Richard Posner and Elisabeth Landes wrote this excellent paper in 1978, but I’m only now seeing it. It speaks of the terrible inefficiencies — pervasive shortages and surpluses — that come with state adoption agencies and their price controlled system of allocating the right to raise children. They address all the usual objections to a market for children and generally provide enough evidence to lower the temperature of the debate and introduce some rational thinking here.

In passing, they point out that a real market for child-rearing rights would probably end the practice of abortion or perhaps seriously curtail it.

Wow. When was the last time this point has been made an a debate on abortion? I’ve been thinking through it for years but never actually seen it discussed before. But it is really a no brainer. Why are value resources being tossed away when there are plenty of people out there who clearly want to use them? There is an intervention in the market process, and that intervention concerns the market for child-rearing rights. If we had an open market that allowed for payments to expecting mothers, the decision to abort would carry a heavy opportunity cost. Right now, all the cost is associated with carrying the baby to term.

This is the kind of libertarian research that could make a huge difference in the world. This paper came out in 1978. I see it as compatible with Murray Rothbard’s views on child rights. Don Boudreaux wrote along the same lines. If anyone knows of other work in this area, I would love to see it. It seems that more work needs to be done in this area.

I once asked an anti-abortion activist whether he would favor a market for children if permitting one could reduce the number of abortions by half. He quick answer was no. I asked him to clarify: are you saying that it is better to be dead than traded? Yes was his answer.

That’s interesting to me because the current adoption market is already rooted in the cash nexus and trade. The problem is that it is seriously hampered by monopolization, regulations, and price controls.

I’m really happy with this way this article turned out. It is published at Crisis. The editor John Zmirak had initially sent me a piece by the legendary historian Christopher Dawson and asked me to respond. I generally avoid this sort of debate so I didn’t bother to look at the piece for probably ten days or so. In fact, I didn’t really accept the challenge.

Then I read the piece. It was quite incredible. Dawson sweeps his scholarly hand over vast continents and epochs and makes wild claims entirely abstracted from the real experience of humanity. Nowhere does he show the slightest interest in the plight of the common man and his quality of life. He is happy to declare the middle ages to be this wonderful time of faith and order and then proceeds to blast away all of the last several hundred years as hopelessly corrupted by materialism. His target is what he calls the bourgeoisie, and here he admits that his thinking is in line with Karl Marx. But there is a difference. Whereas the Marxists posited a hopeless conflict between capital and labor, his model posits a conflict between real faith and material provision. The two are irreconcilable.

The real danger of the Dawson piece is its erudition in big things and its deep disengagement with the small things that make life good, like clean clothes, medical care, running water, job opportunities, access to food to feed the children, and the like. He cares nothing for these things. He is content to simply praise the past for its Michelangos and Berninis and condemn the present for its Lady Gagas and Justin Beibers. It’s really a cheap trick and an obvious one: pick the best of the past and the worst of the present and you can paint a picture of relentless decline.

My response points to the dramatic change that took hold of the world in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, a change that created what we call the middle class today. It gave life to hundreds of millions of people. Without the bourgeoisie and the capitalist marketplace they sustain, the world could not support seven billion. Surely a high-minded cultural historian like Dawson should care about things like this? Surely!

In the days following the gift-giving holidays, many millions of people stand in judgement over the quality of the gifts they gave and the gifts they receive. Did they arrive on time? Did the quality hold up? Did the reality match the advertising hype? The Internet ads an extra wrinkle. Anyone dissatisfied can post blistering attacks on any merchant and the product in questions. Anyone can vote up or vote down.

The down votes are what make the news. The Wall Street Journal tells the story of Scott Mitchell of Connecticut, who purchased from Best Buy and Playstation 3 for his two sons ages 10 and 14.The company let him know via an email that the goods didn’t arrive. He was furious and wouldn’t stop posting diatribes against the company. Eventually, the suits got involved and sent him his full bundle of goods at a low price plus a $200 gift certificate.

“While I can’t say I’m happy, I wound up being satisfied,” Mr. Mitchell told the Journal.

The case was cited as one of many such cases. Consumer demand was so intense that Best Buy got behind. The company didn’t have the inventory it needed to fill all requests. Cyber Monday overloaded the staff and they couldn’t respond fast enough. Any business that hears the story thinks: nice problem to have. Inventory decisions like this require daily clairvoyance.

What’s more important here is what this anecdote indicates about the social order. In this setting above, who is in control? Mr. Mitchell is just one lone guy with one problem with a company that serves untold millions. But he had a voice and his voice was heard. The company scrambled to please him.

