http://mises.org/daily/574/Intellectual-Roots-of-Terror

Roman’s Book Report has launched.

Episode 1:

November 22nd, 1963 is a day Americans can never forget. That was the day when President Kennedy was assassinated by the (supposedly) lone gunman Lee Harvey Oswald. Shortly after, Oswald himself was killed on national television. Oswald’s name has been seared into the national consciousness as the ultimate traitor, but in the new memoir Me & Lee: How I Came to Know, Love and Lose Lee Harvey Oswald by his girlfriend Judyth Vary Baker, the hypothetical killer actually went to Dallas to try to prevent the assassination!

According to Baker, Oswald told her early in November that Kennedy would be killed at Dealey Plaza. He knew this because he had been invited to join the assassination team, as well as an abort team that would try to interfere with the shooting. He had infiltrated the former team with hopes of exposing the players, but once events were set in motion he knew the operatives would not hesitate to kill his entire family and anyone else he knew (including Judyth) if he didn’t play along.

Vary begged him not to take part, but he insisted that the group would just get another shooter to take his place. “If I stay,” he said, “at least that will be one less bullet aimed at Kennedy.”

After Oswald’s murder, his predictions began to take place, when a number of Vary’s cohorts in the undercover biological work she was engaged in mysteriously died or were killed. Afraid for her own life, she abandoned her promising science career and raised a family, keeping quiet about her involvement in the Kennedy situation for many years.

Now, living in an undisclosed European country for her own safety, she recalls her life as a girl who wanted to become a nun, but whose amazing aptitude for science ultimately brought her into a plot to kill Castro with a cancer-causing agent. This in turn led her into a world of virulent anti-Communists, Cuban exiles, mafia figures and the CIA. Me & Lee is a memoir that blows the lid off the Lee Harvey Oswald debate, and even names some of the men responsible for the Kennedy assassination. It is a must-read for anyone interested in American history, politics or even the fates of star-crossed lovers. (Read more from lewrockwell.com)

1. Hack your shower head.
2. Fix your water heater.
3. Go to a coin shop and compare real coins to today’s tokens.
4. Work for free.
5. Publish with creative commons (no Intellectual Property).
6. Visit a courthouse, and notice how benign our “criminal class” looks.
7. Go to jail. See what it means to be completely controlled by the state.
8. If you want to improve culture, do something wonderful. Don’t blame the market.
9. Tell the truth. Ideas are more powerful than armies.

For a detailed account of the descent of an entire country into despair and barbarism read Adam Fergusson’s When Money Dies: The Nightmare of Deficit Spending, Devaluation, and Hyperinflation in Weimar Germany.

First published in 1975, republished in 2010, and made available through the Mises Institute, When Money Dies should dispel the notion that the rule of men is superior to the rule of law. Why “the rule of law”? Because it was the violation of the rule of law by governments themselves that supplanted the peaceful, liberal order of a gold-based international monetary system with one in which central banks, at governments’ behest, could print fiduciary media without limit.

The full implication of this change was seen in Weimar Germany, the German people’s first experiment with representative democracy, where civilized society fell victim to the evils of the monetary printing press. For all practical purposes, the German mark was not worth the paper upon which it was printed. Eventually the Reichsbank issued the largest denomination note ever printed in the history of the world, a one-hundred-trillion-mark note, which no one would accept for payment. Be very careful if you believe that it can’t happen today. (Read more from mises.org)

Like Willa Cather, Joseph Conrad was a great economic novelist who maintained a contemptuous distance from the “economic” novel.

. . . .

The fullest, indeed the virtually inexhaustible, expression of Conrad’s praxeology is his novel The Secret Agent (1907). Cather thought that her era was characterized by “the revolt against individualism.”[3] Conrad saw something larger: a revolt against human action as it really is. The Secret Agent attempts to explain both the revolt and what it revolts against.

I.

The praxeology of The Secret Agent emerges from Conrad’s interest in a certain group of characters — political radicals — who are engaged in plotting, or at least in ardently desiring, the downfall of the capitalist system. These people have their own theories about human action, theories that Conrad finds enticing targets for ridicule. From the ruins of their ideologies, he retrieves much that is useful by an opposing system of thought. (Read more from )

I had no idea. How interesting!

Jeffrey Tucker covers a lot in this video. History, books, anti-capitalism. Interesting commentary on Upton Singclair’s The Jungle.

He talks about America’s gilded age 1870-1900ish, and a free-market aristocracy in Rhode Island that, from what it sounds like, consciously compared itself to the government enforced European aristocracy.

