Talk Elections

Sometimes you just read something so stupid and offensive it makes one respond in one's mind "You know I should make thread on how stupid and retarded this is". Such is my way with certain segments of the oxymoronically and ironically named "libertarian movement". Now perhaps I wouldn't mind if it's opinions were kept to such neglected oddities like Lew Rockwell and were put onto the back corners of the internet with the truthers, the UFOlogists and the Crop circle crowd, which of course is where they properly belong. But of course the simplistic, reductionist logic of libertarianism has gathered a certain appeal, at least on segments of the politically minded interwebs - probably to the intellectual descendants of those late 60s/early 70s student Trotskyites who held their beliefs due in part to an instinctial reaction that washing the dishes was bourgeoise. Indeed in the simplicity of its equation "markets good, government bad" can be an easy rewrite of "proles good, middle class values bad". Which is wonderful, especially as those terms are so brilliantly imprecise.

But enough of the ad hominem truth. Here's what provoked this, an article from a leading libertarian/austrian economist (who Philip often links to in his otherwise interesting blog) who had been travelling in Sweden and Denmark and gaves us some of his opinions:


Things I have learned from this article:

1) Education is bad. Indeed, Mass Education is very bad because it is "inefficient" and should not be given to "workers". Indeed it would be better off if Sweden and Denmark had stupider/less educated people working the trains like the United States (and it would save more in taxes too!). The only reason people get educated is to work and get a high paid, non-menial job; workers like the train tickets seller (of course Brian wasn't polite enough to ask for his views) shouldn't actually be educated at all as that would violate THE PRINCIPLE OF COMPARATIVE ADVANTAGE OMGZ!!11. Indeed, the Scandinavians must be freaks for not thinking like this - like everyone else - and refuse to take a basic job, because that's somewhat beneath their ability and should go about exploiting their advantage instead or anything else is a "tragic waste". In short what Brian Caplan seems to either think there is or desires that there should be a world full of Richiuses (Richiuii?).

2) The purpose of life is apparently work and to make money (why else should people with skills not take up unskilled or semi-skilled jobs?) and indeed the use of one skills should be headed towards that job. Not notion of even social worth or utility here. Yay! For Monotous Materialism.

3) Proof no. 257962 that Economists are one of the greatest threats to the human race.

4) I'm not going to even comment on "the semi-competent workers on welfare" bit. (For the record via a quick google search it is estimated that Sweden's official unemployment will be 9% by the end of the year - less than the United States. This implies that Sweden has more competent workers in it than the United States.)

So Libertarianism as by Bryan Caplan is Pro-destruction of Civilization and Pro-Elitism in the worst possible way and anti-Human. Really did anyone expect anything else (especially from a man in another article on this topic deems Singapore to be freer than Sweden)? [/rant over]

That ain't my flavor of libertarianism.  Who wouldn't want more intelligent workers...in any field?  Smarter people do jobs better, even if they are way too smart for the job.  This would be especially important in jobs that deal with the public like this idiot libertarian is ranting about.  Just imagine how much easier flying would be if the TSA was made up of smart, efficient people.  Leave the dumbasses to clean toilets and dump french fries for us, give us the smart guys at the train station.

Richii.

Hardly just "implied".

More than just some nobody though: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bryan_Caplan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bryan_Caplan) (Actually reading those quotes makes me realize that he is even a bigger douche than I originally thought).

Show me where Caplan makes any of those claims. I read and re-read his blog post, and couldn't find those startling views anywhere.

The argument is basically "smart, intelligent people are (without asking them) doing useless menial work, this is a waste of resources "a tragic waste", instead people of less intelligence and less education should be doing those jobs - which would not "violate the principle of comparative advantage" (ie. people should make their decisions to the diktats of economic laws thus #2) indeed it is desirable that people with lower-skills, which he effectively admits are rare in Sweden (see comments on education and on welfare) exist and should do these jobs themselves and they are beneath educated people. Indeed he admits his classism and his disdain for actual intelligence and learning with the comment that the Dane doing the tickets would be a manager in the United States (if you read the rest of his articles, as you do, you know he prefers the US to Denmark as it is "oppressive to materialist and ambitious minded people*".

