Today in History: The Wright brothers make the 1st sustained motorized aircraft flight at 10:35 AM on this day in 1903 at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. But how much of what the Wright Brothers did led to the first airplane?
"It is because of patent-based historiography that people believe that the Wright Brothers invented the airplane, when in fact they made only a tiny contribution of combining wing warping with a rudder. It was Sir George Cayley in Britain and Otto Lilienthal of Germany who did the bulk of the work of inventing the airplane. But it was the Wright Brothers who applied for the patent and quickly used it against Glenn Curtiss who improved wing warping with movable control surfaces." Jeffrey Tucker
The Wright brothers were so litigious with their patent that it stifled plane innovation in America. During this time the French picked up the slack and airplane technology advanced under them. In fact, when the USA entered World War 1 they had to use French planes. Many have since argued against intellectual property rights as they tend to harm new technology, economic activity, and societal wealth.
In 1851, The Economist wrote: “The granting [of] patents ‘inflames cupidity’, excites fraud, stimulates men to run after schemes that may enable them to levy a tax on the public, begets disputes and quarrels betwixt inventors, provokes endless lawsuits . . . The principle of the law from which such consequences flow cannot be just.”
Today in History: Henry Varnum Poor was born on this day in 1812. Poor was a financial analyst and founder of H.V. and H.W. Poor Co, which later became the financial research and analysis bellwether, Standard & Poor's, or if you will, the S&P 500. The S&P 500 is a stock market index that measures the stock performance of 500 large companies listed on stock exchanges in the United States. It is one of the most commonly followed equity indices. The 10 largest companies in the index are Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, Alphabet(class A & C), Berkshire Hathaway, Johnson & Johnson, JPMorgan Chase and Visa Inc. The components that have increased their dividends in 25 consecutive years are known as the S&P 500 Dividend Aristocrats. It was only recently that AT&T, General Electric and ExxonMobil were in that top 10.
Tesla's stock will be added to the S&P 500 later this month. To be eligible for S&P 500 index inclusion, a company should be a U.S. company, have a market capitalization of at least USD 8.2 billion, the public float must consist of at least 50% of outstanding shares. It must have positive reported earnings in the most recent quarter, as well as over the four most recent quarters and the stock must have an active market and must trade for a reasonable share price.
Today in History: London becomes the world's first city to host licensed taxicabs on this day in 1897. This makes you think: what is a license, really? "What does a business license accomplish? Well, I guess it proves that you're seriously in business, although in most cities you can't be in business without one. So it's outright extortion, like property taxes, going to fund city government services that you didn't want anyway. Police? Well, maybe you do want police protection of your property, but police won't go near a riot and they're always too busy elsewhere, so you'll have to pay extra to hire your own." Robert Klassen
Why do you have a license on your car when the manufacturer has already placed a number on your car? This is so the government can track you, and they also want the fee a license costs. "The fee, of course, goes to support a state bureaucracy consisting of bored and indifferent individuals who are only working there for the wages and benefits and who couldn't care less about their career, if you can call it that." ibid
According to a 2015 White House report, "By one estimate, licensing restrictions cost millions of jobs nationwide and raise consumer expenses by over one hundred billion dollars...Consumers are likely most familiar with licensing requirements for professionals like dentists, lawyers, and physicians, but today licensing requirements extend to a very broad set of workers," including auctioneers, scrap metal recyclers, barbers, manicurists, eyebrow threaders, and tour guides. This means that an ever-growing share of jobs "are only accessible to those with the time and means to complete what are often lengthy"—not to mention expensive—licensing requirements, while the penalties for working without a license can include job loss, fines, and even incarceration.
Perhaps we need to be more like cats. You have to license your dog, but not your cat. Cats refuse to be licensed. They are too independent, stubborn, stuck-up and disobedient.
Today in History: Legendary American stock trader Jesse Livermore died on this day in 1940. He is considered a pioneer of day trading and was the basis for the main character of Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, a best-selling book by Edwin Lefèvre. At one time, he was one of the richest people in the world.
In a time when accurate financial statements were rarely published, getting current stock quotes required a large operation, and market manipulation was rampant, Livermore used what is now known as technical analysis as the basis for his trades. His principles, including the effects of emotion on trading, continue to be studied.
Some of Livermore's trades, such as taking short positions before the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and just before the Wall Street Crash of 1929, are legendary and have led to his being regarded as the greatest trader who ever lived.
He learned to read and write by the time he was 3 and a half. By the time he was 5, he was reading newspapers and devouring the financial pages.
