Milton Friedman: 5 Myths About the History of Capitalism
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNc-xhH8kkkFive myths cloud our perception of both the past and the present:(1) The "robber baron" myth, which holds that in late nineteenth-century America there were powerful men who became rich at the expense of the poor. The reality is that they became wealthy by being productive, and that there is no other period in history which saw such a rapid and widespread improvement in the well-being of the average individual;
(2) The myth that the Great Depression was caused by a failure of business, when it was, in fact, produced by a failure of government and specifically by the Federal Reserve System;
(3) The myth that government in the economy has expanded in response to public demand, when, actually, the public has had to be sold "hard" for politicians to enact every major social program;
(4) The "free lunch" myth, which forces the individual to pay more, no matter how the government raises money - by taxing individuals, by taxing businesses, or by printing more money; and
(5) The myth that government, like Robin Hood, transfers wealth from the rich to the poor, when the reality is that the government usually transfers wealth and income from both the very rich and the very poor to those in the middle.
AR-15 Used By Pregnant Mother To Save Innocent Lives
Reports the NY Post, on Pregnant Florida mom uses AR-15 to kill home intruder
A pregnant woman is credited with saving the lives of her husband and daughter after she used an AR-15 to fatally gun down a home intruder, a report said. The hero mom sprung into action when two intruders entered the family’s Lithia, Fla. home last week and pistol whipped her husband while violently grabbing their daughter, according to the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office. “They came in heavily hooded and masked,” the husband, Jeremy King, told Bay News 9. “As soon as they had got the back door opened, they had a pistol on me and was grabbing my 11-year-old daughter.”[...]“He made it from my back door to roughly 200 feet out in the front ditch before the AR did its thing.” [...] The homeowner said he took a “severe beating,” but credited his wife for saving him. “I’ve got a fractured eye socket, a fractured sinus cavity, a concussion, 20 stitches and three staples in my head,” said King. “Them guys came in with two normal pistols and my AR stopped it. [My wife] evened the playing field and kept them from killing me.”
Free Market Education: School Inc. – Push or Pull (Episode 2)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvQeE2a6tzsEducation policy analyst Andrew Coulson travels to Michigan’s prestigious Cranbrook High School, one of the top ten private high schools in America, in “Push or Pull,” the second episode of School, Inc.Cranbrook -- and other excellent private schools in America --typically don’t “scale-up” to replicate their excellence on a larger scale and serve more students. So, is there someplace else where scaling up excellence is happening?The answer is “yes” and it is in America’s charter schools.But when charter schools compete with public schools, there is often trouble ahead. From those involved we hear how the Sabis School, tremendously successful in Springfield, Massachusetts, was prevented from operating in nearby Brockton, because a school superintendent decided such excellence was simply not in the best interest of his public school.For six years the American Indian Charter School, part of a small network of California charter schools, ranked among the top middle schools in California. But in the spring of 2013 the Oakland Public School District voted to shut down all three American Indian Schools, because the charter school had chosen to use its own special education services, and not those controlled by the state; that resulted in a loss of revenue to the public school system.Not every story has a negative outcome. When Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, the city’s vibrant charter schools came to the rescue, and provided the facilities and services which other schools needed to get back on their feet. Finally, Coulson travels to South America, for a comparison of how the success of Chile’s wine industry sets the scene for the growth of the country’s successful private school networks.Chile’s private schools consistently outperform schools in all other Latin American countries, but trouble is always on the horizon. Still the private school networks of Chile provide a note of optimism in Andrew Coulson’s journey to discover the secrets of School, Inc.George Friedman: “Flashpoints: The Emerging Crisis in Europe”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-8KV_GurLYFlashpoints: The Emerging Crisis in Europe.A major new book by New York Times bestselling author and geopolitical forecaster George Friedman (The Next 100 Years) with a bold thesis about coming events in Europe, this provocative work examines ‘flashpoints’—unique geopolitical hotspots where tensions have erupted throughout history—and why conflict is due to emerge again.