Free kibbles

Mises scholar explains that only prison inmates use honest money.

Bernanke calls for deficit reductions and claims the Fed won't monetize the debt. Are we beginning to see a split in the Obama/Geithner/Bernanke triumvirate, or is Bernanke just setting the stage for Obama's huge tax increases?

Georgia gave NCR $56.9 million in tax breaks to incentivize it to move to Georgia, but NCR CEO Nuti said the tax breaks, while nice, were not a major factor in the decision to move. Dayton Business Journal is overflowing with NCR stories. Nuti details the criteria used in selecting new location. Gov. Strickland offered NCR $31.1 million in incentives to stay, but Dayton City Commissioner accuses NCR of not returning phone calls. NCR was founded in 1884, and NCR already has 2,800 employees in Georgia compared with 1,300 in Dayton.

"Local officials in Ohio grumbled that NCR never even let them compete." What a joke. Ohio and Dayton had 125 years to compete. Why didn't they give NCR, and every other business in Ohio and Dayton, tax breaks last year? The year before? That smacks of entitlement mentality. No matter how much burden the city, county and state placed on NCR, the aristocrats felt entitled to have NCR remain in Dayton. This should be a wake up call, the burden of local and state government are driving businesses and people out of Ohio, but our aristocrats are sulking instead of waking up.

In essay on competition, Mises slaps down the liberal idea of equality of opportunity.

It is usual to find fault with the fact that catallactic competition is not open to everybody in the same way. The start is much more difficult for a poor boy than for the son of a wealthy man. But the consumers are not concerned about the problem of whether or not the men who shall serve them start their careers under equal conditions. Their only interest is to secure the best possible satisfaction of their needs. If the system of hereditary property is more efficient in this regard, they prefer it to other less-efficient systems. They look at the matter from the point of view of social expediency and social welfare, not from the point of view of an alleged, imaginary, and unrealizable "natural" right of every individual to compete with equal opportunity. The realization of such a right would require placing at a disadvantage those born with better intelligence and greater will power than the average man. It is obvious that this would be absurd.

Absurd indeed. It seems Mises has no problem with IP in this essay. Mises sees anti-competitive policies as a kind of conspiracy to lead to socialism.

It is the ultimate end of these anticompetition policies to substitute for capitalism a socialist system of planning in which there is no catallactic competition at all. While shedding crocodile tears about the decline of competition, the planners want to abolish this "mad" competitive system. They have attained their goal in some countries.

I think for most government aristocrats, that's true, but not for everybody. Businesses that are just looking out for themselves love when government protects them from competition, but I don't think that alone makes them socialists.

Mises scholar succinctly sums up the reason for GM's demise.

The philosophical tapeworm lay within the minds of those running the company. For decades, it led them never to take a stand on principle and forcefully resist the UAW. Always the present cost of a major strike was allowed to outweigh the prospect of the ultimate destruction of the company, which was never considered fully real because it lay in the future.
...
What has happened to General Motors is symbolic of what is happening to the United States. The United States is being destroyed economically and culturally by irrational theories and policies. The standard of living of its people is falling. Government officials are preparing to accelerate the fall by means of the imposition of insane policies designed to curtail energy consumption and roll back the production of wealth. The American people have elected a President who has expressed regret that the Supreme Court "never entered into the issues of redistribution of wealth" because it "didn't break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution."

If a company as great and as economically powerful as General Motors once was can collapse into a shadow of its former self, so too can every other company in the United States. So too can the United States itself.

Wow. Powerful and accurate conclusion.

Boortz reminds us that while we're distracted with today's outrages, Democrats are working on their plan to force socialized medicine down our throats.

Remembering that the power to tax is the power to destroy, government plans taxes on downloads.

Why has the US government been so slow to embrace Twitter, Facebook and YouTube?

As if social justice wasn't Marxist enough, Obama's head of the EPA calls for environmental justice. Obama is going to harm you on behalf of trees.

Bankruptcy judge approves Chrysler's sale to Fiat. Chrysler who?

Dow Jones kicks out GM and Citigroup. Pharaoh Obama will put them back at his whim. Or elevate some dirt-eating alternative energy company.

Pajamas Media slams the nanny state in another wonderful, politically incorrect video that doesn't fear to bring de Tocqueville to the masses. And while I love this attack on Democrats, it's diminished because it ignores the role conservatives played in creating this government monster.

The head of the world bank compares stimulus boondoggles to a sugar high. Too bad this guy is the leader of wasteful, supra-national organization we should put out of our misery.

The media infatuation with Pharaoh Obama is unprecedented since at least John Kennedy and unhealthy since it provides no checks on his power.

Obama concerned about books being written about him, especially by Bob Woodward.

Economy didn't decline as badly as expected in Q1 even though stimulus boondoggle money has had no effect. But once that stimulus money kicks in, it will harm the economy by sucking jobs away from the productive private sector. Only 31 percent of Americans think the stimulus boondoggle has helped the economy. Kool-aid drinkers one and all.

Pharaoh Transparency-not refuses to report how much his date night on Broadway cost taxpayers.