* - Whoever they are.

How anyone can't see that this is anti-intellectual elitist garbage is beyond me. (And then of course there is the welfare comment; which I note you did not list in your quote)

Caplan does indeed suggest that people of less competence—those on welfare—should be doing the unskilled labor. That I don't deny. He also assumes that skilled workers would prefer to do more challenging work—a claim that may or may not be correct.

Re-read your post; you made far more sweeping accusations.

The word "menial" is completely absent from his post, and the word "useless" is used only in an unrelated context.

I agree with Gully here 100%.

This guy is basically suggesting that education is "welfare", that welfare is inherently bad, and that people should be less educated in order to perform unskilled labor.

Just think, Libertarians, how much money we could save by gutting the education system and providing educations only to those who can afford it!

There's certainly a toilet scrubbing or fruit picking job out there for those young adults raised by a poor family!

The free market will save us all.


P.S.:  Philip, I'd like you to quantify the argument here rather than just trying to pick apart Gully's argument.  What, exactly, is the problem in Sweden, and how do you suggest we "fix" it?

His blog entry does indeed use the word "menial"; don't know how I missed that. It doesn't, in any case, affect the substance of my post.


Re-read Caplan's words; that's not what he states at all. Indeed, nowhere does he say that even a single person is "too educated" per se. Rather, he suggests that some people are "too educated" to be performing unskilled labor.


My point is a modest one: Caplan's blog entry does not make the cartoonish argument Gully has attributed to him. I don't know, and don't claim to know, what the problem in Sweden is—if indeed there is a problem.

He claims that it's a waste when educated people do unskilled labor... but there isn't a large enough pool of uneducated workers in Sweden to cover all of the unskilled jobs..

So to address this inefficiency you can either stop educating certain people or you can try and somehow get rid of the low-skill jobs.. or invite unskilled workers in.. but that can inefficient in itself.

You don't seem to think things through, Philip.  No, he did not explicitly say he wanted to dumb down the population to save money and make it more efficient, but he pretty much implied it.

And that was a slick excuse to get out of addressing my question to you.

If you're going to defend the economist that wrote the article, then I expect you to defend his argument as well rather than skirting around the issue and trying to find a few exaggerations to focus on in Gully's post.

If you don't want to defend the argument or don't care about it, then don't pick apart Gully's post.  The thread is about the economist and his ideas.. not about critiquing Gully's post.

Caplan's claim was that the lack of unskilled workers is a consequence of the unskilled population's being on welfare.

The thread is indeed about the economist and his ideas—or more precisely, about using the economist and his ideas as a springboard for (illogically) trashing an entire political movement that he's affiliated with. As it turns out, some of the ideas being attributed to Caplan are based on a strained and implausible reading of the blog entry at issue. That's all I'm saying, and I don't see how it can plausibly be characterized as "off topic."

I don't see the difference. That is basically what I've been attacking (in part). Not to mention that his argument if you think about it contradicts itself by essentially admitting that Swedish workers are more efficient workers than Americans (Note: I don't know whether this true or not, but that is what he is saying) funny for a "libertarian". Anyway the attitude of the whole thing is the most disgusting thing.

Oh and as for this thread I plan to make it a long running thing.

The language you quote was in response to Snowguy. My response to you is two posts up.


Well, if the unskilled population is kept on welfare—which is Caplan's theory—then that will naturally tend to drive up the working population's average skill level.

Not sure why you insist on putting scare quotes around the term "libertarian."

I'm still waiting for the bashing and the extravaganza.  There is one thing that has become obvious though, if somebody claims to be about to bash libertarians you can rest assured they won't bring up anything even close to a position actually held by a majority of libertarians.

