What's new

NEW 11/25/2013: Noam Chomsky

An important enemy of the right wing, who have long denounced him with the persistence of Scientologists. Chomsky provides important viewpoints that are suppressed in the media. [more...]

NEW 11/25/2013: Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media

Introduced the propaganda model of the media, arguing that the mass media of the United States "are effective and powerful ideological institutions that carry out a system-supportive propaganda function by reliance on market forces, internalized assumptions, and self-censorship, and without overt coercion" [more...]

NEW 11/25/2013: Defying Hitler: A Memoir

"This fascinating personal history elucidates how the average German grappled with a rapidly changing society, while chronicling day-to-day changes in attitudes, beliefs, politics, and prejudices." [more...]

NEW 11/25/2013: Healing Our World: The Other Piece of the Puzzle

(1993) Libertarianism repackaged for the new-agey. Pseudoscientific, pollyanna claptrap. Revised as Healing Our World: In an Age of Aggression. [more...]

NEW 11/24/2013: Socialism Is Slavery

Randian black-and-white nonsense based on the lie that tyrannical rule by Communist Parties is exactly socialism and exactly what's going on in all those Scandinavian nations. Slavery is a capitalist phenomenon, for profit. Profit to capitalist slaveowners or to tyrants. [more...]

NEW 11/23/2013: Imagining the Post-Antibiotics Future [More...]

"After 85 years, antibiotics are growing impotent. So what will medicine, agriculture and everyday life look like if we lose these drugs entirely?" Bad. [more...]

NEW 11/23/2013: The Genetic Commons

Unregulated markets in antibiotics and pesticides select strongly for resistant genes, resulting in widespread resistance to antibiotics and pesticides. This is a classic tragedy of the commons, requiring regulation. Examples include DDT, MRSA, and resistance to RoundUp. [more...]

NEW 11/23/2013: My Take on the Seven Things We Need to Focus on for Equitable Growth in America [More...]

Brad DeLong presents seven progressive ideas that promote growth and simultaneously reduce inequality. [more...]

NEW 11/21/2013: Big Sugars Sweet Little Lies [More...]

How the industry kept scientists from asking: Does sugar kill? "This decades-long effort to stack the scientific deck is why, today, the USDA's dietary guidelines only speak of sugar in vague generalities." [more...]

NEW 11/21/2013: The Sugar Industry

The sugar industry has engaged in a decades-long public relations effort to stack the scientific deck to prevent government regulation of sugar (including corn sweeteners, honey and syrups.) [more...]

NEW 11/21/2013: The King of MOOCs Abdicates the Throne

Sebastian Thrun and Udacity’s “pivot” toward corporate training, away from the MOOCs they originally promoted. "[...] on the heels of the embarrassing failure of a loudly hyped partnership with San Jose State University, the 'lousiness' of the product seems to have become apparent." [more...]

NEW 11/21/2013: Massive Open Online Courses

MOOCs are the latest technotarian educational fad. They are hyped by libertarians such as Tyler Cowan as the great disruptive game changers for higher education. They are proving massively unsuccessful, with completion rates of less than 10%. [more...]

NEW 11/19/2013: My Faith-Based Retirement [More...]

401k plans have resulted in spectacular losses for many Americans, and record low readiness for retirement. [more...]

NEW 11/19/2013: Retirement Privatization

Privatization of retirement has failed to benefit retirees everywhere it has been tried. Programs such as 401k savings plans have been colossal failures that fleece investors to benefit the financial industry. [more...]

NEW 11/12/2013: The Free-Market Al-Qaeda: Neoliberal Think Tanks and the Harm They Do [More...]

How a a small group of “free-market” ideologues consciously set out 40 years ago to marketize everything public. Includes a list of 12 right-wing philanthropic foundations that set out in the 1960’s to overturn a century’s accumulation of progressive public policy. [more...]

NEW 11/12/2013: Political Research Associates [More...]

"Political Research Associates is a progressive think tank devoted to supporting movements that are building a more just and inclusive democratic society. We expose movements, institutions, and ideologies that undermine human rights." [more...]

NEW 11/12/2013: Politically Incorrect

A sneering badge of honor among many libertarians who revel in their ideological freedom to ignore and despise the unfortunate. [more...]

NEW 11/12/2013: Theocracy and White Supremacy:Behind the Culture War to Restore Traditional Values [More...]

"The goal of many leaders of this ultraconservative religious movement is imposing a narrow theological agenda on secular society. The predominantly Christian leadership envisions a religiously-based authoritarian society; therefore we prefer to describe this movement as the 'theocratic right.'" [more...]

NEW 11/12/2013: Vast, Right-Wing Conspiracy

A term used by Hillary Clinton, which like politically Incorrect is sneered at by libertarians. Hillary was wrong: there are several vast, right-wing conspiracies, aimed at corporatism, conservatism, plutocracy, and theocracy, each with their respective billionaire sponsors. The Kochtopus is probably foremost among them. Libertarians are mong the cats paws of these conspiracies. [more...]

