1. It is Dangerous to Be Right When the Government is Wrong by Andrew Napolitano – The Judge, host of FreedomWatch on Fox Business, has put together an amazing book that analyzes a host of topics from the standpoint of natural law. I will be reviewing this book on my personal website soon but I’m going to say it now – you need to read this book. The data and stories he presents in the book make it easily worth every penny and a well-deserved place on your (or anyone else’s) bookshelf.

2. Libertarianism Today by Jacob Huebert – This book was on the list last year, but it warrants another mention because you can get it at a significantly reduced price by purchasing directly from the publisher. Huebert’s book is definitely a must-read, and is one of the best recent books on hardcore libertarianism in the past few years. LRC writer Laurence Vance has called it, “The best introduction to libertarianism on the market.”

3. Bourbon for Breakfast and It’s a Jetsons World by Jeffrey Tucker – Check out this review of Bourbon for Breakfast, and you’ll see that it is a super read for anyone looking to circumvent statist restrictions upon their lives. Tucker’s followup work tells exciting stories of the little everyday miracles of the free market at work.

4. Liberty Defined by Ron Paul – Another gold standard in libertarian literature by one of liberty’s greatest defenders. See this review for the full story.

5. Rollback by Thomas Woods – I am a huge fan of Tom Woods and have known him for over 5 years now. His latest book makes an eloquent case for dismantling pretty much everything the government currently does today.

6. Great Wars and Great Leaders by Ralph Raico – Leaders who take a country to war are often heralded as “great,” but the libertarian perspective dispenses such ideas as folly. War is the health of the state and the enemy of liberty, and Raico’s historical work is great ammunition in the war of ideas that we fight daily.

7. Myth of a Guilty Nation by Albert Jay Nock – This is an old book newly reprinted by the Mises Institute, and I’m excited to see it available again (because I’m a big fan of Nock and haven’t ever read this one). From the Mises.org description: “Nock’s book reminds us of what most everyone has forgotten, namely, that this was sold as a war for freedom and self-determination over imperial ambition. Along with that came some of the most rabid war propaganda ever fabricated until that point in time, all designed to make Germany into a devil nation. Nock’s brave book took on that idea and demonstrated that there was fault enough to go around on all sides. All through the 1920s, a Nockian-style retelling of the facts behind the war led to a dramatic shift in public opinion against World War I.” Awesome!

8. The Bastiat Collection Pocket Edition by Frederic Bastiat – If you haven’t read Bastiat’s The Law, you need to get on that immediately! This book contains all the major works of Bastiat in a very small volume, and makes a great gift.

9. Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt – Need to learn a little more about economics? Start with the classic by Hazlitt, and never forget the first lesson again…

Last but not least, a special note for the Christian readers…

10. Christian Theology of Public Policy and Bible and Government by John Cobin – I absolutely love the excellent work of John Cobin. For Christian libertarians, these are must reads!

Have a happy holiday season!

Jack Hunter reports in the Daily Caller that Rand Paul blocked an unanimous consent vote that could have had big effects:

Last week, while most senators were focused on the important national issues of war funding and Americans’ constitutional liberties, Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) seemed more concerned with the fate of a foreign country. Behind the scenes, Rubio moved to have a unanimous consent vote that would have hastened Georgia’s entry into NATO. The unanimous consent vote never happened because Senator Rand Paul single-handedly prevented it.

This is not a triviality. Make no mistake: Bringing Georgia into NATO could lead to a new military conflict for the United States, which is why any move that would facilitate Georgia’s entry into the alliance should be publicly debated. Rubio’s attempt to push this through by unanimous consent — that is to say, without any formal debate or vote — is highly suspect and calls into question the senator’s better judgment.

You may remember that the small country of Georgia, which is on the border of Russia, nearly got the United States into a smoking conflict just three years ago. There is more information in the Daily Caller article and I recommend reading it. The American people are, for the most part, incredibly ignorant of foreign policy these days. I highly doubt that most could even find Georgia on a map, or even know that Georgia is a country at all. Nonetheless, this rogue government continues its imperialist ventures behind the people’s backs, ignoring the costs and building its hegemony day by day.

However, just reporting the facts in this blog post is only part of the point…

Rand Paul made a good move here, no doubt. But, we need to remember such events do not prove that politics is the be-all-and-end-all of the liberty movement as well. Rand, I am sure, knows that if the government wants a war, they can get one. The importance of Rand’s block is that it brings attention to the inner workings of the State. If the consent vote had gone through, hardly anyone would have noticed until another conflict was underway. Then, of course, boobus Americanus will fall in line, trusting that their deified overlords got it right just like they did Iraq, and Afghanistan, and Libya, and etc.

