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Hoppe: The Property And Freedom Society — Reflections After Five Years

(Austrian) Economics, Anti-Statism, Democracy, Immigration, Political Correctness, The Left, The Right, Vulgar Politics

By Stephan Kinsella / June 10, 2010 / 4 minutes of reading

I was privileged to attend to the Fifth Annual Meeting of the Property and Freedom Society last week. It was held in beautiful Bodrum, Turkey at the Hotel Karia Princess, from June 3-7, 2010. The list of speakers may be found in the Program. This is my second, having also attended the inaugural meeting in 2006. I’ll put up another blog soon with more details about the event, but for now let me say it was without a doubt the best liberty related event I’ve ever attended. And two of my fellow TLS co-bloggers also attended–Gil Guillory and Juan Fernando Carpio.

Group photo2 from the Fifth Annual Meeting, June 2010, Hotel Karia Princess, Bodrum — Group photo from the Fifth Annual Meeting, June 2010, Hotel Karia Princess, Bodrum

Professor Hoppe’s opening address, “The Property And Freedom Society — Reflections After Five Years,” is published here on The Libertarian Standard today. It’s a fascinating, informative, and perceptive overview of various libertarian paleo- and related alliances over the years.

Hoppe surveys the mistakes of former alliances, and lessons learned; and also devastatingly illustrates how the state has coopted even most free market think tanks into serving the state’s aims:

The strategy of Hayek and of the Mont Pelerin Society, then, had to fail. Instead of helping to reform—liberalize—the (Western) State, as they intended (or pretended?) to do, the Mont Pelerin Society and the international “limited-government” think-tank industry would become an integral part of a continuously expanding welfare-warfare state system.

Indicators for this verdict abound: The typical location of the think tanks is in or near the capital city, most prominently Washington, DC., because their principal addressee is the central government. They react to measures and announcements of government, and they suggest and make proposals to government. Most contacts of think-tankers outside their own institution are with politicians, government bureaucrats, lobbyists, and assorted staffers and assistants. Along with connected journalists, these are also the regular attendees of their conferences, briefings, receptions and cocktail parties. There is a steady exchange of personnel between think tanks and governments. And the leaders of the limited government industry are frequently themselves prominent members of the power elite and the ruling class.

Most indicative of all: For decades, the limited government movement has been a growth industry. Its annual expenditures currently run in the hundreds of millions of dollars, and billions of dollars likely have been spent in total. All the while, government expenditures never and nowhere fell, not even once, but instead always and uninterruptedly increased to ever more dizzying heights.

And yet, this glaring failure of the industry to deliver the promised good of limited government is not punished but, perversely, rewarded with still more ample funds. The more the think tanks fail, the more money they get.

The State and the free market think tank industry thus live in perfect harmony with each other. They grow together, in tandem.

As for lessons learned:

…

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More economic pain coming

(Austrian) Economics, Business, Corporatism

By Ryan McMaken / June 4, 2010 / 2 minutes of reading

In the chart below, provided by chartoftheday.com, one can see how grim the job situation has become. The long term-trend experienced since 1961 has been abandoned for what can only be described as stagnation in job creation. As jobs remain flat, of course, the size of the job force will continue to grow as more young people graduate from college and secondary school. This is partly why unemployment among teens and twentysomethings is now about 25 percent.

According to chartoftheday.com:

Today, the Labor Department reported that nonfarm payrolls increased by 431,000 in May. It is worth noting that a large majority of last month’s gain in payrolls was due to the hiring of temporary workers for the 2010 census. Today’s chart provides some perspective on the US job market. Note how the number of jobs steadily increased from 1961 to 2001 (top chart). During the last economic recovery, however, job growth was unable to get back up to its long-term trend (first time since 1961). More recently, nonfarm payrolls have pulled away from its 40-year trend (1961-2001) by a record percentage (bottom chart). In fact, the number of US jobs is currently at level first reached in early 2000.

So far, the current “recovery” has produced a net loss of 133,000 jobs. During the same point in the last recovery (2003), the economy was adding 200,000 to 300,000 jobs per month. Calling the current situation a recovery is risible to anyone who is out looking for a job right now, especially since workers are now experiencing the longest periods of joblessness experienced in decades.

We can add to this the fact that the debt crisis in Europe has now spread to Hungary. So now, Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Spain and Hungary are all now facing serious debt crises and even risk of default. The European economy is in disarray, and investors were not pleased as the Dow plunged more than 300 points to below 10,000.

The homebuyer tax credits are gone, the stimulus is beginning to wear off, and there is nothing left that the feds can do to stave off another crisis since interest rates are already effectively zero and the federal government is more more broke than ever. State and local governments are in even worse shape.

Needless to say, this does not bode well for the “recovery.”

