Mises Wire |
- 144 Million Americans Now Live in States with Legal Recreational Marijuana
- The Meaning and History of Liberty: An In-Print Bibliography
- Who Really Makes US Foreign Policy? Who Benefits and Who Loses?
- In Defense of Defaulting on the National Debt
- The Great Reset in Action: Ending Freedom of the Press, Speech, and Expression
| 144 Million Americans Now Live in States with Legal Recreational Marijuana Posted: 29 Jun 2022 12:30 PM PDT Were these cannabis-legal states to combine to form their own country, it would be the tenth-largest country in the world. Original Article: "144 Million Americans Now Live in States with Legal Recreational Marijuana" This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon. |
| The Meaning and History of Liberty: An In-Print Bibliography Posted: 29 Jun 2022 12:00 PM PDT You can only read so many books in a lifetime. How tragic it would be if among these that the subject of liberty itself would be neglected. Thus am I currently at work on a fascinating project: the 100 most important books on liberty. It will not only be a list but eventually a book that will include summaries, discussions, and study questions. You will hear more about that in the future. For now, however, I have compiled a different list: 125 books in print, useful for understanding liberty and the system of individual enterprise. Thus does it emphasize, with a few exceptions, modern rather than historical works. It makes no claim to be comprehensive and is nothing more than introduction to a vast literature. Many are available online, many of them on this site. The links below, however, point to editions available in the Mises store. Others are available through other sellers.
Originally published June 2005. |
| Who Really Makes US Foreign Policy? Who Benefits and Who Loses? Posted: 29 Jun 2022 09:00 AM PDT In a piece of news that shocked the mainstream media, but which shocked no one familiar with the academic industry writ large, retired US Army general John Allen was forced to resign as president of the Brookings Institution after it was revealed the FBI was investigating him for lobbying on behalf of the Qatari monarchy. Of course, the real news, scarcely noted by the Washington Post, New York Times, or any other purported paper of record, is that Allen was only really in trouble because he hadn't fulfilled the pro forma legal requirements for those lobbying the US government on behalf of a foreign agent or government. The Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), under which such activities are regulated, includes several exceptions that allow for such activities without declaring a conflict of interest. Think tanks, a misnomer if ever there was one, operate under an "academic exception" that allows for engagement in "bona fide religious, scholastic, academic, or scientific pursuits or the fine arts." Anyone who has ever picked up one of the many deadly dull social science journals where actual, bona fide empirical academic work is done knows this constitutes perhaps a fraction of what think tanks almost daily churn out. Rather think tank commentary, touted as objective analysis, is regularly featured or cited by publications and outlets as apparently diverse as the Wall Street Journal and NPR. Of course, think tanks are hardly alone. As Ben Freeman, a specialist on foreign influence on US policy, has documented, such democratic bastions of liberal values as the UAE and Saudi Arabia donate hundreds of millions, even billions, to universities around the country. Of course, from a libertarian perspective, who is to say who should be giving money to whom and for what? Further, FARA's provisions are so nebulous that virtually anyone could be targeted for virtually any reason, an obvious opportunity for unaccountable federal officials to impinge on Americans' civil liberties. But the blatant hypocrisy of it all is what really stands out, as the same universities and think tanks regularly decry the apparently perfidious influence of countries like China, which they breathlessly warn uses our "open institutions" for its own gain. Should any of their number dare to go off message and report, for example, on the well-documented and wholly negative influence of countries like Israel on US foreign policy, they are tarred as anti-Semites, racists, or foreign agents themselves! The truth is the powerful Israel and Saudi Arabia lobbies have been able to steer US policy in directions clearly at odds with the best interests of the American people for decades. Unsurprisingly, perhaps nowhere has the deleterious effect of their money been more felt than in US policy toward Iran, with the Saudis, Israelis, and Emiratis dumping literally billions of dollars into attacks on a country the United States should have normalized relations with decades ago. The Uyghur lobby is another such interest group that enjoys an open door in Congress and the op-ed pages of prominent papers—this while its nakedly paramilitary arm advocates the violent overthrow of the Beijing government! And what are we, or foreign governments like China, to think when the parent organization of such extremists, the World Uyghur Congress, takes funding from the US government itself? We aren't supposed to think about it at all. Just like we aren't supposed to question any of the other nakedly self-serving policies. Who, for example, is surprised to learn there is a large and active Ukraine lobby in Washington? That has paid off handsomely, with our government now handing over $130 million daily to Kyiv with little to no oversight. And of course, most maddeningly, any critically thinking American who even dares to question the US government's obviously dangerous and counterproductive policies, bought and paid for by literal foreign agents, are themselves accused of being in the pay of Moscow, Beijing, or Tehran. Never mind that all the evidence points in the opposite direction. Again, the American people aren't expected to think at all, only to stay in line and keep the money flowing. This is the sad state of foreign policy in America, and it happens right out in the open. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| In Defense of Defaulting on the National Debt Posted: 29 Jun 2022 06:30 AM PDT Conventional wisdom says a country should manage its debts, but what if debt has become uncontrollable? Original Article: "In Defense of Defaulting on the National Debt" This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon. |
