The Humble Libertarian original

By: Wes Messamore The traditional partisan debate over whether to raise or cut taxes– especially for high-income earners– ignores an independent solution that should at least be tolerable to both sides: make the high-income earners– especially corporations– pay their taxes in the first place... Read the rest of my article at The Independent Voter Network . Wes Messamore , Editor in Chief, T H L Articles | Author's Page

Glen Allport writes : Much of the growing transfer of wealth to the rich is in fact only possible because of government coercion. Many of today's corporations (some portion of our military contractors, for instance) would not even exist in a free society, and those which did exist would have to be selling something that people (not government) were willing to pay for. But today, we don't have a free society, and government power is massive enough to make or break any corporation or industry. Government power is now being used to hand billions and even trillions of dollars to failed businessmen (many of whom failed due to serious fraud, as with "liar loans" in the banking industry) and to connected corporations and other groups. Today, government control of various industries (misleadingly called "regulation") enables bad corporate behavior, stifles competition, allows massive pollution to go unpunished, and raises prices to artificial and even absurd le...

There has been mixed responses to Occupy Wall Street by libertarians. Some see the movement as a positive, while others see them as little more than lazy hipsters. But libertarians must be sensitive to why people feel the way they do about issues. The occupiers point out a legitimate concern that "the 1%" control vastly more power and wealth than "the 99%", and corporations have accumulated more power and privilege than is healthy for an open society. Some other concerns and demands are absurd, but the heart of the matter is on track. The question is why has this happened? While many on the left are quick to blame a nebulous thing called "greed", or lack of regulation, the matter is more complicated than that. This calls for a Lord of the Rings metaphor. Let's say that Sauron, the big cheese bad guy of Lord of the Rings, is the corporate hegemony. The 1%. Most people in Middle Earth agree that this is a problem, but there are a few differ...

Sometimes all you need is the headline. " Christmas Tree Tax ." Yeah. Here's the story : ' Obama Administration to Delay New 15-Cent Christmas Tree Tax The U.S. Department of Agriculture is going to delay implementation and revisit a proposed new 15 cent fee on fresh-cut Christmas trees, sources tell ABC News. The fee, requested by the National Christmas Tree Association in 2009, was first announced in the Federal Registry yesterday and has generated criticism of President Obama from conservative media outlets. The well-trafficked Drudge Report is leading with the story, linking to a blog by David Addington, a former top aide to then-Vice President Dick Cheney, at the conservative Heritage Foundation assailing the president thus: “The economy is barely growing and nine percent of the American people have no jobs. Is a new tax on Christmas trees the best President Obama can do? And, by the way, the American Christmas tree has a great image that doesn’t need any ...

"Damn it feels good to be a banksta!"t-shirts, bumper stickers, and other merchandise, because these days, bankstas have it pretty good: make poor business decisions, get rewarded with a heap of taxpayer bailouts and loans. Get your "Banksta" merch here ! Tweet Wes Messamore , Editor in Chief, T H L Articles | Author's Page

This is the list of Occupy Wall Street Demands that protesters should be making: Speaking truth to power at an Occupy Wall Street protest, this orator (F-bomb warning) tells the Occupy Wall Street crowd exactly what they need to hear, explaining that if we really want to reign in the power of the bloated and corrupt financial sector, restoring prosperity and freedom to the rest of us in working class America, that we must give the regime in Washington LESS, not more power over our economy, because they will only ever use their power to benefit the elite 1%, not the rest of us. In contrast to one ineffectual, haphazard list of confused demands by some of the Wall Street Occupiers , this speaker's prescription for reform would decisively strike at the heart of the financial sector's ill-gotten gains and the destructive means by which it attains them. In this alternative list of Occupy Wall Street Demands , the speaker calls for: 1. Localism: Limit the size, role, and ...

On her Facebook page today, Corie Whalen , a friend of mine and a respected colleague in the fight for liberty, wrote a quite succinct and, as far as I can tell, mostly accurate assessment of the Occupy Wall Street protest movement: "I'm all for the left/right working together when interests converge. With libertarians and progressives, this actually happens a lot. For example, via an interest in civil liberties, anti-war matters, and protesting the drug war. Typically, this coalition makes sense when both sides find themselves against certain sets of government action. However, I'm highly concerned by some people who claim to be interested in liberty supporting this "Occupy Wall Street" movement. Maybe I'm missing something, but as far as I can tell, OWS is purely leftist in the worst, authoritarian sense of the term. Look at this pro-government list of demands , and tell me this has any relation to liberty. All I see is a bunch of misguided 20 somethi...

