MCViewPoint

Opinion from a Libertarian ViewPoint

Posts Tagged ‘Government’

Thomas Sowell: Where Is The Government Spending Our Money?

Posted by M. C. on June 14, 2024

Power and Control

Thomas

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Thomas Sowell: The Government Doesn’t Give You Something For Nothing – The Case of Social Security

Posted by M. C. on May 16, 2024

There is nothing that politicians like better than handing out benefits to be paid for by someone else.

“Money with strings is worth less than money without strings.”

Thomas Sowell

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“do something”

Posted by M. C. on May 8, 2024

There are always calls for the government to “do something” when things are going bad. Those who make such calls have almost never bothered to check out what actually happens when the government does something, as compared to what happens when the government does nothing.

Thomas Sowell

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ruinous prices – paid by others

Posted by M. C. on May 8, 2024

The fatal attraction of government is that it allows busybodies to impose decisions on others without paying any price themselves. That enables them to act as if there were no price, even when there are ruinous prices – paid by others.

Thomas Sowell

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Government’s Usual Habit — Don’t Change The Bad Policy Being Protested, But Attack Free Speech

Posted by M. C. on May 2, 2024

The Ron Paul Liberty Report

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What Do Justin Trudeau And Kristi Noem Have In Common? They Both Want To Put You In Jail For Having Unpopular Opinions

Posted by M. C. on March 22, 2024

Everyone who commits an offense under this act or any other act of Parliament, if the commission of the offense is motivated by hatred based on race, national or ethnic origin, language, color, religion, sex, age, mental or physical disability, sexual orientation or gender identity or expression, is guilty of an indictable offense and liable to imprisonment for life.

Notice that virtually everything in this list defining “antisemitism” focuses on speech, attitudes or thoughts. “Allegations.” “Accusing.” “Denying.” “Accusing.” “Accusing.” “Denying.” “Applying.” “Using.” All of this refers to speech, attitudes or thoughts.

It IS easier to prove discrimination when government describes anything it wants as discriminatory.

How are these for offensive words…power, control, government.

https://chuckbaldwinlive.com/Articles/tabid/109/ID/4510/What-Do-Justin-Trudeau-And-Kristi-Noem-Have-In-Common-They-Both-Want-To-Put-You-In-Jail-For-Having-Unpopular-Opinions.aspx

The left and right sides of an ellipse are descriptive of Left and Right politics. At the top of the ellipse is Liberty. At the bottom of the ellipse is Tyranny. Republicans and Democrats spend most of their time arguing over things that fall in the middle of the ellipse.

I define Tyranny as anything that promotes the power of the state to control people’s lives and liberties beyond the Natural Laws of our Creator. I define Liberty as anything that constrains the power of the state to control people’s lives and liberties beyond the Natural Laws of our Creator.

The problem with so many people from both the political Left and the political Right is that, regardless of their differences over middle elliptical issues, they meet in unison at the bottom of the ellipse. Both Trump and Biden, Republicans and Democrats, want to use the power of government to coerce, intimidate or force the American citizenry to do what THEY want us to do. Whether we agree or not with either side is irrelevant. The fact that we would allow them to exercise governmental power to enforce THEIR personal opinions upon us should be anathema to any true freedomist.

And there are no God-ordained liberties more precious to free men and women than the freedom of speech and the freedom of religion (conscience).

And there is currently a perfect depiction of what I said above being played out before our very eyes with the Leftist Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and South Dakota’s conservative governor, Kristi Noem.

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“When Will They Learn?”

Posted by M. C. on March 11, 2024

by Jeff Thomas

Dependency upon government is a disease. Once it has been caught, it becomes chronic and does not reverse itself in a population until the system collapses under its own weight.

Again, this will not be the liberal view when the time comes. Instead, they will conclude, as they do now, that freedom is a small price to pay for safety.

For many years, frustrated colleagues of mine who are either conservative or libertarian have posed the rhetorical question, “When will those liberals learn?” Surely, at some point (they reason), liberals will recognise that bailouts, entitlements, and a “planned” society simply do not work. It’s not even a question of whether liberalism is a laudable concept. The problem is that it just… doesn’t… work.

Of course, my colleagues are correct in their appraisal of the liberal concept. Unfortunately, they are gravely mistaken in their belief that there comes a point at which the liberal “bubble” pops and suddenly all liberals wake up and smell the coffee.

