Michael Moore and Ron Paul about Capitalism
Michael Moore is an interesting man, in his new movie Capitalism: A Love Story is explained the root of capitalism, of course, this all just for 9.99$. I bet Michael’s next movie will be about “How capitalistic McDonald made me look this way”.
Ok without sarcasm I think he made a nice movie in order to make as much money as possible, which is interesting because this places him to the role of common greedy capitalist. He is definitely not an “independent” movie maker as he often like to present.
This is all ok, there has been many bad commercial movies, but Michael actually even did not get the meaning of Capitalism, such a basic error when the movie is supposed to describe capitalism. I understand there can be more “schools of capitalism”. But I do not think that schools which refuse bailouts, central banking and so on would be small. There are actually even politicians who got it right!
It is interesting that Michael later even admitted that we do not have a free market or capitalism. Notice that he complains about companies which want to take our choices, but in other way he want to take people’s choice about healthcare. If consistency is the basic for logic then he is definitely not consistent.
Now Michael tell me, how many times more have you earned with your new movie than the average employee?
Internet Access as a Legal Right?
Your neighbour just came to a small visit, he noticed your internet connection and realized “I want that too”. Yes he can choose some internet provider, he can find ideal speed/price ratio for him and apply for a connection. But that’s outdated, at least in Finland it is. Finland has become first country in the world having internet access as a legal right.
So instead of choosing an internet provider he will use his “right to the internet” and government makes the rest. I bet they will tax you, using your money for that connection, but it really doesn’t matter, doesn’t it?
CNN says that it is view shared by the United Nations, I think it is great. Dear United Nations what about my right to space flight, right to car, right to an island in pacific?
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, article 3rd says:
Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.
So stop taking people’s money, their property, product of their work their supplies which serves as instrument of personal security. Where are you going to take all the money from? I have not noticed that the Finnish government or the UN would be profitable institutions.
Murray Rothbard in his book the Ethics of Liberty with a reference to Franz Oppenheimer says:
There are only two means to the acquisition of wealth. One is the method of production, generally followed by voluntary exchange of such products: this is what Oppenheimer called the economic means. The other method is the unilateral
seizure of the products of another: the expropriation of another man's property by violence. This predatory method of getting wealth Oppenheimer aptly termed the political mean
Welcome in the world when violence is used for a “good” purpose, everyone needs the Internet!
Americans are not in Iraq due to Oil
There has been many theories that Americans invaded Iraq due to Oil revenues, my problem is that the Iraqi oil revenues cannot cover the costs of war at all, so all those theories are based on the idea that they cannot do elementary math in Washington?
Americans are in Iraq because oil profits will pay everything
source of numbers is here
The USA would have to withdraw Iraq now and control all the Iraqi oil production for at least 140 years to cover all its direct costs and more than 500 years to cover total costs!
The Iraqi oil profits cannot pay the total war costs at all.
Americans attacked Iraq because Hussein did not want to use the dollar anymore
Buying power of the Iraqi oil is absolutely minimal compared to the whole American economy, there is also dozens of countries with bigger economy using dollar (China, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Hong-Kong).
Or take a look at Kuwait, which is a larger economy than Iraq and stopped using the USD and Kuwaiti dinar has been re-pegged to a basket of currencies.
1 – Iraq war costs source – Reuters
2 – Iraqi oil revenues (the biggest annual revenue in the history – 2008) – Energy Information Administration
3 – Iraqi oil profits – my estimate based on profits of large OPEC companies - OPEC
Rumors about Replacing the Dollar in the Crude Oil Market
Today there appeared some speculations on the Independent that Arab states started a deal with Russia, France and China about replacing the USD in the crude oil market. However the rumors has been after a while completely denied by all supposed participants.
This is not a new thing, a year ago I pointed out that behind the peak oil price was actually the value of the dollar and as a proof I have shown the oil price nominated in gold which is much more stable.
This oil-dollar peg has been point of many conspiracy theories that the USA controls all those countries and forces them to use the dollar. Which is, of course, as the most of conspiracy theories a non sense.
Anyone can trade a crude oil in any currency he want to, using the FX market (spot conversion is a matter of seconds). And anyone can calculate the crude oil price in any currency, using basic math of the elementary school level.
So why all of them has used the dollar? Because it was really profitable for them. And because it does not seems that good anymore, there are some talks about changing the dollar leading position.
