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Posts Tagged ‘capitalists’

Capitalism, except for the capitalists

Posted by M. C. on March 18, 2023

What happened over the weekend is bigger than Silicon Valley Bank; once again the wealthiest, most politically connected companies and executives are proving the rules don’t apply to them.

Eventually these excesses will have to be unwound, gradually or suddenly. When they are, you can bet that all the people who have made fortunes from cheap cash for the last 15 years will be reaching into someone else’s pockets to save themselves – just as they did over the weekend.And the only pockets left will be the federal government’s.

In other words, yours.

https://open.substack.com/pub/alexberenson/p/capitalism-except-for-the-capitalists?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android

Alex Berenson

Back to the banks.

For a few hours on Sunday, they fooled me.

At 6:15 p.m. Sunday, the government and Federal Reserve announced they would guarantee all deposits at the two big banks they’d closed, Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank – removing the $250,000 limit on insured accounts to help prevent a bank run.

Taxpayers would not be on the hook for any losses, they said. The banking industry would pay for the extra insurance.

I didn’t think the deposit insurance should be extended at all.

When banks failed in 2008, we didn’t have unlimited deposit insurance, and we didn’t have widespread bank runs on healthy or unhealthy institutions. Very few individuals have more than $250,000 in their plain vanilla bank accounts (as opposed to brokerage accounts where they are saving for retirement).

So extending the limits at taxpayer expense to protect very wealthy depositors and – in the case of Silicon Valley Bank – venture-capital backed companies didn’t seem fair.

And we have limits on government backed deposit insurance for good reason. Without it, large depositors have every reason to chase the highest possible interest rates on their money, even at badly managed banks. Why? They know that even if the bank squanders their deposits on bad loans, they’ll get their money back.

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This risk is not theoretical. In the 1980s, many savings and loans crashed after offering high-yielding deposits. As financial historian and journalist Roger Lowenstein explained yesterday in the New York Times:

When the Federal Reserve, under pressure of rising inflation, began to jack up rates, S.&L.’s had to pay higher rates to attract deposits…

Many switched to riskier assets to juice their returns, but as these investments soured, their problems worsened. Roughly a third, or about 1,000, S.&.L.’s failed.

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But venture capitalists – led by David Sacks, a good friend of Elon Musk – spent the weekend screaming that bank runs would be inevitable if the government didn’t guarantee all depositors.

Many if not most of these folks had not-at-all hidden conflicts-of-interest – either personal deposits at Silicon Valley Bank or investments in companies that had deposits there. Nonetheless, they insisted that they were warning about bank runs solely because they wanted to save ‘Merica from bank runs!

Whether or not they were trying to worsen the crisis, their warnings certainly did. They essentially forced the government’s hand.

My old friend and colleague Jesse Eisinger (I guess he’s now a ex-friend, thanks to my reporting on Covid and the mRNAs, but that’s a story for another day) captured the dynamic nicely:

See the rest here

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The Paradox of Prosperity | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on October 9, 2020

De Jouvenel aptly wrote “strangely enough” to characterize the fact that as capitalists raised standards of living in each succeeding generation, the hatred of capitalists increased instead of diminished. This is paradoxical, but true. The more prosperous our society has become, the more the creators of that prosperity and the system that enables it have been vilified. How dare those wicked capitalists break the iron grip that abject poverty had held over the masses of human beings throughout millennia of history!

https://mises.org/wire/paradox-prosperity?utm_source=Mises+Institute+Subscriptions&utm_campaign=ee0aad78c3-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_9_21_2018_9_59_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_8b52b2e1c0-ee0aad78c3-228343965

Mark Hendrickson

In Friedrich Hayek’s 1954 book Capitalism and the Historians, the late French philosopher and political economist Bertrand de Jouvenel noted a baffling historical trend: “Strangely enough, the fall from favor of the money-maker coincides with an increase in his social usefulness.”

In surveying the history of capitalism from its inception in the late eighteenth century to the mid-twentieth century when he was writing, De Jouvenel was struck by an ironic and counterintuitive phenomenon. By “money-maker,” he meant the capitalist entrepreneurs who became rich by supplying the masses with more consumer goods. Entrepreneurs generated the economic growth that uplifted standards of living; hence, their “social usefulness.”