He died by suicide. He shot himself with an Automatic Colt Pistol. Interestingly, his son and grandson would go on to kill themselves as well.
Today in History: The original man of steel, Andrew Carnegie, was born on this day in 1835. Carnegie led the expansion of the American steel industry in the late 19th century and became one of the richest Americans in history. He did now, not by gouging and screwing his customers, but by making his product more easily accessible. For instance, Carnegie almost single-handedly reduced the price of steel rails from $160 per ton in 1875 to $17 per ton nearly a quarter century later.
Andrew Carnegie had an interesting philosophy when it came to wealth. "Carnegie spoke of the millionaire’s duty to live a 'modest' lifestyle, shunning extravagant living and administering his wealth for the benefit of the community. To do otherwise, he warned, would encourage an age of envy and invite socialistic legislation attacking the rich through progressive taxation and other onerous anti-business regulations. Carnegie practiced what he preached, giving away over $350 million in his lifetime. One of his first acts after U.S. Steel went public was to put $5 million into a pension and benefit plan for his workers...he spent millions building 2,811 public libraries, donating 7,689 organs to churches, and establishing Carnegie Hall in New York and the Carnegie Institution in Washington. He financed technical training at the Carnegie Institute of Technology and established a pension fund for teachers through the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching." Mark Skousen
Carnegie's dictum was (1) To spend the first third of one's life getting all the education one can. (2) To spend the next third making all the money one can. (3) To spend the last third giving it all away for worthwhile causes.
Today in History: American disc jockey Alan Freed, who had popularized the term "rock and roll" and music of that style, was fired from WABC-AM radio over allegations he had participated in the payola scandal on this day in 1959. Payola occurs when a disc jockey is paid by record companies or music publishers to play certain recordings, and for some reason this is considered scandalous. Payola is one of those things like insider trading, gambling and the college admissions scandal that really shouldn't be illegal. A play on radio is effectively a commercial for that music or musician. And paying for commercials is, quite obviously, fairly common. Is it really so outlandish that some in the industry want to "buy" spots? Payola actually helped a lot of new artists get airplay. Without payola, we would never have heard of Chuck Berry.
Payola also has a long history. "The first documented instances of payola date from England in the 1860s. The publishers of sheet music paid vaudeville artists to sing and popularize their songs. Payment of these fees was a normal marketing procedure for publishers and a significant source of income for performers; payola occasioned no political scandal. Prior to the payola scandals, payola had been an accepted and legal business practice used to promote new products for many decades. In the case of rhythm and blues, the independents lacked the reputations and marketing power to place their artists through name alone, and were forced to rely on payola." Tyler Cowen
Today in History: The Mayflower Compact was signed in what is now Provincetown Harbor near Cape Cod on this day in 1620. The words in this contract that stand out to me the most was "the general Good of the Colony." As William D. Guthrie wrote in 1918:
The history of the Plymouth colony from 1620 until its absorption by the colony of Massachusetts in 1691 teaches us many lessons in political philosophy. There [is one] which I desire to recall to you: One as to the right to private property...The Pilgrims began government under the Mayflower Compact with a system of communism or common property. The experiment almost wrecked the colony. As early as 1623, they had to discard it and restore the old law of individual property with its inducement and incentive to personal effort. All who now urge communism in one form or another, often in disguise, might profitably study the experience of Plymouth, which followed a similarly unfortunate and disastrous experiment in Virginia. History often teaches men in vain. Governor Bradford's account of this early experiment in communism in his annals of “Plimoth Plantation” is extremely interesting. The book is rich in political principles, as true to-day as they were three hundred years ago. After showing that the communal system was a complete failure, and that as soon as it was abandoned and a parcel of land was assigned to each family, those who had previously refused to work became “very industrious,” even the women going “willingly into ye feild,” taking “their litle ons with them to set corne, which before would aledg weaknes, and inabilitie,” Bradford proceeds as follows: “The experience that was had in this comone course and condition, tried sundrie years, and that amongst godly and sober men, may well evince the vanitie of that conceite of Platos & other ancients, applauded by some of later times, —that ye taking away of propertie, and bringing in comunitie into a comone wealth, would make them happy and florishing; as if they were wiser then God. For this comunitie (so farr as it was) was found to breed much confusion & discontent, and retard much imploymet that would have been to their benefite and comforte. For ye yong-men that were most able and fitte for labour & service did repine that they should spend their time & strength to worke for other men's wives and children, without any recompence. The strong, or man of parts, had no more in devission of victails & cloaths then he that was weake and not able to doe a quarter ye other could; this was thought injuestice. The aged and graver men to be ranked and equalised in labours, and victails, cloaths, &c., with ye meaner & yonger sorte, thought it some indignite & disrespect unto them. Let none objecte, this is men's corruption, and nothing to ye course it selfe. I answer, seeing all men have this corruption in them, God in his wisdome saw another course fiter for them.”
