Freedom News Blitz

The Freedom News Blitz hasn’t posted an article since January 21 of this year. You might be wondering if its author disappeared or just quit writing for this blog. Well, I’m still around. Allow me to explain what’s going on.

Yes, I’ve been in hibernation. Fortunately, the time finally arrived for me to take another important step on my spiritual journey. How did I know it was time? As necessary as my previous steps were, they resulted in much upheaval in my life. If you are currently on your spiritual journey, you know what happens. Once you reach a certain stage of awareness, you become quite comfortable. Of course, you can’t continue on the pathway if you stagnate. As they say ‘shit happens’, forcing you to once again to move forward and upward.

Although, I experienced difficult times that tested me emotionally, mentally and spiritually, I finally recovered from my sudden plunge into the abyss of doubt and uncertainty. I give thanks for my years of meditation. My commitment to meditation, along with exercise, mental stimulation and action bears the sweet fruits of higher awareness.

Hopefully, the next phase of my journey takes me to a place where I partake of the unknown wisdom of the ages. As mentioned before, I desire that every freedom-loving individual discovers the Libertarian Pleasures of the mind, body and spirit. I’ve happily experienced them through the years. Now, I reach for the next level of pleasure and ecstasy along with the everyday delights of success and prosperity.

Another move I’ve made on my spiritual journey is to once again enter the field of sales. Satisfying the consumers’ most urgent desires and getting rich doing it is definitely spiritual. When you help someone become happily involved with a product you offer and the product improves his or her quality of life, you perform a service of the highest level of awareness.

The pleasures of life are yours for the taking. I will share any insights I gain—someday putting it all together as a follow up to the book The Libertarian Way.

Robert A. Meyer
The Libertarian Way

The pages of the Freedom News Blitz continually warn you about the evils of the anti-life social system of socialism. You would think that the tragic “experiments” that took place in the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany and other unfortunate countries would discourage anyone from considering it. Unfortunately, ivory tower intellectuals seem to reside in a world completely divorced from reality—a world where sound economic theory doesn’t exist—a world of illusion.

What is ironic is that as China moves closer and closer to a social system that somewhat resembles capitalism, America’s political and financial establishment plunges us into the abyss of socialism. Whatever happened to the home of the brave, the land of the free?

Let’s once again define socialism.

Socialism is a system of social organization that calls for public (state) ownership of the means of production. The totalitarian state owns everything and everyone’s life.

Honestly, have governments ever proven they are capable of handling anything efficiently? I’m sure you realize total governmental control of our economy must result in mass poverty and despair. Let’s face it. When you attack capitalism, you are viciously biting the hand that feeds you.

I know. Altruists and world-improvers claim they only want to improve capitalism. Let me ask you this. Are you currently satisfied with the results of they have achieved? I think not.

I want to introduce you to a website Socialism Alerts that warns you of the dangers of socialism—especially the socialism Obama and company attempts to ram down your throat.

Robert A. Meyer
The Libertarian Way

Obviously, it’s rather easy to criticize the political and financial establishment. A glance at our current economic situation informs you that something ‘just ain’t right.’ It is apparent that our beloved politicians take pleasure in bamboozling us. Their policies of tax, spend, bailout and regulate continually reap their ugly consequences. Of course, they pretend everything is hunky-dory.

Ask these questions. Why doesn’t the mass media expose the disastrous economic policies of the establishment. Could it be they all sleep in the same bed of government interventionism and socialism.

Let’s face it. The establishment needs the press to continually brainwash the masses into accepting the liberty violating system of government interventionism. Of course, members of the press need the political establishment to retain their position of resident intellectuals.

Here’s something to ponder on. Why didn’t the mass media get a whiff of the bad economics the political establishment foisted on its hapless constituents? Could it be that most reporters are ignorant of the basic laws of economics. Is it possible they unwittingly continue to pave the way to economic collapse and eventual totalitarianism? If not, then they must plead guilty to intellectual dishonesty.

As you may know, Fox News takes a different stand, often supporting the values our Founding Fathers built our great nation on. Robert Ringer wonders about the future of Fox News in the excellent article “Fox News’s Liberal Future?”.

Robert A. Meyer
The Libertarian Way

Apparently, many people believe the Fed can manipulate the rate of interest willy-nilly. What they don’t realize is that the rate of interest is a market phenomenon that gives its participants correct information. Entrepreneurs, capitalists, homebuyers and consumers alike appraise the current rate of interest and determine if they desire to be borrowers, lenders, consumers, sellers etc. Without the correct information, they are as sailors lost at sea, without the necessary guide of a compass.

As you can see, when the Federal Reserve System screws around with interest rate, usually setting it artificially low, it tricks people into making incorrect decisions that waste scarce resources and cause marketplace distortions. And you wonder why our economy suffers from boom and bust cycles.