His principles for great entrepreneurs:
1- don’t let school take you out of the real world
2- don’t worry about money
3- fanatical focus on task at hand
4- surround themselves with good, smart people
5- don’t plan & act now
6- compete, but don’t seek to destroy
7- look to give others what they want
8- stay away from politics & the state! Find a realm of freedom and create within it!

I’m going to get this book.

I found Vargas’s column about the Tea Parties and translated it through Google translation, which made for some garbled English, but most of it remained understandable.

Here are some excerpts, with emphasis added:

Because of his [the Tea Party's] face [is hidden(?)] below ultraconservative, reactionary, populist and demagogic, and the nonsense that can claim some of their leaders, like those who say that President Obama is a Muslim ambush that want socialism for the United States or outbursts of Mrs. Christine O’Donnell, candidate for Delaware, a former practitioner of witchcraft who has accused homosexuals have created AIDS, there are in the core of this movement something healthy, realistic, deeply democratic and libertarian. The fear of runaway growth of the state and bureaucracy, whose tentacles are increasingly infiltrated into the private lives of citizens, cutting and stifling their freedom and their initiatives, the appropriation by the public sector functions or services that society civil could take more effective and less waste of resources, the creation of striking systems of social assistance can be financed only with systematic increases in taxes, which will result in falling living standards of middle and lower classes.

These fears are not free, respond to the reality of our time and originate from problems like living in the First and the Third World. But in the U.S. have a particular resonance, as always lively touch a nerve in a country where individualism is not ever had the bad press it has in Europe, in the collectivist doctrines that have taken deep roots in its modern history. A U.S. European pilgrims came seeking freedom, to practice their religion, it was not official, to defend the right of individuals to be independent, to choose your life without any limitation other than respect for life forms others. In the purest American tradition is not the state but the citizen is responsible first of its failure or success. . . .

For a long time, this ideal design was more or less respected and worked with the extraordinary development and prosperity of the country as a result. . . .

Then, because of wars, economic inequality multiplied, reformist political action was being amended, in many ways to improve it, but sometimes for worse. And among the latter, no doubt, given that inflation elephantine bureaucracy that, as much as in Europe, has reduced the area of freedom and autonomy of the individual, resulting in shrinkage of civil society and, therefore, the responsibility of the citizen against himself, his family and social group. . . .

In modern society, where the State is God, the individual is becoming less responsible, because reality can be just him, it pushes each extra day being only a state-dependent. For almost everything: studying, heal, get a job, enjoy a safe, participate and enjoy the cultural life, retirement account with the State. The idea that that is the final destination of the evolution that has followed the situation in his country is simply intolerable for a significant part of the United States, where the idea of the sovereign individual that should not be coil or exploitation by the State. . . .

If the State is decentralized and slim, if not . . . the individual is no longer free and has become an automaton manipulated by invisible and all-powerful bureaucrats who, in the shadows of their offices, taking all important decisions concerning their fate. . . .

In many cases, they [private individuals] do better and spend less than bureaucrats. In culture, for example, here in the United States, largely, magnificent museums, operas and concerts, dance, major exhibitions, public libraries are funded mainly by civil society. True, there are tax incentives that encourage this generosity, but the main reason is a cultural tradition, not entirely disappeared, which induces people to act, take initiative to invest their money in what they think right and necessary. Unlike others, this message from the Tea Party deserves to be taken into account.

Movement of the Moment Looks to Long-Ago Texts

So the agitation for greater liberty is nothing but the “movement of the moment.” It’ll pass, just like Fresca and drive-in theaters.

But when it comes to ideology, it [the Tea Party] has reached back to dusty bookshelves for long-dormant ideas.

It has resurrected once-obscure texts by dead writers — in some cases elevating them to best-seller status — to form a kind of Tea Party canon.

Um. Are you saying we should only read popular texts by living writers?

All told, the canon argues for a vision of the country where government’s role is to protect private property — against taxes as much as against thieves. Where religion plays a bigger role in public life. Where any public safety net is unconstitutional. And where the way back to prosperity is for markets to be left free from regulation.

Yes. No. Mostly. Yes.

Republican nominee for Senate in Wisconsin, asserted that the $20 billion escrow fund that the Obama administration forced BP to set up to pay damages from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill circumvented “the rule of law,” Hayek’s term for the unwritten code that prohibits the government from interfering with the pursuit of “personal ends and desires.”

