Aeon J. Skoble
Mark Brady
William Marina
EBay on Thursday laid out plans to become a conduit for Chinese exporters as it announced an alliance that could make it easier for Chinese goods to find their way on to the online auction site.
The internet company said it had formed an alliance with Global Sources, a Singapore-based business-to-business media company that helps Chinese and other Asian manufacturers reach potential customers around the world.
The arrangement will give eBay's "powersellers" its most active users access to Chinese-made goods so that they can buy products for resale on the online auction site.
EBay's move echoes attempts by other ecommerce companies to provide an easier way for smaller Chinese manufacturers to reach a global market, and for potential customers to find suppliers in the country.
William Marina
With respect to why this is occurring, I would suggest it is part of the larger Imperial Syndrome. The Chinese were the first to deal with developing an imperial, bureaucratic schooling system, which was later debated by Jefferson (a sinophile via France) and John Adams. Tocqueville also recognized the triumph of "the Chinese System" in France.
As noted recently by a teacher at American University, to avoid instant responses by students including threats, use number rather than letter grades and get the hell away from campus and the computer after listing your grades at the last second. I got an early taste of this when I started teaching on the Internet in 1997.
I recall in high school after having won a city wide prize for American history, and having the highest average in the 11th grade class, getting "B"s because I would not cut out little articles, mount them, and bring them into class. All of the young ladies did so to "earn" the "A." The teacher, a woman, asked me why I wouldn't conform, and I asked why she couldn't reconsider her system?
I suspect that women by nature and by early training are better suited to this kind of schooling that has little to do with a real education, which is not so easy to evaluate with either a number of a letter grade.
Wendy suggests privatization, but if the private schools have the same Mandarin training structure, how will that help?
If males take the approach of the Taoists and simply drop out, that need not, as Wendy suggests, consign them to blue collar jobs. It may lead them into the market, entrepreneurship and small business. The spate of new books about the corporate corruption in universities suggests that is a viable alternative to schooling, certainly these are now more ethical.
I often wonder what my life might have been like had I turned down the academic scholarships and fellowships that took me through to the doctorate, as I had turned down the athletic ones, and had simply gone into construction from the get-go? Even operated as a sideline, one year I earned more from the latter than from teaching, until Reagan's "tax reform." In neither effort was my primary motivation monetary, but I did enjoy working with some craftsmen more than with some of the academics at the university. There was never the nastiness, pettiness and envy one sees among so-called intellectuals.
See also my article "Capitalism and the Tao," in The Free Market for Jan. 1998 at Mises.org.
David T. Beito
As K.C. Johnson puts it, to "the AAUP, the internal threats to academic freedom that represent the majority of FIRE’s cases don’t seem to exist. Instead, their view of academic freedom is like LBJ’s grandmother’s nightgown—covering everything a professor might do or say, provided that the professor’s attitudes are acceptable to the current academic majority."
Anthony Gregory
Against Leviathan is a little more polemic and impassioned—not to say less rigorous in its research—and has a slightly greater chance, in my experience, of inciting the reader to share the author’s anger and frustration. After reading it, I was frankly rather upset, especially by the sections on the war on drugs, both in its overt and well-recognized form (the war on illicit recreational substance users) and the less appreciated campaign (the war to deprive the ill from their needed and preferred but non-FDA-approved medicines). Both wars have assaulted individual liberty and have led to thousands of American deaths. And when Higgs writes about it, he discusses statistics and policy options, but the living resentful emotion of living under the tyranny of the therapeutic state resides in each of his virtuosically chosen words. I get the impression that Higgs has had it and he’s not going to take it any more.
But the book is filled with facts, data and information—more than one might believe without thinking about it while reading it, since the author’s prose goes does so easily and is not cluttered with extraneous and arrogant jargon. Here’s my review of the book from a while back on LewRockwell.com, in which I touch on other issues he examines, such as the oppression of conscription, economic egalitarianism as a supposed a priori good (he debunks this one well), and the nasty characters who have ruled this country (such as Richard Nixon, who, truth be told, was no more amiable and tactful in private discussion than he was honest and humble in his public “service”). I’d really like the comments of anyone who’s read the book, or anyone who hasn’t read it. This collection of essays truly is superb.