... Which as Sweden has actually a lower unemployment rate than America and that more skilled (whatever that means) people are doing unskilled (also, wtm) jobs that implies that skill levels (whatever they are) are higher in Sweden than the United States.

As for the rest:


... And this is bad? (which is what Caplan is implying). Why is people being unskilled (read: uneducated in this context) a bad thing?


Because libertarians are against anything I would consider actual liberty. Also I resent the way the word was hijacked to describe radical free-marketers which is very different from its original definition, also applied to Bakuninite anarchists.


Oh I'm biding my time.

<looks at watch>

Bump.

I need to use this thread more often.

Anyway it has occured me that Libertarianism is the bizarre ideology, completely contrary to even basic intutions or life experience, that if everything did everything that they wanted (and let's be clear... this is what this is about, not 'capitalism', 'free markets'* or other masking bollocks) the world would be wealthier, happier and more enlightened place. Unsurprisingly, it is really about self. And people make fun of communists.

* - This term should be abolished from the English language NOW**.

** - Though it does not anywhere get the banality of 'economic freedom'.

Which is not to say, I'll with the add, that 'the state' (whatever that is) or 'the government' (whatever that be) is necessarily a good restricting agent either (or that 'restricting' is necessarily a good thing... though it is rather the world's fault that most of the people who live in it are clearly not up to the task).

Austrian Economics is a giant joke whose entire purpose is to reassure its thinkers that the profit motive is in fact a moral cause. The fact that leading Austrian economists attack state education or Grameen bank or hold that child labour in Nineteenth Century England was mostly a 'state' issue (http://www.thefreemanonline.org/columns/child-labor-and-the-british-industrial-revolution/) shows this to be true. There isn't an Austrian economists who isn't a joke historian (see Nineteenth Century England comment; also see Murray Rothbard's historical commentary).

There's a difference between anarcho-capitalists and other so-called "miniarchist" libertarians. You're describing the former.

     Though when one realizes that the former regards the latter as largely fake libertarians, one sees why Gully would feel the need to rant against them.

Libertarianism is the doctrine that Lockean property rights are absolute or near-absolute, and that the repeated and systematic invasion of them is properly criminal.

"Austrian Economics is a giant joke whose entire purpose is to reassure its thinkers that the profit motive is in fact a moral cause." If emphasis were enough to prove a point, you would be safe in resting your case. But your reasoning is sloppy; it consists of listing a few positions of some Austrian economists (your link doesn't work, BTW), assuming that they're wrong, and then using amateur psychology to discern their "real" motive for believing what is (supposedly) patently false.

I don't have any problem with critiques of Austrian economics or its leading thinkers, but your criticism is just silly.

Indeed, an unfortunate truth.

Libertarianism as it is presently construed deserves to be ridiculed. Austrian Economics is innately self-contradictory; it provides for no mechanism by which to prevent a corporate-State (as in, the United States of Microsoft) from emerging. It cannot guarantee economic competition, and therefore is self-negating.

Obviously you shouldn't take what I said there as my literal position (except on Austrian Economists as historians, which is more of a general comment). Though I do think there is an element of that in it.

Also as for definition of libertarianism (I was attacking more the common garden variety); Define 'property' please.

Also I fixed the link.


Don't take everything I say seriously. etc. etc.

Lockean property would here mean "those things regarded as property in Lockean philosophy" (which is not to say that Locke was a libertarian).

Having never read Locke other than opening parts of An Essay concerning human understanding I don't know what this definition is....

His work is nuanced enough that a complete description would be impractical, but here is a very rough outline:

1. The world has been given to mankind in common.

2. If universal consent were necessary, "man had starved, notwithstanding the plenty God had given him" (§ 28).

3. As this would be absurd, there must be some way that a single individual can take something out of the common lot and make it his own—that is, his property. Locke reasons that because a man owns his labor, by mixing his labor with some unclaimed portion of nature, he acquires legitimate title to it.

