The American government has trillions of dollars to spend every year, has strong criminal interests, and is allowed to commit crimes with impunity. Supply and demand dictates that someone will come forward to supply their needs: countless weapons systems, espionage, interrogation, and the propaganda necessary to use them all as often as possible.

Do some businesses ask the State to make their jobs easier? Sure. Why try to compete when you can bribe some gangsters to cripple or eliminate your competition. The worst of them are just halfway houses for former and future war criminals, but not too many people would buy what they’re selling if these ‘purchases’ were optional. I doubt you’d add a million dollar cruise missile to your cart the next time you buy something.

Guilty as charged: you are quite correct, my comments were poorly written, and yes, many economy theories are gobbledygook designed to sell something (though in my case, I am not selling anything, just being clumsy in expressing my thoughts).

As for Amazon vs. Hiroshima – you are correct again. However, the US government is not by any means a government “of the people for the people” but one “of the millionaires for the millionaires” and while I have no idea whether US corporations played a role in the decisions to bomb Japan, I do know for a fact that the Zionist, Oil and Military-Industrial lobbies are the three pillars of US Imperial policies and the corporations are just the visible tip of the iceberg of these lobbies. This is why the people running the government are also the people running companies like Exxon, Halliburton, Bechtel or Carlucci’s Carlyle Group. Ever since the United Fruit Company (or even before) the US foreign policy have been directed by US corporations. To disassociate the US corporate world from the government is just naive – they are two aspects of the same evil, IMHO.

Well, this just goes to prove that Ivy League “education” is more about connections then about real education. I can assure you that most of your shows, in particular your “rant” ones, are at least as good or better then the best graduate courses in international relations. You could *teach* at any of those colleges and you would be among the most popular teachers, in particular among foreign students.

I have thee kids which I know homeschool and I make listen to all your (and Amy Goodman’s DemocracyNow!) shows. That’s how they get these international relations education!

Kind regards,

VS

I’ll agree that Americans are notoriously ignorant about nearly everything, but I see a different culprit. The government runs the schools and they intentionally don’t teach economics, languages, geography, or history. Instead they’re told to worship the Patron Saint of Internment Camps and taught that war is good for the economy. People who know nothing can believe anything, which means there will always be plenty of idiots willing to support whatever evil the government wants to do.

While I’m on the subject of evil: Amazon didn’t nuke Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Yahoo doesn’t run Guantanamo. I can legally tell a company “No”. I cannot legally tell the government “No”. Guess which one of those things needs to change?

Well don’t feel bad, Scotty. I’m a graduate of Penn State or lets see…was it State Pen?

Ha! Me and my community college dropout education! What the hell do I know? Is Hayek not saying that what counts is a continual process of seeking information continually adjusting prices though? There is perfect information somewhere, just not in the possession of any one person.

(I am in over my head here. Someone from Mises.org help!)

And do prices not eventually fall in line to the real truth regardless of spin put out by the state or the corporation?

And don’t kid yourself man. Every single one of these giant corporations you despise are on the dole – most especially those property stealing sons of bitches at Wal Mart. Take away their eminent domain, their free security on the high seas, etc. and you’ll have a Wal Mart that people want, not that they are subjected to – or none.

No, I believe her wanting to pass laws to forbid families from spanking their children is wrong. If she believes it’s child abuse, then she’s got a whole hell of a lot of tradition and culture to battle against, and again, more power to her if she handles it the social way instead of the political way. If she wants to go house to house encouraging parents to reason with their children, more power to her. As for guns, I don’t own one and am not really into them. But that has nothing to do with what I believe the law is or should be or whether or not the guy next door should be allowed to own one or not. It’s none of my f-ing business until he pulls it on me, and then I might consider whether my choice not to own one was the wise thing!

She may care about kids, but she also cares about butting into other people’s business via the law and I think that is the chicken-sh*t way of handling things for the most part.

Oh well – I will wait and sing “let my posts go!” in the meanwhile. Sorry guys!

