Free kibbles

FREEDOM OF SPEECH:

Internet traffic should be managed by the dynamic, adaptive private sector for the good of consumers not by static government for the good of aristocrats. Net-neutrality is a euphemism for fascist internet.

TAX AND SPEND:

The coming sovereign debt crash is going to be worse than the 2008 financial crisis.

"The Club Med nations – and in many senses Britain – were not so different to sub-prime households: they borrowed cheap in order to raise their standards of living, ignoring the question of whether they could afford to take on so much debt. But, as King points out, sub-prime households – and the banks that lent to them – can usually be bailed out. The International Monetary Fund simply does not have enough cash to bail out a major economy like Spain, Italy or, heaven forfend, Britain. So, again, we find ourselves in unknown territory.

...

It is fashionable to compare the current situation to the Lehman Brothers collapse, but that understates its severity. The sub-prime property market in the US, together with its slightly less toxic relatives, represented a $2 trillion mound of debt. The combined public and private debt of the most troubled European countries – Greece, Portugal, Spain and so on – is closer to $9 trillion.

...

The problem is not merely that holders of Greek government debt would dump their investments, or even that they would ditch their Spanish and Portuguese bonds while they were at it. It is that government debt is the very bedrock of the financial system: should Greek government bonds collapse, the country's banking system would become insolvent overnight. In fact, banks throughout the euro area would be at risk, given that they tend to hold so much of their neighbours' government debt. That, at least, is the theory, but as was the case in the aftermath of Lehman's collapse, no one really knows how great their exposure is."

The sovereign debt problem isn't limited to those few countries. You can include Japan and the US in this group, and we're going to pay the piper big-time. When that happens, any government funding itself with debt won't be able to find lenders except at high interest rates. When government's start defaulting, the debt exposure will wipe out the imaginary wealth we're used to like a wildfire.

REGULATION:

Why does a company need permission to build a wave-powered desalination plant?

WAR ON DRUGS:

This essay is black markets in general, but I put it here anyway.

"When something becomes illegal, consumer demand does not vanish. Instead, consumers seek alternative, more costly and risky, means of satisfying their wants. Prices are higher than they would be otherwise, and product diversity, quality, and quantity demanded are lower. In view of suppressed demand and the potential to earn large profits, individuals with a knack for averting authorities direct their energy and resources to satisfy this demand. The illegality of the activity enables the intermediaries to ask higher prices of consumers and to bid down prices paid to growers of hemp, coca, and opium poppies. It gives rise to drug cartels, prostitution rings, and violence associated with the protection of "their" territories."

The question always is do we want an underground economy in product or service X or do we want an open economy in X. It's never a question of can we stop X. That won't happen. There's should be no such thing as black markets. People should be able to engage in any type of non-violent exchange they want without fearing governmental violence.

POLICE STATE:

Murray Rothbard criticizes forcing people to testify against their will.

WAR:

Maoists kill 65 in India. Terrorism isn't just for radical Muslims any more. The bigger government becomes, the more oppressive government becomes, the worse the world economy becomes, the more terrorism we're going to suffer.

FOREIGN POLICY:

Hillary Clinton explains Obama won't tolerate other countries determining their own policies.

China condemns the sinking of the South Korean ship but doesn't defer to the belief that North Korea is the culprit. This is probably what Clinton is talking about.

POLITICS:

The White House is claiming Rahm Emanuel asked Bill Clinton to ask Sestak to take an unpaid federal job in exchange for dropping out of the Democrat primary against Specter. This doesn't pass the sniff test. Funny how Obama had to drag Bill Clinton into this to try and deflect blame. I doubt the narcissist-in-chief would ever ask Bill Clinton for help, I doubt Clinton would help and offering Sestak and unpaid job makes no sense.

I doubt that offering Sestak a job will be Obama's Watergate only because the media wants to protect him whereas it wanted to destroy Nixon.

It sounds like Gary North read my latest, yet to be posted essay and my blog in general as he promotes a strategy of using the repeal of Obamacare to oust big-government Republicans.

"The reason why a bill to repeal this widely hated law would be effective in November is this: it will expose big-spending Republicans for what they really are. They are "me, too" Democrats. They are salami-slice Keynesians who believe in big government, but big government imposed by law at a slower rate. They want big government to subsidize big business and regulate entry in order to keep existing big businesses big. This has been the Republican Party's tradition ever since 1861.

The only reason why Republicans seem conservative these days is that, after Woodrow Wilson won in 1912, the Democrats have overtaken them in the spending category. George W. Bush did his best to reclaim the Party's position as the biggest spender, but Pelosi and Obama have fought back. The Democrats still hold the position as #1.

A bill to repeal Obama's health insurance law would force Republican candidates to fish or cut bait. It would force them to take a stand against centralization in order to get elected. They would have to commit to vote for a bill so short -- six words -- that it could not be modified without gutting it, which is what Republicans really want to do."

He's exactly right.

MISC:

Description of the Deepwater Horizon disaster naturally calls for more government regulation, as if bureaucrats know more about this kind drilling than the people who do it for a living.

Quote from The Cult of the Presidency by Gene Healy, page 21:

"The Framers, [John] Yoo argued, understood "the exectuve power" in light of the British constitutional tradition, and in that tradition, taking the country into war was a royal prerogative. Though Article I, Section 8, of the Constitution gives Congress the power "to declare War," that power, Yoo argued, was far narrower than most modern scholars understood it to be, and it did not limit the president's ability to wage war at the time of his choosing."

What a crock. The Hamiltonians tried to make the case for a strong executive at the Constitution Convention, and it was rejected. The Founding Fathers were not of one mind. They made all kinds of arguments, but in the end, they wrote the Constitution which was ratified by the states. It means what it says. I'm glad to see Healy makes that point on page 24:

"And for the purposes of determining the Constitution's allocation of powers, Hamilton's sincerity [in the Federalist Papers] - or lack thereof - hardly matters. In the ratification conventions, Americans approved the constitutional text, not the secret desires of Alexander Hamilton or any other Framer."

The argument of one or many Framers does not matter. The text of the Constitution is what was ratified and what matters.

Scientists manipulate food at the molecular level. They can't possibly know all the ramifications of this.

Volcano blows a smoke ring.

In praise of the essential ingredient of economic growth - savings and the misers who save.

"Ever since the first caveman saved seed corn for future planting, the human race has owed a debt of gratitude to the hoarders, misers, and savers. It is to those people who refused to use up at once their entire store of wealth and chose rather to save it for a needy time that we owe the capital equipment that enables us to aspire to a civilized standard of living.

It is true, of course, that such people became richer than their fellows, and perhaps thereby earned their enmity. Perhaps the whole process of saving and accumulating was cast into disrepute along with the saver. But the enmity is not deserved. For the wages earned by the masses are intimately dependent upon the rate at which the saver can accumulate money."

Without savings, we'd all be hunter-gatherers still today.

Britain to end national ID program and abolish ID database.

"The £4.5bn national identity card scheme is to be scrapped within 100 days, the home secretary, Theresa May, announced today.

The 15,000 identity cards already issued are to be cancelled without any refund of the £30 fee to holders within a month of the legislation reaching the statute book.

Abolishing the cards and associated register will be the first piece of legislation introduced to parliament by the new government. May said the identity documents bill will invalidate all existing cards.

The role of the identity commissioner, created in an effort to prevent data blunders and leaks, will be abolished."

That's fantastic news for the Brits. Don't expect our government to follow.