Nicholas Kristof writes at The New York Times : AFTER flying around the world this year to cover street protests from Cairo to Morocco, reporting on the latest “uprising” was easier: I took the subway. The “Occupy Wall Street” movement has taken over a park in Manhattan’s financial district and turned it into a revolutionary camp. Hundreds of young people chant slogans against “banksters” or corporate tycoons. Occasionally, a few even pull off their clothes, which always draws news cameras. “Occupy Wall Street” was initially treated as a joke, but after a couple of weeks it’s gaining traction. The crowds are still tiny by protest standards — mostly in the hundreds, swelling during periodic marches — but similar occupations are bubbling up in Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Washington. David Paterson, the former New York governor, dropped by, and labor unions are lending increasing support. I tweeted that the protest reminded me a bit of Tahrir Square in Cairo, and that...

"The Obama Administration fast tracked Solyndra's loan application and now $535 million dollars of American tax payer money is gone along with 1,000 green jobs. How many more examples of green jobs failure do we need before we realize you can't centrally plan economic prosperity?" Hat tip: Young Americans for Liberty Wes Messamore , Editor in Chief, T H L Articles | Author's Page

Nick Schulz has a great lesson for us at National Review Online, drawing from the failures and successes of Steve Jobs, who recently stepped down as CEO of Apple: Lots of digital ink will be spilled about Jobs in the coming days, most of it focusing on his truly marvelous successes. It’s better to focus on his failures. Jobs failed better than anyone else in Silicon Valley, maybe better than anyone in corporate America. By that I mean Jobs did what only the greatest entrepreneurs can do: learn from their failures. I don’t mean learn from their mistakes. I mean learn from their abject, humiliating, bonehead, epic fails. Everyone today thinks of Jobs as the genius who gave us the iPod, MacBooks, the iTunes store, the iPhone, the iPad, and so on. Yes, he transformed personal computing and multimedia. But let’s not forget what else Jobs did. Jobs (along with Steve Wozniak) brought us the Apple I and Apple II computers, early iterations of which sold in the mere hundreds and we...

This Sunday, in a piece entitled " Letting Bankers Walk ," Paul Krugman quite correctly criticized Washington's "go easy on the bankers" policy: Ever since the current economic crisis began, it has seemed that five words sum up the central principle of United States financial policy: go easy on the bankers. This principle was on display during the final months of the Bush administration, when a huge lifeline for the banks was made available with few strings attached. But here's my rule: only people that didn't cheer lead for the TARP bailouts (like here , here , and here ) get to complain about the TARP bailouts or position themselves as critics of the banking establishment with any amount of credibility. Wes Messamore , Editor in Chief, T H L Articles | Author's Page

The Politico 's got the goods : A company that laid off hundreds of employees. A federal “bailout” to rescue a failing bank. Mitt Romney, at the center of it all. It’s a story line from a tough Democratic ad that was teed up for use against Romney in his 1994 Senate campaign in Massachusetts. The spot, which was provided exclusively to POLITICO, never actually aired. But it’s all but certain that some version of its allegations will surface in the GOP primary or the general election, if Romney makes it that far. That ad would have been damaging had it appeared when it was produced nearly two decades ago. But it could take on new relevance in a 2012 campaign in which Romney is touting his business career as proof he can lead a national economic turnaround. Wes Messamore , Editor in Chief, T H L Articles | Author's Page

Glenn Kessler at The Washington Post reports : We take no view on whether the administration’s efforts on behalf of the automobile industry were a good or bad thing; that’s a matter for the editorial pages and eventually the historians. But we are interested in the facts the president cited to make his case. What we found is one of the most misleading collections of assertions we have seen in a short presidential speech. Virtually every claim by the president regarding the auto industry needs an asterisk, just like the fine print in that too-good-to-be-true car loan. Let’s look at the claims in the order in which the president said them. “Chrysler has repaid every dime and more of what it owes American taxpayers for their support during my presidency — and it repaid that money six years ahead of schedule. And this week, we reached a deal to sell our remaining stake. That means soon, Chrysler will be 100 percent in private hands.” Wow, “every dime and more” sounds like such a...