David T. Beito
Well....perhaps that is taking it a bit too far but this audio of Harding’s signature “normalcy” speech from 1920 shows the work of a polished orator.
The content also includes much common sense. Unlike the more famous great communicator of a later age, Harding not only cut taxes but reduced the national debt and pursued a consistent policy of arms reduction. Speaking in the aftermath of Woodrow Wilson’s war-created hysteria and red scare, Harding forcefully closes by warning about the dangers of big government: The world needs to be reminded that all human ills are not curable by legislation, and that quantity of statutory enactments and excess of government offer no substitute for quality of citizenship. The problems of maintained civilization are not to be solved by a transfer of responsibility from citizenship to government and no eminent page in history was ever drafted to the standards of mediocrity. Nor, no government worthy of the name which is directed by influence on the one hand or moved by intimidation on the other. My best judgment of America's need is to steady down, to get squarely on our feet, to make sure of the right path. Let's get out of the fevered delirium of war with the hallucination that all the money in the world is to be made in the madness of war and the wildness of its aftermath. Let us stop to consider that tranquility at home is more precious than peace abroad and that both our good fortune and our eminence are dependent on the normal forward stride of all the American people.
David T. Beito
Sheldon Richman
Kenneth R. Gregg
As an activist, she would become known as one of the leading abolitionists of her time, promote the career of Florence Nightingale for generations of young women, lead the fight for women's rights, write a candid autobiography as well as a popular work on the sociology of August Comte and one on Mesmerism.
The following is excerpted from "Political Non-Existence of Women" from her Society In America:
POLITICAL NON-EXISTENCE of WOMEN. General Treatise on the Denial of Full Citizenship Rights to Women.
One of the fundamental principles announced in the Declaration of Independence is, that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. How can the political condition of women be reconciled with this? Governments in the United States have power to tax women who hold property (to divorce them from their husbands; to fine, imprison, and execute them for certain offences. Whence do these governments derive their powers? They are not"just," as they are not derived from the consent of the women thus governed. Governments in the United States have power to enslave certain women (and also to punish other women for inhuman treatment of such slaves. Neither of these powers are"just;" not being derived from the consent of the governed. Governments decree to women in some States half their husbands' property; in others one-third. In some, a woman, on her marriage, is made to yield all her property to her husband; in others, to retain a portion, or the whole, in her own hands. Whence do governments derive the unjust power of thus disposing of property without the consent of the governed? The democratic principle condemns all this as wrong; and requires the equal political representation of all rational beings. Children, idiots, and criminals, during the season of sequestration, are the only fair exceptions. The case is so plain that I might close it here (but it is interesting to inquire how so obvious a decision has been so evaded as to leave to women no political rights whatever. The question has been asked, from time to time, in more countries than one, how obedience to the laws can be required of women, when no woman has, either actually or virtually, given any assent to any law. No plausible answer has, as far as I can discover, been offered for the good reason, that no plausible answer can be devised. The most principled democratic writers on government have on this subject sunk into fallacies, as disgraceful as any advocate of despotism has adduced. In fact, they have thus sunk from being, for the moment, advocates of despotism. Jefferson in America, and James Mill at home, subside, for the occasion, to the level of the author of the Emperor of Russia's Catechism for the young Poles. Jefferson says" Were our State a pure democracy, in which all the inhabitants should meet together to transact all their business, there would yet be excluded from their deliberations,
"1. Infants, until arrived at years of discretion.
"2. Women, who, to prevent depravation of morals, and ambiguity of issue, could not mix promiscoously in the public meetings of men.
"3. Slaves, from whom the unfortunate state of things with us takes away the rights of will and of property."
