Category Archives: Free Markets

The Goods On Gas

Capitalism, Energy, Free Markets, The State

From my latest WND column, “The Goods On Gas”:

“The Mouths on television tell you to blame gas speculators, ‘profiteers’ or foreign producers for gas prices—anyone but your government. By their post hoc illogic, the price of fuel is causing prices to rise.

Fuel is fueling, but not causing, price hikes.

The deliberate and destructive policies of deficit spending are responsible for the steady rise in the prices of all commodities, crude included. This is so because deficit spending is “accompanied by an enormous increase in the stock of money…”

The general trend, then, of price increases is a consequence of government-generated inflation and the $9.5 trillion trifle known as the national debt. Unless these are curtailed, the trend will persist.

The particular price of fuel, concomitantly, is determined by supply and demand. … Absent legislative barriers to exploration, enterprising capitalists would have defied central planners and turned from tinkering with ethanol to drilling for—and refining—oil…”

Ultimately, “The more efficient the source of energy, the less waste and pollution are involved in its conversion into energy. Think of the totality of the production process! The fewer resources expended in bringing a fuel to market, the cleaner and cheaper is the process.”

Comments are welcome.

Update 2: Axis Of Economic Idiocy

Barack Obama, Economy, Elections 2008, Free Markets, Individual Rights, John McCain, Socialism

Here’s an excerpt from my WorldNetDaily column, which WND has titled “Axis Of Economic Idiocy.” It leads the Commentary Section:

“Obama is an ass with ears when it comes to the economy. The same goes for Clinton. So Sen. McCain did not help himself (or us) by being charmingly self-deprecating about his understanding of the economy. He has allowed Obama and Clinton, infinitely more asinine than he, to assert their superiority…”

“Where Kemp-McCain economics meet Obama-Clinton ‘freakonomics’ is in the unnatural and un-American idea that the government is entitled to a portion of your income; that it has a lien on your life and on what you acquire in the course of sustaining that life…”

Be it Hillary, Hussein or McCain—they all agree that it is up to the all-knowing central planner to determine how much of your life ought to be theirs…

“While McCain will, at least, put in place an economic incentive structure more conducive to prosperity, the other two intend to penalize prudent, productive economic activity. … As another killer collectivist put it, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need…”

Discuss.

Update 1 (March 29): Topic: B. Hussein Obama.

The propriety police has been patrolling our humble blog, and have found me wanting for having fun with Obama’s second name.

So why did I originate—and use now on two occasions—the “Hillary, Hussein McCain Axis of Evil” appellation?

For one, because it sounds good (humor alert for the grim reader). This writer is a sucker for the sound of words. The rhyme is irresistible. Writing is a bit of a craft. I know I’m a throwback in this respect.

More material: I’ve made a substantial case against the man in “Obama’s Racial Ramrodding” for WND and in “The Ethnic Particularism of Barack Obama” for Jewcy (that last sentence has good cadence too, wouldn’t you say?). Once I rested my case against BHO, it was time to play. Let a girl have some fun. I would hope my readers would be bored silly if I did not give them occasion to laugh.

I’m afraid this is not the place for anemic, prissy writing.

Obama is the media’s messiah; Hillary their punching bag; McCain their pet “maverick.” Me you can trust to pick apart this unholy trinity. They’ve all been subject to forceful comment here and here. In “Mitt’s Gone, Bill’s Back,” I exposed McCain as an extension of the neoconservatives. I wrote:

Thanks to the malign McCain, it looked as though the neoconservative whey was finally separating from the conservative curd. What was to remain was not the best concoction, but it promised to be a far cry from the previous accursed ideological amalgam. I had hoped that, in the dust-up between conservatives and neocon-dominated establishment Republicans, McCain would serve as the curdling bacteria. I was wrong.

No doubt, I do find it highly significant and symbolic that a man with the name Hussein may well ascend to the highest office in the US. More disturbing to me is that man’s radical worldview, embraced by virtue of affiliating with a highly political, Afrocentric church for two decades; Obama is not coming clean about his Black-Liberation theology leanings.

Am I someone who believes America has very distinct roots and that those are on the wane? Indeed. Is Obama an antithesis to the authentic America I occasionally catch a glimpse of? I believe so.

Finally, lighten up. Or please take the inquisition elsewhere.

Now what was I saying about B. Hussein Obama?

Update 2 (March 31): I must agree with Patrick about McCain’s language, at least: McCain knows and uses valid terms such as the “unintended consequences of government intervention,” etc. As I said in my column, he is infinitely more familiar with economics than the other two asses with ears.

Incidentally, planned economies are not a branch of economics, as far as I’m concerned, but a branch of statecraft.
There is only one kind of economics, and that is the kind that comports with the laws of nature: the free market.
The free market includes and subsumes the right to enter into voluntary, communistic arrangements!

America’s Best Export

Foreign Policy, Free Markets, Media

“[B]ows and basses rather than arms and armor…”

“North Korea presented a lavish welcome on Monday to its latest visiting delegation, the New York Philharmonic…The North Koreans opened the door to some 400 people, the largest contingent of Americans to visit this isolated, totalitarian state since the Korean War ended in 1953. The group includes musicians, orchestra staff, television production crews and 80 journalists, as well as patrons who paid $100,000 a couple.

The Philharmonic will play in the East Pyongyang Grand Theater, where music of Gershwin, Dvorak and Wagner, not to mention the American and North Korean national anthems, is to be broadcast live on state radio and television. That will be a novelty for a populace shut off from the world by government censorship.”

And it would have been a novelty in the US had stations other than CNN broadcast this positive event. Perhaps America would once again adopt the “novel” idea that genuine change is best achieved through peaceful trade and voluntary exchange of cultural products.

America's Best Export

Foreign Policy, Free Markets, Media

“[B]ows and basses rather than arms and armor…”

“North Korea presented a lavish welcome on Monday to its latest visiting delegation, the New York Philharmonic…The North Koreans opened the door to some 400 people, the largest contingent of Americans to visit this isolated, totalitarian state since the Korean War ended in 1953. The group includes musicians, orchestra staff, television production crews and 80 journalists, as well as patrons who paid $100,000 a couple.

The Philharmonic will play in the East Pyongyang Grand Theater, where music of Gershwin, Dvorak and Wagner, not to mention the American and North Korean national anthems, is to be broadcast live on state radio and television. That will be a novelty for a populace shut off from the world by government censorship.”

And it would have been a novelty in the US had stations other than CNN broadcast this positive event. Perhaps America would once again adopt the “novel” idea that genuine change is best achieved through peaceful trade and voluntary exchange of cultural products.