ars libertatis

The Olympic Games will always turn the world’s eyes to a host city but they won’t necessarily bring gold to the city coffers, according to an Olympic scholar.

Except for the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984, cities — including Montreal and Athens — generally don’t make a profit hosting the Games, said Kevin Walmsley, co-director of the University of Western Ontario’s International Centre for Olympic Studies.

Most are left holding the bag, which for Vancouver could be an $875-million-plus debt for the Olympic Athletes Village. In Montreal’s case it was a $1.5-billion debt and a white elephant Olympic Stadium dubbed the Big Owe, which was built in 1976 for the Summer Olympics and just recently paid off.

It’s difficult to compare the two because the contracts, economic climates and even the value of the Canadian dollar are so different, Walmsley said. But both follow a common theme.

“The Olympic Games are not a profit generator and never have been,” he said. “What is always consistent is, there are always cost overruns.”

Take Athens, which hoped to shed its drab image and become a true tourist haven, but was left with a $17-billion US debt. Or Italy, where the national government helped bail out the 2006 Turin Winter Games by covering $159.11 million US of a $195.82 million shortfall.

Olympics watchers say Beijing’s bill will top $50 billion US.

Walmsley noted Athens proved the Olympics aren’t a way to regenerate a city. There also aren’t any guaranteed economic spinoffs. To reap any benefits, he said, cities have to work hard afterward to sell the brand.¹

1. Kelly Sinoski, Vancouver Sun – After the Olympics comes debt / via S.M. Oliva – Beautiful Gold, So-So Silver & Shameful Bronze [↩]

Sozialismus kann jeder. Liberalismus aber muss man sich hart erarbeiten. Sozialismus machen daher viele, Liberalismus aber nur wenige.
[...]
Liberalismus ist harte Arbeit. Doch sie lohnt sich. Sie lohnt sich für jeden Einzelnen, der unabhängig von der Willkür der Anderen leben will. Liberalismus und Sozialismus sind auch keine Alternativen. Die Alternative zur Freiheit ist immer Willkür.¹

1. Bodo Wünsch – Sozialismus ist einfach, Liberalismus stets erarbeitet [↩]

Was haben eigentlich alle gegen Steuerhinterzieher? Die Leute tun doch keinem etwas.
[...]
Steuerhinterzieher haben eine wichtige soziale Funktion. Sie signalisieren dem nimmersatten Staatsapparat, dass es Grenzen beim Zugriff auf das Geld der Bürger gibt. Das ist sozial gerecht, denn wenn der Staat im Zaum gehalten wird, dann profitieren fast alle. Gäbe es keine Steuerhinterzieher, müsste man sie erfinden.¹

1. Kristian Niemietz – Steuerhinterziehung: sozial und gerecht [↩]

Grundsätzlich gilt, dass im Internet erlaubt sein sollte, was auch außerhalb des Internets erlaubt ist, und für ein privates Unternehmen sollten dieselben Spielregeln gelten, die auch für jeden anderen Bürger und den Staat gelten. Jeder Mensch hat das Recht durch eine Straße zu gehen, öffentliche Plätze zu betreten und sich den Verlauf der Straßen und die Fassaden der Häuser anzusehen. Bislang hat jeder das Recht, öffentliche Plätze und Straßen zu fotografieren und sich die Fotos ins Album zu kleben, was ja Millionen von Touristen jedes Jahr tun. Wenn nun die Touristen ihre Urlaubsfotos ins Internet stellen, was auch immer mehr Bürger tun, dann ist das ebenfalls legal. Wenn Google dasselbe tut, nur in einem größeren Maßstab, wird laut über Verbote nachgedacht. Nun – wenn man die Entscheidung fällt, in den Schutz der Privatsphäre auch den öffentlichen Raum einzubeziehen, dann gilt auch dafür das Prinzip der Gleichheit vor dem Gesetz. Was für Google gilt, muss dann eben auch für die anderen Medien und jeden Privatbürger gelten. Dann eben keine Urlaubsfotos mehr von öffentlichen Plätzen und keine Bilder mehr von Prominenten ohne deren Zustimmung. Eine Lex-Google darf es nicht geben.¹

