Tag Archives: Size of Government

Critique of Stossel’s Ayn Rand / Atlas Shrugged episode

@ 5:30, the Chairman of BB&T talks about how they refused to participate in eminent domain endeavors, and “pick-a-payment” mortgages, even though such mortgages were sellable on secondary markets. He then offers a fantastic, insider look at TARP. Because the Fed didn’t want to let the public know which banks had gotten into trouble, they forced ALL big banks to accept TARP.

@ 24:30, A libertarian asks a question which points to the divide between Randian Objectivists and libertarians. The guy’s defence of Rand’s war on altruism is rather feeble.

FYI, I favor 95% of Rand’s Objectivism.

@ 27:00, there is a great discussion of fish pedicures, and a psychopathic, parasitic legislator who wants to outlaw the practice (unless you can sterilize the fish).

@ 36:30, I think there’s a good question about the state’s role in preventive legislation, like laws which regulate distracted driving, which poses threats to other people’s liberty. I guy from Reason Magazine who took the question answered well — as well as you can answer if you believe in the state. However, I think the correct response is the anarcho-capitalist line, that roads should be privatized, and regulated by their private owners.

@ 41:30, there is a wonderful chart correlating sales of Atlas Shrugged with expansions of the U.S. government.

Toxic Citizenship

Jackie Bugnion is an American citizen who has lived in Switzerland for 45 years. She had two securities accounts in her adopted country but in the spring she was told that she should find another home for her money. This summer those accounts were moved into SEC-regulated subsidiaries. “I call them the ‘American ghettos’,” she says. These subsidiaries are subject to higher fees and higher minimum investments than normal accounts. “It makes you feel toxic when this happens to you after you have been the client of a bank for years,” says Ms. Bugnion.

American expatriates are fast becoming the world’s financial refugees. Onerous legislation from the U.S. government is making it too difficult – and too expensive – for banks to service U.S. citizens that live abroad. Expats are being left with a fast diminishing range of options. An increasing number are taking the most drastic step and renouncing their citizenship. (Read more from lewrockwell.com)

$18M Being Spent to Redesign Recovery.gov Web Site

ABC News’ Rick Klein reports: For those concerned about stimulus spending, the General Services Administration sends word tonight that $18 million in additional funds are being spent to redesign the Recovery.gov Web site.

The new Web site promises to give taxpayers more information about where their money is going than the current version of the site.

“Recovery.gov 2.0 will use innovative and interactive technologies to help taxpayers see where their dollars are being spent,” James A. Williams, commissioner of GSA’s Federal Acquisition Service, says in a press release announcing the contract awarded to Maryland-based Smartronix Inc. “Armed with easy access to this information, taxpayers can make government more accountable for its decisions.”

The contract calls for spending $9.5 million through January, and as much as $18 million through 2014, according to the GSA press release.

“We are pleased that another major milestone has been achieved,” Earl E. Devaney, chairman of the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, says in the press release. “We thank the GSA for its assistance and look forward to working with Smartronix. (Read more from blogs.abcnews.com)

Libertarianism in Ancient China

by Murray Rothbard

By far the most interesting of the Chinese political philosophers were the Taoists, founded by the immensely important but shadowy figure of Lao Tzu. Little is known about Lao Tzu’s life, but he was apparently a contemporary and personal acquaintance of Confucius. Like the latter he came originally from the state of Sung and was a descendant of lower aristocracy of the Yin dynasty. Both men lived in a time of turmoil, wars and statism, but each reacted very differently. For Lao Tzu worked out the view that the individual and his happiness was the key unit of society. If social institutions hampered the individual’s flowering and his happiness, then those institutions should be reduced or abolished altogether. To the individualist Lao Tzu, government, with its “laws and regulations more numerous than the hairs of an ox,” was a vicious oppressor of the individual, and “more to be feared than fierce tigers.” Government, in sum, must be limited to the smallest possible minimum; “inaction” became the watchword for Lao Tzu, since only inaction of government can permit the individual to flourish and achieve happiness. Any intervention by government, he declared, would be counterproductive, and would lead to confusion and turmoil. The first political economist to discern the systemic effects of government intervention, Lao Tzu, after referring to the common experience of mankind, came to his penetrating conclusion: “The more artificial taboos and restrictions there are in the world, the more the people are impoverished — The more that laws and regulations are given prominence, the more thieves and robbers there will be.”

The worst of government interventions, according to Lao Tzu, was heavy taxation and war. “The people hunger because theft superiors consume an excess in taxation” and, “where armies have been stationed, thorns and brambles grow. After a great war, harsh years of famine are sure to follow.”

The wisest course is to keep the government simple and inactive, for then the world “stabilizes itself.”

As Lao Tzu put it: “Therefore, the Sage says: I take no action yet the people transform themselves, I favor quiescence and the people right themselves, I take no action and the people enrich themselves—” (read more from informationliberation.com)