Observations on Hayek’s Plan by Mises

Abstract: This memorandum was written at the request of Henry Hazlitt to provide Mises’s comments on and concerns about F.A. Hayek’s initial proposals for what became the Mont Pèlerin Society. Mises stresses that those who favor liberty and freedom and oppose totalitarianism must also oppose interventionism. The memo argues that those who fought and lost against the rising tide of totalitarianism at the turn of the 20th Century lost their battles because they settled for middle-of-the-road policies that conceded considerable ground to the socialists. The weak point in Professor Hayek’s plan is that it relies upon the cooperation of many men who are today’s middle-of-the-roaders. As interventionists, they may not be the hoped-for intellectual pioneers to inspire people to build a freer world.

Karachi as a province

S. Akbar Zaidi
January 11, 2014

THERE is little disagreement on the suggestion that Pakistan needs many more provinces than the existing four (five, if one includes Gilgit-Baltistan). From aspects of political economy to being able to better administer smaller units, many arguments support the idea of numerous new provinces.

The argument that more provinces would break Punjab’s hegemony over the rest of Pakistan and parts of what currently constitute Punjab itself are equally valid. A Seraiki and Hazara suba are a key requirement for the people of those regions. It has been suggested that the older 12 divisions of Pakistan, with modifications, should become provinces or autonomous administrative units. One of them was Karachi Division.

The issue of making Karachi a province is laced with emotion. Any such demand is seen as incendiary and challenges the supposed integrity of the Pakistani nation-state. Karachi’s political economy must be studied to consider whether a city of 20 million could exist as a province or even as an independent territory.

Is PDA a crime in Pakistan?

Young couples, know your rights the next time you're stopped by a cop

KARACHI: As evening falls in Karachi, Ahmed* and his girlfriend Manahil* head out on a dinner date. This wasn’t just any date, the 24-year-old wanted to surprise his girlfriend with the news that his family had agreed to their marriage. But fate had another surprise in store for them: a stark reminder of the fact that they live in Pakistan, where love costs a thing or two.

On the way back from dinner, Ahmed took a detour and stopped his car on the service road. The couple shared a kiss. “It was nothing more than that,” says Manahil. “But before we knew it, two uniformed law enforcers on a bike came out of nowhere and one put his pistol on the window,” she recalls.

Ahmed opened the door and stepped out of the car, only to be hit by the personnel on his head. “They took my partner away and took away our mobile phones and wallets,” she says.

The policemen continued to harass the young couple for almost 20 minutes. They threatened them with jail time and said they would only be released if their parents came to the police station. “I started crying. They even called me a slut,” Manahil recounts. “They took Ahmed to the nearest ATM and let us go only after taking a total Rs17,000 from us.”

Polio vaccine: Is it really as safe as the Government claims it to be?

By Karim Khan
Published: November 10, 2014

Is the Oral Polio Vaccine (OPV), which is administered to millions of children in the developing world, really safe?

Reporting on polio vaccination has secured a regular slot in major media outlets. The reporting is mostly always supportive of the vaccination campaign commonly called “polio eradication”. But is the Oral Polio Vaccine( OPV), or Sabin vaccine (named after Albert Sabin), which is administered to millions of children in the developing world, really safe? Does it have no harmful effect on human health a claimed by some doctor in a recent story?

The short answer is: no, it’s not completely safe. Not only can it cause permanent disability in some children, it actually has caused epidemics of paralysis in at least two countries – Nigeria and India. It’s been officially admitted and reported in media many a time, though the media in Pakistan tends not to talk about it or its history beyond the version endorsed by the authorities.

The most well-known (or infamous, for that matter) epidemic of the paralysis caused by the OPV happened in Nigeria in the period ranging July 2005 to June 2010. An outbreak of vaccine-derived poliovirus (VDPV) caused 315 reported cases of type 2 circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus (cVDPV2). The incident followed the use of OPV to immunise children in Nigeria where polio caused by wild poliovirus has remained endemic.

