LibertyVoter.Org

By Jörg Guido Hülsmann

By: Jörg Guido Hülsmann

(Excerpt from chapter 17 of Mises: The Last Knight of Liberalism, pp. 765–67.)

Mises’s exposition of economic science differed decisively from all modern authors in that it drew a sharp line between praxeology and psychology. This has remained a defining feature of the works of his disciples.

Mises did not contest that the psychological background of a person, his worldview, knowledge, conscious motivations, subconscious urges, and so on have an immediate impact on his behavior. Neither did he ignore the important psychological problems that his friend F.A. Hayek began to stress in those years, in particular, that of knowledge acquisition. Mises’s point was that there were also laws of human behavior that exist in complete independence of these psychological dispositions.

For example, in chapter 4, Mises discusses ends and means, scales of values, and scales of needs. He does not deal with the question of how or why people select ends and means, or how or why they have certain values and certain needs. He argues that in every human action we do use means to attain ends, and that needs and values can be ranked11 In chapter 15 (“The Market”) he points out that consumers are sovereign because their buying decisions steer the market.12 This is obviously true, irrespective of what consumers buy or the reason why they make these purchases. Therefore he does not deal with these questions. In chapter 16 (“Prices”) Mises states that the number of market participants determines how narrow the margins are within which prices are determined. Yet this implies that the number of market participants has no influence on how prices are formed. Irrespective of the number of market participants, market prices are always determined by the decisions of marginal buyers and sellers.13 Thus, all prices can be explained as a result of the mere fact that market participants prefer one …read more

Source: MISES INSTITUTE

By Chris Calton

By: Chris Calton

Austrian economists often employ the pedagogy called “Crusoe economics” to illustrate the foundational principles of economic theory. Robinson Crusoe is alone on an island. He has nothing but his own body at his disposal, and he needs to find food and construct a shelter to survive. So what does he do?

He starts punching trees, of course!

Okay, Robinson Crusoe doesn’t punch trees — that would be a recipe for bloody knuckles and wasted time. But in the game Minecraft, in which players are plopped into a world in a very Crusoean situation, punching trees is how they obtain the initial materials they need to start constructing a shelter and tools.

But while Minecraft may not accurately illustrate real-world physics and biology, it does illustrate many (not all) of the foundational principles of economics. Before we can consume, we have to mix our labor with nature. In the world of Minecraft, this is done by punching trees to obtain wood. Wood, then, serves as a factor of production; throw a few blocks of wood together, and you get a crafting table — a higher-order production good — which allows you to craft lower-order goods like shovels, swords, and pickaxes.

Murray Rothbard wasn’t writing about crafting tables and pickaxes in Man, Economy, and State. He was writing about berry picking and fishing poles. But the principles are apparent in both worlds. “To acquire fish,” Rothbard writes, Robinson Crusoe “must have a pole or net, to acquire shelter he must have logs of wood … and an axe to cut the wood.”

Fish and shelter are among the basic consumer goods one might seek in Minecraft, and the player has to spend labor (well, virtual labor) to craft production goods like the fishing pole or the wood blocks and doors for the shelter — and an axe is certainly handy for cutting down future production time for players who make the initial investment in crafting one.

The stages of a production process play out in Minecraft, as well. Rothbard writes that “any process … of production may be analyzed as occurring in different stages. In the earlier or ‘higher’ stages, producers’ goods must be produced that will later cooperate in producing other producers’ goods that will finally co-operate in producing the desired consumers’ good.”

If a player wants to craft a fishing rod, punching trees is simply the first stage of production. Next, they …read more

Source: MISES INSTITUTE

By Christopher A. Preble

Christopher A. Preble

At the beginning of his book, The True Flag: Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain,
and the Birth of American Empire, Stephen Kinzer explains
that Americans’ “enthusiasm for foreign intervention
seems to ebb and flow like the tides … At some moments we are
aflame with righteous anger. Confident in our power, we launch wars
and depose governments. Then chastened, we retreat—until the
cycle begins again.”

If fervor for overseas military adventures moves like the tides,
then right now we see more sand and mud than blue water. Americans
aren’t anxious to start more wars. On the contrary, they
believe that U.S. interventions have undermined our security, and
they want to try something else. For example, research jointly sponsored by the Charles Koch
Institute and the Center for the National Interest found that 51
percent of Americans believe that our post-9/11 foreign policy has
made us less safe. And they want more resources dedicated to
nation-building at home—not nation-building abroad. Nearly
eight in ten respondents favor dedicating additional tax dollars to
domestic spending, not a massive military buildup.

Meanwhile, a poll commissioned by the Committee for
Responsible Foreign Policy revealed that nearly 71 percent of
Americans want their representatives in Congress to constrain
Washington’s interventionist impulses. Americans believe that
war is a last resort. They desire “clearly defined goals to
authorize military engagement overseas, including a timeline and
what will constitute victory; [and] oversight and accountability
from Congress in regards to where troops are stationed and what is
being accomplished abroad.” A solid majority of Americans,
according to the poll, also want assurances that weapons and
equipment provided to others are not used in ways that harm
innocent civilians.

“The research showed that 67.4 percent of American voters
disapprove of Congressional leadership allowing our involvement in
conflict overseas without formally approving military
action—or even allowing a debate,” explained Bill
Dolbow, a spokesman for the committee.

