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Your Vote Still Doesn’t Matter
I hit a nerve whenever I write about voting and democracy. Point out the sheer lunacy of the civic religion and a certain group of readers will blow their stacks, sending back long emails stuffed with long words, calling me things like “intellectually vacuous” and insisting I’m full of “self-aggrandizement.” Such is the case with …
Loopholes: Another Word for Freedom
Let’s say that a thief demands $100 and lets you keep $10 because he likes your suit. He calls that a deduction. The next day, he demands the whole $110. He says that he is not stealing more. He is only eliminating deductions and closing loopholes. That’s the GOP’s tax plan in a nutshell. They …
Okay, Grandma’, It’s Your Turn in the Pokey
Proponents of liberty argue over what parts of the economy or society government should not touch. Government should get out the education business, stay out of health care, and even leave roads and infrastructure to the private sector. But when it comes to criminal justice, even many libertarians think government should supply the police and …
The Fundamental Right of Secession
What is the world’s smallest country? Monaco? Nope. Malta? Too big. Even Vatican City with a mere population of 770 is huge in comparison. It’s called Sealand, founded and ruled by Paddy Roy Bates, a remarkable man who died this week at the age of 91. He was the original pirate radio operator and the …
Could the Government Get a Mortgage?
Mortgage credit is tight, and extremely so. Romney and Obama were even questioned about it in their first debate. Think of all the potential issues that presidential candidates might address–fiscal cliffs, budget deficits, mass unemployment. That they were even asked about this matter illustrates how much government sponsors and supports the nation’s housing market. People …
Regulators Destroying Your Home Appliances
Ayn Rand’s novella Anthem, the ebook of the week in the Spy Briefing Club, is a story about a government that hates, fears, and bans technology precisely because it wants to keep the people enslaved in a primitive state of being. Preposterous right? Wrong: this is going on every day right in the United States, …
How to Expand the Great Conspiracy
Spreading the ideas of freedom and glories of free markets is an ongoing job. One thing we do here at the Spy Briefing Club is resurrect the works of previous generations of freedom fighters. It is the Rothbards, the Chodorovs, and Nocks on whose shoulders we stand. The works of these champions of laissez faire …
How to Protect Against the Evil Eye
In large parts of the oldest civilized region of the world, you will find in nearly every room a pretty blue charm that looks like an eye. It’s in the front entrance of homes, somewhere in every room, on boats, in airports, in restaurants, and built into the designs of everything from wallpaper to grocery …
A Haircut in the Turkish Style
A trip to Hans and Gulcin Hoppe’s Property and Freedom Society (PFS) salon in the beautiful port city of Bodrum is unforgettable in so many ways. The “politically correct-free zone,” as professor Hoppe described it in his introductory remarks, is chicken soup for the isolated anarchist’s soul, with four days spent with the creme de …
The Center of the Conspiracy
I’ve found it: the organizing cell of what must be the world’s most dangerous intellectuals. It is right in this room where 100 people now sit, listening and discussing. But instead of heated and sweaty plotting, what we find instead is the atmosphere is of a 19th-century salon: polite, smart, fun. It’s the ambition and …
The State of Economic Freedom
The great news for humanity: Economic freedom around the world is on the rise. This means liberation for millions and billions of people. What a change from 20 years ago, when so many lived under despotism and socialist slavery. These people are freer, and getting freer. More people avail themselves to the global division of …
What Is Bernanke Really Thinking?
Why a third round of quantitative easing? Sure, Ben Bernanke says that it is all about jobs and growth, as shown by various 60-year theories pushed by Lord Keynes. Really? Let’s get serious. This approach has done nothing over five years. It has prolonged the suffering. Another round virtually guarantees continued economic stagnation. QE is …
Rachel Carson and the Bed Bugs
A month ago, a family I know returned from a trip in which they stayed in an ordinary hotel off the interstate in Virginia. They arrived late and left the next morning. The parents slept in the bed while the kids slept on the sleeper sofa. The kids had red welts all over their faces …
Give the Gift of Liberty
You know the cliches: It’s a small world after all We are the world. Globalism rules Earth is our neighborhood now and every citizen is a next-door neighbor. All that’s more or less true in the digital sector. I’ve emailed and texted using translation programs that allow me to speak with people in languages I …
The Bernanke of the 18th Century
Central banks around the world are ramping up money production to revive their economies. What should investors do? It’s easy, according to Jeff Kilburg, founder and CEO of Killir Kapital Management. His advice is to buy. Buy what? Almost anything. “Analysts? They can go on vacation at least until after Christmas,” Kilburg says. “You can …
To Build a Better Can Opener
“How the heck does this thing work?” I struggled with the new can opener for 20 minutes before giving up. This thing doesn’t work. Has the government wrecked the can opener too? Hmmm, maybe I should read the instructions. I had done the “guy thing” and attempted to use a new product without bothering to …
TAG, You’re It
You probably don’t realize this, but your finances are standing behind more than a trillion dollars of the bank deposits of large corporations and municipalities housed at America’s largest banks. It all began in 2008, as it usually does. During the crash, the FDIC instituted the TAG (Transaction Account Guarantee) program. TAG provides UNLIMITED coverage …
The Truth Behind the Romney “Gaffe”
Cover the kids’ ears! Hide their eyes! Shuffle the weak and frail from the room! A politician running for president has uttered a heresy that brings into question the holy grail of democratic politics. Romney has failed to pretend as if the country is one big happy family that uses our glorious voting system to …
Five Deadly Effects of QE3
In announcing QE3, Ben Bernanke’s words betrayed not the slightest doubt that this is the right thing. More Fed bond purchases, combined with three more years of zero interest rates, he said, will quicken economic growth and cause unemployment to fall. And the punditry class all nodded in unison. I know that this is government …
Gadget Mania: May It Never End
What kind of events are worth reporting on in real time, with updates every few seconds? Such events have to be pretty dramatic. Well, the release of the iPhone 5 apparently qualifies. The tech blogs were all over it, and so were the wire services and big papers. A moment to celebrate? Sure! It was …
Who Knows the Future?
The instant the Fed announced QE3, an unlimited program of bond buying with fake money until the end of time, the speculation about what it would mean went viral. Does this mean that recovery is around the corner? Or does it signal a coming hyperinflation? Or perhaps more deflation stemming from liquidation? The reaction of …
Is the Housing Bust Over?
Some pretty big names in the financial prognostication business are recommending that investors start buying houses. Jim Grant has devoted lots of space in Grant’s Interest Rate Observer to the idea. Marc Faber, Donald Trump, Warren Buffett and our own Chris Mayer all like sticks and bricks. Five years ago, the unthinkable began to happen. …
Drop the Freon and Come out With Your Hands Up
“All the profits of drug trafficking and none of the risk.” That’s how the prosecutor in a federal criminal case described Carlos Garcia’s smuggling operation that has landed him in the federal pen for 13 months. Before wearing leg irons and striped pajamas, Garcia was a top executive in Marcone Inc., a leading supplier of …
Don’t Think about Elephants
The movie Inception (2010) directed by Christopher Nolan, is one of the few films I’ve seen that takes the idea of ideas themselves seriously. It’s about a team of experts that specializes in corporate espionage by extracting information from dreams. This time, their job is much harder: They are asked to implant a new idea …