15 Years of the Monetary Policy Committee (UK)

(Austrian) Economics, Statism
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A post at the Cobden Centre, 15 years of the MPC, calls to attention “a brilliant video from our friends at SaveOurSavers, celebrating 15 years of the Monetary Policy Committee”. The video skewers the hypocrisy, lies, and inane economic theories spouted by or in defense of monetary central planners and their inept failure to meet its 2% inflation target.

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Kinsella Austrian AV Club Interview—Mises Institute Canada

(Austrian) Economics, Anti-Statism, Business, IP Law, Libertarian Theory
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I was interviewed yesterday by Redmond Weissenberger, Director of the Ludwig von Mises Institute of Canada. We had a long-ranging discussion of intellectual property and libertarian theory, including a discussion about exactly how Ayn Rand and other libertarians got off track on this issue, in part because of flaws regarding “labor” and “creationism” in Locke’s original homesteading argument; inconsistencies between Rand’s support for IP and her recognition that production means rearranging existing property; and also the different roles of scarce means and knowledge in the praxeological structure of human action. (For more on these issues, see my blog posts Locke on IP; Mises, Rothbard, and Rand on Creation, Production, and ‘Rearranging’, Hume on Intellectual Property and the Problematic “Labor” Metaphor, Rand on IP, Owning “Values”, and ‘Rearrangement Rights’, and The Patent Defense League and Defensive Patent Pooling, and my article “Intellectual Freedom and Learning Versus Patent and Copyright.”)

The video is below; audio file is here (69MB). (Trivia: I used my iPad, running the Skype app, for this interview. More stable and better camera than a MacBook.)

[C4SIF]

[now podcast at KOL165]

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Reason.tv Interviews Science Fiction Author David Brin

Democracy, IP Law, Libertarian Theory, Police Statism, Taxation, Technology
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David Brin is the author of science fiction novels The Postman, the Uplift series beginning with Sundiver, and others as well as the ever-popular nonfiction work, The Transparent Society: Will Technology Force Us to Choose Between Privacy and Freedom?. He recently sat down with Reason.tv’s Tim Cavanaugh to discuss his recent criticisms of “dogmatic libertarians,” his hobbyhorse of government transparency, and the subject of uplifting dolphins.

I have much to say about Brin’s attacks on “dogmatic libertarians,” by which he means followers of Murray Rothbard and Ayn Rand who worship property too much, but watch the video first and then continue on below for my commentary.1


  1. It’s heartening to see that the video on YouTube has more dislikes than likes at the moment. 

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“Close” Encounters Of The Cop Kind

Drug Policy, Police Statism, Victimless Crimes
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Over the weekend there was a small health expo at my local YMCA (which also shares a building with a public elementary school). A variety of organizations had stands and booths–from golf and swimming coaches to dietitians and chiropractors. And, like civilized people, they would pitch their goods and services to passers-by. Unfortunately, this peaceful demonstration of entrepreneurialism and voluntary market demand was tainted by the presence of the police.

No fewer than five “cruisers” lined the edge of the parking lot. About a dozen police officers, in full regalia (guns, tasers, cuffs, baton, military boots) interacted with children who would ask one question about another, their eyes glazed over by the “magnificence” of “our” public “servants.” But the “law and order” monopolists would still had a gem to show the community. Parked on the grass a B.E.A.R. military-style vehicle was the center of attention. Mothers and fathers, sons and daughters were taking turns climbing on the truck of mass destruction.

I approached and listened to the guy inside tell a kid that he was the one in charge of holding the bullet-proof shield when they have to go “serve warrants” and that the guy you see right there (pointing across the parking lot) was the one whose job was to break doors open. Another officer (dressed in camo and looked like a military soldier but was a local cop) told a girl that they were there to help the good ones and take care of “the bad guys.” Meh.

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The NFL is Not for Libertarians

Business, Corporatism, Employment Law, Statism
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Tonight marks one of the more bizarre annual rites in the American worship of state power—the NFL Draft. I realize I may be alone in this characterization. Just this morning, Mises Institute president Doug French wrote a lengthy editorial celebrating the Draft. But I don’t share the public’s love of the fraudulent, anti-libertarian monstrosity that is the National Football League. As I see it, you can support liberty or the NFL, but not both.

The NFL is not a private enterprise in any free-market sense. It was at one time, but since the 1960s, it has steadily morphed into a subsidiary of the state. Admittedly, this process did not begin at the NFL’s insistence. In the 1950s, the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division decided to interfere with the rights of NFL franchise operators to make rules regarding the presentation of their games on the new medium of television. By 1961, the NFL was forced to lobby Congress for a special antitrust exemption just so it could sign its first national television contract. A few years later, a similar exemption was secured to permit the NFL’s merger with the American Football League.

In the decades following the merger, the NFL embraced its special status and started demanding municipal governments, rather than franchise owners, assume the financial risks of constructing new stadiums. Today, 23 of the 32 clubs have stadiums built no earlier than 1992. Most are financed primarily through taxes or government-backed bonds. Generally, NFL owners contribute only about one-third of the cost.

In Cleveland, for example, the city used bonds to pay for 75% of the cost of the Browns’ stadium, which opened in 1999. The team only pays $250,000 per year in rent to the city. Keep in mind, the new stadium was only built after the first Cleveland Browns franchise moved to Baltimore in 1995. Why did they move? Because then-Browns owner Art Modell, after financially mismanaging the team for years, needed a government bailout, which he received from the state-run Maryland Stadium Authority in the form of M&T Bank Stadium. And to get one step further back, the Maryland Stadium Authority came into existence only after Baltimore’s previous NFL team, the Colts, moved to Indianapolis when the latter city—through the Marion County Capital Improvement Board—offered the club’s owners a brand new stadium.

Even when owners pay for a share of construction costs, it usually comes in the form of long-term debt. Franchise sales in recent years have also been heavily leveraged. When Daniel M. Snyder purchased the Washington Redskins from the estate of Jack Kent Cooke in 1999, he paid a then-record $800 million, which included assumption of $155 million in debt on the stadium Cooke built just before his death and another $340 million Snyder borrowed from a European bank.

Without direct government financing in the form of taxes and municipal bonds, and indirect financing in the form of interest rates artificially manipulated by central banks, most of the NFL stadiums erected over the past 20 years would not exist, at least in their present forms. Nor would debt-fueled sales like Snyder’s been possible. …

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