Why a College Degree is Worthless

This one is a little more "rant" oriented and contains traces of auto-biographical information.

I'm pleased to see that this topic gets more and more coverage all the time. I find myself in a similar place as JS Kim, an investment firm manager who "attributes zero of his success as an entrepreneur to the formalized education process, his four years of education at an Ivy League institution or the attainment of a double masters in business administration in public policy."

I made the same mistake as him and achieved the pointless, end-of-your-name alphabet soup, only I didn't do a double masters. Mine was only in public policy and not from an Ivy League school, but rather a crummy public school (ECU). I've learned economics and business, like Kim, completely on my own, no thanks to the seven years of higher education or the K-12 indoctrination. If I'm as smart as him, maybe I'll be successful as an entrepreneur someday. Unfortunately, all of my degrees are statist, they pigeon-hole me, are a source of great shame, and I had a particularly surreal time going from a political science PhD program to an emergency backup plan: master of "public" administration.

The fact that American education is not only worthless but counter-productive, cruel, humiliating, entropic, and mind controlling should be abundantly obvious to everyone nowadays. Nonetheless, there are still those fools who seek to re-affirm the grandeur of achieving a college degree. Let me provide just a couple quick reasons to avoid "schooling" past 12th grade in America.

~College Degree Holders Are Largely Unskilled Workers~

Unless you've learned something closed to a trade, your college experience has probably left you unskilled aside from the ability to write a little better than average (this is a stretch at many colleges though). Engineers, accountants, doctors, chemists, and the sort can consider themselves skilled. Liberal arts majors cannot.

The only skills that college professors are willing to teach are statistics and a rundown version of their research methods. Contrary to what the professors tell you, companies are not banging the door down looking for graduates who know how to use SPSS and SAS. The ultra-quantitative way of thinking may have had a lot to do with the downfall of the financial institutions, and little has changed (due to the moral hazards of the bailouts), but that doesn't mean the average college graduate from big-state-U is going to find themselves that kind of opportunity. It's always been a very exclusive club.

It also doesn't matter how many internships one does. Even that very rarely leads to substantive skills. The current business plan of American higher education is to produce young workers who are good at glorified paper-pushing activities. Since the economy is shedding these jobs (and for good reason), anyone who has been educated under this decadent status-quo is in a world of trouble. Tomorrow's jobs, believe it or not, will require a great deal of skill. That's what happens when there is a market correction: unproductive labor becomes obsolete.

~Student Loan Bubble~

You can't give good treatment to this topic without mentioning the debt burden of today's college graduates (and dropouts). Last time I checked, the average debt load upon graduation is somewhere around $20,000 to $30,000. As Peter Schiff has pointed out on numerous occasions, this all has to do with the easy-lending policies of the federal government. Just like with the real estate bubble, the government has turned the higher education system into a monster by allowing people to borrow at teaser rates, with very little requirements, and no down payment.

I've mentioned in previous posts that colleges have little incentive to keep the costs low. They fully realize that, due to societal pressure, most young people will pay whatever it takes to get a college degree. This is where you hear bizarre stories about folks going six figures into debt in order to pay for an art degree. The money issue, like in every other situation, is going to be the Waterloo for higher education. The colleges that cannot change with the times, cannot even get their staffs to quit taking 2-hour lunches, and do not provide meaningful training are going to see their revenues dwindle and be forced to shut down operations. With the way things are now, university administrations have no ability (or backbone) to tell the spoiled-rotten professors they have to take a pay cut. The economics and politics of the situation will leave universities with no choice but to disband.

Good News: there is light at the end of the tunnel. I DO have a job, which has nothing to do with my educational attainment and I have the opportunity to start from the bottom and prove myself as a productive individual. You can do this as well. You CAN recover from the stigma of a college education. Let your individuality, talent, and critical-thinking abilities propel you into a better career. Oh, and for God's sake, move to a non-communist country. It's good for career development.

The NFL and Statism

I started to write this while watching Monday Night Football, which went into rain delay.

My argument this go around is that the NFL is more than happy to exercise statist tactics. While it may be true that the NFL is a private, non-profit sports league, that hardly makes it innocent and virtuous. It basically brings out the ugliest aspects of all its substituent franchises, some of which are owned by unscrupulous folks connected to the federal government (see Redskins). It's the same old story: big businesses are not evil because they exploit folks through the free market, it's because they're connected to the powers that be.

How does the NFL use statist tactics? You may have heard someone refer to it as the "No Fun League." This is no joke. Just like the state, the NFL has rules that control absolutely everything, usually for no reason other than to generate revenue through fines, the NFL's version of taxation. The fines are truly insane too. Terrell Owens recently got in trouble for tweeting within 90 minutes of a game (he made an announcement about a giveaway promo to a lucky fan who wore his jersey to the game). Other players have been fined for text messages, endzone celebrations, and numerous other on/off-field rules (some are concurrent with the equally corrupt NCAA).

The league might be voluntary, but it's also a de facto monopoly due to numerous sports regulations that make it impossible for competitors to offer a better, consumer/employee-friendly alternative. This is true across sports where wealthy owners do not have to buy their stadiums since cities will force the taxpayers to pay it for them. Good luck competing with franchises that are able to get some of the loftiest subsidies in town. As a consequence, like every other business that does this kind of thing, the NFL becomes a creature of the state.

What are some other special rules that help the NFL? Well, first of all, the NFL is not a business in its own right, it's a sports league, a non-profit organization that fosters the competitive endeavors of its substituent franchises. The government classifies it as a 501(c)6 non-profit group, a nice designation to have that allows it to escape tax burdens. As you may have noticed, the state rarely hesitates to provide unfair tax advantages to its buddies at the expense of everyone else. The 501(c)6 status is the same privilege granted to real estate boards (who are very dominant in local politics) and the so-called Chambers of Commerce. It's nice to be part of the state's list of priveleged operations that gain the non-profit designation. And you wonder why churches are so corrupt nowadays?