Justice was served, and not because he was part of a big pack of people going to voting booths once every four years. There were no hearings, committees, testimonies, debates, complex systems of legislation and signings, judges and juries, regulations and legal rights. He was served because he was a consumer. One man with a credit card beat the system.

The institution that allows this great thing to happen is known as consumer sovereignty and it is an intrinsic part of the market. The preferences and rights of one individual prevailed even though he was not in the majority, even though he never registered for any system in a political apparatus, even though he had no lobbying firm or friends in high places. He complained and the giant corporate monolith bowed to his wishes. And they did so for self interested reasons. It’s bad for business to have dissatisfied customers. So the the corporate execs fell to their knees in supplication.

This is a good system. Who set it up? No one. There was no votes, no constitutions, no committee hearings, no lobbying. It emerged spontaneously from the decisions of self interested parties. The company exists to make a profit by finding ways to get goods to people who want them. Mr. Mitchell was among those who decided on his own volition to trade with the profit-seeking company. That trading relationship is one of billions and billions that go on every day, all day, all year. Put them all together and you have what is known as the market economy.

Philosophers from the ancient world to the present have tried to imagine how to set up a society in which every individual matters, a society without exploitation, a society without violence, a society with peace, justice, and prosperity. They have usually imagined that this world would have to emerge from the political process. That is where their speculations and plans usually begin. They were and are wrong. The society that does these things is right before our eyes and found within the framework of our own choices, actions, and trades with others.

We are often told about the evils of corporate power and the grim nightmare of the market in which we are all swallowed up by the forces of materialism and consumerism. Where is there evidence of any of this in the sphere governed by voluntary exchange?

In the market economy, the buyer is the decision maker. He or she determines what gets produced, how much, and directs the pattern of change. The supposedly powerful fat cats of the corporate world are daily submitting to the wishes of the little guy with a computer and a credit card. Any company in a market can be shut down in a matter of weeks if the consumers switch loyalties. This happens every day.

Nothing like this system exists in our dealings with the state. For years now, masses of people have been screaming about the indignities imposed upon us by the TSA. The TSA responds with a propaganda blitz designed to make us believe that they are strip searching us electronically for our own good. The institution doesn’t comply with all our wishes much less the wishes of one person. Instead it sets out to change our thinking, trying to make our mental habits conform to those with the power.

In other words, the TSA operates on the opposite principle of the free market. In the market, we are in charge and the producers slavishly attempt to find out what we think and try to conform their operations to our point of view. In government, we are told that we are the ones that must change. We must submit. We must comply. We must go along no matter what. We can choose to be grumpy about it or happy about it, but, in either case, there is no choice. We must obey. And the institutions of government never really go away.

And so it is with every government agency at all levels. The little guy doesn’t matter. There is nothing like the consumer/producer relationship that we see in operation in every instant on the market economy. Instead, the government takes our money by force and spends it as it wishes. If we don’t like the system, we are invited to slog our way to designated spots every four years and choose among a slate of drones who want to be our designated leaders.

Government vs. the market: which system is better? Granted that neither system provides utopia. The real issue is: which system is better capable of self correcting in our favor? The market does this every day. There is a ceaseless struggle going on globally with the goal of winning us over as consumers. The market is always saying: “how can I help you?” The government is always saying: “help us or else.”

Looking at the choice here, it seems rather obvious that the market – as a particular application of the principles of choice and free association – is the best approach to organizing society. No one designed it. It is controlled by us in the very exercise of our free will to It gives power to the people. The statist approach can only lead to less satisfaction, less mutual benefit, less control, and ultimately the very nightmare that we all want to avoid.

Think of all that that market contributed to your holidays and all it will do for you in the year ahead. As a form of social organization, nothing is more deferential to your needs and wishes.

Bill Bonner is absolutely one of the best essayists of our time. Never heard of him? He is the head of Agora Inc., and an impressive entrepreneur in every way. Check this essay and see what you think: The Diabolical Genius that Is Modern Government:

You’ll recall that this series began by pointing out how worthless most “theories of government” really are. They’re not theories at all. They don’t explain anything. Instead, they are just wishful thinking…flattery…and apologia for the elite who use government for their own ends.

The “social contract,” for example, is a fraud. You can’t have a contract unless you have two willing and able parties. They must come together in a meeting of the minds — a real agreement about what they are going to do together.

But what is the ‘social contract’ with government? There was never a meeting of the minds. The deal was forced on the public. And now, imagine that you want out. Can you simply “break the contract?” You refuse to pay your taxes and refuse to be bossed around by TSA agents and other government employees. How long would it be before you got put in jail?