Did you know the market rate of interest is composed of three components that correspond to reality. I know—the political and financial establishment completely disregards reality—and Wall Street investors seem to like it that way.

Anyway, here are the three components.

1. Time Component
2. Risk Component
3. Inflation Premium

The time component gives people information on how to weigh the future against the present. If they prefer to delay consumption and save for the future, the rate of interest tends to fall. If they prefer immediate consumption at the expense of future savings, the rate tends to rise.

The risk component is just that—how risky a loan is. The more risk there is in lending— the higher the rate of interest. A safe loan tends to have a low or negligible rate of interest included in its final rate.

An inflation premium is included if lenders and borrowers expect prices to rise. The more they expect prices to increase—the higher the rate of interest. The final rate of interest includes all three components.

As you can see, Federal Reserve policy of lowering the rate of interest to practically 0% is absurd. As unbelievable as it might seem, Bernanke and company are in effect claiming that:

1. People no longer wish to consume anything today. They are delaying all consumption until sometime in the future. Fact: This is ridiculous. If people actually acted in this manner, the human race would perish.

2. There is no longer any risk in making loans to businesses and individuals. Fact: This is the height of absurdity. Our current crisis is the result of too much easy money resulting in excessive debts that many debtors can never repay.

3. Inflation is past history. Fact: Increases in the money supply is inflation. Price increases are the result of inflation. Of course, the establishment loves to confuse the issue by reversing cause and effect. Face it. We can expect rapidly increasing price in the not too-distant future—unless of course, the whole house of cards collapses.

One solution to our economics woes is to allow the rate of interest to increase to its natural level. This would wash away most of the mal-investments—resulting in producers satisfying the most urgent desires of productive citizens.

For an excellent and entertaining article about the time component of the rate of interest read the article Of Time and Marshmallows by J. Grayson Lilburne.

Robert A Meyer
The Libertarian Way

Apparently, taxpayers such as you and I are too stupid to know what to do with our money—and too dense to understand basic economic theory. Therefore, the “good” men and women who reside in Federal, State and Local Government must do our thinking for us and determine how we spend our money.

Let me ask you this question. Does the above paragraph describe free enterprise or something much closer to socialism? I think we can assume that the government, especially the Feds, do everything possible to destroy the free enterprise system.

Did you know that interventionism eventually causes the breakdown of the economic system? Common sense tells you that the every single intervention leads us that much closer to all-around governmental control of the economy. And that my friend is called socialism.

What is the essence of government interventionism? According to Ludwig von Mises in Human Action Chapter XXXVI “The essence of the interventionist policy is to take from one group to give to another. It is confiscation and distribution.”

He also states “The interventionist interlude must come to an end because interventionism cannot lead to a permanent system of social organization. “

Mises supplies us with two solid reasons why interventionism must fail miserably.

1. All varieties of interference with the market phenomena not only fail to achieve the ends aimed at by their authors and supporters, but bring about a state of affairs which—from the point of view of their authors’ and advocates’ valuations—is less desirable than the previous state of affairs which they were designed to alter. If one wants to correct their manifest unsuitableness and preposterousness by supplementing the first acts of intervention with more and more of such acts, one must go farther and farther until the market economy has been entirely destroyed and socialism has been substituted for it.

2. Interventionism aims at confiscating the “surplus” of one part of the population and at giving it to the other part. Once this surplus is exhausted by total confiscation, a further continuation of this policy is impossible.

Bill Bonner wrote an enlightening article The A to A of Government Inefficiency that demonstrates how costly and destructive government interventionism proves to be.

It’s possible that the hapless taxpayer mindlessly supports economic fallacies. However, I think we can conclude that the word “stupidity” more closely aligns with the economic policies of the political and financial establishment, policies that erode the efficiency of the free enterprise system.

Robert A. Meyer
The Libertarian Way

Many people question the value of public education. On March 22, 1980, the ultimate anti–public education song Another Brick in the Wall – Part 2 by Pink Floyd hit Number 1 on Billboard’s Top 100 chart. A few lines from the song demonstrate why it enraged many members of the education establishment.

“We don’t need no education
We don’t need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Teachers leave them kids alone”

Since government controls the public school system, you can make a case that its curriculum might be biased towards pro-government, socialistic nonsense—the ultimate brainwashing. As far as the teachers go, I have no desire to downplay their dedication to teaching. After all, you can’t really expect a highly efficient, mind-expanding educational system when the government exerts control over it.

Here’s an article Another Brick in the Wall that appeared in Libertarian Review, Vol. 9, No. 9 (September 1980), pp. 42–43—republished by the Ludwig von Mises Institute.

By the way, you will discover how the establishment attempts to resort to censorship when it is under attack.