NEW 11/12/2013: Liberals, you must reclaim Adam Smith [More...]

David Brin denounces modern libertarians and their selective citation of Adam Smith. Brin calls for progressive reforms to bring capitalism back to Smithian competition.[more...]

NEW 11/12/2013: Monopoly and Oligopoly

Capitalists unendingly seek monopoly and oligopoly as routes to the highest possible profits. Both are inefficient according to ordinary microeconomics. This is a huge, measurable cost. Capitalists cannot self-regulate this problem away: government must. See also Market Power. [more...]

NEW 11/12/2013: Class War and the Lessons of History [More...]

David Brin points out that class war has always been occurring according to Adam Smith, and that the founders of the US were levelers, creating institutions that broke up concentrations of wealth. Progressive leveling can work again. [more...]

NEW 11/10/2013: PRWatch [More...]

"Original reporting, investigations, and analysis on corporate policies, products, and PR spin." One of the Center for Media and Democracy projects. [more...]

NEW 11/10/2013: The Legislative Attack on American Wages and Labor Standards, 2011–2012 [More...]

There has been a huge, nationwide, state-level attack on workers led by ALEC and others. "This policy agenda undercuts the ability of low- and middle-wage workers, both union and non-union, to earn a decent wage." [more...]

NEW 11/10/2013: ALEC Exposed [More...]

The Center For Media And Democracy's wiki on the enormous and corrupt reach of the American Legislative Exchange Council into our democratic governments. How ALEC is reshaping the law and democracy for the benefit of the wealthy. Who funds, controls, and works for ALEC. [more...]

NEW 11/10/2013: The Koch Brothers, ALEC and the Savage Assault on Democracy [More...]

“We are in the midst of the greatest coordinated legislative attack on voting rights since the dawn of Jim Crow,” [more...]

NEW 11/10/2013: Countervailing Power

Stability and productivity are often a product of countervailing powers. For example, the three branches of US government checking and balancing each other. Market competition preventing monopoly is also an example. Important countervailing powers frequently opposed by libertarians include democracy, unionization and government regulation. [more...]

NEW 11/10/2013: ALEC

The American Legislative Exchange Council, founded, led, and funded in part by the Koch brothers, is leading the class war by corporatists and plutocrats to disenfranchise ordinary people. ALEC opposes unions, voting rights, regulation, environmental law and other democratic countervailing power. ALEC relies on corrupt direct access to legislators, handing them already-written bills. [more...]

NEW 11/08/2013: Nullification (U.S. Constitution)

State nullification of US law is a crackpot theory that has never been upheld in courts. Nullification arguments have long been the political tools of slaveowners and their successor racists. There is a strong overlap between conservative racists and libertarianism. [more...]

NEW 11/02/2013: People Have Rights. States Have Powers.

An incorrect statement based on an erroneous Constitutional interpretation. People, US states, and the US federal government all have both rights and powers. [more...]

Introduction To Libertarianism

The FAQ has long served as my introduction to libertarianism, but I've long wanted something more direct and punchier.  Here are my first few scribblings on the subject, the start of a new page.  I will keep this page rather short, because I do not want to lose readers.

Let me know if you have ideas to add to this.  It's not complete yet.

Libertarianism can be divided into three major realms. (There might be unimportant others.)

Political Libertarianism

Political libertarianism is the libertarianism that we are exposed to through the media, the mass market libertarianism.

Political libertarianism, like the media, is controlled by plutocrats and operated for the benefit of plutocrats. It is not about "liberty" or "freedom": it is about ownership. The plutocrats want to convince the populace that their ownership of the vast majority of the world's wealth is legitimate and untouchable. Their objective is to get more wealth and prevent losing any wealth to taxation or other liabilities.

Political libertarianism is dominated by public relations programs that have been around since at least the 1930's, reacting to Progressivism. They took off with the Mount Pelerin Society in the 1950's. The Koch brothers have largely organized or controlled these public relations programs, and they scored their first big successes in the 1980's under Reagan.

This is also called vulgar libertarianism by Kevin Carson. The message really is: “Them pore ole bosses need all the help they can get.”

(Short list of plutocratic funded libertarian-oriented organizations needed here.)

Individualistic Libertarianism

Individualistic libertarianism is what the targets of political libertarianism believe. This is a huge morass of conflicting ideas with only one constant: the political libertarian idea that ownership should be sacred. Ask a libertarian what part of ownership they would give up to achieve any other social end, and they will say no part. It doesn't matter if some socialistic government (such as roads or defense) would benefit the lives of everybody; they despise it because it conflicts with their property, no matter how meager.

