Economics.org.au

Most political commentators claim to provide full disclosure, yet fail to declare and make easily accessible the reasoning hiding behind their positions, rhetoric and affiliations. Instead, as far as they let their audience know, they base their arguments on unplumbed premises. They appear to agree with Wilde, that, "to be intelligible is to be found out." If they outed themselves and admitted their reasoning, then the world would be less misleading, mistaken and mystifying. At Economics.org.au, we put our reasoning front and centre. In brief, our argument is Gustave de Molinari's:

If there is one well-established truth in political economy, it is this:

That in all cases, for all commodities that serve to provide for the tangible or intangible needs of the consumer, it is in the consumer's best interest that labor and trade remain free, because the freedom of labor and of trade have as their necessary and permanent result the maximum reduction of price.

And this:

That the interests of the consumer of any commodity whatsoever should always prevail over the interests of the producer.

Now in pursuing these principles, one arrives at this rigorous conclusion:

That the production of security should, in the interests of the consumers of this intangible commodity, remain subject to the law of free competition.

Whence it follows:

That no government should have the right to prevent another government from going into competition with it, or to require consumers of security to come exclusively to it for this commodity.
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It offends reason to believe that a well-established natural law can admit of exceptions. A natural law must hold everywhere and always, or be invalid. I cannot believe, for example, that the universal law of gravitation, which governs the physical world, is ever suspended in any instance or at any point of the universe. Now I consider economic laws comparable to natural laws, and I have just as much faith in the principle of the division of labor as I have in the universal law of gravitation. I believe that while these principles can be disturbed, they admit of no exceptions.

But, if this is the case, the production of security should not be removed from the jurisdiction of free competition; and if it is removed, society as a whole suffers a loss.

Either this is logical and true, or else the principles on which economic science is based are invalid.
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Either communistic production is superior to free production, or it is not.

If it is, then it must be for all things, not just for security.

If not, progress requires that it be replaced by free production.

Complete communism or complete liberty: that is the alternative!
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(Those who need a more popular authority to be swayed will be relieved to know that Molinari is following Adam Smith here.)
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To spell out some of this: Monopolies tend to produce an inferior quality product at higher cost, compared to if they had competition to contend with.

If they had competition to contend with, they: (1) would have greater incentive to improve how they cater to customers, for if they did not, they would lose business; and (2) would tend to be better able to cater to customers, since anyone would be allowed to compete by improving the price or quality of the service offered to customers, and to benefit from the increased custom attracted by their superior service.

It follows that monopolies in areas like law and order, money and banking, and education and roads, tend to provide inferior quality products and higher cost compared to if the free market was allowed to provide those services.

It also follows that a monopolist of law and order, who did not allow free market competition in those areas, would tend to allow itself to get away with what free market law and order agencies would not.

Indeed, if to expropriate the justly earned property of another (for whatever reason) is theft, and tax is the expropriation of justly earned property from another, then tax is theft. Is it surprising that a monopolist of law and order, who is funded mostly by taxation, would allow itself to get away with it?

In the words of Albert Jay Nock:

"[T]he State claims and exercises the monopoly of crime ... [I]t makes this monopoly as strict as it can ... It punishes private theft, but itself lays unscrupulous hands on anything it wants."

Regarding the lack of thought usually shown to these issues, Nock asks:

"One would think people might sometime be led to fathom out the underlying reason why, in general, political organization thrives on policies that would be fatal to non-political organization; and whether ipso facto political organization is not inimical to society."
~ Nock, Journal of Forgotten Days: 1934-1935 (Hinsdale, Illinois: Henry Regnery Company, 1948), p. 58.

"The government does not, indeed, waylay a man in a lonely place, spring upon him from the roadside, and, holding a pistol to his head, proceed to rifle his pockets. But the robbery is none the less a robbery on that account; and it is far more dastardly and shameful."