Today in History: Woodrow Wilson was elected President of the United States on this day in 1912. Wilson is by any metric, the worst president on US history. He dragged America into World War I despite promising not to. He gave us the much-hated income tax. He gave us the Federal Reserve. Alcohol prohibition happened under his watch.
"Woodrow Wilson has been elevated as one of the better presidents but I think if you go back and look at it, the war was avoidable...and of course Woodrow Wilson helped bring Hitler to power by insisting on the abdication of the Kaiser after World War I - which was totally unnecessary." Ivan Eland
This Day in History: American journalist and author Rose Wilder Lane, died on this day in 1968. Rose’s mother was Laura Ingalls Wilder, author of the beloved series of Little House on the Prairie books. We now know that Rose had much more to do with the success of those books than has previously been thought. After World War I she traveled the world only to be met by starvation everywhere, so she was initially attracted to Communisn. In short time she realized that this ideology only made things worse. She embraced individualism as she found that people who were left alone and freed from government restraints fared better.
"Rose’s opposition to government intervention strengthened as the years rolled by. She became a strenuous opponent of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. Before Pearl Harbor she opposed our entry into the war. During the war, she refused to apply for a ration card, relying on honey for sweetening and canning her own garden fruits and vegetables. She even refused to accept a Social Security number. When a radio commentator asked his listeners for their views on Social Security, she scribbled on a postcard: 'If [American] school teachers say to German [Nazi] children, ‘We believe in Social Security,’ the children will ask, ‘Then why did you fight Germany?’ All these ‘Social Security’ laws are German, instituted by Bismarck and expanded by Hitler. Americans believe in freedom, in not being taxed for their own good and bossed by bureaucrats.'” The local postmaster, reading the message, considered it subversive and notified the FBI which sent a state trooper to investigate. Rose’s response was a newspaper article: 'What Is This—the Gestapo?'" ~Bettina Bien Greaves
Her philosophy on life was detailed in her 1943 book The Discovery Of Freedom which you can download here.
This Day in History: French judge, and writer Étienne de La Boétie was born on this day in 1530. In his very short life La Boétie has given the world one of the earliest critiques of governmental power: Discourse of Voluntary Servitude (Discours de la Servitude Volontaire).
In this writing he wonders, "how it happens that so many men, so many villages, so many cities, so many nations, sometimes suffer under a single tyrant who has no other power than the power they give him; who is able to harm them only to the extent to which they have the willingness to bear with him; who could do them absolutely no injury unless they preferred to put up with him rather than contradict him. Surely a striking situation!"
200 years later David Hume wondered the same: "Nothing appears more surprising to those who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye, than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few; and the implicit submission, with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers."
James Mackinnon wrote about Étienne de La Boétie in A History of Modern Liberty, Volume 2 (1906) where he summarized Étienne de La Boétie's thoughts.
"How a million of men can submit to the absolute régime of a king, especially a bad king, is what La Boëtie, like most reasonable beings, cannot understand. That men out of gratitude for some benefit should place one of themselves in a position in which he might do them untold harm, shows a lamentable want of foresight. To remain in subjection and suffer every species of wrong is worse than cowardice. If a man were to announce this voluntary servitude as hearsay, and not as a fact patent to all, nobody would believe him. The people is the author of its own slavery, for to recover its liberty it has merely to will its freedom. Liberty, it would seem, is not a blessing desired by man, for, though he has but to desire in order to attain it, he prefers to remain in an effeminate slavery. Be resolute to serve no longer, and you will be free. If this seems paradoxical, it is because, cries La Boëtie, the love of liberty, the most natural of sentiments, has been so long stifled by bondage that it has ceased to seem natural. Nevertheless, man is born in subjection only to his parents and to reason. Nature has given the same form to all, in order that all may realise their brotherhood. If there is any advantage in individual ability, it ought only the more to foster fraternal affection between man and man by enabling the strong to minister to the necessities of the weak. Nature has ordained society, companionship, for man, not the oppression of the weak by the strong. Liberty is therefore natural. Long live liberty! The kingship in any form—whether obtained by election, succession, or conquest-appears to La Boëtie, who has in his view the absolute sway of a Henry II., equally hostile to liberty. The king who has been elected strives to affirm his power at the expense of liberty; the king by succession regards the people as his natural slaves; the conqueror as his prey.