Libertarian Philosophy

Libertarian philosophy is mostly corrupt: much of it is funded by plutocrats to provide ideas and materials for their public relations campaigns.

Common failures of libertarian philosophy include:

• apriori reasoning
• natural rights
• self-ownership
• individualism
• the assumption of property
• single value reasoning
• misframings
• ignoring anthropology

These are all erroneous assumptions or fallacies of argument.

(This is not the ancient nondeterministic philosophical libertarianism concept that means free will.)

What's New: another 30 links and indexes.

NEW 11/02/2013: Market Failure and Government Failure [More...]

How a combination of market failure and government failure brought about the housing bubble. And how fixing the government failure can alleviate the market failure.[more...]

NEW 11/02/2013: Government Failure

Generally used as a distraction from arguments about market failure -- an invalid demand for perfection from government. What matters is what combination of government and/or market is optimal. [more...]

NEW 11/02/2013: Smith's word [More...]

Smithian soundbites misrepresent the larger picture he portrayed in his major works. "[...] evidence suggests that Smith had a more complex view of human action than most people give him credit for." [more...]

The Worlds Smallest Political Quiz

"The Quiz", as it is popularly known, is a carefully planned piece of recruiting propaganda. It qualifies people not as libertarians, but as people susceptible to becoming libertarians (a MUCH larger class, containing people of many different viewpoints.) [more...]

Edmund Burke, Welfare King [More...]

Edmund Burke, considered a philosophical founder of modern conservatism and a representative of classical liberalism took a huge government handout while opposing government help for poor laborers. [more...]

The US is a republic, not a democracy.

This libertarian/conservative meme is an equivocation fallacy, intended to disrupt statements by their opposition. It is indisputable that the US is a republic. It is also indisputable that the US is a nation with democratic elections, making it a type of democracy. [more...]

Disrupting Arguments

Libertarians have a large number of disrupting arguments that are used as a way to start interjecting libertarian views into unrelated discussions or to sidetrack discussions from views of their opponents. You've seen these over and over. [more...]

Scourge of the Libertarians: Interview with Mike Huben [More...]

Hyperbolic title, but a wide-ranging interview about libertarianism's place in the world. How it relates to religion, anarchism, epistemology, atheism, skepticism, conservatism, the Republican party, isolationism, liberty, civil rights, other values, the UN and Pax Americana. [more...]

The Fossil Fuels and Petrochemical Industry

A mighty industry whose bought legislators have showered it with enormously profitable tax favors and sheltered it from environmental regulations. Much of the Koch wealthcomes from this industry, which is why libertarian propaganda promotes fossil fuels and denigrates regulation, environmentalism and renewables. [more...]

The Tobacco Industry

The tobacco industry is notorious for its enormous public relations battle to preserve its ability to addict new generations of children. Science denialism, suppressed and secret research, legislative blockages, avoiding FDA oversight, and other tactics result in an industry that is still responsible for 300,000 US deaths per year and 5 million worldwide (growing rapidly.) [more...]

The Lead Industry

The lead industry obstructed government regulation of lead in paint and gasoline for more than 50 years after it was discovered to cause retardation. This resulted in millions of children poisoned by lead, a process that is still continuing because of ubiquitous lead paint in older houses. [more...]

California Officials Announce Record Settlement In Dark Money Case [More...]

The Fair Political Practices Commission called the Center to Protect Patient Rights (CPPR) and Americans for Responsible Leadership (ARL) parts of the "Koch Brothers' Network" of dark money organizations. They were fined $1 million for aa $11 million donation. [more...]

Capitalist Corruption Of Government

Government corruption by capitalists has long been pervasive. Campaign funding and advertising, a revolving door between the public and private sectors of the influential and other sorts of payoffs for politicians, their staffs and other government employees are a worldwide problem. Government exists to serve the populace, not primarily capitalists. [more...]

The Myth of Charter Schools [More...]

A scathing review of the propagandistic nature of Waiting for Superman and its endorsement of charter schools. It details the big-business and plutocratic tie-ins to charter schools. [more...]

Charter Schools

Charter Schools are a strategy for undermining teacher's unions, privatizing public education and shifting and cutting education expenses from business and the community at the expense of the poor and the working class. They do not produce better results, let alone the extraordinary results cherry-picked by their advocates. They are primarily prometed by plutocrats, and serve to distract from the real causes of low achievement: especially poverty. The rich do not want to spend on fixing poverty. [more...]

Billionaires Carbon Bomb: The Koch Brothers and the Keystone XL Pipeline

How the Keystone XL Pipeline, global warming denialism, the Tea Party and the Citizen’s United ruling all are in the economic interests of (and have been influenced by) the second richest family in the US. Emphasis on the harms the Koch brothers are committing. [more...]

Kochtopus - Mapping the Influence of Koch Cash [More...]

A diagram showing the wide and diverse reach of Koch money influence. Very incomplete: many organizations are left out and a huge amount of money is not reported here. [more...]

