War Eagle Condo Bust
Back in the middle of this decade, building anything seemed like a good idea. With the housing boom in full bloom, developers had the imagination, lenders had the construction money, and buyers had swarms of mortgage lenders panting to lend them the entire purchase price of anything their hearts desired. FULL ARTICLE
The Economics of Illusion
Keynesianism presupposes an economy whose members do not see through the changes brought about by monetary or fiscal manipulation -- or, as some might say, the swindle. Above all, it presupposes that people are blinded by the idea that the value of money is stable -- by the "money illusion," as Irving Fisher called it. In all this we are not saying anything new; fundamentally, we are merely stating the approach of the classical economists. FULL ARTICLE
Woods Tells the Story of the Meltdown
Tom Woods has made an invaluable contribution with his latest book. If the Austrian account of our current plight is correct, what should we do now? Woods offers a simple answer that is essential for the public to understand. The government should do nothing. Malinvestments have occurred and must come to an end. FULL ARTICLE
Madoffian Finance in California
IOUs? . Idea: give California a central bank. Even better: give every citizen a central bank so we can dispense with this paycheck nonsense altogether.
Great news, our descent into Hell is taking place at a slower pace
Don't you love the way the NYT reports all bad economic news under Obama? Somehow everything is oddly turned into good news.
The "most painful downturn since the Great Depression has yet to release its hold"--what did you expect buddy?--and yet it is not so bad since "the figures for June did show signs that the pace of job losses is continuing to slow." Further, "Some economists contend that a recovery is indeed in its early stages, cautioning that the job market tends to lag behind progress in other areas."
Don't you know that it is a point of hard-core, irrefutable doctrine that the stimulus works, so it is just a matter of finding and then counting the ways, since it is also doctrine that there is no way the stimulus could be exacerbating problems? If you don't see it, you just haven't looked hard enough.
Abolish the Bank of England
A movement growing in that polite sort of way.
Happy We-Should-Restore-The-Monarchy-And-Rejoin-Britain Day!
The celebration of the 4th of July as if it's a libertarian holiday is a bit much to bear. Secession from Britain was a mistake. It's easy enough to realize that the Constitution was not some libertarian achievement as conservatives and libertarians delude themselves into thinking. The Declaration of Independence in 1776 led to all the standard evils of war and raising an army--in the words of Jeff Hummel, "unfunded government debt, paper money, skyrocketing inflation, price controls, legal tender laws, direct impressment of supplies and wide-spread conscription." Hmm, doesn't sound very libertarian to me. (See also below on the language of the Declaration.) Stealing, conscripting, enslaving, murdering. The glorification of democracy. The expansion of empire. The entrenching of corporatist interests with the state. The substitution of traditional order with worship of the democratic state.
Monarchy isn't perfect, as Hoppe argues, but the move from monarchy to democracy was not "progress" as even some libertarians have mistakenly believed (as Hoppe notes, "although aware of the economic and ethical deficiencies of democracy, both Mises and Rothbard had a soft spot for democracy and tended to view the transition from monarchy to democracy as progress"). When I suggest it was a mistake to secede from Britain, libertarians--brainwashed by both Saturday morning Schoolhouse Rock propaganda (No More Kings; Fireworks; Three-Ring Government; The Preamble) and Randian pro-America mythology--freak out. "You want us to have a king? How terrible?!" or "But Britain is more socialist than we are!" Well, first, I don't want us to have a king. I'd prefer we have no state: no kings or congresscritters or revenuers. But we have a king now, under another name; he can tax and murder us, just like the dreaded monarchian boogey-man; the state is overlord of all our property, as in feudalism. And rejoining socialist Britain now would be terrible--but would the European monarchies have become democratic socialist states if America had never left Britain? Our secession led to a constructivist new utopian order based on a "rational, scientific" paper document and the rejection of traditional, unwritten, limits on state power, thus setting the world on the path of democracy and democratic tyranny, and all the evils of the 20th Century-WWI, WWII, the Holocaust, the Cold War, Communism, Naziism, Fascism, Great Depressions I and II (see Goodbye 1776, 1789, Tom for links). America's reckless utopianism corrupted its mother state, rendering it unfit to rejoin. But had we never left? One percent tax paid to a distant King over the ocean sound appealing, anyone? (See Would YOU sign the Declaration of Independence?)