De Jouvenel aptly wrote “strangely enough” to characterize the fact that as capitalists raised standards of living in each succeeding generation, the hatred of capitalists increased instead of diminished. This is paradoxical, but true. The more prosperous our society has become, the more the creators of that prosperity and the system that enables it have been vilified. How dare those wicked capitalists break the iron grip that abject poverty had held over the masses of human beings throughout millennia of history!

This graph of world per capita wealth over the last two thousand years tells an amazing story. (A chart of US per capita GDP growth shows a similar trajectory over the last 230 years.)

hend.jpg

hend

Mass poverty was the norm for centuries. That finally began to change in the late 1700s with the emergence of capitalism. The nineteenth-century socialist reaction to capitalism condemned capitalism for not making every human being prosperous equally and simultaneously. It’s true: some prospered before others. As I have explained before, the reason that there was not faster economic progress for more people in the 1800s was not that evil capitalists were exploiting workers, but simply that there were not enough capitalists to “exploit” (employ) more workers and mass produce more goods.

Looking at the graph, you can see that economic growth accelerated explosively in the twentieth century. (Note that growth became much more rapid after the end of slavery, which debunks the fallacious assertion that America’s great wealth depended on slavery.) In the United States, per capita income rose (in 1990 dollars) from $5,301 in 1913 to $31,178 in 2008 and life expectancy from 53 years to 78 years. In short, more Americans are living longer lives at higher standards of living than ever before due to our capitalist system. That has happened despite the considerable handicaps of bureaucratic regulation, wasteful pork barrel politics, and government redistribution of wealth. (There is also more prosperity outside the United States than ever. See chart above and my article “Ready for Some Good News?”)

Despite the astounding success of the free enterprise system in producing unprecedented prosperity, antagonism toward capitalism is growing, and popular politicians are adopting platforms that are essentially socialist. Indeed, the paradox of prosperity that De Jouvenel noticed almost seventy years ago remains firmly intact, for capitalism has never been more fruitful and never more hated by its beneficiaries than it is today.

The present fascination with socialism and hatred of capitalism reflects a combination of willful historical blindness, lack of simple common sense, and inexcusable economic ignorance:

  • Anyone even casually familiar with twentieth-century history should know that socialism has failed miserably, causing economic retrogression and impoverishment wherever it has been tried.
  • Common sense should recognize that since capitalism is a system where entrepreneurs compete with each other to produce what people want, and socialism is a system in which producers produce what the state wants, then obviously people prosper more under capitalism.
  • Most appalling and bitterly ironic about so many Americans enthusiastically, even fanatically, espousing socialism in 2020 is that this year marks the centenary of the most important economic discovery of the twentieth century: in 1920, the Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises explained with irrefutable logic that socialism must inevitably discombobulate and reduce economically rational production because it obliterates the market-based price system necessary to coordinate production. Shame on the economics profession for remaining silent about this fundamental truth and allowing dangerous economic ignorance to persist.

Fact: it is free market capitalism that has made us wealthy beyond the wildest dreams of our great-great grandparents. Fact: the socialist alternative simply does not work. For anyone to favor replacing the world’s greatest wealth-creating system with a proven wealth-destroying system is to spurn prosperity, forsake rationality, and court destruction. That is the grim reality of the paradox of prosperity. Author:

Mark Hendrickson

Mark Hendrickson is adjunct professor of economics at Grove City College. 

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How Capitalists Improve Human Productivity | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on September 9, 2020

Thus, capital is “‘stored-up’ labor, land, and time”—saved resources. The time element is particularly relevant in understanding capital; as a matter of fact, capital can be (also) conceived as previous human beings’ efforts whose outcome—i.e., advancement toward the enjoyment of final consumption—we can now benefit from. In this sense, Böhm-Bawerk’s metaphor is highly illuminating:

The boy who cuts a stick with his knife is, strictly speaking, only continuing the work of the miner who, centuries ago, thrust the first spade into the ground to sink the shaft from which the ore was brought to make the blade. (The Positive Theory of Capital [1891] 1930, p. 88, qtd. in Rothbard 2009, pp. 481–82)

Therefore, insofar as capital is the inheritance of past human action, it’s analogous to giants on whose shoulders today’s producers of consumptive goods are standing:

https://mises.org/wire/how-capitalists-improve-human-productivity?utm_source=Mises+Institute+Subscriptions&utm_campaign=c2ae49e1c2-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_9_21_2018_9_59_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_8b52b2e1c0-c2ae49e1c2-228343965

To quote the last paragraph of this 2008 article by Robert Murphy, when asked why Austrian school economics should be studied, the best answer is: “the Austrian theory of capital is the best one you can find if you really want to grasp how the economy actually works—beyond sterile mathematics and static timeless analysis.”