What kind of contract is it that you don’t agree to and can’t get out of? They can dress it up…print out a piece of paper…have a solemn ceremony in which everyone pretends it is a real contract. But it’s not worth the paper it’s not written on.

Also, what kind of a contract allows for one party to unilaterally change the terms of the deal? Congress passes new laws almost every day. The bureaucracy issues new edicts. The tax system is changed. The pound of flesh they got already wasn’t enough; now they want a pound and a half!

Every theory of government we’ve come across is a scam. So we offer a better theory: government is just a way for the insiders to take advantage of the outsiders.

Until the Industrial Revolution, the apologists relied on God to justify government. If one man bossed around another, it was God’s doing they said. The Almighty got the blame. Which was neat and clean as long as you accepted the major and minor premises of it.

But the system came apart for two reasons.

First, it made God look like a fool. Monarchs governed in ways that must have been inexplicable to the “divine right of kings” theorists. Kings were frequently incompetent, murderous and venal. Finally, the theorists gave the theory and the kings the heave-ho at the same time.

Second, the rising wealth and power of the productive classes required a new idea.

Insiders always use government to transfer power and money from the outsiders to themselves. When wealth was easy to identify and easy to control — that is, when it was mostly land — a few insiders could do a fairly good job of keeping it for themselves. The feudal hierarchy gave everybody a place in the system, with the insiders at the top of the heap.

But come the industrial revolution and suddenly wealth was accumulating outside the feudal structure. Populations were growing too…and growing restless. The old regime tried to tax this new money, but the new ‘bourgeoisie’ resisted. It wanted to be an insider too.

“No taxation without representation,” was a popular slogan of the time. The outsiders wanted in.

There never is one fixed group of people who are always insiders. Instead, the insider group has a porous membrane separating it from the rest of the population. Some people enter. Some are expelled. The group swells. And shrinks. Sometimes, a military defeat brings a whole new group of insiders sweeping into power. Elections change the make-up of the core group.

But the genius of modern representative government is that it cons the masses into believing that they are insiders too. They are encouraged to vote…and to believe that their vote really matters. Of course, it matters not at all. Generally, the voters have no idea what or whom they are voting for. Often, they get the opposite of what they thought they had voted for anyway.

But the common man likes the humbug that he is running things. And he pays dearly for it. After the insiders brought him into the voting booth, his taxes soared. In America, with taxation without representation, before the war of independence, the average tax rate was as little as 3% or so Now, with representation, government spends about a third of national income. And if you live in a high-tax jurisdiction, such as Baltimore or New York, you will find your state, local and federal tax bill will run to nearly 45% of your income.

In short, the insiders pulled a fast one. They allowed the rubes to feel that they had a solemn responsibility to set the course of government. And while the fellow was dazzled by his own power…they picked his pocket!

It didn’t stop there. Under the kings and emperors, a soldier was a paid fighter. If he was lucky, his side would win and he’d get to loot and rape in a captured town for three days. Relatively few people were soldiers, however, because societies were not rich enough to afford large, standing armies.

The industrial revolution changed that too. By the 20th century, developed countries could afford the cost of maintaining expensive military preparedness, even when there was not really very much to be prepared for. But the common man was skinned again. Not only was he expected to pay for it, still under the delusion that he was in charge, he also believed he had a patriotic duty to defend the homeland insiders! That is the real reason that the modern democratic system has spread all over the world. It allows the insiders to mobilize more of the resources of the country on their behalf. Nothing can compete with it.

But now the insiders are in trouble. The typical citizen is beginning to realize that he’s been had. As long as the insiders could plausibly promise him more and more benefits, he was willing to go along. But now, growth has stalled. They can’t deliver. The insiders keep borrowing — more than $10 trillion this year alone. Soon, they’ll be out of credit…out of time…and out of luck.

[This article is based on a speech I gave at the University of Alabama, Birmingham, December 5, 2011.]

You know that anti-piracy video you sometimes see at the beginning of movies? It explains how you wouldn’t steal a handbag, so neither should you steal a song or movie by an illegal download. Well, it turns out that the guy who wrote the music for that short clip, Melchoir Rietveldt, says that his music is being used illegally. It had been licensed to play at one film festival, not replayed a million times in DVDs distributed all over the world. He is demanding millions in a settlement fee from BREIN, the anti-piracy organization that produced the thing.

Interesting isn’t it? When you have hypocrisy that blatant, criminality this rampant, practices called piracy this pervasive – it reminds you of the interwar Prohibition years – you have to ask yourself if there is something fundamentally wrong with the law and the principles that underlie the law. Yes, people should keep to their contracts. But that’s not what we are talking about here; this case is being treated not as a contract violation but a copyright violation, which is something different. We are dealing with a more fundamental issue. Is it really stealing to reproduce an idea, an image, or an idea? Is it really contrary to morality to copy an idea?