“There is a temptation, when you are around George Friedman, to treat him like a Magic 8-Ball.” —The New York Times MagazineWith uncanny accuracy, George Friedman has forecasted coming trends in global politics, technology, population, and culture. Now, in Flashpoints, he focuses on the continent that was the cultural and power nexus of the world for five-hundred years: Europe. Analyzing the historical fault lines that have existed for centuries within the borderlands of Europe and Russia--which have been the hotbed of numerous catastrophic wars--Friedman walks readers through the flashpoints that are smoldering once again. The modern-day European Union was crafted in large part to minimize these built-in geopolitical tensions, but as Friedman shows with a mix of fascinating history and provocative cultural analysis, that design is failing. Flashpoints is George Friedman’s most timely book, delivering an unflinching forecast for the coming years.About the author:George Friedman is the Chairman and founder of Stratfor, the world's leading private intelligence company. He is frequently called upon as a media expert in intelligence and international geopolitics, and is the author of six books, including the New York Times bestsellers The Next Decade and The Next 100 Years. He lives in Austin, Texas.Inside China’s “Educational” Camps
Haaretz has an interview with Sayragul Sauytbay, a teacher who escaped from China and was granted asylum in Sweden:
Twenty prisoners live in one small room. They are handcuffed, their heads shaved, every move is monitored by ceiling cameras. A bucket in the corner of the room is their toilet. The daily routine begins at 6 A.M. They are learning Chinese, memorizing propaganda songs and confessing to invented sins. They range in age from teenagers to elderly. Their meals are meager: cloudy soup and a slice of bread. Torture – metal nails, fingernails pulled out, electric shocks – takes place in the “black room.” Punishment is a constant. The prisoners are forced to take pills and get injections. It’s for disease prevention, the staff tell them, but in reality they are the human subjects of medical experiments. Many of the inmates suffer from cognitive decline. Some of the men become sterile. Women are routinely raped. Such is life in China’s reeducation camps, as reported in rare testimony provided by Sayragul Sauytbay (pronounced: Say-ra-gul Saut-bay, as in “bye”), a teacher who escaped from China and was granted asylum in Sweden. Few prisoners have succeeded in getting out of the camps and telling their story. Sauytbay’s testimony is even more extraordinary, because during her incarceration she was compelled to be a teacher in the camp. China wants to market its camps to the world as places of educational programs and vocational retraining, but Sauytbay is one of the few people who can offer credible, firsthand testimony about what really goes on in the camps.
The article also posts the official Chinese response to Sauytbay's claims:
In Xinjiang in recent years, [responds the Chinese embassy in Sweden], “China has been under serious threats of ethnic separatism, religious extremism and violent terrorism. The vocational education and training centers have been established in accordance with the law to eradicate extremism, which is not ‘prison camp.’” As a result of the centers, according to the Chinese, “there has been no terrorist incident in Xinjiang for more than three years. The vocational education and training work in Xinjiang has won the support of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang and positive comments from many countries across the world.”
None of the countries are listed, but one NBA billionare who is "educated on the situation at hand" on China agrees.Read the full article: A million people are jailed at China's gulags. I managed to escape. Here's what really goes on inside
Prince William Lectures Others On Birth “Population” Control
The Mathusian is quoted in the Daily Mail Online:
Prince William has warned that the future of wildlife is under threat from rapid population growth, as he prepares to welcome his third child.