Donald Trump didn’t win the presidency on the basis of his
foreign-policy views, per se, but he did do well among voters who
doubted that the country was moving in the right direction. That
included discontent with our experiences in recent wars.

And yet, for all his talk about draining the swamp and sticking
it to the establishment, Donald Trump has not embarked upon a
radical restructuring of the nation’s foreign policy.

He approved an escalation of the war in Afghanistan, and pledged
to leave U.S. troops in central Asia indefinitely. He has expanded
the number of U.S. troops in Europe, maintained a large and
obtrusive U.S. naval presence in the Asia-Pacific region, and
deepened American involvement in the civil wars raging in Syria and
Yemen. …read more

Source: OP-EDS

By Ryan McMaken

By: Ryan McMaken

In recent decades, anti-abortion advocates have increasingly claimed that the US Constitution provides protections to babies in utero via the 14th Amendment. That is, the Amendment would guarantee that no state may “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

This argument was used by the state of Texas which claimed in the case of Roe v. Wade that “the fetus is a ‘person’ within the language and meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment.”

The Supreme Court rejected this claim, but not on the grounds that the 14th Amendment did not potentially apply. The court simply denied that a fetus is a person. Furthermore, the court admitted that if personhood were legally established in this case, then the 14th Amendment indeed would apply.

Consequently, anti-abortion activists have focused on establishing the personhood of humans in utero and of asserting that the 14th Amendment ought to apply even without an explicit declaration of personhood. Both Mike Huckabee and Ted Cruz both repeated this view during the 2016 presidential primary season.

Some commentators have even gone so far as to suggest that babies in utero enjoyed Constitutional protections at some point in the past, as was the case with Michael New in National Review when he reported on a 2012 presidential primary debate:

During the [Palmetto Freedom Forum on September 5, 2011], Princeton professor Robert P. George asked all five candidates whether they would support legislation, under Section Five of the 14th Amendment, that would restore legal protection for unborn children.

It's unclear as to how closely New is quoting George here. But, the use of the phrase “restore legal protection” is problematic because babies in utero did not enjoy legal protections under the Constitution before Roe v. Wade, and one cannot restore that which never existed. Certainly, one can plausibly claim that these babies have always enjoyed rights in the moral sense. It's also entirely possible that some state constitutions explicitly addressed the matter. And we know many state statutes did. But in the legal sense, it is clear there was no protection under the US Constitution.

This idea of “restoring” lost rights to the unborn via federal law has been further extended into the idea that the US Constitution as originally imagined provided these rights.

This, however, does not …read more

Source: MISES INSTITUTE

By Chris Calton

By: Chris Calton

After Narciso López’s first attempt at overthrowing Spanish rule in Cuba, he found more support from American southerners and returned for a second try. Although he would fail, the idea of expanding slavery into new territories was now in the minds of a number of southern expansionists.

…read more

Source: MISES INSTITUTE

By Thomas A. Firey

Thomas A. Firey

In the coming days, American workers will receive their first
paychecks adjusted for the new federal income tax cuts. And
Democratic Party politicians will have a problem. Up to now the
Democrats have successfully pushed the line that the Republican-led
cuts are a giveaway to the rich at the expense of the poor and
middle class.

The paychecks — with lower withholdings and higher
take-home pay for almost everyone in the middle and lower classes,
including a larger tax credit for the poorest workers — will
disprove that claim. Workers, happy to pocket an extra $25 or so a
week, may conclude that the Democrats have been lying about the tax
cuts all along.

There are legitimate reasons to criticize the cuts; this column
offers one below. So why didn’t the Democrats make those
arguments instead of pushing a false claim that will soon be
disproven?

The tax cuts, in essence,
reduce the price of government, which could lead to demand for
more, bigger government — perhaps in the form of a new
infrastructure bill and the return of congressional
earmarks.

Regardless, they’ll now likely acknowledge that, yes,
workers are getting a little more money. But, they’ll stress,
the biggest beneficiaries are the rich and — worse —
corporations. Problem is, the corporate tax cut is probably the
most socially beneficial part of the new tax law.

For years, U.S. firms have shouldered one of the highest
corporate income tax rates in the world, at just under 39 percent
(state and federal combined). In 2017 that was the third-highest
rate among the world’s 173 nations. In contrast, the average
corporate rate across Europe (national and subnational taxes
combined) was less than 23 percent. And even though U.S. firms can
take advantage of deductions and loopholes, they ultimately pay
some of the highest taxes among the world’s major
industrialized nations.

High corporate taxes affect business decisions in socially
harmful ways. Taxes discourage deals that would have produced more
goods for consumers, more employment, better wages, and better
payouts to shareholders. These missed opportunities are known as
“deadweight losses.” By cutting the corporate rate to
21 percent, Congress has reduced those losses, which may be why
several firms have announced wage increases, employee bonuses, and
business expansions following the passage of the new tax law.

But even with this economic boost, the tax cut is expected to
result in less government revenue. How to make up for that lost
money? One way would be to raise taxes on rich individuals, which
shouldn’t produce as many deadweight losses. The new tax law
does this to some extent by limiting tax breaks used by the …read more

Source: OP-EDS