What can be done?

Economics Political Theory
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I must say that I really do enjoy the informal economic education I have received at the hands of the Mises Institute. But that being said, I must ask, what can be done to shift America’s way of thinking back towards the free market?

We could talk about the failures of Socialism and the great benefits Capitalism that has been seen around the world, but I fear that does not strike the root of the problem.

I think we need to fight this fight on moral grounds. I feel that most American’s would believe that freedom is a good thing, and what we must convince them of is that Capitalism IS freedom. We must champion the belief that the individual knows what is best for himself and should be allowed to make his own choices and decisions. We must destroy the code of Altruism, which teachs that the individual is to live for others with no thought of his own well-being. We must remind Americans that our very government was created to protect and perserve liberty, not to ensure equal outcomes for all.

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I think I need to fight this fight on moral grounds. I feel that most American’s would believe that freedom is a good thing, and what I must convince them of is that Capitalism IS freedom. I must champion the belief that the individual knows what is best for himself and should be allowed to make his own choices and decisions. I must destroy the code of Altruism, which teachs that the individual is to live for others with no thought of his own well-being. I must remind Americans that our very government was created to protect and perserve liberty, not to ensure equal outcomes for all.

[;)]

It’s great you’re inspired. Now stop waiting for a party or council to form, and be your own leader and your own follower.

Check out the link in my sig

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“Capitalism” really is just a name created by Karl Marx to negatively label to a free market system. A claim that Capitalism has failed is to say that free markets and freedom of choice has failed. In truth, this has not failed. It is gov’t interference in the economy, and the distortions created from this interference, is what has made our economy fail. Not free markets. Our Fascist leaders today trying to control our economy to do what they dictate it should do don’t believe that free markets can work. Otherwise they would let the market correct itself. They feel they have to grab power by taking away our freedom of choice so they can override our economic decisions. They’re dictating that we have green power, who will manage and lead wall street banks, who will lead our automakers, what cars the automakers will make, and so on …

To have true free market capitalism will require major political shift. Politicians will have to surrender their powers to empower the people so they can make choices for themselves. With freedom comes responsibility. Are wall street bankers ready for responsibility for their risky actions? They made terrible decisions but weren’t allowed to fail this time. What about next time? Are members of our welfare state ready to take control of their own lives and be responsible for their actions? If yes then we’re ready for a libertarian movement.

Get politically involved. Support Ron Paul or someone from the Libertarian Party.

http://www.lp.org/

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Hoppe seems to agree with you, I’m not so sure either way.

It really depends with whom you’re speaking. No debate will progress unless you share some common ground and both parties are willing to acheive the truth rather than convincing the other person. Unless both conditions are fulfilled the debate won’t go anywhere, you’re going to hit a brick wall.

The people you will most easily convert is the intelligent layman, especially the young. Since they have not gone through university, and have not had a chance to be indoctrinated by state employed professionals. However, in order to convert the intelligent layman (that’s almost all of us here, by the way) radicalism is needed, moreover you must appeal to one of their values. This is helped by the fact that the professional economists are slowly driving the discipline into irrelevance (what would you expect by failed mathematicians) and have been plain wrong on just about every prediction they’ve made so far. What is needed is historical case studies in order to show the failure of government, pick a particular instance in history where the government has failed and study it.

As you said, utilitarian arguments are simply not enough. It may well be that they can provide a good starting ground for the conversation but after that it is not enough to rely on utilitarian reasoning.

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Point taken, I do attempt to make arguments on moral grounds, but I am still looking to perfect it.

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I do support Ron Paul, but the crux of my argument is that we can make the fight all we want on practical grounds (Capitalism is better for everyone, Socialism leads to death and destruction), but if people believe self interest is evil and we all need to spend our lives helping others, then our cause is doomed.

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The real down side of free markets is the free part, because it implies responsibility for oneself. I think people would rather put up with being told what to do if the trade off is security (even if it isn’t real, you can still believe it is).

