The US government has gone from forbidding guns on plans (9-11 terrorists surely knew that) to making armed air marshals mandatory for international flights in US airspace, which suggests a slogan for the US regulatory state: whatever is not forbidden is required for everyone in the world.
It’s not enough to be able to arrest Americans in America, holding them indefinitely without charges, without counsel and without trial.
Every once in a while, I see a car bearing bumper sticker, “Buy American.” From what I gather, it is a popular sticker in Michigan, especially in cities like Detroit and Pontiac.
“Americans have to pull together,” we are told. “They ought to help each other. If they don’t stop buying those foreign imports, they’re going to kill the U.S. economy.” In other words, “What’s good for General Motors is good for America.”
Some fun anecdotes in response to Gary North’s post and article on “buying American”:
In “Why The State is Different“, Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. says: “the state is the only institution in society that can impose itself on all of society without asking the permission of anyone in particular. You can’t opt out.”
Stephen Evans writing for the BBC draws attention to a point often lost in all the discussion of Wal-Mart, globalization, and the claim that the marketplace is somehow making all places and things homogeneous. In fact, the global marketplace is broadening the market for niches and highly specialized tastes. ”One of the great boons of the internet is that it makes the local available everywhere....
An addendum to this post: Despite all the claims of property rights in this country, only the government truly owns real estate in the United States. If you want to see who truly owns your property, stop paying your real estate taxes. The government will serve eviction, seize your property and sell it to pay the tax. In this respect, we are all renters
Sent out by James Hess on Hayek-L, this article by Kristian Williams in the December 2003 issue of the Monthly Review is a fascinating re-reading of the history of the rise of local police: “Despite its initial plausibility, the idea that the police were invented in response to an epidemic of crime is, to be blunt, exactly wrong.
An interesting look at Wal-Mart:
