The Paleo Blog

At Taki's Magazine there has been some recent debate and conversation over the issue of race, "race realism," nationalism, and white nationalism. Like Dr. Paul Gottfried, I am not afraid to talk about these politically incorrect and hence untouchable issues intelligently with intelligent people. And, unlike Mr. Justin Raimondo, I have no direct reason to disassociate with someone like Mr. Jared Taylor, the editor of American Renaissance. If truth be told, once a week I generally scan the website's, typically thought provoking, links. Similarly, I do the same for the website VDare.com, which contains many themes that American Renaissance does.

My goal here is not to go through each and every point that has been made at TakiMag. Instead, among other things, I want to---extensively---show how cultural conservatism, properly speaking, can coexist with what is sometimes called "race realism" (as opposed to "pure white nationalism"), and why it makes sense to be a "realist" when it comes to race. I additionally want to show, more briefly, how cultural conservatism combined with race realism can peacefully live together with anti-state libertarianism, contrary to some of the discordant remarks made by Gottfried.

Some Relevant Articles: "Whiteout" by Jared Taylor; "The Limits of Race" by Paul Gottfried; "Nationalists Without a Nation" by Justin Raimondo; "What Do White Nationalists Want?" by Taylor; "Race, Christianity, and Anarcho-Capitalism" by Gottfried.

It is correct to say that I probably do not view race and racial-genetic inheritance as important, in degree, as Taylor does. The race of a man, or a given group of men, is most certainly not the whole of him, or them. Race is not even close to being "everything." At the same time, however, I would not go as far as Raimondo, who apparently thinks the individual is more or less unshaped, genetically speaking, by his racial makeup. He appears to view it as basically insignificant and null. To me, personally, this is a silly notion when you logically examine it. Albeit I am not an expert on the subject, nor do I desire to be one, the work of Drs. J. Philippe Rushton, Richard Lynn, Michael Levin, Charles Murray, and others cannot just be dismissed as examples of "pseudo-science." That their work shows that you can make categorical and generalized statements about race is clear enough. One cannot, for example, deny the differences in average IQ rates or average crime rates. Neither, for example, can the documented statistics of serum testosterone levels being different among the races be denied. Or, for one more example, it cannot be denied that certain races are more or less susceptible to certain diseases. Why the differences appear is another question, of course. Why some men think that the differences are un-natural or a priori evil as against sameness, too, are separate questions.

Most men do not deny that one's family heredity is significant in shaping the individual. This shaping not only includes personal appearance but such things as intelligence as well. And this shaping is inborn, apart and separate from environmental factors. Understanding this gives explanation to why everyone cannot be a theoretical physicist or a mathematician. What is more, it explains that everyone cannot be a professional football player or basketball player. Now enter the topic of race into this paragraph's discussion. Race can be viewed, in some real sense, as a super-extended family. For this reason it seems improbable to say that race heredity does not, to some extent, have an influence on the individual.

At the time of the publication of The Bell Curve by Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray, Murray N. Rothbard (who, from what I am told, was "into" race realism), in an editorial called "Race! That Murray Book," wrote that "everyone, and I mean everyone [knows] in their hearts and in private" that there are "self-evident truths about race, intelligence, and heritability" [emphasis untouched]. This book, he said, allowed (at least for a time) the subject to become open and "mainstream," without too much childish and irrational name-calling or false non sequitur accusations.

There is no denying that environmental factors are significant vis-à-vis the individual, but the same appears to hold true for inborn factors of heredity, as the works of Rushton, Lynn, et al. show. To repeat, it seems foolish to say that changes in the environment can make any newborn individual develop into a Sir Isaac Newton or a Michael Jordan. The individual, with his free-will or volition, can no doubt enormously affect his possible intelligence, his array of knowledge, and his athletic abilities. To boot, the young individual is immensely influenced by his family upbringing. But there is also an inborn range that limits his endeavors. I can work day and night, but I will not be a Newton or Jordan.

It actually makes sense to be able to make racial-collective judgments. The classic example is a man who has two ways to walk to his destination. On one side the man sees a group of white men and on the other side he sees a group of black men. Which side should he walk on for safety concerns (with all other things being equal)? The answer is obvious. The man's knowledge is finite and hence incomplete. His choices in walking to his destination are finite. Therefore, he must economize in these kinds of situations. Having collectivistic judgments, even of a racial nature, is for that reason rational. The probability of greater safety on the side which has the white men might turn out to be incorrect, of course. After all, the man does not know the individuals in question. But it is for that reason that it is rational to use collective reasoning, which on average holds true. The man who is 100% "color-blind" will more likely get into trouble than the man who is not.

In the very same way, it makes rational sense to make collective judgments on sex. The above example can be changed so as to have women on one of the two sides. Or, we can think about the hiring of a private bodyguard. Would you hire from a company that employed all women or one that employed all men? I hope it is needless to say, sexual-collective judgments make sense for an infinite range of examples.

In After Liberalism, the brilliant scholar Paul Gottfried writes that left-liberals "are so preoccupied with the role of prejudice in creating hostile environments that they perpetually deny the obvious,"

that stereotypes are rough generalizations about groups derived from long-term observation. Such generalizations are usually correct in describing group tendencies and in predicting certain collective actions, even if they do not adequately account for differences among individuals.

Now Raimondo is right when he writes that each individual has a soul and is unique. I definitely agree with him on this. (Nonetheless, this does not inescapably mean that the individual is racially empty.) Respect for individual life is paramount. Those that say otherwise are on a slippery slope to despotism and tyranny. Taylor's unfortunate statement on the importance of not placing "libertarianism before the preservation of race or heritage" can thus be viewed in this light. That is to say, the word "libertarianism" can be substituted with the words ethics or morality. He argues, loosely speaking, that to save libertarianism one must abandon it. That for man to obtain a more ethical society he must, or might need to, leave behind ethics and become un-ethical. This argumentative reasoning is contradictive from the libertarian point of view. And, to note here too, if Taylor's philosophy truly is "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em," then he is surely mistaken.

In Raimondo's article, he refers to Mr. Patrick Buchanan. Unless I am in serious, serious error, Buchanan would certainly not say that the individual is but an atom detached from his race or racial mixture. Moreover, again, collectivism is not per se bad or per se wrong. The world would exist in chaos if man could not make categorical, group, or collectivistic statements about things, man as a being included. The very fact that insurance can exist proves, economically, that one can make collectivistic statements. And, because it can be potentially used in insuring groups of individuals and their risks, it shows that we can make statements of a collective nature about man. As Dr. Hans Hoppe has spoken about, insurance, in itself, cannot say anything about individual risks (because otherwise these individual risks would not be insurable), but it can say something systematic (because otherwise the complete random uncertainty would have relatively no correlation and would not be insurable) about the risks of the group (and that's why these risks are insurable).

Please allow me to go on a slight tangent. Language, for example, we can, in many ways, call a nationalistic-collectivistic concept. A "concept," furthermore, that is non-relativistic so as to have an objective identity to be usable. It is not something that is "given" in the nature of the physical world but a creation in the minds of men. Thus it is social and cultural forces that are the forces at work that shape, both in a progressive and retrogressive sense, language. Clearly enough, language is hence a highly "conservative" thing. Naturally, then, tradition and continuity are intimately related to a society's language. In addition, it is based on the usages of generalizations and even stereotypes. (Richard Weaver, who I will come to later in this essay, said that there are those that dislike this unbreakable truth about language because "it is felt that 'typing' anything that is real distorts the thing by presenting it in something less than its full individuality and concreteness." But these men do not understand: "For it is true that the word conveys something less than the fullness of the thing signified, it is also true that it conveys something more. A word in this role is a generalization. The value of a generalization is that while it leaves out the specific features that are of the individual or of the moment, it expresses features that are general to a class and may be lacking or imperfect in the single instance ...  In order to make statements that will have applicability over a period of time or in the occurrence of many instances, we have to avail ourselves of these classifiers.") Man, consequently, cannot try to individualize and atomize language without destroying it. A large group of individual men, in turn, cannot just "free" themselves from language by breaking their ties and roots with it. That would be suicidal for any healthy and productive society. That form of "individualism," or expression of individualism, is not something to be looked upon happily, to say the least.

