Awesome article from Sheldon Richman. Government never admits its role when problems arise, but politicians frequently act to blame the marketplace whenever they get the chance.  “Look how dangerous it is if we aren’t managing society. People will miserably fail and make terrible decisions if we leave them to make their own choices.”

You’ve got to hand it to the people who really dislike free markets. They see them everywhere (under every bed?) and especially wherever any serious problem arises. That no free market exists within a thousand miles makes no difference whatsoever.

Take the oil spill in the Gulf. Market opponents are having a field day. They say this finally demonstrates the need for government to run things. Private firms can’t be trusted.

But it looks more like government can’t be trusted. The central government is, in law and in fact, the owner of the part in the Gulf where BP drilled for oil. (I didn’t say it was the legitimate owner.) The owner leased its property to a private company, BP, with a bad safety record (though a good one for sucking up to the environmentalist establishment and bureaucrats) and issued permits for the drilling operation. It then failed to keep a sharp eye on what BP and subcontractors Transocean and Halliburton were doing to its property. That might have something to do with the fact that government regulators don’t have the sort of relationship to “their” property that real private owners do, and they can always be counted on to get friendly with those they regulate. The Minerals Management Service in the Interior Department has a special conflict of interest: It makes money off the drilling it permits and regulates. Thus it could benefit from decisions that are bad for the public.

So what failed here, the market or the State? The call isn’t even close. The free market was nowhere near the scene. It has an airtight alibi. It didn’t exist.

Now with some effort you might get a die-hard anti-market person to concede this. So we move to the next step. What should replace the current hybrid (government-corporate) system? I see only two choices: full government management or full market management. Full government management wouldn’t appear terribly promising, considering that the current problems are traceable back to government management already. How would things change substantially if, instead of contracting out the drilling to a nominally private company, the government instead hired the personnel itself and paid them directly from the U.S. Treasury? Who cares if the rig says “BP, ” “Transocean,” or “U.S. Government” on it? The same fallible people would be in the same position to make the same fateful mistakes. Not much would have changed.

Incentives Matter

That’s because what matters is incentives, not whether a worker is on the government payroll. Why assume that civil service employees know more or care more than people paid by corporations?

But, it will be said, the government workers will have a mandate to protect the environment and the public. Okay, let’s go with that. Let’s say the decision-makers are environmental hawks who really don’t like oil drilling anywhere. They’ll be tough: no drilling unless it’s 100 percent safe. Leaving aside the obvious problem with this standard, that policy would have costs. The risk of oil spills may drop to zero, but we might have to forgo certain important benefits in the process. Poor people, say, might have their prospects dimmed by more expensive energy.

Is the tradeoff worth it? How do we go about answering that question? Government is no help here. It can certainly impose a plan, but constructing a plan beneficial to the public would be like playing darts in the dark. What bureaucrats think is good for us may not actually be good for us, no matter how much they care. Mises and Hayek covered this in their writings on state socialism and economic calculation.

Things are sure looking bleak. Government assurances are worthless whether it contracts out for drilling or does it itself. That leaves only the free market. Can it be trusted?

First off, let’s remember that we live in the real world. There are no iron-clad guarantees. The best we can hope for is relative security. Option A can’t be perfect. All we can ask is that it is better than Options B, C, and D. But how do we decide? When people conclude that government management is the best alternative, knowingly or not they have rigged the game. They are comparing the messy real world in which free markets would operate to an impossible government-managed smooth-running utopia, where regulators have complete knowledge and total dedication to the public interest. This is the Nirvana Fallacy, and the problem with it is that utopia isn’t on the table.

What is on the table are two options: an arrangement where incentives align economic activity with the public interest and one where they don’t. Now which setup seems more promising? One where personnel risk no capital, face no prospects of bankruptcy, and procure their revenue by force (taxation) after flattering members of special-interest-serving congressmen? Or one where: capital had to be raised from wary investors in a competitive environment, insurance would be priced according to risk, products would have to be sold to buyers who are free to say no, and full and strict liability would haunt every decision, with bankruptcy always looming and no government bailout are even implied?

When you come down to it, the choice is really rather easy.

http://www.campaignforliberty.com/article.php?view=931

Amusing and excellent post by Tom Woods regarding “discrimination” of obese people, particularly on planes and other transportation methods. Rights do not come from people, they come from our Creator. If you expect government to legislate perfect equality (regardless of how different that means to different people) in products, service, and other such things you are bound to go down the road of disappointment.