It is our job to expose the evils of the State, not “reform” them. Libertarian politicians like Rand and Ron Paul can only do so much to “fix” anything at all. Ultimately, the willingness of the people to turn a blind eye is what allows the State to thrive. We should take events like Rand’s vote as opportunities to talk to people, to teach them about liberty. Without changing the culture, any good a libertarian politician might accomplish has every possibility of being washed away the moment he leaves office.

I support Ron Paul, but it is up to us to carry things forward in the long run. I’m not Ron Paul, you are. Think about it.

This is not a comprehensive list and it would not fix all of the government’s problems, but they independently or together would definitely be steps in the right direction.

1. End the Federal Reserve: Since the Federal Reserve was instituted in 1913, the dollar has
lost over 95% of its purchasing power and has caused vicious boom and bust cycles throughout the 20th century. Big-spending politicians and politically favored bankers love the Fed’s loose monetary policy since it allows them to print as much money as they want to help finance their pet projects without directly taxing the general populace. Unfortunately, the general public becomes victim to the insidious inflation tax which eats away all of their savings. What is truly needed is a system of competing currencies that is recognized and accepted as such by individuals through the actions of the market without the coercion of the state.

2. End all corporate subsidies: Corporate subsidies encourage rent-seeking behavior and also create substantial distortions in the marketplace. If we want to eliminate the corporate revolving door in government, destroying the piggy bank of subsidies is a good first step. Businesses will now have to actually compete for consumers in order to stay afloat, as opposed to constantly feeding off of the trough of taxpayer funds.

3. Restore Freedom of Association in Labor Relations: Government should step out of labor relations altogether and allow for people to freely and peacefully contract with each other. This is by no means an attack on unions. If anything, when voluntaryism replaces statism, labor unions would be more organic based on the models of Lions Club or Rotary Club organizations or Japanese style enterprise unions. These labor models simply encourage people to get together and act in unison, which in turn fosters an environment of worker-employer camaraderie. Workers will truly have a say in these respective organizations without having to worry about top-down government actors potentially co-opting these organizations.

4. End the War on Drugs: The War on Drugs has been going on for more than three decades and has resulted in the incarceration of millions of people for non-violent crimes. The black markets created by these misguided policies have created incentives for violent criminal syndicates to step into these markets and make ludicrous profits. This helps finance their criminal activities that have completely destabilized countries such as Mexico and Colombia over the past two decades. The War on Drugs has also empowered the prison-industrial complex, which benefits tremendously from the increasing number of prisoners they can get from the criminalization of drug use. Likewise, the drug war has resulted in the militarization of police departments and has diverted law enforcement resources that would otherwise be used to combat violent crimes. It has also led to heinous violations of civil liberties across the board. Drug problems used be handled through the community instead of through coercion, as practically all drugs were legal during the 19th century. Ending the drug war would incentivize voluntary civil society institutions to tackle these problems on a local level.

5. Restore Free Markets in Education: There is no doubt that education costs have skyrocketed the past decades, but that has been the result of government intervention in the education. The antidote to this disease is a free market in education. Abolishing the Department of Education would be a great start. Parents should be able to choose from private schools, religious schools, apprenticeships, homeschooling co-ops, and online education programs like Academic Earth and Khan Academy. In a free market for education, the customers are the parents and children, and they have the money and means to choose the education that they want instead of the government controlling what they will get. This system would also empower teachers to set up their own schools and become entrepreneurs in education, which would enable the latest innovations in educational services to be more readily available to the general public. Likewise, in the higher education sector markets must also be allowed to function. Some of the largest misallocations in human capital occur in higher education and this has resulted from outdated models of education that benefit tenured professors and administrators and the push for making college education a “right” for all. To solve this, top-down accreditation agencies should be abolished and instead let the market create more market-oriented rating agencies that send signals to consumers about which educational institutes provide the best services at the lowest cost. With education going the online route, you will start to see the medieval era model of education turn into a more open-source model of education that allows for everyone to have access to even the most esoteric forms of knowledge at very little to no cost.