The Rev

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yes, but why cant they pay a private life management firm to tell them what to do? got to be better than a monopoly firm doing the same.

and then we still have voluntarism, yippee!

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“life is either a daring adventure or nothing. Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature.”- Helen Keller

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Really???

I’m very curious about the origin of the word “capitalism” (and “capital” too, it really just means “big”, doesn’t it? Or “head” as in pro capita? (which almost sounds individualistic…)) What did it mean originally? Where does it come from? How has its meaning changed over time?

If “capitalism” is a word which Marx created, well then I’d be baffled! (but I have no idea about that ethymology, though)

I think that the origin and definition of “capitalism” maybe deserves a new thread, if someone is informed on that topic. It is a very important word, it needs to be well understood.

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When it comes to liberty rhetoric, we all need to be very sharp. Nothing is worse than going into an intellectual gunfight representing free markets, and getting your ass handed to you by some statist who is better at debating, even if his position is bankrupt.

I agree with you on the moral argument. Utilitarianism is merely morality. We want good outcomes, but we all define good differently.

The most powerful argument I can make to a non-libertarian, is to appeal to their humanity. How can they do good, if they insist upon using violence against the innocent? How can stealing help the poor? If force is justified for food, is it justified for education? Health care? Transportation? Clothing? Entertainment? Sex? Physical exercise?

One we adopt the principle that theft and violence are ok, we have lost all claim to the moral high ground with the ends of our solutions.

But you also have to show the positive aspects of libertarianism. That charity is more local and intimate. That it is better to teach a man to fish, than to make him dependent on being given fish. That people are inherently good, and recognize it is in their self-interest to help one another. This one is easy, if you can relate it to the individual and how they deal with their own family members or loved ones.

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When I try to explain to someone that taxation is really theft, they usually roll their eyes. Thinking IS alot of work, tho.

The Rev

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I’m very curious about the origin of the word “capitalism”

You may find this article informative:

"Not that all of these individuals used the term capitalism, for as DiLorenzo points out, “The word capitalism was coined by none other than Karl Marx, who hoped that it would help in his crusade to denigrate the system of private property and free enterprise and promote socialism.”

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I’ve tried to stop saying Taxation is theft. It’s way beyond what most people can comprehend.

You have to guide people to thinking. It’s not a switch they can turn on, the way many of us are turned on all of the time.

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Well, a quick search for “capitalism etymology” seems to suggest otherwise. For instance

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Marx lived 1818 - 1883 and wrote his manifesto in 1848, perhaps before Thackeray in 1854.

Anyway, I don’t know. I’m not an expert. DiLorenzo is also a history scholar and knows a lot more than me on the subject.

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Gandhi did not try to persuade the entire Indian people to become Gandhi. He simply acted and created the change he wanted to see, and paid the price to do so. It was his leadership in action that persuaded others to join his side.

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The way I see it, ANY grounds, when looked at objectively with the facts, lead to libertarianism & anarchy.

Moral and ethical, logical, whatever. It all leads to libertarianism when the right facts are examined with an open mind.

For example, I just finished writing a note on facebook about tax and tax evasion. I basically said that there is no logical, moral or ethical argument that can truly be made against theft evasion. Taxation is merely a type of theft that refers to an organization viewed as having the authority to do what is wrong for others to do coercively or fraudulently taking value/money from others. On what grounds do people really and truly come to the conclusion that this organization has this authority? Tradition, I believe, is the biggest one. Tradition is an amazing thing. It’s kind of like muscle memory, something you just do without question or objectivity. You’re simply programmed to do it. You don’t ask questions, you don’t consider alternatives, you don’t really think at all, it’s just done.

I try to view it and argue it from all angles, and they pretty much all lead the same place. You never know but what it takes to get someone to wake up and realize the truth might just be looking at it from the right angle (morally, ethically, logically, biblically, whatever it may be, whatever they hold over tradition or whatever they hold over whatever they’re using to justify the wrong of governments)

Just the thoughts off the top of my head… I’ll let you decide if it’s worth .02.