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Southwest Airlines recently announced that, as of this week, “persons of size” who fly with them will have to purchase an additional seat if they cannot fit into one.

The policy is not without precedent: United Airlines already charges heavier passengers double if they cannot fit in one seat. But in the wake of Southwest’s announcement, the discrimination police were out in their usual hysterical force. One obesity activist I saw on television argued that fat people shouldn’t be charged more for exceeding their allotted space since bulimic people do not receive a discount for using up less.

I was about to refute this argument, but it’s probably safe to assume that my readers are not comatose.

Einstein, these spokesmen aren’t. A person’s height does not impose any discomfort on people in adjacent seats.

These cries of “discrimination” recall the old claim that a hairdresser who charges more for women’s haircuts than men’s is engaged in discrimination. Men’s and women’s haircuts are not the same product. The women’s cut is generally much more demanding and time-consuming, and requires considerable skill, while men are generally content with a simple, straightforward haircut. (Of course, even if this did constitute discrimination, it should still be perfectly licit; anyone whose blood boiled from moral outrage over such an egregious travesty against human rights could simply patronize another establishment.)

Likewise, the passenger using up more than one seat is not using the same product as the person who uses only one. In no conceivable sense could it be described as “discrimination” to charge a higher fee to someone who uses more of a service.

Activists for the overweight complain that the real problem is the small size of airplane seats. “The fact is that Americans are getting larger,” Berg noted. “This is what the population looks like, and an airline has an obligation to make its seat fit the population.”

Of course, an airline has no such “obligation” in a free society. Since it wants to keep its customer base, it naturally wants to provide accommodations suitable for the population, and it will lose market share if its competitors do a better job of catering to people’s comfort. Berg’s inanity amounts to saying, “The fact is that Americans are moving away from classical music and toward rock. This is what the population listens to, and a record company has an obligation to make its music suit the population.”

Now, businessmen are not infallible. Southwest’s policy may backfire. It all depends on the difference between the revenue lost when angry overweight customers refuse to pay for an extra seat and fly on a competing airline that features no such requirement, and the revenue to be gained by passengers eager to fly on an airline that ensures that its passengers will enjoy a comfortable flight.

“We don’t want the customer to be embarrassed or offended in any way,” said Southwest spokeswoman Christine Turneabe-Connelly. But the comfort of all passengers is important. “If we have a full flight and there’s somebody sitting next to [a larger passenger], the other customer becomes upset.” In fact, Southwest found that most of the letters of complaint it was receiving came from people “feeling crowded by a large passenger.”

Under the new policy, a Southwest employee would speak discreetly to especially heavy customers planning to board a crowded flight, and ask them either to purchase a second seat or to wait for a less crowded flight. The Times of London quoted one NAAFA spokesman as saying that she would not pay one cent more than any other passenger, and predicted that Southwest’s policy would lead to lawsuits (as people seek to vindicate their inalienable human right to pay for one seat and use one and a half).

“Remember that you have a right to accessible transportation,” the National Association for the Advancement of Fat Acceptance tells visitors to its website. It would be interesting to hear the philosophical basis for such a “right,” strangely overlooked by John Locke and the framers of the U.S. Constitution.

Of course, the only genuine rights are ones that can be enjoyed by all people at the same time and in the same way, since any right that belongs to man qua man (such as the right to private property) must by definition be available for his exercise at all times, else it is not truly part of his nature. A “right to accessible transportation,” of course, means that one person gets accessible transportation while another is forced to provide it. To paraphrase Frank van Dun: Imagine two people on a desert island – how would they enforce their “right to accessible transportation” on each other, apart from each of them fruitlessly barking commands at the other person?

The response to Southwest’s obviously reasonable policy reflects the growth of an antidiscrimination movement among the overweight. Laws are presently on the books preventing discrimination on the basis of weight or height in San Francisco, Santa Cruz, Seattle, Washington, D.C., and Michigan.

When San Francisco’s Jennifer Portnick applied in the summer of 2001 for a position as an aerobics instructor with Jazzercise, a company with 5,300 franchises in 38 countries, she was turned down. “Applicants must have a higher muscle to fat ratio and look leaner than the public,” the 240-pound Portnick was told.

