"But true Socialism has never been tried" | Robert Higgs

Robert Higgs on the argument that 'true socialism has never been tried' :

"Of course, but the accusation is not sound. Not only has every actually-implemented socialist setup been a disaster, but socialism is intrinsically flawed for reasons spelled out by Mises and Hayek. A true market system is something we know from sound theory can work well, whereas a true socialist system is something we know from sound theory cannot work well. Even the corrupted market systems actually adopted have vastly outperformed the socialist systems actually adopted. "Real" socialism would be a disaster just as much as, if not more than, half-assed socialism like that of the USSR, China, and other places."

Democracy as Participatory Fascism

Astute socialists (if that’s not an oxymoron) opt for participatory fascism, not outright socialism, in practice.

They know that outright socialism—the nationalization and central control of all the major means of production—is a ruinous system. By opting for participatory fascism, they can get the bulk of what they seek, by means of pervasive regulation, heavy taxation, and floods of government spending, while allowing the fettered capitalists enough room for maneuver that they keep the economy from going straight to hell.

Moreover, when anything goes wrong—and it will—they can blame the problem on capitalism, the fraudulently so-called free-market economy that remains in hobbled operation.

- Robert Higgs

The Private Production of Defense

Hans Hoppe takes on the most difficult subject in economic and political theory: the provision of security. He argues that the service is better provided by free markets than government, while addressing a hundred counter-arguments. Here we have an important updating of an argument rarely made even in the libertarian tradition.

"Without the erroneous public perception and judgment of the state as just and necessary and without the public’s voluntary cooperation, even the seemingly most powerful government would implode and its powers evaporate. Thus liberated, we would regain our right to self-defense and be able to turn to freed and unregulated insurance agencies for efficient professional assistance in all matters of protection and conflict resolution." —Hans-Hermann Hoppe

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Low Wage Helps Low-Skilled Workers

"There is no inherent reason why low-skilled or high-risk employees are any less employable than high-skilled, low-risk employees. Someone who is five times as valuable to an employer is no more or less employable than someone who is one-fifth as valuable, WHEN THE PAY DIFFERENCES REFLECT THEIR DIFFERENCES IN BENEFITS TO THE EMPLOYER.

This is MORE THAN A THEORETICAL POINT. Historically, lower skill levels did not prevent black males from having labor force participation rates higher than that of white males for every US Census from 1890 through 1930. Since then, the general growth of wage-fixing arrangements: minimum wage laws, labor unions, civil service pay scales, etc. has reversed that and made more and more blacks unemployable despite their rising levels of education and skills: absolutely and relative to whites."

"In short, no one is employable or unemployable absolutely, BUT ONLY RELATIVE TO A GIVEN PAY SCALE."

"Workers compete against other workers (not employers) to find jobs and get the highest wages. Employers compete against other employers to find the best workers. In other words, low-skilled workers compete against high-skilled workers in the labor market. LOW-SKILLED WORKERS WHO WOULD BE EMPLOYABLE AT A LOW WAGE BECOME UNEMPLOYABLE AT AN ARTIFICIALLY HIGHER WAGE. And that explains the perverse cruelty of minimum wage laws: it inflicts the greatest harm on the very workers it is allegedly designed to help."

https://www.aei.org/economics/thomas-sowell-on-the-cruelty-of-minimum-wage-laws/

Herd mentality: A Psychological Tactic in Politics

Excerpted from:
Against the State: An Interview with Lew Rockwell

By John W. Whitehead

The Rutherford Institute

September 25, 2014

QUESTION: Government is theater. Would you agree?

LEW ROCKWELL: Yeah, a bloody theater, a terrible theater, but it is a theater, and they know it. They know this is how to appease the people.

QUESTION: Two psychologists have studied the use of words by politicians in recent years. The most used word now by politicians in America is the word “we.” The use of this word actually gets people to form into a group where essentially they stop thinking. That is connected to the theater concept of controlling people, and I guarantee you that the government hires behaviorists and psychologists, and they study how to manipulate people. What do you think about that?

LEW ROCKWELL: I remember one of the critics of the Nazis saying that it is an indication of totalitarianism when politicians refer to “our children.” They are not your children. They are God’s children, and they are the parents’ children. They are not the government’s children, but the government, of course, feels they are and they want to shape them. They want to mold them and they want parents to have less and less to do with it. They want them in the public schools from 6 to 6, eating all their meals there and that sort of thing. You know they are not that kind of villain, but they are, in fact, villains. Even if they seem like nice, decent people, they are actually not.

I was once in politics myself before going straight, and I can tell you they are not good people. I encountered only one man whom I thought was thoroughly good, and I had the honor of working for him eventually, and that was Ron Paul, and also the only person in politics I have ever encountered who did not have the lust to rule, the lust to dominate. Ron Paul doesn’t have that, so he was a very odd bird in politics. For him, politics was an educational mission, but most of them want to dominate. Again, most of us are not interested in running the next door neighbor’s family. We don’t want to run the next town. We don’t want to run the next country. We have enough to do with our own families, mowing our lawn, doing our job, earning enough money, and so forth, that is what we want to do. But there are people who want to run the family next door. They want to run the next town. They want to run the world.

QUESTION: So they become government officials.

LEW ROCKWELL: They go into politics.