When Ideas Have Sex: Matt Ridley on Innovation
Author Matt Ridley shows how, throughout history, the engine of human progress has been the meeting and mating of ideas to make new ideas. It's not important how clever individuals are, he says; what really matters is how the meeting and mating of ideas.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLHh9E5ilZ4Lockitch: Spacetime, Black Holes, and Gravitational Waves
The 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded for the first-ever detection of gravitational waves, confirming a 100-year-old prediction of Einstein's. The discovery, announced in 2015, launched a new era of gravitational wave astronomy, but also raises challenging philosophical questions about the nature of space, time and gravity. What are gravitational waves and how are they being used to study the universe? And is there an inherent conflict between General Relativity and key metaphysical principles?https://youtu.be/wwJ8Rl-dN9sAmy Peikoff and CLP’s Legal Battle To Legalize Privacy
From CLP Files Amicus Brief in United States v. Facebook:
Should an individual lose the protection of our Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement simply because he or she shares information, for a limited purpose, on Facebook? Today the Center for the Legalization of Privacy filed its first amicus brief, in United States v. Facebook, currently pending before Federal District Court in the District of Columbia. The case concerns whether the Court should approve a settlement reached between Facebook and the Federal Trade Commission, embodied in this stipulated order.
You can read the entire brief and support Amy Peikoff's work at Legalize Privacy.
How EU Politicians Buy and Control Academics
From How the EU created a cadre of loyal academics - CapX
EU positivity is moulded from years of association born not simply of certification, but of financing. The EU is a massive donor and awarder of grants, even if it is not of course handing out its own money. But the association of grant and grantee, in fields and subjects chosen by the EU’s civil service, under systems run by its fellow travellers, encourages the recruitment, the development, and the progression of a pro-EU cadre – whether they are fully aware of it or not. This is particularly clear with respect to academics, from whom over October we can expect to hear a great deal as they are drafted in to act as commentators.
The problems arising from the EU funding academic research are several.
Firstly, the bidding system and scale of money available inevitably risks skewing academic research along the EU’s pro-integration priorities. Secondly, the selection points and networking system heavily risks openly pushing bids and bidders themselves along pro-EU lines. Thirdly, the nature of the inducements generates an elite of EU-specialists, whose starting point is one of explaining rather than challenging the process, and who are self-recruited from pro-EU academics. It also then supports the career progression of those professionals, bridging academia, thinktanks, governance, and the private sector. Finally, can only encourage a measure of professional hostility to Euroscepticism.
In other words, the mass funding scheme supports the creation of a pro-EU elite that has, to varying degrees, bought into supporting the system and professionally engaging with it – which to be fair is precisely why the funding streams were originally set up.
Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh’s “Eloquent Condemnation of Racism”
From Kavanaugh calls out racism on first day of new Supreme Court term — Quartz:
The Supreme Court heard arguments Monday on the constitutionality of a Louisiana law that allows criminal convictions based on jury verdicts that aren’t unanimous.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh pointed out that the Louisiana law had racist roots. He noted that there were two “practical reasons” to overrule the precedent the state relied on. One was unfairness to defendants who may well have a constitutional right to a unanimous jury, and the other was the law’s apparently racist intent. “The rule in question here is rooted in a—in racism, you know, rooted in a desire, apparently, to diminish the voices of black jurors,” the justice told the state’s solicitor general, Elizabeth Murrill. “Why aren’t those two things enough to overrule… unfairness to defendants and rooted in racism?” he asked Murrill. She replied that the law was not “fundamentally unfair.” But Kavanaugh didn’t look convinced.
Although the conservative justice seems a somewhat unlikely champion of minorities, he recently also authored the majority opinion in a case reversing a quadruple murder conviction based on a racist jury selection process and is actually steeped in the topic. The opinion was an eloquent condemnation of racism.
Kavanaugh’s unexpected question was just one sign that, as ever, it will be impossible to predict where the justices fall on any issue until they reveal their decisions.
Kavanaugh only "seems a somewhat unlikely champion of minorities" to actual collectivists, toxic "feminists" and "reverse" racists who claim to speak for minorities.
