The Shutdown and What It Means To You

Anti-Statism, Humor, Statism
By / / 2 minutes of reading
Share

With all the hysteria in the mass-media in concern to the shutdown, your friendly Libertarian Standard blogger is here to deliver a public service announcement to allay any dissonance you may be needlessly experiencing.

You, dear citizen, will not be regaining any freedoms you might have had before; anything that otherwise might have been permitted to you before as a natural, human right will not necessarily be allowed again because of this unfortunate shutdown event.

THESE FOLLOWING ITEMS WILL BE UNAFFECTED BY US GOVERNMENT SERVICE CUTS:

  • The freedom to retain the full gain of property you’ve obtained through voluntary means. Our dedicated IRS agents will be working round-the-clock to ensure that you pay your full due (and then some). Sadly, due to current budgeting woes, money you’ve lent us interest-free (thanks again!) in advance will be held hostage due to despicable, greedy taxpayers shamelessly(!) refusing to fork over more of their property.
  • There will no freedom to enter or leave your invisible jail without permission papers from your ever-so-gracious wardens. You will have to defer your furlough plans until passport services are resumed.
  • You will not be free to trade with people living in other territories without paying our bridge trolls the proper custom. Any privacy you think you may have to be secure in either your person or property is out of the question once you are within the marked territories of the bridge trolls or their Uruk-hai siblings at the TSA.
  • The freedom to consume foodstuffs or chemicals for your pleasure and even health will be strictly prohibited without the specific permission of our Surgeon General. Any pleasurable activities that are as yet unknown are categorically forbidden by emergency measure. Yes, Granny may die because the FDA couldn’t approve her medicine in time, but so what, somebody might get high in the meanwhile, and we couldn’t have that, no sirree.

Always remember- a government shutdown affects YOU, not them.

The Shutdown and What It Means To You Read Post »

Arthur C. Clarke vs. Economics and Capitalism

(Austrian) Economics, Pop Culture, Science, Statism, Technology
By / / 4 minutes of reading
Share

A few years ago in honor of Arthur C. Clarke’s then-recent birthday, I wrote on my own blog that he must never have read Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard,

because according to this quote cited by Gregory Benford in his happy-birthday letter in Locus Magazine (January 2008), he claims that “there are some general laws governing scientific extrapolation, as there are not (pace Marx) in the case of politics and economics.” Well, far be it from me to disagree that Marx was wrong about a lot of things, but Clarke is wrong here. Sir Clarke, you may be 90 years old now, and happy birthday by the way, but it’s never too late to acquire a firm grasp of sound economic theory.

As disappointing as it is, it’s not surprising that he had a natural-scientistic bias against economics. Sadly, he died only a few months after my post.

In a more recent article in the Sri Lanka Guardian, more of Clarke’s economic ignorance is on display:

While researching for this article I came across a searing indictment by Clarke on the American capitalist system. After observing that the structure of American society may be unfitted for the effort that the conquest of space demands he continued, “No nation can afford to divert its ablest men into essentially non-creative and occasionally parasitic occupations such as law, insurance and banking”. He also referred to a photograph in Life Magazine showing 7,000 engineers massed behind a new model car they had produced as ‘a horrifying social document’. He was appalled by the squandering of technical manpower it represented. All this indeed makes one wonder whether he really was a closet socialist.

…

Arthur C. Clarke vs. Economics and CapitalismRead More »

Arthur C. Clarke vs. Economics and Capitalism Read Post »

Distill THIS! (or: How The State Gives Small-Scale Distilleries Nightmares)

Business, Corporatism, Statism
By / / 3 Comments / 4 minutes of reading
Share

A friend shares the following story:

I was talking with a buddy of mine last night: a lawyer currently working for the state, getting his MBA on the side. He’s been researching the possibility of setting up a distillery firm, and we talked about it for close to an hour. Very interesting stuff, and he’s got some great ideas for how to break into the market and his unique angle.

But the funny part is that probably 45 minutes of that hour was spent talking about his strategy in light of the manifold regulatory hoops and tax laws he has to navigate. Between licensing and taxes, which as you can imagine for hard liquor are absurd, his business model is 100% dominated by meeting the requirements of the state. Some examples: before you can boil an ounce of alcohol, you need local, state, and federal licensing in place. You can’t get the federal until you have the state and local in place, and getting all three takes anywhere from 8-24 months. The problem is that to fill out the paperwork you have to have the facility, equipment, stock, etc. all in place and ready to go; you can’t fill out paperwork for a nonexistent distillery. So he’s looking at having to hold a facility with the equipment for two years while the feds sit around.

You can’t just put up or rent any building, either. Your firm’s place of business has to be in a Class 3 piece of land, which basically means you have to set up out in the middle of nowhere or in a really depressed part of a city. (He lives very close to Baltimore, so he’ll be going for the latter.)

…

Distill THIS! (or: How The State Gives Small-Scale Distilleries Nightmares)Read More »

Distill THIS! (or: How The State Gives Small-Scale Distilleries Nightmares) Read Post »

There’s no room for violence in our political discourse?

Democracy, Nanny Statism, Police Statism, The Left, The Right, Vulgar Politics, War
By / / 1 Comment / 1 minute of reading
Share

There’s no room for violence in our political discourse? But politics is merely war by other means. Political discourse within the state inherently involves the threat of violence and is ultimately backed by it.

…

There’s no room for violence in our political discourse?Read More »

There’s no room for violence in our political discourse? Read Post »

Scroll to Top