Category Archives: Free Markets

Not a System; But Life Itself

Free Markets, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Liberty, Natural Law

I missed the Republican debate last night. The weekly, WND column was to be devoted to that bit of sparring. But lo, 8:00 PM EST rolled round, and there was no debate on CNN, FoxNews and Business, MSNBC, etc. There were references to The Debate, but the newsmen who’re supposed to say, Where, What, When, Why, Who—they refuse to give it up when the ratings don’t accrue to their network.

Here is the “Complete Transcript of the Hanover Economic Debate.”

Hermann Cain promised to “re-establish confidence in our system.” “Our system.” How I hate that phrase. Everyone uses it with reference to the voluntary free market.

Such crude utilitarianism.

“The free market—it has not been unfettered for a very long time—is really is a spontaneously synchronized order comprising trillions upon trillions of voluntary acts that individuals perform in order to make a living. Introduce government force and coercion into this rhythm, and you get life-threatening arrhythmia. Under increasing state control, this marketplace—this magic, organic agora—starts to splutter and people suffer.” [By The Free Woman]

They all call it The System. It is not. The free market is a sacred extension of life itself.

Remember the cult, 1967 British television series, “The Prisoner”? Google “I am not a number—I am a free man!”. (Whenever “Number 6” (the individual) attempted to escape from “The Village” (the collective), a giant balloon called “Rover” gave chase and subdued him.)

The free market is us; at least everyone of us who is not a moocher or a looter. If this “collective” had a voice it would scream, “I am not a system I am life itself.”

UPDATE II: Protesters: Walking Ads For Bounty Business Creates (Kanye Joins Smelly Rally)

Business, Capitalism, Economy, Free Markets, Government, Technology, Trade

This detailed image titled “Down With Evil Corporations,” via LRC.COM, depicts the walking contradiction that the potentially violent Wall-Street protesters embody. The clothes they wear, the devices they use to communicate and transmit their (mostly) sub-intelligent message, the food they buy cheaply at the corner stand to sustain their efforts—these are all produced, facilitated or brought to market by the invisible hand these unproductive people wish to lop-off.

CLICK TO ENLARGE:

UPDATE I (Oct. Eighth): Myron you’re confused; your reasoning is backward. Corporations don’t have the powers you attribute them; to the extent that they have this list of powers you wrongly imbue them with—they got them from government. If government stuck to its constitutional (originalist) mandate, all else would fall into place. The feats you ascribe to companies are only ever made possible by state edict. I’m surprised you don’t see that Perry didn’t have to accept a bribe, the government doesn’t have to grant Microsoft all the H-1B visas it wants (while the IEEE reports that 4 percent of American engineers are unemployed), it doesn’t have to recapitalize the big banks, etc, etc.

UPDATE II (Oct. 11): Rapper Kanye West drops in on the Smelly Rally (“Occupy Wall Street”) “wearing $355 GIVENCHY shirt” and lots of gold, all fashioned by business for his pleasure.

UPDATED: Can the Incredible Hulk Strike at Socialism? (Clutching @ Straws)

Barack Obama, Business, Capitalism, Economy, Elections, Free Markets, Free Will Vs. Determinism, Political Economy, Political Philosophy, Socialism

The excerpt is from “Can the Incredible Hulk Strike at Socialism?”, now on WND.COM:

“New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie may be planning to join the Republican presidential thrust and ‘Perry.’ … references to Ronald Reagan do not make a speech Reaganesque. To be Reaganesque, Christie will have to expose the spirit of socialism—envy, entitlement, aggression—and juxtapose it with the morality of capitalism: commerce, creativity, comity.

Gov. Christie boasted that his ‘Executive Branch’ showed the requisite leadership, not least in educating the public before enacting solutions to New Jersey’s problems.

If Christie wishes to ‘educate’ the rest of the country, as he claims to have done for New Jersey, he would have to first strike at the assorted zero-sum, socialist notions, whereby one person’s plenty is portrayed as another’s poverty. Chief among these is the concept of ‘the American economic pie.’ This pie-in-the-sky is perverse in the extreme because it feeds the idea of a preexisting income pie from which the greedy appropriate an unfair share.

Wealth, earned or ‘unearned,’ as egalitarians term inheritance, doesn’t exist outside the individuals who create it. Wealth is a return for desirable services, skills and resources rendered to others. Labor productivity is the main determinant of wages—and wealth. Most wealthy Americans produce what they consume—and much more; they don’t remove or steal it from poorer Americans.”

Read the complete column, “Can the Incredible Hulk Strike at Socialism?” on WND.COM.

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UPDATE (Oct. 1): Clutching At Straws. Rasmussen Reports: Obama 44%, Christie 43%:

Few expect him to run, but New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is essentially even with President Barack Obama in an early look at a hypothetical Election 2012 matchup. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of Likely U.S. Voters shows that Obama earns 44% support in the matchup, while Christie attracts 43%. Six percent (6%) prefer a third option, and eight percent (8%) are undecided.

UPDATED: Princess Ameerah Al-Taweel

Aesthetics, Business, Celebrity, Classical Liberalism, Economy, Etiquette, Feminism, Free Markets, Islam, Middle East

Is Princess Ameerah Al-Taweel the most beautiful woman in the world? Indisputably. Her face is simply exquisite. Poise and manners are perfect too. Mrs. Al-Taweel’s simple, rich-girl solutions to endemic unemployment sound more left-liberal than classically liberal, but her heart is pure and she is bright. Married to “Buffett of Arabia,” Ameerah Al-Taweel is also terrifically wealthy. I hope she does not pick up any ho-like mannerisms while in America.

Ameerah Al-Taweel’s Interview With CNN’s Piers Morgan

UPDATE (Sept. 25): It would seem that Princess Al-Taweel is a “micro-credit cultist.” The role of the NGO, as she see it, is to encourage economic growth by doling out loans to plucky people who want to start a business. Her belief in the “Micro-Credit Cult” is understandable. Saudi Arabia is a rentier state, where an aristocratic, authoritarian upper-class manages the country’s vast natural resource of oil. In the Saudi situation, this custodian class is probably more benevolent than a democratic despotism would be.