If the slave disqualification, here assigned, were shifted up under the head of Women, their case would be nearer the truth than as it now stands. Woman's lack of will and of property, is more like the true cause of her exclusion from the representation, than that which is actually set down against her. As if there could be no means of conducting public affairs but by promiscuous meetings! As if there would be more danger in promiscuous meetings for political business than in such meetings for worship, for oratory, for music, for dramatic entertainments, for any of the thousand transactions of civilized life! The plea is not worth another word.
Mill says, with regard to representation, in his Essay on Government, “One thing is pretty clear, that all those individuals, whose interests are involved in those of other individuals, may be struck off without inconvenience.... In this light, women may be regarded, the interest of almost all of whom is involved, either in that of their fathers or in that of their husbands."
The true democratic principle is, that no person's interests can be, or can be ascertained to be, identical with those of any other person. This allows the exclusion of none but incapables.
The word"almost," in Mr. Mill's second sentence, rescues women from the exclusion he proposes. As long as there are women who have neither husbands nor fathers, his proposition remains an absurdity.
The interests of women who have fathers and husbands can never be identical with theirs, while there is a necessity for laws to protect women against their husbands and fathers. This statement is not worth another word.
Some who desire that there should be an equality of property between men and women, oppose representation, on the ground that political duties would be incompatible with the other duties which women have to discharge. The reply to this is, that women are the best judges here. God has given time and power for the discharge of all duties, and, if he had not, it would be for women to decide which they would take, and which they would leave. But their guardians follow the ancient fashion of deciding what is best for their wards. The Emperor of Russia discovers when a cost of arms and title do not agree with a subject prince. The King of France early perceives that the air of Paris does not agree with a free-thinking foreigner. The English Tories feel the hardship that it would be to impose the franchise on every artizan, busy as he is in getting his bread. The Georgian planter perceives the hardship that freedom would be to his slaves. And the best friends of half the human race peremptorily decide for them as to their rights, their duties, their feelings, their powers. In all these cases, the persons thus cared for feel that the abstract decision rests with themselves; that, though they may be compelled to submit, they need not acquiesce.
It is pleaded that half of the human race does acquiesce in the decision of the other half, as to their rights and duties. And some instances, not only of submission, but of acquiescence, there are. Forty years ago, the women of New Jersey went to the pol1, and voted, at state elections. The general term,"inhabitants," stood unqualified as it will again, when the true democratic principle comes to be fully understood. A motion was made to correct the inadvertence; and it was done, as a matter of course without any appeal, as far as I could learn, from the persons about to be injured. Such acquiescence proves nothing but the degradation of the injured party. It inspires the same emotions of pity as the supplication of the freed slave who kneels to his master to restore him to slavery, that he may have his animal wants supplied, without being troubled with human rights and duties. Acquiescence like this is an argument which cuts the wrong way for those who use it.
But this acquiescence is only partial; and, to give any semblance of strength to the plea, the acquiescence must be complete. I, for one, do not acquiesce. I declare that whatever obedience I yield to the laws of the society in which I live is a matter between, not the community and myself, but my judgment and my will. Any punishment inflicted on me for the breach of the laws, I should regard as so much gratuitous injury, for to those laws I have never, actually or virtually, assented. I know that there are women in England who agree with me in this. I know that there are women in America who agree with me in this. The plea of acquiescence is invalidated by us.
It is pleaded that, by enjoying the protection of some laws, women give their assent to all. This needs but a brief answer. Any protection thus conferred is, under woman's circumstances, a boon best owed at the pleasure of those in whose power she is. A boon of any sort is no compensation for the privation of something else; nor can the enjoyment of it bind to the performance of anything to which it bears no relation.
Because I, by favour, may procure the imprisonment of the thief who robs my house, am I, unrepresented, therefore bound not to smuggle French ribbons? The obligation not to smuggle has a widely different derivation. I cannot enter upon the commonest order of pleas of all; or those which relate to the virtual influence of woman; her swaying the judgment and will of man through the heart and so forth. One might as well try to dissect the morning mist. I knew a gentleman in America who told me how much rather he had be a woman than the man he is; a professional man, a father, a citizen. He would give up all this for a woman's influence. I thought he was mated too soon. He should have married a lady, also of my acquaintance, who would not at all object to being a slave, if ever the blacks should have the upper hand; it is so right that the one race should be subservient to the other ! Or rather, I thought it a pity that the one could not be a woman, and the other a slave so that an injured individual of each class might be exalted into their places, to fulfil and enjoy the duties and privileges which they despise, and, in despising, disgrace.