The verdict here is crucially important because ever more of the state’s active intervention against liberty and real property is taking place in the name of intellectual property enforcement. The legislation SOPA could effectively end Internet freedom in the name of enforcing property rights.

If people who believe in liberty do not get this correct – and it no longer possible to stand on the sidelines – we will find ourselves siding with the state, the courts, the thugs, and even the international enforcement arm of the military industrial complex, all in the name of property rights. And that is a very dangerous thing at this point in history, since IP enforcement has become one of the greatest threats to liberty that we face today.

Another case in point to consider here. This week a judge in Nevada, acting in a case brought by the luxury Chanel, ordered the takedown of some 600 websites that he alone was guilty of trafficking in pirated products, that is selling fake Chanel products. There was no extensive research done; the claim of the company was enough. The judge then issued an order that went beyond the parties to the lawsuit itself and ordered the complete de-indexing of such site by GoDaddy, Facebook, Google, Twitter, Yahoo and Microsoft. Meanwhile, there is legislation before Congress that would permit similar takedowns of any website regarded as a violator of intellectual property.

Every time one of these cases comes along, I’m reminded a scene from the streets of Washington, D.C. that I saw years ago. Some immigrant families were doing a brisk business in knock-off fashion goods and watches. A new convert to the cause of free enterprise, I stood there in admiration of their entrepreneurial skill. They weren’t ripping anyone off. The good looked very much like the real thing but with a few difference, and the consumer was not defrauded in any way. All buyers knew exactly what they were getting, and they were also aware that they were getting their goods at a tiny fraction of the price they would pay for the real thing at the department store.

I recall thinking: isn’t the market grand!

A few days later, the Washington Post carried a story about how those very vendors were arrested for trafficking in fakes and violating trademarks. A judge issued the order and their property was confiscated. And so it was. The bustling businesses was now shut down by the police. Consumers and producers were thereby denied a chance to trade peacefully to their mutual benefit. And this was all because some third parties complained, invoking a government regulation.

But wait a minute? If you own a trademark, isn’t it stealing for someone else to come along and make your product, hocking it as a great knockoff but selling it at a fraction of the price? If so, can the judge’s order be seen as the enforcement of property rights, and isn’t property rights enforcement exactly what we free enterprisers are supposed to favor?

Let us grant that trademark – which is what is being enforced here – is the most intuitively plausible of all forms of intellectual property protection. Trademark concerns a federal registration of a name or logo, one that forbids competition from using those protected things in commerce. I don’t think that is compatible with free enterprise, but much less defensible forms of IP are copyright and patent. They both stand the competitive principles of free enterprise on their heads, and illustrate just how contrary to free markets IP really is.

The idea of competition is that you are free to emulate the success of others, improve on the product or process involved in making or marketing it, and chip away at the market share held by another producer. Because of this freedom, every producer must constantly innovate and cut costs in service of the consumer, and there is constant change taking place among the firms that seek to profit from enterprise.

With patent protection, however, a single company owns a government-protected monopoly on a product or process, and can thereby exclude all competition. This is a variation of the old “infant industry” fallacy for protectionist policies. One company is effectively sheltered by law for a period of time from the demands of competitive commerce. It doesn’t really matter if another firm stumbled on an idea independently. The patent forbids anyone from becoming a competitor to the privileged firm.

With copyright, everyone in society is bound for a very long period of time from producing any words or making any image that would seem to reflect a learning process used a copyright holder as an example. We have a similar granting of monopoly privilege here but instead of having to seek out protection, it is granted automatically. This might seem to be a benefit to the creator, artist, composer, or author, but the reality is that these people nearly always sign away their rights to the production company, the publisher, the filmmaker or whatever, and this most often occurs for the lifetime of the copyright. Even the creator, then, must beg or pay in order to use his or her own material. The law has been expanded and internationalized so that the monopoly lasts 70 years after the death of the person who wrote the song, drew the picture, or wrote the book.

If you look at the origins of these two institutions, we can see the essence of what is going on. Copyright originated as a government restriction on printing during England’s religious wars. As it developed, it had nothing to do with individual rights and everything to do with protecting dominant publishing firms against competition. It is the same with patent, which grew out of the mercantilist experience of Europe in which the prince would grant one producer rights against all competitors. Both are designed to slow down innovation and drag out the process of economic development with government restrictions. For this reason, the idea that IP somehow creates an incentive to innovate is completely wrong; in fact, the reality is precisely the opposite.