The Coming Obamacare Healthcare Inequality: Concierge Medical Services

Health Care

By Stephan Kinsella / May 31, 2010 / 3 minutes of reading

My wife and I have a great doctor. She has a small clinic nearby with a few other doctors, who are also all very good. Our doctor has a waiting list for people who want to be her patient. We have over the years recommended several people, even some who live 20 miles away, to her. She is very nagging–in a good way. She makes you promise to get a physical, eye exam, etc., intervenes to get you an appointment with a specialist if you need one, etc. Follows up by phone, and so on. She is great.

She recently announced to us that she is moving to some kind of “concierge” service–she figures she basically provides that kind of above-average service already, and this is a way to reduce her patient load (from about 4000 to about 400), and escape some of the regulatory burden that Obamacare is going to impose. So she’s picking a select group of her current patients–about 10% of them–and they will be allowed to remain her patients–for $1600/year each. Now, we love our doctor, so will probably do this. And 3600 of her patients will now lose their favorite doctor. Thanks, in part, to Obamacare.

So, you can see what’s coming. The affluent will have to pay more–in our case, $3200 a year more–but for even better service than we already get. And others will have increasingly slim pickings. Case in point, I mentioned this to some friends, and my TLS co-blogger Brian Martinez noted: “This is what my wife’s doc did, too. Went to a concierge system. Unfortunately we couldn’t justify the extra expense and pay for health insurance for the rest of the family. So my wife had to leave her doctor of 10 years and find a new one, and she hates to switch doctors.”

Expect to see more of this. I had never heard of it before and am still waiting to hear the details from our doctor (some information will be mailed later), but a google search revealed that this is indeed a growing trend; see Health care reform laws prompt surge in ‘concierge medicine’, Are Concierge Medical Services on the Upswing?, and Royal Pains: Can Concierge Medicine Coexist With Obama’s Healthcare Plan?

So, Obamacare will only exacerbate healthcare “inequalities,” and diminish the quality of care of many people. The government will then use this as an excuse to bash “greed” and “inequality,” and clamp down further, driving us closer to outright socialized medicine. As one of the articles above noted, “Critics say boutique medicine will only exaggerate the health insurance crisis. Many doctors may leave traditional family practices — widening the gap between the affluent and the poor.” As Martinez noted to me, “You know all the good doctors with wealthy patients will follow this route and as you say it will prompt the regime to crack down on this ‘greedy’ practice. [expletive deleted] Obama.”

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Libertarian Themes in Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time

Fiction Reviews (Movies), Imperialism, IP Law, Pop Culture, Taxation, War

By Gil Guillory / May 30, 2010 / 2 minutes of reading

SPOILER ALERT: I try my best not to “spoil” the movie, but some plot elements are revealed.

There are lots of things to like about the movie Prince of Persia: Jake Gyllenhaal‘s abs, the parkour, Gemma Arterton‘s attitude and beauty, or Ben Kingsley’s well-proven ability to portray the bad guy. But I like the libertarian themes.

The movie is inspired from the video game franchise of the same name. All of the important elements of the movie are directly from the video game: the parkour, the street rat, the princess, the dagger of time. The fact that videogames are perhaps becoming in our age the leading form of art for the young is well explained in the lecture series Commerce and Culture by Paul Cantor. Many libertarians have underscored this essential link between market and art, and especially the way that copying is at the heart of artistic development.

The plot itself has libertarian themes. The antagonist, seeking political power, lies the Persians into a war of conquest on the false report of weapons manufacturing and collusion with a known enemy. After the invasion is over and won, there is a scene where the king admonishes one of his sons for his act of invasion, which could be interpreted as an unintended allusion to the foreign policy fiasco perpetrated by George W. Bush over the counsel of his father George Bush, among others.

But the overt libertarianism in the movie is a running gag throughout the movie delivered by Alfred Molina‘s character Sheik Amar, whose role in Raiders of the Lost Ark we cannot forget. The gag is that Amar is the proprietor of a community whose reputation is crafted to prevent tax collection, reminding me of Ralph Raico’s point (I believe he raises it in this lecture) that the Arab stories of caves full of wealth were likely based on the reality of businessmen hiding their wealth from the tax man. Molina/Amar makes many anti-tax comments throughout the movie, which were cheered in the theater where I saw it. As another homage, Molina’s famous scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark is replayed in Prince of Persia between the male and female leads.

Not only for its libertarian themes, but also for its action, characters, plot, and overall impact, I highly recommend the movie. Great summer movie for the family, rivaling the likes of Pirates of the Caribbean.

For my family it had an additional appeal, since the setting was the Persian Empire, and we’re preparing to leave for Turkey in a few days. PFS meeting, here we come!

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Article: What’s Really Wrong with the Healthcare Industry

(Austrian) Economics, Articles, Health Care

By Vijay Boyapati / May 29, 2010 / 2 Comments / 1 minute of reading

The real problem with the American healthcare system is that prices are continually rising, making healthcare unaffordable to an ever-increasing fraction of the population. And recent healthcare legislation has addressed none of the causes of high prices.

Read the Full Article by Vijay Boyapati

Afterwards, discuss the article below.

[The article is also available at Mises.org]

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