Augustine2004's opinions on Lew Rockwell, Plato, and assorted other subjects

[Augustine2004]

Robert Wenzel says that the rebels in Egypt unfortunately do not understand what private property should be, that there should be no public property, and what difference universal private property can make to their lives. So, if the rebels do take control of the government, we may have the French Revolution kind rather than the American. (Note: he didn't actually say something like, ' . . . that there should be no public property,' but I think he would agree.)


* Not only is Bill Gross, the world's biggest investor by one measure (greater than even Warren Buffett), shorting US Treasuries; George Soros says the US dollar is no longer the world's reserve currency. (If you haven't heard of that windbag, never mind heard him, you've been living on Mars.)


* I try to understand all the economic analyses out there. Some could be correct but are very hard for me to follow. However, just understand what we have going on there is a massive transfer of resources to the power elite, which includes financial companies such as Goldman Sachs. One way to force a transfer of wealth is to make extremely risky bids. If they hit, all is well. But if, as you may expect, they don't hit, why then just get the boobs--you, I, and that fella behind the tree--to cover the losses through our noses. For one thing the Fed is going all around buying up toxic assets.


* Normally, as the rich gets richer, the poor ought to benefit, too. But this is a third world economy now. We are going to get so poor that it no longer benefits the rich to rip out our remaining wealth. All that would be left for the uber elite is to lord it up over us.


Richard Maybury however is optimistic that after a period (years) of travail, we are going to bounce back. Socialism is going to get discredited big time. Doug Casey thinks so, too. People are going to see the State as it really is. Look at China and India. Booming even though still partially socialist, because they are dismantling socialism.

SMS--Short Message Service--is now used by 60% of the world's population. That is more impressive when you subtract out kiddies and seniles. (I am senile, I don't use SMS much though I do have a similar service. However, I am not yet senile enough to have forgotten I'd already written about the communication revolution.) SMS use--whose volume now drawfs email volume--ought to destroy the State in time. What happened and is happening in Falajah may become more known, as it ought to be. Maybury's optimism is going to be justified by future events, thanks in part to SMS.


* It's so obvious! In the past our dear government borrowed heavily from the future. Generations not yet born then will start out with debt that they can't possibly hope to make enough money to cover. Guess what? The future is now. Our debts can't possibly be covered. Insolvency! We didn't do anything--except to support dear old Uncle Sam while he was going on a spending spree and making all sorts of wild promises.


* One thing Tom Sowell didn't mention in this article of his
http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell041211.php3
is that many people are war profiteers. One at least is tryannous rex wealthy (hint: Feinstein).

[Augustine2004]

Readers may find this post
interesting.

[Augustine2004]

You and I are golden geese, by government fiat. http://epautos.com/?p=2911



Why worry about unemployment statistics? Henry Hazlitt points out in Economics in One Lessonthat we've progressed in producing more with less time and energy. Since the time Nixon shut the gold window, we did employ record percentages of people, but have we really gotten that much ahead in life? The point is that progressively more leisure availability is not necessarily a bad thing.
Now we have Great Depression unemployment. But I would say the drop in production is the thing to fret about the most. Production per person is the statistic to be concerned with the most, not with how many people are on the dole. (Have you read that in the aggregate, US households is getting more from our governments than the total amount of taxes they paid?) To be sure, idle people tend to commit more crime than busy people, but crime is somewhat a minor issue in comparison.
We should be pointing out that, while production per person has been dropping for years overall, our governments have grown like Topsy. Are we really going to be better off with more government, not less?

[Augustine2004]

I was startled to read this

For a long list of other FDA debacles through the years, just put "FDA" into my search box at the very top of this, or any page at mxyzxy.com.

Incredible, isn't it, that the FDA has gotten away with so many for so long? Oh, when will we wake up?


A doctor recommends we avoid *ALL* artificial sweeteners in an article. He singled out Splenda (sucralose). It's supposed to sweeten our food without side effects. But do research on these, and you'll find a whole medley of disturbing stuff, such as headaches, blurred vision, seizures, unhealthy guts, etc.


A woman internet writer discussed a German recommendation that it's ok to give patients placebos and tell them white lies about those. She pointed out that it's a virtual admission by the German version of FDA that most drugs on the market are not really that good.

She did say something that annoyed me: It was this phrase 'lawless as a gold rush town in the wild west.' Where's the evidence that such towns were more lawless (more evil-doing?) than say your town?