The Austrian school’s understanding of capital and production relies upon three main pillars. First: the factors of production comprise both nature-given factors—namely land and labor—and non-nature-given (i.e., produced by giving up production aimed at immediate consumption) ones—namely capital goods. Second: production in a capitalistic economy requires time and features several stages. Third: the ultimate source of wants satisfaction—and hence of subjective value—is consumption, which is the sole ultimate end of production; hence, the farther in time from consumption the output of production is, the less it’s valued—in other words, people have time preferences.

Understanding Production and Time

What is production? It’s human action blending commodities (land) and human energy (labor) in order to attain goods and services conducive to wants satisfaction. If production leads to direct want satisfaction, the outcome of production is consumption goods; otherwise—i.e., if the outcome is delayed want satisfaction, that is, goods and services conducive to satisfaction in future time—the outcome is capital goods.

As Rothbard very effectively describes it, capital is

a way station along the road to the enjoyment of consumers’ goods. He who possesses capital is that much further advanced in time on the road to the desired consumers’ good….Capital goods are “stored-up” labor, land, and time; they are intermediate way stations on the road to the eventual attainment of the consumers’ goods into which they are transformed. (Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market [2009], pp. 52, 58)

Thus, capital is “‘stored-up’ labor, land, and time”—saved resources. The time element is particularly relevant in understanding capital; as a matter of fact, capital can be (also) conceived as previous human beings’ efforts whose outcome—i.e., advancement toward the enjoyment of final consumption—we can now benefit from. In this sense, Böhm-Bawerk’s metaphor is highly illuminating:

The boy who cuts a stick with his knife is, strictly speaking, only continuing the work of the miner who, centuries ago, thrust the first spade into the ground to sink the shaft from which the ore was brought to make the blade. (The Positive Theory of Capital [1891] 1930, p. 88, qtd. in Rothbard 2009, pp. 481–82)

Therefore, insofar as capital is the inheritance of past human action, it’s analogous to giants on whose shoulders today’s producers of consumptive goods are standing: it’s the produced but not yet consumed (and thus transferred into the future) outcome of human action. The metaphors of standing on the shoulders of giants, the knife-ore, and the way station are helpful in understanding another feature of capital: namely capital accumulation as length of production.

In fact, the more capitalistic the economy, the lengthier its structure of production—or, if you will, the taller the giants on whose shoulders the current producers of consumption goods are standing. In other words, even though thinking of a “capitalistic” structure of production as “lengthy” might seem counterintuitive, it nonetheless makes perfect sense. Actually, in order to produce more efficiently (i.e., with a lower input-output ratio) and/or more effectively (i.e., attaining more sophisticated products, such as PCs, smartphones, etc.) today, some human productive action—blending time, labor, and natural resources (land)—needs to have been performed and saved (i.e., not consumed) in the past. In a sense, capital gives producers a head start when compared to the same production occurring without its aid.

Hence, every single capital good is akin to a segment or brick on a road leading to consumption—i.e., satisfaction of wants. The lengthier the structure of production is, the farther the road can go.

Understanding the Role of Capital

Given that production is ultimately the outcome of blending land, labor and time, we are left with one question: What’s the role of capital? First of all, it should now be clear that if we trace production far back enough, “we must arrive at a point where only labor and nature existed and there were no capital goods” (Rothbard 2009, p. 10).

That said, we know that production takes time. A useful way to visualize the interplay of land, labor, and capital in production is the following: since any conceivable consumption good is ultimately an actualization of land and labor’s potential suitability to satisfy human needs, the only obstacle between the original factors (land and labor) and final wants satisfaction (consumption) is time. Imagine you are given an egg. If you want to attain a full-fledged chicken, you will need stored-up grain (i.e., land) to feed the newborn chick and “stored-up” labor to take care of and raise it. Both land and labor are to be taken away from other employments, i.e., saved). You also require the time necessary to bridge the gap between the egg (a potential chicken) and the actual chicken—that is, the final consumption good.