Truth be told, as long as governments can benefit from maintaining a strong liberal consciousness in their citizenry, and as long as they can count on the media to maintain that consciousness, it will always be possible to convince liberal thinkers that, whatever negative events have taken place in a given country, they are the fault of the “enemy”—the non-liberal contingent.

But, surely, when there is clear-cut evidence that liberal policies have failed, liberals must accept that liberalism is an economic and social dead end. No, I’m afraid not. Let’s look at how just three examples are likely to play out—not as we’d like to see them play out, but how they will play out in reality.

When the bailouts end, the economy will collapse. Liberals will then grasp that bailouts do not work. Not so, I’m afraid. Although endless QE is as implausible as perpetual motion, when it is finally halted, the economy will inevitably crash, and crash badly—made worse by QE. Will liberals then realise the failure of QE? No, they will only argue that the only problem was that it was halted—that, had it continued, it would eventually have saved the day.

No liberal will hazard a guess as to what amount of QE or length of time would have created salvation; however, the blame for the crash will be placed squarely at the feet of the greedy One Percent, whom the liberals will say “engineered the end of QE in order to impoverish and enslave the middle class.” Liberals will be more committed than ever to government spending as a solution.

When cities such as Bradford in the UK or Detroit in the US reach fiscal collapse, liberals will realise that ever-increasing entitlements are simply not sustainable, that such tax-based benefit programmes drive out thriving industries, leaving the poor behind, in a dying metropolis. Again, this will not happen. Instead of learning the obvious lesson, liberals will redouble their belief in collectivism. They will reason that the government had successfully protected inner city workers through benefit programmes. However, big business, wanting to create slaves of workers, sent jobs overseas, to countries where enslavement by the rich is still possible.

By doing so, they removed tax dollars from the system, causing the impoverishment of inner-city dwellers, destroying their lives. Rather than abandon social programmes as ineffective, liberals will set about creating massive relocation programmes, such as moving the disenfranchised inner-city people to areas where there is sufficient local business for taxation to continue supporting those on public assistance. In so doing, those areas that were previously economically viable will also be bled to the point of fiscal failure, spreading the disease. However, the liberal conclusion will remain the same: “The problem is the greedy rich.”

When the government has fully morphed into a dictatorial police state, liberals will realise that governmental overreach has destroyed their liberty.

See the rest here

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The Stronger the Government, the Weaker the Nation

Posted by M. C. on February 16, 2024

Unfortunately, however, it’s difficult for a weak people — people who are frightened of their own shadows and deeply afraid of losing their dole — to overthrow a big and powerful government that has made them that way.

by Jacob G. Hornberger

https://www.fff.org/2024/02/13/the-stronger-the-government-the-weaker-the-nation

For all of our lives, it has been the aim of most Americans to make the federal government stronger, especially with respect to the warfare state. The principal justification for an ever more powerful government is that it keeps the American people safe from the likes of terrorists, drug dealers, communists, illegal immigrants, Russians, Chinese, Iranians, North Koreans, and Muslims. Moreover, it is argued, a powerful military-intelligence establishment enables the U.S. government to violently police the world and thereby earn respect and credibility from foreign regimes.

What hardly anyone notices about this big-government shibboleth is the price that is paid for it: a weak nation.

Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.

For example, no one can deny that the American people, despite living under the most powerful government in history, are among the most frightened people in the world. This phenomenon was perfectly manifested after the 9/11 attacks, when most Americans eagerly and willingly traded away their freedom for the aura of “security.” Examples include the support for the USA Patriot Act, the TSA takeover of airports, the unconstitutional invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, the torture center at Guantanamo Bay, the power to torture and assassinate American citizens, and the illegal telecom surveillance scheme.

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No One Needs Government: All Government and Rule Are Corrupt and Evil!

Posted by M. C. on January 26, 2024

By Gary D. Barnett

No one, no statisticians, and not even this government itself, has any clue as to how many federal laws exist. No one knows how many rules, restrictions, and regulations there are, and it is impossible to find an answer to this question. The Federal Register alone, the daily repository of all proposed and final federal rules and regulations, has well over 85,000 pages. The Code of Federal Regulations through 2019, has 186,000 pages, and the Federal Register Pages for the past decade eclipsed 800,000 pages.

“My father always said that government is like watching another man piss in your boot. Someone feels better but it certainly isn’t you.”