Robert A. Meyer
The Libertarian Way

Government interventionism is a complete disaster for the market economy and its participants. The only people who benefit from it are the members of the political and financial establishment. Everyone else suffers through currency depreciation, boom-bust cycles, excess taxation and crippling regulations. Unfortunately, the establishment media devilishly convinces the masses that the government knows what’s best, has everything under control and will deliver the “goods.” All we can say to that is “Yeah, sure.”

On pages 734 thru 736 of the Third Revised Edition of Human Action, Ludwig von Mises explains how corruption is a regular feature of government interventionism. Here are some enlightening excerpts that expose faulty reasoning.

There is no such thing as a just and fair method of exercising the tremendous power that interventionism puts into the hands of the legislature and the executive. The advocates of interventionism pretend to substitute for the—as they assert, “socially” detrimental—effects of private property and vested interests the unlimited discretion of the perfectly wise and disinterested legislator and his conscientious and indefatigable servants, the bureaucrats. In their eyes the common man is a helpless infant, badly in need of a paternal guardian to protect him against the sly tricks of a band of rogues. They reject all traditional notions of law and legality in the name of a “higher and nobler” idea of justice. Whatever they themselves do is always right because it hurts those who selfishly want to retain for themselves what, from the point of view of this higher concept of justice, ought to belong to others.

The notions of selfishness and unselfishness as employed in such reasoning are self-contradictory and vain. As has been pointed out, every action aims at the attainment of a state of affairs that suits the actor better than the state that would prevail in the absence of this action. In this sense every action is to be qualified as selfish. The man who gives alms to hungry children does it, either because he values his own satisfaction expected from this gift higher than any other satisfaction he could buy by spending this amount of money, or because he hopes to be rewarded in the beyond. The politician is, in this sense, always selfish no matter whether he supports a popular program in order to get an office or whether he firmly clings to his own—unpopular—convictions and thus deprives himself of the benefits he could reap by betraying them.

Let’s face it. Mises is right. “Corruption is a regular effect of interventionism.”

A perfect example of the above is demonstrated in Jeff Clark’s article The Biggest Financial Deception of the Decade.

Robert A. Meyer
The Libertarian Way

We can place booms, busts, bubbles and economic catastrophes firmly in the lap of the Federal Reserve System. Although individuals such as Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke should have know better, they both contributed to monstrous booms that finally collapsed, leaving many people’s financial and personal affairs in complete disarray.

Around the hard money camp, they are known by their nicknames “Bubbles” Greenspan and “Helicopter” Bernanke. I’m not sure if old Alan got his nickname from his preference for bubble baths or bubble economies. Bernanke once remarked something about tossing dollars out of helicopters.

In all fairness, maybe they believed they had no choice but to keep the illusory prosperity party going. It’s possible that if they would have done the right thing and allowed interest rates to rise, resulting in the liquidation of malinvestments, the political establishment would have removed them from their esteemed post as Fed Chairman. Still, Greenspan was a disciple of Ayn Rand and wrote an article “Gold and Economic Freedom”, showing his support for the Gold Standard. The article appeared in Rand’s excellent book Capitalism – The Unknown Ideal.

The great economist Ludwig von Mises demonstrates the inherent flaws in the political and financial establishment’s monetary policies—policies that Greenspan and Bernanke implemented. The article is Free Banking versus Large-scale Credit Expansion. It is excerpted from chapter 17 of Human Action: The Scholar’s Edition

Robert A. Meyer
The Libertarian Way

The enemies of capitalism viciously attack it with lies and half-truths. It is obvious they desire to place it in chains, preventing it from performing its important social function. It’s time to set the record straight.

In a system of unhampered capitalism, everyone is free to choose. All voluntary exchanges are legal. It is a completely open system. The government’s only function is to protect life, liberty and property. Involuntary exchanges are illegal because these types of anti-social activities interfere with an individual’s freedom of choice. Obviously if someone’s freedom of choice is violated, his opportunities for success in life are limited. As more people’s freedom of choice is restricted the system moves towards being closed. It becomes unable to adapt to change and adversity.

Economic theory conclusively proves that unhampered capitalism is the only system that results in the happiness and prosperity that individuals desire. Realizing that the social system of unhampered capitalism is the only arrangement of society’s activities that constitute an open system, we can conclude that all other systems result in the misery, poverty and degradation of the masses.

Only unhampered capitalism is an open system that can grow and thrive. If it ever does reach a breaking point, it will evolve to a much higher state of organization.

Although supporters of capitalism consider Karl Marx as its greatest enemy, he was correct on one point. A system of pure unhampered capitalism could quite possibly lead to a new “utopia”. What we must be understood is that the new system would also have to be unhampered for it to evolve into another higher state of organization.