This is a distortion to discredit the theory in the above mentioned books. Most libertarians/Austrian economists (Lew Rockwell) were against Obama’s interference in the BP disaster, but, and this what the NY Times neglects, advocated a 100% liability instead of the artificial cap which Obama placed on the company’s liability.

(Read more from nytimes.com)

This Mises Daily article is excerpted from chapters 4, 5, and 6 of Denationalisation of Money: the Argument Refined, by F.A. Hayek.

It tells some of the history of the world in terms of inflation:

Historians have again and again attempted to justify inflation by claiming that it made possible the great periods of rapid economic progress. They have even produced a series of inflationist theories of history,[2] which have, however, been clearly refuted by the evidence: prices in England and the United States were at the end of the period of their most rapid development almost exactly at the same level as 200 years earlier. But their recurring rediscoverers are usually ignorant of the earlier discussions.

From Marco Polo we learn that, in the 13th century, Chinese law made the rejection of imperial paper money punishable by death, and twenty years in chains or, in some cases death, was the penalty provided for the refusal to accept French assignats. Early English law punished repudiation as lese-majesty. At the time of the American revolution, non-acceptance of Continental notes was treated as an enemy act and sometimes worked a forfeiture of the debt.[3]

Only a few of the great powers preserved for a time tolerable monetary stability, and they brought it also to their colonial empires. But Eastern Europe and South America never knew a prolonged period of monetary stability.

I was struck by the clarification to Gresham’s Law given at the end. Something I’d noticed when I encountered the law in my studies:

It is a misunderstanding of what is called Gresham’s law to believe that the tendency for bad money to drive out good money makes a government monopoly necessary. . . . What Jevons, as so many others, seems to have overlooked, or regarded as irrelevant, is that Gresham’s law will apply only to different kinds of money between which a fixed rate of exchange is enforced by law. . . . Indeed, whenever inflation got really rapid, all sorts of objects of a more stable value, from potatoes to cigarettes and bottles of brandy to eggs and foreign currencies like dollar bills, have come to be increasingly used as money, so that at the end of the great German inflation it was contended that Gresham’s law was false and the opposite true.[20] It is not false, but it applies only if a fixed rate of exchange between the different forms of money is enforced.

To restate Gresham’s Law another way, bad money drives out good, IF IT FORCIBLY KEPT AT THE SAME PRICE.

Favorite parts (though the entire interview is dynamite):

@10:20 – Identification of Atrocity, and absurdity of counter argument “that’s war.”

@ 11:40 – Tom Wood’s paraphrases the surprising pro-war stance of many (but not all) Objectivists: “Collateral damage is not something to be deplored, it’s to be cheered. . . These people live in terrorist countries. . . I mean these people actually use that term, ‘Terrorist Country.’ There’s a nice individualist philosophy for you. . . To defend the good countries, we need to lay utter waste to our enemies. That’s individualism and reason.”

@ 16:30 – Absurdity of military budget.

@ 22:00 – The consequences of the military state.

Were there such a category, Somalia would hold a place in Guinness World Records as the country with the longest absence of a functioning central government. When the Somalis dismantled their government in 1991 and returned to their precolonial political status, the expectation was that chaos would result — and that, of course, would be the politically correct thing to expect.

Imagine if it were otherwise. Imagine any part of the globe not being dominated by a central government and the people there surviving, even prospering. If such were to happen and the idea spread to other parts of Africa or other parts of the world, the mystique of the necessity of the state might be irreparably damaged, and many politicians and bureaucrats might find themselves walking about looking for work.

If the expectation was that Somalia would plunge into an abyss of chaos, what is the reality? A number of recent studies address this question, including one by economist Peter Leeson drawing on statistical data from the United Nations Development Project, World Bank, CIA, and World Health Organization. Comparing the last five years under the central government (1985–1990) with the most recent five years of anarchy (2000–2005), Leeson finds these welfare changes:

* Life expectancy increased from 46 to 48.5 years. This is a poor expectancy as compared with developed countries. But in any measurement of welfare, what is important to observe is not where a population stands at a given time, but what is the trend. Is the trend positive, or is it the reverse?
* Number of one-year-olds fully immunized against measles rose from 30 to 40 percent.
* Number of physicians per 100,000 population rose from 3.4 to 4.
* Number of infants with low birth weight fell from 16 per thousand to 0.3 — almost none.
* Infant mortality per 1,000 births fell from 152 to 114.9.
* Maternal mortality per 100,000 births fell from 1,600 to 1,100.
* Percent of population with access to sanitation rose from 18 to 26.
* Percent of population with access to at least one health facility rose from 28 to 54.8.
* Percent of population in extreme poverty (i.e., less than $1 per day) fell from 60 to 43.2.
* Radios per thousand population rose from 4 to 98.5.
* Telephones per thousand population rose from 1.9 to 14.9.
* TVs per 1,000 population rose from 1.2 to 3.7.
* Fatalities due to measles fell from 8,000 to 5,600.

