This “terrorist identification chart” is quickly spreading across the internets. While it may not be formally precise and 100% accurate considering the existing legal texts. But it is nevertheless quite real. Considering the Patriot Act, the Military Commission Act, and most recently the National Defense Authorization Act – who’s not a terrorist?

So watch out, citizen – you might soon find that the threat government points out comes from you. Whether you know it or not.

H/T: Brad Spangler.

The European Union has from day one been (increasingly) about counteracting the only remaining super power after the [expected] implosion of the Soviet Union. European leaders (newspeak for ruler-politicians) have always aimed to make the EU “glorious” (powerful), and have long missed the days Europe were where it all happened.

While aiming to beat the Americans, they have at the same time worked to remain friends and not cause animosity across the Atlantic. After all, Europe is not as powerful as she “should” be. And will be, if you ask the power grabbers.

Of course, the recent rapidly quickening in pace in the ruling classes’ building a worldwide police state while using intellectual property “rights” and piracy as rationale, have been to all rulers’ gain. So why fight it? At the same time, it offers a great opportunity for European pols to take a stand and “demand” a thing or two from the American ruler(s). And appear to be the High Guardians of morality. This is how one quickly buys the people’s support, after all.

Whether this is the first step in European cockiness toward a new version of the superpowers’ King of the Hill remains to be seen. But politicians in the European Parliament will hold a press conference tomorrow, at which they will present a letter to President Obama and lawmakers expressing great concern about the treatment of Wikileaks suspect Bradley Manning. The official information blurb states:

MEP’s Marisa Matias (GUE/NGL), Christian Engström (Greens-EFA), Ana Gomes (S&D), Marietje Schaak (ALDE) and Christofer Fjellner (EPP), will present to the press a letter addressed that same day by themselves and 50 other colleagues of the European Parliament to President Obama, Members of the US Congress, and U.S. military authorities.

The press conference will be held at 11:30 local time tomorrow, November 30. It will be broadcast/streamed live here.

H/T Swedish minarchist blogger HAX.

While (re-)reading one of the chapters of Mises’s Theory of Money and Credit, I noted my underlining of the very clearly formulated definitions on page 240. Mises defines inflation as:

an increase in the quantity of money (in the broader sense of the term, so as to include fiduciary media as well), that is not offset by a corresponding increase in the need for money (again in the broader sense of the term), so that a fall in the objective exchange-value of money must occur.

Austrians commonly refer to only the first part of this definition – the increase in the quantity of money – without the specifying statement that inflation is only that part which is not offset by an increased demand for money (which, indirectly, seems to suggest a “soft dismissal” of monetarism rather than the hard line that would otherwise follow).

The same seems to be true for Mises’s definition of deflation:

a diminution of the quantity of money (in the broader sense) which is not offset by a corresponding diminution of the demand for money (in the broader sense), so that an increase in the objective exchange-value of money must occur.

Now, it would not be fair to say that these definitions as formulated by Mises back in 1912 in any sense were final. And it is far from impossible that Austrian thinkers before and since then have used idiosyncratic and different variations of these definitions, but presumably with a common core of their meaning.

But what definitions are there? I am interested in finding out what other definitions of inflation and deflation are available in Austrian works. Please post the definitions you are aware of in the comments section (direct quotes with page references, please).

No, you didn’t hear them actually say it. In fact, Bernanke says quite clearly “no” – gold is not money. But their actions speak much louder than words. The Financial Times reports that central bank gold buying is at a 40-year high. In other words, whereas central banks have primarily been net sellers of gold since the crash of the Bretton Woods system, they are now net buyers – and quite heavily so.

This is especially the case in rapidly growing economies such as the People’s Republic of China. So while European and American central banks are (still) selling gold and “investing” in paper currencies/fiat monies, the developing world is going heavy on what used to be the world accepted means of exchange. As the West goes down the tubes, the “new” economies are not only growing in terms of wealth and prosperity, but they are also adopting sound money. Meanwhile, we are getting rid of paper money for the sake of saving money – and replace it with digital ones and zeroes. (But at least we have “more money” than they do!)

