[maester_miller]

1. “general welfare” clause
2. commerce clause

They justify literally anything by pointing to one of these two things.

[maester_miller]

Not sure if this is relevant to your question, but it always amuses me when people (usually leftists) yell about “record-breaking” profits or how profits are at an “all-time high”?

Is this not a universally good thing? Companies cannot profit without selling things of value to consumers. If Apple’s profits are at an all-time high, it is because more people have Iphones than ever before. Should this not be a cause for celebration rather than condemnation?

Also, anyone who is at all familiar with business knows that growth is absolutely critical. Given this, every company everywhere absolutely intends for its profits to constantly grow, and to have “record-breaking profits” which are at an “all-time high” every quarter, and every year. While this may not be a realistic goal in the real world, it certainly could be if we were to eliminate the government interventions into the economy which create business cycles.

[maester_miller]

Well, they hold bonds and notes with specific maturities. They can’t just say “give me the money now” at any given moment.

That said, IF, when the bonds expire (and I’m sure they hold bonds with a large variety of maturities) the Chinese refuse to buy new ones, the government will simply pay them back with the proceeds from bonds they sell to other entities, like say, the Federal Reserve.

[maester_miller]

Hmmm, that’s certainly an interesting question. A liberty minded person will almost always be opposed (philosophically at least) to receiving any sort of gift that was obtained through coersion, which would include essentially any gift that comes from a government rather than a individual or voluntary association of individuals.

That said, I believe that most of the aid we received was in the form of loans, rather than gifts. As far as military aid goes, to view this as some sort of gift might be somewhat naieve. European nations didn’t provide aid to the colonies or to the south out of the kindness of their hearts or out of some sense of guilt (like the foreign aid we give out today), they gave it out of unquestionably selfish national interests. The French and the Dutch supported colonists to weaken their rivals in England, not because they loved freedom or some such thing.

[maester_miller]

Are you sure it’s that simple? I read a book recently (can’t recall which off the top of my head) stating that the anti-federalists, Jefferson included, called THEMSELVES anti-federalists. The author used this as one potential reason that they ended up losing the argument over the ratification of the constitution – poor marketing. That even back in the 18th century, people were more likely to support causes that were FOR something rather than against something.

Of course, the author also pointed out that a much more correct label would be for the federalists to be called nationalists (because they favored a strong national government with diminished state power) and for the anti-federalists to be called federalists (because they still favored a national government, just a very weak one, the articles of confederation were a federal system too).

[maester_miller]

“We defend the principle secession, not every action taken by the south in those times.”

This is so important that I’m going to repeat it. MANY anti-secessionists attack the entire concept of secession by attacking specific actions taken by the Confederacy, which is such an obviously terrible argument that it shouldn’t even have to be refuted, and yet it’s so common, it does.

The fact that someone supports the right of secession does not mean that said person agrees with every single action taken by the secessionist government under all circumstances. It doesn’t mean we like slavery, it doesn’t mean we approve of the tyrannical and socialist economic structure of the CSA, etc.

[maester_miller]

For Argument 2, this may get you labeled as some extreme/insane person, but I would argue that absolutely, we WOULD in fact be better off if private citizens had access to the most advanced military equipment available.

It would be cost-prohibitive for your average psychopath to purchase, say, a Stealth Bomber. That type of technology would only be available to someone with a very vast amount of resources, and those people are not likely to randomly decide to become supervillians, despite what Hollywood may suggest to us. Is there any particular reason that I should trust Barack Obama with a stealth bomber any more than I should trust Bill Gates with one?

As currently interpreted, the second amendment means nothing. Imagine a hypothetical scenario where the King of England, prior to the revolution, issued a decree granting the colonists “the right to bear arms.” Then, he sent his soldiers, armed with muskets, to every individual home and confiscated all the muskets and cannons that the colonists owned. If anyone complained, the King’s agents would simply reply that the WERE in fact allowed to bear arms, as they were being allowed to keep any swords, shields, and longbows. However, they couldn’t really expect private citizens to be allowed to own the same advanced technology that the government possesses, as that would just be dangerous and chaos would ensue.

Do you think anyone would have bought this argument as legitimate?

The founding fathers didn’t simply want the populace to be “armed” (which is a vague and meaningless term). They wanted it to be sufficiently armed as to be capable of successfully opposing the government.

[maester_miller]

While it is true that value scales are subjective, I think the “rational” descriptor is in there to suggest that everyone acts rationally according to themselves. In other words, the thief who steals your car most likely did not do so because he’s some sort of unthinking brute who merely acts out of some sort of animal instinct. He stole your car because he wanted a car, and in his mind, that was the most effective way to obtain one. Most people might not consider that to be rational, but we can infer from his actions that, at the time at least, he in fact did consider that to be in his best interests.

That’s what I got from reading Mises, at least.

[maester_miller]

Perhaps the northern states didn’t think the issue through that thoroughly. Perhaps they simply assumed that any state in which slavery was legal would inevitably grow to become a slave-based economy and would therefore side with the existing slave states in all political matters. As the professors point out, the difference between the north and south was over many issues, not JUST slavery, but the divide was roughly the same as the mason-dixon line.