The truth is, that while there is much said about"the sphere of woman," two widely different notions are entertained of what is meant by the phrase. The narrow, and, to the ruling party, the more convenient notion is that sphere appointed by men, and bounded by their ideas of propriety ; a notion from which any and every woman may fairly dissent. The broad and true conception is of the sphere appointed by God, and bounded by the powers which he has bestowed. This commands the assent of man and woman, and only the question of powers remains to be proved.
That woman has power to represent her own interests, no one can deny till she has been tried. The modes need not be discussed here: they must vary with circumstances. The fearful and absurd images which are perpetually called up to perplex the question, images of women on wool-sacks in England, and under canopies in America, have nothing to do with the matter. The principle being once established, the method will follow, easily, naturally, and under a remarkable transmutation of the ludicrous into the sublime. The kings of Europe would have laughed mightily, two centuries ago, at the idea of a commoner, without robes, crown, or sceptre, stepping into the throne of a strong nation. Yet who dared to laugh when Washington's super-royal voice greeted the New World from the presidential chair, and the old world stood still to catch the echo?
The principle of the equal rights of both halves of the human race is all we have to do with here. It is the true democratic principle which can never be seriously controverted, and only for a short time evaded. Governments can derive their just powers only from the consent of the governed.
Just a thought.
Just Ken
CLASSical Liberalism
Jason Kuznicki
William Marina
But here is a piece from the Christian Science Monitor, one of the better papers on what has been going on in Iraq. As noted these tensions have been around for a while.
http://csmonitor.com/2005/0613/dailyUpdate.html
One should remember it was the abuses by contractors in Falllujah that precipitated things a year ago April. There is little control over the highly paid contractors who the regular forces have to protect.
William Marina
Rumsfeld is having trouble getting recruits, even with perks including $40,000. What needs to be done is to make the pitch to all of the guys, and some gals, who have been playing video games and manipulating joy sticks since they were toddlers.
"Become a War Hero, While Never Leaving the USA," might be a typical ad, to some of these kids, even high school dropouts. Given the skills needed, do they really even need to be 18 to join up? Maybe all that should be required is a skill certificate from Sony or Nintendo.
After the bonus and a tour of duty(?) at regular combat pay (?), a "Drone Jockey" can then sign up with some private contractor such as Halliburton for the really big bucks, until time to retire before the age of 40. This will give a new definition to "Combat!"
If we had had such a force in the Vietnam years perhaps even George and Dick might have gone into"Combat."
Hey, they need a suitable anthem for the Joy Stick Air Force. How about, "Take to the Air Junior Joy Stickers?" sung to the old Air Force song music? Boy, what Gilbert & Sullivan could do with this theme!"When I was a lad, I used to work, as a Joy Stick Flyer in the Drone Air Force . . ."
To read more about our Drone Force, and its growing effectiveness, check out these links:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.06/drones_pr.html
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.06/drones.html?pg=4
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,67655,00.html
Mark Brady
Virginia’s Declaration was drawn upon by Thomas Jefferson for the opening paragraphs of the Declaration of Independence. It was widely copied by the other colonies and became the basis of the Bill of Rights. Written by George Mason, it was adopted by the Virginia Constitutional Convention on June 12, 1776.
Rick provides the complete text of the Declaration and links to the appropriate page at the National Archives website.
David T. Beito
How many books do I own? I have no idea. Probably three thousand, divided about equally between home and work.
2. What’s the last book I bought? Myrlie Evers, The Autobiography of Medgar Evers. Actually, the publisher sent it to me because of my bio (co-authored with Linda Royster Beito) of Evers’ mentor, T.R.M. Howard.