6. Restore Free Markets in Health Care: The American Medical Association, which for almost 150 years has effectively cartelized the allocation of medical resources, and government involvement in the insurance industry has resulted in the rising costs of healthcare. To solve this problem, there must be a free market in drugs where people can freely import from foreign countries and not have to worry about cumbersome bureaucracies like the FDA preventing potentially lifesaving medicine from entering the market. In a system of free market healthcare, instead of the FDA there would be competing drug certifying companies on the market relying entirely on their reputation for good testing since they would not be backed by the state. Individual doctors, patients and insurers will decide which certifying agencies they trust and which they do not. Other reforms would include removing the state monopoly on medical licensing which would allow for competing businesses or nonprofits to provide certification. Shorter patent terms on drugs and medical technology would also help tremendously. This would enable producers to learn from each other’s research at a faster rate, thus allowing for an increase in the supply of vital drugs and devices while accelerating the overall pace of research.

7. Revert to a Non-interventionist Foreign Policy: With hundreds of bases in over 150 countries, the United States is completely overstretched. The U.S must close down all these bases and end the War on Terror in order to truly bring about peace and prosperity. The political establishment’s pursuit of foreign policy interventionism over the past 50 years has resulted in the loss of countless American lives and civil liberties. It has also led to the creation of a “vampire economy” in which the military complex sucks out a substantial amount of wealth in the economy that would otherwise be put into more productive sectors of the economy. By ending these wars and closing down these bases, there would be a major economic stimulus, as taxpayers dollars that are usually spent on military projects would actually go back to the average American’s pockets to be spent on more productive sectors of the economy that have actual demand.

8. End Coercive Taxation: The income tax and other federal taxes have enabled the US government to explode into an enormous Bismarckian warfare/welfare state. These revenue generating mechanism have created a gigantic trough of money readily available to corrupt politicians to spend to their heart’s content. By the same token, these taxes are immoral and allow for the government to arbitrarily pick between which groups to plunder and which groups to dole out the taxpayer funded goodies. All of these taxes should be abolished. The federal government must only generate money from user fees and reasonable excise taxes. When the government can generate tons of revenue, it can also spend out the wazoo, especially on misguided foreign policy and social welfare programs. The beast must be put on a diet.

9. Let Young People Opt out of Entitlement Programs: Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid have created a total social welfare boondoggle where young people will get the short end of the stick. As the baby boomer’s retire en masse, young people face the daunting task of footing the bill for their parent’s social programs. Not only is this immoral, but it will create massive tax burdens for the younger generations. Young people should be allowed to opt-out of these programs and actually take ownership of their savings without depending on the state. As more and more youth opt out, these programs will eventually be gradually phased out.

10. Restructure Business Incorporation: If we want to truly create a separation of corporation and state, there must be a push towards a more organic, free market manner of incorporating business. It is no surprise how even the smallest government interaction with business gives the government the opportunity completely get involved in business. All forms limited liability should be conducted contractually as opposed to the traditional top-down model of incorporating companies. All government sponsored liability caps should be done away with. Ultimately, there would be credit rating agencies to guide investors in knowing which companies would protect their investments the best. These institutions could also incorporate these companies through market means so that they can partake in interstate commerce. The only legitimate government involvement with these type of businesses should be court related with regards to dealing with contracts and torts. The goal is to essentially remove the government imposed corporate veil and look for market alternatives independent of the state to form businesses and handle liability and risk.

We are proud to announce that Texas Young Americans for Liberty with the help of Libertarian Longhorns were able to receive 1st place in the 2011 Constitution Week Activism Contest! We were awarded a $500 activism grant for our efforts.

What a great way to start the activism year off!!

You can see the full details of the plan here, or you can download a PDF. Here are some of the high notes:

Spending and Entitlement Programs

The Paul budget cuts $1 trillion in the first year of his presidency, including complete evaporation of the Departments of Energy, Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Commerce, Interior, and Education. Finally, a Republican who actually wants to abolish the wretched DOEs (both of them)! Ending foreign wars provides most of the cuts in this category. Spending returns to 2006 levels within a year (not enough, in my opinion, but a good start).

The plan provides for preservation of existing Medicaid and other welfare programs for the time being, but more importantly allows people to opt out! Considering that I no ZERO people, libertarian or not, who expect to receive a cent back from what they pay into Medicare/Medicaid/Social Security this is a godsend.

Taxes

Paul’s plan lowers the corporate tax rate to 15%, which is down from around 40%. The USA has one of the highest corporate tax rates out there and it is one of the many reasons for the declining industrial economy here. All of the Bush tax cuts remain (one of the few good things Bush ever did) and the Death Tax is abolished. Ends taxes on personal savings, allowing families to build a nest egg.