4. A person is not entitled, under first principles, to take more than he can make use of before it spoils (a vague but not meaningless criterion). The introduction of money changes the picture: "But since gold and silver, being little useful to the life of man in proportion to food, raiment, and carriage, has its value only from the consent of men, whereof labour yet makes, in great part, the measure, it is plain, that men have agreed to a disproportionate and unequal possession of the earth, they having, by a tacit and voluntary consent, found out, a way how a man may fairly possess more land than he himself can use the product of, by receiving in exchange for the overplus gold and silver, which may be hoarded up without injury to any one; these metals not spoiling or decaying in the hands of the possessor" (§ 50).

Philip,

Firstly, it should be noted that Locke talks about property in two senses. Aside from the narrow definition of man mixing his labour with natural resources to create property, in the Second Treatise he also discusses a more capacious definition in §87

'Man being born, as has been proved, with a Title to perfect Freedom, and an uncontruled enjoyment of all the Rights and Priviledges of the Law of Nature, equally with any other Man, or Number of Men in the World, hath by Nature a Power, not only to preserve his Property, that is, his Life, Liberty and Estate, against the Injuries and Attempts of other Men; but to judge of, and punish the breaches of that Law in others, as he is perswaded the Offence deserves, even with Death it self, in Crimes where the heinousness of the Fact, in his Opinion, requires it.'

Of course, Locke most certainly was not an advocate of a libertarian or a liberal ideology (to suggest as such would be to suggest an intention that simply could not have been there) and certainly did not regard those property rights as absolute (or at least absolute in the sense that several posters around here have argued they are), as he also made clear in his discussion of the beginning of political societies in the Second Treatise in §120:

'To understand this better, it is fit to consider, that every Man, when he, at first, incorporates himself into any Commonwealth, he, by his uniting himself thereunto, annexed also, and submits to the Community those Possessions, which he has, or shall acquire, that do not already belong to any other Government. For it would be a direct Contradiction, for any one, to enter into Society with others for the securing and regulating of Property: And yet to suppose his Land, whose Property is to be regulated by the Laws of the Society, should be exempt from the Jurisdiction of that Government, to which he himself the Proprietor of the Land, is a Subject. By the same Act therefore, whereby any one unites his Person, which was before free, to any Commonwealth; by the same he unites his Possessions, which were before free, to it also; and they become, both of them, Person and Possession, subject to the Government and Dominion of that Commonwealth, as long as it hath a being. Whoever therefore, from thenceforth, by Inheritance, Purchase, Permission, or otherways enjoys any part of the Land, so annext to, and under the Government of that Commonwealth, must take it with the Condition it is under; that is, of submitting to the Government of the Commonwealth, under whose Jurisdiction it is, as far forth, as any Subject of it.'

That all leads me to enquire quite what you meant when you stated that libertarians is predicated upon the doctrine that Lockean property rights are absolute or near-absolute. Locke saw political society as essential to the preservation of property rights. These were not absolute property rights, but ones held by virtue of an original contract between citizens and state, which would seem to undermine the possibility of their being absolute, although that obviously depends on what you meant by absolute.

I am aware of Locke's broad definition of property (and have occasionally alluded to it on this forum), but in the context of Gully's question it seemed proper to focus on material objects.

I don't claim that Locke believed property rights were absolute or near absolute. As you suggest, Locke clearly believed that they were qualified by a social contract. By "Lockean property rights," I had in mind bodily integrity and homesteading-based claims to physical objects. I was not referring to a "Lockean" legal framework, taken as a whole.

I disagree with your claim that Locke saw property rights as being held by virtue of the social contract. He saw them as being qualified by the social contract, to be sure; and he certainly saw civil society as being essential to their protection. Nonetheless, he makes it clear that they exist even in the state of nature: "If man in the state of nature be so free, as has been said; if he be absolute lord of his own person and possessions, equal to the greatest, and subject to no body, why will he part with his freedom? why will he give up this empire, and subject himself to the dominion and controul of any other power? To which it is obvious to answer, that though in the state of nature he hath such a right, yet the enjoyment of it is very uncertain, and constantly exposed to the invasion of others" (§ 123).