3. What’s the last book I read? Thomas Reeves, The Life and Times of Joe McCarthy.
4. What are the five books that mean the most to me? This is a tough one.
Some of these books are currently are on mind as important...so my answer may be quite different a year from now. I am including For A New Liberty because of the tremendous influence it had on my political development.
Jane Jacobs, Death and Life of the Great American Cities.
Jeffrey Hummel, Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men.
Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
Murray Rothbard, For a New Liberty.
David E. Bernstein, Only One Place of Redress.
I will tag Tom G. Palmer, David Hart, Jeffrey Hummel, Matt Barganier, and John Majewski.
David T. Beito
A related question might be asked. To who extent can Bush's reluctance to crackdown on illegal immigration, a reluctance that has enranged many of his pro-war supporters, be traced to the need for more recruits.
As the military has its fourth consecutive month of recruiting short-falls, this could be the"sleeper" issue of the coming months. If you're a noncitizen who has joined the Army or Marines, the citizenship process has become easier. There are about 37,000 noncitizens in the military, with more than 3,000"green-card soldiers" having served already in Iraq. President Bush has streamlined the system to make them full-fledged Americans -- though many still find their applications delayed because of their inability to meet appointment schedules.
The issue was briefly in the news in 2003 when Bush gave retroactive citizenship to two (one of them, at least, originally illegal) non-citizen soldiers who died in Iraq. According to Bill, the military of the Roman Empire engaged in similar practices and, of course, famously came to rely heavily on non-Romans to staff the ranks.
Keith Halderman
“Unless you have a get out of cancer free card in your wallet, you need to vote for the legislation described below, not because the overwhelming majority of the people in your district want you to, not because it is the right, the compassionate, thing to do, but because you or someone you love may need medical cannabis in the future. When that time comes, with pain and suffering, who do want to have the power to make fundamental decisions concerning relief, the federal government or yourself?”
Kenneth R. Gregg
Daniel Klein has a very interesting paper describing one of the fundamental issues which libertarians have to address. In his insightful manner, he examines the notions of" common purpose" and"shared experience" which statists use to justify their attempts to coordinate everyone's thoughts and behavior into a single, unified collective whole. In The People's Romance: Why People Love Government (As Much as They Do), he presents the idea of collective behavior as a collective good within an historical context, and also seeks to explain why it occurs and why it's such a difficult concept for libertarians to overcome.
He argues that this sense of mutuality expressed in a" coordination of sentiment" is in contradistinction to the spontaneous order essential to a libertarian society, as well as the notions of private property, and even self-ownership. I think that he has come up with an excellent explanatory tool in our understandings of what issues libertarian need to address.
Tip of the hat to Douglas Wagoner on Atlantis II for bringing it to my attention.
Just a thought.
Just Ken
CLASSical Liberalism
Mark Brady
Today let us celebrate the life of Francis Wrigley Hirst (“Frank” to his family), who was born on June 10, 1873, at Dalton Lodge, two miles east of Huddersfield in the West Riding of Yorkshire. After a long and fruitful life, he died at Singleton in Sussex on February 22, 1953.
The weekly periodical Truth described him as “one of the greatest libertarians of all time” for his work as an apostle of civil liberty and personal freedom. A book of reminiscences by his family and friends appeared in 1958, in which his lifelong friend and brother-in-law, J. E. Allen, wrote that he had a “genius for friendship” and the historian G. P. Gooch declared, “I have never known a man whose character and convictions underwent less change with advancing years.”
Hirst was a prolific writer, skillful biographer, and scholarly exponent of basic principles, who devoted his life to the cause of individual liberty when at times it must have seemed that collectivism had triumphed. It is therefore appropriate that today we salute Francis Wrigley Hirst as a valiant defender of the Cobdenite tradition of peace and free trade.
You can read my account of his life here.
