in 2020 (albeit with massive fraud), why not run two crazy people again?

If they win, maybe they’ll pick Hillary for Attorney General.

These people needed “the insurrection” at the Capitol on January 6. It masks the fact that they themselves are in the process of overthrowing every shred of Constitutional government in America.

For power. The power of a Monarchy. Or a Communist dictatorship. There really isn’t any difference. Only the labels change.

Too many people fail to see, or refuse to see, what’s happening before their eyes:

Pay for the rest rest.

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What Is Government Costing Your Family?

Posted by M. C. on August 7, 2024

https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/what-is-government-costing-your-family/

by Thomas Eddlem

depositphotos 39422933 s

What would you do if the government came to you and said your family owes it $75,000 this year, and every year, adjusted upward for inflation?

You might respond “I can’t afford it.”

Don’t worry, you are already paying that.

That’s the price the average American household is already paying (or borrowing on behalf of) your government. You read that right, the average family.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, the federal government will spend $6.88 trillion in fiscal 2024 (which ends October 1), including $1.99 trillion in deficit spending. The U.S. Census bureau says there are 131.4 million households or 84.3 million families in America, using 2023 (the latest) numbers. I’ve recorded both for the chart below, and the differences between the two are that “family” is defined by the U.S. Census as “two or more” people related living in the same household, but “household” is simply all the people (including roommates, dormers, foster children, etc.) living in the same place. Household is more numerous largely, but not only, because it counts people living in a home alone.

cost of government libertarian institute

So the cost of the federal government per household is about $52,400 and per family it’s $81,600.

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts, where I live, will spend $56.6 billion this year, including $13.7 billion in federal aid.

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TGIF: Democracy as Religion

Posted by M. C. on August 7, 2024

First, classical liberalism, or what we moderns call libertarianism, is not mainly about believing; it’s about respecting each individual’s person, property, and liberty, and particularly about the government’s respecting those things. It’s also about understanding that freedom leads to social cooperation (the division of labor and trade), peace, and prosperity. Economic theory and history show it.

Second, it’s democracy, not freedom, that requires faith in the absence of evidence. It’s a religion that holds that If we believe hard enough, tens of millions of us going to the temple polls to vote will make the right decisions. No one explains why it should work out that way. And it doesn’t. It’s a faith in magic, and magic is not real.

https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/tgif-democracy-as-religion/

by Sheldon Richman

ballot

During a conversation with someone who loves representative democracy but hates America’s current political situation, I pointed out a problem with his view. The current situation, I said, is a product of representative democracy. So you can’t have the system without the lamented consequences.

Why is that? People like free benefits for themselves and society, and politicians prosper by promising and delivering apparently free benefits to enough voters. Individuals and interest groups see the government as a bazaar open for business 24/7.

The problem, of course, is that there are no free benefits. The government, which does not produce anything, can’t give away anything it hasn’t first taken from someone else. The system’s inherent perverse incentives deliver big spending, high taxes, and growing budget deficits (when raising taxes is unfeasible) financed through massive borrowing. This process eventually leads to central-bank monetary inflation, rising prices, and shrinking purchasing power. The transfer of purchasing power from regular people to politicians is a form of taxation.

I proposed to my interlocutor that a better way to go would be to move the government’s few legitimate functions to the free, competitive market, which aligns incentives more consistently with individual rights and general prosperity. The government’s illegitimate functions should be abolished.

He mocked my position by holding his hand in the praying position and looking toward heaven as he said, “If only we all believe.” I responded that it’s no article of faith that freedom and free markets—classical liberalism—have eradicated most extreme poverty and created unmatched living standards worldwide. You can easily look up the graphs that show this astounding progress. The still-lagging areas lack freedom.

For roughly 200,000 years human beings lived short lives with virtually no material progress. Then a few hundred years ago things changed dramatically thanks to liberalism, the Enlightenment, and the Industrial Revolution. That was no coincidence, and understanding what economic historian Deirdre McCloskey calls the “Great Enrichment” requires no faith.

I could have said much more to my interlocutor, and I’ll say it here.

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