So if we look to what central banks do and not to what they say, then Bernanke was quite obviously lying. In case anyone thought differently…

The super state of the European Union is reacting to information potentially undermining their political agenda in the expected way: prohibition, repression, and censorship. The latest move to “save” the economy is not to get the finances under order, as any individual or market organization would have (been forced) to. No, to government the solution is to sweep the problems under the carpet – to pretend they aren’t there. And, of course, to shoot the messenger. Long before he arrives with the bad news.

This is what the European Commission is now doing. While President Obama badmouthed the rating agencies, at least he did not (as far as we know) outlaw rating. But this is exactly where the European Commission is heading: the best way of stopping a market reaction to bad finances is not to avoid bad finances – it is to hide information of the fact. In other words, they propose a “blackout” of credit ratings of troubled European states. It is the typical knee-jerk reaction only governments (believe they) can get away with.

This image is being passed around on Facebook and elsewhere. H/T Ed Lopez.

Some may remember the search for and the final success in finding Ludwig von Mises birthplace in the Ukrainian town of Lviv. Then, at the 130th anniversary of Mises’s birth, a conference was organized to celebrate the life and works of Ludwig von Mises. As part of this celebration, a memorial plaque was placed on the wall of the building at 13 Academician V. Hnatiuk Street where Ludwig von Mises grew up.

What happened after the celebration is the typical story of bureaucratic statism. The Standing Committee on Culture, Promotion, Media and Tourism of Lviv City Council, the authority (judging from the name) that is in charge of a bunch of things, ruled that the plaque violated a number of bureaucratic rules and was therefore to be forcefully taken down. So much for Lviv’s great heritage and the historical significance of the birthplace of the greatest economist in the 20th century.

Of course, it is likely that both the “standing committee” and the mayor are quite ignorant of the life and works of Ludwig von Mises. It is also likely that this is but a routine bureaucratic matter that has not gained much attention in the town of Lviv. Therefore, and to express our dissatisfaction with the committee’s decision, an open letter is currently finding its way through the DHL logistics network to the mayor of Lviv, Mr. Andríj Ivanovych Sadovýj. The letter reads (but translated to Ukrainian):

To: Mr. Andríj Ivanovych Sadovýj, Mayor of Lviv;
Cc: Lvivska Miska Rada
Re: Lviv and Ludwig von Mises

30 October 2011

Dear Mr. Sadovýj,
This is to call your attention to a matter of symbolic and practical importance to the City of Lviv and to the countless admirers of one of Lviv’s most famous sons.
Lviv has an enviable history with many great sons and daughters. One of the greatest is no doubt the world renowned economist Ludwig von Mises. Born and raised in Lviv before the family moved to Vienna, Mises is known for many important breakthroughs in economic, monetary, and business cycle theory, the methodology of the social sciences, and for being one of the leading voices in the historically significant socialist calculation debate in the 1920s and 1930s. The numerous and voluminous works of Ludwig von Mises have shaped much of modern economic theory and his many theoretical advances have greatly contributed to both economic and political thinking. Current global financial and monetary challenges have both proven the accuracy of Mises theories and sparked unprecedented interest in his life and works.
By all available records, the Mises family’s industriousness, personal sacrifice and courage had made an extraordinary contribution to the progress and peace of Lviv and Galicia. This was the reason for Ludwig von Mises’s grandfather to be granted a patent of nobility. Considering the great historical and contemporary impact of Ludwig von Mises’s work, and the recent renewed global interest – indeed, a surge – in his work, we would expect the City of Lviv to host annual festivities to commemorate this great man and his achievements, dedicate the town library in his name, or establish a Mises museum to celebrate and document his life. Being the birth town of Ludwig von Mises, the City could venerate and benefit from his deeds and glory.
Yet the actions of the Standing Committee on Culture, Promotion, Media and Tourism of the Lviv City Council are in stark contrast to this great Lvivian heritage. Instead of celebrating their great son of Lviv, the Committee has decided to forcefully remove the plaque that commemorates Mises’s birth home. Such a disregard to Lviv’s own history is hard to comprehend. We can assure you that this motion is interpreted as a gesture of disgrace and bold intransigency.
We hope, Mr. Mayor, that you will be able to convince the Council and your fellow citizens not only to leave Mises’s memorial plaque at the house wall but undertake initiatives to honor his heritage. We remain open for discussion and cooperation for such initiatives.
Sincerely,

