These two lectures speak to a very subtle, but very important topic underlying economics.

There’s a struggle between empiricists who insist there is no knowledge without experiment, and rationalists who believe in the triumph of reason. When the former, the empiricists reign, economics gets treated like just an opinion true only until it can be refuted, with all theories (including socialism) being valid until experiments are conducted.

The second of these two lectures by Hans Hermann Hoppe is more accessible than the first.

In some states it is illegal to label your milk rBGH free. rBGH is a hormone which is occasionally linked to illness immediately before the scientist conducting the study decides to retire.

On my “Liberte” brand yogurt it says “rBGH free: Milk produced without the use of recombinant bovine somatotropin.”

This is immediately followed by: “No significant difference has been shown between milk derived from rBGH treated and non rBGH treated cows.”

I’m certain that food and chemical companies are so effective at using regulation to strangle competition that someone could go to jail for selling this yogurt without that last note about the safety of rBGH.

I urge my leftist friends to be careful when they call for regulation. They’ll usually get it.

Triple H – The man, the myth, the legend:

Policy makers struggling to understand the barrage of financial panics, protests and other ills afflicting the world would do well to study the works of a long-dead economist: Karl Marx. The sooner they recognize we’re facing a once-in-a-lifetime crisis of capitalism, the better equipped they will be to manage a way out of it. (more on bloomberg.com)

. . . . because economics is just an opinion, and all opinions are equally valid.

The FDA has been killing people since 1906. The case against fats, it turns out, is nonsense:

See Also:

ps — only the government would create a pyramid to use it as a triangle.

Moscow on the Hudson because people are surrounded by impressive monuments and incompetent government.

Praise God that Hurricane Irene didn’t pound New York City nearly as severely as the State and its media threatened it would!

No church this morning: since the City shut down the subways and buses, congregants can’t assemble. Mayor “Nanny” Bloomberg advised us all to sleep late, as if neither the Lord nor His day of worship exist. And yet Christians support the State.

Meanwhile, the storm graphically proved the superiority of freedom and the market: while Our silly Rulers cowered and quavered, bars and restaurants posted placards: “Pre-Hurricane Party! C’mon in!” The tax-supported library didn’t even bother opening yesterday though we enjoyed a fine lunch of shrimp chow fon and chicken with cashews right next door. The City ordered everyone to stay home, and tried to force obedience by pulling the plug on public transit, but workers valiantly struggled to reach their jobs. A friend told me over our chow fon that he’d gone to his office that morning without knowing whether he’d gain access to the building or not: the staff that unlocks its doors might have stayed home since the subways were closing before their shift ended. In fact, when he arrived, not only did the porter admit him, he was on the phone with his replacement, asking whether he should pull a double shift or if the guy would find a way in from Brooklyn to Manhattan. Yep, Mr. Replacement said, he’d be there.

The State: utterly useless. The market: brave, inspiring, dedicated, dependable — and even providing delicious dinners and open offices despite impending rain. (Read more from lewrockwell.com)

Wow! Can’t believe this is making it into mainstream publications!

It’s a recurring fantasy for left wing academics fascinated by central planning that in cyclical downturns government should act decisively on a scale equivalent to war. Nobel Prize recipient Paul Krugman exemplifies this intellectual longing to steer our lives.

Krugman effortlessly slides into a war footing espousing intervention comparable to America’s crusade against Hitler, who, take note, centrally planned an economy himself:

“World War II is the great natural experiment in the effects of large increases in government spending, and as such has always served as an important positive example for those of us who favor an activist approach to a depressed economy.”

After WWII until its glaring failures manifest in the Seventies, Keynesianism inundated economic thought. Paul Samuelson’s textbooks became mainstays across the academy. Samuelson championed mathematical analysis, which transformed macroeconomics into a pseudo science spawning waves of budding planners infatuated with statistics.

From this basis the myth prevails that WWII finally overcame the Great Depression. History has revised Hoover, easily the most meddlesome peacetime president before FDR, into a laissez-faire reactionary. The New Deal – a disastrous example of everything not to do during downturns became beneficial, only it supposedly wasn’t aggressive enough. (Read more from forbes.com)

The United States will stop all financial aid to the Palestinian Authority if they proceed with plans to ask the United Nations for recognition of an independent state in September, a U.S. official warned Friday.

U.S. Consul General in Jerusalem, Daniel Rubinstein, told chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat in the name of the Obama administration, that the U.S. would veto a UN Security Council resolution calling for recognition of an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip within the June 4, 1967 borders and for UN membership. (Read more from haaretz.com)

What a stupid headline. Government thrives on fear and hatred. Of course the terror risk goes up. If he lives, it goes up, if he dies it goes up.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration says Osama bin Laden’s death has raised the risk of anti-American violence worldwide.

The State Department said in a global travel warning Tuesday that Americans should take precaution and maintain vigilance about terrorist threats, demonstrations and the possibility of violence against U.S. citizens.

It said al-Qaida and other groups are planning terrorist attacks against U.S. interests in Europe, Asia, Africa and Middle East. (Read more from yahoo.com)

I heard this question posed today by a university professor as if it was profound. I don’t find it so.

My niece makes glitter and glue paintings in her pre-school which have huge significance to her mother, my sister.

Her glitter paintings won’t appear in art books for the same reason propaganda art doesn’t. It’s crappy art. In the case of my niece, it has significance because of the mother-child relationship. In the case of propaganda art, it has significance because so many people are caught up in the mass delusion the art supports, whether it be Aryan purity, the creation of a workers’ paradise, making the world safe for democracy, hope and change, freeing the Cuban slaves, or whatever the slogan of the day.

Once the bubble bursts on the collectivist madness, we are left with crappy art plus a feeling of embarrassment on the part of whoever awoke from the mass delusion.

Why is it crappy?

Propaganda art doesn’t (and can’t) reflect the richness and complexity of the human experience. It looks at the world through a straw and sacrifices everything that makes us human in a vain, perverted attempt to constrain human activity and imagination for any one of the many false collectivist gods.

Paul Krugman takes the broken window fallacy to a entire new level. Following today’s earthquake Krugman writes:

People on twitter might be joking, but in all seriousness, we would see a bigger boost in spending and hence economic growth if the earthquake had done more damage.

(Read more)