1. Gérard Bökenkamp – Die Doppelmoral der Google-Kritiker: Eine Lex Google darf es nicht geben [↩]

Twain was born as Samuel Langhorne Clemens in 1835, when the meaning of liberalism was less ambiguous. To be liberal was to favor free enterprise and property rights, oppose slavery, reject old-world caste systems, loathe war, be generally disposed toward free trade and cosmopolitanism, favor the social advance of women, favor technological progress — and to possess a grave skepticism toward government management of anything.
[...]
Biographers and critics have had difficulty figuring out how the same person could champion the interests of Newport capitalist class while founding the Anti-Imperialist League. He loved America’s attachment to property and commerce but emerged as the country’s most severe critic of the warfare state (he said that the United States should make a special flag for the Philippines: “white stripes painted black and the stars replaced by the skull and cross-bones.”)
[...]
“Talking of patriotism what humbug it is,” he wrote; “it is a word that always commemorates a robbery.”

Further: “Patriotism is being carried to insane excess. I know men who do not love God because He is a foreigner.”
[...]
Another central theme of the old classical liberal school was its confidence in the ability of society to manage by itself and the futility of attempting to use the state apparatus as a mechanism for overriding the preferences of individuals. This confidence in the ability of individuals to govern themselves stemmed from an understanding of the creative power of mutual exchange in the absence of the state and the violence against person and property unleashed by its presence.

This theme is returned to again and again in the course of the narrative in both The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, two great American novels in which the state is conspicuous for its sheer absence. Indeed, this is part of the great charm and enduring power of these two novels: they describe the affairs of a society that is in evolution apart from the state. The state has only one role in the novels and it is entirely negative: it makes and enforces the fugitive slave laws. It is this fact alone that turns Huckleberry and Jim into outlaws fleeing down the Mississippi to find freedom.¹

1. Jeffrey Tucker – Mark Twain’s Radical Liberalism [↩]

Haiti’s problem is not an earthquake but poverty. Which is to say their problem is a government that thwarts a market economy that could produce wealth.

Poverty greatly increased the damage from earthquake and has also made the recovery process nearly impossible.¹

*

The people of Haiti do not need a continuation of government regulation, control, and coerced redistribution. They need what Adam Smith called a “system of natural liberty” in his book, The Wealth of Nations. They need individual liberty, private property rights, impartial rule of law, open, competitive markets, limited government, low taxes, free trade, a non-inflationary monetary system, and a political and economic environment friendly to entrepreneurship and capital formation.

That is the road to real economic recovery to left Haiti out of poverty in the aftermath of this terrible human tragedy.²

*

Among other consequences of the earthquake in Haiti was the collapse of their government. The people of Haiti now have a rare opportunity to reconstruct their politics (or antipolitics). Of course, the priority of all the foreign governments will be restoring to power as quickly as possible the prior corrupt and useless regime that kept Haitians, an industrious and successful people in freer societies, in fourth world-style grinding poverty.³

*

First: Those folks need our charity. Consider finding a suitable private organization and give, if only a little. Rest assured that charity and liberty go together. And realizing a psychic profit through helping others does add value to your world.

Second: Do not count aid coming from the US government as a gift on your part. That money was thieved from your neighbors. And like all ill-gotten gain, most of it will end up in the hands of evil – the very same folks who have impoverished Haiti for decades.

Third: Remember that government aid is not charity. And even when that aid does provide for a short-term need, it comes with a yoke of suffering; a yoke that will last for years. While private organizations usually ask for nothing in return, government aid comes with a hefty burden – it entrenches the existing kleptocracy and enforces the ideology of theft.