Consider this, The Saudi Monetary Agency gained more than 1 trillion Saudi ryials (cca 260 billions USD) just in 6 years due to the USD peg. All those money are saved somewhere all around the world, owned by someone in the government. (SAMA annual report, page 46). The same goes for China which gained much much more.
So talks about forcing someone are nonsense, non-US governments will use the USD as long as it is profitable. When it stop being profitable they will simply switch to something different, which is China doing now, so far it has not been much successful.
UPDATE: Just realized that behind this report is 9/11 “Truther” Robert Fisk, that explains all thought
Hard Irish Yes For Europe
Opinions change, this has been the core idea of the Irish referendum about the Treaty of Lisbon. The Irish once said no, but because it was politically incorrect they’ve made a new referendum next year. That’s the democracy of the 21st century – vote as long until it passes.
I love free move across the whole Europe, I love possibility to work anywhere in Europe without any limitation, but this is not the European Union, it is The Schengen Agreement. The European Union was created in order to ease economic cooperation across the European countries, but it has changed, it want to centralize and control Europe now.
I don’t want to pay another “European” bureaucrats in Brussels or Strasbourg, when I see all the bureaucrats here in my country I am really enough satisfied with them. I really don’t need to know how does the real banana looks like according to the EU. I really don’t need those 11 pages of articles just for banana market.
all the days they work on the banana formula there
The Irish referendum was probably the last chance how to stop them and how to stop centralization of Europe. Yes the Czech and the Polish president haven’t signed it yet, but they will as they are under heavy pressure from local governments.
But maybe the really really last change will be the British Conservative party which promised to make a referendum in Britain, unfortunately I don’t think it will change something. Decision has already been made, we do(not) need that treaty.
A Lesson On Freedom Of Association From New Zealand
Yesterday, Sir Roger Douglas had a speech about the Education Amendment Bill in the New Zealand Parliament. He greatly argued that in a free society an individual is free of association on all levels, including military service, labour unions or compulsory education.
The goal of a free society is to minimize violence, that’s why all forced associations must be abolished or at least very limited regardless how glorious their usefulness sounds.
By the way I’ve been quite surprised by huge money waste in this student associations on public universities, especially when New Zealand is ranked by Transparency International on the second best place in corruption and transparency level in the world.
He got it right
“They stole students money … They stole your money”
I cannot imagine how huge amounts are being wasted in different countries. I wish there were more politicians like Sir Roger Douglas.
Dogma versus Atheism
I’ve just seen this 2 years old British documentary which criticized atheism. Rod Liddle who is a moderator of the documentary also accused atheism of being same dogmatic as religion, comparing it to the regime of Soviet Union.
I consider myself as an atheist, and because atheism is the opposite of theism, meaning it is lack of belief therefore it does not mean I must necessarily refuse any higher creator (for example some race of Aliens who just study us as humans study ants). I don’t have a problem with this, but I think that creator as is described by Abrahamic religions simply cannot exists. Regardless to my evidences – this article is not about them, but about dogmas.
I don’t know why Rod Liddle suggested that connection to science and theory of evolution gave Hitler a moral apology for his actions (wasn’t Hitler a believer?). In fact if had Hitler used science he would be never able to do what he did. Science which talks about human morality is philosophy – concretely ethics.
And it had been known before Hitler was born that what is natural was not good or moral, actually it’s a logical fallacy. No as an atheist I really don’t see Sparta style as moral.
To say that Marxism is the result of non-belief seems to me also a bit strange, because it was a blind belief that the whole worker class is exploited by capitalist or bourgeoisie.
It does not matter whether you are a victim of Mohammed’s dogma of being chosen by Allah and killed in his execution of a whole tribe or another Islamic conquest. It does not matter whether you are a victim of Christian Inquisition, Christian conquests or Crusades itself. And it also does not matter whether you are a victim of Nazi dogma of superior Aryan race or communism dogma of exploited worker class – you are the victim of a dogma and that’s it.
Faiths are to be dogmatic and that’s the point all believes have some laws which they want to apply on others or a certain area (give me a tip about some religion which doesn’t if you know it, might some secular protestant Christianity?) .
The problem of dogma compared to opinion is that opinion can be easily changed when more information is available, dogma cannot.