Edit: About calling taxation theft… I wouldn’t know for sure, but if I got into a discussion about it, I might try this angle… First, talk about inflation. It will probably be much easier to convince is a bad thing. It shouldn’t be hard to see how inflation is essentially theft. At that point, it’s a short step to taxation being theft, as inflation is essentially a tax. In fact, it’s more of a direct tax than, say, income tax, as it doesn’t even require the exchange of the representation of value (the green), it simply sucks the “value” right from it. It’s instantaneous, no forms or transfer of physical representations required. That is, assuming my understanding of inflation is simi-correct.

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Also, big companies and banks often accrue some of the benefits of the inflation tax, and the poor and middle classes always take the brunt of the costs; people tend to love opposing things which hurt the poor.

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I’m also enjoying this site immensely. I hope to learn much.

But that being said, I must ask, what can be done to shift America’s way of thinking back towards the free market?

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American education is completely in the hands of the Teachers Union, the Teacher Training Institutes, and the D.C. powers. Nothing can be done.

I think we need to fight this fight on moral grounds. I feel that most American’s would believe that freedom is a good thing, and what we must convince them of is that Capitalism IS freedom. We must champion the belief that the individual knows what is best for himself and should be allowed to make his own choices and decisions. We must destroy the code of Altruism, which teachs that the individual is to live for others with no thought of his own well-being. We must remind Americans that our very government was created to protect and perserve liberty, not to ensure equal outcomes for all.

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Who’s WE Kimosabe. You’ve changed the subject from I to we. I do not allow you to conscript me.

Your goals seem also to be confused. Do you want to do something - to take action? For whose benefit. Your own or others. Do you want to educate others in capitalism? Do you want to propogandize and control their beliefs. Please do not take offense. I am trying to point out different behaviors in different groups of people and between different generations.

You will not live long, no one does. Our public education system has developed over a period of 150 years. During only my lifetime our morals, or if you prefer, our culture, have completely changed. I’m not even sure we value honesty and more, but I’m very sure we’ve lost all sense of honor. I agree with you that the problem is due to a vast cultural or moral change in our country. A daily Mises article recently discussed that. But people cannot be forced to change their beliefs quickly if ever. Most people find thinking to be hard work and try to avoid it. They have become sheeple who will never act.

It is political knowledge that in any group of people no more than10% do all the work. That means 10% think and are willing to take action upon that thought. This is true for any size group. I even tested this out in graduate school. It works there also.

Since the Mises site is primarily for education, only 10% of the people will ever come here, at most. There are other sites, kitco.com for example, where people are more willing to take action. They are gold bugs, usually older than on this site, who also like to discuss economics. There you will find some died in the wool keynsians to test your knowledge. Or the Libertarian or Constitution parties. These are people who want to be activists.

Have you read and studied our Constitution. It is here: http://www.constitution.org/cs_found.htm. Some comments by a founding father:

'The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.’ – Thomas Jefferson

“When once a republic is corrupted, there is no possibility of remedying any of the growing evils but by removing the corruption and restoring its lost principles; every other correction is either useless or a new evil.”~~- Thomas Jefferson

*“If the American people ever allow the banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation, and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property, until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered … I sincerely believe that the banking institutions having the issuing power of money are more dangerous to liberty than standing armies.” --*Thomas Jefferson

“What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that its people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms…The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”
*-*Thomas Jefferson

“Whosoever controls the volume of money in any country is absolute master of all industry and commerce… And when you realize that the entire system is very easily controlled, one way or another, by a few powerful men at the top, you will not have to be told how periods of inflation and depression originate.” - James Garfield

Yet very little action has been taken. We have become a shameful and dishonorable people who demand and cry out to be given food, clothing, shelter of their own choice, all to be stolen from those who produced it.

I apologize if I’m sounding pedantic. I’m angry at myself for having learned about the FRB and economics so late in life.