Laissez faire
Laissez-Nous Faire
Monday, December 1st, 2008Laissez faire means literally “Let do,” but it translates into “Let us do as we please.”
Embellished history has it that the term laissez faire was coined in 1680, during a meeting between Jean-Baptiste Colbert, the French finance minister, and a group of businessmen. Colbert had asked these men how the government could best help the [...]
Water, Water Everywhere, Nor Any Drop To Drink
Saturday, November 15th, 2008The most obvious place to begin any real discussion of water is in pointing out that right now on planet earth, water in its potable form is about the most abundant resource there is.
No one even passingly acquainted with the subject seriously disputes this.
In the words of water specialist Fredrik Segerfeldt: “Water is a finite [...]
The Redheaded Slut of Political Theory
Saturday, November 8th, 2008Now that the people of these United States have proven beyond all reasonable doubt that, in fact, empty rhetoric can completely control their minds, it seems as good a time as any to lay out, in very fundamental terminology, what the science of economics actually is — all the more so since Barack Obama, like [...]
Inspirational Quotes From Barack Obama’s Memoirs
Saturday, November 1st, 2008My grandmother was a typical white person (Barack Obama, 2008).
In 1995, Barack Obama published a book entitled Dreams From My Father — A Story of Race and Inheritance. This book is a memoir of sorts, poorly written — or, rather, ghostwritten — by Obama’s friend, the neo-Marxist terrorist William Ayers.
What follows are a few of [...]
Drilling For Oil and Building Highways: more energy efficient (by far) than bicycles
Sunday, October 26th, 2008Based upon mountains of faulty data, the Institute for Local Self-Reliance and its many off-shoots advocate now as a “solution to the fossil fuel problem” the return to so-called “carbohydrate economies.”
This sort of economy essentially consists of families, communes, or small groups doing their own farming; re-enacting, to some extent, the barter system; high [...]
Bailout
Wednesday, October 8th, 2008Mercantilism is the system of securing special economic favors from government.
Capitalism is the system of private ownership of the means of production and the primacy of the individual over the group.
Mercantilism is in every significant way the exact opposite of laissez-faire capitalism.
Most businessmen today are not capitalists — insofar as they seek, demand, and [...]
Can laissez faire handle pollution and climate?
Monday, September 15th, 2008The United States is still the world’s most prosperous nation, and there is still no need to dwell upon this fact because, for the most part, it’s still uncontested.
The point is worth reiterating, however, if only because it stresses a fact which has been touched upon in a previous article. That fact is this:
So long [...]
Drugs
Wednesday, September 10th, 2008Everyone, for the most part, believes in “freedom” — that is, until everyone finds out what freedom in practice actually means. Then almost no one believes in it.
Rightwing politicos and leftwing politicos don’t of course usually agree on specifics, but they do often agree on principle: namely, that government’s proper sphere of authority does [...]