In the end read this small text about abolition of Slavery which some consider to be product of Christianity (of course that other religions claims their religion is also against slavery – they were just 1000s years silent)
It is certainly true that the campaign against slavery and the slave trade was greatly strengthened by devout Christians, including the Evangelical layman William Wilberforce in England and the Unitarian minister William Ellery Channing in America. But Christianity, like other great world religions, lived comfortably with slavery for many centuries, and slavery was endorsed in the New Testament. So what was different for anti-slavery Christians like Wilberforce and Channing? There had been no discovery of new sacred scriptures, and neither Wilberforce nor Channing claimed to have received any supernatural revelations. Rather, the eighteenth century had seen a widespread increase in rationality and humanitarianism that led others—for instance, Adam Smith, Jeremy Bentham, and Richard Brinsley Sheridan—also to oppose slavery, on grounds having nothing to do with religion. Lord Mansfield, the author of the decision in Somersett’s Case, which ended slavery in England (though not its colonies), was no more than conventionally religious, and his decision did not mention religious arguments. Although Wilberforce was the instigator of the campaign against the slave trade in the 1790s, this movement had essential support from many in Parliament like Fox and Pitt, who were not known for their piety. As far as I can tell, the moral tone of religion benefited more from the spirit of the times than the spirit of the times benefited from religion.
Where religion did make a difference, it was more in support of slavery than in opposition to it. Arguments from scripture were used in Parliament to defend the slave trade. Frederick Douglass told in his Narrative how his condition as a slave became worse when his master underwent a religious conversion that allowed him to justify slavery as the punishment of the children of Ham. Mark Twain described his mother as a genuinely good person, whose soft heart pitied even Satan, but who had no doubt about the legitimacy of slavery, because in years of living in antebellum Missouri she had never heard any sermon opposing slavery, but only countless sermons preaching that slavery was God’s will. With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil—that takes religion. whole text here.
I would a bit modify it: for good people to do evil that takes blind rationalization, god(s) know the best is one them. Yes faith kills reason.
How Is Bill Maher Wrong Or Actually Right?
I know that today is popular to support Obama as a symbol of change and hope compared to his not so famous predecessor. I personally did not like Bush, but it does not create any need for me to fall in love with Obama. However one of the most famous supporter of Obama is Bill Maher. I know Bill has some great points like his support to legalization of marijuana and gay marriage, but his economic thinking doesn’t attract me at all.
In one episode of his talk show he suggested that the fear “the USA is going to be socialistic” is wrong, comparing assets held by private companies and the government from bailout. Check the video on facebook.
I don’t know whether those numbers are correct or not, but M. Barofsky suggested that the limit for bailout is incredibly huge – 23,7 trillion dollars. Yes the limit won’t be reached at all and so far the USA spent just 2 trillions. But compare bailout to big American historical events.
Bill is paradoxically right, the USA is not going to be socialistic country, it already is. When government orders for what you can buy products, for what you can sell products. When it taxes more than 30% of your income and when it is going to order how you should care about your health. What it is if not socialism? I guess we should rewrite capitalism on wikipedia.
Religious Roots of Liberty
Today I have read an interesting article about roots of freedom in religions, as the article had been written by a reverend, you rightly assume that the idea of freedom is to originate in Abrahamic religions, especially in its Judeo/Christian branch.
Well I don’t want to criticize his points in a much deep way, just if we want to see some monument in Palestine from the times of Israelites what about Solomon's Temple?
In fact we should not be surprised by the fact that some parts of our political philosophy might originate in religions, they are actually first attempts of people to understand the essence of life – philosophy. Ayn Rand said in an interview for Playboy:
You must remember that religion is an early form of philosophy, that the first attempts to explain the universe, to give a coherent frame of reference to man's life and a code of moral values, were made by religion, before men graduated or developed enough to have philosophy. And, as philosophies, some religions have very valuable moral points. They may have a good influence or proper principles to inculcate, but in a very contradictory context and, on a very - how should I say it? - dangerous or malevolent base: on the ground of faith.
Yes Religions stand behind the first ethical and sociological values and we also can find in them similarities to philosophy of liberty. But classical liberalism should not be used as “propaganda” for confirmation of truthfulness of each religion.
Liberal Hindu or Buddhist can find reason for liberty in his religion texts, Chinese liberal fighting against oppressive communist government will use his books of Taoism and Muslims are today convinced that the European Renaissance has been imported to Europe due to Islamic philosophers like Ibn Rushd and that founder of liberal economics is Ibn Khaldun.