I wasn't suggesting you claimed Locke believed that, my intention was more to point to the fact that Locke's ideas about property were strongly linked to his arguments on political society, such that the legal framework and the principles of property don't seem to be divisible. That's where my final query about what you meant by 'absolute' came from.

Apologies, the 'by virtue' comment was slightly loosely worded (I blame it on writing that at one in the morning). What I meant by that remark was that the creation of society alters - and tempers - the nature of property rights from their position in a state of nature. Hence the section (§120) I quoted above where he discusses the uniting of property to a commonwealth.

Bumpity Bump.

All this talk of the gold market (I read some libertarian blogs recently and need to get the stupid off) and the superiority of the gold standard over fiat currency forgets obvious salient fact... that the value of gold itself is based on... absolutely nothing except the perspectives and prejudices of people especially those who operate in the ´market´. Gold serves no real function, in manufacture, in production or any other human economic activity of any great significance. Furthermore, in many societies in history it was not used as a currency (It only had a decorative function in those parts of Pre-colombian American where it was present and used). Some would argue that its rarity is it´s main virtue - but why not then a platinum standard? No, it`s real virtue as a currency as far as I can see is it´s SHINY (and now, it has historical connonations too which is actually one of the major reasons behind the bubble in precious metals. See below). I would like to convinced of gold´s utility beyond the sheer fondness of shiny things in which you can see your reflection but so far I haven´t actually got one. I, at least, would like to think that educated people at least have learned enough to get beyong "OMG SHINY" school of human thought about money.

Anyway it has been clear for some time that the whole ´gold´ debate has absolutely nothing to do with economics (as far as I can see veryfew  people arguing for it actually seem to understand their arguments) but everything to do with a particular (need I say, false?) image of American history.

The essential contradiction of libertarianism is that of liberalism and liberal forms of socialism, in order to operate a modern economy production and productivity need to increase but in order to do so forms of personal expression and freedom need to suppressed or at least managed. One only has to think of all those times businessmen are found complaining about the amount of national ´sick days´ there are to understand this point. An economy is a fundamentally ´collectivist´ construct, what individuals do within it is what is important. As we all should know by now, people don´t act like social economic models tell us they should (in fact I actually the purpose of these models is for them to be imposed upon people as ´correct´ ways to act. See history of nineteenth century imperalism and that´s just to start with) and if they disobey en masse then of course the ´system´ has problems.

Imagine libertarians were put in charge of a late Imperial China in which a large percentage of the population were so dependant on opiates that it severly damaged the nation´s economy and worker productivity (this is crude example, I know, but it sums up my point). Now, of course, this is due to decisions that the Chinese population made themselves (this historical example alone shows the daftness of most economic theory especially any of a determinist nature. And Austrianism seems pretty determinist to me. Certainly "Libertarian Sociology" seems to be not existant). Would the libertarian argue in favour of ´free trade´(which in common with free trade throughout human history was first imposed by cannon and gun shot) and thereby further help to erode the basis of the local economy or does try to impose the laws and force of coercion that make the economy work in the first place. What is the libertarian solution exactly? I would love to know.

The Soviet Union had a similiar problem with alcoholism in the 80s (actually it was a not totally insignificant cause in the destruction of the union). And let us not forget why men like Rockefeller supported prohibition in the 20s (and continue to support the war on drugs now in many cases).

I stand by my earlier post....gold's value, while mostly tied to the "shinny" part of the equation does have some very important uses in the electronics field.  It's one of the best conductors and doesn't corrode.

And the relevance this has to the ´gold standard´ debate and bubble is? (I stand corrected on that issue, btw but not on the wider point).