A man born unaccustomed to modern subjection would certainly instinctively prefer to obey his reason rather than any other man. Men become slaves only by constraint and deception, never by natural impulse. At first they usually deceive themselves in this matter, to discover speedily that they have been and are being duped. So apt are they to mistake for nature what they owe only to their birth, to mistake custom, which teaches servitude, for nature, which teaches freedom. Nature, unfortunately, loses her power the less she is cultivated. As a plant may be transformed by engrafting some foreign twig on its stem, so human nature may be entirely distorted by custom. Custom, then, is the first cause of this voluntary servitude, in which men seem to live so naturally. Happily, there are exceptions even to the power of custom.
Such exceptions are the men 'who, possessed of strong intelligence and insight, are not content, like the great mass, to regard what is before their eyes, but look beyond and behind them, studying the past in order to measure the present and gauge the future.' To such, slavery is not natural and its taste never sweet, however artfully it may be gilded. Education and freedom of thought are the enemies of tyrants. It is the interest of the tyrant to enervate the people rather than enlighten them, and it is the tendency of the subjects of a tyrant to lose all the masculine virtues of natural freedom. Long live the king, cry the people, in return for the spectacles, free dinners, and largesses of the tyrant. They bless Tiberius and Nero for their liberality, and forget that they are being bribed with their own substance, and will be called on to-morrow to surrender their property in order to satisfy the avarice, their children to gratify the passions, of these magnanimous emperors. Credulity grows with effeminacy, and the tyranny of kings is invested with the miraculous by the ignorance of the mass. The people themselves help to give currency to the lies they believe, for the profit of the monarch. Moreover, the tyrant finds ready adjuncts in the passions, the avarice, the egotism of many of his subjects, who find their advantage in his service and their own slavery."
This Day in History: The first-ever computer-to-computer link was established on ARPANET, the precursor to the Internet on this day in 1969. There is a persistent myth out there that government invented the internet, ergo, government is helpful and we need it. The government was interested in a network of computers talking to each other and it used funding to support that research. The the private sector was also interested in the same thing. In other words, we would have had an internet with or without the government, and perhaps sooner, as the government locked access to the internet until the 90's. Now think of all the components needed for the internet to work. Where did that come from?:
"IBM and ATT had major labs and were vitally interested in computers talking to one another as early as the late 1950s and early 1960s. Bell Labs invented UNIX in 1969; it made the internet possible. IBM invented FORTRAN and hard drives in 1956. Bell transmitted packet data over lines in 1958. Texas Instruments invented integrated circuits in 1958. In 1961 Leonard Kleinrock published a paper on packet switching networks. Bell Labs made the first modem in 1961. The mouse was invented in 1963. Digital Equipment Corporation produced the first minicomputer in 1964. In 1965 time sharing at MIT and mail command started. Intel began in 1968. The year 1966 saw the first use of fiber optics to carry telephone signals."~Michael S. Rozeff
"If the government didn’t invent the Internet, who did? Vinton Cerf developed the TCP/IP protocol, the Internet’s backbone, and Tim Berners-Lee gets credit for hyperlinks. But full credit goes to the company where Mr. Taylor worked after leaving ARPA: Xerox. It was at the Xerox PARC labs in Silicon Valley in the 1970s that the Ethernet was developed to link different computer networks. Researchers there also developed the first personal computer (the Xerox Alto) and the graphical user interface that still drives computer usage today."
This Day in History: German philosopher and author Max Stirner was born on this day in 1806. As with other German philosophers of the time, I'm not sure I really liked any of them. He is covered in Charles T. Sprading's book "Liberty and the Great Libertarians" although his "might makes right" philosophy and his repudiation of all moral principles including individual rights scarcely qualifies him as a libertarian in any sense of the word. He did say some great things however, such as “The state calls its own violence law, but that of the individual crime.”
He also said something that people should think about during these lockdowns: "When one is anxious only to live, he easily, in this solicitude, forgets the enjoyment of life. If his only concern is for life, and he thinks 'if I only have my dear life,' he does not apply his full strength to using, i. e. enjoying, life. But how does one use life? In using it up, like the candle, which one uses in burning it up. One uses life, and consequently himself the living one, in consuming it and himself. Enjoyment of life is using life up." In other words, life is more than just mere biological existence, living means enjoying all the things that life has to offer.