Regulation

ObamaCare, Dodd-Frank, and Sarbanes-Oxley will be scrapped, thank goodness. Not really a surprise, of course, because these monstrous regulatory devices are easily some of the most destructive mandates in recent years.  The report also says, “President Paul will also cancel all onerous regulations previously issued by Executive Order.” Hopefully by “onerous” he means almost everything.

Monetary Policy

The Federal Reserve, of course, will get a full audit, exposing the government banksters’ fraud and deception forced upon the world. Gold may not be made official money yet, but this is the best start you can hope for.

Conclusion

All this being said, as an abolitionist I would be remiss to point out that this budget does not go far enough, for three reasons. First, why are certain departments, like defense, seeing nominal increases in spending after the major cuts year on year? If the plan is to drill down the size of government, I wouldn’t expect to see any department or program see increases over the years. And no, I don’t think that inflation-adjusted numbers should count. I don’t get a raise just because my money is worth less, and neither should the government.

Second, unless I missed it then why on earth is the income tax not eliminated on day one? Has that not been a pretty important point of Paul’s message from the beginning? Would somebody correct me please?

Third, why stop here with the cuts? There are plenty more departments to eliminate, bureaucratic orgs to eradicate, and government waste to incinerate. Never rest on your laurels, strike the root! Now, I grant that, while comprehensive, this plan is not written on stone tablets. Ron probably would love to do more, but in such a publication as this you must nail down the essentials rather than write every detail you can. So, kudos to the Paul campaign for putting forward a good plan.

Again, you can check out the full plan here.

I hear there is another major money bomb coming up, called Black This Out. If you support this plan, perhaps you should consider donating?

Imagine having an insatiable thirst; you must continue to drink to stay alive. It’s necessary for you to seek out proper hydration as you see fit, by finding clean water. Every day you have to spend time finding the source of your hydration, and when you find it, you store it in a bucket. This works well because you can carry more than you can consume in one sitting. Because of the liquid you save, you can be sure that you will have some for the rest of the day, and maybe for the next morning before you go search for more.

Imagine, now, that this bucket has a small leak. Instead of being able to spend the rest of your day working as you please, you might have to make another trip to find water. Maybe you must take two extra trips, and those trips still won’t save enough water for the morning. It is obvious that this leak makes life more difficult for you; more of your time must be diverted toward satisfying this need. The leak costs you in terms of the productivity you could engage in if your bucket was sound. Because part of your wealth is constantly draining, you must spend more of your time replenishing it.

Wouldn’t life be harder if money worked that way too? It seems that many people don’t know, or don’t understand that it does. The supply of US dollars is constantly expanding, meaning that your share of the wealth is constantly dwindling. The central bank of the United States, better known as the Federal Reserve, has a mandate to 1) maintain stable prices and 2) maximize employment. How does increasing the supply of money do either of these things? Obviously unemployment numbers are pretty high, and the only way in which prices can be considered stable is that they are stably increasing. The price of a movie ticket in 1939 was 23 cents. $1 in 1970 equaled the purchasing power of $5.61 in 2010. In fact, since creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913, the US dollar has lost 96% of its value. Basically, a $1 bill in 1913 was worth slightly more than a $20 bill today. I assume you haven’t received a check for all the wealth the Federal Reserve has siphoned off from you.

What if the ground was a treadmill that ran 1mph in the opposite direction of wherever you were going? It would make things more difficult, and take longer to get to your destination. In the same way, our economy is constantly struggling against a similar force.

A family with a new born baby attempting to save for college must deal with inflation when calculating how much they need to save to pay for their child’s education. The wealth lost from inflation may be exactly the amount that the same family falls short of their goal. Would it not be an immense stimulus to the economy to simply stop the treadmill, plug the leak, return to sound money? I challenge you to ask whomever you deem eligible, why do we have to keep printing money?

We received a great response from the UT student body and drew in a diverse crowd of people around our wall. From Conservatives to Anarcho-Syndicalists, students from all over the political spectrum voiced their thoughts and opinions on our wall. We were definitely popular in the eyes of our fellow students.

We also used this event as a recruitment drive opportunity and a way to get people to sign our petitions to bring Ron Paul on campus. We were very successful in getting over hundreds of signatures for our petition and got dozens of emails for  our mailing lists. Even amongst people who disagreed with our principles there was great interest in our groups’ activities and a potential campus visit by Ron Paul. Overall, this event was a slam-dunk in terms of promoting our groups to the rest of the UT campus.