“I thought, I’m being judged by my measurements and not by what I can do,” Portnick later told reporters. Well, that’s a crying shame, but it’s their company, not yours. In the same way that a dentist might not want a receptionist with David Letterman-like teeth, an exercise center might want to communicate to its customers that following its regimen might actually make them thin. “A Jazzercise applicant must look leaner than the public,” Portnick’s rejection letter read. Nazi Germany!

Naturally, Portnick had no choice but to pursue the matter with San Francisco’s Human Rights Commission and its ordinances regarding weight discrimination. “She can inspire people to be fit that don’t have a cookie-cutter body,” lawyer Sondra Solovy said, thereby suggesting that if only Jazzercise possessed better businessmen, the company would realize the unique profit opportunity it had just missed.

But if Jazzercise was really shooting itself in the foot by not hiring Portnick, let the market prove her right. In fact, the publicity surrounding the case led to an upsurge of business at Portnick’s own aerobics center, where she now works. The “discrimination” mentality, on the other hand, has become all-consuming in the United States, supplanting common sense and rational thought. The first instinct is now always to run to the state and bully the hapless employer whose crime was not to hire you.

Naturally, Jazzercise eventually backed down under the pressure and settled with Portnick, dropping its “fit appearance” requirement for its aerobics instructors. Portnick announced her victory during International No Diet Day festivities in San Francisco.

There’s no logical stopping point to any of this. Why not demand, for instance, that all clothing stores respect overweight people’s human right to purchase clothes of their size? Why should they need to degrade themselves by having to shop at a Big & Tall? Isn’t that almost like apartheid?

Once again, it is private property that provides the only conflict-free resolution to problems of this kind. By intruding in the affairs of civil society and curtailing the rights of property owners in the name of stopping so-called anti-fat discrimination, it will be the state, when all is said and done, that ultimately grows the fattest.

Reprinted from Mises.org.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/woods/woods137.html

This article is from 2006, but it is a great demonstration of how private individuals and groups can come together on issues like environmental preservation in a free society. We do not need government coercion in order to protect the government, we simply need individuals using their influence (which happens to be much more effective and powerful in a free market and free society).

Look out development sprawl, the land trusts are coming.

Each year the US loses about 2 million acres of open space, farms, and forest to development. But now the tables are turning. Rather than see local green space and rugged outdoor areas gobbled up by strip malls or subdivisions, private land owners are increasingly preserving it.

Out on the east fork of New Mexico’s Gila River, the endangered Gila trout is getting help from adjacent landowners who are setting aside 48,000 acres in several land trusts to protect its habitat by preventing development.

At the same time, on the shores of Chesapeake Bay, 206 properties totaling more than 38,000 acres of fragile estuary habitat for migratory birds and marine life, like the short nose sturgeon, have been permanently set aside using legal tools like land trusts and conservation easements.

It’s all part of a huge new boom in conservation of private lands in which landowners voluntarily give up rights to develop their land – often in return for tax breaks, but also to save rugged landscapes they love.

Private land set aside for conservation grew 54 percent from 24 million acres to 37 million acres– an area larger than New England – between 2000 and 2005, according to a recent study by the Land Trust Alliance, a Washington-based umbrella group of local, state, and national land conservation groups.

National groups such as The Nature Conservancy were key in this push for preservation. But the biggest drivers for growth were volunteer local and state land trusts, whose protected acreage doubled from 6 million acres in 2000 to 11.9 million acres. Meanwhile the rate at which those associations were saving land tripled to 1.2 million acres a year between 2000 and 2005.

“People are not sitting around and waiting for a Washington bureaucrat to solve the problem of strip malls in their own backyard – they’re forming land trusts,” says Rand Wentworth, president of the alliance.

Land trusts are nonprofit groups that assist in setting up conservation, agricultural, and other land-preservation easements and then act as land stewards. Over the five-year period, their numbers leaped by nearly a third to 1,667, the study shows. The focus of such trusts varied widely with 39 percent protecting natural areas and wildlife habitat to 38 percent for open space and 26 percent wetlands and water resources. Others focused on preserving farms, local parks, and urban gardens.

http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/2010/0426/One-farmer-acts-to-save-environment-from-factory-farms

Morality has become increasingly complicated in modern times. Not that long ago you probably would have been 100% aware if you were buying stolen goods. After all, you most likely were on a first name basis with your supplier, and you were probably very aware of his business practices. Then along came big government and interference into the marketplace, which made knowing where the goods you purchased came from a lot more complicated.