This, and several other things, has an affect on the individual. There is no question about this. A man is not a blank slate. He grows up in some kind of social order. This social framework, to some undisputable degree, brings an order and structure to society (because otherwise no civilization would exist to speak of!). No individual reinvents the wheel. Defending a civilization, and wanting to enhance it, requires defending concepts that we can call "collectivistic" or "anti-individualistic." Many of these concepts are also generally built into what we can call "tradition." Defending a civilization means defending values and morals that are, in some fashion, "objective," "non-relativistic," and "non-nihilistic" (because, e.g., certain human actions lead to good results and some to bad!). Additionally, I would also add, this specific concept of collectivity does not necessarily deny methodological individualism (or libertarianism). This is because I am not saying that language, for instance, forms apart from the individuals that compose a society.

Now this tangential discussion is not as far off from the issue of race as you might prima facie think. What I briefly discussed was the importance of "cultural conservatism." At bottom, it is an understanding that there is a structure and order of society that is intelligible to man. It is an understanding that there are laws that govern nature, and that man has a nature himself. It is a seeing that there are "permanent things" or permanent truths about human existence. Conservatism is the recognition of the truth that society is not rootless. History, tradition, prejudice, authority, religion, and spirituality are all cornerstones to conservatism. Moreover, it is based on an understanding that, given that there is a structure and order of society and so forth, certain values that preserve and enhance a society must be defended. These specific things or values, that is, must be given "authority" in the associations, institutions, habits, beliefs, ideas, attitudes, etc. of men. They unite individuals into a vivacious society, with an enduring and transcendent moral order. (In contrast to this, it is, e.g., principles of relativism that destroy genuine culture. Principles, of which, that lead to the destruction of order and morality. They lead to indiscriminate thought and action, and thus the breakdown of society.)

If a discernible race can be viewed, in some sense, as a super-extended family which passes down certain genes, and if we grant that these genes actually have some meaningful impact on men (how couldn't they?), it then seems that it is not possible to defend a given civilization if one is to detach the specific people that make it up and have made it up in history.

Arguably, then, what has been called "race realism" is, or can be, perfectly consistent with cultural conservatism. An essential part of conservative values, incidentally, is the value of community. Since people live together in community, it is only to be expected that a community's characteristics would somewhat be defined by its ethnicity and race.

Is it so far-fetched to say that only the people of Western Civilization could have built Western Civilization (and likewise for other Civilizations)? And, if this is true, is it so far-fetched to say that the individuals of this grouping should think about defending this discernable collectivity of individuals (in terms of promoting good culture, trying to increase the low birthrate numbers, etc.)?

True, in today's world of political correctness it might be taboo to discuss differences between peoples, but intelligent men should not shun earnest discussion and research. As far as I can tell, this specific research is fully coherent (and is not in contradiction to methodological individualism or place man, necessarily, in a pure "materialistic" light, as Raimondo suggests). This research in point of fact helps to smash the ideas of egalitarianism, and other analogous left-liberal myths. The myopic idea to bring about a "utopia" of equality will, as this type of research shows, only result in the substitution of one form of hierarchy and distinctions with another. Because if it can be shown that intelligence is not entirely based on environmentalism, it can be said that leftist social policies will fail. This research can furthermore show that the culture of one peoples cannot just be transferred to another peoples. It is thus a blow to the dreams of Wilsonian imperialism.

According to the great Richard M. Weaver, a leading intellectual figure of traditional conservatism, the left-liberal view of man is of a "positivistic" nature. It is this that often leads to social engineering proposals. Since, if liberalism is correct about man, it does make some sense to say that the managerial state must relentlessly engineer civil society. As Weaver wrote in National Review:

The [left-liberal] attitude toward race stems from [liberalism]'s positivistic representation of man, which has always had one of its cardinal tenets the dogma that there are no real differences between people except economic differences. Remove the economic differences and all the others----racial, cultural, social, and moral----disappear. Thus the collectivizing of the economy can be depended on to obliterate the various differences...

Studying racial differences should be just as much an acceptable thing as studying sex differences. Recently I read Dr. Steven Rhoads's excellent Taking Sex Differences Seriously. It presents an immense amount of scientific information that confirms a more "traditionalist" view of the sexes. (Though, how anyone could think that their differences are based on "social construction" is beyond me. The differences between men and women are mostly common sense.) So the sciences are on the side of the cultural conservative, and they should be treated accordingly.

Now, allow me to comment a bit on the issue of nationalism.

We have to remember that the world is no racial or ethnic monolith. Although "nationality" and "nation" does indeed exist in some organic and unifying sense, they are no monolith (and thank goodness). A Europe that became a stateless continent would still have "nations" in some fashion. France would still be France, in general, and they would still be speaking French, and equally for the other nations. Sketchily and loosely speaking, we can define a nation this way: it is made up of a people sharing a geographical location that often is discernible by its features in some way; as a whole it is made up of a common people of a common race (the location of individuals of various ethnicities and races are not "randomly" located around the world, nor could they be); it has a sharing of temporal continuity of a people being at a given location with many customs and traditions; it contains a common language in widespread use; there exists a general self-awareness and patriotism among the people of being a part of a sort of distinct "nation" (even if there are no borders in the conventional sense of that term, as seen in certain secessionist-separatist movements).

To go over once more, this is not to say it is any monolith. Given the non-egalitarian nature of the world, different communities will be different from each other. However, I should point out, there is a difference between "multiethnic" societies and "multicultural" societies in our statist world, as Gottfried has defined these terms. The first term does not of necessity imply the second term:

Nothing could be more misleading to equate a multicultural society with a multiethnic one. . . At issue [in the Western world today] is not the coexistence of more or less tolerated ethnic minorities grouped together under an administrative unit or imperial jurisdiction but the celebration of state-sponsored "diversity." In the new multicultural as opposed to conventional multiethnic situation, the state glorifies differences from the way of life associated with the once majority population. It hands out rewards to those who personify the desired differences, while taking away cultural recognition and even political rights from those who do not. [Source: Multiculturalism and the Politics of Guilt.]

Thus, for example, desiring to use the multicultural regime for a force of "good" is a self-destructive desire. Multiculturalism specifically is used as a political and ideological instrument for managerial control, both directly and indirectly.

It goes without saying that I want nothing to do with "white supremacists." As far as the term "white nationalist," it confuses me because it seems to imply the desire to make America "white only" (making it indistinguishable from the former term). Obviously, I am not for this either. Yes, I want all of the best for whites but the same is true for all other races.

If, as a few surely claim, there needs to be racial homogeneity "nationally"----as embodied in a centrally powerful State?!,---- then the question logically is: why not worldwide? The thing that one must understand is that no racial conflict [see this & this], in any consequential sense of the term conflict, exists in the division of labor or in free trade. Different communities---with no forced integration---can peacefully coexist with each other. Moreover, freely trading with "everyone," in a manner of speaking, and discriminatorily choosing who you live next door to do not contradict each other. That is, "inviting the whole world" to come to your doorstop does not follow from you trading with the whole world. Neither does it follow that from a free market condition that genetic pauperization, i.e., dysgenic deterioration in the population, will occur. Conversely, it does follow, by subsidizing births of the lower end of intelligence at the expense of the higher, from welfare state conditions. To Taylor's credit, though, and as far as I know, he has only advocated as public policy free association (i.e., the elimination of all compulsory civil rights) and immigration restrictions (which some anarcho-libertarians have argued for).

Today's massive and unrelenting immigration that is occurring I do not consider a good or desirable thing. The work of gentlemen like Lynn only boosts my reasons for this. Not to mention, most Americans are not so wanting of this amount of immigration either. This makes me believe much of it is artificially stimulated via statism. (That's why the solution to this problem is not the central state. Ideally, it should be to uphold private property rights to the max.) With private property rights fully restored, and all property privatized, all "immigrants" would have to be granted permission to enter. In distinct dissimilarity with today, men would have full control and freedom over who could and could not immigrate or travel into and onto their roads, private neighborhoods and towns. With that understanding, it seems fairly apparent that a total free-for-all of immigration would not be present in anarcho-capitalism. That can only be the outcome of the central government running public property and controlling private property owners' (and their voluntary associations') right to discriminate.