Actually, Imperial Russia included "platinum" as one of its standard coin metals when it was on a trimetallic system from 1828-1845.   That experiment helps to show why platinum is not a good coinage metal.  First of all, platinum is hard to work with.  It takes far less effort and cost to mint gold and silver coins of similar sizes.  Second, platinum is difficult to purify.  Indeed, the coins were minted from "pure Ural platinum" to which no other metal had been added, but which still contained significant impurities of iridium and palladium.  Third, as a coinage metal, it is quite possible to counterfeit with other metals.  In particular, gold and platinum have almost the same density, so depending on which happens to be the more valuable metal, one can fairly easily substitute the other to make counterfeits.  During the 19th century counterfeiting or adulterating gold coins with platinum happened a good bit as at that time platinum was the cheaper metal.  Indeed, the counterfeiting problem is why I doubt we'll ever go back to a circulating hard coinage standard unless we have a complete collapse of the trust that makes fiat currency work.  As shady as central banks can be, the ease with which high value circulating coins could be counterfeited makes them even more suspect unless one is dealing with a situation like Zimbabwe.  Even then, the solution was not to go on the gold standard, but to use a trustworthy fiat currency instead.

Though it's value as an industrial metal has nothing to do with its special place in the heart of cranks.

Agreed.  I didn't think I said otherwise.

There is a confusion here. The argument in favour of a gold standard isn't necessarily linked to gold. I do think Gold is pretty suitable (it is rare but not too rare, it's durable and so on) and it obviously has become a strong candidate by virtue of its position in our culture.

The argument for having a metal based currency instead of a fiat one is not in any way specific for gold. I don't think those arguments are particularly convincing myself, but they don't relate to shinyness.

I missed this earlier.


Ummm but that "virtue of its position in our culture" is in fact, that gold is shiny and suitable for ornaments, no?

EDIT: Re-reading my original post I will note that my point on Gold was pretty much a side observation. When is anyone going to get down to the meat of my post?

I tried reading it again, but I stopped at crop circles and the other thing.  I'm not that kind of libertarian (like most libertarians) so I can't help you in your quest to .....do whatever is you're trying to do here.

Where can I buy an "I Survived Gully Foyle Bashing Libertarianism" t-shirt?

Yeah, sure. You still seem to miss the point that the argument for a gold standard has very little to do with the fact that it's based on the metal gold. Just like the argument for paper money isn't really about the virtues of paper as a material for bills.

I've never seen anyone make a point of the specific metal.

Also, you seem to think that libertarians necessarily think economic growth is a political end, but I've never met one who does (and I know many libertarians). I think most libertarians would think that the individual's freedom to smoke opium supercedes any governmental concerns about economic productivity. That's hardly a contradiction since economic productivity, to my knowledge, isn't a part of libertarian philosophy.

Assuming this was the meat you referred to, then let me give you my take on the saner side of the gold argument in general and the libertarian portion thereof.

The primary theoretical advantage of a gold standard is that it is not a fiat currency.  That means that the size of the money supply is not dependent upon the whims of government.  (Not entirely true, but more on that later.)  That advantage of course is not solely held by gold.  Other commodities can and have held that position.  Indeed, there need not be a single standard.  For example, in pre-British India, some of the local rulers coined both gold and silver coins, but did not set a fixed exchange rate between the two metals.

So why did gold coins obtain their preeminent position as the standard of value?

To begin with, consider the advantages of coins.  They are a convenient size to be used in small  transactions.  Because they are made from metal, multiples or fractions of the base unit can be chosen as convenient.  You can't do that with hides.  Metal also happens to be durable.  You don't have to worry about vermin getting into your money as you would if one used a grain standard as Heinlein had a colony planet use in Time Enough for Love.   Of course what I have mentioned so far only explains why metal and not coins in particular.  The advantage that coins have over random lumps of metal is that it takes effort to make coins and a good deal of that effort, the production of dies, is the same whether one is making 1 coin or 1000 coins.  This means that once you have come to trust that a particular coin contains what you think it does, then other coins from the same source can also be trusted to a degree.