The Nigeria outbreak caused by the vaccine led Steven Wassilak of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to write a research paper on such cases. His paper titled ‘Outbreak of Type 2 Vaccine-Derived Poliovirus in Nigeria: Emergence and Widespread Circulation in an Under-immunised Population’ was published in The Journal of Infectious Diseases (2011)’. The paper noted that vaccine-caused paralytic polio is clinically indistinguishable from that caused by the wild polioviruses.

In India, which was been declared free of polio in 2013, a notable rise in cases of vaccine-induced paralysis has been reported over the past three years. Acute Flaccid Paralysis (AFP) is one of the types of permanent paralysis, and is considered as a sign of acute or debilitating polio. The incidence of AFP reportedly soared in India over the period of 1996 to 2011 with 60,000 new cases reported in 2011. Various sources have placed the number of vaccine-associated AFP cases in India variedly, but hardly anyone reported less than 45,000 cases in 2012.

The risk of paralysis and serious harm associated with OPV was indeed the reason that led most of Europe, particularity Western Europe, as well as the United States to “discontinue” the use of OPV for immunisation. The word “discontinue” is of course a euphemism for “banned” so as to linguistically benefit the OPV which is the foundation of international health projects worth hundreds of millions of dollars a year. As reported in a 2004 paper published in the Journal of American Medical Association (JAMA), all cases of polio reported in the US since 1979 were cases of Vaccine-Associated Paralytic Poliomyelitis (VAPP). That is why the vaccination policy was changed to exclusive use of inactivated vaccine for polio, called Inactive Polio Vaccine (IPV) in short, which is administered as an injection, and is significantly more expensive than OPV.

Is it the ignorance regarding both the disease and the science of the medicine that worries critical thinkers? Yes, but more so it is the lack of freedom of questioning in a country that has effectively given itself to a form of slavery by so-called non-profit international organisations that earn millions from vaccination campaigns. The recent imposition of travel restrictions on Pakistanis as “recommended” by the World Health Organisation (WHO) are more than proof of such slavery.

Worse though is the one-sided media reporting that uses language as a tool to shape voice of dissent as “propaganda” by running headlines with terms like “anti-polio” campaigns when the questions raised are in fact directed at the safety of the vaccine claimed to be effective against polio. It’s true that oral polio vaccine’s risk of causing permanent disability is reported in only a handful of cases. Most children vaccinated with it don’t show any immediate adverse effects. However, the same holds for wild poliovirus. Less than one percent of wild poliovirus cases show any symptoms of the disease and of those permanent disability is still rare. The important question is: are parents made aware of the risks significantly early to let them make an informed decision on vaccinating their child?

Source: https://blogs.tribune.com.pk

What is Bitcoin?

General Disclaimer: This is a guest post, and the website does not necessarily endorse all views presented in this article.

Imagine you have a watch. The primary purpose of your watch is to tell time. If the watch breaks, time doesn’t stop, it continues. Time continues no matter how many watches break. Time exists because space exists. Time is intangible, it cannot be physically held in your hands yet it exists. Similarly, Bitcoin exists on the internet. For as long as computers, internet or any form of peer to peer networks will exist, so will Bitcoin. Bitcoin is also intangible. You can possess it yet you cannot physically hold it. The word Bitcoin therefore is a bit ambiguous because no physical coin exists.

Whenever anything is used as a medium of exchange, it can be categorized as a currency. A currency gives people an ability or power to purchase and sell goods and services. For example, USD or PRs currency notes are an example of mediums of exchange. Bitcoin is also a medium of exchange because it is used for buying and selling goods and services. Bitcoin is strictly and completely a digital currency.

Although we never ask the questions about where the fiat currency of our country comes from but whenever conversation of Bitcoin comes up we want to know what it is. I wish that everyone asked these questions for all the currencies they use because mostly, their currency is printed out of thin air by the lousy Keynesian banking system of their country. It is further defaced with inflation and governments enjoy violent monopolies over it. I am going to give you reasons to abandon these currencies because I am about to prove it to you that Bitcoin is a much superior currency over any other fiat currency and only you have a complete control over the fruit of your labor as it should be. 