The advent of the liberalism of the 18th century gradually wiped out most of these antique institutions and replaced them with competitive capitalism. But in the world of ideas, these protections remained and became worse, especially in the latter part of the 20th century. They are remnants of a precapitalist age.

In the digital age, when ideas can be multiplied by billions of times in a matter of seconds, the notion of IP protection becomes ridiculously outmoded. And it is for that very reason that enforcement is being stepped up and now threatens free speech and the freedom to innovate. Ultimately, a consistent enforcement of IP would shut down free enterprise as we know it.

This is not an easy subject and it does take some serious thinking to sort out all of the issues. But here is one clue about where people who love freedom should come down on the question. When the state is totally dedicated to using its enforcement arm to harm so many businesses and so many free associations, and it does it in the name of private property, you have to wonder if something has gone terribly wrong. The state is the least trustworthy institution when it comes to defending our freedoms; there is no reason to suppose that this gang of thieves has been converted to the cause of real property rights just because that is what it claims to be defending.

For several decades, immigration has been the main source of economic growth in Alabama. Same with foreign investment and the people it brings in. Major swaths of the state would be sunk without both.

Immigration has brought not only economic growth but a much-needed cultural shift in the state. We now have ever more museums, schools, houses of worship of many varieties, and our theaters, movie houses, and orchestras are actually enjoying support. Alabama now has highly skilled hands that can do a variety of tasks that were impossible to get done before, from complex engineering to intricate tile work in public spaces. Of course the agriculture issue is gigantic: nearly all the workers were undocumented and now they are gone. Then there’s the food issue: without immigration, Alabama would be mostly burgers and chicken fingers. All of these industries, to one extent or another, rely on workers with sketchy documentation.

So what do the politicians do? This year, they whipped up an crazy xenophobic frenzy and passed a massive crackdown that led to a cruel mass exodus from the state. And they did this in the middle of a recession. Absolutely ghastly. And now the inevitable has happened: there is no one to fill these jobs. Industries are under serious strain. Businesses are going bust. Unemployment, which is already higher than the national average, is going up. There are no workers to do what the immigrants did because the necessary skills and work ethic just isn’t present in the native population (as any Alabama resident could have told you).

The latest solution: put the prisoners to work to fill the missing jobs.

Speechless.

British Library digitizes 300 years worth of newspaper archives, brings 65 million articles online

If you seek power over others, how much of an advantage does raw intelligence gain you?

If you look at the makeup of the U.S. Congress — which now has a 9% percent approval rating — or if you watch the Republican debates, you are not immediately inclined to label either the smart set.  In fact, you have to be a dim bulb to repeatedly say many of the things that seem necessary for electability. On the other hand, a certain amount of cleverness is obviously necessary to outwit the media and your opponents.

Which is it? Two films that explore the relationship between power and brains are “Being There” (1979) and “Limitless” (2011). The films came out thirty years apart but deal with the same issues. “Being There” suggests that being dumb as a chicken is a huge advantage for those who seek political success. “Limitless” suggests that politics is the inevitable trajectory of a person who is far more intelligent than everyone else. Which is more realistic?

I’ll state my own view up front: politics is a gigantic waste of brains. If a person really has a gift for high-level thought, almost any profession would be a greater better to society and probably more self-fulfilling in the long run. Whereas it was probably once true that the political life attracted some of the best and brightest, it no longer seems true at all today.

“Being There” is both hilarious and serious, worth sitting down with at least once every few elections seasons. Peter Sellers and Shirley MacLaine star in this adaptation of a novel by Jerzy Kosinski about an illiterate and simple-minded man named Chance who happened to be in the right place at the right time. His utterances are few and most concern what he has done his entire life, which has been to tend one garden on one estate and otherwise watch television.

When his benefactor dies, he is turned loose on the world and is taken in by a wealthy and influential industrialist who is close to the U.S. president. His new caretakers mishear his name and call him Chauncey Gardener, and they mistake his stupidity and space-cadet ways for discreetness and quiet dignity.

Wearing the right clothes borrowed from the attic of his old house, and otherwise seeming to hold himself well and convey the right messages, Chauncey inadvertently leads everyone around him to think he is brilliant, well connected, a great lover, a worthy successor to the great men of our time, and, in the end, is even considered for president.

When he does speak, it is about the only thing he knows, which is gardening. People around him imagine that he is speaking in high-level metaphors. This happens in private and even on national television. He rises to such social heights that he is beyond negative judgment. The only person who knows the truth decides not to reveal because to do so would be such a crushing blow to people he loves.

Unrealistic? Not so much. The only reason we tolerate the blather from the political class at all is entirely due to power and position of its members. If you put the same thoughts and ideas in the mouth of your neighbor, you would find him tedious, annoying, and largely deluded.