Whether or not we should also realize how has been religions effectively fighting against human liberty, in response to Rev. Edmund A. Opitz:
Collectivist regimes, in the nature of things, must be profoundly irreligious, even to the extent of pressing a corrupted religion into service to shore up tyranny. via Mises.com
No they don’t, irreligious regimes based on the human reason and proclaiming liberty can be put into practice as easily as religious regimes. As well basics of religious and irreligious regimes (faith and reason) can be easily stolen and used as an instrument of oppression.
Contribution to classical liberalism should not be associated to any particular religion group, but to few individuals who by their thoughts gave to the humanity a chance to prosper. The forefather of classical liberalism John Locke in fact opposed the classical Christian philosophy valid at that time.
In the end I will quote Steven Weinberg, a theoretical physicist challenging the classical idea that Christianity played a huge role in abolishment of slavery:
Where religion did make a difference, it was more in support of slavery than in opposition to it. Arguments from scripture were used in Parliament to defend the slave trade. Frederick Douglass told in his Narrative how his condition as a slave became worse when his master underwent a religious conversion that allowed him to justify slavery as the punishment of the children of Ham. Mark Twain described his mother as a genuinely good person, whose soft heart pitied even Satan, but who had no doubt about the legitimacy of slavery, because in years of living in antebellum Missouri she had never heard any sermon opposing slavery, but only countless sermons preaching that slavery was God’s will. With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil—that takes religion. see the whole great piece here
It is not about any religion it is about basic realization of violence and injustice.
In Defence of Pigs in Egypt
Recently I have read some posts of a typical pan-Arab ignoring some basic historical facts. And one her article came to my mind more closely, no I am not going to comment her fascistic attitude towards the Israeli Channel 2 as it has been already done by Carl from Jerusalem:
we would welcome Egyptians and Egyptian television to come here and 'return the favor' but they have no interest in doing so. – see the rest here
But about the funny, not so much for pigs, swine mass murder. Well I understand that some religion can convince people to stop using their reason, it is actually the basics of all faiths but let consider some scenarios/arguments.
Swine flue Epidemic Will Start
If this is going to happen it is a little bit late to kill all the pigs, we simply missed our chance, actually if this was really happened it would have instantaneous effect on economy and mainly on food production. As I pointed before just now without any crisis in Egypt dies about 60 000 kids annually due to very poor economical development. Now imagine a “defcon 1” situation when the food would became enormously limited resource, I bet many Muslims would then thank god for pigs, oh yes they could choose paradise instead.
Government Will Pay For Them
Why I always think, when I hear government’s great solution, that something is wrong here?
The Egyptian Government has allocated 1/2 billion pound to compensate the pigs raisers, I must hint that the poultry raisers have not recieved a penny from the government on their losses in the outbreak of H5N1 and the government already ignores compensating them – via Zeinboia
Well Egypt is known as inflation paradise country, currently practising Mugabe’s money theorem. Have you ever heard about the bubble in the USA? So one of the main reason was Mr. Allan Greenspan who were inflating M2 for 4,5% annually. Now guess what? For Egypt is not a problem to have 14% growth in bad times. I guess they are lucky that during Sadat’s and Nasser’s rule there were no statistics as would realise that Mubarak is not that bad.
Just for example in last decade Egyptian Pound lost more than 60% of its value to the Czech Crown – a currency of the country which national food contains pork and national drink is beer.
Fiat money compensation does not solve anything, it creates more problems and does harm the real economy!
Act of Prevention
Oh yes such a common utilitarian argument that from this action will benefit the whole society.
I am definitely, those dirty pigs should be eliminated as soon as possible ,we can’t jeopardize the life of millions for no good reason. – via Zeinboia
She has also provided us with a report about victims of Swine flue from the Minister of Health in Egypt.
Dear Zeinobia for last 6 years swine flue killed 260 people, Islamic terrorism has in the same time killed more than 100 000 people. And victims of Islamic Conquests are estimated to be more than 100 millions, there is one much bigger thing you can do for the case of humanity – stop being a Muslim.
Yes utilitarian arguments are stupid, but not always it must look so clearly anyway as we know human stupidity is endless so kill the pigs.
P.S. kill all chimpanzees, gorillas, and forest antelopes in Africa spreading Ebola, a virus 10 times more deadly than flu. Kill all Guinea-Bissaus and Gabons for spreading the H.I.V., in the end kill all the birds for the birds flu.
What could go wrong indeed.
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