Again, the Marxists have things totally backwards. It's not private companies that use, abuse, and alienate employees, it's the fascist ones. NFL teams, under the banner of the omnipotent NFL, treat their players like dog meat, allowing them to generate concussions at break-neck speed. The NFL only puts superficial protective measures in place. If a player gets a concussion, they're only really required to have an independent doctor take a look at him. It comes as no shock that this step gets fudged over in order to make sure the player gets back on the field as soon as possible. The WWE has a similiar problem when it comes to concussions, something that may have had an impact on Chris Benoit's murder/suicide episode. If any other non-politically-connected business tried to get away with this disregard for employees, OSHA would put them away in no time. The rules do not apply to everybody though.

By the way, here's a recent LRC article that illustrates some of the same problems but focuses more on the college level.

~Sports and Over-Leveraging~

During the pre-game of the Vikings/Jets game I heard commentators talk about how the Vikings organization has all the chips in with the expensive veteran, Brett Favre, along with newly acquired WR Randy Moss. Truth be told, the concept of "all-in" gambling amongst sports teams hoping for "a championship now" is reflective of the short-term thinking that plagues not only pro sports teams, but many American companies these days. Many sports franchises, like the Stanley Cup champion, Chicago Blackhawks, mortgage their entire futures all for a chance of winning here and now. It is a sign of over-leveraging brought on by money printing, which leads to credit expansion, along with favors from municipal governments that routinely dole out money for new stadiums.

Ironically, now would be the time for teams to focus on long-term contracts, much the way the New Jersey Devils did with Illya Kovalchuk. The crazed money printing of the Fed means that teams stand to gain a lot by locking players into long-term deals that pay in dollar amounts bound to be devalued severely by the time the latter years of the contract are paid. In other words, $100,000,000 (as long as its not paid competely up front) will be worth less and less as its paid out annually to the player. Teams can take advantage of rapid inflation with multi-year obligations just like other debtors can get away with allowing inflation to wittle away their debt.

Nevertheless, the tendency for sports teams to go nuts with huger, yet shorter contracts in every league is a sign of the times. Large businesses are still drinking the punch from the Fed and all of its money-creating, credit expansion. Once the plug is pulled on the dollar, the jig is up for pro sports teams. I expect this bubble to burst just like all others related to borrowing and government handouts. When it does, good bye mid-market teams.

Good bye statist sports!

Greenville City Planners Want "Smart" Growth

This blog post is addressed particularly to my friend's in Greenville, NC.

Has anyone else noticed the obsession with "building up downtown," "greenways," "bike paths" and a general disdain for popular businesses like Wal Mart?

Well, you're not alone because Greenville, like many cities run by liberal and closet-liberal city council members, is really hell bent on something called "Smart Growth."

What is Smart Growth?

• An urban planning scheme that places an emphasis on city officials controlling where and to what extent growth occurs throughout a city
• Ultra-Green Environmentalism
• A preference for downtown development over suburban development
• A disdain for what is considered suburban sprawl (think McMansions, all over the place)
• In larger cities, a desire for vertical development (skyscrapers; everybody living in studios)
• Driving up the value of inner city properties to attract new wealthy taxpayers, but, at the same time, burdening poorer residents with rising housing costs
  
• AKA "New Urbanism"
• A pathology of needing to stick with the city's land usage plans at all costs
• A tendency toward pedestrian downtowns as opposed to drivable downtowns (lots of inconvenient one-way roads)
• A hatred of automobiles, which are to be supplanted with public transit

Why is Smart Growth a problem?

First of all, in Greenville's case, last year's new ordinances for regulating the bars (which really provide a cartel for existing, powerful establishments) fits perfectly into the smart growth fixation. The whole idea is turning downtown (they re-named it "uptown") into a lefto-granola-eating utopia. Instead of bars, fast food, and chain businesses, there would be lots of cafes, artsy establishments, vegetarian restaurants, and other high cultural venues that appeal to upper-middle class yuppies. Gone are the plebeian waterholes, to be replaced with public transit and trendier items for pretentious pseudo-professionals. Basically, the Greenville city council would like the place to look more like Cary, NC (or worse). This all relates to our masters' desire to force upon us what they think is the correct way to live culturally.

To be honest, this has not worked for very many places at all. The trend in America, for a long time, has been to move away from larger cities and head southwest. That has not stopped utopian city planners and council members from continuing Smart Growth even amidst fiscal turbulence. Part of the problem is the environmental industrial complex. Without naming names, I can guarantee that at least one or two Greenville city council members consider bike paths and green space to be the most important issue. These folks are either ideological nuts or stand to benefit financially from building greener. This is not about making the town prettier. Suburban sprawl may appear unappealing to some, but it's not anything other than an aesthetic problem (plus, it's a result of the Fed's credit-driven housing bubble more than anything).

The urbanists hate the suburbs largely because it means people might have to use automobiles to get to work (oh no!).The other problem for Greenville residents, particularly those looking for jobs, it the fact that the council is hostile toward allowing businesses like Wal Mart or Home Depot to come to town. Since those businesses do not fit the leftist/environmentalist model for economic growth, and they offend some of the neighborhood associations who finance the campaigns of council members, they are unwelcome in Greenville.

I would advise you, as an informed individual to educate yourself more on the topic of Smart Growth and its consequences for REAL growth. A good article that talks more about it can be found here. The good news is not every elected official is on board with the social engineering of Smart Growth. There are a few who are mildly pro business in a non-corrupt way. However, it looks like the general direction for Greenville and other cities is toward the downtown worship of Smart Growth.

The Warfare State: the Biggest Issue for Libertarians

I just realized that I've been doing an anti-state blog and have yet to have a good post about the American warfare state. I'm sorry. I should've done one sooner, but at least I can say this is still a fairly new blog.