To understand Bitcoin better, let us look at its structure. Bitcoin is a unique digital currency and payment system and it can be looked at through these major categories
• Currency
• Online ledger
• & Software

When someone says that Bitcoin is a digital currency, what they mean is that Bitcoins are just accounting entries in a distributed database software called Blockchain. In other words, unique alphanumeric data stored in a database makes up Bitcoins (in reality the record of Bitcoin). Blockchain is simply a ledger. Ledger is something where records of transactions are stored or recorded on a network of computers. Blockchain ledger is distributed or shared by all Bitcoin users and miners. Whenever any amount of Bitcoin including fraction of a Bitcoin is moved from one person to another person, the transaction is recorded on the ledger and it is there forever and it is also publically viewable. Even though it is public; the name of the person who sent it and the name of the person who received it is not public information. The identity of people using bitcoins is not stored in the ledger of the Blockchian. 

Bitcoin currency is modeled after actual physical Gold. Bitcoin is decentralized and it is completely private. It is Decentralized and private because it cannot be controlled, created or destroyed by any government around the world. It is modeled after Gold because of its non-inflationary, inherent deface protection features. There will never be more than 21 million (2 karoor dus laakh) Bitcoins. Critics of Bitcoin sometimes ask how will 21 million coins be enough for 7 billion people? Among the few answers, the most important I like to state is the fact that Bitcoin can be divided in 100 million (dus karoor) pieces and anyone can own a 100 millionth of a Bitcoin (.00000001). As the demand and use of Bitcoin will increase, so will the purchasing power and value of Bitcoin compared to other currencies. 

To clarify, Bitcoin is not a company or a factory that produces currency. It is a digitally distributed technology. For anyone including governments, to try to destroy Bitcoin, they would have to shut down the entire internet. 

The record of how many Bitcoins you own is immediately stored in the software programs called Bitcoin digital wallets. A digital wallet is like a physical wallet, a purse, a pocketbook or a money safe with a lock, except it is digital in nature and it exists on your mobile phone or in a computer. You can never lose your Bitcoins as long as you have a cold storage or a backup phrase. You should lookup both cold storage and bitcoin backup phrase concepts on the internet. For those who own Bitcoins, any one of the two methods are absolutely essential for backing up your coins, just in case you happen to lose your mobile phone or computer. If you have cold storage or password phrase saved, you can easily access your coins again and get them back in your new computer or mobile phone. 

Bitcoins transactions require internet on your phone or computer. Bitcoin transactions occur directly between the two parties involved (between two people) and no third party is needed. For example, for Bitcoin transactions, no banks, no governments, no special permissions, no time and place restrictions are required. Bitcoin can be used anytime, anywhere without any borders or restrictions on the amounts of money transferred. 

Sending and receiving Bitcoins is as easy as sending SMS / MMS picture messages or email. One can buy and sell nearly anything using Bitcoins. Sending Bitcoins has very small transaction fees compared to credit card fees. These fees are essentially small awards shared with Bitcoin miners on blockchain. Miners are people with high end computers and great computing powers on the blockchain network to facilitate ledger transactions and confirmations. These computers are very expensive and require a lot of electricity to operate. Bitcoin transactions are therefore nearly instant. 
This blockchain technology which is the core behind Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, can also be used for “Global Asset Register”. For example, a car key can be assigned to a specific person by recording it on a public ledger. 

Any business can take advantage of Bitcoin technology and instantly start accepting payments in Bitcoins for their products and services. Setting up for Bitcoin is easy and free with services similar to ANYPAY or BITPAY. Bitcoin transactions are instant and there are no bank processing delays. Businesses can save a lot of money in transaction fees as well as tax liabilities. 

How can one start with Bitcoin? 

You will need a free app or a free software program on your mobile phone or computer to get started. As previously mentioned, these programs or apps are called “Bitcoin Wallet(s)”. There are many apps and programs available for free download over the internet. Please do your own research, download and use a secure wallet from a trusted source. Read online reviews before downloading a wallet. Read pros and cons and make an informed decision. 