Per Bylund, The Ludwig von Mises Institute in Sweden
Dr. Krassen Stanchev, Institute for Market Economics
Ruta Vainiene, Lithuanian Free Market Institute

Signatories:
Dr. Roman Mogilevskii, Center for Social and Economic Research CASE-Kyrgyzstan,
Lisl Biggs-Davidson, Center for the Research into post-Communist Economies
Gia Jandieri, New Economic School – Georgia
Dr. John H. Moore. President Emeritus, Grove City College
Mirsuljan Namazaliev, Central Asian Free Market InstituteTsvetelin M. Tsonevski – Foundation for Economic Education
Prof. Miroslav Prokopijevic, Ph.D., IES & European University
Pavel Koktyshev, Institute for Public Policy
Linda N. Newton, Human Resource & Finance, Foundation for Economic Education
Josef Šíma, Ph.D., CEVRO Institute [school of legal and social studies]
Andrei Illarionov, PhD, Institute of Economic Analysis, Cato Institute
PD Dr. Michael Wohlgemuth, Walter Eucken Institut
Dr Alberto Mingardi, Istituto Bruno Leoni,
Prof. Pierre Garello, Aix -Marseille University and Institute for Economic Studies-Europe
Dr. Stefan Kolev, Wilhelm-Röpke-Institute
Jan Oravec, The F.A.Hayek Foundation
Svetozar (Steve) Pejovich, Professor Emeritus, Texas A&M University, Professor, University of Donja Gorica
Vadim Novikov, Russian Academy on National Economy and Public Administration
Dr. Franz-Lothar Altmann, Assoc. Prof.
Prof. Leonard P. Liggio, Atlas Economic Research Foundation
Prof. Donald J. Boudreaux, George Mason University
Dr. Barbara Kolm, F.A.v. Hayek Institut
Martin Zaimov, Chairman, Societe Generale Bulgaria
Carlo Lottieri, University of Siena and Istituto Bruno Leoni
Dr. Tom G. Palmer, Atlas Economic Research Foundation and Cato Institute
Ruzica Stojanovska, Ohrid Institute for Economic Strategies and International Affairs
Pierre Bessard, Liberales Institut, Zurich
Paata Sheshelidze, New Economic School – Georgia
Andreea Mihaela Prundeanu, Academy of Economic Studies
Karl-Peter Schwarz, Franfurter Algemeine Zeitung
Bojan Bogevski, Mises Macedonia
Wolf von Laer, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos
Frederik Cyrus Roeder, Ilia State University
Dr.Muhamet Mustafa, Prof. of Development Management, Pristina Unversity, Kosovo
Konstantin Bondarenko, Tajikistan Free Market Centre
Assoc. Prof. Katarina Zajc, Ph.D., LL.M., University of Ljubljana Law School
Linda Whetstone, Network for a Free Society
Dr. Zef Preci, Albanian Center for Economic Research
Prof. Jörg Guido Hulsmann, Université d’Angers and Ludwig von Mises Institute

I found this online via a Facebook post. Says it all.

H/T: Jonas Hjertquist

Last night, Walter Block debated (or “collaboratively discussed with”) Four Arrows on the common ground of their very disparate worldviews. The discussion was based on the book the two men co-authored: Differing Worldviews in Higher Education: Two Scholars Argue Cooperatively about Justice Education (PDF here), an argumentative yet cooperative discussion on a number of issues.

The debate was held at the St Louis University school of social work and the lion’s share of the audience were social work people. Obviously, they were both outraged, confused, and befuddled by Walter’s viewpoints and arguments. The Q&A made this very clear: most questions were directed only to Walter and most of them were quite confused about what he was actually saying. (For instance, a question about how Walter incorporated the culture of people in the mountainous country in his “Austrian economics.”) But overall the event was very respectful, and many should have learned that libertarianism is not as strange and evil as they used to believe.

As Walter noted after the event, this is probably the first time most of these people have heard a libertarian argument. In this sense, the event was a complete success – and more “outreach” of this type is very important for our movement to grow and in order to eventually change the world for the better.

The most surprising statement of the night was Four Arrows’ initial declaration that he is “a libertarian now,” thanks to Walter’s persuasive arguments. Way to go, Walter! But unfortunately we also learned that this perhaps was a little premature: Four Arrows later commented on the minimum wage and how voluntary exchanges below the minimum wage level somehow “extracts” money from employees and enriches employers. I’ll leave it to Walter to finish what he started.