So, back to the role of capital: capital allows original factors’ owners to anticipate consumption which would otherwise be accessible only in later time. Thus, capitalists make it possible for laborers and landowners to exchange the future goods they produce—which will ripen only in due time—for present and immediately consumable ones saved (stored) by the capitalists. In other words, capitalists perform a service for the owners of original factors, satisfying and accommodating the latter’s time preferences (i.e., their desire to consume sooner rather than later). As Rothbard phrases it,

The capitalists’ function is thus a time function, and their income is precisely an income representing the agio [i.e., the premium] of present as compared to future goods….Capitalists restrict their present consumption and use these savings of money to supply money (present goods) to factor owners who are producing only future goods. This is the service—an advance of time—that the capitalists supply to the owners of factors, and for which the latter voluntarily pay in the form of the interest rate. (Rothbard 2009, p. 374)

But how does it work in practice? Look at figure 1 (taken from Rothbard 2009, p. 369, figure 41). Consider, for the sake of simplicity, only one stage of production (say, the last one, delivering the consumption goods worth one hundred ounces of gold).

Figure 1

Absent capitalists, the owners of land and labor would need: first, to save enough resources in order to buy the intermediate goods worth 80 ounces of gold from previous-stage producers to work with (but this would be tantamount to becoming capitalists themselves!); second, and more important in practical terms, they would have to wait for the final product to be delivered to consumers, who will pay for it only at the very end of the productive process. Instead, thanks to capitalists, the owners of land and labor get paid—by capitalists—before the final consumption goods are sold in the market, thus enjoying consumption before the end of production.

However, this advanced payment that the owners of original factors enjoy comes at a price—namely the discount rate (or agio). That’s why landowners and laborers, even though the value they added amounts to 20 ounces of gold (100 – 80), will earn only 15 ounces: the difference (5 ounces) is paid to capitalists, who advanced present actual consumable goods (say, money) in exchange for future potential ones.

Conclusion

The concept of capital is intertwined with the idea of time and of saving (storing) scarce resources. Capitalists, acting as intermediaries between present production and future consumption, are the key players in every capitalistic economy: they make it possible for present producers (landowners and laborers) of future potential consumptive goods to enjoy consumption before the actual end of production—thus satisfying the latter’s time preferences.

The price laborers and landowners choose to pay capitalists is the interest (or discount) rate, i.e., the price (or agio) of early consumption. Symmetrically, capitalists are remunerated by landowners and laborers for foregoing consumption today to the advantage of the latter.

Author:

Fabrizio Ferrari

Fabrizio Ferrari holds a M.Sc. in Economics from Catholic University, Milan. Follow him on Twitter and Linkedin.

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Abolishing the Police Won’t Mean Abolishing State Violence | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on June 16, 2020

Places that actually see private enterprise and private property as a good thing, as something that is socially beneficial, actually can get along well without the practically autonomous police agencies. Unfortunately, it seems that on both the local and national levels, demands for more confiscation and coercion seem to be directed into a predatory philosophy of governance.

In current times, police forces in most states and municipalities are more interested in collecting revenues from fines in order to prop up their own pay and benefits and to provide more money for general government coffers. Eric Markowitz writes in the New Yorker:

The question of whether or not abolishment of police forces would automatically lead to bloodshed, violence, and utter chaos is not easily answerable, because the various political landscapes are not even. Take Minneapolis again. The governing mentality there is thoroughly progressive, which incorporates the belief that all facets of life should be governed by progressive entities, including the right (which progressives consider to be nonexistent) to protect one’s life and property.

Years ago, I was discussing a law in Canada that makes it illegal for one to defend oneself against physical aggression from others if that defense involves what authorities call an “offensive” weapon. The man told me that Canadians are “proud” of that policy because, in his words, it limits violence. (That means that if someone attacks me, although it might be violent, my fighting back using an “offensive” weapon adds to the violence, which is self-evident.)

https://mises.org/wire/abolishing-police-wont-mean-abolishing-state-violence?utm_source=Mises+Institute+Subscriptions&utm_campaign=4ef0911661-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_9_21_2018_9_59_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_8b52b2e1c0-4ef0911661-228343965

The aftermath of the May 25 police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis has set off riots, protests, looting, and waves of social demands and changes that will take years to sort out. Yet perhaps the most interesting and provocative development has been the demand for cities to “defund” municipal police departments.