So why did we end up on a gold standard instead of a silver standard, a copper standard, a tin standard, etc.?  Well first off, while coins can be made into convenient sizes, for any one particular metal, you can't cover all of the desired denominations.  For any particular metal, the difference between the largest practical coin and the smallest is roughly 10:1 to 20:1. (You can find coins that are too small or large to be practical that were minted anyway.)

That's one of the reasons bimetallism developed in the first place.  The ratio of the value of gold and silver remained fairly stable for a considerable period of time (tho never constant) and close to or in that range, thereby making the the value of the largest practical silver coins and the smallest practical gold coins roughly equivalent.  That encouraged setting a link between gold and silver usually by fixing the value of gold coins to those of silver.  Since there were far more silver coins and silver was the bridge between gold and copper in value.  The reason trimetallism probably never developed was that the ratio for silver to copper was usually higher, which is why copper coins were not usually minted so as to have enough metal to be worth the equivalent of its stated value, altho the British cartwheel pennies minted at the end of the 18th century did.

So why did bimetallism get abandoned and why did we pick gold?  Simply put the ratios that made it possible stopped working.  The usual case when the ratio between gold and silver differed from the official ratio was to reset the ratio. For example,  the guinea beloved of English punters was originally a gold coin worth 20 shillings (1 pound).  When the value of gold relative to silver increase, the coin was revalued at 21 shillings.  (The United States eagle ($10) was reduced in size in the 1830s for the same reason.) Bimetallism was abandoned in the 1870s because the discovery of new deposits and improvements in metallurgy (that for example made it worth extracting low concentrations of silver from copper or lead deposits) caused the value of silver to gold to not only drop quickly, but to drop to the point that restoring the ratio to a point that would make bimetallism work again would have left a gap in the range of coin sizes.  Bimetallism had to be dropped and governments profited by transforming the silver coinage into a token coinage.  (Note: Some countries such as China, that had never bothered much with coining gold remained on a silver standard.)

---

Having covered why we eventually fell into being on the gold standard, let me next cover why we really weren't, or at least weren't on a pure gold standard. The simple explanation is credit.  The multiplier effect of credit on the money supply loosens the link between the size of the money supply and the size of the gold supply.  A strong central bank even gives the government a degree of power over the size of the money supply by giving it tools to control how much money is in circulation for a given amount of gold.  Eliminating central banks won't eliminate that power, just put it in the hands of those who own the banks.

Fiat money is more flexible than money from a gold-backed bank, which is both good and bad.  Those who favor gold-backed banks fear the bad more than they appreciate the good.

I'm bumping this old thread to post a Caplan article (http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2013/01/make_the_feelin.html) that needs to be read for its sheer awfulness. Mercifully, it's short...


As I was told in the other thread that I was making a strawman version of libertarianism, I shall not be providing any commentary but it is hardly necessary anyway and I should emphasize here this is not satire. Repeat, not satire.

I was reading the essay in the first post and as a Dane I feel have to comment. As example ticket sale to trains, ooutside a few major stations we don't have a shop which only sell tickets, in fact mostly they are sold either in automats or in 7/11 (who lease shops on most Danish train stations). So he entered a highly specialised service shop and expected minimum workers. Next that the person knew the train plan came as a surprise to him (not really the most complex task), especially a person answering question about tthe train plan the entire day. How incompetent is American service workers that these things come as a surprise to anybody? Next the worker likely do not have more than a elemental school or high school education (but the former is more likely), but some of the few things Danes learn very early are; take intiativ, cooperate and try not to borther your boss by things you can find out yourself (as example with the computer she stand in front off).

What's your objection, to his advocacy for abolition of the minimum wage (I don't think many libertarians would object to legalizing transactions between consenting adults), or his acknowledgement that libertarians are bad at pathos?

Are you really so blind as not to see the absurdity there?

I think this should be shared by all to appreciate it's dead-on accuracy. Perhaps the greatest tweet of all time?

https://twitter.com/dankmtl/status/221978990720724992 (https://twitter.com/dankmtl/status/221978990720724992)

"Libertarianism is Astrology for Men"

lol