The next step is to get Bitcoins. You can either purchase Bitcoins with fiat money (currency of your choice), other digital crypto currencies, or you can mine Bitcoins. To get Bitcoins using a standard currency such as Us dollars or Pakistani Rupees, there are three easy ways. 

1. One: You can buy Bitcoins via online Bitcoin Exchange, i.e COINBASE, URDUBIT or similar. It is advised that you should never leave your money on any exchange and transfer Bitcoins from exchange to your wallets on your phone or computer immediately after purchase. Please keep your devices (Phone or computer) password protected.

2. Two: You can buy Bitcoins using currency via a Bitcoin ATM (the automatic teller cash machines if any such device is available in your area. As of February 2019, it is unknown if any standard bank offers such service and it is unlikely anytime soon. This method to acquire Bitcoins is the most recommended option for privacy and tax evasion but the ATM fees are on average around 9% +/-, which is high. This may be the cost you have to pay for anonymity. 

3. Three: You can get Bitcoins via website “Purse.io” by becoming an EARNER and by facilitating people who wish to purchase goods on Amazon.com using Bitcoins. They tell you what they want to buy, you buy it for them using your currency such as the US Dollar and they pay you in Bitcoins. This method will cost you almost nothing to get Bitcoins, just a little time. This option is better than using an Exchange. As of February 2019, I haven’t heard if governments have tracked this service and its users. There are no guarantees for the future. 

Once you have Bitcoins, you can spend them anywhere Bitcoins are accepted for products and services. If someone doesn’t directly accept Bitcoins, you may purchase gift cards with Bitcoins or Bitcoin based credit cards offered by Bitpay to make purchases around the world in any store and online. There are ways to only deal with Bitcoins and no other currency altogether but this process involves a major learning curve, some sacrifices and life style changes but it’s not impossible.

There are some known problems with Bitcoin as you would often hear about them from the critics of Bitcoin. For example:

• Bitcoin is not perfect, not invincible and not anonymous. All these allegations are somewhat true. 

• Because Bitcoin is still a new concept, its value is volatile. Historically Bitcoin has seen many fluctuations. This is generally expected in Bitcoin communities. Overall Bitcoin is the strongest currency in the world for its high value. 

• Trusting a Bitcoin exchange can be a very costly mistake for example Mt.Gox and Quadrigacx exchange. The Quadrigacx owner allegedly died with secret keys and people loss their coins. Mt. Gox had a vulnerability. It was maliciously attacked and coins were stolen. 

• 51% Attack. When malicious miner’s computing power increases more than 50% of the computing power of the entire blockchain, they can interrupt and compromise Bitcoin network. Mostly the damage is done to an exchange or a mining pool under attack. This is another reason not to ever store your Bitcoins on any online exchange. 

• Bad people can use Bitcoins for bad things that break laws including drugs etc. Bad people have existed since the origin of men. Bad people do bad things with or without Bitcoins. Statists and Governments use these types of excuses to create bad laws and stop innovations especially when these innovations threaten their own existence, their revenue generation schemes and their control over people. Libertarians should just ignore this gang of thieves’ known as government. 

The fact is, all libertarians should be using Bitcoins instead of state issued fiat monies. If Walmart, CSD or TCS was bombing children around the world, I wouldn’t shop there. Why should I then use money of the governments who do the same. Moreover, all people should be libertarians. 

To get started and learn more about Bitcoin; visit weusecoins.com, Bitcoin.org (BTC bitcoin core), Bitcoin.com (BCH bitcoin cash), yes, there are differences between these two last ones, but that’s for another podcast. 

Please support us by subscribing and sharing our podcast “Libertarian Gup Shup” at iTunes, Stitcher, Google play music, YouTube and libertariangupshup.com. 

About the Author:
This article is written by M.I Chaudhary. He is the founder of Pakistan Libertarian Party