Anybody know enough to comment on this article? Rich get richer, but so did the middle class and the poor? http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2011/04/...-and-poor.html

[Augustine2004]

I am not in total agreement with this op-ed
http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewr...ves/86787.html
yet it seems to be an excellent retrospective and a good look-ahead. Undertaker of the American Dream, indeed!

[Augustine2004]

Scots secession, at long last?
http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2011/...-no-to-empire/
　

Thomas Sowell seems to me to be saying that the USFG has to continue its policies, even though they are provably failures, because changing them would be tantamount to admitting that we are better off without the State.
http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell050311.php3
I'm not sure. Your opinion?

　

I recall Murray Rothbard's suggestion that--first let me explain that GDP is essentially a measure of total national spending. As such, it includes government spending, including that part financed by borrowing. Now, Rothbard said that government spending should rather be subtracted out. I used to doubt that: Why not simply leave that out altogether. Now I agree. The new result may not be an accurate measure of national production or prosperity, but it would be a whole sight lot better than most anything else.

[Augustine2004]

Perhaps you have been following Tom Woods, Mr. Nullification
http://www.tomwoods.com/books/nullification/

Well, here's nullification in action!
http://weeklypacket.com/news/2011/ap...w-short-hours/
http://weeklypacket.com/news/2011/ma...ts-penobscot-/
http://www.foodrenegade.com/maine-to...d-sovereignty/
http://beforeitsnews.com/story/620/1...vereignty.html

[Augustine2004]

I liked this so much I just had to post a link to it http://www.lewrockwell.com/tucker/tucker194.html
I'm sorta surprised, though, that the author didn't stress the importance of private property. We need government to act on the basis of private property everywhere, yet Haiti's government utterly acts as though everything Haitian belongs to it as the author shows. That's the explanation for the abject poverty there.

[Augustine2004]

What do you know! Another must-post
http://www.lewrockwell.com/mccarthy/mccarthy13.1.html
Do me a favor? I'm allowed to post lewrockwell.com article links only here. But maybe you can repost in a thread of your choice. The thread I'd post in is this
http://www.theologyweb.com/campus/sh...litical-Derail

[Augustine2004]

For all my efforts, there doesn't seem to be anyone on TWeb, excepting Joel and possibly a rather few others, who can explain why Haiti remains so desperately poor, and the USA is still wealthy and yet rapidly sinking to Haiti's level.

If I and other Rothbardians fail, much of the world is going to remain at Haiti's level or sink to there.

Lifeguards in Orange County, CA, make over $200k annually. No, that's no error, I read it twice. Good reason to get rid of government. Or at least pry off the unions' fingers from the teat.

The lives of the weathy are different from your and my lives--more anarcho-capitalistic!
http://www.lewrockwell.com/walker/walker43.1.html

[Augustine2004]

Correction: Orange County lifeguards make up to $200,000/yr, or so I now understand. Sigh, not much of a correction, is it!

[Augustine2004]

People near the Mississippi River didn't trust the government to do things right, so built levees themselves.

pictures http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...es-houses.html

[Augustine2004]

Cause of autism?

vaccines manufactured using cell cultures developed from aborted human fetuses. The theory is that foreign human DNA wreaks havoc in the brains of young tykes.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-31727_16...-10391695.html

[Augustine2004]

I think fresh fruits and veggies in grocery stores used to be cheap relative to fast food--at least, much cheaper relative to now.

Why are they relatively much more expensive now?

The 2008 revision of the Farm Bill provides around $290 billion in subsidies. Meat & dairy got 73.8% of that. Grains 13.2% (I suppose that doesn't include stuff grown for ethanol). There are two more categories before veggies and fruits come in--last with 0.4%. Yikes!

I don't know about you, but I do suspect the leading cause of obesity and other health problems is the USFG.

[Augustine2004]

Many moons ago I tried to show that optimal division of labor everywhere and every time requires pure private property (no public property at all). I am now ready to redo my answer to that question.

I wrote the following:(post 1033)

The words ‘labor’ and ‘leisure’ seem clear enough, but when I considered how the world is to decide, I became lost. Consider, for example, the popular artist. She is happy to create exquisite works of art, for which there is considerable demand (I’m not sure, but I think Picasso died a billionaire in today’s money.) Labor? Leisure? I say, both! If I’m correct, then the answer is not the clear-cut dichotomy one-thing-and-the-other-thing answer that you may expect. One may try harder to solve a crossword puzzle than to finish a computer program that he agreed to produce.

Also consider that a country's military can work very hard indeed, but what it does may not be good for the world.

As before, feel free to offer thoughts or criticism.

Probably a problem is, 'labor' is not quite the right term. Maybe it would help to have a better term.