The reason this is such an important topic is because war is the very lifeblood of the state. I'm sure you've heard that phrase before if you're familiar with the anarcho-capitalist/radical libertarian movement. I've actually had a lot of contact with the American military as a former Air Force brat. You don't realize the utter stupidity of the ONGOING Korean conflict until your dad has to deploy to the dreaded place for an entire year. He made multiple trips to the Persian Gulf but none of them were individually as long as the trip to S. Korea.

Even as a young child I could sense that there was at least something a little strange about American foreign policy. At one point I was told that the Gulf War was finished; that we won. I asked if Saddam Hussein had been defeated since he was, after all, the "bad guy." He wasn't, but I did not realize until years later that the reason he was not defeated was because the U.S. does not fight traditional wars for the purpose of "winning." No, instead the goal is to a) show off our military might and intimidate international deviants, b) turn a huge profit for the military-industrial complex, c) use it as an excuse to destroy civil liberties, and d) all of the above.

Also, as a former military brat, I can attest to the occupied-country's sense of indignation toward Americans who hog their land for military purposes. It was always a rather big thing in Okinawa, a 60-mile long island over-run by about a dozen or so U.S. military bases, including Kadena, the largest in the Pacific theater. Every once in a while, I would hear about the locals wanting to have sound-proof walls to muffle the jet blast. There were always a few Okinawan politicians who used "getting rid of the bases" as part of their platforms. The various Vietnam War movies have it correct when they illustrate the relationship between GIs and sex workers. On Kadena, it was pretty common knowledge that Gate 2 Street, leading off the base, was a complete red light district by nightfall. Wanton, underground sex goes well with the military lifestyle.

People tend to forget that there are not only a handful of bases left in S. Korea, but also in Germany and Japan as well. The occupation of Germany, thought to have ended in 1949, has never entirely rescinded, not as long as four installations remain. This just corroborates another point about how much land is wasted for military adventures. So much of our debt could be paid off if we simply sold the land that is possessed by the state yet hardly used (military and civilian alike).

Oddly enough, I don't know that I have as many clever insights to contribute to the libertarian anti-war school of thought. It's been so well covered already (see Murray Rothbard, Karen Kwiatkowski, Lew Rockwell, Butler Shaffer, and a whole lot more for a good dose). I'll admit it's rather difficult to convince the same lay people who don't have a clue about the number of countries in the world that the 700-some-odd U.S. military bases are absurd. I try to imbue people with Facebook statuses that put things into perspective. How well that works is anybody's guess.

ECU Raises Tuition; No Recession for Professors

A lot of people have been completely insulated from the recession and have enjoyed "business as usual" with but a few distractions or pitfalls. Bankers, for example, have had it better than ever financially. What about college professors?

At eastern North Carolina's largest school, East Carolina University, tuition is going up and no cuts are to be made to academics. Check out the Chancellor's take on the budget and tuition increases. This is going on everywhere in the country and is not limited to public universities (although, those may be the first to fail if this situation continues). At ECU, the raising of tuition is nothing new. It happens every year as a result of unlimited student lending (see the parallels to the housing bubble) and the fact that the state legislature gets pressured more and more to reduce funding. The university knows it can get away with raising tuition as long as people can take out more loans with impunity and without risk. What's new? Now, you will see even deeper cuts to administrative staff (meaning longer lines and lower service), but NOT any reductions to pay and benefits of professors.

I no longer have access to ECU's faculty salary information (you have to have a school user name), but unless things have changed, the average faculty member makes well north of $50,000 per year and much higher in certain departments. What happened to Americans having to cut back and take lighter paychecks? This has not been the case at ECU or hardly any other universities. The burden is always absorbed by the customers. God forbid ANY university abolish the tenure system and kick some of the six-figured, leftist blow-hards out and balance the university's budget.

In effect, the tenure system is a form of unionization that allows senior members to hold the rest of the world hostage. As long as there's a mis-informed demand for college and an academic cartel allowing the tenure system, this problem will not go away and costs will sore even worse than health care prices. The other irony of all of this is that there is an enormous market of unemployed or underemployed PhDs out there who would gladly take a job at a university for less than the cost it takes to pay tenured-for-life losers who cannot even be troubled to publish in the irrelevant journals their younger peers do. It's time to ditch the dead weight.

Peter Schiff was right once again. Education has been something I've followed closely for years now and I knew there was a bubble for some time. I was happy to see that Schiff joined in the criticism of the student-loan induced bubble. The costs of education are spiraling because of these awful no-risk loans that were designed to make things more affordable for the poor. ECU has made it clear that academics is the LAST area that will be touched by any kind of financial hardship. They would like you to believe this is because of a commitment to excellence. Unfortunately, it has more to do with a commitment to the very powerful, shadowy union of the professors, who will never take a pay cut even as their universities desperately need to streamline.

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly in America

Everyone likes that movie - or at least almost everyone. Many have tried to diagnose societal ills and use that movie's title as a framework for doing so. I'm no exception.

I can think of three types of people in America: normal/well-intentioned folks, authority sluts, and entitlement sluts. They comprise the good, bad, and ugly respectively. Fortunately, the "good" is the largest category demographically, even during the evil mood of times likes these. They definitely do not have power though. You could think of them as a very silent majority. Most normal people may not have the most sophisticated understanding of our world's problems and may be prone to falling for the traps set by the other types of folk (sub-prime mortgages, credit cards like crazy, global warming), but they are good at heart. Deep down, most have a respect for private property and believe that everyone should work for what they get.

Then there are the authority sluts, the ones who either think they have a divine right to boss people around or are just sociopaths. This refers to lots of people in power and particularly police officers. Granted, not all people in power are authority sluts (some are just opportunists). You can tell the individual who has an authority trip by the way they treat others. They operate in accordance to very loose rules and quite often don't bother to find any justification for their ruthlessness at all. A great example of this is the officer who takes you down to the station for "insulting an officer" or "disturbing the peace." It seems like hardly anyone gets in trouble for real crimes these days. One's only hope is that these types encounter someone who is more powerful than they are and busts them down a notch.