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This Day in History: The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed down 733.08 points, or 7.87% on this day in 2008, making it one of the worst percentage drops in the Dow's history. The worst was on October 19 1987 (-22.61%) and October 1929 had worse drops as well. October has a special place in finance, known as the October effect, and is one of the most feared months in the financial calendar. The 2nd, and 5th worst market drops actually happened earlier this year in March. There was also a -8.72% drop in late 1899.
Interestingly, two days prior, October 13 2008, had one of the biggest percentage gains in stock market history (+11.08%).
There is another problem with stock market numbers, like the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500. The new record levels are counted in "nominal" terms. The numbers don't account for inflation. I know that back in 2013 financial experts noticed the high numbers in the stock market, but in reality, when adjusted for inflation, they stated that the market was actually higher in 1999. For instance, in 2013, the Dow could buy 15.35 tons of bananas, but in 1999, the Dow could have bought 38.51 tons of bananas.
This Day in History: Hundreds of Knights Templars in France are arrested at dawn on Friday the 13th by King Phillip the Fair on this day in 1307. It’s sometimes said the Templars were the world’s first bankers, though they were more accurately the world’s first financial-services company. People who made pilgrimages to Jerusalem would deposit cash at the Temple Church in London, and withdraw it in Jerusalem. Instead of carrying money, he would carry a letter of credit. The Knights Templar were the Western Union of the crusades. This then made them wealthy, which then made them a target of King Phillip the Fair, a man desperate for money.
"The High Middle Ages in France were brought to a dismal close by King Philip IV. 'Philip the Fair' centralized power by seizing control of the papacy, dramatically increased taxes, debased the French currency, expelled France’s Jewish population, massacred the international bankers known as the Knights Templar, destroyed the country’s independent trade fairs, and plunged France into a crisis with England that shortly after evolved into the disastrous Hundred Years War. The poverty engendered by this royal rampage contributed to the unsanitary urban conditions that were so hospitable to the Black Death that killed over a third of Europe. The towns that had been oases of prosperity had become death traps."~Dan Sanchez
It is believed that the Friday the 13 superstition started on that October dawn in 1307 when the Knights Templars were arrested, tortured and then put to death.
This Day in History: The Franklin National Bank collapsed due to fraud and mismanagement on this day in 1974, which was, at the time, the largest bank failure in US history. Now, 46 years later, it does not even rank in the top 30 of bank failures. Some of the bigger bank failures since then have been Washington Mutual (where I had an account), Continental Illinois National Bank and Trust, IndyMac and American Savings and Loan. On the flipside, Canadian banks have been relatively more stable and insulated from economic turmoil in comparison. For one thing, Canada has about 2 dozen banks, while the US may have thousands. Canadian banks have greater freedoms when it comes to investment banking, and the big 5 Canadian banks are exceptionally well managed banks and are far more conservative than their much larger US peers. In fact, it is not uncommon to find Canadian banks break into the US market in one form or another (TD Ameritrade, CIBC, RBC).
This Day in History: Edgar Allan Poe died on this day in 1849 at age 40. Novelist Anne Brontë also died in 1849 at age 29, and Frédéric Chopin also died in 1849 at age 39. These early deaths were not uncommon for the time. The average lifespan for most of history was between 25-30, much of that attributed to high infant mortality. Half of all children died by the age of 8. After that age you had to contend with diseases (parasites, typhoid, rheumatic fever, scarlet fever etc) constant wars and poor healthcare (doctors only began regularly washing their hands before surgery in the mid-1800s). By 1900 the average life expectancy rose to 48. By 1950 it climbed to 67. Today it is about 78. Over the last 200 years people became more wealthy, and wealth promotes health, and extra wealth funds health research. The poorest countries in the world, such as Sub-Saharan Africa, have the lowest lifespans.
Today in History: Austrian-American economist, sociologist, and philosopher Ludwig von Mises was born on this day in 1881. Mises was one of the great classical liberal (Libertarian) economists of the time, alongside Milton Friedman, Murray N. Rothbard and Friedrich Hayek. Mises was an early critic of socialism and Marx and argued that a socialist economy was doomed to fail because such a system lacked the signalling information needed for a coherent and sane economy. For instance, a capitalist economy produces signals to producers that consumers want or need so much of a certain item. A centrally planned economic system like socialism has no such mechanism as production decisions are handled by the top few, or even the one.
