What these self-styled "anticommunist liberals" are fighting against is not communism as such, but a communist system in which they themselves are not at the helm. What they are aiming at is a socialist, i.e., communist, system in which they themselves or their most intimate friends hold the reins of government.
We libertarians ought to convince everyone else of why it would be better to live in a society without a federal government.
The best the state can do to bring about this ideal is to stop interfering in all manner of social and economic relations between people.
The human tragedy that produced the Lord of the Flies atmosphere in New Orleans was due to the fact that government had turned much of the Crescent City into an urban reservation via its welfare system, and when those who depended heavily upon that system for their sustenance found themselves on their own, they had no idea what to do or how to do it.
In the wake of two major hurricanes and the calls for federal intervention, we repost Vedran Vuk's classic 2006 article that detailed how by "doing its job," FEMA blocked economic recovery in New Orleans after the Hurricane Katrina disaster.
History reveals that prohibitions are indeed classic examples of the co-opting of public-spirited intentions by rent seekers within the political process, thereby explaining the existence of what at first appears to be irrational policies.
What needs to be understood clearly is the mischievous nature of the governmentally sheltered fractional-reserve banking system. In terms of the relative frequency of "boom-bust" cycles, we find ourselves precisely where we were without the "monetary policy".
Your high-publicity stunts before Congress, at the National Academy of the Sciences, the IPCC, and in the press will put you directly in the crosshairs of just such a maniac, I fear, especially if you don't quit while you're ahead.For the sake of science, Dick, for the sake of collegiality, for your own sake, give it a rest. You know as well as I do that the issue isn't global warming. The issue is what side of the bread our butter is on.
We must realize that the two most powerful motivations in human history have always been ideology and economic interest, and that a joining of these two motivations can be downright irresistible.
Hans-Hermann Hoppe has famously argued that any attempt to argue against the libertarian ethic of self-ownership and non-aggression is self-refuting, since the very act of engaging in an argumentative exchange presupposes the legitimacy of each participant’s exercising exclusive control over the scarce resources involved in arguing: his own mind and body.