“Not Yours to Give”: Davy Crockett on Government “Charity”
Speech by Davy Crockett (House of Representatives 1827 -1831, and 1833 -1835) in regards giving government relief to the widow of a Naval officer:
Mr. Speaker—I have as much respect for the memory of the deceased, and as much sympathy for the sufferings of the living, if suffering there be, as any man in this House, but we must not permit our respect for the dead or our sympathy for a part of the living to lead us into an act of injustice to the balance of the living.I will not go into an argument to prove that Congress has no power to appropriate this money as an act of charity. Every member upon this floor knows it. We have the right, as individuals, to give away as much of our own money as we please in charity; but as members of Congress we have no right so to appropriate a dollar of the public money. Some eloquent appeals have been made to us upon the ground that it is a debt due the deceased. Mr. Speaker, the deceased lived long after the close of the war; he was in office to the day of his death, and I have never heard that the government was in arrears to him. This government can owe no debts but for services rendered, and at a stipulated price. If it is a debt, how much is it? Has it been audited, and the amount due ascertained? If it is a debt, this is not the place to present it for payment, or to have its merits examined. If it is a debt, we owe more than we can ever hope to pay, for we owe the widow of every soldier who fought in the War of 1812 precisely the same amount. There is a woman in my neighborhood, the widow of as gallant a man as ever shouldered a musket. He fell in battle. She is as good in every respect as this lady, and is as poor. She is earning her daily bread by her daily labor; but if I were to introduce a bill to appropriate five or ten thousand dollars for her benefit, I should be laughed at, and my bill would not get five votes in this House. There are thousands of widows in the country just such as the one I have spoken of, but we never hear of any of these large debts to them. Sir, this is no debt. The government did not owe it to the deceased when he was alive; it could not contract it after he died. I do not wish to be rude, but I must be plain. Every man in this House knows it is not a debt. We cannot, without the grossest corruption, appropriate this money as the payment of a debt. We have not the semblance of authority to appropriate it as a charity.Mr. Speaker, I have said we have the right to give as much of our own money as we please. I am the poorest man on this floor. I cannot vote for this bill, but I will give one week's pay to the object, and if every member of Congress will do the same, it will amount to more than the bill asks.
Comments Hal Gordon, a former speechwriter at Reagan White House in "Drain the Swamp"? Davy Crockett Did It With a Speech | Vital Speeches:
When Crockett sat down, the bill was dead. He had shamed it to death. Furthermore, according to [his biographer and friend Edward] Ellis, not a single member of Congress offered to join him in contributing a week’s pay for the relief of poor widow, about whose plight so many of them had waxed eloquent when they thought they were going to be spending the taxpayers’ money rather than their own.At that time, the records of the House did not include transcripts of speeches made on the floor. So some historians have questioned the authenticity of Crockett’s speech. But Crockett is known to have opposed a similar bill in 1828, and the speech certainly sounds like him.So does the observation that Ellis says Crockett made to him in private afterwards:
There is one thing now to which I will call your attention. You remember that I proposed to give a week's pay. There are in that House many very wealthy men—men who think nothing of spending a week's pay, or a dozen of them, for a dinner or a wine party when they have something to accomplish by it. Some of those same men made beautiful speeches upon the great debt of gratitude which the country owed the deceased—a debt which could not be paid by money—and the insignificance and worthlessness of money, particularly so insignificant a sum as $10,000, when weighed against the honor of the nation. Yet not one of them responded to my proposition. Money with them is nothing but trash when it is to come out of the people. But it is the one great thing for which most of them are striving, and many of them sacrifice honor, integrity, and justice to obtain it.