| The Great Reset in Action: Ending Freedom of the Press, Speech, and Expression Posted: 29 Jun 2022 04:00 AM PDT Governments, corporations, and elites have always been fearful of the power of a free press, because it is capable of exposing their lies, destroying their carefully crafted images, and undermining their authority. In recent years, alternative journalism has been growing and more people are relying on social media platforms as sources of news and information. In response, the corporate state, digital conglomerates, and the mainstream media have been increasingly supportive of the silencing and censoring of alternative media outlets and voices that challenge the official narrative on most issues. At the recent World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland, "Australian eSafety commissioner" Julie Inman Grant stated that "freedom of speech is not the same thing as a free for all," and that "we are going to need a recalibration of a whole range of human rights that are playing out online—from freedom of speech … to be free from online violence." Meanwhile, the Canadian government is seeking to restrict independent media and the freedom of expression via the implementation of Bill C-11, which would allow it to regulate all online audiovisual platforms on the internet, including content on Spotify, Tik Tok, YouTube, and podcast clients. Similarly, the UK is seeking to introduce an Online Safety Bill, the US "paused" the establishment of a Disinformation Governance Board following backlash, and the European Union approved its own Digital Services Act, all of which aim to limit the freedom of speech. Attempts by elites and politicians to silence dissenters and critical thinkers is not something new. In fact, history is full of examples of "the persecution of men of science, the burning of scientific books, and the systematic eradication of the intelligentsia of the subjected people."1 However, these current efforts to curtail freedom of speech and press by supposedly liberal governments are still somewhat ironic, given that even "the most intolerant of churches, the Roman Catholic Church, even at the canonization of a saint, admits, and listens patiently to, a 'devil's advocate.' The holiest of men, it appears, cannot be admitted to posthumous honors, until all that the devil could say against him is known and weighed."2 The corporate state, digital conglomerates, and the mainstream media want to ensure that they have the exclusive authority to dictate people's opinions, wants, and choices through their sophisticated propaganda techniques. To do so, they have even resorted to transforming falsehoods into truth. In fact, the word truth has already had its original meaning altered, as those who speak the truth on certain subjects are now regularly accused of spreading hate speech, misinformation, and disinformation. Presently, truth is no "longer something to be found, with the individual conscience as the sole arbiter of whether in any particular instance the evidence (or the standing of those proclaiming it) warrants a belief; it becomes something to be laid down by authority, something which has to be believed in the interest of the unity of the organized effort, and which may have to be altered as the exigencies of this organised effort require it."3 However, modifying the definition of truth comes with the potential for great peril, as truth-seeking often contributes to human progress in that it leads to discoveries that ultimately benefit society at large. It should be noted that truth is by no means the only word whose meaning has been changed recently in order for it to serve as an instrument of propaganda; others include freedom, justice, law, right, equality, diversity, woman, pandemic, vaccine, etc. This is highly concerning, because such attempts at the "perversion of language, the change of meaning of the words by which the ideals" of the ruling class are expressed is a consistent feature of totalitarian regimes.4 As a number of liberal-democratic governments increasingly move toward totalitarianism, they want people to forget that there is "the greatest difference between presuming an opinion to be true, because, with every opportunity for contesting it, it has not been refuted, and assuming its truth for the purpose of not permitting its refutation."5 According to them, "public criticism or even expressions of doubt must be suppressed because they tend to weaken public support."6 In fact, they believe that all views and opinions that might cast doubt or create hesitation need to be restricted in all disciplines and on all platforms. This is because "the disinterested search for truth cannot be allowed" when "the vindication of the official views becomes the sole object" of the ruling class.7 In other words, the control of information is practiced and the uniformity of views is enforced in all fields under totalitarian rule. The suppression of freedom of the press, speech, expression, and thought means that current and future generations will be "deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error."8 They are also at risk of becoming ignorant of the fact that the only way in which a person can know "the whole of a subject" is by "hearing what can be said about it by persons of every variety of opinion, and studying all modes in which it can be looked at by every character of mind."9 That is to say, current and future generations will be unaware that "the steady habit of correcting and completing" one's own "opinion by collating it with those of others, so far from causing doubt and hesitation in carrying it into practice, is the only stable foundation for a just reliance on it."10 At present, it is likely that the masses do not regard freedom of the press, speech, expression, and thought as being particularly important, because "the great majority are rarely capable of thinking independently, that on most questions they accept views which they find ready-made, and that they will be equally content if born or coaxed into one set of beliefs or another."11 Nevertheless, no one should have the power and authority to "select those to whom" freedom of thought, enlightenment and expression is to be "reserved."12 In fact, John Stuart Mill went so far as to claim that "if all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind."13 He further added that silencing the expression of an opinion is essentially an act of "robbing the human race," which applies to both current and future generations.14 Even though the suppressors can deny the truth to people at a particular point in time, "history shows that every age having held many opinions which subsequent ages have deemed not only false but absurd; and it is as certain that many opinions, now general, will be rejected by future ages, as it is that many, once general, are rejected by the present."15 If current efforts to suppress freedom of the press, speech, expression, and thought succeed, then the search for truth will eventually be abandoned and totalitarian authorities will decide what "doctrines ought to be taught and published."16 There will be no limits to who can be silenced, as the control of opinions will be extended to all people in all fields. Accordingly, contemporary authoritarian policy makers need to be reminded about the crucial importance of freedom of speech, expression, and thought, which the US Supreme Court recognized in the 1957 case Sweezy v. New Hampshire when it ruled that
This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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