The entitlement sluts are irritating in many obvious ways. It's one thing to prefer making an honest living by oneself, self-employed. It's quite another to think that everyone else owes you this regardless of how well your business does. I always think of the farmers who whine for subsidies (although most subsidies go to bigger companies) because they feel entitled to be farmers just like their fathers and grandfathers. It matters not whether anyone wants to buy their crops. Then, of course, there are the Americans who are part of an entire class of entitlement insanity, the Americans who draw from Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. I don't refer to those who receive these "services" reluctantly yet disagree with them. Here I criticize those who think it's a god-right even though it's predicated on stolen wealth. This is the second-largest category. Entitlement sluts think that their standards of living cannot slip any lower than their recent plights, and, if it so much as appears to do so, then the rest of the world has hell to pay. If there's not hell to pay, they'll at least cry about it for a while.

These are in a way ideal types. It is easy to think of examples of overlap between authority and entitlement sluts. Nevertheless, as a psychological framework, I think this breaks people down into neat categories as well as anything else. It would be nice to think of everyone as INDIVIDUALS. Regrettably, this current social order has been thrust onto us by the way society has been shaped through years of American fascism. In a free market society, people would be more identified by what they do to contribute (baker, shoemaker, car salesman, dentist). The status quo is not the way I want it. It is just how I'm calling it based on what I've seen. The American population is fairly neatly situated into three categories: the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Why Do Leftist College Students Hate Families So Much?

It's completely irrational if you follow things to their logical (or at least, likely) conclusion. Left-wing college kids, if they have any identity at all, are usually known for one thing: deviance for the sake of deviance. It's not necessary the good kind of rebelliousness associated with the Ron Paul movement and anti-statism. No, it usually involves hatred of most time-honored customs. One can debate the merits of social conservatism all day, but it's clear that many college-aged folks hate every last bit of it. They're taught that way.

One of those traditions is of course the family structure. This is a social institution that's been around since time immemorial and it has not lasted that long by accident. However, leftist students (and even some libertarians who choose to emphasize leftist social ethics) are very anti-family. They're taught that it reeks of bourgeois lifestyle, coincides the "evil" patriarchal system, and gets in the way of individual expression. The fact that lefties usually hate individualism leaves more than just a grain of irony in this situation, but, at any rate, Marxist intellectuals are willing to push some "rugged individualism" if it means disruption of the existing social order. Suffices to say, families are a bigger threat to statist hegemony than individuals. This is why you'll hear many a women's studies professor preach the indomitable nature of the individual woman. For them, it serves an end (individuals eventually melted into a collectivist utopia).

On a practical level, however, leftist students ought to re-think their aversion to American family structures. Why is that? Because in today's sterling economy, they'll be back in their parents house immediately following graduation, barring some employment miracle. Insofar as the most left-liberal, anti-family students tend to choose the most useless college majors, odds are they'll need to move back in with those dreaded bourgeois parents who never understood them and their mindless rebellion against "capitalism," "the rat race," and mainstream culture. You don't know what you have until you lose it and need it again. That is precisely the painful lesson these folks would endure if their generous guardians did not re-admit them back into the home despite their bratty ways.

The anti-everything, pseudo-Renaissance artist is not likely to make it very successfully in today's economy, not without completely re-tooling his/her profile. In the mean time, it's time to ditch the attitude and black clothing and accept the fact that you need your family a lot more than you think. This goes for middle-aged and elderly folks who fall on hard times as well. You never out-grow the family. Thankfully, the good news is that these folks do not make up every student in academia. It is a positive sign to see people re-learn the values of family and sticking together when things get tough.

As long as Marxist professors try their hardest to proselytize impressionable undergraduates, the ugly kind of anti-social individuals will exist. Then again, I guess these kids are good candidates to just continue their education into master's and PhD programs. I would like to feel sorry for their bank accounts when they take out so many loans to go to school forever. I do not though.

I Utterly HATE Marxists

There's no point holding back about it. I hate Marxists and that includes lite-Marxists. I've tried to find the good in them and treat them with the respect owed a sophisticated opponent, but it just hasn't worked. Very slim partial truths abound for Marxism; not much more than that though. They are the airheads of political philosophy. Keynesians, by comparison, are pure evil. I can at least respect that deep down Keynesians do not believe their garbage, that it is just a front to enhance the power of the ruling elite. The academic ones make good money off their scheme.

I've given Marxism more than a few passing glances, never came close to embracing it, but have given Marxist social commentators their time of day. In earlier times, I was quite impressed with their canny perception of societal ills such as huge wealth distribution gaps, corrupt business practices, the favored status granted to large businesses by the government, etc.

All of this was of course until I found the Austrian School of Economics, which diagnosed many of the same problems AND provided much more convincing explanations grounded in the a priori laws of economics. For example, the Marxists are sharp enough to notice some of the shenanigans involving the railway and oil monopolies over a hundred years ago, yet unlike the Austrian scholars, they mindlessly blamed it on the specter of free market capitalism. It was indeed a specter because there was nothing close to free market capitalism for those industries. Instead, the real-life explanation was that the banks, railroads, and oil folks (many of whom were the same across industries) received special regulations that entrenched their monopolies. If not a monopoly situation, then an industry cartel created by government regulations that can only be followed by a small group of wealthy companies (smaller competition gets destroyed). Furthermore, the fact that there is ever a favored status granted to certain companies over others should be a red flag that it IS NOT a free market, but rather a corporatist one.

Marxists are often able to see that something is not quite right, but then take the pre-schooler approach to explaining the causal mechanisms. I would like to think the difference between Austrian scholars and Marxists is mostly an epistemological one: the individual vs. class as the preferred unit of analysis. That would be fine, but it's not. Marxists are genuine idiots who cannot see farther than beyond their noses.