The great take-home of the night, however, was the forcefulness and persuasiveness of the Blockian arguments – or should I say “paradigm”? – even to a social work crowd. Walter is undoubtedly a worthy recipient of the Gary G. Schlarbaum Prize for Lifetime Achievement in Liberty award.

Update: The organizers filmed the event and will, after editing, post the discussion on Youtube. I’ll post a link when it is available.

Only two weeks after the free streaming music service Spotify was launched in the United States, it is sued for patent infringement. The service, which has been immensely popular all over Europe since its inception in 2006, offers millions of songs and for a small monthly fee the whole music library is made available on mobile devices and at high(er) quality. Some predict Spotify may be the “iTunes killer.”

That is, if it survives the IP madness.

It lasted only two weeks after working for several years trying to get around laws and regulations to enter the US market. Now the online company will have to appear in court to defend their business from allegations by Packet Video, a company that claims to own a patent for online streaming. The “beauty” of this story is that Packet Video did not create anything to award them the patent. They gained it through acquiring another company in 2007 – a company that was awarded the patent already in 1995.

One has to wonder what kind of streaming technology was invented (and needed government protection) back in 1995, while most people were not even on the web – and the pioneers were just being introduced to the Netscape Navigator browser. This was the same year the Mises Institute created the first version of mises.org. Of course, anything “streaming” was far from attainable at the time.

If Packet Video “wins” in court, commentators believe this would be a serious blow to all streaming services online both today and in the future. Oh the glory of government privilege…

I have written much before on the state of Sweden, the mythical land of “working” socialism. Here is another example of how it seems to not work at all as the global myth has it. The huge discount store of Gekås in the small, 9,000-population town of Ullared in southern Sweden attracts 28,000 customers daily. Obviously, most of the customers are from out-of-town or even drive from far away to buy the heavily discounted goods at Gekås.

The problem with all these travelers is that the roads to Ullared are not even close to sufficient for this kind of traffic. This causes traffic jams and customers consequently end up spending time in their cars instead of in the discount store. Meanwhile, the central government’s road authority Trafikverket has done nothing to improve the roads to Ullared for the last 15 years. And they are not planning on doing anything either.

As a solution to this problem, which of course affects Gekås as it affects the small town of Ullared and the whole region, Gekås are offering a SEK 100,000,000 loan (approx. $16,000,000) to the road authority to improve the roads – at a very favorable interest rate. Gekås have already invested in the infrastructure in Ullared to support visits by their numerous customers, and this is obviously the next step. The road authority has not responded, but it is likely they will turn Gekås offer down. Private interests are generally not allowed to participate in the provision of public welfare and service. Or, as in this case, the non-provision of it.

Americans look out! Your empire may not be the only one in the world much longer. The European Union, often thought of by Europeans (and especially European power-hungry politicians) as a way of engineering a super power of their own to equal that of the United States, is consistently taking leaps toward creating a centralized continental super state. Years ago, the European Union invested millions in creating a pan-European history book to be used in schools across the continent. “To create a European sense of belonging,” they said. Recently, the European Parliament voted to study further how they can get the EU’s budget to be the size of “2.5-10%” of the continent’s GDP.

Well, there are ridiculous attempts at creating a united people of Europe as well: British The Telegraph reports that there are plans in the European Parliament to force all national sports teams of EU member states to wear the European Union flag on their jerseys…

Two columns were published today with very different libertarian analyses of government laws and privileges. In one of them, Steve Horwitz argues that “equality under the law” is an important libertarian (classical liberal) principle, and therefore that it is a “no-brainer” for libertarians to support such measures as increasing the marriage definition to include gays (as was recently done in New York).

In the other, I argue that one needs to separate rights from privileges and that increasing the relative size of a privileged group does not constitute a step in any valuable direction (at least from a libertarian point of view). Indeed, there is – as Hayek argued in his Law, Legislation, and Liberty – a difference between the Law (as in natural or common) and (enacted) laws. Equality under the numerous government laws is not only impossible (since pretty much all of them constitute privilege), but may be directly counter-acting the cause of liberty.

In contrast, the principle of equality under the Law, as in market-based, voluntary law or natural rights, is something to which I think Murray Rothbard would subscribe. In either case, there should be plenty of examples and arguments to support both takes on this issue of . What do you think?