If I didn't hate states and flags so much I might just fly the ole Union Jack this Saturday!
Continue reading "Happy We-Should-Restore-The-Monarchy-And-Rejoin-Britain Day!" »
Yet Another Study Finds Patents Do Not Encourage Innovation
A new study published in The Columbia Science and Technology Law Review challenges the traditional view that patents foster innovation, suggesting instead that patents may harm new technology, economic activity, and societal wealth. These results may have important policy implications because many countries count on patent systems to spur new technology and promote economic growth.
The study is: Patents and the Regress of Useful Arts, by Dr. Andrew W. Torrance & Dr. Bill Tomlinson, Colum. Sci. & Tech. L. Rev. 10 (2009): 130 (Published May 15, 2009).
As those familiar with my libertarian and IP views know, I'm not a utilitarian (see my There's No Such Thing As A Free Patent; Against Intellectual Property); but almost all IP proponents are, and claim that IP is "worth it" because it generates additional innovation the value of which is implicitly presumed to be obviously much greater than the relatively trivial cost of having an IP system. So it is striking that there seems to be no empirical studies or analyses providing conclusive evidence that an IP system is indeed worth the cost. Every study I have ever seen is either neutral or ambivalent, or ends up condemning part or all of IP systems. Utilitarian IP advocates remind of the welfarist liberals skewered by Thomas Sowell in his The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy--liberals continue to advocate policies long after there is overwhelming evidence these policies do not work, even by the naive, socialistic standards of their proponents; likewise, utilitarians keep repeating the mantra that we need patent and copyright to stimulate innovation and creativity, even though every study continues to find the opposite.
Continue reading "Yet Another Study Finds Patents Do Not Encourage Innovation" »
Big Government and the 4th of July
As we prepare to celebrate the 233rd anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence we should recall why the American colonists made their decision to break away from the British Empire. The Declaration, in the enumerated grievances against the British Crown, makes it crystal clear that the cause was Big Government.
I explain this in a new piece of mine, "A Declaration of Independence from Big Government."
It was a Big Government that violated the colonists' personal and civil liberties, and denied them economic freedom through the stranglehold of a spider's web of commercial regulations, controls, and restrictions. In addition, the hard working people of those thirteen colonies along the eastern seaboard of North America were burdened with numerous taxes that consumed significant portions of their wealth, and were imposed without their consent.
Everywhere, the king appointed various "czars" who were to control and command much of the people's daily affairs of earning a living. Layer after layer of new bureaucracies were imposed over every facet of life. "He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance," the Founding Fathers explain.
In place of this oppressive system, the Founding Fathers declared the principles of a free people: every individual's right to his life, liberty and the pursuit of his own happiness. The ground was laid for the noble experiment of a society of free men associating on the basis of voluntary consent and mutually beneficial exchange.
Unfortunately, in our own time we have returned to a system of government controls and fiscal burdens that are far more oppressive than the ones our Founding Fathers revolted against.
Those freedom-loving colonists rose up against a government that taxed a fraction of what the U.S. government plunders the American taxpayer, nowaways. And the intrusive hand of government in our personal, social and economic affairs is far more pervasive today than anything those American colonists faced 233 years ago when the Declaration of Independence was signed.
This 4th of July, each of us should try to remind our fellow Americans about why the Founding Fathers led a revolution against the British government, and why the dangers of Big Government is far greater in 2009 than anything they faced in 1776.
Richard Ebeling
On J. Neil Schulman's Logorights
On GMO patent infestation, Kent Hastings comments on my IP views and those of J. Neil Schulman. Schulman responded:
My article "Informational Property: Logorights" begins by specifically disclaiming any state grants of monopoly. The concept stands or falls on its natural-property-rights arguments. Neither Samuel Edward Konkin III or Stephan Kinsella or anyone else has ever successfully answered the challenge I raised in my article, that without the identity of a thing being real enough to make it claimable as property, there would be nothing identifiable existing to be copied in the first place.
This is not arcane. It's just being pointedly ignored -- and Kinsella's attempts to change the subject don't make me forget what I wrote.
