I LOL’ed. Even though it’s a bit ironic that “Keynes” here looks a bit like John Stossel…

Happy New Years to everyone!  Let’s get the new year to a roaring start — with a new column at the newly remodeled Strike the Root.  (Many congrats to the good folks there for their hard work on the site!)   Read it here and in the “Columns” section of this blog.

“In short, ideas have consequences. YOUR ideas have consequences. And sometimes they are not very nice ones. Ideas, once they are out of your head and out in the world, do affect others when they are carried out.

Politics isn’t just random slogans or feel-good catchphrases and cool policies that make the world a happy place of rainbows and sugarpops. No, politics is about playing the system and using force against others to get what you want.”

“Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.”

Whether it was Giovanni Gentile or Benito Mussolini himself who said this, people have used thsi quote to sum up the basic tenets of Fascism (Italian or otherwise).  But this article on Social Memory Complex (Thanks to Mike Gogulski for alerting me to it),

“It always surprises me how many different political conclusions this point is used to augment. For some, it means private business is bad because it takes advantage of a vulnerable democratic political process. For others, it means firms are enlisted into the agendas of big bad politicians, restraining the so-called “free market” competition that benefits us all. . . . After all, the quote is often used by people who assume the legitimacy of both big business and big government. The quibble lies solely with the relative power of one party relative to the other.”

“The radicals of the 19th century saw the state as larger than just the government. The state was composed of all those who benefited from the status quo. Government, business, academia, and other institutions work to stabilize this status quo as the basis of their privilege.  So when Mussolini talks about a merger between corporate and state power, he is not talking about fusing business to government – that alliance already exists, and most people back then knew it, too. . .  Mussolini was talking about bringing all aspects of society under a smaller group of technocratic, autocratic managers.”

I’ve had to clarify, in a lot of recent discussions I’ve had with people, that just as Democrats and Republicans are the same Beast, corporations and “the government” are just parts of the same cruel Organism that we call the State (or status quo, or whatever).  Not so many years ago, when I was going gaga for Ralph Nader, the Green Party, and “single-payer” government medicine, I thought with absolute certainty that big business was Public Enemy #1.  Then, after reading a little too much Ayn Rand, I saw Big Government as the Evil of all Evils.  It took me a while to realize that the struggle is not a matter of one over the other, but recognising both aspects as part of a greater whole.

I understand this from my own experience talking with people and developing my own views, that once people start to accept this, they become more receptive to anarchic thought — just as how people often become receptive to libertarian thought once they accept that Democrats and Republicans are the same.

Speaking strictly from my own experience; becoming radical is a step-by-step process….most are lucky to get to the “Democrats = Republicans” stage, much less the “big business = big government” stage.

To that end, let’s hope the Fed’s resistance to being audited, the Bush bailouts, and Obama’s stimulus campaign are like a sledgehammer to the noggin – talk about a wake-up call!

After a bit of a hiatus (i.e. work has been keeping me very busy lately), I finally have a new column on Strike the Root.  Read it here and in the “Columns” section of this blog.

“The undergraduate degree is a way to weed out the cultured workers from the low-brow; the affluent from the less-affluent; the pacified from the rough-around-the-edges; the best and brightest from the dumb sheep; the ones who ‘get their hands dirty’ with practical skills from those fully indoctrinated in squeaky-clean trivia (which is what most white-collar work is, anyway); the upper and middle classes from the lower classes.  In short, its function is to help lock out the undesirable proles from the Inner Circle.“

I’ve finally joined the Youtube fad, with my own video channel.  I noticed there’s not too much of an Agorist presence in particular, so my first project involves the classic New Libertarian Manifesto, by Samuel E. Konkin III.  Mike Gogulski recorded an audiobook of the Manifesto so I decided to make a series of videos based on that.

Check out my playlist here.  I plan to make more videos in the near future so stay tuned!