The all-Democrat Minneapolis City Council didn’t just discuss such a measure; indeed, they voted unanimously on June 7 to defund and disband the police department in a measure that members claimed would improve public safety. Tax funds previously earmarked for the police will go, council members said, to social service agencies.

Not surprisingly, the standard response from many people (and especially conservatives) has been near disbelief, with the expressed opinion that the move is “insane.” Bronson Stocking of Townhall writes: “The mob won’t be happy until police are abolished and complete anarchy, like we’ve seen in Minneapolis recently, becomes the new normal.”

Likewise, Patrick Buchanan writes in the American Conservative:

The “Ferguson Effect” will take hold. Cops will back off from confronting the lawless and violent. Criminals will see an opening to seize opportunities. The urban poor who look to the police as their only protection will stay inside and lock their doors. And small businesses, realizing the cops may not be there, will sell and move out.

As I read my conservative friends on sites like Facebook, they take it as a given that any move to eliminate government police forces automatically will result in something akin to a Death Wish landscape of criminals killing, burning, raping, and looting the cities. In other words, they instinctively believe that the police truly are the “Thin Blue Line” that protects law-abiding people from harm intended by criminals.

Capitalists Are the Real Criminals

People accept this narrative on its face, as though it were true simply by its utterance, and it reflects the larger belief that humans don’t cooperate peacefully with each other unless the authorities force them to do so. On that subject Buchanan, Nancy Pelosi, and Bernie Sanders are on the same page. Furthermore, they are likely to see agencies like police forces at governing levels from municipalities to the FBI (and even the CIA) as entities that exist for our good, to protect those who are law-abiding from the Bad People.

We see this fundamental belief extended to the business world, and there is very little difference between the pages of the American Conservative and hard-left publications like The Nation or Jacobin. The theme is that what might seem to be socially cooperative behavior—individuals buying and selling voluntarily in the marketplace—actually is fundamentally coercive, with businesses being predatory entities. The more successful the business, the more proof that it gained that success by preying on others.

For example, when the rioting and looting in US cities was at its height, Bernie Sanders declared that business owners have been “looting” the poor for forty years which would seem to be a backhanded endorsement of the violence and theft taking place, or, at the very least, a justification for the looting and burning. Again, because Sanders and his followers view business activity as violent theft and government action as either peaceful or promoting peace, there would be no reason in their minds to have police protect private property or its owners, since “property is theft.” (One doubts that Sanders believes that about his own three houses and his other personal property, but socialists have lived with that disconnect for years and always get away with it.)

Certainly at least some Minneapolis city council members seem to believe that private property owners should be subject to break-ins and home invasions as a form of social justice. Lisa Bender, the city council president and the leader of the abolish-the-police movement, effectively said that having property protection is “privilege.” To be fair, she was saying it in the context of how white suburbanites have reasonable expectations that the police will offer some semblance of protection while others are not so fortunate:

Because for those of us for whom the system is working, I think we need to step back and imagine what it would feel like to already live in that reality where calling the police may mean more harm is done.

Policing as a Revenue Racket

She is not entirely wrong. People living in high-crime areas often do not see police as their protectors, and that is not, as some conservatives might believe, unreasonable. The police officer often is not their friend, but neither is the typical police officer anyone else’s friend. The reason is that no one reasonably can conclude that modern police forces exist to protect ordinary citizens. In fact, the US Supreme Court already has ruled that police are under no legal obligation to protect anyone.

In current times, police forces in most states and municipalities are more interested in collecting revenues from fines in order to prop up their own pay and benefits and to provide more money for general government coffers. Eric Markowitz writes in the New Yorker:

Alexes Harris is an associate professor of sociology at the University of Washington and the author of “A Pound of Flesh.” Published in June, the book analyzes the rise of monetary sanctions in the criminal-justice system. Harris argues that jurisdictions have increasingly relied on levying fines for minor infractions—broken tail-lights, vagrancy, traffic violations—as a way to generate municipal revenue. For instance, a Department of Justice investigation revealed that, in 2013, police in Ferguson, Missouri, issued arrest warrants for nine thousand people, almost all for municipal-code violations such as failing to pay a fine or missing court appearances. Doing so allowed the city to collect $2.4 million in fines and fees, the second highest source of income for the city, behind taxes.

