The Market Fundamentalist

Dave S was loud once again at the Carson Nugget. We were there for the Northern Nevada premiere of Aaron Russo’s documentary America: From Freedom to Fascism.There were several tables of people there eating before the movie. I must confess I was kind of glad he was sitting near me, because I anticipated that he would launch into another anti-immigrant screed. I didn’t care if I was the only pro-immigrant person in the room. If he wanted a verbal
confrontation, I would give it to him.

He Did.

It was his usual diatribe. He argued with the fallacy of the “mature economy” and large population today that somehow cannot absorb more immigrants…even though Americans are not reproducing with large families and indeed we can accept more people easily. He asks why the Mexicans should have preference over Asians who must wait “simply because they are born close to the border”. Of course accidents of birth are an important factor in determining rights and opportunities. His accident of birth in being born in the USA, by that logic, should not determine his status either. Besides, the argument that Mexicans ( as a generic term for Latinos) should not be allowed entry when others have to wait is an argument for eliminating quotas and waits for everyone, not an argument for equality of restrictions on liberty.

The natural control on immigration is of course to eliminate the welfare state, if not the state itself, and make the distinction between immigrant worker and citizen clearer. Let those who come to work, work. Allow those who truly wish to remain and be citizens of the US have a clear path to that. Get the government out of the schools and health care and the labor markets so that the market place can allocate these resources. End the war on drugs and return to a non-interventionist foreign policy to minimize crime and terrorism associated with international travel. Stop the inane reliance on papers, ids and return to community policing and awareness as the proper method of discovering potential criminals and terrorists.

Since Republicans and Democrats have no intention of doing any of these things, it is left to the Libertarians alone to propose them.

But what really gets me is Dave S is convinced he is a free market economic thinker. He says he met Milton Friedman. But, he must not have read “Free to Choose” , wherein Friedman calls protective tariffs or restrictions on the free immigration of persons an “illogical rationalization” and where he even quotes the immortal inscription on the Statue of Liberty and states “They came by the millions, and by the millions they were absorbed. They prospered because they were left to their own devices.”

In similar fashion Dave S says he met Ayn Rand and thinks that qualifies him to understand Libertarian thought. That Ayn Rand is only one Libertarian among many, many great free market thinkers is lost to him. That her accomplishments must be measured against the cult of personality she created around herself is also not understood by him. The current Objectivists are thankfully not all Libertarians, and not all Libertarians by far are Objectivists. Murray Rothbard called them “Randroids” because of their slavish, almost programmed devotion to Ms. Rand. And, Ayn Rand herself was an immigrant, who fled both the Communists of her Russian Homeland and the Fascists of Italy.

Dave S, once again, illustrated the difference between a conservative and a libertarian. He cannot help but think in collective terms, and therefore is a socialist. His socialism is of the right, and regards the nation state as the great collective that the individual must absorb into. The left socialist thinks of the collective as a class distinction, of rich vs. poor. Both are antithetical to libertarian beliefs, as we regard the individual as an end in himself, and deny that any collective, whether nationalist or based on class or race, is more important than the
individual person.

April 21, 2006 From Chuck Muth’s Nevada News and Views
THIS WEEK IN “ALWAYS RIGHT”
“In case you missed it, the home state of left-wing icons Ted Kennedy and John Kerry recently passed a law which forces almost every single Massachusetts resident to buy a health insurance policy…whether they want to or not. And a similar “individual mandate” could be coming to Nevada if we’re not careful.”

What Chuck Muth neglected to mention in his email is that the Massachusetts health care
Program is promoted, and bragged on,by a Republican Governor. It is said that Gov. Milt Romney hopes to ride the coattails of what libertarians have called “Aetna Care” to the White House.
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A friend of mine commented last night: The calls on KKOH are all about immigration. That is the number one topic.

I asked: Don’t they have something better to talk about than blaming all our problems on wetbacks?

“Its the right wing hot air machine. Never discuss the revolt of the generals , the failing war in Iraq and Afghanistan, the failed diplomacy over Iran, Russia and China , the scandals and prison terms of a floundering Republican administration …the only thing to talk about is the so called immigration problem.”