The socialist author of "The Worldly Philosophers," Robert Heilbroner, after examining the socialist countries of the 20th century, famously declared that "Mises was Right." "Capitalism has been as unmistakable a success as socialism has been a failure. Here is the part that's hard to swallow. It has been the Friedmans, Hayeks, and von Miseses who have maintained that capitalism would flourish and that socialism would develop incurable ailments. All three have regarded capitalism as the 'natural' system of free men; all have maintained that left to its own devices capitalism would achieve material growth more successfully than any other system. From [my samplings] I draw the following discomforting generalization: The farther to the right one looks, the more prescient has been the historical foresight; the farther to the left, the less so."
Today in History: Today is Constitution Day. The US Constitution has been considered one of the greatest documents ever written, alongside the Magna Carta and the Gutenberg Bible. The Constitution is supposed to put constraints on Government and assure limited Government. Sounds good. However, what started as the smallest government in the world ended becoming the largest. My frustration with the Constitution mirrors that of Lysander Spooner in the 1800's when he wrote: "But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain - that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it."
Back in Spooner's day it was noted that even Abraham Lincoln committed numerous unconstitutional acts:
"He started a war without the consent of Congress; illegally declared martial law; illegally blockaded Southern ports; illegally suspended habeas corpus and arrested tens of thousands of political opponents; illegally orchestrated the secession of West Virginia; shut down hundreds of opposition newspapers and imprisoned their editors and owners ... ." He also "ignored the Ninth and Tenth amendments; orchestrated the rigging of Northern elections; introduced the slavery of conscription and income taxation; waged war on Southern civilians and ... created an enormous political patronage system that survives today."~Thomas Dilorenzo
Many have recognized that the lockdowns this years are also unconstitutional (hence illegal), yet, here we are. The Constitution is a great document, but perhaps, too often, an ignored one.
This day in history: The landmark American science fiction television series Star Trek premiered on this day in 1966. When you really think about it, the world of Star Trek is a Communist world. There is no private enterprise (no pun intended), and there is no money in ‘Star Trek’ because the transporter/replicator machine makes anything you need. Spock repeatedly reminds Captain Kirk that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, and he continually sacrifices himself each time a crisis occurs. Star Trek has a 5 year mission, Communists had 5 year plans.
"The shows Deep Space Nine and Enterprise described the rise of communism on Earth in detail. Of course they do not call it communism. They call it 'The New Economy.' In this economy—with rare exception—the government educates you, employs you, feeds you, and assigns you shelter. They build all apartment, 'commercial,' and office buildings, and factories. The exceptional private employers include nostalgic restaurateurs, generational vintners, and the like. The government will let anyone produce specialty goods or services as a creative outlet. But for all other goods and services, the government provides." Conservapedia
In one episode Lily Sloane asked Picard how much the USS Enterprise had cost to build, he told her, "the economics of the future is somewhat different. You see, money doesn't exist in the 24th century... The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force in our lives. We work to better ourselves and the rest of Humanity." (Star Trek: First Contact)
This is all idealistic utopian nonsense akin to Edward Bellamy's 1888 book "Looking Backward." Socialism/Communism never improved society. Quite the opposite in fact. It has lead to mass deaths and starvation...it has always failed, and failed spectacularly. When you see these large majestic ships in the Star Trek universe, remind yourself that you never really see Russian Ladas and Yugos on the road anymore.
There was one species that was interested in commerce and trade (capitalism), the Ferengi, but they were portrayed in the most negative light.
Today in History: German political philosopher Hans-Hermann Hoppe was born on this day in 1949. Hoppe, who can be described as an Austrian school libertarian anarcho-capitalist economist who is best know for his book "Democracy: The God that Failed."
In this book, Hoppe argues that democracy is not an improvement over monarchy. Politicians in a democracy have a very high time preference (they value immediate gratification) because they have to please their constituents in the short span of a term in order to get re-elected. Thus, democracy is short-sighted and favors short-term gains over long-term losses. Monarchy, on the other hand, is the opposite. Monarchs have low time preference for three reasons: (1) their reign lasts for a lifetime (2) they will pass their kingdom on to their heirs, and (3) they have total ownership of their kingdom. Hence, monarchs have a greater incentive to maintain their society over time.
Of course, Hoppe would rather have neither system, but it is food for thought.