"The highwayman takes solely upon himself the responsibility, danger, and crime of his own act. He does not pretend that he has any rightful claim to your money, or that he intends to use it for your own benefit. He does not pretend to be anything but a robber. He has not acquired impudence enough to profess to be merely a "protector," and that he takes men's money against their will, merely to enable him to "protect" those infatuated travellers, who feel perfectly able to protect themselves, or do not appreciate his peculiar system of protection. He is too sensible a man to make such professions as these. Furthermore, having taken your money, he leaves you, as you wish him to do. He does not persist in following you on the road, against your will; assuming to be your rightful "sovereign," on account of the "protection" he affords you. He does not keep "protecting" you, by commanding you to bow down and serve him; by requiring you to do this, and forbidding you to do that; by robbing you of more money as often as he finds it for his interest or pleasure to do so; and by branding you as a rebel, a traitor, and an enemy to your country, and shooting you down without mercy, if you dispute his authority, or resist his demands. He is too much of a gentleman to be guilty of such impostures, and insults, and villainies as these. In short, he does not, in addition to robbing you, attempt to make you either his dupe or his slave."
~ Lysander Spooner

"If any considerable number of the people believe the Constitution to be good, why do they not sign it themselves, and make laws for, and administer them upon, each other; leaving all other persons (who do not interfere with them) in peace? Until they have tried the experiment for themselves, how can they have the face to impose the Constitution upon, or even to recommend it to, others?"
~ Lysander Spooner

"Justice removed, then, what are kingdoms but great bands of robbers? What are bands of robbers themselves but little kingdoms? The band itself is made up of men; it is governed by the authority of a ruler; it is bound together by a pact of association; and the loot is divided according to an agreed law. If, by the constant addition of desperate men, this scourge grows to such a size that it acquires territory, establishes a seat of government, occupies cities and subjugates people, it assumes the name of kingdom more openly. For this name is now manifestly conferred upon it not by the removal of greed, but by the addition of impunity. It was a pertinent and true answer that was made to Alexander the Great by a pirate whom he had seized. When the king asked him what he meant by infesting the sea, the pirate defiantly replied: ‘The same as you do when you infest the whole world; but because I do it with a little ship I am called a robber, and because you do it with a great fleet, you are an emperor.’"
~ Saint Augustine, The City of God Against the Pagans, ed. and trans. R.W. Dyson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), bk. IV, ch. 4, pp. 147-48.

The arguments Mises used to defend government conflict with the arguments he used to defend the market. As Mises himself said:

"The issue is always the same: the government or the market. There is no third solution."
[Mises, Socialism (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1981), p. 492, or here.]

"It is inconsistent to support a policy of low trade barriers. Either trade barriers are useful, then they cannot be high enough; or they are harmful, then they have to disappear completely."
[Mises, Money, Method, and the Market Process, ed. Richard M. Ebeling (Norwell, Mass.: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1990), p. 135-36.]

"Whatever some people may consider as just and fair, the only relevant question is always the same. What alone matters is which system of social organization is better suited to attain those ends for which people are ready to expend toil and trouble. The question is market economy, or socialism? There is no third solution. The notion of a market economy with nonmarket prices is absurd. The very idea of cost prices is unrealizable. Even if the cost price formula is applied only to entrepreneurial profits, it paralyzes the market. If commodities and services are to be sold below the price the market would have determined for them, supply always lags behind demand. Then the market can neither determine what should or should not be produced, nor to whom the commodities and services should go. Chaos results."
[Mises, Human Action (Auburn, Ala.: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 1998), pp. 393-94.]

"[O]nce the principle is admitted that it is the duty of government to protect the individual against his own foolishness, no serious objections can be advanced against further encroachments. A good case could be made out in favor of the prohibition of alcohol and nicotine. And why limit the government’s benevolent providence to the protection of the individual’s body only? Is not the harm a man can inflict on his mind and soul even more disastrous than any bodily evils? Why not prevent him from reading bad books and seeing bad plays, from looking at bad paintings and statues and from hearing bad music? The mischief done by bad ideologies, surely, is much more pernicious, both for the individual and for the whole society, than that done by narcotic drugs … If one abolishes man’s freedom to determine his own consumption, one takes all freedoms away. The naive advocates of government interference with consumption delude themselves when they neglect what they disdainfully call the philosophical aspect of the problem. They unwittingly support the case of censorship, inquisition, religious intolerance, and the persecution of dissenters."
[Ibid., pp. 728-29.]

"People can consume only what has been produced. The great problem of our age is precisely this: Who should determine what is to be produced and consumed, the people or the State, the consumers themselves or a paternal government? If one decides in favor of the consumers, one chooses the market economy. If one decides in favor of the government, one chooses socialism. There is no third solution."
[Mises, Economic Freedom and Interventionism, ed. Bettina Bien Greaves (New York: Foundation for Economic Education, 1990), p. 47.]

So, if we are wrong to call ourselves Misesians, you can blame Mises.