Not at all. The difference is, as you say, in what she *advocates*, but between you and her? She belives that spaking kids is detrimental to their education and that guns represent a danger to the people. You believe that *not* spaking kids is detrimental to their education and that the *absence* of guns represents a danger to the people (as do I, BTW). But both of you care about kids and the safety of people. All you need to be on the same side is compare notes, assumptions or experiences. But a person who does not care about kids or safety (say Cheney or his goons) is somebody truly different then the two of you. But on a human level you and your friends wife are far more similar that your difference of views might suggest. Also – is she, and are you, willing to commit acts of violence to enforce your views on others? That would also be an important thing to consider. Anyway – I found that there are many people “like me” (whether that is good or bad depends on whom you ask) on ALL sides of the political spectrum.

Scott – I don’t know where you ever got the idea that the theory of lazzie fair depends on all actors having perfect knowledge in the market

I got them from my courses while doing my Master’s Degree in International Economics at some well-known US college (actually, one very much associated with Neocons nowadays). Considering how many ignorant people graduate with all kids of degrees, this really proves nothing other than that this is what US elites are taught.

But common sense seems to also back up the concept. The term “laisser faire” comes from the French expression “to let happen” and does adequately suggest the fact that to have things happen “naturally” is not what takes place “naturally”. Wild market forces have interests which are diametrically opposed to the interest of the market and the only way to protect the consumers from these “wild market forces” is to ensure that he/she has access to all the information needed to make choices, what economists call “perfect information”. This information needs to be *proactively* promoted against the market forces whose interest is to *monopolize and distort* the free flow of useful information. Am I making sense here? Do you see what I mean?

Mises-Hayek argument explains why a central planning organism as the Soviet Gosplan (which was tasked with planning the entire Soviet economy and output plans) cannot function efficiently). However, this argument does not address the problem which I am referring to: how to prevent the corporations from taking over the “information market” the way they have in the USA. There is no Gosplan in the USA, but the ignorance of most Americans of the world outside their borders or the nature of their government is far, FAR, worse than the ones of the Soviet citizens (I can compare the two for having spent quite some time in both the USSR and the USA). Let’s face it: most Americans today watch shit, read shit (when the read at all), eat shit and know shit and that sad reality is not the result of government action, at least not directly, not in a Socialist kind of way, but the result of the actions of the puppeteers who control the government. Remove the US government and the very same puppeteers will maintain their control over the US society just through their corporations and finacials assets (which are truly huge, Walmart is bigger than most governments on the planet).

Cous Cous – If one store is selling books, milk, or gasoline for less than the one down the road, the locals will figure it out; sign technology is pretty wide spread these days. If I need just about anything, I can go online and search through a near infinite number of vendors and find a deal that makes me happy in a few minutes. Labor follows the same principles

The putative “locals” might know what is going locally, but for anything else the ONLY medium of information still free from corporate control is the Internet and God knows “they” (the governments and the lobbies controlling them) are working on all sorts of legal, technical and political plans to take control of that medium. Pull the plug on your computer and you have totally lost any means of getting good info about pretty much anything beyond the driving distance from your home (or even less).

Maybe not fundamentally different, though individuals’ ideas and actions surely can be called fundamentally different. I mean, my friend’s wife, who’s a public school teacher, may be fundamentally the same as me (well, uh, sort of), but she spends her time advocating that citizens not be allowed to spank their kids and own guns. Now there’s a big difference between us and I oppose what she advocates.

http://thestressblog.com/2007/04/25/the-show-10/#comment-30557

That’s why I’m a libertarian. The right and left are just two brands of corporate-state socialism at war.

I want to take the high road when it comes to opposing empire and so VS, please don’t take any offense. I am obviously intolerant of other opinions, but I try to be very tolerant of those who hold them.

“The reality is, of course, quite different due to a fundamentally flawed assumption of the free market theory: perfect information.”