Anyone who is familiar with Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickeled and Dimed, understands that Marxism is alive and well amongst public intellectuals. The Cold War may have dealt a decisive blow to planned economics, but these individuals still linger. The economically illiterate Ehrenreich once waged a pointless, non-scientific, pre-concluded experiment to show that living off minimum wage was less than enjoyable (who would have guessed?). Nowhere in the analysis of her experiment does she consider the idea that the minimum wage laws themselves are the reason so many workers cannot get jobs or are de facto forced into miserable conditions. Nope, the answer is always the same: employers are evil and the minimum wage should be doubled (even if this still wouldn't come close to producing the bourgeois, entitlement lifestyle Ehrenreich thinks is a right). The work of Marxists like Ehrenreich demonstrates how tired, myopic, incomplete, and mis-leading this line of thinking really is.

Note: My writing in this article may seem a bit negative and attacking. This is obviously more of a rant than anything else. For a more academic take on the subject, visit the Mises Institute online.

I cannot complete this rant about Marxists without talking about the lite-Marxists I mentioned at the beginning. Much the way the neo-Keynesians are compared to old-fashioned-Keynesians, these half-baked intellectuals are several magnitudes more frustrating than their progenitors (and not because they are closer to being correct). If you read my earlier post on this blog, you could have probably gotten an idea as to how I feel about squishy, unprincipled thinkers. While their philosophical limbo may be easy to identify and rip apart, these tend to be the folks who are taken most seriously and can convince a lot of lay people of their views.

The brilliant Lew Rockwell really hit the nail on the head once again as it pertains to the fellows I'm discussing. In his article, Down with the Rich, Again?, he points out the glaring inconsistencies of the anti-rich lite-Marxists who at one time hated the wealthy for living extravagantly, but now hate them for not spending enough to help the economy (admittedly, some of them get mixed up with neo-Keynesians, who may in fact be consistent about spending like crazy even before the economic downturn).

I think Lew's article sums this point up well enough. The mindless pseudo-thinkers that dominate the media and universities possess no true beliefs about anything other than a knee-jerk hatred of the (mostly self-made) wealthy. Also, as far as universities go, I've noticed a trend away from the classically-Marxist professor toward a more moderate social-democrat who has it out for the free market due to the fact that the academic labor market is currently a nightmare for today's PhD holders. I'm certainly not surprised they hate competition since their competition is as stiff as it is (blame the state expansion of education credit, by the way). Academia is full of un-scholars who greatly appreciate the foundation of the American welfare state and only criticize it for not being even larger.

Overall, Marxists have had a much greater influence on that status quo than they would like you to believe. Marx had the nerve to complain about alienation of workers (during the 1840's) when most people still worked for themselves (until Lincoln changed that). Alienation of the so-called "working class" is a newer phenomenon. TODAY's world is full of bizarre and dysfunctional relationships between workers and owners because of the economic policies that have re-distributed the wealth toward a power elite, taking it out of the hands of creative entrepreneurs. Nowadays, most people have to put up with that half-wit boss who may have gotten his/her job solely through affirmative action or other preferential treatment. The evil bourgeoisie assailed by modern Marxists is the product of their own policy prescriptions. In summation, I can assure you that the folks in Washington have followed Marxist prescriptions a heck of a lot more than mine (or any other sensible, ethical individual for that matter).

Scary Things that Turned out to be Bullshit

1) Swine Flu
2) Gulf Oil Spill
3) Avian Flu
4) Mad Cow Disease
5) AIDS Threat

All of these things are media fetishes. Do your best not to fall for them. Their trick is to get you distracted from the economy and war disasters (Iraq, Afghanistan, KOREA!!). You might file these up there with the Salem Witch scare and other Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. I'm sure you can think of others. Follow the links to see why these phony problems are bullshit. Sometimes the government itself has elitist schizophrenia and admits that they're BS.

Does Austrian Economics Fill Me With Hope and Optimism?

No, Austrian Economics does not. It depresses me to the point of despair. The saving grace is that it cannot provide hope anyway. Economics does not do that and it only provides despair when combined with other cognitive faculties such as value judgment.

Austrian Economics is a school of thought that professes a value-neutral approach to economic learning. This means that the study of economics has nothing to do with a "good" or "bad" outlook for society. It is simply the study of what is logically possible given conditions of scarcity, the type of money system, the presence/lack of market distortions, etc.

There is nothing in the Austrian School that says there should (or should not) be any hope for the future. If it is the case that the central bank is rapidly inflating money supply, which pushes us closer to disaster, the Austrian School will have predicted it without elaborating what exactly is meant by disaster, or what kind of human misery it entails. This is perfectly acceptable too since misery is not at all an economic concept.

Nevertheless, the writing is on the wall. A purely economic lens will surely not allow us to decipher it, but any understanding of the real terms (socially and politically) provides us some insight into the horror. It's not hard to see that runaway inflation might lead to a lot of nasty things: starvation, homelessness, crime like you've never seen it before, perhaps genocide, perhaps sex slavery. Economics of any sort cannot predict these things (it might come close with starvation, maybe). However, after we figure out the inevitable consequences of certain policies, all we have to do is use our knowledge of the past as well as our imaginations to figure out that there is a very grim future.

Learning Austrian Economics is a good thing. It is unlikely that it will be applied soon enough to avert "shit from hitting the fan," but you can at least have the gratification of knowing that you "called it" and that you did not die economically illiterate like most other bozos. Beyond that, I would not count on an expertise of Mises's Human Action to bring about personal prosperity (other than intellectual enlightenment). They can only hire so many people to work at the Mises Institute, after all.

Teachers as Prison Guards

I think someday when I have children and they reach school age I will try something interesting, if not a bit surreal. On the first day of kindergarten, rather then pretend it to be some sort of journey that the child will be embarking on, I will give the child the full, honest truth from the get go.