A funny and popular story about the Chevy Nova is that it didn’t sell well in Latin America becuse its name, Nova, literally translates in Spanish to “It doesn’t go”.  I always thought it was funny, but I just read a post that debunks this.  It turns out the anecdote is basically an old wives’ tale. (And at any rate, my experience working in the translation industry tells me that no agency and certainly no translator worth their salt would ever let something like this slip through the cracks!)

For one thing, the name “Nova” does sound to the untrained ear like Spanish “No vá” but (and I hadn’t even considered this) there is a slight difference in pronunciation, for one thing, between these two words, the English is one word while the Spanish is two words with an accented “a” sound.  “NO-va” versus “no-VA”

There’s more:

Pemex (the Mexican government-owned oil monopoly) sold (and still sells) gasoline in Mexico under the name “Nova.” If Mexicans were going to associate anything with the Chevrolet Nova based on its name, it would probably be this gasoline. In any case, if Mexicans had no compunctions about filling the tanks of their cars with a type of gasoline whose name advertised that it “didn’t go,” why would they reject a similarly-named automobile?

“]”]

Apparently the legend assumes that General Motors’ marketing team hadn’t checked things out thoroughly before deciding to release the car under that name in Latin America, but they knew about the translation issue and decided to go ahead anyway.

And this just sealed the deal: the car actually sold well despite the finicky name:

T]he Chevrolet Nova’s name didn’t significantly affect its sales: it sold well in both its primary Spanish-language markets, Mexico and Venezuela. (Its Venezuelan sales figures actually surpassed GM’s expectations.)

Oops.  Well, there’s always Engrish.com to fill the loopy-translation void!

“Worst Side Story.” Laments about our financial mess to tunes from West Side Story. By Walt Handelsman of Newsday.  I wonder will the next one be entitled “Crash”, set to the ubiquitous tunes of Cats??

Feeeeed me!

Those kooky Keynesians are at it again.  Greg Mankiw’s recent article for the New York Times suggests that the Federal Reserve can stimulate the economy out of recession by putting in place a negative interest rate (he suggests -3%). “At that interest rate,” he says, “you could borrow and spend $100 and repay $97 next year.”  Paying back less money than you borrowed…sounds great, right?

Of course, such a policy translates to effectively giving money away.  This is pretty much what Uncle Sam (and our more distant Uncle Bush for that matter) has been doing and what Uncle Obama will continue doing for the conceivable future.  So it’s no surprise that Mankiw, a former Bush adviser, would suggest this.  But at least he acknowledges in his column the most obvious flaw; who in their right mind would lend money at those rates?  They might as well not lend at all, he says.  “Rather than giving your money to a borrower who promises a negative return, it would be better to stick the cash in your mattress.  Unless, that is, we figure out a way to make holding money less attractive.”

Uh-oh…

Here’s where things start getting ugly.  Here I’ll let Mankiw explain his proposal in his own words:

“Imagine that the Fed were to announce that, a year from today, it would pick a digit from zero to 9 out of a hat. All currency with a serial number ending in that digit would no longer be legal tender. Suddenly, the expected return to holding currency would become negative 10 percent.  That move would free the Fed to cut interest rates below zero. People would be delighted to lend money at negative 3 percent, since losing 3 percent is better than losing 10.  Of course, some people might decide that at those rates, they would rather spend the money — for example, by buying a new car.”

So in order to get people to spend money again (for indeed the world revolves around mindless consumption and not real growth) we’ll not only practically give it away to Wall Street, the military industrial complex, automakers, and politically connected corporations, nor only create inflation, but we’ll randomly take people‘s money out of circulation to balance out the immense amount of money we’ll be generating to fill rich people’s pockets.

It gets better: 

“The idea of making money earn a negative return is not entirely new. In the late 19th century, the German economist Silvio Gesell argued for a tax on holding money. He was concerned that during times of financial stress, people hoard money rather than lend it. John Maynard Keynes approvingly cited the idea of a carrying tax on money.”