My man, I don’t know where you ever got the idea that the theory of lazzie fair depends on all actors having perfect knowledge in the market. I think the lack of perfect information is the reason to keep the power away from the state and defer to wild market forces:

From Lawrence H. White at Mises: http://www.mises.org/mofase/ch5.asp

“But Hayek is sharply critical of the assumption of perfect information, which he recognizes as “just another way of saying that equilibrium exists but does not get us any nearer an explanation of when and how such a state will come about. It is clear that, if we want to make the assertion that, under certain conditions, people will approach that state, we must explain by what process they will acquire the necessary knowledge.”[80]

“The market economy for Hayek is an information-gathering process, and this concept springs directly from his subjectivist outlook. In the task of using “available” resources to satisfy “existing” needs, “neither the ‘available’ resources nor the ‘existing’ needs are objective facts.” Resources and needs “exist for practical purposes only through somebody knowing about them.” The fact that each individual’s knowledge is limited and specialized means that “a successful solution . . . must be based on a method of utilizing the knowledge dispersed among all members of society. . . . This is precisely the function which the various ‘markets’ perform.”[81] This analysis forms the basis for the Mises-Hayek argument concerning the impossibility of efficient socialism.

“To assume perfect information is thus to assume away the very phenomenon supposedly under study, the market process. For the market process, Hayek points out, is a process of discovery unfolding through time.”

But, I’m not necessarily opposed to individual leftists. There’s a grand socialist tradition whose advocates I’m actually kind of fond of. I like reading the cranky leftisms of Norman Thomas, or GB Shaw, or today’s Gore Vidal. But had they any feelings remotely similar toward liberty loving thinkers. Did Shaw read Nock? Nock certainly read Shaw and Marx and was able to find and praise truths as well as find and criticize the untruths. Vidal likes Bill Kauffman, apparently, but has he read Justin Raimondo or Murray Rothbard? So how far will the mutual civility go?

This is true, Vineyardslayer, but does it make any difference? I mean you do know that there is nothing you or I can say or do that will change any of this so why take it seriously?

I just try to look at what our government masters do and say and really all of politics and current events as just another form of entertainment. As the saying goes, “I used to be angry but now I’m just amused” or some such. Shit, you look at it any other way and you’ll go nuts. Why invest your emotional energy in things you absolutely cannot influence?

Just look at George Bush and his gang of criminals and the criminal Congress and for that matter the entire corrupt two party system as another version of “American Idol” except you don’t get to vote one of the bastards off each week. And of course Tucker Carlson is not Simon Cowell.

My beef isn’t with leftism per se. I mean there is a grand tradition of socialism that I’m actually fond of, even though I think it’s essentially boneheaded. But I kinda like reading the cranky old leftisms of Norman Thomas or Shaw or even today’s Gore Vidal. But I don’t expect the feeling to ever be mutual from folks like that.

Of course he wouldn’t even if he wanted to. It’s air time and Jensen’s probably not a fool and knows not to bite the hand that feeds him, if only for an hour.

I’m not singling out Jensen — I don’t know him from Adam — but the left in general (and “whatever it means” is definable: statist; anti-liberty; collectivist) and I’m pretty sure I’m right.

I didn’t say Amy Goodman and Chomsky hurl insults. I implied that they rarely, if ever, give libertarians or paleocons the time of day. And though Amy Goodman might not hurl insults, she certainly entertains and supports those who do. Her prerogative, no doubt. But it’s a double standard that is typical from the left. Alas, it’s never been a two way street. And that’s fine, for as I said, Scott takes the high road as do most liberty loving individuals.

There’s more but I need to cut off my analytical abilities to deal with the LP.

(Anyway – Fascists want a fascist state, Libertarians do not want a state of any type, thus calling Libertarians Fascists would be pain stupid. I don’t think that Amy, Chomsky or the Cockburns are stupid at all. Would Jensen insult Libertarians? I don’t know. But there is a simple way of checking this out: to have Scott give him a call and interview him.)

I would also love it if Scott got Amy on his show and I would equally love it if Amy got Scott on her show, but realistically speaking the two shows have very different formats: one, Scott’s, is an informal discussion and indepth interview show while the other one, Amy’s, is more of a formal news & commentary show. I think that having Amy on Scott’s show would therefore be way more interesting as the other way around. Amy could interview Scott as, say, part of a segment on the independent media in the USA, but Scott could have an indepth discussion with Amy about her values and his points of disagreement with them. Which would you prefer? I would much prefer Scott interviewing her than the other way around.

In boot camp they yell, “Will kill for food!”