Having a half hour to kill before an appointment last night I chose to listen to BBC Radio 4's "The Moral Maze". Like most BBC programming this starts from the premise that we need the state to do something about something. The usual manipulative words were duly rolled out. "We" (the state) should be "concerned" (look for an opportunity to regulate) about something that "researchers" (taxpayer funded state action apologists) are "concerned about" (this should justify even more taxpayer funded research).

This particular episode was concerned with the "role of censorship". The usual arguments were trotted out and I guess the idea was to demonstrate with some of the BBC's most highly regarded intellectuals what a tough job the political class has with the intellectual shakings and stirrings involved in coming up with appropriate regulations. They showed that some people disapprove of pornography and violence in films and that others enjoy it or don't consider it to be harmeful. Others do consider it harmful and in fact dangerous. Oh what to do. What to do.

Of course the elephant in the room on the radio was the unquestioned assumption that "we" (the state) must do something about it. Now if this had been a conversation amongst free people who were not looking to impose their conclusions, should they come to any, on the rest of the population by threat of violence there could have been just as wide a range of opinions on the rightness and wrongness of the various issues and they could have each respected the others and gone with their own freely arrived at strategies of persuading other people about the virtues of their particular view of things. No need for a moral maze at all.

I have a great subject for them to debate though. How about "Why shouldn't the public be allowed to pay the BBC whatever they think it is worth?"

Walt Williams again. If a white man, such as Walter Block - see below, had given such a talk he would have been branded a racist and a sexist. If you watch both videos you will find that is indeed what happened.

This guy is warm, funny, sane and well worth listening to.

This is an incredibly good talk on slavery and many other things. It is really good on economics and the role played by the state. It is from the FEE archives.

... by J.L. Bryan is a dystopia type story similar in many respects to Orwell's "1984" but with a more libertarian slant. It is available as a free pdf file from here  and I highly recommend it.

I'm not going to give a full review as I personally prefer just to recommend it. If you've read many of my other postings you know where I'm coming from.

I found it to be a real page turner that I read in two sittings. It has a few really good lines in it and the following is an example.

“Let them go,” the bearded man said.
  “But there could be a bounty—” Rico protested.
  “Shut up.” One of the older bandits cut him off.
  “We at least oughta siphon some gas,” another bandit said.
  “Quiet,” the bearded man said.  “I served four years in the Marines, in the old world.  We
talked about something called honor.  You brats don’t even know what the word means.”
  “Sure,” Rico spoke up. “My uncle told me, greed and honor.  Greed is killing someone
else for your own profit.  Honor is when you kill for someone else’s greed, and they keep the
profit.”

This reform is incredibly simple yet amazingly far reaching and powerful. It was inspired by listening to James Whale's talk show on Monday. He wanted to know why those who complained didn't vote to do something about it. I had a great deal of agreement with him on this. This is not a wholly original idea but is perhaps an unusual presentation of it.

After listening to many of the responses and from other conversations I've had with friends and people I meet day to day I have come to the following conclusions about where I believe most people outside of government and the public sector are at;

1. They don't like the way our current form of government works. They don't feel like they have any power to correct it and are pretty much in apathy over the whole thing.

2. They don't vote in elections for reasons to do with number 1 above. This is coupled with the fact that the only way to "kick the bastards out" in our current system is by electing another bunch of bastards to take over.

3. We are not taught that "spoiling a ballot paper" does get counted as spoiled ballots. If you can't bring yourself to vote for the lesser evil there is still a point in voting. We aren't given the option of "None of the above" as such, but we can cross out all the names and simply write that on the sheet. The vote is counted as a spoilt ballot which is better than not being counted at all.

Most of us believe that democracy means we have a say. Unfortunately that isn't all it means. It also means rule by the majority of those who vote. As there are no areas of economic or other aspects of life that politicians do not feel comes into their area of jurisdiction that means that what freedoms we still have left are by no means guaranteed. In fact it is inevitable they will be continuously eroded. It leads to a multitude of false claims and deliberate manipulation of facts by those with vested interests in political outcomes. Indeed a "political outcome" essentially means having to fool some groups and buy off others.

Democracy, as we have it, is a classic divide and conquer mechanism. Far from bringing about a classless society it continuously creates new classes of us against them. The rich against the poor. Women against men. Blacks against whites. Gays against straights, etc. We are constantly clamoured to adopt one or more of such groups as part of our "identity". Yet there is little if any need for us to do so. Most of the justifications given us are false and self serving to those who promote them. But that is not the subject of this post.

So to the solution. It is startlingly simple and very democratic in the sense that we each have a real say in how our lives are run and who has control over our money. No part of government can raise any money for any purpose other than by voluntary contributions from the population. They cannot borrow from banks and they cannot print money nor have it printed for them. They have to compete in the same way that those of us who currently pay for government have to compete. That is it. The whole solution. Nothing else is needed.

Before dismissing it give it some thought. Yes of course this means that government will not have the budget that it currently does. What would this mean apart from having to cut back it's never satiated ambitions? For one thing it would mean that there isn't the support from the public that is claimed. And that would mean it is not in the interest of enough of the public to support the proposition. So it wouldn't have any so called mandate anyway.