Think something’s fishy here? We have a perfectly comforting explanation:

“The idea of negative interest rates may strike some people as absurd, the concoction of some impractical theorist. Perhaps it is. But remember this: Early mathematicians thought that the idea of negative numbers was absurd. Today, these numbers are commonplace. Even children can be taught that some problems (such as 2x + 6 = 0) have no solution unless you are ready to invoke negative numbers.  Maybe some economic problems require the same trick.”

“Tricks” indeed – more like we’re getting suckered by con men.

Here lies the logic behind Keynesian theory – the dominant theory espoused by government economists and advisers, shoved down our collective throats in college classrooms, newspapers, and TV.  Instead of advocating responsible and sustainable practices (i.e common sense), we see them denouncing saving as “hoarding” and coming up with counter-intuitive “tricks” to “stimulate” the economy (at whose expense?).  Well, this isn’t algebra, it’s making the most rational and sustainable use out of scarce resources.

Although Mankiw seems rhetorically limber enough to put his foot inside his own mouth without our assistance, Robert P. Murphy has written an excellent response on the Mises Institute’s website that refutes much of this Keynesian nonsense.  But here’s the critical question about this plan: who would be the most affected by it? It wouldn’t be those who have power and clout; it’d be the working classes, people on fixed incomes like Social Security or pensions, students, the poorest and most disadvantaged among us.

As you increase the money supply, you lower its value, and thus prices for things like housing, gas, food, clothing, etc., have to increase accordingly to make up for that.  Even if you get an increase in wages, you’re just keeping pace with this inflation.  Indeed, real wages have stagnated for three decades (the past couple of years have seen big hits) while the top few percent have dramatically increased their wealth thanks to Uncle Sam’s economic engineering.

source: Economic Policy Institute

When inflation’s afoot it becomes harder and less worthwhile to save up for a rainy day – or for retirement or for a house, a car, anything.  (Zimbabwe is a particularly extreme example; the country has abandoned its own currency because of its runaway inflation – at one point six months ago it cost 200 million Zimbabwean dollars to buy a loaf of bread!)  Hence working people here have to turn to gambling their money on the stock market, and be subject to its ups and downs that often seem as fickle as the weather. Hence people turn to living on their credit cards (which may already be maxed-out), incurring oppressive debt.  Hence people live a precarious paycheck-to-paycheck existence because they just can’t get ahead.  God help you if you’re a young person just starting out.

And last time I checked, most of us don’t get billion-dollar bailouts to help us out in times of crises.

Politically-connected bankers and industrialists and the military industrial complex take a small hit from inflation’s effects too, but as Murray Rothbard points out in The Case Against The Fed, they get the newly generated money and easy credit/interest rates first, before any other segments of society.  So they are the first to see the benefits, before the larger effects of these manipulations take their toll.  We hear a lot about the gap between rich and poor; those with clout and those without it.  Now you know why.

Keynesian economics pulls the rug out from under the feet of the poor and working class.  This has been obvious for decades now.  Presidents win elections by talking about the poor, even as they take advice from folks with fancy degrees, like Mankiw, who make a living suggesting that we “trick” working people into mindless consumption in order to feed Moloch.

It’s the new weaponic device of the 21st Century…or Final Fantasy XIV for that matter…the Bacon Torch.

Or rather, the Prosciutto Torch, but whatever.  Roll up a few tubes of prosciutto, bake ‘em dry, wrap them up in another baked roll of prosciutto, attach to a source of oxygen, light that bad-boy and FFFOOOOOOM!  Burn a hole in a steel pan.  As a foodie (and a firm believer in the right tom own and bear arms) i think it’s pure Genius!  Watch the video and read the article on PopSci.

According to this sacred tale, Jeshua Cottontail, the Holy Bunny, was betrayed by his disciple, the treacherous dog Barkus Fleascarrying, for thrity pieces of Kibble.  He rose from the dead three days later and bestowed candy and chocolate to his loyal disciples, except for Barkus, upon whom he placed this curse:

“If any dog should try chocolate, that dog shall die on the spot.”

Genius.