As far as Gottfried's critical remarks on anarcho-capitalism, Mr. Keith Preston has written an interesting essay on his blog, "Why You Conservatives Should Give Us Anarchists a Chance: A Reply to Paul Gottfried." I suggest you all read it.

It is funny how Gottfried, in his first main essay on this subject, says that most "white nationalists I have met are libertarians," but then suggests that Raimondo's libertarian views are naturally atomistic and against thinking about any kind of collectivity, racial or otherwise. Well, as my (unforgivingly) long-winded analysis reasons above (despite how weakly perhaps), I reject this as erroneous: (non-statist) cultural conservatism combined with race realism has no necessary incompatibility with libertarianism. Neither is libertarianism per se against authority. As important, libertarians are the ultimate manumitters vis-à-vis the managerial and multicultural regime.

A private property society would be more compliant with a bourgeois society, one can argue. Private roads and spaces, for instance, would not be detached from the values of the local community. They could justly enforce rules against prostitution or whatnot. Just because a private law society would do its best to outlaw all violence against the non-violent does not mean that various forms of social ostracism would not exist against immoral activity. It also does not mean that (voluntary) positivistic law would not exist (which would, in terms of specific forms of this kind of law having very wide-spread support, put high pressure on those who do not comply to comply). You could additionally see small proprietary communities develop, which could range from religious monasteries, to (yes) collectivist, left-liberal communes, to distributionist-based communities, to racially homogeneous communities. And instead of a top-down and socialist monopolist of law and order, you could see the rise of a very diverse assortment of "intermediate institutions" handling these kinds of things. Nothing, as a whole, in this appears to be absolutely anti-authority, or anti-Christianity. Neither does it suggest a free-for-all society where everything that is non-violent is encouraged and promoted.

One of the main things that has been lacking in today's world is an objective and non-subjectivist view of ethics and morality. Libertarianism provides an objective view of ethics. This makes it not antagonistic to having a sort of objective or traditionalist view of personal morality.

The question of "anarchist" feasibility is yet another question. Preston gives reference to many historical examples, and I will not repeat that here. With these examples, I do not view it as written in stone, as Gottfried does, that the feasibility and probability is zero (despite how pessimistic I can be). States collapse when the public stops supporting them. "All it takes" is a change in vox populi.

To finally conclude this lengthy essay, let me add that differences are what make the world an interesting place. But it is only natural that a man of a given culture and a given people generally prefers his own to others (just as he generally prefers friends of a like-nature). Notwithstanding this, he can respect, or at the very least peacefully tolerate, the variety of cultures and peoples in existence (and the non-monolithic nature of his own).

A man should want the very best possible for all men, of whatever society, culture, religion, race, or ethnicity. Society has no need for men that hate, or for men who are unable to discriminate between things, including between collectives and within collectives, to see the individual worth of an individual.

As a matter of fact, the "collective good" and the "good for the individual" are not set against each other. This provides elucidation to why individuals can peacefully coexist and cooperate with each other in a market setting. An individual, by himself, is weak and un-wealthy. Cooperation in the division of labor propitiously changes this. (Language, to use an example from above, is another perfect illustration of this.) The individual becomes better off---regardless if his working capabilities are little or great---by this peaceful participation and the collective whole of individuals become better off as well. Thus, correspondingly, various collectives, so to speak, become better off through peaceful economic cooperation with each other. Protectionism, on the other hand, can be called "anti-life" or "anti-existence" because it leads to conflict. The more complex and diversified a division of labor is under a free market, the more peace is required, and the more economically dependent we are on one another. It helps facilitate peace and friendship. The so-called "ideals" of protectionism, socialism, and the like, on the other hand, help tend to lead to war and hate. It starves and isolates men.

It is only the egalitarian mindset which wishes to ignore the obvious and is bent on unnatural oneness and sameness that is a logical ally to statism and oppression. It is a mindset that tries to impose on reality and the laws of nature. Equality is made superior to justice and liberty, and that is just tyranny.

(The Financial Boom was Bad [An Example of Not Allowing the Market to Work!])

The prophetic Mr. Peter Schiff, author of Crash Proof: How to Profit from the Coming Economic Collapse (2007), talks at the Mises Institute's Austrian Scholars Conference.

I hope you have some gold under your mattress.

Oh, by the way, I wonder. Who has a better track record: Mr. Greenspan----or, maybe I should call him, Mr. Monopoly Man----or, say, the Austrian economists?

Hmm. What did Greenspan say in 2003 about housing and what did the Austrians say? Why, let's time travel back and read, how about, "Housing Bubble: Myth or Reality?" by Dr. Frank Shostak.

Or, even more generally, who has a better track record: The typical Keynesian economists you see on TV----who say they have the answer, even though they did not see this coming----or the Austrians?

***

Without Mr. Monopoly Man there would not have been any bubble in housing, as Dr. Thomas Woods says:

The housing bubble could not have arisen without the Federal Reserve. Had people started buying houses at unusually high rates, banks' loanable funds would have begun to deplete, interest rates would have shot up, and that would have been the end of it. That would have discouraged any additional speculation in real estate. But Alan Greenspan and the Fed could create money out of thin air, thus giving the banks more to lend and driving interest rates down, thereby perpetuating the destructive bubble in housing.

***

Despite the earnest intentions of those who call for a return to a "gold standard," perhaps they do not realize how severe this economic crisis is and is becoming (thanks to those in power who will not allow the market to rid itself of the various malinvestments that occurred in the artificial "boom"). Government with the gold standard abused it, more or less, from day one. Given its top-down and centralized nature, it was a system that was waiting to be abused. As a matter of fact, the prerequisite to have a gold standard is abuse, fraud, and anti-market interventionism! Because of this, nothing will suffice but the complete privatization of money production.

As Woods points out in his excellent book Meltdown, F. A. Hayek argued that this is exactly what needs to be done (read Hayek's "Toward a Free Market Monetary System"): "I am more convinced than ever that if we ever again are going to have a decent money, it will not come from government: it will be issued by private enterprise, because providing the public with good money which it can trust and use can not only be an extremely profitable business; it imposes on the issuer a discipline to which the government has never been and cannot be subject. It is a business which competing enterprise can maintain only if it gives the public as good a money as anybody else. . ."

(At the end of my blog essay "Money and Civilization" I give a quick outline on how this can be done.)

And, do I really need to type this? (OK. I guess I do, given what President Bush on steroids Obama is doing.) Economic progress comes from capital accumulation; not spending. Read Dr. George Reisman's brilliant essay on that here.

***

[Update - 4.18]

A Note on Deflation and Inflation.

We all have to be careful with the terms inflation and deflation because they are defined differently by different people. But the best definitions are, as is usually the case, the classical definitions: Inflation is nothing but an increase in the money supply via fiduciary media (put bluntly: counterfeiting). Deflation is nothing but the decrease in the money supply. In this very specific sense, therefore, deflation is practically always a statist phenomenon. A recession or depression often sees some fiduciary media extirpated. (This is not a bad thing, for both ethical and economic reasons.) On the other hand, deflation qua the overall fall in prices (we'll call it: "definition 2") is more generally and often a free market phenomenon. (Though, definition 2 often follows definition 1 in a recession or depression.) For instance, imagine that we have a robust economy with a free market money that is by and large gold as its medium of exchange, with no fiduciary media, and thus a banking system based on 100% reserves. Naturally, then, man would see overall deflation in this very specific sense. Gold would of course increase, but extremely slowly as compared to the increase in the amount of goods being produced. Hence, purchasing power would go up, prices would go down, and saving and investment would be encouraged. This would be a magnificent thing. Deflation is not evil. In contrast, inflation qua the overall increase in prices is, ultimately and generally, a statist phenomenon. It would not be something we would see in a free society.

Some of his articles:

• "Fed Up"
• "Tooth Fairy Economics"
• "Washington and the Stimulus: A Parade of Blockheads"
  
• "Banana Republic, U.S.A."
• "Unnatural Disaster"
• "The Deck Chairs Are Fine Where They Are"
• "We Need Our Heads Examined, Says Harvard"
• "Government: The Cause of – and Solution to – All Our Problems"
• "Don't Know Much About Capitalism"
• "The Harding Way"
• "No, the Free Market Did Not Cause the Financial Crisis"
• "Beware of Obamanomics"
• "Question Authority (Unless I Say Not To)"
  

And visit his website.