Video: Life For Four Women Under Socialism in Venezuela
The Female Exile, the award-winning documentary produced by Spanish think tank Fundación para el Avance de la Libertad (Fundalib), is a cautionary tale of the excesses of state power.Four women exiled from Venezuela share their experiences of the human rights abuses of the socialist state and the cost of standing up against this socialist regime. The half-hour documentary is subtitled in English.Margaret Thatcher: Freedom is Indivisible
Margaret Thatcher's speech launching "Free Enterprise Week" (1975 July 1).Recently you have changed your name from Aims of Industry to Aims for Freedom and Enterprise. I welcome that change—it is timely and it is vital.Free Enterprise is an essential part of Britain's future. Free Enterprise provides the jobs—nearly three quarters of all employment—and my goodness we need those jobs. Free Enterprise provides the exports—nearly 95%; of all we sell abroad—and my goodness we need those exports. Free Enterprise creates the wealth—nearly three thousand million pounds were paid in taxation last year—and my goodness this Government needs money. Free Enterprise provides the inventiveness—there would be no North Sea Oil without Free Enterprise who found it and developed it. (What a curious fact it is that it was Tony Benn who turned on the first drop of free enterprise oil. His appointment is the only known example of pouring trouble on oily waters.)Yes—jobs, exports, wealth and inventiveness. These four—they are the basis of our prosperity. They depend on Free Enterprise.All you need now is a Government that believes in it. A Government that would encourage a flourishing, profitable free enterprise which produces the goods. Jobs, exports, wealth and inventiveness. Certainly important enough matters to be celebrated on a special day.Free Enterprise Day is dedicated to the destruction of one of the most dangerous of modern myths. There is an increasing belief that freedom is divisible. That you can have political freedom and economic slavery. That you can preserve intellectual freedom and destroy commercial independence. That you can fight for freedom of speech and yet overthrow freedom of enterprise.No myth is more dangerous. Freedom is indivisible. Once the State controls the means of production, distribution and exchange, all of us become dependent upon it. The whole nation becomes dependent upon the decisions of the bureaucracy and the politicians. And it is obviously so. If the State is the only source of capital, then only those ideas, those people, and those aims which are approved by the State can get the money for development.If the State is the only source of patronage, then only those causes, those ideals and those charities which commend themselves to the State can raise the money that they need.If the State is the only employer, where is the real freedom to choose of the employer?If the State is the only provider of housing, where can the tenant look for alternative accommodation?If the State is the only shareholder, where can the director the manager or shop-floor worker look for independent support?But, they say, you are putting forward an extreme choice. You are talking about total state takeover. That could not happen here. Couldn't it?.Is not the real fact that this Government is taking the country faster towards the centralised state than any previous Government?Month by month, almost day by day, the freedom of free enterprise is curtailed and the power of the State enhanced.That is why we have a two-fold purpose today.First, to say “STOP” to the extension of State control, and second, to start the extension of freedom.But, say the opponents of free enterprise you have to restrict economic freedom to gain political freedom.You have to control private enterprise in order to give more power to the people. What nonsense.Not one single measure produced by any Socialist Government has extended power to the people.They have given much more power to bureaucrats, much more power to extremists, much more power to Socialist Ministers.But it is power to the people which only free enterprise can provide.Power is primarily the power of choice.Choice in small things, and in big things—the food you buy, the house you rent or the home you own; the clothes you wear or the holidays you choose. Where you invest—the risks you take.All these individual choices are a fundamental part of freedom, and free enterprise makes them possible.The ideal of freedom has been part of our history since history began.That of enterprise has been with us as long.Free enterprise has been the engine which created the wealth which freed hundreds of millions of people from the day-long struggle; every day a battle merely to keep body and soul together.It has enabled the arts to flourish. And to become, not just the preserve of the rich, but to be enjoyed by men and women from every walk of life.It has created the wealth to finance science and technology; to continue the struggle to overcome the scourges of poverty and disease (not least in the third world).Beyond these benefits, priceless in themselves, free enterprise has enabled the creative and aquisitive urges of man to be given expression in a way which benefits all members of society. [end p4]Any man may test