[swalsh81]

I dont believe so. That was simply my take on a skimming of the kinsella article. Dont take my little paragraph as gospel or anything. searching for “ayn rand rothbard subjectivism” or something like that on mises.org might get you more. you could also enter “ayn rand rothbard subjectivism site:mises.org” in google and it will just give you results from that site.

[swalsh81]

according to stephan kinsella http://www.stephankinsella.com/2010/01/mises-and-rand-and-rothbard/

at least a part of this arises from a misunderstanding of Mises/Rothbard. Basically, the some (looks like the ARI in this case) is viewing the economic subjectivism of Mises/Rothbard (that value is subjective) as an all encompassing view of everything: that everything is subjective. But I dont think that is what they meant at all. After all, rothbard wrote much about concepts other than pure economics, and he maintained that life and property rights and by extension other things were inherent rights in a person as human. That is certainly not subjective. To say that, in certain cases, deemed best by the whole rights can be violated like a couple instances for forced taxation and things like that, that seems to be the subjective side to me.

[swalsh81]

Prices are not determined by cost of production (which includes cost of display sales etc in stores). prices are determined by demand for a product (in relation to the supply of money of course). Thus, costs of production are actually indirectly dictated by demand for a product (that is, unless you are speculating a future demand, if cost of production is higher then the price consumers are willing to pay, the good will not be produced). If the minimum wage were raised to something like $12, it is unlikely we would actually see an across-the-board 1.1% increase in prices at walmart. Prices might inch up if the market could handle it, but the majority of the new cost to walmart would actually come from the employees themselves. (not knowing what benefits walmart provides) it may reduce its employee discount, start charging more for employee uniforms, keep even fewer cashiers on at a time, have fewer people on the floor helping customers, reduce its overnight cleanup crew, or any of a number of other things.

[swalsh81]

want an anomaly to many people? I’m a baptist.

[swalsh81]

inasmuch as Congress cannot legislate that the courts use certain language, Heritage is probably right: it is not an enumerated power given to congress to regulate the procedures of the courts. This, of course, is dependent on the interpretation of A1S8 where it says that congress has the power to “make rules for the government and regulate the land and naval forces” but this appears to be more to do with defense than regulating court procedures.

But the idea that the government can gather information about a person from a company under some blanket warrant without a specific warrant related to that person, I, personally, believe is unconstitutional in itself.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

With the understanding that the founders could not conceive of phone metadata in this case, I would think that that would fall under the category of “papers”. If that is the case, then data cannot be gathered unless a warrant has been issued with an oath and affirmation of probable cause regarding every person for whom data is to be gathered. Sure, it may be that this amendment is going about this in a less than ideal way, but the program seems to be unconstitutional unless there is a signed consent form with phone companies permitting the sharing of data with the US government.

It may have been more proper to increase the requirements of the NSA for each person about whom data is gathered.

[swalsh81]

thanks for all the links. That was what struck me about debt deflation. It seemed to me that it must be caused by something and is merely a symptom of the underlying credit expansion and I did not see how it would be legitimate for a central bank to “meet demand” for holding money if it is the same central bank that caused problems in the first place

I think I have a good handle on (at least the basics) of Austrian business cycle theory, I would really like to get into some more specifics and down in the depths of macro theory.

[swalsh81]

can I ask what your view is of the monetarist argument that is made? or is that more or less covered int he Anderson book?

debt deflation has been something else that has come up in discussion. Do you have a comment on debt deflation?

[swalsh81]

The intended audience is High School. I’m not sure how many they are shooting for in total, but I know that the current public school curriculum overlooks or purposefully leaves out some very good and important documents, anti-federalists for example. Just curious what the professors here would like to see in a high school classroom that would otherwise be left out.

[swalsh81]

UME?

[swalsh81]

The Danburry Baptists were concerned that the federal government would interfere with them. That they would come in and tell them what they could and could not do. This is what Jefferson was assuring them would not happen (and unfortunately is starting to be what is happening now). The Wall of Separation Jefferson was talking about was a wall keeping government out of religion, not the other way around. This would include the establishment of a national religion. If a national religion were established then it would still be an interference of government in religion.

I am not a scholar on court cases but I will put in my two cents.

Reynolds v. United States: I’m going to leave this to the professors. But I will say that while religion is not an excuse to commit a “crime” the definition of the “crime” is what is of more interest to me. If a muslim engages in an honor killing, its still murder whether he thought it was the right thing to do or not. If, on the other hand, a church preaches against something they believe as sinful but is considered “hate speech” by the government, and they do not engage in force to uphold these values, what crime have they really committed?