Fourth: The recipients of private charity tend to recognize that such aid is the result of sacrifice on part of the donor – it is appreciated. It’s understood that this kind of aid is for the short term only. Government aid, on the other hand, is received with a frown – it is not appreciated, as the recipients expect more and believe the aid will never end, with dependency the result.

Finally: If direct aid is not your thing, work toward liberating Haiti with whatever vigor you can muster. The long-term goal must be the end to the evil state in Haiti, with prosperity arriving soon after the state departs. Any effort that accelerates that change will reduce future suffering.⁴

1. James Ostrowski – Haiti in a Nutshell [↩]
2. Richard Ebeling – Haiti Needs the Free Market, Not More Political Paternalism [↩]
3. James Ostrowski – Intellectual Foreign Aid for Haiti [↩]
4. Jim Fedako – Helping Haiti [↩]

This is a legend of success and plunder
And a man, Tom Smith, who squelched world
hunger.
Now, Smith, an inventor, had specialized
In toys. So, people were surprised
When they found that he instead
Of making toys, was BAKING BREAD!

The way to make bread he’d conceived
Cost less than people could believe.
And not just make it! This device
Could, in addition, wrap and slice!
The price per loaf, one loaf or many:
The miniscule sum of under a penny.

Can you imagine what this meant?
Can you comprehend the consequent?
The first time yet the world well fed!
And all because of Tom Smith’s bread.

A citation from the President
For Smith’s amazing bread.
This and other honors too
Were heaped upon his head.

But isn’t it a wondrous thing
How quickly fame is flown?
Smith, the hero of today
Tomorrow, scarcely known.

Yes, the fickle years passed by;
Smith was a millionaire,
But Smith himself was now forgot
Though bread was everywhere.

People, asked from where it came,
Would very seldom know.
They would simply eat and ask,
“Was not it always so?”

However, Smith cared not a bit,
For millions ate his bread,
And “Everything is fine,” thought he,
“I am rich and they are fed!”

Everything was fine, he thought?
He reckoned not with fate.
Note the sequence of events
Starting on the date
On which the business tax went up.
Then, to a slight extent,
The price on every loaf rose too:
Up to one full cent!

“What’s going on?” the public cried,
“He’s guilty of pure plunder.
He has no right to get so rich
On other people’s hunger!”

(A prize cartoon depicted Smith
With fat and drooping jowls
Snatching bread from hungry babes
Indifferent to their howls!)

Well, since the Public does conle first,
It could not be denied
That in matters such as this,
The Public must decide.

So, antitrust now took a hand.
Of course, it was appalled
At what it found was going on.
The “bread trust,” it was called.

Now this was getting serious.
So Smith felt that he must
Have a friendly interview
With the men in antitrust.
So, hat in hand, he went to them.
They’d surely been misled;
No rule of law had he defied.
But then their lawyer said:

The rule of law, in complex times,
Has proved itself deficient.
We much prefer the rule of men!
It’s vastly more efficient.
Now, let me state the present rules.

The lawyer then went on,
These very simpIe guidelines
You can rely upon:
You’re gouging on your prices if
You charge more than the rest.
But it’s unfair competition
If you think you can charge less.

A second point that we would make
To help avoid confusion:
Don’t try to charge the same amount:
That would be collusion!
You must compete. But not too much,
For if you do, you see,
Then the market would be yours
And that’s monopoly!”

Price too high? Or price too low?
Now, which charge did they make?
Well, they weren’t loath to charging both
With Public Good at stake!

In fact, they went one better
They charged “monopoly!”
No muss, no fuss, oh woe is us,
Egad, they charged all three!

“Five years in jail,” the judge then said.
“You’re lucky it’s not worse.
Robber Barons must be taught
Society Comes First!”

Now, bread is baked by government.
And as might be expected,
Everything is well controlled;
The public well protected.