My response is as follows [my other comments on Schulman's logorights idea may be found in Thoughts on Intellectual Property, Scarcity, Labor-ownership, Metaphors, and Lockean Homesteading; Renaming Intellectual Property; and pp. 16, 26 et pass. of my Against Intellectual Property]:
Neil, I said your term "logorights" is somewhat arcane, not your theory, and there was no disrespect implied.
I think you are just wrong to assume that "having an identity" is a sufficient condition for being subject to property rights.
Consider: one has no property right the value of one's property, as Hoppe and Rothbard have argued (see Sheldon Richman on Intellectual Property versus Liberty); and likewise, one has no property right in the "identity" of one's property.
The reason is that owning value, patterns, identify gives you an ownership right in others' already-owned property. Saying you own the "identity" of a thing you own is another way of saying you own the pattern by which it is arranged-which is a disguised way of saying you have ownership rights in things everyone else owns. The standard Lockean account of property accepted by most libertarians says that the person who appropriates a previously unowned scarce resource becomes its owner. The IP advocate, of which you are one, says that if A thinks of a unique way to use his property or a unique pattern to impose on his own property, this act of intellectual innovation magically gives him partial ownership rights in property already owned by others. It lets you tell B how he can use his own property, even though B is the appropriator and by Lockean principles only B should be the owner. Granting A an IP right just means some of B's rights of control are transferred to A-it's a transfer of wealth or property, and it's incompatible with libertarian property rights.
The mistake Rand made was thinking "anything you create" is property, without first asking if the thing created is the type of thing that is subject to property in the first place. In fact, creation is neither necessary nor sufficient since if you create some new pattern using others' property you are not its owner; and if you impose a new pattern on property you own, then you own the transformed thing since you already owned the stuff of which it's made. A focus on creation as a source of ownership is the mistake made here. Creation is a source of wealth, sure, but not of ownership, since you can only create using things you already own.
Tibor Machan makes a similar mistake to your "identify" view when he assumes that many "ontological" types of things can be property-the mistake is in assuming that the way we conceptually and terminologically understand the world has some metaphysical basis that translates into property rights. By this view any concept we come up with to "identify" things that is successful, has magically created a new class of property. I find the concept "poem" useful-it is conceptually valid.. poems "have" "identity"-voila, they must be property!
I don't agree with this way of making rights depend on what concepts we have or how we identify and understand things in the world. Just because we can call something by a word, or call it a "thing," does not mean it is ownable. In fact, all ownership rights are enforced in physical terms against scarce resources; which means that granting rights in anything else has to undermine and dilute real rights in real things.
Dean Krugman to the Marching Band: "Stay the Course!"
All who remember Animal House can recall the scene at the end in which the band is trying to walk through the wall at the end of the alley, having been led there by one of the pranksters from Delta House. Obviously this moment is an absurdity, but nonetheless I can think of no better way to describe Paul Krugman's latest exhortation to the Obama administration to "stay the course." FULL ARTICLE
Free Bernie Madoff
What is the point of jailing him? He is no direct threat to anyone. Society would not safer with him in the slammer. He is not going to rob people or beat people up. He might write a book and donate the funds to charity or make some restitution to his victims. I, for one, would like to read that book. Instead, taxpayers will be forced to pick up the tab for his living expenses until his death. FULL ARTICLE
Centocor v. Abbott: Biggest Patent Verdict Ever.
From a post by Joe Mullin: Centocor v. Abbott: Biggest Patent Verdict Ever.:
This afternoon, a jury in Marshall, Texas, awarded the largest patent verdict in history: Abbott Laboratories must pay $1.67 billion to Centocor, a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson, because its Humira arthritis treatment infringes U.S. Patent No. 7,070,775. ... The jury deliberated for five hours before issuing the verdict, which specifies $1.17 billion for lost profits and $504 million as a reasonable royalty.
As I noted here, referring to a $1.92 million verdict against Jammie Thomas for "illegally" sharing 24 songs, "The pro-IP libertarians ought to hang their heads in shame. If they support this result, it's unthinkably evil. If they oppose it-well, they really can't, can they, since this is the result of having a state-run IP system-of having a state at all."