***

Perhaps it was about ten months ago---although I am uncertain---that I turned my radio on to hear what Mr. Sean Hannity had to say. I could not take listening to his program for any longer than about five minutes. He was ranting on how the "fundamentals" of the economy are sound and then repudiated those who claimed that the economy was in a recession.

Of course today everyone will admit there is a recession. Statists like Mr. Hannity have been proven to be absolutely incorrect----whereas gentlemen like Dr. Ron Paul have been proven to be absolutely correct. (See, e.g., chapter six of The Revolution: A Manifesto.)

Unfortunately, I think one can say the exact same thing about the "d" word, depression. I.e., the establishment will be forced to admit that the "d" word is an accurate description of the situation. Things are going to be getting a lot worse, and we are just in the beginning of this.

Due to the State's monetary policies and due to the fascistic arrangement the banking industry and much of big business has with the State, many individuals and families have been living in a credit card illusion.

We live in a world of monetary socialism. It is with this arrangement, ever since the creation of the Federal Reserve System, that over 95 percent of the value of the dollar has been lost.

It's an arrangement that has encouraged debt, short-term thinking, and short-term planning. It's an arrangement that punishes thriftiness and other conservative work ethics. Thus I would call the Fed not only an anti-economic institution but an anti-social institution as well. (For a more extensive look into its anti-social nature, see "The Cultural and Spiritual Legacy of Fiat Inflation" in The Ethics of Money Production by Dr. Jörg Guido Hülsmann. Download PDF here.)

It's an arrangement that has also brought about various artificial bubbles, leading to unsustainable booms, which then lead to inevitable busts. This occurs when the Fed floods the banking system with credit, thereby lowering the interest rate.

But the only "natural"----versus artificial----way interest rates can lower is if man saves more. Briefly, this means that man has held off present consumption for the future; that he is saving and investing more in temporally lengthy projects. If the Fed, on the other hand, floods the market with credit (via the printing up of money from nothingness), this in turn artificially lowers the interest rate, despite the fact that man has not saved more. Temporal coordination of production in the economy is consequently distorted. Investments that receive the credit are made to seem profitable. In effect, such industries get subsidized as they are flooded with this new credit that was created from thin air. An artificial bubble develops (à la housing). But as this new money trickles through the market, the old consumption-saving proportions reassert themselves (which, to iterate, determine the "natural" interest rates) and those investments are then seen for what they really are; namely, hot air. They will no longer be profitable. Resources are not there to keep the "boom" going. People have not saved more. People, instead, wanted more present oriented things. But investors were being incompatibly pushed, by the artificial paper money stimulus, into future oriented things based on the illusion of freed up resources in the future. This is when a recession or depression occurs.

So, since today's artificial "boom" resulted in massive misallocations of resources into various temporally unsustainable lines of production (via credit expansion and hence an artificially depressed interest rate below what the market would have set it), it is only the bust that will get us on the correct course. Thus technically speaking, the bust is not the problem; it was the "boom" generated by the Fed. Resources, capital, and labor must be able to move with the market---a market that is ridding itself of these government-generated bubbles.

It is accordingly imperative that the State not interfere with this adjustment process.

As Mr. Jim Rogers says, the unsound must fall and the sound must rise. And therefore, to repeat what has been said on this blog before, the government must allow the market's pricing system to rediscover what is truly sound and what is truly unsound, and allow men to act accordingly.

Politicians, no doubt, don't like to hear that.

Neither do they have a real incentive to listen. This is because a crisis is a great time for them to expand their power and wealth. Consequently, there is little reason to be optimistic concerning the future.

(But if they want to "do something," I do have some advice later in this blog entry.)

Moreover, these politicians propagate to the public false hopes that the State is savior. They act as if they can create something from nothing. This propaganda is truly sophomoric. The State has no wealth of its own which it does not coercively take from others in the productive economy. All it can do is redistribute wealth and override the market's free and voluntary interactions of men.

You can accordingly call the "stimulus" bill a wealth destruction bill.

If the politicians keep this up, they will be sending us into a deep and long depression.

***

We must keep in mind the big picture, always. Henry Hazlitt, one of the great Austrian school economists, was right. We must think about the seen and the unseen, the short-term and the long-term, individual groups and all groups. Only in this manner should we examine so-called government "solutions."

For example, the State can "create" jobs only by taking away jobs that would have been created in the market. You might see the government jobs and so forth, but you don't see that there has only been a diversion. Instead of those jobs employing resources and money to serve the direct needs of consumers, resources and money are being employed by these jobs through State dictate; independent of voluntarily paying consumers, independent of the market's profit-and-loss system, independent of the market's competitive milieu. Ordinary people are made that much poorer because they are forced to pay for these jobs, if they like it or not, and have that much less money to spend (or save) on what they want, employing who they want.

And what does it tell us that such "created" jobs are independent of voluntarily paying consumers? They must not be worth much to the needs of ordinary people. It must be wasteful. And, even if it is not, there is no way to tell, unless we subject such jobs to the market. Only then can we see if the costs are justified, i.e., if the costs of this labor are less than what this labor produces. In addition, only then can we determine if those jobs are serving the higher versus lower needs of people. The costs and expected profits can subsequently be compared and contrasted with other possible labor employments. This additional point is important, since we live in a world of changing conditions and uncertainty. Consumer demands are not static, after all. But State "created" jobs cannot engage in cost accounting and will be restrictive in movement as against a free market of labor. The maximization of wealth with a free market's labor mobility is non-existent and hence standards of living must be lower than they otherwise would be.

Such "created" jobs might even be completely destructive in every way, i.e., the costs might be greater than the output. (Even if they are not, there is no way to know if these jobs are serving the higher or lower needs of the public, as shown above.) Indeed, the State can "create" lots of jobs. It can have men build many bridges, if they lead to somewhere is beside the point. It can draft all young men into the military. [Hey, Mr. Obama, I thought we were getting out of Iraq?!] And so forth.

A free market, in contrast, allows rational calculation. It helps prevent labor (and resources in general) from being allocated to unwanted and uneconomic lines of production. This is because it is based on private property which allows for profit-and-loss calculations with a universal medium of exchange. What is more, activities in a free market are not only dependent on voluntary consumer demands, but are also in a milieu that is competitive. As a result, it helps divert labor away from their less wanted and less needed locations and into their more wanted and more needed locations. And, implied in this, the free market helps men cut down on waste and to economize to the conditions of what people demand and to the underlying reality of the finite supplies of goods and natural resources that are in existence.

However government has no such ability, by definition. Thus, government "created" jobs will be arbitrary in terms of real wants, needs, expenses, and resources. There will be general misallocation, and hence standards of living will be lower than they otherwise would be. Since such "created" jobs are not based on voluntary demand, their activities will be independent of the wants and needs of people. Thus, given such a non-market position, this labor's costs can be very high and its quality output can be very low. This will actually multiply due to the fact that such labor has no need to worry about competition. And, because the factors of production employed by such "created" jobs cannot be sold on the market, they will be independent of their capital value and hence there will be over and under utilization thereof.

The very same basic lesson of the seen and unseen applies to the wealth destruction bill in its multiplicity of schemes [see the link --- an essay by Dr. Woods]. All that it will do is override people's free choices and make people that much poorer. Dr. Woods calls it "tooth fairy economics." We all must remember: the State has no resources and it lacks the free market's ability to economize. If we are to come out of this economic downturn fast, we need the pricing system to sort out resources. All the State can do is distort that process and make this downturn that much longer and that much deeper.

***

Or, the State can try to inflate more as a "solution." Though all that would do is intensify bubbles and increase the pain at the end of the road. It would be an attempt to cure our problems by the very means that caused our problems (as I wrote about above). It would result in the unsound increasing and the sound decreasing. More than that, a redistribution of wealth would occur from the poor and middle classes to those special interests who received the new money first.

And, we should all be aware, it is perfectly clear that wealth is expanded by enlarging the amounts of goods (not money). Wealth, for society at large, is not increased by growing money on trees. Just as important, it is about increasing capital. That means saving is a good thing------despite what the mainstream media might say. Even at an intuitive level, it should be crazy to anyone when a talking head suggests that an individual, a family, a community, a society in financially difficult times should go on a spending spree.