I will walk the child up to the teacher and explain things this way: "See this person, junior, this is your prison guard, you are not to use the bathroom without her permission. You shall regain your auto-urination "privileges" once your sentence is complete in about 12 years, until then, the guard controls your bowel movements. You will speak only when spoken to, eat when told to eat, and you will not to leave the premises without permission along with an escort. Good luck, junior."

How do you think the teacher would react? Could she protest? Was anything I would have said not grounded in truth?

Congressman Hot Dog Really Pissed Off (kind of has a point)

Even though almost any change might be a welcome diversion from the current Democrat-dominated federal government, the looming possibility of a Republican return does not sound all that reassuring. It's more like Revenge of the Sith or The Empire Strikes Back. The two parties take turns being the Sith/Empire; the empire is always striking back. In November, it may be the Republicans' chance to play the role of Sith.

This became even clearer when I saw the desperation on the face of Congressman Anthony Hot Dog (D-Fifth Circle of Hell) while giving this rant about his wishy-washy opponents. I definitely do not endorse his views on health care, but I see his statements (shouting, to be exact) as a prediction for the future. He is worried about losing power, and, what frustrates him the most is that he'll be losing it to a crowd of politicians who will eventually pursue the same policies. Obviously, he believes he could do just as a good job screwing up the country as them.

The likely truth is that Republicans are bound to flip-flop on the health care issue and get right back to boosting state interference, just as soon as they regain the power to do so. In that regard, Congressman Hot Dog should be glad that his position is destined to prevail, but, of course, it won't do any good to him if his folks are not the ones in power to enact it.

I don't even know if the inevitable waffling on health care will come in 2010. The GOP will likely want to jam anything that looks like the Obama agenda until he's ousted in 2012. At that point, however, it will definitely be business as usual, with a continued descent into ever-more socialized medicine. By the way, how much more socialized can our health care system get? It's already the most expensive due to government manipulation. What is the low point anyway, being held at gunpoint to drink water?

Bottom Line: do not trust either party in its current establishment form.

Why Can't People Manage Their Own Money?

Part of good budgeting is knowing just how much money you will have after the government steals a good portion of it from you. If, for example, you make $30,000 a year in gross terms, you would want to know how much of it you would have left over after taxes so that you could plan a monthly budget. If you are left $24,000 after taxes, which is $2,000 per month, then you would have $660 to spend on rent each month (assuming the 33% rule for housing expenditures). Sensible adults can handle this as long as it does not get much more confusing.

Why can't people do this very well? As usual, blame it on the state.

The fact that there are taxes to begin with, and that they are so numerous and severe, make it very difficult to actually determine net income. Check this website out for ways to do it. Notice how complex it is.


If you look over the steps that the link gives for figuring out your net income, you might notice a lot of talk about the so-called savings apparatuses like Social Security and 401(k). Therein lies another explanation for why people cannot manage their money. The state has given people every reason not to do so. Making compulsory contributions to retirement accounts has taken away the brain work involved in money management and savings. No longer do you have to deliberate over whether you should put money in the bank, buy savings bonds, buy gold, invest in K-Mart, or anything else. The state has made it easy for you, since you are basically a child.

Why has the state made it easy for you? Because it doesn't want you to think things through, do what's in your best interest, and save money in such a way that may NOT benefit the state (buying gold and silver, for example). It would much rather you go along with the 401(k) system (which hasn't worked) or perhaps buy war bonds as people were forced to do during WWII. It should come as no surprise that the state does not want people managing their own money. No, the welfare-warfare psychos would much rather take your money and either waste it or provide a mediocre, over-regulated imitation of the services the private sector would produce. When people take care of their own finances 100%, there is nothing left for the thieves in Washington to take away under the guise of "security." Their only other option is to deliberately steal, as the petty burglar would do, WITHOUT pretending to help you. Politically, this does not work any more.

Ending Death Tax = More Humane Than Giving Unemployment Benefits

Unemployment is no longer the exclusive territory of the lazy, careless, or disinterested. Everyone knows this. The same can be said for the wretchedness of the estate tax; it affects lots of people. If not, then it soon will once the federal thieves reduce the death tax exemption from $3.5 million to $1 million. The tax rate will also increase from 45% to 55%.

Is this being discussed extensively by the mainstream media? No, not by my honest recollection. Perhaps it gets some coverage here and there, but not anywhere near the level of focus placed on the issue of unemployment insurance. As of right now, the welfare-statist/re-distributionist crowd is crowing very loudly for even more extensions on benefits, calling anyone who opposes that move draconian, scrooge, brutal, callous, and uncaring.

Those folks could be consistent enough with their position of helping the poor by providing relief if it was not for the fact that they are concurrently making new rules that would extract money from families. If they believe that providing stipends to the unfortunate is the only compassionate thing to do, then why do they appear so eager to burden more and more American families by confiscating thousands or millions of dollars when a family member dies? What bizarre form of compassion is this? No doubt, many struggling individuals would benefit greatly from the financial boost of an inheritance. Even if the individual on the deathbed may not be having a difficult time financially (hence, the million dollar nest egg), they may very likely have family members that are not doing so well. The law will not allow large transfers of money before death either without incurring a "gift" tax. Again, the severity of this estate tax is not to be under-estimated. This is not just skimming off the top. It is wiping out over half of one's wealth and wasting it on the federal government.

These are not legislative moves that help America's debt-ridden, perhaps paycheck-to-paycheck Americans move into economic security. Abolition of the right to inheritance is one of the Ten Planks of Marxism. We have not abolished yet (entirely), but certainly do not fully respect it.

I encourage anybody who has fallen for the propaganda of socialists championing the poor to think again about these policies. Everyone knows $1 million is not that much money in the big scheme of things (a decent house might be worth a quarter of that alone). Shoveling unemployed people a monthly stipend of a few hundred dollars does not make one magnanimous when it coincides a huge tax hike. Obama's crew promised no taxes. Only a fool who looks at tax policy solely through the narrow spectrum of the personal income tax would fall for Obama's proposition of not raising taxes. It's a cruel lie.