Yesterday, the US Department of Justice waltzed into the Texas Capitol with a letter to the Lt. Governor, saying that if Texas passes the HB 1937 “patdown” bill, which bans government officials from legalized molestation as a condition for entering a public building or airplane (and which, by the way, I helped write), that they will respond by turning Texas into the TSA equivalent of a no-fly zone.

Unfortunately, the Senate may be caving. But you can help! The best thing you can do right now is encourage anyone and everyone you know, especially from Texas, to send phone calls and emails toward the Texas legislature telling them you support human dignity and HB 1937.

Click here to get more information, to use our 30 second contact-the-Senate form, and to find out how to call every Texas Senator. This is our “Come and Take It” moment and we have very little time, so get going!

1.  With concern to the energy industry, where do you stand on the argument that free markets will provide the most economically efficient solution possible?

Libertarians agree with this argument. Knowledge is distributed in society, and thus it is logically impossible to consolidate it into a central planning authority that can make right decisions. Only with a pricing system free from government constraints can an economically efficient solution emerge.

2. It has been argued that intervention in markets, through the imposition of subsidies, results in misallocation of resources and wastes taxpayer money. Is this true with regard to the energy industry? Why or why not?

This is absolutely true. There is no exception for the energy industry that allows it to circumnavigate the problems of economic interventionism. Thus, libertarians advocate the deregulation of the energy industry to allow for free competition, stricter enforcement of property rights to de-incentivize pollution by companies (i.e. full restitution of damages), and abolition of all industrial subsidies whether for alternative energy or traditional energy companies.

3. In regard to economic welfare and prosperity, is there a distinction to be made between what is beneficial from a social and environmental perspective, and what is beneficial from a business perspective?

There is no distinction to be made, because on a truly free market actors operate to harmonize other actors needs with their own. This is the essence of trade — that we voluntarily exchange goods and services with each other and thereby make our lives better. The social and environmental problems that arise are primarily the result of governments not enforcing property rights, such as permitting pollution that hurts people or stealing people’s rightfully owned property with eminent domain.

4. In economic language a good is said to have a negative externality when the private cost to producers or consumers do not reflect the total social costs resulting from the production or consumption of the good.
a) Would you consider climate change to constitute a negative externality tied to the production and consumption of energy?
b) If so, what is your position regarding the efficacy of alternative energy subsidies in dealing with the problem of climate change?
c) Are there alternative solutions to the problem of climate change and the externality problem more generally?

Assuming that climate change is anthropogenic (you’ll have to forgive me, as a scientist I am inherently skeptical), it is indeed possible for it to constitute a negative externality, but as with all negative externalities it is caused by a lack of adequate property rights protections. See my recent peer-reviewed work on transportation pollution.

Given that climate change is a negative externality, that still does not indicate that the government should tax either corporations or individuals in order to provide monies for alternative energy subsidies. If climate change truly is an issue of property rights violations, than this provides a super-incentive for energy producers to be investing into alternative energy research from the outset, and need no subsidies to motivate them.

Finally, as many scientists have noted, especially Bjorn Lomborg, climate change may have positive externalities as well as negatives. How are you going to determine which to focus on?

The most general solution that I can proffer, and that I promote in my peer-reviewed article, is to get back to strict property rights enforcement via nuisance laws and pollution laws. In other words, damage someone’s property and you pay them restitution.

5. Can alternative energy incentives be an effective tool for reducing dependence on foreign oil? Why or why not?

If by incentives you mean subsidies, then I would say NO. Subsidies tend to discourage competition on the free market for such goods and services.

6. A separate solution to subsidizing alternative energy would be to tax carbon dioxide emissions. The implementation of a “carbon tax” could bring the private costs of CO2 intensive energy more closely in line with total resulting social costs, and thus make alternative energy more competitive with conventional production methods.  Where do you weigh in on the implementation of a carbon tax as opposed to subsidization of alternative energy or reliance on the free market?

On the carbon tax question, I would answer absolutely not! Given the hazards of interventionism as outlined above, carbon taxes are completely and utterly useless toward actually accomplishing anything given politicians and the laws of economics. Carbon taxes will not work and never will work.

7.        Which values have served you best, in your analysis of whether financial incentives for alternative energy are desirable?

I’m not entirely sure what you mean in this question, but if you are asking what informs my views the most on this issue then I would say economic law. Trying to circumvent the laws of economics in this arena is like trying to defeat gravity by throwing things up in the air. It is patently impossible.