How Much Money Inflation?
The Federal Reserve is lying about the nation's money supply (M1). The current figure for money supply is being given as $1.6 trillion. The actual number is $2.34 trillion. The reported number is equivalent to an increase of 16% over the past year. The actual number is equivalent to an increase of 70% over the past year. This compares with the nation's high money-supply increase of 16.9% in 1986. FULL ARTICLE
Auditing the Fed will Audit the State
The Fed is a racket at heart, a con game writ large -- what else can you call an organization with the exclusive privilege of printing money in the trillions and handing it over to friends? But if this is true, what does that say about the state, the organization that created and sanctions it? Is the Fed an honest mistake in the state's otherwise undying efforts to preserve our liberty, or might it be a key component of a bigger racket? FULL ARTICLE
Honor Among Thieves
Stephen Bainbridge, a law professor at UCLA, offers a nice counterpoint to the majority who cheered Bernard Madoff's 150-year prison sentence for running a Ponzi scheme:
Perhaps I'm lacking in the empathy President Obama famously thinks judges need, but I have a hard time working up much sympathy for Madoff's victims . . . These folks wanted to believe that they really had found a great and all-powerful Wall Street Wiz and that there was nobody behind the curtain. So they ignored basic precepts of investing. They got burnt. Whatever.
Coincidentally, a defendant in another fraud case was sentenced today in Washington. Harriette Walters, a former middle manager for the District of Columbia's tax office, received a 17.5 year prison sentence for masterminding a scheme to issue $48 million in property tax rebates to non-existent entities -- the money really went to Waters and her friends.
Now, Walters is denounced as a thief for "stealing" the District's money. Walters' own attorney acknowledged at sentencing, "She took the money of the District of Columbia when it was not hers, and that was a terrible things to do." But the District took the money from its residents in the first place. They were the actual thieves here, not Walters. Sure, it would have been nice if Walters used her skills to help refund the money to its rightful owners, but it's hypocritical to condemn for her spending the money on herself and her friends when that's exactly what the city's "elected" leaders planned to do. Remember, this is the same District that spent over $600 million on a baseball stadium. Nothing Walters did can approach that level of waste or fraud.
Even more comically, the sentencing judge told Walters that, "It's a shame you couldn't have used your talent and your brilliance to help the D.C. government." Help them do what? Steal even more money from local residents?
In Comes the State
The trustees and bureaucrats plan the future based on the science of the day. They act as if they were the intended recipients of a letter written by Claude-Henri Saint-Simon some 200 years ago. In that letter, Saint-Simon envisioned a paradise governed by "men of genius." That was his utopia. Of course, history reveals a different reality. FULL ARTICLE
Inflation: What You See and What You Don't See
People are being told by governments, central bankers, and leading mainstream economists that money-base expansion is not inflationary -- because the money would remain in the portfolios of banks and would not spill over into the hands of firms and private households. This is, to put it mildly, an uninformed view. Let us start right from the beginning, FULL ARTICLE
The Heroic Professor Nesson
The recent issue of IP Law & Business has a fascinating Q&A with
Harvard law professor Charles Nesson, who is representing Joel Tenenbaum, a 25-year-old doctoral student being sued by five record companies under the Digital Theft Deterrence and Copyright Act of 1999. Tenenbaum refused to settle, and Nesson is arguing "that the law is unconstitutional because it allows for 'grossly excessive' awards."
While it's demeaning to have to hope for a just statutory interpretation by fake judges appointed by the criminal state of an artificial positive law enacted by "law"-makers of another department of the same criminal gang, it's heartening to see some people fighting back, and some otherwise mainstream legal professionals fighting for them. I doubt Nesson is a libertarian or against IP completely, but some of his comments are great. For example, he says,
Continue reading "The Heroic Professor Nesson" »
Australia's Uncreative Destruction
It turns out that Australia's Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is going around town breaking windows by, well, demanding they be built. There are over 35,000 construction and maintenance projects planned across Australia over the next 12 months. This includes AU$49 (US$39.4) billion dedicated to "nation building infrastructure," or crudely AU$2,200 in taxes for every man, woman, and child residing in Australia. FULL ARTICLE
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