This is the comment of the week people (by: @AngelaTC ) : Wesley, put this in your bag of talking points, right alongside "moral hazard," when you encounter the "but they paid it back!" position. People who say that don't understand the discount window, and what it means. The money was 'lent' to the banks through the discount window at zero or 1% interest. They then used it buy treasury bonds -- (i.e. loan it back to us) at 3% interest. So when they 'paid it back' they kept the 2% difference in INTEREST THEY GOT FROM US ON MONEY WE LOANED TO THEM FOR FREE. Herman Cain is probably a nice guy, and no doubt he's got tons of charisma, but he's nothing more than the GOP version of Obama peddling Hope n Change. Angela blogs at Red State Eclectic . Wes Messamore , Editor in Chief, T H L Articles | Author's Page

Here's a fun fact. Did you know that last year, illegal immigrants paid more taxes than multi-billion dollar conglomerate General Electric ? That's right, the Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy found that in 2010, undocumented immigrants paid an estimated $11.2 billion in taxes. General Electric -- which earned $14 billion last year-- paid nothing. It even got money from Washington ( i.e. from you ), all credits and subsidies considered. Isn't that appalling ? Look, if you think illegal immigrants aren't carrying their fair share of the burden, if you think they are soaking up goodies from the welfare state and glutting our social services-- we can have that debate... But can we agree that the bigger drain on our national treasury is corporate welfare and giant multi-billion dollar handouts to the finance industry and other powerful lobbies with friends in Washington? Can we agree that the unearned transfer of wealth from hard-working middle class and poo...

Today I read an article that may have provided the most detailed and accurate look into the fundamental dysfunction with the US government that I have encountered in a long time. Here is the money quote from the article: "The close alliance among Wall Street and the economics departments of the major universities and the West Wing of the White House is the military-industrial complex of our time. That it has an effect on our governance is beyond question. How pernicious and distorting these effects are, how cynical many of its participants might be, and what might be done to change the system are being fiercely debated in Washington." Read the entire article here and prepare to feel ill. Also take a careful look at the large graphic on Page 2, noting all the different administrations and both major parties represented in this "revolving door" of corruption between Washington and Wall Street. Justin Raimondo of AntiWar.com has said that there are not really two...

There’s a popular historical legend that goes like this: Once upon a time (for this is how stories of this kind should begin), back in the 19th century, the United States economy was almost completely unregulated and laissez-faire. But then there arose a movement to subject business to regulatory restraint in the interests of workers and consumers, a movement that culminated in the presidencies of Wilson and the two Roosevelts. This story comes in both left-wing and right-wing versions, depending on whether the government is seen as heroically rescuing the poor and weak from the rapacious clutches of unrestrained corporate power, or as unfairly imposing burdensome socialistic fetters on peaceful and productive enterprise. But both versions agree on the central narrative: a century of laissez-faire, followed by a flurry of anti-business legislation. Every part of this story is false. Read the rest of Roderick T. Long's article at Praxeology (dot) net . James Tuttle , Regular Columni...

One question that’s frequently raised about market anarchism: How would you prevent the economy from being taken over by monopolies, if we didn’t have anti-trust regulations and other restrictions on corporate abuses of power? Without anti-trust laws, the firms in an oligopoly or cartel could simply lower prices when a competitor tried to enter the market, and then raise them again when the competitor went out of business. Oligopoly firms could also, it’s argued, use their market power to restrict competition in other ways, like making exclusivity contracts to prevent a would-be entrant to the same industry from obtaining the suppliers and outlets it needed to function. The problem with this argument is that it assumes a great deal of what it needs to prove. Read the rest of Kevin Carson's article at The Center for a Stateless Society . James Tuttle , Regular Columnist, T H L Articles | Author's Page | Website

The general lines of Ludwig von Mises’s rational-calculation argument are well known. A market in factors of production is necessary for pricing production inputs so that a planner may allocate them rationally. The problem has nothing to do either with the volume of data or with agency problems. The question, rather, as Peter Klein put it, is “[h]ow does the principal know what to tell the agent to do?” This calculation argument can be applied not only to a state-planned economy, but also to the internal planning of the large corporation under interventionism, or state capitalism. Read the rest of Kevin carson's article at The Freeman Online . James Tuttle , Regular Columnist, T H L Articles | Author's Page | Website

On Tuesday’s Rachel Maddow show, Maddow asked author Thomas Frank about the prospects presented by the defection of some allegedly libertarianish Tea Partiers on the renewal of USA PATRIOT. Isn’t there a split between the libertarian and authoritarian strands of the conservative movement?, she asked. Well, yeah, Frank said. There’s some underlying tension between the socially conservative wing and the pro-business wing (“or as they prefer to be called, ‘pro-market’”). In hinting at the pro-business vs. pro-market distinction, of course, Frank scored at least an oblique hit on an important point: The so-called “libertarian” wing of the conservative movement, for the most part, is more pro-business than pro-market. As he suggested himself, if you examine their agenda closely, despite all the rhetoric it’s not really about whether government is big or small. It doesn’t matter so much what size government is as who it helps out. What they mean by “pro-market” is a big government tha...