Economics of Liberty

Among free men there is competition as to who will do most, each for the common good, each by himself, all expecting to share in the misfortunes of defeat, or in the benefits of victory; but an enslaved people loses in addition to this warlike courage, all signs of enthusiasm, for their hearts are degraded, submissive, and incapable of any great deed

Étienne de La Boétie - The Politics of Obedience 1552-1553

Liberty and King's Favor

"By such words, Hydarnes, you give us no good counsel," replied the Lacedaemonians, "because you have experienced merely the advantage of which you speak; you do not know the privilege we enjoy. You have the honor of the king's favor; but you know nothing about liberty, what relish it has and how sweet it is. For if you had any knowledge of it, you yourself would advise us to defend it, not with lance and shield, but with our very teeth and nails."

Étienne de La Boétie - The Politics of Obedience 1552-1553

Liberty is the Natural Condition

Liberty is the natural condition of the people. Servitude, however, is fostered when people are raised in subjection. People are trained to adore rulers. While freedom is forgotten by many there are always some who will never submit.

 Étienne de La Boétie - The Politics of Obedience 1552-1553

Rothbard on Boétie

Why in the world do people consent to their own enslavement?

Murray Rothbard in his Introduction to The Politics of Obedience by Étienne de La Boétie, 1975

Indifference vs Cowardice

But if a hundred, if a thousand endure the caprice of a single man, should we not rather say that they lack not the courage but the desire to rise against him, and that such an attitude indicates indifference rather than cowardice?

Étienne de La Boétie - The Politics of Obedience 1552-1553

Debt Solution

How can the solution for debt and consumption be more debt and more consumption? How can that be the solution to our problems?

Jim Rogers

Master and King

I see no good in having several lords:
Let one alone be master, let one alone be King.

Homer via Ulysses in the Illiad

Supporting the Colossus

I do not ask that you place hands upon the tyrant to topple him over, but simply that you support him no longer; then you will behold him, like a great Colossus whose pedestal has been pulled away, fall of his own weight and break into pieces?

Étienne de La Boétie - The Politics of Obedience 1552-1553

Clintonian Terrorism

[Terrorism is] killing and robbery and coercion by people who do not have state authority and go beyond national borders.

Bill Clinton - in the December 09 issue of Foreign Policy

Genocide and Extermination of Civilians

[W]e must . . . never forget, we must put in the dock and hang higher than Haman, those who, in modern times, opened the Pandora’s Box of genocide and the extermination of civilians: Sherman, Grant, and Lincoln.

Murray Rothbard given in a 1994 speech titled “America’s Two Just Wars: 1775 and 1861"

Reagan and Aggression

History teaches that war begins when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap

Ronald Reagan

Self Defense

Legitimate use of violence can only be that which is required in self defense

Ron Paul

Washington's Fire

Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.

George Washington

War Murder

It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.

Albert Einstein

Democracy

In a democracy, the people and the government are one and the same.

Albert Einstien

Thinking in a Trench

We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.

Albert Einstein

On Bread and Circuses

Already long ago, from when we sold our vote to no man, the People have abdicated our duties; for the People who once upon a time handed out military command, high civil office, legions — everything, now restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things: bread and circuses.

Roman Poet Juvenal – 77 AD

Majority Vote

Thou shalt not steal, except by majority vote

Gary North (2006)

They Yearn for Political Power

To repeat, conservatives yearn for a state, or "leadership," with the power to restore order and to put things — and people — back in their places. They yearn for political power. Liberals yearn for a state that will bomb the rich and balm the poor. They too yearn for political power. Libertarians yearn for a state that cannot, beyond any possibility of amendment, confer any advantage on anyone; a state that cannot compel anything, but simply prevents the use of violence, in place of other exchanges, in relations between individuals or groups.

Karl Hess (1969, The Death of Politics: originally published in Playboy)

Status of the man

Civil liberty is the status of the man who is guaranteed by law and civil institutions the exclusive employment of all his own powers for his own welfare.

 William Graham Sumner (What Social Classes Owe to Eachother, 1883)

Specific Order

The great flaw in conservatism is a deep fissure down which talk of freedom falls, to be dashed to death on the rocks of authoritarianism. Conservatives worry that the state has too much power over people. But it was conservatives who gave the state that power. It was conservatives, very similar to today's conservatives, who ceded to the state the power to produce not simply order in the community but a certain kind of order. [original emphasis]

Karl Hess (1969, The Death of Politics: originally published in Playboy)

Politics and Control

Political parties and politicians today — all parties and all politicians — question only the forms through which they will express their common belief in controlling the lives of others.

Karl Hess (1969, The Death of Politics: originally published in Playboy)

Libertarianism is

Libertarianism is the view that each man is the absolute owner of his life, to use and dispose of as he sees fit: that all man's social actions should be voluntary: and that respect for every other man's similar and equal ownership of life and, by extension, the property and fruits of that life is the ethical basis of a humane and open society. In this view, the only — repeat, only — function of law or government is to provide the sort of self-defense against violence that an individual, if he were powerful enough, would provide for himself.

Karl Hess (1969, The Death of Politics: originally published in Playboy)

Private Gold Holdings

However, several websites, such as Gold Eagle, estimate the total private gold holdings to be about 15,000 metric tons.

Ganesh Rathnam from article "Gold: India’s Capital Asset through History"

Over 40,000 new laws for the new year

Legislatures in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Guam, the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico met in 2009, leading to the enactment of 40,697 laws, many of which take effect January 1

CNN  1/1/2010

Tzu on War

All war is based on deception.

Sun Tzu, Art of War Ch1:18

Ancients on spontaneous order

Good order results spontaneously when things are let alone.

Zhuangzi (Chinese Philosopher from the 4th Century BC)

A New Era of Taxes

Your father made our yoke hard; now therefore lighten the hard service of your father and his heavy yoke which he put on us, and we will serve you.

The People of Israel to King Rehoboam, son of Solomon.  1 King 12:4