And of course that means there will be cuts in their "services". There weren't that many who were in favour of going to war in Iraq or elsewhere. Yes of course those businesses who make arms were in favour but if they didn't have the taxpayers to foot the bill could war be as profitable. I think not. Yes there will be all manner of other problems that might be perceived at first glance but at least try and think it through. What does it mean politically if there is too little money raised to fund a bank bailout? Does it mean the end of civilisation as we know it or just the end of a corrupt business and thus allowing those funds to go to other places that are valued higher?

There are some obvious questions this will raise from those who probably won't give it much thought. What about the poor? What about the roads? What about defence? I am not suggesting abolishing anyone's desire to help the poor. We will still need roads and defence. And if we need them we will figure out how to provide them in the same way we figure out how to provide shoes and lifeboat services.

The poor are not helped by welfare programmes that create dependency on the state. They are certainly not helped by being led to believe they are entitled to the hard earned pay of others. They could be helped into productive activity by private charities which are not paid according to how little they achieve. The same applies to many other government "services".

There is lots more I could say on this and probably will but I want to put this up sooner rather than later.

An obvious reference to Ron Paul. Still the single point of sanity in the whole of US politics. Here is his speech before the House of Representatives on a bill ciriticising China over human rights.

Hats off to this shop on the Fulham Road that I saw today.

I have been obvserving some of the events of the last few weeks concerning the expenses of MPs and have been wondering what to post about it if anything. It is a momentous event for a newspaper to do what newspapers should have been doing all along and holding up the activities of the Westminster club to scrutiny. One might also speculate as to why the Telegraph is doing this as Sean Gabb has done. (Sorry I don't have a link).

There is a whole lot I could say about the matter but it all boils down to the question that is the title of this post. Let's just expand the debate a little.

Found on the Mises site with this article by Lew Rockwell.

Tom Conti is an actor I have liked for a couple of decades but I had no idea he was capable of such a statement as follows. It isn't nearly as radical as it might have been but judging it against the usual BBC intellectuals it stands out like a sore thumb.

The "bill" is Ron Paul's bill to audit the Fed. And Ben is of course Bernanke. This is an interesting conversation between them. RP's bill is gaining considerable momentum and Ben really looks scared.

The following is the entire content of a blog post from the FEE website (Foundation for Economic Education). It is so spot on and memorable and I wanted it to get whatever wider audience my blog may provide.

"The current push for a regulatory dictatorship over the financial industry is based on the principle that we must keep on a tight leash any organization whose activities are so pervasive and consequential that its potential for misjudgment presents a “systemic threat.”

Isn’t that the case for strictly limiting the government?"

Can a talk about economics be entertaining? Can a talk about the current economic mess and the insanities of governments make you smile?

When it's Peter Schiff giving the talk the answer is most certainly yes.

Unfortunately it isn't embodied nor embraced by the current Conservative Party. Here is a short speech by Sean Gabb of the Libertarian Alliance. Sean is a prolific writer on what is wrong with the UK and he writes well. You will find some of his writings on the linked website.

I used to think so. All those graphs and formulae. But that isn't real economics which enables us to understand how the world works and why we have most of the problems we have.

Lew Rockwell explains it very well here and links to some classic writing by Mises that needs to be promoted to all inteligent people.

I came across this quote today. It was made in the diary of a colonal who was one of the first to liberate a Nazi concentration camp in 1945.

“It took a little time to get used to seeing men, women, and children collapse as you walked by them and to restrain oneself from going to their assistance. One had to get used early to the idea that the individual just did not count. It was shortly after the British Red Cross arrived, though it may have no connection, that a very large quantity of lipstick arrived.  This was not at all what we men wanted, we were screaming for hundreds and thousands of other things: food and medical equipment, and I don’t know who asked for lipstick. I wish so much that I could discover who did it; it was the action of genius, sheer unadulterated brilliance. I believe nothing did more for those internees than the lipstick. Women lay in bed with no sheets and no nightie but with scarlet red lips, you saw them wandering about with nothing but a blanket over their shoulders, but with scarlet red lips. I saw a woman dead on the post mortem table and clutched in her hand was a piece of lipstick. At last someone had done something to make them individuals again, they were someone, no longer merely the number tattooed on the arm. At last they could take an interest in their appearance. That lipstick started to give them back their humanity.”

The first part of this video is a bit of truth slipping on to the air from Ron Paul. The amusing bit is what happens when CNBC cuts back to the studio.

This has to be one of the greatest speeches ever made in the US Congress. What if we had a politician with a quarter the courage and honesty of this man in the UK? Yes this is Ron Paul again.

This is a great talk from Murray Rothbard about the history of the Austrian school of economics. It covers a huge field in less than one hour and is a really good introduction to the subject. You can find out a lot more by going to mises.org.

This is a graphic ilustration of the current US inflation machine. We have one here too maybe not as big but just as damaging as we have a smaller economic base. This should be food for thought to those who think that generating money with a printing press to pay for pork works better than production or real needed and wanted goods and services.

The most important point about this isn't how bad it is going to get which is plenty, but what the solution is. Notice what happens when money isn't tied to a valuable commodity. Hat tip to G. Edward Griffin.