Ludwig von Mises writes in Human Action on the nature of copyrights and patents:

If there are neither copyrights nor patents, the inventors and authors are in the position of an entrepreneur. They have a temporary advantage as against other people. As they start sooner in utilizing their invention or their manuscript themselves or in making it available for use to other people (manufacturers or publishers), they have the chance to earn profits in the time interval until everybody can likewise utilize it. As soon as the invention or the content of the book are publicly known, they become “free goods” and the inventor or author has only his glory. (p. 657, Scholar’s Edition)

The analysis is as clear and sound as anything else Mises ever wrote, and the implications are obvious. That the “digital” information economy provides the means to easily make and distribute copies does not change anything; in fact, the faster pace of the market affects all industries and products (however at varying degrees).

One might wonder what could possibly be wrong with being an entrepreneur in the market. The answer is: Nothing. Unless you already enjoy a politically enforced privilege, of course, because then you would prefer and push to keep it. That is the nature of privilege, after all.

Whereas Sweden has long been known for its wonderful socialism, it is also known for being a “pirate nest” in terms of lack of respect for “intellectual property.” The torrent based file sharing site The Pirate Bay was founded and is hosted in Sweden, as are the servers for whistle-blower web site Wikileaks; the country has a Pirate Party represented in the European Parliament; and people are generally unsympathetic towards copyrights and intellectual privilege. All of this has of course stirred great hatred from the US federal/corporate government as well as privileged corporations’ feudal interest safe-keepers such as IFPI and MPAA, all of which have put great pressure on the Swedish government to enact anti-pirating laws, crack down on internet-based “crime,” persecute and prosecute enemies of the state, and so on.

Yet Swedes do not seem to fall for it – despite their falling for socialist promises for over a century. Instead, people get quite upset with this madness. A recently and very widely copied Facebook status update summarizes recent high-profile cases in Swedish courts:

Indemnification for the murder of 10-year-old Engla Juncosa Höglund: $11,500.

Indemnification for the rape of 14-year-old girl: barely $7,700.

Indemnification for the Pirate Bay: $7,000,000!!!!!

There is probably more to the story than these amounts show, but the court-ruled compensations of the victims in these cases are simply ridiculous – how’s $7,000,000 for “illegal copying” compared to $7,000 for child rape? But it shows clearly how government values the lives and welfare of children (“its” children) as compared to how it values corporate privilege. No wonder people are upset with status quo.

The myth of Sweden as the successful socialist experiment continues to thrive – despite and in direct contrast to the available facts. On his blog, Carl Svanberg recently summarized the state of Swedish health care using recent news reports. It is a nasty image of advanced and high-tech health care that is unavailable when needed, strictly rationed, and where medical personnel dissuade dying people from seeking care.

But let’s not forget that the myth is so much more important for socialist-oriented politicians aiming to nationalize private industry (like Obama), than facts could ever be.

Washington Post has an article today on “Five economic lessons from Sweden, the rock star of the recovery.” While it is certainly true that the economy of Sweden quite quickly bounced back after the short crisis, WaPo’s analysis is more of wishful thinking than statements of facts. Granted, the facts stated are true – but the offered interpretations of their effects are not.

The first lesson is not rocket science, but Keynesians might not fully agree with it: “Keep your fiscal house in order when times are good, so you will have more room to maneuver when things are bad.” Sweden’s economy has been in relatively good shape after the depression the country experience in the early 1990s, after which politicians started cleaning up their own mess. Since the mid-1990′s Sweden has had only balanced budgets and even reduced the national debt from just over 80% to under 40% of GDP. The welfare system has also, slowly and step by step so that people would not notice the change, been restructured through adding incentives for people to choose productive labor instead of welfare checks. Many welfare programs have also been changed from the previous never-ending subsidization of laziness to provide limited time only support while adjusting to changes in the market.

But already in the second lesson, “Fiscal stimulus can be more effective when it is automatic,” smells of Keynesian wishful thinking. The writer seems to say that Sweden managed to get quickly out of the crisis since the country’s government “always” stimulates the economy, while temporary stimulus attempts (as attempted by both Bush II and Obama) do not seem to work. Of course, an extensive welfare system is really a burden on the economy – it is hardly the case that constant stimulus spending makes an economy depression-proof. And when thinking about it, this “second lesson” really contradicts the first lesson: how come a country could quickly bounce back when it did not provide temporary stimulus and had recently and consistently cut down on and restructured the welfare systems while also cutting taxes specifically for those with [real] jobs? It is hardly the “stimulus spending” that helped Sweden out of the crisis.