Orson Scott Card, Heartfire

Ah government, that institution invented for the sole purpose of solidifying a monopoly of force over people, so as to be able to rule over all of society with a violent iron hand. This bastardized, immoral, and vile practice now consumes this country and the world, and it has been allowed to happen with little resistance. When rule has taken hold, and is tyrannical, one can condemn the ruling class, but when that tyranny is perpetual, blame rests with the masses of people who have voluntarily accepted and embraced their own servitude. This reality is purposely avoided by most, as any acceptance of personal blame would require a responsibility not sought by the masses.

In today’s world, the situation is much worse, again due to a complete lack of individual responsibility and courage; an overwhelming  dependency on government, and an abundance of mass indifference among the herd. Few if any institutions are deserving of respect or praise as well, so universal rule is not only evident, but the lack of any worthwhile or trustworthy institutions has added fuel to the fire of tyranny. This includes NGOs, most so-called charity organizations, religious entities, churches, corporations, bureaucracies, a great majority of supposed health and medical establishments, education asylums, mainstream media, global ‘think’ tanks, and of course all authority-driven consortiums. So long as the majority expects others to take care of and protect them, obeys the rule-based master-class, and compliance is perceived to be the way to safety and survival, this paradigm shift into totalitarian hell will continue.

The power of the individual is far greater than most any imagine, especially when large groups of individuals are willing to shun even the idea of a State or rule, and to forsake compliance under any threat of force or violence. The problem of rule remains though, because while more are ‘saying’ that they are waking up, and more are promoting that narrative, the global agendas are still going forward with effectiveness, regardless of the rhetoric. It has now become in vogue actually, especially in ‘alternative media’ circles, to tout the notion that “we are winning,” and that with a new ‘election,’ the new ruler in power will throw off the chains of bondage that enslave ‘us.’ Little do they realize that there is no viable political solution, and there will never be. As Larken Rose properly stated:

“The truth is, one who seeks to achieve freedom by petitioning those in power to give it to him has already failed, regardless of the response. To beg for the blessing of “authority” is to accept that the choice is the master’s alone to make, which means that the person is already, by definition, a slave.”

All governments everywhere, including this abominable American democracy or so-called ‘constitutional republic,’ hold a ‘legal’ (illegal) monopoly on violence, and therefore use that force to restrain the population at every level possible. All it has to do is make a law, and then threaten property confiscation, incarceration, injury, or death in order to coerce compliance. Given that reality, consider just the U.S., and the astonishing multitude of its so-called laws.

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Everyone Loves a Generous Government Until They Have to Pay For It

Posted by M. C. on December 27, 2023

Not only does everyone love getting “free money” from the state, they also love hearing the fantasy repeated endlessly that debts are no problem because we will continue to “grow our way out of debt.”

https://www.oftwominds.com/blogdec23/generous12-23.html

Charles Hugh Smith

Governments, like individuals, can spend liberally with great generosity, or they can be frugal. Everyone receiving government money loves the state’s free-spending generosity, as it is “free money” to the recipients.

But there is no such thing as truly “free money,” a reality discussed by Niccolo Machiavelli in his classic work on leadership and statecraft, The Prince, published in 1516. In Machiavelli’s terminology, leaders could either pursue the positive reputation of being liberal in their spending (not “liberal” in a political sense) or suffer the negative reputation of being mean, i.e. miserly, tight-fisted and frugal.

Machiavelli pointed out that the spending demanded to maintain the reputation for free-spending liberality soon exhausted the funds of the state and required the leader to levy increasingly heavy taxes on the citizenry to pay for the state’s largesse.

Once we examine this necessary consequence of liberal spending, it turns out the generous government is anything but generous, as it is eventually forced to impoverish its people to support its spending.

It is the miserly leader and state that is actually generous, for it is the miserly leader / state that places a light burden on the earnings and livelihoods of the citizenry.

As Machiavelli explained, taxes and the inflation that comes with free spending both rob everyone, while the state’s generosity is a political process that necessarily distributes the largesse asymmetrically:

If he is wise he ought not to fear the reputation of being mean, for in time he will come to be more considered than if liberal, seeing that with his economy his revenues are enough, that he can defend himself against all attacks, and is able to engage in enterprises without burdening his people; thus it comes to pass that he exercises liberality towards all from whom he does not take, who are numberless, and meanness towards those to whom he does not give, who are few.

The profligate state and leader fail, for their resources are squandered.

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