Protected from lawsuits by qualified immunity and protected from accountability by their unions, police in the USA have evolved into something akin to an occupying army that declares itself to be beyond criticism and beyond control by the underlings that it claims “to protect and serve.” Although we can decry this situation, we should not be surprised.

We Need State Control to Ensure Either “Order” or “Social Justice”

Modern police forces are yet one more creation of progressivism, the view that we should be governed by dispassionate and well-trained “experts” instead of politicians. From dealing with pandemics to investigating crimes, the idea is that the “experts” should have control and that we should always listen to them and do what they tell us. To do otherwise is “taking the law into your own hands,” which always is portrayed as being antisocial.

The police clearly fit within that viewpoint, which has become almost second nature to most Americans. Liberal progressives, who almost always believe that “training” will “solve” almost any difficulty when it comes to government agents exerting authority over others, are adamant that individuals should defer to government at every level, whether it be education (including Harvard University’s recent attack on home schooling, a thoroughly progressive initiative), policing, and the home itself.

For example, the city council of Minneapolis did not call for refunding the tax dollars saved through disbanding the police to the city’s taxpayers, but rather have announced plans to transfer that money to government social programs. In other words, the progressives there plan to help expand what is called the therapeutic state in the belief that government mental health “experts” will counsel people into living better lives.

On the conservative side, support for the police seems to be a more nebulous support for an ordered state. At the risk of seeming trivial, this viewpoint often is explained on the popular CBS cop show Bluebloods. During one of their famous dinner table discussions, someone asks why killing a cop is worse than killing an ordinary person. Frank Reagan, the fictional New York City police commissioner (played by Tom Selleck) replies that the police represent order and that attacking the police is an attack upon the order of society itself.

In the end, we are dealing with similar belief systems that don’t have anything but blind faith in the systems as an authority. On the right, the police protect society, because, well, that is what people believe and even if it is not true, they believe it anyway: the police protect all of us from violent people, and if they are disbanded, society will degenerate into lawless chaos. That police forces have evolved into insular and autonomous entities that have become a law unto themselves does not seem to take root in at least some conservative thinking.

On the progressive left, there is the unending belief in the therapeutic state. If there is a role for official policing, it is to aid in the fight against capitalism and bigotry. Thus, the left-wing district attorney in San Francisco, Chesa Boudin, can declare that his office will concentrate its efforts on prosecuting landlords who, in his view, constitute a criminal class. Democratic politicians such as Beto O’Rourke can call for unleashing the tax police upon religious groups that do not adhere to the Left’s sexual orthodoxy. So, those on the left who might call for abolishment of the police still want government to have at least some police powers to go after people they don’t like.

The Left Does Not Permit Private Self-Defense

The question of whether or not abolishment of police forces would automatically lead to bloodshed, violence, and utter chaos is not easily answerable, because the various political landscapes are not even. Take Minneapolis again. The governing mentality there is thoroughly progressive, which incorporates the belief that all facets of life should be governed by progressive entities, including the right (which progressives consider to be nonexistent) to protect one’s life and property.

Years ago, I was discussing a law in Canada that makes it illegal for one to defend oneself against physical aggression from others if that defense involves what authorities call an “offensive” weapon. The man told me that Canadians are “proud” of that policy because, in his words, it limits violence. (That means that if someone attacks me, although it might be violent, my fighting back using an “offensive” weapon adds to the violence, which is self-evident.)

There certainly would be support in Minneapolis for a similar policy, especially given that at least its political leaders consider any kind of defense of one’s life and property to be nothing more than “white privilege.” Thus, if one fits into a certain ethnicity and social/economic group, then any kind of self-defense is prima facie illegitimate. Likewise, in such a viewpoint, violence against others and their property is legitimate provided that the ones engaging in the violence are included within a certain protected group. In fact, if we are to properly interpret what Sanders declared, looting and arson actually would be considered acts of self-defense against capitalists and landlords who, in their view, are the real criminals.