This Day In History: The Oracle of Omaha, Warren Buffett, was born on this day in 1930. Buffet is an American investor, business tycoon, and philanthropist, who is the chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway. The Berkshire Hathaway stock is the most expensive in the world (presently at 328,000.00). He is considered one of the most successful investors in the world and has a net worth of $78.9 billion, making him the fourth-wealthiest person in the world, behind Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and Bernard Arnault.
Buffet is the most mentioned person in financial circles, and when he buys and sells, everyone takes notice. His recent gold acquisition marked to the world a public lack of confidence in the American dollar.
On Bitcoin he stated, "In terms of cryptocurrencies, generally, I can say with almost certainty that they will come to a bad ending."
Buffet bought his first stock when he was 11 years old, and made $53,000 by the age of 16. He also eats like Trump, preferring Cokes and McDonalds.
He reads a stack of books every day, “Read 500 pages like this every day. That’s how knowledge works. It builds up, like compound interest.”
This Day In History: English philosopher and physician John Locke was born on this day in 1632. Locke was a real “Renaissance Man” who found time to be an expert in, not only medicine, but also metaphysics, epistemology, political philosophy, philosophy of mind, philosophy of education, economics, the Bible and theology (moving from Calvinist trinitarianism to Socinianism and Arianism, though he is still referred to as a Protestant Scholastic). He would go on to inspire David Hume, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Adam Smith, Imanuel Kant and the founding fathers, particularly Thomas Jefferson.
Locke was the Father of Classical Liberalism (Libertarianism). He stated that each person has a property in himself, and property precedes government. Unlike Descartes, Locke thought the mind was a blank slate (tabula rasa). The earth is given to humans in common. Locke’s doctrine that governments need the consent of the governed is central to the Declaration of Independence. He advocated separation of powers and believed that revolution was not only a right but an obligation at times.
John Locke wrote his major works in his 60's, and never really found time for a wife or romance. He did have an interesting feud with Isaac Newton. Newton would send strange, paranoid letters accusing Locke of trying to “entangle [him] with women.”
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This Day In History: Scottish Philosopher David Hume died on this day in 1776. One puzzle that Hume posed is especially pertinent today in the era of mass lockdowns. In his First Principles of Government, Hume wrote, "Nothing appears more surprising to those who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye, than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few; and the implicit submission, with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers." 200 years prior to Hume, Étienne de La Boétie wrote his "Discourse on Voluntary Servitude" wherein he wonders, "how it happens that so many men, so many villages, so many cities, so many nations, sometimes suffer under a single tyrant who has no other power than the power they give him; who is able to harm them only to the extent to which they have the willingness to bear with him; who could do them absolutely no injury unless they preferred to put up with him rather than contradict him. Surely a striking situation!" It was however the great H.L. Mencken that figured out how this was done: “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” David Hume: How Easily the Masses are Manipulated by the Few
This Day In History: Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto died on this day in 1923. VP gave us what has come to be called the Pareto Principle, or the 80/20 rule. According to legend, one day he noticed that 20% of the pea plants in his garden generated 80% of the healthy pea pods. Observing this caused him to think about uneven distribution. He then discovered that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by just 20% of the population. He investigated further and found that 80% of production typically came from just 20% of the companies. The generalization became: 80% of results will come from just 20% of the action. An extended analysis tells us that 20% of the sales reps generate 80% of total sales, 20% of customers account for 80% of total profits, 20% of the most reported software bugs cause 80% of software crashes, 20% of patients account for 80% of healthcare spending, 20% of criminals commit 80% of crimes, 20% of drivers cause 80% of all traffic accidents, 20% of the world's population controls about 80% of the world's income.
Also, 20% of farmers produce 80% of the world's agriculture, 20% of your phone apps get 80% usage, 20% of shareholders own 80% of a corporation's stock, 20% of professional athletes cause 80% of ticket sales, 20% of bar liquor is consumed 80% of the time, 20% of your knowledge is used 80% of the time, etc.
If everyone started with an equal amount of money and then started to transact, 80% of the wealth would end in the hands of the 20%.
This day in history: The novella "Animal Farm" by George Orwell was first published on this day in 1945. Animal Farm is considered one of the top-most dystopian books on practically every list, alongside Orwell's 1945, Yevgeny Zamyatin's "WE", Huxley's "Brave New World", Ray Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451", Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale", "The Hunger Games" by Suzanne Collins and John Wyndham's "The Chrysalids."