True, loaves cost a dollar each.
But our leaders do their best.
The selling price is half a cent.
(Taxes pay the rest!)¹

1. R. W. Grant – Tom Smith and His Incredible Bread Machine [↩]

Der gröbste Irrtum der Kapitalismus-Reformer ist aber, drittens, ihr Marktverständnis. Das spontane Spiel von Angebot und Nachfrage ist eine Form der Koordination unzähliger individueller Absichten. Preise und Produkte sind Ergebnis dieses Zusammenspiels. Wenn das Ergebnis nach irgendwelchen Massstäben nicht perfekt ist, hat nicht der Markt «versagt». Er ist keine handelnde Institution. Es sind immer Menschen, die «versagen», die dumm, unvorsichtig, gierig, riskant handeln. Diese Eigenschaften sind normal verteilt; es gibt beispielsweise wenige besonders Dumme und besonders Intelligente, der Rest bewegt sich in der Mitte. Wer das versteht, wird nie die Illusion hegen, Menschen in der Politik oder in Aufsichtsgremien seien gescheiter oder moralischer als Menschen in der Wirtschaft, im Finanzsektor. Warum auch sollten sie Risiken besser erkennen oder weniger eigennützig sein?¹

1. Gerhard Schwarz – Die Sehnsucht nach einer Zähmung des Kapitalismus [↩]

Lao Tzu worked out the view that the individual and his happiness was the key unit of society. If social institutions hampered the individual’s flowering and his happiness, then those institutions should be reduced or abolished altogether. To the individualist Lao Tzu, government, with its “laws and regulations more numerous than the hairs of an ox,” was a vicious oppressor of the individual, and “more to be feared than fierce tigers.” Government, in sum, must be limited to the smallest possible minimum; “inaction” became the watchword for Lao Tzu, since only inaction of government can permit the individual to flourish and achieve happiness. Any intervention by government, he declared, would be counterproductive, and would lead to confusion and turmoil. The first political economist to discern the systemic effects of government intervention, Lao Tzu, after referring to the common experience of mankind, came to his penetrating conclusion: “The more artificial taboos and restrictions there are in the world, the more the people are impoverished — The more that laws and regulations are given prominence, the more thieves and robbers there will be.”
[...]
Two centuries later, Lao Tzu’s great follower Chuang Tzu (369–c.286 BC) built on the master’s ideas of laissez-faire to push them to their logical conclusion: individualist anarchism. The influential Chuang Tzu, a great stylist who wrote in allegorical parables, was therefore the first anarchist in the history of human thought.
[...]
Chuang Tzu was also the first to work out the idea of “spontaneous order,” independently discovered by Proudhon in the nineteenth century, and developed by F.A. von Hayek of the Austrian School in the twentieth. Thus, Chuang Tzu: “Good order results spontaneously when things are let alone.”[...]
Chuang Tzu, moreover, was perhaps the first theorist to see the state as a brigand writ large: “A petty thief is put in jail. A great brigand becomes a ruler of a State.”¹

1. Murray N. Rothbard – Libertarianism in Ancient China [↩]

Welcome to the wartime contracting bazaar in Afghanistan. It is a virtual carnival of improbable characters and shady connections, with former CIA officials and ex-military officers joining hands with former Taliban and mujahedeen to collect US government funds in the name of the war effort.
[...]
The real secret to trucking in Afghanistan is ensuring security on the perilous roads, controlled by warlords, tribal militias, insurgents and Taliban commanders. The American executive I talked to was fairly specific about it: “The Army is basically paying the Taliban not to shoot at them. It is Department of Defense money.” That is something everyone seems to agree on.

Mike Hanna is the project manager for a trucking company called Afghan American Army Services. The company, which still operates in Afghanistan, had been trucking for the United States for years but lost out in the Host Nation Trucking contract that NCL won. Hanna explained the security realities quite simply: “You are paying the people in the local areas–some are warlords, some are politicians in the police force–to move your trucks through.”
[...]
A veteran American manager in Afghanistan who has worked there as both a soldier and a private security contractor in the field told me, “What we are doing is paying warlords associated with the Taliban, because none of our security elements is able to deal with the threat.”¹

1. Adam Roston – How the US Funds the Taliban [↩]

Do you believe that the government of the United States considers itself obliged by law to respect anyone’s rights? You are wrong. Read Chris Floyd’s article on a recent Supreme Court decision to let a lower court’s ruling stand, and weep your bitterest tears. If you count yourself among those who believe that this country stands for something better than the historical norm of tyranny and savagery, consider yourself as having made a grievous mistake.