And, to repeat again on this blog, men saving would actually make the recovery faster. Time preferences would have gone down and, hence, would put man closer to the artificially low interest rates. Less adjustment would be needed because "real" rates would be closer to the "fake" rates, so to speak. (See Rothbard on this.)

***

Though I am pessimistic, the only way that we all can avoid a long and deep depression is if government stops doing anything more than it has already done. Yes, there will be some major pain. But at least it would be over (comparatively) quickly.

Even better: it can cut its budget. And while this is a radical statement, I suppose, it is a much needed statement: money and banking must be uncut from the government; namely, it must be left to the private market. We need private money (which would most likely be gold): private minting, private coining, etc. without a central bank, legal tender laws, fractional reserve banking, etc.

Furthermore, we all need to see the State as it really is. It's essentially a parasitic institution, and should be treated as such.

If a given activity is by definition theft and if it is unethical, then it is not possible to deny that this unethicalness of theft applies consistently without throwing out the first starting principles. An act of theft/murder/slavery/etc. does not become right because a man of the State is doing it. Socialism in all of its forms must be rejected.

***

I'll conclude this entry by saying that modernity has brought a de-civilizational decline in cultural and social life. Modernity might also, ultimately, do the same with material wealth. There has been, what you can almost call, financial stagnation and soon we may have a financial depression. The credit card illusion will be ending. On top of this, statism has become so powerful with its welfare-warfare apparatus that it will ultimately bankrupt itself (unless the market creates some huge innovation to keep it going longer, e.g., a new energy source).

Now I'm sure some would criticize me as a "naïve youngster." Though, all a man has to do is glance back at how the culture was, say, 60 years ago (even though he must take into account the problems of those years as well). Performing such a glance is not that difficult. Just look at the differences between the television shows back then and those of today.

An underlying error of my make-believe critic is to subconsciously accept a Whig theory of history and to be so orientated to what exists at present-------as if the present is detached from the past; detached from what it carves out for the future; and is King.

This overall attitude explains, I think, why so many men will not accept a statement like this: "The U.S. Empire will not last forever." It explains why many men think an economic depression "could never happen again."

It additionally explains why it is too difficult for many men to think about the future Death of the West. Today's ethos makes this thought about the future too shocking to be thought of as true: "Dying civilization?" "It can't happen here. ... That only occurred in the irrelevant and detached past. ... Open your eyes and see what is around you. The present is totality."

Man's present orientation, high time preference, and subconscious acceptance of the Whig theory of history, makes him go with a leftist and statist flow, and being part of that flow makes it hard for him to discern right from wrong. It makes him unable to see, for example, that the culture is in a major crisis, and that the West is dying.

***

Some Previous Entries on The Paleo Blog:

• "Money and Civilization" (If you only read one, please read this one.)
• "Prolonging and Deepening the Recession"
• "Hazlitt: 'Saving the X Industry'"
• "Subsidizing Badness"
  

[Hmm ... I retired this blog? Oh, well... This subject is too important.]

Classic Article on A Christmas Carol: Read Butler Shaffer's "The Case for Ebeneezer" at LRC.

VDare.com is having their annual War Against Christmas Competition. See Tom Piatak's report.

The Bubble Economy.

Read "Evidence that the Fed Caused the Housing Boom" by Robert Murphy.

In February look for a book on this economic depression by Thomas Woods. I am happy to report that a mainstream publisher, Regnery, is publishing it. This will increase the book's exposure to people who are unfamiliar with Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard.

Listen to the 1992 Mises Institute conference on Money and the Federal Reserve.

Read Peter Schiff at Taki's Magazine.

Hear the great Jim Rogers on The Lew Rockwell Show.

"Barack Obama," Chris Brown writes, "plans to initiate public-private partnerships."

"Obama's 'New Deal'" by Jeffery Kuhner.

"Garet Garrett knew where FDR's policies—and Bush's—would lead," says Justin Raimondo in The American Conservative.

George Smith writes about the evil Alexander Hamilton, founding father of crony capitalism.

The Fascist Market: Timothy Carney, author of The Big Ripoff: How Big Business and Big Government Steal Your Money, is interviewed in The University Bookman.

In my view, this deep alliance is a topic that too often gets overlooked, even by those who claim to be supporters of the free market. It can drive one mad how so many men frame arguments around the premise that today's economy is "free," or around the premise that the regulatory state was primarily created to "protect" consumers or small upstart businesses.

One gentleman, it is said, that explodes these myths is Gabriel Kolko. In Murray Rothbard's writings you will sometimes find references to his works, even though Dr. Kolko is a Marxist------By the way, read the new article, which mentions Kolko, by Dylan Hales called "Left Turn Ahead."

For example, in "Left and Right: The Prospects for Liberty" Rothbard wrote:

In The Triumph of Conservatism, Kolko traces the origins of political capitalism in the "reforms" of the Progressive Era. Orthodox historians have always treated the Progressive period (roughly 1900–1916) as a time when free-market capitalism was becoming increasingly "monopolistic"; in reaction to this reign of monopoly and big business, so the story runs, altruistic intellectuals and far-seeing politicians turned to intervention by the government to reform and to regulate these evils. Kolko's great work demonstrates that the reality was almost precisely the opposite of this myth. Despite the wave of mergers and trusts formed around the turn of the century, Kolko reveals, the forces of competition on the free market rapidly vitiated and dissolved these attempts at stabilizing and perpetuating the economic power of big business interests. It was precisely in reaction to their impending defeat at the hands of the competitive storms of the market that big business turned, increasingly after the 1900s, to the federal government for aid and protection. In short, the intervention by the federal government was designed, not to curb big business monopoly for the sake of the public weal, but to create monopolies that big business (as well as trade associations of smaller business) had not been able to establish amidst the competitive gales of the free market.

When a man says we "must" have this or that regulation against laissez-faire capitalism, I often wonder: Who will regulate the regulator?

H.L. Mencken Club.

In late November they had their very first annual meeting.

Addresses Online:

• “Hear No Genes, See No Genes, Speak No Genes--the Jargon of ‘Culturalism’” by John Derbyshire. (The text of Mr. Derbyshire's speech is just excellent. I am not sure how he writes for National Review.)
  
• “The Decline and Rise of the Alternative Right” by Paul Gottfried.
  
• “Greek to Us: The Death of Classical Education and Its Consequences” by E. Christian Kopff.
  
• “The Old Right and the Antichrist” by Richard Spencer.

Secular Right.

Even though I am not an atheist, I'm okay with cooperating with those who are (in a non-militant sense). It is independent of being opposed to fascism and socialism. There were, of course, plenty of nonreligious gentlemen in the Old Right. (Rothbard, one of my heroes, was an agnostic.) However I agree with paleoconservatives when they say that traditional conservatism----in a cultural sense----cannot be atheistic. If it is to conserve the natural, the good, the transcendent, and the normal, then a conservatism that defends Western Civilization cannot leave behind its religious roots. That should be obvious.

Take a look at Joe Sobran's 1999 article "Christianity and History."

James Bovard: "Are Democrats Better on Privacy and Surveillance?" Ha-ha.

"Police Have Killed 400 With Tasers Since 2001."

"Obama Finds Favor with Neoconservatives," writes Paul Gottfried.

"Blagojevich, Obama, And The Diversity–Fueled 'Chicago Way'" by Steve Sailer-----And see his new book America's Half-Blood Prince.

"In Praise of McCarthyism" by Justin Raimondo.

Ron Paul is interviewed at Huffington Post.

Patrick Keeney writes about Theodore Dalrymple's new book, The Politics and Culture of Decline. He is additionally the author of In Praise of Prejudice.

See Clyde Wilson's "Nathaniel Macon and The Way Things Should Be" at Chronicles.

Stateless Proprietary Communities: I was going to type up a separate larger entry on this but decided not to. Instead, please allow me to leave you all with a few articles by anthropologist Spencer Health MacCallum on this subject...