Another even more comprehensive study published last year by Benjamin Powell of the Independent Institute, concludes: “We find that Somalia’s living standards have improved generally … not just in absolute terms, but also relative to other African countries since the collapse of the Somali central government.”

Somalia’s pastoral economy is now stronger than that of either neighboring Kenya or Ethiopia. It is the largest exporter of livestock of any East African country. Telecommunications have burgeoned in Somalia; a call from a mobile phone is cheaper in Somalia than anywhere else in Africa. A small number of international investors are finding that the level of security of property and contract in Somalia warrants doing business there. Among these companies are Dole, BBC, the courier DHL, British Airways, General Motors, and Coca Cola, which recently opened a large bottling plant in Mogadishu. A 5-star Ambassador Hotel is operating in Hargeisa, and three new universities are fully functional: Amoud University (1997) in Borama, and Mogadishu University (1997), and University of Benadir (2002) in Mogadishu.

The Call to “Establish Democracy”

All of this is terribly politically incorrect for the reason I suggested. Consequently, the United Nations has by now spent well over two billion dollars attempting to re-establish a central government in Somalia. (Read more from mises.org)

Somalia is in the news again. Rival gangs are shooting each other, and why? The reason is always the same: the prospect that the weak-to-invisible transitional government in Mogadishu will become a real government with actual power.

The media invariably describe this prospect as a “hope.” But it’s a strange hope that is accompanied by violence and dread throughout the country. Somalia has done very well for itself in the 15 years since its government was eliminated. The future of peace and prosperity there depends in part on keeping one from forming.

As even the CIA factbook admits:

“Despite the seeming anarchy, Somalia’s service sector has managed to survive and grow. Telecommunication firms provide wireless services in most major cities and offer the lowest international call rates on the continent. In the absence of a formal banking sector, money exchange services have sprouted throughout the country, handling between $500 million and $1 billion in remittances annually. Mogadishu’s main market offers a variety of goods from food to the newest electronic gadgets. Hotels continue to operate, and militias provide security.”

To understand more about the country without a government, turn to The Law of the Somalis, written by Michael van Notten (1933-2002) and edited by Spencer Heath MacCallum, sheds light on the little known Somali law, culture and economic situation. Somalia is often cited as an example of a stateless society where chaos is the “rule” and warlords are aplenty.

The BBC’s country profile of Somalia sums up this view as widely publicized by the mainstream media: “Somalia has been without an effective central government since President Siad Barre was overthrown in 1991. Fighting between rival warlords and an inability to deal with famine and disease led to the deaths of up to one million people.”

The first sentence is indeed true: when the president was driven out by opposing clans in 1991, the government disintegrated. The second sentence, however, depicts Somalia as a lawless country in disorder. As for disorder, Van Notten quotes authorities to the effect that Somalia’s telecommunications are the best in Africa, its herding economy is stronger than that of either of its neighbors, Kenya or Ethiopia, and that since the demise of the central government, the Somali shilling has become far more stable in world currency markets, while exports have quintupled.

As for Somalia being lawless, Van Notten, a Dutch lawyer who married into the Samaron Clan and lived the last dozen years of his life with them, specifically challenges that portrayal. He explains that Somalia is a country based on customary law. The traditional Somali system of law and politics, he contends, is capable of maintaining a peaceful society and guiding the Somalis to prosperity. Moreover, efforts to re-establish a central government or impose democracy on the people are incompatible with the customary law.

Van Notten distinguishes between the four meanings of the word “law” — statutory, contractual, customary, and natural law. The common misunderstanding is that legitimate rules only come from formally established entities and that therefore a country without a legislature is lawless. Refuting that misunderstanding, van Notten explains that a perfectly orderly and peaceful country can exist when people respect property rights and honor their contracts. While natural laws denote peace, liberty, and friendly relations, statutory laws represent commands. Statutory laws reflect the preferences of legislators, who impose “morality” on those they govern and regulate their ability to voluntarily enter into contracts. This, according to van Notten, is wrong from the standpoint of both morality and law. (Read more from mises.org)