He is right of course. But, my friend, a staunch Democrat, would forget that when his party is in power, the same phenomenon occurs. Each side of the American duopoly in politics cares more for gaining power than for the truth.
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Sure, and “Bill the Butcher” Tancredo and the rest of the Republican Gang are making sure the Foreign Hordes do not enter this fair land to displace American jobs from them that was here first…

The Greatest Minds of the Generation-Lou Dobbs, Tom Tancredo, Ann Coulter, Ted Kennedy, et al as Reason magazine writer Nick Gillepsie put it… want to make English the official language of what used to be called these United States.

Last week I purchased a blender, a citrus juicer, a digital camera,
and a mini food chopper. Prices ranged from $15 to $250 dollars. All of these simple appliances came with instructions in multiple languages. But, then , these are the products of businesses that aim to please real customers. And, as Dave S reminded me, “we” are a nation, not a market.

As Ludwig von Mises and many others have reminded us, economic calculation is impossible in a socialist commonwealth. (more…)

The Republicans had their say in Carson City yesterday
But that’s as far as it will go in this Congress. The vast numbers of immigrants and their supporters marching peaceably against the Tancredo led fanatics have killed any so called “reform” for now.

Yes, to paraphrase one sign pictured on the blog site, it was freedom, not illegal immigration, that ended in this country on 9/12. The Republican Party has once again demonstrated that it has lost the vision
of Ronald Reagan.

It is now the Party of the Neocons and the Nativists.

What can you say except that the only Republican who really inspired me, Ronald Reagan, is a dead letter in his own party.
And for what? He helped crush an evil empire in the name of American values and freedom. The current Republicans want to create one in the name of “benevolent hegemony” and Know Nothing Ism.

I didn’t leave the Republican Party. The Republican Party left me.

The Hitler label is way overrused. Like Hollywood sequels, the political propaganda machines keep churning out the comparisons to the demonic little Austrian house painter.

The Right compares every tin pot dictator and rogue state as “another Hitler”. Never mind that H had the most advanced air force in the world, had several other states as partners in crime, and had a legitimate beef with the victorious allies of WWI to inspire his people with.

Mr Neo-con, I knew Adolph Hitler. And Saddam Hussein, Iran, Manuel Noriega, fill in the blank , is no Hitler.

The Left claims Bush 43 is Hitler. While they accuse him of the most grievous crimes since the Holocaust, they quietly conspire with Republicans to bring about a homegrown, neo fascist economic state.

As for my conspiracy theory friends, they imagine that 9/11 was another Reichstag fire.

They imagine that the state is competent, and so this disaster could have been pulled off by a conspiracy. In fact, the state is incompetent, and has no incentive to become more competent. Just larger and deadlier to almost everyone except the real enemies.

However, the thought that Republicans will be demonstrating today in Nevada’s Capitol against immigration just confirms how the state turns against logic at the slightest whim. Rather than condemning “illegal” immigration, the so called conservative Republicans should be demonstrating against the welfare state that causes 90% of the problems associated with immigration.

But, as the article linked here claims, Haliburton received tax dollars to built detention centers for use in case of an “immigration crisis”!

Now, that is Hitlerian.

Check out:The Death of British Freedom - by John Pilger

Up to now the British House of Lords, led by the classical liberal Liberal Democratic Party, has put up the good fight against the British National ID card.

It now looks as though Labour will have its way, and Britian will lead the way into the BRAVE NEW WORLD of democratic fascism. Democratic at least until the next crisis.

What was opined by Richard Disney, darling of the new conservatives running for Assembly, on my SNCAT show RAWC PRESENTS: IRAQ 3 YEARS LATER: Something about we fought WWII to “end fascism” ?

We didn’t end it, Richard. The Allies simply took over the franchise from the Germans.

I was yelled at on my shift today. Not by my boss, she is very nice. By a customer, who felt we had made a mistake. By the time I got the call, she was screaming.

The merits of e-commerce can be offset at times by folks who cannot read computer entries and relate the meaning to customers. In much the same fashion, we are surrounded by
pundits who either cannot read the complicated stats generated by government or ngo’s, or else simply choose to relay false or misleading interpretations. Often, the statistics themselves are cleverly constructed to relay an ideological point of view.