Most things you purchase today were probably the product of theft somewhere down the line. “How can that be?” you may ask. Well, let’s start with the most simple example: food.

A farmer hears that the government is subsidizing corn this year because it has the potential to be used as a fuel and thus an alternative to oil. Let’s say you buy your corn directly from the farmer. A transaction involving only two people (no middle men), the grower and the consumer, except there is an X factor in this equation: the government subsidy.

After all, where did the money for the subsidy come from? That’s right. You and me. Now you might be alright with subsidizing farmers to grow corn, but I’m not. I don’t even like corn! Yet, the government took my money and transferred it to the farmer, who then transferred it to you via lower corn prices.

You (and the farmer) have effectively stolen my money. You didn’t mean to steal my money; you just really like fresh corn on the cob, and so you decided to buy some. By now you are probably saying, “That’s not fair! I can’t be held morally responsible.”

And I ask, then who is responsible?

The government? The one that is supposed to be, by the people, of the people, and for the people? It’s your government. You elected the representatives. You sat idly by while they subsidized farmers to grow more corn than the market determined was needed.

But you only had the best of intentions, after all, our dependence on foreign oil funds oppressive dictators and terrorists! We needed a solution and what’s better than a homegrown solution?

Except…it turns out that making ethanol from corn is ineffective, it takes more energy to turn corn into ethanol than the energy gained from the fuel! Not only that, but we have also now burned up a great deal of the world’s food. Places that actually rely our corn so that they can eat are now starving…

Oddly enough the government in all of its infinite wisdom didn’t foresee any of this, but the free market would have foreseen it all. Because no farmer would have been growing extraneous corn without the government paying them to do so, and thus no imbalance in the corn market would have occurred. And even if some farmer had been growing corn extra corn, no producer of Ethanol would’ve been dumb enough to waste money burning corn as fuel. And even if some business had been dumb enough they wouldn’t last very long, as they would be out of business much more quickly with higher corn prices and ineffective methodology.

Even more absurd is the fact that there is a crop, which could be grown quickly and easily without chemicals, and would supply us with enough fuel to not even need foreign oil. But the government has made growing this plant illegal!

Yes. I’m talking about Hemp. If we were to grow 7% (that’s all) of the world’s Hemp we would no longer be dependent on foreign oil. Do you think that if it were not illegal to grow farmers would need subsidies to grow such a crop? Not a chance.

Farmers would grow what makes them money, just like Wal-Mart sells the products that make them money. You would think it was absurd if the government was subsidizing the sale of the Nintendo Wii. Yet, the majority of people never question our country’s numerous government subsidies. Not to even mention the waste that occurs from lack of oversight of government funds.

So, the next time someone tells you that the unfettered free (redundant I know) market caused the economic recession, you should laugh in their face. Our market is no freer than the Chinese Press. Between congress’ laws (Cap and Trade), taxes (Corporate Income Tax and “Sin” Taxes), regulations (like those put upon the Auto Industry), and monetary inflation (from The Federal Reserve) inevitably one section of the economy is harmed and another rewarded. My money and your money is stolen and given to someone else, and believe me it ain’t the poor people.

Government subsidies of any kind are not only bad for the economy, they are morally reprehensible.

Below in gray is a well done and thought provoking article from Jacob G. Hornberger of the The Future of Freedom Foundation. The common negative assumptions about the free market and its influence in history (child labor, benefits for the rich only, economic inequality) are rarely explained with hard facts, evidence, or even basic common sense. The growing fallacies that free market, laissez faire economics “screw the poor” and “benefit the rich” and the subsequent demand for more government intervention to cure economic ills are precisely what will lead to more misery and poverty. Government does not and cannot create wealth, nor can it cure poverty.

Economic Ignorance and Liberal Hypocrisy at DailyKos.com

A liberal named John Sumner, who goes by the pseudonym Devilstower, has weighed into the debate originally inspired by my article “Liberal Delusions about Freedom.” Sumner’s article, “What Conservatives Mean When They Say ‘Libertarian’,” which appeared yesterday on the liberal website Dailykos.com, reveals a lot about the liberal mindset as well as the reasons why America today is suffering so many economic woes.