Time magazine chose the book as one of the 100 best English-language novels (1923 to 2005); it also featured at number 31 on the Modern Library List of Best 20th-Century Novels, and number 46 on the BBC's The Big Read poll. It won a Retrospective Hugo Award in 1996 and is included in the Great Books of the Western World selection.
Great audio, I listened to this years ago and I never forgot it. Christopher Hitchens talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about George Orwell. Drawing on his book Why Orwell Matters, Hitchens talks about Orwell's opposition to imperialism, fascism, and Stalinism, his moral courage, and his devotion to language. Along the way, Hitchens makes the case for why Orwell matters. http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2009/08/hitchens_on_orw.html
(George Orwell presents us with yet another case of a writer who was not himself a libertarian as we understand the term today, but whose last two novels, Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-four, have earned him a place in the libertarian tradition.)
"That man (Herbert Hoover) has offered me unsolicited advice for six years, all of it bad," Calvin Coolidge
This day in history: The 31st President of the United States, Herbert Hoover, was born on this day in 1874. The general narrative we hear about the Great Depression is that Herbert Hoover was a laissez-faire president who did nothing to help American crawl out of the depression which made it even worse, and we must learn from this today and enact federal stimulus programs to boost life into the economy.
The problem with this all is that this is a lie. Hoover actually intervened in the economy more than any prior president. Keep this in mind when you consider that there was a Depression in 1920, the government did nothing, and the economy bounced back within 12 to 18 months. As Hoover himself proclaimed during his presidential campaign of 1932:
. . . we might have done nothing. That would have been utter ruin. Instead we met the situation with proposals to private business and to Congress of the most gigantic program of economic defense and counterattack ever evolved in the history of the Republic. We put it into action. . . . No government in Washington has hitherto considered that it held so broad a responsibility for leadership in such times. . . . For the first time in the history of depressions, dividends, profits and the cost of living, have been reduced before wages have suffered. . . . They were maintained until the cost of living had decreased and the profits had practically vanished. They are now the highest real wages in the world. Creating new jobs and giving to the whole system a new breath of life; nothing has ever been devised in our history which has done more for . . . “the common run of men and women.” Some of the reactionary economists urged that we should allow the liquidation to take its course until we had found bottom. . . . We determined that we would not follow the advice of the bitterend liquidationists and see the whole body of debtors of the United States brought to bankruptcy and the savings of our people brought to destruction.
Hoover doubled federal spending and one of his first acts as president was to prohibit business leaders from cutting wages. He also launched huge public works projects such as the San Francisco Bay Bridge, Los Angeles Aqueduct, and the Hoover Dam. Hoover signed into law the damaging Smoot-Hawley tariff into law in June 1930 which raised taxes on over 20,000 imported goods (to the highest levels in American history) which made it more difficult for other countries to export goods to US, so now their economies suffered, and they thus imported less American goods. Hoover ended up creating a worldwide trade war. Also, because there were less foreign imports, government revenues from tariffs actually declined, the opposite to what the government intended.
Hoover eventually raised the top income tax rate from 23 percent to 65 percent (the rich must pay their fair share after all) and the lowest income tax rate from 1.1 percent to 4 percent in 1932.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt eventually criticized Herbert Hoover of presiding over “the greatest spending administration in peacetime in all of history.” Roosevelt criticized Hoover for spending and taxing too much, boosting the national debt, choking off trade, and putting millions of people on the dole. Roosevelt's running mate, John Nance Garner, charged that Hoover was "leading the country down the path of socialism."
Hoover definitely did not favor laissez-faire policies. In fact, Hoover even self-identified as a progressive and denounced laissez-faire himself:
"Individualism cannot be maintained as the foundation of a society if it looks to only legalistic justice based upon contracts, property, and political equality. Such legalistic safeguards are themselves not enough. In our individualism we have long since abandoned the laissez faire of the 18th Century-the notion that it is 'everyman for himself and the devil take the hindmost.'"
Besides an aggressive expansion of all state public works programs, Hoover also instituted farm subsidies and price supports and enacted rules to discourage commodity speculators. He then set out to weaken bankruptcy laws so as to prevent them, resulting in many companies being propped up artificially. He imposed limits on immigration and deported illegal aliens and fought tirelessly to keep wage rates propped up.
So the image of Hoover as an Adam Smith Physiocrat is competely inaccurate. As William Leuchtenburg, author of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal states: "Almost every historian now recognizes that the image of Hoover as a 'do-nothing' president is inaccurate." For a list of all of my books on CDrom,click here