When an open system such as capitalism finally reaches its threshold, what replaces it is vastly superior. However, it is basically still unhampered capitalism, but at a much higher state of existence. The productivity of labor and the standard of living is so high that what follows is a society based on the spiritual. Production is mental and spiritual.

Imagine this: Instead of having to work 40 to 60 hours a week you only have to work one hour to accomplish the same standard of living. It is almost hard to envision what would follow. What does an incredibly advanced society produce? One thing is for certain. Individuals, unhampered by economic ignorance and heavy-handed government interventionism, unleash superior spiritual and mental powers, resulting in a standard of living unheard of in our present state of development.

We can conclude that unhampered capitalism is an open system that corresponds to the needs of individuals. It allows them to expand their powers and one day reach a state of higher awareness that propels them into a glorious future.

Robert A. Meyer
The Libertarian Way

Obviously, the most blatantly fallacious ideologies infect the political and economic scene. One quick glance at our ongoing economic crisis tells you something fishy is going on. It’s bad enough that the political and financial establishment spouts and enforces about every economic fallacy known to man—but unfortunately, they convinced the masses that their snake oil possesses curative powers.

First, let’s discover sound economic reasoning.

The greatest economic books of all time are:

1. Human Action – Ludwig von Mises
2. Man, Economy and State – Murray Rothbard
3. Socialism- Ludwig von Mises
4. Theory of Money and Credit – Ludwig von Mises
5. Capitalism – George Reisman
6. Capital and Interest – Eugen von Bohm-Bawerk
7. The Failure of the “New Economics” – Henry Hazlitt
8. The Wealth of Nations – Adam Smith

There are other great works on economics—but I only considered books 400 pages or more. Also, I didn’t consider a book I haven’t read or I’m not familiar with—so the above list is my opinion.

The greatest economists of all time are:

1. Ludwig von Mises
2. Murray Rothbard
3. Friedrich A. Hayek
4. Henry Hazlitt
5. Eugen von Bohm-Bawerk
6. Carl Menger
7. Joseph Schumpeter
8. Milton Friedman
9. Frank H. Knight
10. Adam Smith

By the way, I only listed those economic geniuses who are no longer with it us—so my apologies to such current greats such as Thomas Sowell, George Reisman and others. You may very well disagree with my list or the order I list these great masters of economics. If you want to discover some of the living masters of economics who could one day make the list visit The Ludwig von Mises Institute.

You may wonder what my lists have to do with my opening paragraph. Following is an excerpt from Mises’ economic masterpiece Human Action Third Revised Edition pages 184-185. I ask you, “Who can follow up my opening paragraph better than Ludwig von Mises?”

Here’s what Mises has to say about “The Fight Against Error.”

A critical examination of the philosophical systems constructed by mankind’s great thinkers has very often revealed fissures and flaws in the impressive structure of those seemingly consistent and coherent bodies of comprehensive thought. Even the genius in drafting a world view sometimes fails to avoid contradictions and fallacious syllogisms.

The ideologies accepted by public opinion are still more infected by the shortcomings of the human mind. They are mostly an eclectic juxtaposition of ideas utterly incompatible with one another. They cannot stand a logical examination of their content. Their inconsistencies are irreparable and defy any attempt to combine their various parts into a system of ideas compatible with one another.

Some authors try to justify the contradictions of generally accepted ideologies by pointing out the alleged advantages of a compromise, however unsatisfactory from the logical point of view, for the smooth functioning of interhuman relations. They refer to the popular fallacy that life and reality are “not logical”; they contend that a contradictory system may prove its expediency or even its truth by working satisfactorily while a logically consistent system would result in disaster. There is no need to refute anew such popular errors. Logical thinking and real life are not two separate orbits.

Logic is for man the only means to master the problems of reality. What is contradictory in theory, is no less contradictory in reality. No ideological inconsistency can provide a satisfactory, i.e., working, solution for the problems offered by the facts of the world. The only effect of contradictory ideologies is to conceal the real problems and thus to prevent people from finding in time an appropriate policy for solving them. Inconsistent ideologies may sometimes postpone the emergence of a manifest conflict. But they certainly aggravate the evils which they mask and render a final solution more difficult. They multiply the agonies, they intensify the hatreds, and make peaceful settlement impossible. It is a serious blunder to consider ideological contradictions harmless or even beneficial.

The main objective of praxeology and economics is to substitute consistent correct ideologies for the contradictory tenets of popular eclecticism. There is no other means of preventing social disintegration and of safeguarding the steady improvement of human conditions than those provided by reason. Men must try to think through all the problems involved up to the point beyond which a human mind cannot proceed farther.

If only enough people understood and embraced these words of wisdom.

Robert A. Meyer
The Libertarian Way