Such a governing philosophy, not surprisingly, would not prevent the recent burning and looting that have scarred Minneapolis and other US cities, since this philosophy provides a justification for it. It would not take long, should this violence continue, for cities to become totally unlivable. Perhaps it should not be surprising that Minneapolis police have engaged in predatory behavior, since the entire governing philosophy of that city seems to endorse it.

However, we also know that, at least before the riots, Minneapolis had had a reputation of being a prosperous city and a livable place, and there certainly are many places in Minnesota itself where violent crime almost is nonexistent. The business atmosphere in the Twin Cities is highly rated and overall quality of life is rated as excellent. And then the riots came, exposing not only an underbelly of discontent, but also a governing philosophy that simply cannot deal effectively with what is happening.

One doubts that such a progressive governing philosophy would permit property owners to band together to protect their belongings without running afoul of lawmakers and their worldview. After all, if protecting one’s property is nothing more than a manifestation of “privilege,” and the real looters are those who own property, then there is nothing left to do but to turn loose the mobs.

There are other places in Minnesota and in the USA, however, where the municipal police model actually does more harm than good. After all, what is municipal policing? It is the forced outsourcing of protection in which the “protectors” “capture” the protection apparatus and act not as real protectors, but rather like a mafia that demand protection money. It would be patently dishonest to say that people cannot come together to create something that is more effective and more just.

Unfortunately, policing is caught between two narratives, neither of which adequately and accurately describes the current social and economic climate. If the worldview of people in a community is one that is open to exchange and voluntary cooperation, then an outside police force really is not necessary.

However, in an atmosphere in which private property and business owners are portrayed as the enemy that should be driven out, even an outside police agency will be limited in its effective response and most likely would opt out of most duties, which is exactly what we have seen in cities once the looting started. At very best, police in these kinds of communities (such as Baltimore, Detroit, and other dysfunctional places) will put a band-aid over a cancerous tumor and ultimately will opt out of the protection business altogether.

In other words, governing worldviews matter. Governments led by the philosophy that private property and private enterprise are coercive and parasitical and should be smashed can only replace one coercive municipal force with another that is just as bad. After all, the socialism that so many of these politicians demand is one that is totally dependent upon massive amounts of state-sponsored violence and coercion, although in the short run attacks on businesses and private property are useful in that they eliminate business owners from the political equation.

Places that actually see private enterprise and private property as a good thing, as something that is socially beneficial, actually can get along well without the practically autonomous police agencies. Unfortunately, it seems that on both the local and national levels, demands for more confiscation and coercion seem to be directed into a predatory philosophy of governance.

 

 

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EconomicPolicyJournal.com: The Holiday Oddly Called “Labor Day”

Posted by M. C. on September 3, 2018

Labor is a necessary part of the equation and yes, unions were started for a reason but…
What advances man beyond the stage of a land-labor existence is when capital and entrepreneurship are added to the equation especially when capitalists and entrepreneurs are allowed to operate freely in a complete laissez-faire environment.

In other words – It takes a village.

Just try not to think where the phrase came from.

http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2018/09/the-holiday-oddly-called-labor-day.html#more

By Robert Wenzel

You have to give it to socialists, lefties and interventionists in general, they are pretty slick when it comes to naming key elements of their movement.

Take for example the word socialism, what the hell exactly is social about socialism?

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary includes in its definition of social:

marked by or passed in pleasant companionship with friends or associates
—
living and breeding in more or less organized communities especially for the purposes of cooperation and mutual benefit

None of this has anything to do with socialism. Socialism is about authoritarianism. The control of some over others. It is not about mutual benefit. It is about required action determined by authorities, backed up by force—since it is so distant from mutual benefit. If it was about mutual benefit, coercion wouldn’t be involved.

Socialism is many things but it is not “pleasant companionship” if the way you desire to act is in conflict with socialist leaders’ demands.

Then, of course, there is the word, progressive, used by interventionists who favor putting limitations on free markets and the accompanying advances. It is in fact regressive.

This brings me to today’s holiday here in the United States and Canada, Labor Day, which was created by anti-labor group leaders, that is, union leaders… Read the rest of this entry »

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