I suppose an analogy to today might be Puerto Rican statehood. Most liberals support it (because Puerto Rico would almost certainly be a blue state), and most conservatives oppose it. I’ve already heard talk from many neo-cons that if Puerto Rico becomes a state, we’d have to create another red state for fairness/balancing purposes. Slave state/free state seems to me to have been the 1850s version of red state/blue state.

[maester_miller]

I think your question is about as simple as it gets. One of the ways I frequently do well against statists (both on the left and on the right) in arguments is pointing out the arbitrariness of their positions. By asking the question “Where do you draw the line between greed and self-interest” you get right to the core of the issue, which is that any such attempted disctinction is completely arbitrary and subjective.

Not sure how many people here are sports fans, but I am reminded of the NBA player Latrell Sprewell who once rejected a multi-million dollar contract because he “had a family to feed.” I’m sure that in his mind he was not being greedy. I’m also sure that he employed an agent who explained to him that it was in his economic self-interest to hold out for more money.

[maester_miller]

Something that I’ve often found helpful is to ask someone exactly what the perfect “distribution” of wealth would be. Do they *really* want everyone on Earth to have the exact same amount of wealth? Why or why not?

If you can get someone to admit that they don’t really know exactly what the right distribution is, then all of a sudden their complaints basically fall apart. “Well I don’t know what the right level is but this is too much” isn’t a well reasoned argument, and it shows.

[maester_miller]

I’m not sure that the scenario you describe could even happen in real life. Dr. Herbener can correct me if I’m wrong here, but aren’t prices a factor of supply and demand at any particular moment, and that historical pricing serves as a guideline rather than a written-in-stone obligation (I remember reading about this in Human Action I think…)

While it’s true that if many suppliers held their goods off the market, the price of the good would rise (supply has fallen relative to demand), when they “dump” their goods back on the market, the supply will rise relative to the current level of demand, and therefore prices will fall. Perhaps on the day of the dumping people might not be aware of it and would continue to pay the higher price, but I think the market would adjust to the new supply quite quickly.

I also believe we’ve seen this happen in reality numerous times, and not just from cartels and collusion. Look at the gas lines on the east coast in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. Putting aside government-enforced prohibitions on selling goods for true market prices, the current real market price for gasoline is quite high, because the supply has fallen dramatically. But once the shortage revolves itself, absolutely nobody will be willing to go on craigslist and pay $12 for a gallon of gasoline. The price adjusts according to the supply.

[maester_miller]

First of all, the “jobs created and saved” are hardly unseen. The administration has come up with all sorts of ridiculous statistics on that, and their cronies in the MSM have been parroting them constantly. Have you ever driven by a new road pavement and seen the signs advertising that the work is being done with stimulus funds? The government has gone out of its way to make it known how much supposed good this stimulus is providing.

But I think you might be messing up the “seen versus unseen” analogy. The issue at hand isn’t whether money spent results in a particular outcome. Of course it does. The question is whether the money spent on one thing produces a better outcome than if the money was spent on something else. In the broken window fallacy, regardless of whether the window is broken or not, money will be exchanged for goods and services. If the window is broken and the shopkeeper exchanges $50 for a new window, he does in fact get a new window. But, he would have been much better off having his old window, and buying a new pair of shoes instead.

The argument against the stimulus isn’t that we get absolutely nothing for it. It’s that due to government inefficiency and a lack of the messaging effects of the price system, we get far less from the stimulus than we would have gotten by leaving that money in the hands of the voluntary sector. That the government does NOT in fact know how to spend money “better” than individuals and corporations do. That there is a dead weight loss that makes us all poorer.

[maester_miller]

Hey guys,

I do in fact have my own blog, titled “Dude, Where’s My Freedom?” available at http://www.dudewheresmyfreedom.com/ I update three times a week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday evenings. I’m still young and have a lot to learn, my site is nowhere near the quality of intellectual giants like Tom Woods and Bob Murphy (whose blogs I also visit daily), but I’m taking on the Tom Woods and Gary North challenge of just starting, getting my ideas out there, and hopefully slowly building a following and getting better. Any support is greatly appreciated!

Another suggestion I have isn’t a blog, but rather a Facebook page, titled “I Bet Ludwig Von Mises Can Get More Fans Than John Maynard Keynes. The page is probably the best pro-liberty news aggregator I’ve ever come across. It has MANY different moderators, so the quality can be somewhat hit or miss, and the moderators have a wide range of opinions, but all are generally pro-Mises and most of the links they provide are quite interesting. I get a lot of my material from them. You can find it at http://www.facebook.com/MisesvsKeynes

[maester_miller]

I would say that your friend is maybe half right, but missing the greater point.

He’s right in the sense that to the extent that the rise of gas prices is attributable to inflation, that same inflation also causes wages to rise. The problem is that gasoline has risen in price for a number of reasons besides simple price inflation, and that wages have also risen for many reasons besides inflation (namely, gains in productivity as a result of technological improvement).

If we maintained sound money, the illusory price increases from inflation would be stripped away, since government would not have the ability to magically conjure new gold or silver coins out of thin air. That does not guarantee that gasoline would stay at such and such a price as compared to the annual wage. If the supply of gasoline falls and workers do not gain in productivity, the price of gasoline per unit of labor would in fact rise, but that is due to simple economic laws, and not because we have sound money.

To truly answer his question, you can probably find graphs and figures relating the price of gasoline (or various other commodities) as measured against median income, or other commodities (such as gold and silver).

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