his skill, his capacity and his will to work, his tenacity and his vision against the demands of the market place and the customer.The captains of industry and the stall-holders in the market place are both parts of the free enterprise system. They both exist to serve their customers, you and me, and those like us overseas.They each know that success or failure depends upon how well they serve us.So free enterprise benefits the customer in satisfying his demands.It benefits the entrepreneur, in giving him an outlet for his skills and drive.It benefits the worker, not only as a consumer, but by creating profitable firms and well paid jobs.It benefits Britain by creating that surplus of wealth which improves not only material standards but the cultural and artistic standards of life too.It benefits the poor, the old, and the handicapped by creating that wealth which alone can pay for their care.Who then, opposes free enterprise—who wishes it ill and works for its destruction.Those who hate free enterprise and those who have no patience with ideas of individual freedom.Those who would end freedom of choice for the customer—and freedom of choice of employer, for the employee too.Once the customer is dependent on the State for all his needs;Once the worker can turn only to the State for work;Once there is no possibility of the promotion of the Arts except by patronage of the State;Then, not only Enterprise, but freedom itself is destroyed.The trouble is the first steps down that road are tempting.It is so easy to believe that freedom means giving greater power to politicians and officials of the State.It is so easy to believe that by punishing the creators of wealth, the pains of poverty can be eased.Britain has been tempted too far down that path.So let free enterprise fight back now, not for itself but for all those who value freedom itself.That is why today is a day of such significance.Free Enterprise Day—July 1st 1975 marks the beginning of the fight back for freedom.It is a battle we dare not lose.Justice on Trial: The Kavanaugh Confirmation & the Supreme Court
https://youtu.be/gcwb9r6-Y5Q"On June 27, 2018, Justice Anthony Kennedy slipped out of the Supreme Court building and traveled to the White House to inform President Donald Trump that he was retiring. The news touched off a media maelstrom, triggering a confirmation process that his successor, Brett Kavanaugh, would denounce three months later as a “national disgrace” and a “circus.”"At this special event and based on her new, #1 bestselling book (with co-author Carrie Lynn Severino), "Justice on Trial: The Kavanaugh Confirmation and the Future of the Supreme Court," Mollie Hemingway discusses the true story of what really happened, based on exclusive interviews of more than 100 people—including the President of the U.S., several Supreme Court justices, high-ranking White House and Department of Justice officials, and dozens of senators."Nasty politics and unverified accusations of sexual assault became weapons in a ruthless campaign of personal destruction. The Supreme Court has become the arbiter of America’s most vexing and divisive disputes. With the stakes of each vacancy incalculably high, has the incentive to destroy a nominee become irresistible? Will the next time a nominee promises to change the balance of the Court be even uglier and how will this affect the future of America?"Creepy Andrew Yang’s Fascist Department of Censorship
From Yang2020 - Andrew Yang for President:Sounds pretty innocuous (and unnecessary as the market is far better at doing these things than a tax-payer subsidized committee of political appointees), until we get to the last point:
- Create a Department of the Attention Economy that focuses specifically on smartphones, social media, gaming and chat apps and how to responsibly design and use them, including age restrictions and guidelines.
- Create a “best practices” design philosophy for the industry to minimize the antisocial impacts of these technologies on children who are using them....
So the New York Times, WaPo and WSJ are like the phone company? So much for the first amendment. And don't get too successful at what you do -- or if you are a "certain" company on Yang's crap list, you will become a "public utility" and lose your rights under Yang style "public interest" censorship. Yang's "Human-Centered Capitalism" sounds a lot of like old fashioned fascism mixed with socialist-style welfare schemes.Who is the public interest? "C'est Moi!" says Fuhrer Yang.For those "Yang Gang'ers" who welcome federal censorship under a Yang Presidency, ask yourself if you would like the President to have such powers under a Trump government?(Yang has removed from his site his previous call for a Federal Censor or "News Ombudsman" who will provide "penalties for persistent and destructive misstatements that undermine public discourse.")
- Direct the Department to investigate the regulation of certain companies and apps. Many of these companies essentially function as public utilities and news sources – we used to regulate broadcast networks, newspapers and phone companies. We need to do the same thing to Facebook, Twitter, Snap and other companies now that they are the primary ways people both receive information and communicate with each other.