Sumner takes me to task for singing the praises of our American ancestors, who chose a federal government without such statist programs as income taxation, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, welfare, public (i.e., government) schooling, food stamps, corporate bailouts, foreign aid, a central bank, paper money, drug laws, and many, many more.
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Was it the “free market” that exploited Japanese Americans in World War II? Was it “capitalism” that drafted thousands of young men to be sent off to Vietnam, with many to return in body bags? Is it the free market that implements mandatory wage and price controls, takes a third of each American’s income, and leeches money to politically connected corporations? Who is the true exploiter, free markets or government? All things involuntary and compulsory are not compatible with freedom, yet it is constantly government using its monopolized force to accomplish its various goals, not the market. In a free society and market your greed, anger, and any other such negative qualities are purely limited to free and voluntary exchange. You cannot work like government using coercion to sell your products, force to maintain your position, and threats of imprisonment as your insurance.

There are many social injustices, uneven economic scenarios, and plenty of misery in the world today. Saying these miseries come from the free market is a gross misunderstanding of where the free market itself is born: freedom. Freedom has its root in the individual, not in an all-powerful group of people such as government. If some people choose to live in a socialist system with limited property, redistributed wealth, and controlled production, there is nothing standing in their way. But the line is drawn when they feel they have the right to force others into the system. Freedom does not mandate how you live, it simply prevents you from coercing others (either an individual or a group) into a certain lifestyle. No one can force you to buy their product, live the way they think is best for you, and no sensible person can use force with bogus reasoning such as “protecting you from yourself.”
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“None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Recent events not only with the current healthcare bill, but also on the economic front are waking up more and more Americans to the sad truth that the federal government is out of control. A fascist state is quickly developing in America, one of the few rare places in the history of the planet where “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” was not an unattainable dream but instead a mission statement. I first fully grasped where the misguided actions and ideology of the Republocrats would lead America during the Banker Bailout of 2008, and I returned home to fight against the Establishment by running for United States Congress as soon as I could.
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What is the free market? What is capitalism? The short answer is they are both freedom. They are not a system of strings meant to be pulled by a select group of powerful individuals, they are simply the keys to a life of freedom and an individual pursuit of happiness. One of the greatest misunderstandings about capitalism and free markets is that they are locked into a certain setting. The “Invisible Hand,” supply and demand, or any other explanations given for capitalism make it sound like a man-made system or some mystical network mysteriously established in ways that only economists can understand.

Free markets are not rooted in the creation of man; they are not the creation of people or an act of government. Free markets are rooted in freedom and exist only due to freedom itself. Freedom is the natural state of mankind, it is the neutral being that governs existence. Freedom comes naturally, any other government or economic system must come forcefully. The beauty is that freedom not only “allows” but encourages creative solutions to common problems, it does not suggest or mandate that we only look for the “Invisible Hand” or supply and demand to solve an issue that might arise.

A free market is not a system set in stone: it’s not as if the success of the free market hinges on the success of a certain product or business. A free market is merely an extension of the gifts of freedom; everything, whether it be exchange, living styles, or those who you involve with, is based on voluntary action. Freedom thrives on non-coerced and voluntary decisions. When one person or a group of people use force to push forward one objective or another, freedom is assaulted.
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Lost in the daily enjoyment of ridiculing Liberal hacks like Paul Krugman and his little sister Brad DeLong, I almost forgot that there is far more evil source of economic illiteracy: The Neo-Conservative.

David Brooks is one of the most influential peddlers of Neo-Con ideas. Brooks fully supported the invasion of Iraq. His circle is the Karl Rove, Dick Cheney circle of treasonous murderers. Yes, in the next life, like them, he will burn in Hell. Unfortunately, in this life he wants to show us what it looks like.

In his latest column, David has identified America’s primary source of economic and societal collapse.

I know you wait with breathless anticipation for his Holiness Mr. Brooks to enlighten you with his superior and lofty academic insight.

Is it out of control spending? Special interests? The Corporate-State alliance? Loose monetary policy?

Why no! It’s Libertarians. You know, that group of people that makes up 1-2% of the population, has held practically no political power in a century, has not supported any major legislation from Washington in at least that long, opposed every policy that caused the economic crises, and saw it all coming a mile away.
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