Walter E. Grinder and John Hagel III
Alvaro’s new book is a penetrating classical liberal critique of the failed development of Latin America over the past 500 years. Writing in the tradition of such penetrating analysts of state and society as Stanislav Andreski, Alexander Rustow, Franz Oppenheimer and Herbert Spencer, Vargas Llosa quickly cuts to the chase. His opening paragraph begins:
If no other evidence were available, the history of Latin America would be enough to lend credence to the theory that sheer force, through conquest and expropriation, was the origin of the state. No matter what periods of peaceful, decentralized, local or clan-based endeavor one can point to, and there are many in Latin America’s long history, a pattern of oppression in which a particular class of people dominate a wider number emerges. Using the history of Latin America as his canvas, Vargas Llosa discusses how five principles of social, economic and political organization have come together to oppress the individual: “corporatism, state mercantilism, privilege, wealth transfer, and political law.” He summarizes:
All five principles made the ancient Latin American state an instrument through which one class exploited lower classes to satisfy its desires. Borrowing Franz Oppenheimer’s definition, one could say that the principles point to the use of “political” means of predation rather than “economic” means of production and exchange in order to sustain an elite. Latin America has been wrestling with, and ultimately has failed to overcome, this heritage at least since the time of the Aztecs and the Incas.
Vargas Llosa makes clear that there is an alternative tradition in Latin America history that provides a basis for hope:
A double legacy, then, permits one to look at the history of liberty in Latin America as no barren land. One is academic and intellectual. It goes all the way from the School of Salamanca . . . The other legacy is practical. It has very ancient roots, traceable even under the suffocating states of the pre-Columbian world, in the customary behavior of native inhabitants seeking to obtain from nature and from social cooperation of various kinds the basics for subsistence. This legacy continues to stare one in the eye wherever one goes in Latin America. It is the daily struggle of ordinary men and women who survive through clandestine property and enterprise. Nevertheless, he does not allow false hope to take hold. While acknowledging that there have been efforts at reform over time, he observes that the successes were “short-lived and, in the final analysis, unable to produce the desired effects. . . They amounted mostly to traumatic reshuffling of political and economic power.” In this context, he is highly critical of the “so-called capitalist reforms” that spread throughout the region in the 1990’s:
Privatization installed a new class of elites, made up of local and foreign interests, in the place of the old ruling class under economic nationalism. In every country, through the granting of monopolies, the passing of discriminatory regulations, or the use of subsidies, the government facilitated the creation of new groups that came to dominate the economy. There is only one disappointment in the book. Vargas Llosa ultimately does not deliver a theory of social change: what will be required to reverse this centuries long saga of state domination? Yes, there is an alternative tradition that can be drawn upon. Yes, there are four categories of reform (the focus of his last chapter) that will be required to build a free society in the countries of Latin America. And yes, he is right in quoting Roger Douglas from New Zealand that two key pre-requisites for structural reform are the abolishment of privilege and the pursuit of reform in quantum leaps rather than small steps.
But, where do the people of Latin America go from here? How do they mobilize support for such a fundamental and far-reaching reform agenda? Is it just a question of getting the right ideas out there? If Vargas Llosa is right that the oppression of Latin American society has been driven by privilege and interests of ruling groups, what social forces and interests can be mobilized around which issues to mount an effective attack against these ruling groups? We suspect that ideas alone are not sufficient. They must be coupled to a strategy of social change that clearly identifies key leverage points in the state systems and groups within the society that can be mobilized to target these leverage points. We hope that this will be the next book that Vargas Llosa writes.
But this is a modest shortfall in an otherwise powerful book. Vargas Llosa has resurrected a powerful tradition of liberal social analysis that unfortunately has largely been on the retreat over the past fifty years. He understands that the evolution of the societies we live in is shaped by a complex and dynamic mix of the political means and the economic means. Conflict and struggle are inherent characteristics of such societies. This evolution cannot be understood through abstract philosophical principles alone. Understanding must be grounded in empirical research spanning across the boundaries of economics, politics, sociology and, most importantly, history.
This was the core insight of the great classical liberal social analysts mentioned at the beginning of our post. These analysts were clearly an inspiration and foundation for Vargas Llosa in his work. One of the most recent of these analysts, Stanislav Andreski, will be the focus of a future post.