You can try an experiment using C-SPAN. Watch any random subcommittee hearing sometime and replace the faces you see by imagining the same said by the clerk at the convenience store or the worker laying asphalt in a new subdivision. Only then do you fully realize: the real talent of these clueless people is the ability to fake it for extended periods.

Much of our perception of the relative weight of a person’s words is due to the significance of the person using them. How else can we explain how the chairman of the Federal Reserve gets away with giving several speeches and testimonies per week that consist of nothing but long strings of platitudes, buzzwords, and long-refuted fallacies?

And it is the same with every head of every main government agency. They only get away with this because the media play along, never really asking serious questions that deal with fundamental issues or call upon a serious use of brain power. The unstated rule among those covering Washington is to never challenge the stupidity of big government itself. This pertains in those political debates, in committee hearings, or in any press conference.

“Being There” has been popular for so long among smart film critics precisely because it seems to account for so many political successes. It was once said to apply perfectly to Ronald Reagan. I couldn’t say. All evidence suggests that it explains George W. Further, I’ve watched the presidency of Obama, and the Chauncey effect here is completely undeniable. The frenzy that once surrounded his presidency (but probably not so much anymore) was wildly out of proportion to the reality.

“Being There” is more of a commentary on those around Chauncey than Chauncey himself. He never really wanted all this attention and it was never clear that he even knew what was happening around him. He was a happy man just experiencing life as it came to him.

The trouble was that as soon as he entered society, he bumped into many needy people. An aging industrialist needed an heir, and he fit the bill. His wife needed a younger and similarly heroic new and virile husband. Match. The servants in the household needed a new and distinguished visitor, the media needed a star, the president needed an adviser without baggage, and finally  the establishment needed a new president. Chauncey was there. He never wanted it, never sought it, but he was there.

The tendency to find vessels for our dreams and worship fakes of our own creation is a universal one. It happens in every sector of life. But no sector is more replete with this problem than politics. The entire show is based on fundamental myths.

The candidates talk about their “vision” for America as if one man can remake a country in his own image merely upon being sworn in. It is not possible and that’s fortunate for us. It is a despotic longing. And yet people cling to these visions as if this one person can somehow become a conduit for realizing all their likes and dislikes throughout the whole of society.

In this sense, every candidate is Chauncey Gardener — a complete fake that voters themselves construct as part of a national ritual. It is a ritual rooted in a lie that government is anything but what it is, which is an agency of force that enables us legally to steal from each other. Government is not wise, it is not compassionate, it is not a creator of anything. It is a stupid, clumsy, and malevolent agent of legal compulsion, and nothing more.

“Limitless” — starring Bradley Cooper and Robert Di Niro — turns the plot of “Being There” on its head. A failed and down-and-out novelist is given a drug that allows him dramatically heightened ability to think clearly and thoroughly. His IQ soars to four digits and, suddenly, he can make great use of every bit of data that resides in the recesses of his brain.

He turns his life around, finishes the novel in a few days, and it becomes a bestseller. He turns to stockpicking and becomes rich in a matter of days too. He is then recruited to mastermind the largest corporate merger in history. Eventually he turns to politics, and we are somehow led to believe that this is the culmination of his excursion into the realm of advanced thought. The plot is energized by the scarcity of the pills and his quest to find more.

One merit of this film is its focus on intelligence as the key to amazing life performance. As I thought about it, I realized that very few comic book heroes are known for their distinctive ability to think as the main source of their power. They have physical strength, the ability to fly, the capacity to stretch or freeze, x-ray vision, or whatever, but none are known for amazing intelligence alone. It’s usually the villains who are smart and they are always beaten in the end.

Kudos, then, for this film for recognizing that thinking is far more important in the scheme of things than power and might. This is an unusual message that speaks an important truth, and it is a rare thing to see this featured in a movie.

On the other hand: the film completely stumbles with this idea that someone in this position would naturally gravitate to becoming a senator. Anyone with a high-powered brain would likely steer clear of such a thing. If you could make millions in days of stock picking, outsmart every corporate attorney in the world, save lives through medical research, speak any language after hearing it once, and so on, that person would surely dedicate himself to being part of the flow of real life, not becoming a mime in the mythical world of politics, where they pretend to hold the world together through legislation and regulation while we pretend to believe in their ghastly “visions” for how we should manage our lives.

If everyone in government were like the smart guy in “Limitless” we should seriously fear for our lives. Fortunately for us, government is more like “Being There” in two respects: its power and ways attracts and retains people with neither vision nor distinctive intelligence, and, institutionally, it lacks the means finally to rule a world of seven billion people with their own ideas of how to conduct their lives.