As for the other 2, this comes down to Incorporation. The Bill of Rights were limits imposed on the federal government, just as the constitution was. Both were imposed on the government by sovereign states. The order of authority was States over the government. The 14th amendment extended the bill of rights to the states whether intentionally or not. If you look at this Wiki entry and listen to the lectures here, you will see that incorporation was not really exercised until the 1920s. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incorporation_of_the_Bill_of_Rights In these 2 cases, the first amendment was applied to matters within a state. There was no original constitutional justification for this. In fact, it was directly opposed to the structure of power setup by the states.

For instance, some local towns get in trouble for having a nativity scene during christmas. This is not a violation of anything, but, they say it falls under the first amendment because it has to do with religion. But if that is the case, should we legalize murder because the Bible is against it? After all, isnt that respecting a religion? Basically the whole thing about the first amendment is that government should not interfere with religion. Not that all things related to religion should be forced to be equal. And, originally, this only applied to the federal government, the states could do as they pleased in this area.

[swalsh81]

To continue with Porphyrogenitus’ post. The use of the argument “why not raise it to x million” is arguing against the type of statement that seems to be used by most of the defenders of minimum wage: a categorical statement. It seems that most of the time you hear people defend minimum wage it is presented in such a way that minimum wage is necessarily good and cannot have negative consequences. Thus, using a reductio ad absurdum statement like, “well good then, lets raise it to 1 million so everyone can be millionaires” is what their argument can be reduced to. And, using their same logic, taking 100 aspirin would be better then taking 2.

On the other hand, if a person argues that there should be a modest minimum wage that does not exceed some low amount, then using the “raise it to 1 million” argument isnt legitimate because they are themselves stating that they are not talking about excessively high amounts. At that point, we move on to a real economic discussion.

[swalsh81]

The major problem I see is the underlying assumptions that
1) The results of these projects would never have been done in the market
2) The projects were completed in the best possible way and with the best possible results
3) The results of these projects was/is the best past, present and future use of the resources they have and do consume

Sure, there have been government projects especially through the high risk/reward program DARPA, the internet for instance. But you will notice that the Internet was “invented” in the 50s or 60s, but never really came into wide use until the the market really made use of it and demanded its services decades later in the 90s.

Government spending, especially things like research are a prime example of Bastiat’s “That Which is Seen and That Which is Not Seen” and Hazlitt’s One lesson of economics.

[swalsh81]

Is it moral to kill civilians, en masse, who are not actively involved in offensives against you? unequivocally, no.

But much of the support for the nuclear attacks seems to stem from the idea that the Japanese would never have surrendered had we not dropped the bombs. Unfortunately, this is highly debatable and the facts seem to reinforce the side of this supposition being false. From what I have seem from multiple sources (which I dont have handy at the moment but a quick google might yield some results and the professors may have some sources on hand), the Japanese were basically ready to surrender with the demand that they are able to keep their emperor in place. But, the U.S. did not want to allow them to do this, they were “spreading democracy”. Of course, the question arises, wouldnt it then be democratic to have an emperor if thats what the majority wanted but thats beside the point.

So, in my opinion, if your sister can show that the Japanese were, in fact, ready to surrender but their conditions were rejected because the US wanted to unseat their emperor for whatever political reasons it may have been, it would change alot of minds on the topic (probably not the teacher by it would at least get the others students to think).

[swalsh81]

What we do right now is continue to educate. There arent enough of “us” at the moment to gain a majority/supermajority in the house and senate to roll back the size of government.

There are 2 sides of this, one says that, were we to somehow basically abolish the great majority of government, once people got over the initial shock and the market was able to take over, the public in general would relish their new found liberty. The other side says to roll back the size of government because it would be more within the “Overton window” (that which is political feasible).

The proponents of the former argue that that is the more consistent argument with libertarianism and that slow steps is merely giving some vindication to the state. Which is the better way? I dont know.

But I will say this: Either rights are absolute or they are not. Either government (monopoly of force) is inherently anti-natural rights or it isnt. In the end, the scope of government and the meaningfulness and absoluteness of natural rights goes beyond the scope of any constitution written or otherwise. Why do I emphasize this? if people understand that the limits placed on government by the Constitution are simply a written limit on the scope of government based on an understanding of natural rights that cannot be granted by government but were to be protected by government, then “we” would not need to so much cause the government to be limited but it would be demanded by the general public.

But if people begin to understand that rights are rights (and I am talking about negative rights) then, I think, whether or not it is a push for constitution-esque or a push “For a New Liberty”, one way or another, liberty will be demanded by the public, not just the few that do now.

Note to future commentors, I am not pushing the gradual or the all at once approach, my point is that we need to educate the masses.

[swalsh81]

“But wasn’t Lincoln’s entire premise that secession is illegitimate and that the south is NOT their own country?” well sure he didnt seem to think it was legitimate but Lincoln’s opinion did not change history and the fact that secession was a legitimate option to a sovereign state.

And, in relation to Prof Gutzman’s comment, My original comment was written even assuming Lincoln had called up troops with the consent of Congress

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