In truth, any “constitutionally protected rights” you are now exercising exist solely at the pleasure and convenience of the rulers. The minute the continuation of your life or liberty no longer pleases them, they will, as the Court’s decision makes clear, simply declare you an unperson to be dealt with as they choose, whether they choose to torture you, confine you in a steel cage for the rest of your life, or peremptorily kill you. They recognize NO rights in anyone (except themselves, of course) that they are bound to respect.

This horror is the end to which a brave experiment has come. If the rulers can, at their pleasure, declare ANYONE THEY SELECT a legal unperson, the notion that the United States is a free country is nothing but the sickest of sick jokes.¹

1. Robert Higgs – The Supreme Court Has Spoken: You Have No Rights [↩]

[T]he Na’vi, the movie’s marble-skinned alien natives, are easily the most convincing humanoids ever to leap forth from a Hollywood effects house’s CGI server-farm — that is, at least in terms of the way they look and move. The realism stops, however, every time they open their mouths and reveal themselves to be crude, one-dimensional native stereotypes: instinctive and animalistic purveyors of cheap mysticism and nature worship.

So despite its genuinely impressive technical innovations, Avatar isn’t much a movie: Instead, Cameron’s cooked up a derivative, overlong pastiche of anti-corporate clichés and quasi-mystical eco-nonsense.

It’s not that the film’s politics make it bad, it’s that even if you agree, the nearly three-hour onslaught of simplistic moralizing leaves no room for interesting twists or ambiguity in the story or characters: corporations are bad, scientists are good, natives are pure, harmony with nature is the ultimate ideal…
[...]
That Avatar’s melodramatic attacks on corporate interests and its defense of simple, natural living come packaged as one of the most expensive, and probably the most technically advanced, corporate films in history would seem to indicate that only quality bigger than the movie’s stupidity is its head-in-the-clouds hypocrisy. Cameron’s made a movie that he intends to be epic and awesome, but the only thing that’s awesome here is his total lack of self-awareness.¹

1. Peter Suderman – Blue Man Group [↩]

People can feel socially secure in Denmark—at least for now. People don’t get rich from welfare but they can live a comfortable life. Practically all people are eligible for one program or another. But the system is unsustainable in the longer run. In the early 1970s only about 300,000 people of working age lived full-time all year on government welfare. Today it is about 900,000. The population size has remained unchanged at around 5 million. In the not too distant future, more people are going to be pensioners and fewer people will be working age. At some point, the trough will be empty.
[...]
If we next look at the crime level, the Danish Statistical Yearbook 2002 shows reported crimes from 1935 to 1960 to be stable: about 100,000 crimes per year. But from 1960 until today, the number of crime reports has increased by 500 percent, to more than 500,000 per year. And if we look at violent crime, the picture is even grimmer. The number of violent crimes in 1960 was approximately 2,000; it is approximately 15,000 today. This is an increase of more than 700 percent, and it is still rising steeply.

This is a very surprising development. Welfare state advocates often say that crime is caused by poverty. Well, Denmark has become about twice as rich per citizen during this period of rising crime. Another argument is that poverty is caused by economic inequality. Well, Denmark has engaged in the most comprehensive income redistribution program of any nation. Denmark is the most egalitarian country in the world today.
[...]
What about health? Denmark is one of the few OECD countries where the average life span has hardly increased since the early 1970s. In the early 1970s, Denmark was at the top in OECD comparisons; today it is closer to the bottom.¹

1. Per Henrik Hansen – Denmark: A Case Study in Social Democracy [↩]