Privilege

Libertarians tend to be unaware of their privilege from being male, educated, middle class, white, able, healthy, good looking or other indicators of social status. Born on third base, they assume they've hit a triple. [more...]

Lead Poisoning: The Ignored Scandal [More...]

The lead industry obstructed government regulation of lead in paint and gasoline for more than 50 years after it was discovered to cause retardation. This resulted in millions of children poisoned by lead, a process that is still continuing because of ubiquitous lead paint in older houses. [more...]

Obstructing Regulation And Regulatory Capture

Libertarians side with capitalist obstruction of harm-reducing regulations. Addictive drugs (such as tobacco), clean air, workplace safety, pollution reduction, prohibition of lead and mercury contamination, food safety, global warming, etc. They seem unaware that reducing some harmful freedoms can result in huge benefits (including freedoms) for others. [more...]

Capitalist Harms

Capitalism doesn't shy from harming people it it is profitable. Capitalism creates slavery, pollution, disease, inequality, black markets, organized crime and other harms. Even worse, it subverts efforts to regulate these harms by government. [more...]

Windsor, Shelby County, and the Demise of Originalism: A Personal Account [More...]

1980s originalism was an organizing and rhetorical device used to delegitimize progressive constitutionalism. It has since been defeated decisively in many decisions, despite Justice Scalia's adherence. [more...]

Originalism

AKA as Original Intent, this is a method of picking and choosing among the many conflicting intents of legislators in favor of modern prejudices. Originalism is a conservative propaganda ploy much favored by libertarians. [more...]

The cost of racial bias in economic decisions [More...]

"It has been suggested that race bias in economic decisions may not occur in a market where discrimination is costly, but these findings provide the first evidence that this assumption is false." In other words, markets do not deter discrimination. [more...]

When All Else Fails: Government as the Ultimate Risk Manager

"In policies as diverse as limited liability, deposit insurance, Social Security, and federal disaster relief, American lawmakers have managed a wide array of private-sector risks, transforming both the government and countless private actors into insurers of last resort... Well suited to a society suspicious of government activism, public risk management has emerged as a critical form of government intervention in the United States." [more...]

Insurance Market Failures

Many types of insurance cannot be offered privately because of a number of market failures or work poorly when they are offered. Unemployment insurance, old-age pensions, medical insurance, crop insurance, flood and other disaster insurance, etc. Then government should play a part. [more...]

Nominal wage rigidity in macro: an example of methodological failure [More...]

"Focusing on models where consistency with fairly simplistic microfoundations is all important, and consistency with empirical evidence is less of a concern, can distort the way macroeconomists think." [more...]

Microfoundations That Do Not Match Reality.

There has been a huge push to base macroeconomics on microfoundations. But the microfoundations selected do not match what is known of real human behavior and economic measurement. [more...]

Asset Forfeiture Abuse

Confiscating property "used in crimes" has been a public policy that was useful in attacking organized crime, but has been grossly abused by a number of states and localities in the US. The laws need to be revised according to the ACLU and others. [more...]

Prison Profiteers: There is a lot of money in mass incarceration [More...]

An ACLU video series profiling the powerful companies and individuals who are profiting off locking up too many people for too long. [more...]

With 2.3 Million People Incarcerated in the US, Prisons Are Big Business [More...]

Private prisons prey on families of prisoners with exorbitant phone rates (which include kickbacks), poor medical care, and poor living conditions. And because they are private, there is no public transparency. [more...]

Scourge of the Libertarians

Not my choice of title, but it's flattering.

http://www.replyall.me/peltacast/scourge-of-the-libertarians-interview-with-mike-huben/

Emergency Powers

I wonder if the President could invoke emergency powers to suspend the debt ceiling until Congress gets its act together.

It could be viewed that he has a Constitutional duty to protect the validity of the national debt, even against a Congress that is failing in its duty.

Backlog....

For years now I've been accumulating references for Critiques Of Libertarianism as bookmarks to eventually add.  Because it's much faster and easier to add a bookmark than to code and index an entry at my old site or my new wiki.  Today I wondered just how many I'd accumulated.

3,000.  Add to that the 600 or so from my old site and at roughly 6 an hour, that's 600 hours to get it all in.

I also have a library of around 250 relevant books, each of which should get about an hour of attention to identify how it is relevant.

I have several hundred quotations to move to my new site.

Over all, it looks like about 1000 hours of work.  (There is the issue of linkrot: I have that partially solved.)

This is just a hobby, but I wonder if I should try a KickStarter to get more of it done.

The wiki could allow many others to contribute effort, but would have its own stack of problems with consistency of cataloging, very mixed levels of expertise, need for training, inconsistency of coding, etc.  Scaling up a project beyond one person is a big undertaking.

What do my readers (both of you!) think?