• “The Enterprise of Community: Market Competition, Land, and Environment.”
• “Land Policy and the Open Community: The Anarchist Case for Land-Leasing versus Subdivision.”
• “The Quickening of Social Evolution: Perspectives on Proprietary (Entrepreneurial) Communities.”
• “The Social Nature of Ownership.”
• “Werner K. Stiefel's Pursuit of a Practicum of Freedom.”

I am typically (gasp) discriminatory when it comes to listening to music. Give me Bach or Beethoven any day over much of today's modern stuff. Generally in the car or the parlor I have classical music on. During this time of the year, though, instead of primarily listening to the classical radio station and (when I can stomach it) the talk radio stations, I'll have on the classical rock radio station that switches to playing Christmas music 24-7.

For fun, the following are some Christmas-related YouTube clips of "The Three Tenors":  José Carreras, Plácido Domingo, and the late Luciano Pavarotti.

(Personally, I am not that interested in opera plays; only individual arias. See pages 545 to 547 of A Mencken Chrestomathy.)

Three Tenors sing Jingle Bells
Watch Here.

José Carreras sings Ave Maria
Watch Here.

Plácido Domingo sings White Christmas
Watch Here.

Luciano Pavarotti sings Panis Angelicus
Watch Here.

Three Tenors sing Happy Christmas / War Is Over
Watch Here.

Merry Christmas!

Maintaining The Paleo Blog for two years has been a fun and interesting Internet experience. It is my hope that the few readers out there have found this blog informative and enjoyable. Writing the various entries has benefited me in that it has sharpened my analysis on the various subjects that are covered here. To some degree it displays the evolution of my political thinking-----when I started this blog I just turned into a "Rothbardian."

I will be retiring The Paleo Blog in early 2009 and directing a greater amount of my time to other more important things. Please have me in your prayers. That would be very kind. And let me please emphasize my thanks to the few readers. I think, despite its obscurity, it has been a worthwhile activity.

For those who wish to contact me, you can use the private messaging system at VOX.

An Internet pen pal was kind enough to put together what he thought were the best or most interesting entries of this year. Besides the links below, I also put together an informal "studyblog" of Dr. Hoppe's A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism. You can find that here.

• You Can't Escape "Anarchy"
  
• "Not So Wild, Wild West" Justice
  
• Some Thoughts on Technology and Community
• Libertarianism, Freedom, and Lifeboat Situations
• Visions of Order by Richard Weaver
• Libertarian Communities--- A Few Articles and Remarks
  
• Reparations and Private Property
  
• Edmund Burke: A Young Anarcho-Capitalist?
  
• Private Island Thought Experiment and "the Lifeboat"
  
• Weaver: Southerner, Conservative, Rhetorician
  
• Aggression, Defense, and State
  
• McNeocon, Abortion, Insurance & Discrimination, Death of West
  
• Power Destroys Civil Society
• Culinary Conservatism
• Society's (Good) Conformity
  
• Money and Civilization
  
• Beyond Economic Man
• Heroes and Villains
• Don't Give the State Consent
• Notes on the Election, Democracy, Secession
  
• Monarchy > Democracy
• Normality's Enemy, the State
• Some Analysis on the Logic of Private Property

My many thanks to Mister Gaurav Ahuja for the list.

Mr. Ahuja is an anarcho-capitalist and a race-realist. He believes that historical revisionism and Austrian economics is lacking in today's world. He lives in the New York metropolitan area and is proud to be the most pro-White, non-White defender of European mankind. Contact him via p.m. at realliberal.vox.com.

Dr. Thomas E. Woods, Jr., one of the most prolific writers, created a guide for those of us who want to learn about liberty.

See "Learning for Liberty."

Mr. Rockwell writes in his piece "The Myth of Good Government": "If ... money is used to prop up failing companies, that's particularly bad since it is an attempt to override market realities, an attempt that is about as successful as trying to repeal gravity by throwing things up in the air."

Redirecting the market economy to have resources flow out of relatively sound lines of production and into relatively unsound lines of production cannot possibly speed along the recovery. As Henry Hazlitt said, doing this will drive capital and labor "out of industries in which they are more efficiently employed to be diverted to an industry in which they are less efficiently employed. Less wealth is created. The average standard of living is lowered compared with what it would have been."

Government interventionism that does this, in essence, rewards those who have used their resources and money unwisely and punishes those who have used their resources and money wisely. No sound economy can work on this principle without bad consequences.

When you think about this, it becomes apparent that this is how almost all statist interventions work. Many of the government's operations work on a principle that has the effect of rewarding losers and punishing thrifty individuals. Jeffrey Tucker's wonderful article "Good Kids, Bad Kids" does a great job illustrating this point; a point that I have been recently talking about to a friend.

As a young man I have seen how public education reacts to students who should not be there. If you are around my age (or younger), then you know what I mean. In no sense should these specific youngsters be at school. But compulsory education forces them to be there, despite their loutish behavior and almost complete uninterest in academic work. On net they contribute more negative than positive to the environment.

Instead of a system that expels them (punishes them), and thereby forces them into the workforce to develop productive and civilized skills, the system practically allows them to get away with their conduct and/or places them into "special education." This not only brings down the environment, and thus hurts students that should/can be there, but it additionally has a bad impact on these youngsters as well. They are allowed to "free ride" the system and do not get their just ejection which would have forced them to mature. As a whole, society is hence made worse off. This entire system sets into motion an increase of uncivilized behavior and decrease of civilized behavior.

To return to Mr. Tucker's article, he mentions that inflation is a prime example of how the State "discourages goodness and subsidizes badness." That it is. Nothing is so forcefully fused into the market economy than monetary socialism.

Money, as you all know, is what makes the market work. It is what allows transactions to develop without the need to constantly pray and hope for a double coincidence of wants. Money integrates the economy. It is similar to language. Furthermore, it is what allows the vital importance of cost accounting (calculation) to develop.

Thus to impose socialism in this vital area----the economy's "lifeblood"----is only asking for trouble. And, yes, trouble is what we have got from this arrangement. Financial incompetence is what monetary socialism rewards. Society becomes a credit card society. "It rewards," Tucker writes, "short-term thinking and punishes long-term thinking. It rewards debtors and punishes savers. To that extent, it degrades our characters and causes cultural decline."

One of the side effects of inflation is the distortion of cost accounting. Murray Rothbard wrote in What Has Government Done To Our Money:

“By creating illusory profits and distorting economic calculation, inflation will suspend the free market's penalizing of inefficient, and rewarding of efficient, firms. Almost all firms will seemingly prosper. The general atmosphere of a 'sellers' market' will lead to a decline in the quality of goods and of service to consumers, since consumers often resist price increases less when they occur in the form of downgrading of quality. The quality of work will decline in an inflation for a more subtle reason: people become enamored of 'get-rich-quick' schemes, seemingly within their grasp in an era of ever-rising prices, and often scorn sober effort. Inflation also penalizes thrift and encourages debt, for any sum of money loaned will be repaid in dollars of lower purchasing power than when originally received. The incentive, then, is to borrow and repay later rather than save and lend. Inflation, therefore, lowers the general standard of living in the very course of creating a tinsel atmosphere of 'prosperity.'”

Why, this is (sadly) easy to apply to today's situation.

What's more, monetary socialism leads to chaotic booms-and-busts in the economy. Jim Cox writes in The Concise Guide To Economics:

“When an artificial increase in the money supply through the banks occurs, this increases the available money in savings and depresses the interest rate, thereby encouraging an artificial increase in spending which is highly sensitive to the interest rate--capital spending. This run-up in the capital goods industry is the boom, and the subsequent depression results when consumers reestablish their consumption to saving ratio--thus revealing that the capital goods boom was indeed artificial. The only way to prevent the depression is to pump another dose of new money into the system to maintain the higher savings ratio, but eventually this must end or there will be a runaway inflation.

“The artificial increase in the money supply therefore is a government subsidy--through monetary policy--to the capital goods industry. Naturally the subsidy stimulates production in the capital goods industry. Once that subsidy is removed by consumers reestablishing their preferred saving ratio, there is a crash in the capital goods industry.”

Dr. Cox gives the popular analogy of a drug addict. Meaning, we as a society are a bunch of drug addicts when it comes to credit. (This is what monetary socialism brings about.) It is the Federal Reserve's pumping of credit into the market that brings the "high." Sustaining this high requires more and more pumping. However, as the author mentions, there is a limit to this. Near the end of the road either this pumping must be stopped or hyperinflation will occur. When the pumping stops pains of withdrawal occur.