I'm not even going to get into the fact that taxing an inheritance so heavily reduces the the incentive to save money. Now I see why we need Social Security: because it is illegal to save (at least if you want to keep much of it).

Will the Government Shut Down the Internet? What about just me?

Hopefully, you have been privy to the recent news about the government trying to regulate the Internet. This goes well beyond Ted Stevens' series of tubes meme. We even have a new federal agency to deal with the Internet, which has been given a name that sounds like something out of bad B-movie.

Here's a little video evidence to corroborate my claims about a potential Internet kill switch.




I read something earlier today that brought up an interesting point, however, about regulating/shutting down the Internet (from Robert Wenzel; Economic Policy Journal):

"But, the idea of the kill switch hints that the government is indeed scared of the internet. If they can't shut down the entire net, they will, when they deem it necessary, shutdown political bloggers who don't support the regime. How they actually shut things down is not exactly something I want to hang around to find out."

This is how this kind of thing tends to work. Governments do not have the capacity to shoot ALL the Jews, shut down ALL the chat forums in China, or arrest ALL the file sharers who supposedly "steal" music. They also cannot, for similar reasons, run an economy for very long. What they will do is go after those who are the most antagonistic, visible, and hittable. The rest of Wenzel's article talks about the possibility of getting out of Dodge, much like Mises and Hayek had to do during WWII. I may end up expatriating to another country anyway (lack of career opportunities in the U.S.), but rest assured, as long as I can, I will keep this blog operating. I see no reason, for the time being, to shut down the blog. Even if I leave, it will have to be to an English-speaking country.

If I do pull the plug on this, you will know that all of the libertarian/Austrian school predictions have come true, and that freedom of speech has been mortally assaulted. These predictions were all laid out in Hayek's Road to Serfdom. Help fight the freedom fight by disobeying the statist elitists (smoke in bars, protest taxes, tell off the census workers, pirate music, make Hitler rant parodies, etc.). Otherwise, be ready to suffer the fate of the boiling frog.

Minarchist? Anarchist? Downward-Momentumist!

If you were not already aware, there is a bit of a rift between two different types of libertarians in the liberty movement (to put it very generally). The two somewhat-opposing viewpoints are minarchism (limited, minimal amounts of government) and anarcho-capitalism (volunteerism, purely free market, no state).

A quick look at some of the libertarian chat forums on the web, RonPaulForums.com for example, shows that these two camps do not necessarily get along too well even though they both purport to want a change from the totalitarian statist quo (to borrow Jeff Tucker's term). I've seen a lot of shouting and acrimony over this debate. I'll not spend a lot of time dissertating the two camps, but basically the minarchists accuse the anarcho-capitalists of taking the desire to destroy the state too far, while anarcho-capitalists believe minarchism is too nebulous and does not vanquish the root of the problem. Murray Rothbard, one of the greatest anarcho-capitalist thinkers, makes the point that anarcho-capitalists and minarchists would not be at odds with one another and would be able to work together against a common enemy better if it was not for minarchists' lack of a hatred for the state.

Personally, I am much more in line with the anarcho-capitalist school. The biggest problem for minarchism is the lack of an identifiable goal. What is a minimal amount of government anyway? Would that not be "zero" government? It's just too hard to pinpoint a fixed, identifiable level of government that is ideal. That is, unless you come to the conclusion that we should have no government at all. This is one of the reasons anarcho-capitalism is appealing (that along with the myriad of empirical examples of the state being miserable in EVERYTHING it touches).

Can we get beyond this libertarian dichotomy though? Both minarchism and anarcho-capitalism appear to be a long ways off anyway. My suggestion is this: Downward Momentumism. It's perfectly fine for everyone to have their preferred destination of either limited/no government, but let us at least agree that we need to strip away government fast and furiously for the time being. We should know by now that the state is not going to give up easily and it is very unlikely that minarchists will get exactly what they want or anarcho-capitalists what they want. It is up to the freedom fighters to keep the momentum downward no matter what happens! Eventually this would lead to zero if done effectively enough and long enough (which favors the anarcho-capitalists), but in the unlikely event that it gets that way, and, we realize it's a questionable state of affairs, we can then revise our plan and visit the possibility of instituting a benevolent state.

In the mean time, even if you are a minarchist, it's imperative that you avoid the beltway libertarianism that has become popular. Downward Momentumism cannot be accomplished with libertarians who are willing to compromise all the time. Bad ideas like school vouchers, anti-discrimination laws, and libertarian "status seeking" in Washington are the bane of the freedom movement. Whether you hate the state or are simply irritated by its present manifestation, please do what you can to help us reduce its size and scope. Compromises and the re-arranging of chairs will not accomplish anything and will likely advance statism further.

Which is more tacky? Capitalism or the State?

I get a little tired of people using the tackiness of reality television as a rebuttal to capitalism. Leave alone the absurdity of using aesthetics for political theory, I take exception with the idea that the free market produces demonstrably unappealing things compared to statism. Perhaps people simply do not think about the alternative to capitalism and the undoubtedly horrible creations that come from it. Allow me then to help the statists see that the state creates some possibly tacky items as well (I say "possible" due to the fact that this is all completely subjective, as any intelligent person would know).

First, there's this monstrosity, the Ryugyong Hotel, in North Korea. Could this maybe be tacky? There's a friggin' crane on the top of it! This is what government planning gets you. It looks like the ruins of the pyramids of Giza (worse). I'm not saying I would like to see a Taco Bell next to the Taj Majal, but only government can produce something this bad. This thing will never be finished, by the way.




Next, we have something a little closer to home, the U.S. Federal Reserve Building. You don't see this very often because of the clandestine nature of the Fed, not because it is ugly. Nevertheless, it is an eyesore and the propagandists in D.C. would not want to showcase it anyway. Look at this thing. I would just assume take a picture of the Temple of Doom. Honesty compels to admit that the inside looks rather nice (seen on that interview with Helicopter Ben last year), but the outside is chock full of government-crusted ugly.