[Prometheus Unbound]

The problem FDR faced in 1938 was not all that different from that faced by President Obama and the Congress today. The bad economic times stretch on and on, and there is open talk of high unemployment as far as the eye can see. After years of claiming to see “green shoots,” officials are downplaying the chance of substantial economic recovery.

And it’s not just in the U.S.; the problem exist in Europe too, where there is a widespread belief that the European Union, as symbolized by Euro, cannot last. The OECD just predicted a double dip recession pending in the UK.

At the midpoint of Roosevelt’s second term in office, a profound fear gripped the White House that there was no real answer to the depression that seemed to continue on and on. Every respite was followed by yet another plunge in productivity, and clearly unemployment would not improve. Unemployment was 18%, which was higher than two years earlier. (Note that the broadest measure of U.S. employment today is 17+%.)

It is a documented fact that his advisers were the first to draw his attention to the possibility of stoking international problems involving the far East. Japan was the target and a series of embargoes, demands, sanctions, and diplomatic moves reinforced that the point of inspiring a massive movement in the U.S. to push for peace.

Responsible writers at the time drew attention to the plot and speculated about what was really going on. The history of the journalism of this entire period came to be buried in the ash heap of history following the Second World War. But it remains a fact that historians cannot and do not deny: FDR saw advantages in war and dearly wanted the U.S. involved – and that is true regardless of whether you believe that Pearl Harbor constituted his “back door to the war.”

It was hardly the first or last time that the U.S. government pursued war as the ultimate stimulus package. Of course, as Robert Higgs has demonstrated, the war didn’t stimulate anything. It sent the unemployed off to foreign lands to kill and be killed. It gave a pretext to demand massive material sacrifices on the home front. It distracted the public from the obvious failures of the New Deal. The recovery didn’t begin until government spending and regulation were slashed following the war.

Wars have long worked as a salve for serious political problems. Clinton used war in Bosnia, Somalia, and Yugoslavia to bolster a faltering presidency, and Bush followed suit with massive wars on Afghanistan and Iraq that provided a temporary boost. Obama inherited these ongoing conflicts and even increased U.S. involved but both are out of the news and provide no real opportunities for executive heroics.

And so one worries. The U.S. is setting up de facto military bases in Australia while offering a variety of diplomatic warnings against China’s policies with its neighbors. This prompted the head of People’s Liberation Army, Major General Luo Yuan, to proclaim that the U.S. is trying to “encircle” China. He said that “the intent is very clear — this is aimed at China, to contain China.”

This move was followed within days by a ghastly and presumably errant attack on Pakistan that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers. The U.S. apologized and swore it would investigate fully, but everyone knows what that means: what’s past is past. What’s more, this attack occurred only hours after a meeting between Pakistan’s army chief and the head of U.S. operations in Afghanistan at which both sides agreed to more cooperation.

China reacted extremely strongly to this news from Pakistan, with sharp rhetoric and unleashed moral condemnation. “The soil nurturing terrorism will become even more fertile,” said the China state newspaper, and reasonably so, “and the space for terrorism to spread even broader.”

It is a striking observations that most Americans are not willing to contemplate. How do you fight terror when you are daily engaged in bloody activities that can only inspire the creation of more terrorism? Another fundamental question is why this sudden belligerence against China at a time when the U.S. foreign policy priorities are presumed to be focused on the dangers of violent Islamic extremism?

These events together constitute, in the old phrase, “a cloud no bigger than a man’s hand.” Following the end of the Cold War, many Washington warmongers began the search for a new enemy to sustain the imperial overreach of the U.S. government. China was first on the list, but robust trading relationships and amazing growth rates made a military strategy unviable. The U.S. eventually found its enemy and tensions with China abated.

But that was ten years ago, and the terrorist excuse for continuing the American empire indefinitely is wearing thin. The tables have turned to the point that the American people are more scared of TSA agents and custom officials than Islamic radicals. How long will people put up with giving up their rights and liberties under the anti-terrorism pretext?

Most profoundly, how much longer will people stand by and watch the systematic strangling of the American dream – their children unable to find jobs, the college degree ever more expensive and worthless, the political and central banking classes looting private wealth to prop up failed enterprises – all in the name of a “stimulus” that has not and cannot work?

If you were a member of the power elite – hated, protested, and questioned at every turn – war might look increasingly attractive.

There is a gross tragedy with all these events. We could have had peace. We could have had prosperity. It was all within our reach at the end of the Cold War. Instead, our leaders chose intervention and empire building. Chalmers Johnson is right: if there is hope for America, it is with dismantling the empire, not building it, much less trying to provoke another friendly nation into a bloody conflict.