My friends on the left prefer publicly funded studies to privately funded studies. They still believe in the myth of public impartiality. That government itself is a corporation that lives on power without having to demonstrate profit escapes them. Give me privately funded studies nearly all the time. Better yet, give me a society that looks to first principles , and doesn’t try to decide every issue based on surveys and statistics.
A couple of weeks ago H., our Indian friend, was yelling at me. The waitress in the restaurant said we could be heard at the bar, although we were in a back room. Yes, his English is far from perfect, but his launch into a loud diatribe did not help either.
He said Ronald Reagon was stupid. I said he was not. That kicked it off.

But what kept it loud and long was his refusal to accept that the rich pay the most in taxes. To be fair, he may have meant by percentage of income. I meant by percentage of revenue collected by government.

The
Heartland Institute,agrees with me. The top 50% of income earners pay over 96% of income taxes. Like Ayn Rand said, the rich are the most persecuted minority.
But, my friend H, that does not mean that I am off the hook. The poorer classes pay far more in payroll taxes than the wealthier do, and those taxes are their biggest burden. The articles we read every day about how hard it is for many to make ends meet–don’t blame the private employer. Put it on the taxman.

As long as waitresses and secretaries and ditchdiggers think they are better off with social security, medicare,and unemployment tax deductions than they are deciding themselves how to spend their own money- the fruits of their labor, as Mr Tom J has called it-we will continue to see stories about how hard it is to make ends meet.

Too bad Ronald Reagon didn’t cut those taxes, instead of just the capital gains and other marginal tax rates. Or later Republicans, for that matter. But hey, I said he wasn’t stupid. I didn’t say he was always right.

Dave S started yelling at me tonight. We often wind up yelling at each other. This time over immigration.

Dave had quoted Adam Smith just a few minutes earlier, saying that politicians cannot repeal the laws of supply and demand.

But then he causes the good Scotsman to twirl in his grave not a half hour later, by arguing that those politicians should cap the supply of labor! Why? Because those Mexicans might vote socialist, is about as much as I could gather. Oh yes, they work cheap!!
I told him I am more afraid of the blue eyed Anglo Saxon socialists than the latino variety. Socialism started in Germany, not Peru. At least modern industrial style socialism.

Latin immigrants are fleeing what is more like feudal conditions than socialism. Large land grants, a wealthy oligarchy that uses the state to drive them off the land. And, no property rights.

When I said that I believe in the free flow of labor and capital, his reply was that America is a nation, not a market!

Now, has he really read Wealth of Nations? That book was a diatribe against mercantilism. Mercantilism is the belief that nations should compete against each other using protectionist laws. It is anti consumer collectivism.

In other words, more blue eyed socialism.

When Dave said that the government must go after businessmen who hire illegal aliens I just looked at him and said: “I love anti business Republicans.” Since we were in a room full of Republicans, and as always with Dave we had raised voices, that caused a sudden lull in the background conversation.

Dave S thinks he is fighting for freedom, but in fact he is fighting for his own brand of collectivism, wrapped up in the stars and stripes, and served with a side of the policeman’s billyclub. He thinks everyone else is a socialist, but his brand of socialism is just as pernicious, if not more so, than that of the most leftist Democrat.

Most Republicans do not want to end the welfare state, which in turn would end most immigration problems. They just want to keep it for themselves. Like always, for all their anti liberal bashing, they wind up when the chips are down as just New Dealers on the cheap.

Today I met with Dianne Cornwall, Congressman Jim Gibbons’ ( R-NV) District Director, in his Reno office.

The meeting was arranged by Aaron Houston and Kaycee Dempsey of the Marijuana Policy Project. The purpose was to lobby for the passage this summer of the Hinchey-Rohrabacher Amendment to the Justice Department Appropriations Bill.

Ms. Cornwall was polite, and an occasional smile did ever so finely turn up her lips. I started by saying I was not a paid lobbyist, but a concerned citizen. I launched right into the topic. Of all the Nevada legislators, the Congressman seems the most antagonistic to the idea of medical marijuana. Of course, you can’t rely on the press, but sometimes even our jaded press captures a politicians true opinions.

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