"I believe that any system which places enterprise in leading strings, in order that it may become bold and adventurous, which represses commerce in order that it may thrive, which tears Industry in its infancy from the generous breast of Nature to suckle it on duties of Customs, and compels it in youth to lean on crutches that it may become strong in mature age, is as disastrous in its consequences as it is contradictory in its principles."
~ G.H. Reid, Five Free Trade Essays (Melbourne: Gordon and Gotch, 1875), p. 3.

"To the extent that the new spending causes a spending response from investors and consumers, this is more evidence of an uneconomic use of scarce resources. If the money is used to prop up failing companies, that's particularly bad since it is an attempt to override market realities, an attempt that is about as successful as trying to repeal gravity by throwing things up in the air."
~ Lew Rockwell

"The boom produces impoverishment. But still more disastrous are its moral ravages. It makes people despondent and dispirited. The more optimistic they were under the illusory prosperity of the boom, the greater is their despair and their feeling of frustration. The individual is always ready to ascribe his good luck to his own efficiency and to take it as a well-deserved reward for his talent, application, and probity. But reverses of fortune he always charges to other people, and most of all to the absurdity of social and political institutions. He does not blame the authorities for having fostered the boom. He reviles them for the inevitable collapse. In the opinion of the public, more inflation and more credit expansion are the only remedy against the evils which inflation and credit expansion have brought about."
~ Ludwig von Mises

"Economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups." ~ H. Hazlitt

So economics is, by definition almost, politically incorrect. See, for example, what economics has to say about the minimum wage causing unemployment, the RBA creating inflation, government planning worse than business and the importance of understanding the division of labor.

"Property." ~ Ludwig von Mises

Acquiescence.

"Property does not exist because there are laws, but laws exist because there is property."
~ Frédéric Bastiat

"Other people are not your property."
~ Roderick Long

"The issue is always the same: the government or the market. There is no third solution."
~ Ludwig von Mises

"The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant or pine for something they can’t get, and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time is made good by looting A to satisfy B. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods."
~ H.L. Mencken

"[T]he crucial question is not, as so many believe, whether property rights should be private or governmental, but rather whether the necessarily 'private' owners are legitimate owners or criminals. For ultimately, there is no entity called 'government'; there are only people forming themselves into groups called 'governments' and acting in a 'governmental' manner. All property is therefore always 'private'; the only and critical question is whether it should reside in the hands of criminals or of the proper and legitimate owners."
~ Murray Rothbard

"The most absurd public opinion polls are those on taxes. Now, if there is one thing we know about taxes, it is that people do not want to pay them. If they wanted to pay them, there would be no need for taxes. People would gladly figure out how much of their money the government deserves and send it in. And yet we routinely hear about opinion polls that reveal that the public likes the tax level as it is and might even like it higher. Next they will tell us that the public thinks the crime rate is too low, or that the American people would really like to be in more auto accidents." ~ Lew Rockwell, Speaking of Liberty, p. 281.

"A tax-funded protection agency is a contradiction in terms — an expropriating property protector — and will inevitably lead to more taxes and less protection. Even if, as some — classical liberal — statists have proposed, a government limited its activities exclusively to the protection of pre-existing private property rights, the further question of how much security to produce would arise. Motivated (like everyone else) by self-interest and the disutility of labor, but endowed with the unique power to tax, a government agent’s answer will invariably be the same: To maximize expenditures on protection — and almost all of a nation’s wealth can conceivably be consumed by the cost of protection — and at the same time to minimize the production of protection." ~ Hans-Hermann Hoppe

Murray Rothbard's The Ethics of Liberty

Exhibits A, B & more.

Bruno Leoni: 1 & 2.

Take a red or blue pill.

Recycle this ripper.

In short, or in long.

Nope.

Freeride a publicgood.

No, NO, NO!

We do not believe that all men are angels. We do not believe that men in government are angels either.

Tick. More.

Lord Acton: "Few discoveries are more irritating than those which expose the pedigree of ideas. Sharp definitions and unsparing analysis would displace the veil beneath which society dissembles its divisions, would make political disputes too violent for compromise and political alliances too precarious for use, and would embitter politics with all the passion of social or religious strife." ----------------------------------- Friedrich A. Hayek: "Probably nothing has done so much harm to the liberal cause as the wooden insistence of some liberals on certain rough rules of thumb, above all the principle of laissez faire."