(I’m reposting this from Whiskey&Gunpowder because it is of particular libertarian interest)

How much more ridiculous can the US Postal Service get? This you will not believe. It has embarked on a public relations campaign to get people to stop sending so much email and start licking more stamps. This is how it is dealing with its $10 billion loss last year. Meanwhile, rather than offering better service, it is cutting back ever more, which can only guarantee that the mails will get worse than they already are.

It’s true that mail still has a place in the digital world, as the post office says. But the government shouldn’t be the institution to run it. It already has competitors in package delivery but the government stands firmly against letting any private company deliver something like first class mail. And so it has been since the beginning. The state and only the state is permitted to charge people for non-urgent paper mail in a letter envelop.

It’s a control thing. The government is into that. And it is far from new.

Do you know the amazing story of Lysander Spooner? He lived from 1808 to 1887. His first great battle was taking on the post office monopoly. In the 1840s, he was like most people at the time: fed up with the high prices and bad service. But as an intellectual and entrepreneur, he decided to do something about it. He started the American Letter Mail Company, and his letter business gave the government some serious competition.

It opened offices in major cities, organized a network of steamships and railroads, and hired people to get the mail to where it needed to be. His service was both faster and cheaper than the government’s own. Then he published a pamphlet to fight the power: “The Unconstitutionality of the Laws of Congress Prohibiting Private Mails.” It was brilliant. It rallied people to his side. And he made a profit.

The government hated him and his company and began to litigate against him. It dramatically lowered the price for its services, and used public money to cover its losses. The goal was to bankrupt Spooner, and it eventually succeeded. Spooner’s private postal system had to be shut down. It’s the same way the government today shuts down private schools, private currencies, private security, private roads, private companies that ignore the central plan, and anyone else who stands up for freedom.

From this one anecdote alone, you can see that the post office is hardly a “natural monopoly” — something the government has to provide because free enterprise can’t do so. It is a forced monopoly, one kept alive solely through laws and subsidies. If the post office closed its doors today, there would be 1000 companies rushing in to fill the gap. Just as in the 1840s, the results would be cheaper, better services. The government runs the post office because it wants to control the command posts of society, including communication. The Internet as a global communication device snuck up on the state before the state could kill it.

Let’s return to the 19th century. Spooner didn’t go away. He was more than an entrepreneur. He was a brilliant and pioneering intellectual, as the collection The Lysander Spooner Reader makes clear. He was a champion of individual liberty and a passionate opponent of all forms of tyranny. He was an abolitionist before it became fashionable but he also defended the South’s right to secede.

Most incredibly, he was probably the first 19th century American to return to the old anti-Federalist tradition of post-Revolutionary America. He did this by asking the unaskable question: why should the US Constitution — however it is interpreted — be binding on every individual living in this geographic region?

This document was passed generations ago. Maybe you could say that the signers were bound by it, but what about those who opposed it at the time, and what about future generations? Why are the living being forced to live by parchment arrangement made by people long dead? Why are the living bound by a privileged group’s interpretations of its meaning?

In his view, people have rights or they do not have rights. If they have rights, no ancient scroll restricting those rights should have any power to take those rights away. Nor does it matter what a bunch of old guys in black robes say: rights are real things, not legal constructs to be added or reduced based on the results of courtroom deliberations. Plenty of Americans before his time would have agreed with him! It’s still the case.

Now, keep in mind that Spooner lived in a time where the living memory of these debates had not entirely disappeared. He knew what many people today do not know, namely that the Articles of Confederation made for a freer confederation of states than the Constitution. The Constitution amounted to an increase in government power, despite all its language about restricting government power. Remember too that it was only a few years after the Constitution was rammed through that the feds were suddenly jailing people for the speech crime of criticizing the US president!

Spooner spoke plainly: what you call the Constitution has no authority to take away my rights. Hence his famous essay: “Constitution of No Authority.” In “No Treason” he argues that the state has no rights over your freedom of speech. In “Vices Not Crimes,” he shows that people in any society are capable of doing terrible things but the law should only concern itself with aggression against person and property. Reading them all together, as they are in this book, is a radicalizing experience — a liberating experience. It makes you see the world in a completely different way.

It’s true that they aren’t teaching about Spooner in public school. But he was a giant by any standard, the 19th century’s own Thomas Jefferson (but even better than Jefferson on most issues). There is still so much to learn here. It’s no wonder that his legacy has been suppressed.

This edition of his best work is published by Fox & Wilkes, an imprint of Laissez-Faire Books. Incredibly, you are still permitted to buy this and read it without getting arrested — for now.