The third lesson seems to be an attempt to stifle the growing support to audit (or abolish) the Federal Reserve. According to the Washington Post, a country needs to “Use monetary policy aggressively” in order to “solve” crises. The Swedish central bank, the Riksbank, supplied the market with negative interest rates and WaPo tells us this is what saved the country. Interestingly enough, they do not mention anything about what the Riksbank was doing before the crisis – during the boom. Perhaps the Swedish central bank did not work as hard as the Federal Reserve to create a bubble in the first place?

The fourth lesson is the common mercantilist crap we would expect from journalists completely ignorant of economics. Sweden was “saved” because the government was able to “Keep the value of your currency flexible” during the crisis, which improved profitability for exports when the krona fell. Well, the reason the krona does not have a fixed exchange rate is because this was part of why the recession in the early 1990s escalated into a depression; the krona was pegged to the euro, since the Swedish government was hoping to enter the EU and adopt the euro in 1995. This didn’t work out. With a fluctuating fiat currency the market sets its value depending on the public finances, which in a sense provides a check on government spending. The fact that the krona fell during the crisis, which means Swedes were made immediately poorer compared to peoples under the euro and dollar, simply reminded leading politicians that they should not gorge in deficit spending…

The fifth lesson is not so much a lesson as a desperate cry in the name of what Mises termed “statolatry”: WaPo states that “Bankers will always make blunders; just make sure they don’t doom the economy.” Obviously, one should interpret the sentence as to saying that bankers and other private interests will always make blunders, but benevolent government will not. It follows from lessons 2-4 that government saved Sweden (at least in the mainstream media way of thinking), and lesson 5 simply makes this “truth” more explicit.

Just like the other pro-state lessons, however, this is a very interesting statement simply because it is so strange in its utter stupidity. WaPo mentions how banks may have learned something from the much worse crisis in the early 1990s, during which the Swedish government nationalized banks and set interest rates to 500%, but that the real savior of the day (of course) is government. It is proclaimed that “bank bailouts might be necessary to save an economy” and that keeping failed banks afloat is necessary not for the economy to crash, but that government still needs to provide the banks (its children?) with a good spanking so that they do not take on too much risk next time around.

Obviously, this is what WaPo thinks government did in the early 1990s and that’s why only a little support was needed in the recent crisis. But Sweden’s attempt at “solving” the crisis in the 1990s pretty much provided a blueprint for the federal government in this recent crisis: bank bailouts and nationalization, the assuming of bad debts, new government regulation and a supervising authority… This is why e.g. Paul Krugman has used Sweden as an example of how to put an end to the crisis. (But, of course, WaPo concludes, without the Federal Reserve the Swedish banking system would have crashed anyway.)

Interestingly enough, many Keynesians suffer from memory loss. The pretty radical and sound changes to the Swedish welfare state 1992-2007 are always mysteriously unnoticed in their “analysis” of the crises. Carry on, people, nothing to see here.

As I am listening to Swedish radio streamed over the Internet in my mid-Missouri home, I am reminded of the (comparatively) terrible state of American telecommunications. My first real culture shock as a Swede moving to the United States, after realizing the American people is genuinely and unbelievably generous (especially compared to their government and other peoples around the world), was the cost and quality of cellular phones and internet connections. The former (cost) is high, while the latter (quality) is low. I was used to the very opposite in the faraway land in the north, socialist Sweden.

Indeed, the radio commercial offers wireless internet (4G connection for your laptop) at 32 Mbps with unlimited data at less than $15/mo. Granted, it is only for the first six months, after which the price increases to the regular $32. But it includes the gargantuan Swedish sales tax (VAT, really) of 25%. At the same time, I can get the same kind of service but with slower speeds and much worse coverage from Sprint – for $49.99 plus several taxes and fees.