These necessary pains are when the market adjusts back to reality, and away from the artificial high. As the credit (money) expansion flows through the entire economy, the real consumption-saving ratio will be reasserted (with men spending this new money) and the government-generated bubbles and distortions then dissolve.

A (general) deflationary credit contraction is another possible ("secondary") happening in a recession/depression. To be concise, this occurs----besides the (specific) unsound naturally falling----because banks are generally more conservative during this time, and this thereby lowers the supply of money. Additionally, demand for money generally increases. This happening is actually a good thing. It increases the speed of the recovery since it helps reverse inflationary effects. Thus it gives an additional push for men to save and invest more in capital production, and helps to purge malinvestments. (On deflation, read Deflation and Liberty [pdf] by Jörg Guido Hülsmann. And read Rockwell's latest article "The Force Is With Us": "falling prices are an important means for flushing economic error out of a system that is rife with malinvestments generated during boom times." If this deflation will last, is another question...)

In terms of our current economic predicament, not only has the Federal Reserve's Soviet-like management of the economy created massive misallocations (which brought us to where we are today) but the economy's ill-health has been further augmented by the moral hazard created by government protected (and created) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the forcing of banks to engage in uneconomic affirmative action policies. Government, because of this, created a competitive field where it became necessary for banks to engage in bad loaning practices. In other words, the State encouraged bad behavior and discouraged good behavior. Realizing this does not require reading a 1,000 page economic treatise.

For today's economy to be healthy it goes without saying that government should not be subsidizing badness. So exactly what should it do? The answer is nothing. Doing something is what brought us here. Doing nothing would let the market's pricing system, and its checks and balances (which the government ceaselessly attacks), rediscover what is truly sound and what is truly unsound, and let men act accordingly. As Mr. Tucker says: "Laissez-faire is sometimes seen as an 'anything goes' philosophy. It might more accurately be described as a 'reap what you sow' philosophy."

The government, nevertheless, can help the adjustment process along by cutting spending, regulation, and taxation across the board. These actions would be compatible with it "doing nothing." Ending monetary socialism, especially, would be a great thing to do. It would prevent future bubbles. The allocation of resources in higher and lower order industries would be untainted with artificial tamperings of the interest rate.

The last thing the government should do in this period of market correction, according to Rothbard in America's Great Depression (a must read), is to "prevent or delay liquidation," "inflate further," "keep wage rates up," "keep prices up," "stimulate consumption and discourage saving," or "subsidize unemployment." Any of these interventions will only prolong and deepen the adjustment process. These things promote badness, and therefore can turn a year recession to a ten year depression.

Not that the government is likely to listen to those who predicted today's mess, viz., the Austrians and Austro-libertarians. But we all can hope.

To use the lines of libertarian activist Ernest Hancock: "Freedom is the Answer. What's the Question?"

It is freedom, and freedom alone, that brings us financial affluence.

***

See the Following:

• "The Austrians Were Right" by Ron Paul.
• "How the Government Wrecked the Economy": Rockwell interviews Peter Schiff on why we are here and what is to come. (A must listen.)
  
• "Von Hayek in 1975": An interview with Hayek on inflation. (Keynesian nonsense is all over this interview, e.g., trading off unemployment for inflation.)
• The Depression Reader at LRC.
• The Bailout Reader at Mises.org.
  

***
Is Freedom of Speech "Democratic" and an "Absolute"?

"Freedom of speech" is not necessarily "democratic," in spite of claims to the contrary. It is amusing, for me anyways, how often the phrase "democratic rights" is used inaccurately. When freedom of speech is properly understood as just one of the infinite subsets of man's right to his person and property, we can call it a "liberal" right in the classical (correct) sense of that term. On the other hand, it is not a right derived from being inherently democratic. Democracy, indeed, can vote to end liberal freedoms. It is therefore fully compatible----as opposed to classical liberalism----with hating free speech.

No doubt the explanation for this is that men in this day and age consider democracy a "good." Because freedom of speech is "good," it is presumed that it must therefore be "democratic." Such is the sad present state of ideas.

Another common error, which I have typed about on this blog before, is how many men view "freedom of speech" as fundamentally existing in an "absolute" sense. This is not the case. If you are a visitor in my house and you then call me rude names, it would be in my right to kick you out. Doing that would not diminish your freedom whatsoever. Again, freedom of speech is derived from being a subset of man's right to his person and property. It does not exist on its own, detached from private property. Therefore, no additional laws need to be made to enforce or, at times, restrict freedom of speech.

(And, as I will indirectly show below, with the help of Hans-Hermann Hoppe's work, it is impossible to conceive of it as existing apart from private property. Ethical discussions are present because of scarcity and the possibility of conflicts developing over such scarcity.)

Blackmail and libel are two other subjects that cause great confusion with many people: See my review of Defending the Undefendable by Walter Block. And see Dr. Block's "Toward a Libertarian Theory of Blackmail" [PDF].

***
Coercion without Violence?

A earnest caller on a talk radio program was attempting to argue that "coercion" not only applies when man B forces man A to give him his wallet, but that it applies just as much to when man A, owner of a store, refuses to hire B as an employee. But this cannot possibly qualify as an ethical theory. B aggressively forcing A to hire him would be coercion. No coercion is involved if A simply refuses to hire B. In the latter case, there is no (uninvited, non-voluntary) physical invasion or force (or any substitution thereof) involved against either A's or B's private property. The former case does.

Man C, under this caller's theory, can claim that A hiring B would be "coercive" vis-à-vis him because he then could not get the job position. And, taking this theory at face value, C could thus force A to hire him rather than B. Since this is the case, this theory cannot rationally solve who would be "in the right." (B can claim the same thing C does.) This theory would result in unsolvable conflict and, for this reason, cannot qualify as a theory of ethics.

Similarly, imagine man A builds a house, X, in the forest. B comes along and says he wants to buy X for a dollar. A, naturally, denies this transaction. B could then, under this theory, say that A is being "coercive." If this is so, law enforcement can steal X to give to B. But then A can come along and then do exactly what B did to him, and on and on to infinity.

Obviously this would result in ethical chaos.

(To note in passing, in following this line of reasoning, we can disprove the whole notion of what is often called "positive liberty." It is a self-destructive and illogical theory in comparison to what is called "negative liberty." So-called "negative liberty" is internally consistent.)

***
What Determines Just-Ownership?

The goal of ethics----political philosophy and law more specifically----is ultimately to resolve conflicts, and hence to avoid chaos. Actual, physical conflict can only develop, with a number of men greater than one, over the usage (control) of one scarce, discernible, controllable, and "tangible" good, X. The question, then, is of asking who owns X.

The answer, I think, is perfectly clear: It is the first person in its appropriation. Avoiding conflict accordingly means that property be privately owned by the first user-controller.

X not only can be a good, it can refer to a specific spatial location that is homesteadable, e.g., land. (Down below I will try to cover ownership of man's physical body. While, I reason, you can generally say the same exact principle applies in regards to self-ownership, one has to be more precise of what just ownership means in terms of who the first user-controller truly is in a direct sense versus indirect sense.)

Only original appropriation, covered above, can determine just property rights. I don't think you can say otherwise.

A second person who, in a manner of speaking, later arrives cannot be said to be the just owner of X. This would imply that the first person was not the just owner of X and that ownership comes about from the second person, i.e., a late-comer who comes after the first. Now if this is the case, then how did the first person get to his position? What right did he have to homestead and control X if it is not his? He would have no right. (Otherwise we would be back to the problems in the above section of this blog entry. We would have ethical chaos.) Saying that the second person is the owner implies that it must be considered un-just if the first person did not get approval from the second-comer qua just-owner. But how can one determine who the late-comer is before the fact? And what about another late-comer's claim to just-ownership relative to the second-comer, i.e., a third man relative to the first? Logically one must ask this question for the third, fourth, fifth, ... nth person. Society would die out and ethics would not exist.