I may as well throw in this lousy piece of junk that I saw on LewRockwell.com the other day. It's the U.S. embassy in London. Not every statist eyesore comes in the form of a building (how about piles of dead bodies?), but the state tends to get it done best in the realm of architecture.





I do not want to make it sound like statists have not produced anything beautiful (Palace of Versailles, ancient pyramids, etc.). They do after all steal from the beauty of the free market all the time. I just want to highlight some of the nasty structures the statists have erected and dispose of this silly misconception that the free market has a monopoly on tackiness. Also, if people are willing to pay for something, it can't be that tacky anyway. Prices can even help us in the domain of aesthetics.

Job Applications in the Union of American Socialist Republics

Job applications are lot of fun each and every time. Judging by what I see on applications, I have come to the conclusion that I am completely useless to employers in the UASR. I have not spent time as an imperial storm trooper (military). I possess a clean bill of health. This is bad because only people with major disabilities can be productive, so says the ADA. I do not possess a pair of ovaries (so maybe I am disabled, just not in a good way). I do not have the correct "ethnic makeup." If only I were black or Hispanic, then I would be much more productive.

Oh, and one can clearly tell that employers hate these nasty little things called resumes. They would prefer you completely re-type everything about yourself every time you apply to a job. I fully respect the rights of employers. That does not mean that the majority of them aren't complete blockheads like every other genius whose graduated from American schools and cannot identify the country that borders the U.S. to the north.

Why Government Cars Are Worthless

I think it's safe to say that over the past several decades the car industry has been wholly co-opted by the state and the unions, rendering it a fascist industrial complex similar to the military, medical, educational, and environmental industrial complexes. Here are some reasons why the government-infiltrated car industry produces shabby vehicles and a lousy transportation system:

1) Repairs - Any of the following items may require you to spend money either fixing or
replacing: car engine (good luck), catalytic converter, car battery, mass air filter, electrical issues, belts, fuel hoses, throttle sensor, brakes, accelerator, cylinders, muffler, oil changes, tune-ups, tire rotations, re-fueling, spark plugs, broken fuses (these are just a few of the things I've dealt with; there are more) . . . and you will also need to get a driver's license, car insurance (whether you want it or not, and whether it pays anything when you make a claim), state inspections, car registrations, and license plates.

By the way, I know things break, but let's be honest, cars break down at a ridiculous rate and the automotive repair industry is a boon because of it. However, their benefit is at the expense of an efficient, safe driving experience.

Why can't manufacturers work on making cars that do not fall apart every few months? Because that would require them to respond to the consumer demand for better quality, something that does not rest well with unions who are in the business of pumping out new hunks of metal repeatedly (see Detroit). This is just like how public school teachers have no desire to provide quality educations, for then pupils would rise through the education process quicker, thereby decreasing the need for a high supply of over-paid teachers.

2) Debt Financing to Pay for Them

This is the same unsustainable problem Americans have with housing, education, health care, and even general purchases. People use and abuse debt at an obscene level. All things considered, car debt may not be what breaks the camel's back for most families, but it does make up another several thousand dollars in expenses, stymieing the effort to save money. As has been the case in the housing industry, people have fallen for un-fixed loans and extended warranties in this domain as well. The average auto loan in this country is about $30,000, even higher than student loans.

3) Monopoly on Transportation

Believe it or not, cars CAN share the road with travelers of other means. Check out this video of 1905 San Fransisco. This is spontaneous order for transportation. Nobody needs a stop light, stop signs, yield signs, or much else to function peacefully. Even for its time, San Fransisco was still more crowded than many American cities and towns today. To say that we need traffic regulations and a one-vehicle-type system is to ignore reality. Urban planning at both the local and federal levels have distorted the marketplace for transportation. We are de facto stuck with a single mode of transportation, for most of our travels, due to the dictates of elected/non-elected tyrants. Wouldn't things be better without the automobile monopoly?

4) Used on Unsafe Roads

With all the fuss that has been made about BP's blunders, it is a wonder why nobody holds government accountable when its Frankenstein roads put far more people in danger than any oil spill. In Walter Block's book, The Privatization of Road and Highways, he cites a death toll of around 40,000 per year due to automobile accidents. Could the private sector get away with anything like that? Of course, they could not. This problem may not be directly attributable to the quality of cars, but it is worth mentioning. The monopolization of cars as the only method of transportation may have a lot to do with the government plastering roads and highways all over the country, leaving little or no alternative for getting to and from places. Unsafe/faulty cars go hand-in-hand with unsafe roads. Anyone who has seen how inefficient government is in dealing with postal delivery should not be surprised that the same entity takes it sweet time doing basic repairs for roads. For more on this, I highly encourage a reading of Block's book.

5) Very Little Advancement Recently

Unless you are easily impressed by the increase in mass of the average American car over the past 20 years, there is very little to write home about when talking about the most recent evolution in automobiles. The government decided to enact emissions crackdowns on polluting cars, the emission standards ex-communicated almost all old cars, manufacturers got around this by creating SUVs (which pollute a ton, but are not really "cars"), and the rest is history. Now everyone wants to get rid of SUVs. We also have hybrid cars, which are also a statist/leftist idea, and are completely impractical. Hybrids have multiple, highly-polluting batteries.

When compared to the great leaps made in the early part of the 20th century, recent developments are decidedly lame, unnecessary, and usually brought on by frivolous lobbyists (unions and environmentalists). If the free market was allowed to operate, our vehicles would be more akin to Star Trek or the Jetsons. However, when the state interferes with things, progress is slowed to an almost stand-still and prices increase due to artificially-imposed scarcity. I have not even said anything about the oil manipulations, almost entirely attributable to the state in one way or another.