To top it off, my parents enjoy 100 Mbps broadband (that’s 100 Mbps both up and down, folks) in their house in the semi-rural outskirts of Stockholm and, obviously, they get their phone service, cable tv, and everything else through this awesome connection. I can of course listen to streaming radio on my 12 Mbps connection (12 down, only 1 up) here in urban mid-Missouri, but the market does not offer 100 Mbps (or even half the speed) connections. And I have several friends in the area with only dial-up connections of 56 kbps (!), which is unheard of in Sweden unless you live on a mountain top a hundred miles from your closest neighbor, perhaps.

Someone might think that “surely” the Swedish carriers and service providers are subsidized somehow. For internet service providers this may be the case, since there are plenty of municipal fiber optic networks. But there are plenty of those in the United States as well. America is much further from a market society than most of us would like to admit. What about cell phone carriers? No, not really – at least not more than any other corporation. They pay absurd annual “fees” to the authorities for permission to use radio frequencies. The better solution is, of course, to privatize the airwaves, but that is not likely to happen in any country I know of.

So are low-cost, high-quality telecommunications in Sweden due to the country being “not so sparsely populated as the US,” as someone claimed? No, that is definitely the case. Sweden is slightly larger than California with a population of only nine million. And those nine million are the only ones in the world speaking the proud Swedish language, which is hardly a cost-saving fact for businesses. Furthermore, your Swedish cell phone is usable almost everywhere in the country (except, perhaps, on mountain tops in the far northwest), including subways and on forest highways – using your own carrier. At the same time, I can drive only 30 minutes down one of the highways in Missouri for my cell phone to exclaim that there is “no signal detected” – from any carrier.

No matter what excuses we may think of, the telecommunications market in socialist Sweden arguably provides more value to consumers at (much) lower prices than any of the American carriers. So we must conclude that there is something severely wrong with the American telecommunications market. My guess? There is less of a market for wireless telecommunication in the U.S. than even in socialist Sweden…

Tino Sanandaji analyzes data on the Swedish school system on his blog, where increasing “privatization” (a Friedmanite voucher system) and quickly dropping test scores seem to correlate. After first debunking the left’s view that the problem of Swedish education is because of private schools and profits, he debunks the right’s view that the voucher system (a supposedly “capitalist” system) will put an end to the degenerating school system.

Tino rightly points out that the Swedish right’s educational system is a faux capitalist system that restricts free enterprise from behaving like free enterprise and therefore cannot provide the remarkable results we have learned to expect from the market. He also hints at the curriculum being continuously watered down, which is also the case with expectations. And he hints further at the substandard norms in Swedish schools (as well as in society as a whole) and the power vacuum, a result of the egalitarian objectives of education, that has created a type of “mini Lord-of-the-flies” atmosphere in classrooms.

What he does not bring up is how Swedish university education of teachers was dramatically changed over the last decades in order to fundamentally make schools into fuzzy-education, egalitarian-oriented institutions for raising Good Citizens. (This, by the way, in the form of creating “good democratic citizens” is an objective of education as stated in the Central Plan as enacted by Parliament and enforced by The Swedish National Agency for Education.) Finishing a teaching degree makes you state certified for teaching certain subjects, but it does not mean you actually studied those topics (!).

Of course, when teachers are taught to be soft and never demanding, to do what the children ask rather than educate them, and to explicitly advocate gender neutrality in the class rooms at the expense of teaching – which are all part of what you learn while working towards the teaching degree – then the quality of education necessarily drops. Fast. But this should not be surprising; it is all in line with how that Socialist Utopia in the north is developing.

See also: How the Welfare State Corrupted Sweden, The Sweden Myth, Stagnating Socialist Sweden, The Recycling Myth

And the discussion on minarchism vs. anarchism goes on. Whereas this discussion never really ended (will it ever?), it recently picked up again after my article attempting to show why minarchists are “the enemy.” Of course, I do not mean to say that minarchists like Mises were necessarily the ultimate enemy of mankind, but I certainly mean that anarchists like Rothbard are much more principled proponents of liberty. Anarchists, I argue, have a true passion for justice, whereas minarchists are stuck treading water in statist territory.

Obviously, one should make a difference between economics and political philosophy. As for the former, there is no reason not to love both Mises and Rothbard. But as for the latter, one cannot help thinking Mises didn’t quite get it right.

Here are the articles:

Why Minarchists Are the Enemy

Rejoinder on Evil Minarchism