Man cannot determine the answers to these questions ex ante. Getting the consent of late-comers is impracticable. No man could act from the beginning on with an ethic that goes against original appropriation. Man cannot conceivably wait for late-comers in acting and living. Likewise, man cannot physically jump into the air a second time without jumping a first time prior to the second. (This is logically true a priori.) Homesteading and the principle of original appropriation therefore cannot be, as Hans-Hermann Hoppe says, "timeless." (In addition, it is praxeologically implied that man understands the temporal order of things because he is an actor who acts towards goals in the future.) In fact, the whole notion of exchange and contract works because acquiring property happens at specific points in time. This is demonstrated in that man must first acquire property from a state of nature prior to any possible voluntary exchange or contract of property.

Furthermore, and implied above, conflict would be created (not destroyed, which is the goal of ethics) if we were to say that the late-comers get partial control over X. This would be equivalent to saying that more than one person can stand at the exact same spatial location without conflict being (potentially) created.

Neither can it be rationally argued that everyone owns everything as a collective. Conflict would not be taken off the table. Thus, this theory fails too. Conflict would increase manyfold. And, even more deadly, when we consider applying this ethic to our individual physical bodies, it would demand that an individual person get permission just to walk across the room. But even to make the request would, at the very least, require the use of one's own vocal cords. So this must ultimately be ruled out as preposterous as well.

Even solely applying this principle to alienable property, while hence ignoring ownership over inalienable physical bodies, makes no logical sense. Conflict could still technically occur over a man's standing room----and this infers that moving around would still require collective permission----and would doom civilization. Man cannot wait for collective approval to use property "outside" of his body. Man must, for example, eat. And he must be able to move around. He cannot wait. This principle would not allow man to act from the beginning on. It would be impossible to implement this collective idea (including or not including physical bodies) without consent already being there to do so a priori. That is, it must assume a "collective-mind" existing from the start to direct activity. Since it does not exist, this whole idea must be rejected as nonsense on stilts.

(Other ideas must be rejected as mixtures of these false ideas.)

In regards to the more specific issue of self-ownership, every man has a natural and logical right to his person. There is a direct biological or physiological connection to a man's consciousness and his body. Who has a right to a given man's physical body but him? Another man can try to control this body, but he can only do so indirectly with the usage of his own body which he controls directly. Ownership is consequently established through direct use. Denying this is self-defeating because the denial itself would implicitly admit this principle true. One would be engaging in a "performative contradiction." (By the way, if you disagree with me, then why are you arguing with the usage of your own physical body? I thought you said you do not have self-ownership. Further, it is interesting that when you argue with me you implicitly admit that a principle of "non-aggression" is correct.)

From the very beginning of mankind on, man has had to directly own himself to act; thus, to assign property rights that go against self-ownership makes very little sense.

Read the Following Hans-Hermann Hoppe Material (References):

(My attempt to prove original appropriation, while substantially helped along by Dr. Hoppe's work [to say the least], does not, unless I am mistaken, require argumentation ethics. I only applied "AE" when it comes to self-ownership.)

• His book, The Economics and Ethics of Private Property. (Here is an excellent review of it. It is available at Amazon.)
  
• "The Ethics and Economics of Private Property."
  
• "Does the State Resolve or Create Conflict?."
• "From the Economics of Laissez Faire to The Ethics of Libertarianism."
• "Four Critical Replies."

Some Side-Notes:

It's important to keep in mind that man can only own the physical integrity of private property; it is not possible to own its "value." Ex ante, we have control over our actions in terms of aggressing or not aggressing against the physical integrity of another man's property. We don't have control, though, if our actions affect the value or price of another's property. Values are dependent on what others think in their head. It would be impossible to know ex ante if our actions would change values. In order to act man would need the permission of everyone. This, just like the idea that first-comers need the permission of late-comers, would doom mankind and must be rejected. Besides the links already provided, see "On Property and Exploitation" by Block and Hoppe.

What about conflict over property with a non-human entity? Dr. Hoppe would reply, correctly I think, it's only possible to say such an entity is "equal" to man if it is a rational agent that can engage in argumentation. The reason we all are talking about this subject is because we are all rational agents who are engaging in argumentation; hence, the answer. Ethical theory does not come from fish. It comes from man using his rational abilities to argue ethical theories. It is this----the engagement of argumentation---that displays our (mankind's) rationality. Murray Rothbard wrote: "There is, in fact, rough justice in the common quip that 'we will recognize the rights of animals whenever they petition for them.' The fact that animals can obviously not petition for their 'rights' is part of their nature, and part of the reason why they are clearly not equivalent to, and do not posses the rights of, human beings."

The question of air or noise pollution goes back to homesteading and original appropriation. Once we focus our philosophical lenses on this we will arrive at the answer. Someone, for instance, that builds a factory in the middle of nowhere, before anyone else, and emits air pollutants gets an easement. Read Rothbard's "Law, Property Rights, and Air Pollution."

On the topic of "intellectual property," read "Against Intellectual Property" by N. Stephan Kinsella. I read this about a month ago and found it brilliant.

***
Is Government Compatible with Private Property?

The late-comers, typed about above, are actually the equivalent of men of State. That is, they fit such classification. They claim to be the "real" owners of all property as indicated by their claim to tax persons without their individual consent, despite the logical impossibility of them being the just-owners.

They thus have no natural authority or legitimacy. All States are illegitimate and unacceptable. Private property is supreme. All forms of government are incompatible with it. "[T]he State," wrote Murray Rothbard, "is nothing more nor less than a bandit gang writ large." They are in a position that magically grants them so-called "rights" to do things that you and I could never do or get away with. Imagine if the persons of the State were forced to behave in the way we all behave!

To quote Albert Jay Nock:

“[The State] forbids private murder, but itself organizes murder on a colossal scale. It punishes private theft, but itself lays unscrupulous hands on anything it wants, whether the property of citizen or of alien.”

The State cannot even be close to being called a "private club." A man that joins a chess club does so voluntarily. It does not grab him, enslave him in the club, and then force him to pay monthly dues. A man that joins a chess club does so voluntarily. The chess club recognizes man's right to his private property. Unlike the State, it behaves (or can behave) in a way that is fully compatible with original appropriation.

The State can neither be called a "private firm." One solitary man or a group of men can boycott a private firm at any time and for whatever reason. A man can cut off his relationship with a firm. The State, on the other hand, can violently lock such a nonviolent man in a cage for his State boycott. A man can defend himself against a mugger on the street. The State, on the other hand, can attack such a man on the street and lock him up if he tries to defend himself and his property from its attacks. A private firm cannot enslave a man to do its biddings. The State, on the other hand, can enslave a man to do its biddings.

Once the State is rid of its cloak, all that is left to be seen is an organization that is based on violence. It primarily engages in violence against the non-violent. As a criminal organization it lives in direct contradiction to private property.

(Take a look at "Anarchism and Minarchism; No Rapprochement Possible" [pdf] by Walter Block.)

Joseph Sobran has thus asked: "[W]hy pretend such an evil is a positive good?" Even if the State is "inevitable," man should not pretend that the State is something that it is not.

Nonetheless, as Rothbard would say, the existence of the State does not prove it is essential to society or that it is "inevitable." Just because the State does Y activity does not mean that only the State can do Y or that civil society has necessarily failed in Y.

Perhaps the biggest claim is that the State is needed in the development of law. But here is what Rothbard had to say in his Ethics of Liberty book:

“For most law, but especially the most libertarian parts of the law, emerged not from the state, but out of non-state institutions: tribal, custom, common-law judges and courts, the law merchant in mercantile courts, or admiralty law in tribunals set up by shippers themselves...”

Many traditional conservatives look to the Middle Ages because, among other reasons, it was not based on atom-like individuals, as we have today. Many anti-state libertarians also look to specific periods of the Middle Ages because it was a time when there was no State, at least nothing touching what we have now in terms of sovereignty in Leviathan form. In the place of a sovereign State was a polycentric order of law and judicial services.

Persons that instinctively reject a private property society without a State should do some research on the matter. There are (literally) hundreds of reasons---both historical and theoretical----why one should not automatically castoff this idea. There is an amazingly large amount of literature on the subject, waiting for you to explore.

(Leaving aside my personal pessimistic feelings and reasonings on the prospects of a stateless society [for the upcoming generations], I do not believe that my view is "utopian." Instead, I think those who believe the State can be used as a force for good are the real utopians.)