Liberal Vision

American Professor starts “Coffee Party” movement

Ok, he hasn’t actually started a “Coffee Party” movement, but he has written a blog post.

In his hypothetical half-serious 10-point manifesto, the excellent Bill Easterly proposes a tolerant, liberal agenda.

Among their policies and ideals, the Coffee Party…

• …”likes free trade”
• …recognises “tax-bloated government”
• …proposes “ending the War on Drugs”
• …”hates xenophobia towards immigrants”, specifically when “aimed at particular trading partners, falsely blamed for our economic woes.”
• …believes that “ALL ‘are by nature equally free and independent,’ and have ‘inalienable rights, among them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,’ men and women, blacks and whites, gays and straights, immigrants and natives, Christians and Muslims, citizens and foreigners, rich and poor.”

Surely this is something the LDs should support and emulate. Or at least it would be if it actually existed.

Must Reads: Military Keynesianism and Government Failure

Two brilliant articles have surfaced recently. One by the excellent Freeman Magazine pointing out, quite rightly, that American Conservatives are actually Military Keynesians and in surprising agreement with them is Keynesian Economist Paul Krugman. They advocate spending a ludicrous amount on Defense, in a manner wholly unrelated to foreign policy and defend it even if it’s so obviously for the purposes of gerrymandering (e.g. Rep. So-and-so has a military base in his district) under the pretense that anything that keeps America safer is a good thing.

But this brings us to the issue of the Tea Party. If this highly diverse and scattered group of (justifiably) angry economic liberals are not just Conservatives by another name then they surely will speak out in the loudest terms about America’s bloated Defense budget:

So listen up tea partiers! Slashing military spending will not only shrink government and help put us on a path to fiscal responsibility while stripping unaccountable, fat-cat defence contractors of hundreds of billions in corporate welfare. It will also strip foreigners, many of whom speak ridiculous languages, of large defence subsidies paid out of your pocket! What’s not to love?

I don’t quite know what to think about the Tea Party movement yet but I imagine wasteful and counter-productive policies like the Defense budget and drug prohibition with prove whether they are really true economic liberals or disgruntled Republicans by another name.

My second article was originally published in 2008 but is just so funny, I thought – since it was doing the rounds – I’d post it again. 5 Government Programs That Backfired Horrifically . Any article that contains this observation:

Have you ever tried to make steel at home? Does that seem like a retardedly impossible thing to do? Congratulations, you are smarter than Chairman Mao.

Must be read and revisited often.

Enjoy.

Sound Money & The 10 Minute Rule Bill

If you haven’t heard of the Cobden Centre then I strongly recommend you check them out.

Named after Richard Coben, one of the most significant Liberal Party figures of the 19th Century, the Cobden Centre is a pressure group that lobbies for honest money and banking reform.

The Cobden Centre is also enthusiastically dedicated to providing education and resources for those interested in Austrian Economics subsequently their website is a treasure trove for any inquiring mind.

Founded by entrepreneur Toby Baxendale earlier this year, the centre has gone from strength to strength rapidly and is certainly a group to watch. Earlier this week Baxendale delivered some hard truths to the bankers whilst speaking in support of the Ten Minute Rule Bill: “Bankers have behaved like Welfare dependents. They exist on £ billion handouts – to fix a credit bubble they had a big role in creating. To preserve free market economics, we need to rediscover honest money.”

The Ten Minute Rule Bill would require banks to obtain consent from depositors before using funds in what critics regard as little more than a legalised pyramid scheme: the lending of the same money up to 35 times in the UK. Mr Baxendale said:

“A survey commissioned by the Cobden Centre this summer showed that a clear majority of people believe they own the money they have deposited at the bank. They do not. In fact, we are creditors to the bank’s debts, not depositors of our money for safekeeping.

“It is this sleight of hand by the banks which allows the public to be misled about the true state of our banking system. In fact, the banks are insolvent the moment we decide to withdraw ‘our’ money. This excellent Private Members Bill would force banks to ask account holders if they want their funds lent out for risky ventures or simply held on deposit.

“Since the credit crunch hit us, economists have often struggled to explain how and why it happened. Conventional wisdom is still trying to blame so-called “market failure” or insufficient regulation. Now is the time to listen to those economists who argue that the credit crunch was caused by the credit glut that preceded it. And that oversupply of credit was caused by the ability of big banks – crony capitalists – to treat other people’s money as their own”.

Do they learn NOTHING?

Here’s a very informative little vid from the good people over at Reason detailing moves in the US to outlaw Menthol cigarettes:

The move to ban Menthols, and other ”flavoured smokes”, marks the transition to an outright ban on the sale of cigarettes. But I’m just astonished that politicians are moving in this direction.

DO THEY LEARN NOTHING?

I’ll say it again.

DO THEY LEARN NOTHING?

When has prohibition ever worked? It hasn’t/still isn’t. So why are we even going down this path? Looks like the 2020s are going to be marked with prohibition just like the 1920s was. And once again it will end in failure and costly procedures to have the legislation repealed. Politicians are stupid and Government is a joke.

Freedom, but only for Jesus-loving ‘Murcans

The 9/11 attacks were coined an “attack on our freedoms” both in the USA and in other parts of the West (like here). This seemed like reasonable rhetoric, at least until the US government came up with the Patriot Act and a variety of plans to drop a load of bombs on people in the Middle East.

The latest sadly ironic post-9/11 assault on freedom involves the reactionary opposition to some community centre in New York which will apparently include a mosque. This has widely been reported as a plan to “build a mosque on ground zero”, yet as this blog post shows, the mosque isn’t even that close to ground zero:

To borrow Big Apple parlance, the mosque is “two blocks” away. Presumably some flats/shops/offices in that area even include people called Mohammed.