What Libertarians Mean By The Free Market

Markets are much more than multinational corporations, banking firms, and stock brokerages on Wall Street, though all of those things are the result of a market system.Sound economies, from the biggest multinational banks to a childs sidewalk lemonade stand, operate on the principles of private property and exchange. These concepts are the building blocks of free societies, and it is the system of countless small trades, taken as a whole, that we call “the market.”It is important to note that these trades are positive sum win-win situations: each party agrees to a trade because they value what theyre getting more than what theyre giving up.And when those trades are voluntary–when nothing is preventing people from making trades or forcing people to make trades–that results in a free market, which makes everyone healthier, wealthier, more peaceful, and more technologically advanced.Thats what libertarians mean when they defend the free market.

via What Libertarians Mean By The Free Market – YouTube.

Why Do We Exchange Things?

If we each have a boxed lunch with the same sandwich, chips, a pickle, and a cookie, why would we consider trading items? Perhaps I prefer chips and you prefer cookies. Maybe I’ll give you my cookie for your chips. Now both of us are happier with our lunches. This is one example of how exchange can make people better off even without increasing the total amount of wealth. Exchange helps correct mistakes in allocation and it makes everyone involved happier. Professor Michael C. Munger offers a few examples of how exchange can make people happier whether people have the same preferences or different preferences, the same stuff to start with or different stuff. The ability to make people better off by simple exchange may seem like magic, Munger says, but it’s just markets.

via Why Do We Exchange Things? – YouTube.

The Questionable Constitutionality of Dodd-Frank

Featuring Rep. Scott Garrett, Chairman of the Congressional Constitution Caucus, Chairman of the Subcommittee on Capital Markets and Government-Sponsored Enterprises, House Financial Services Committee; and Louise Bennetts, Associate Director of Financial Regulation Studies, Cato Institute; moderated by Laura Odato, Director of Government Affairs, Cato Institute.

The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 was intended to “promote the financial stability of the United States by improving accountability and transparency in the financial system, to end ‘too big to fail,’ to protect the American taxpayer by ending bailouts, to protect consumers from abusive financial services practices, and for other purposes.” The law is extraordinarily complex, requiring almost a dozen federal agencies to complete 398 rulemaking requirements, plus about 145 studies that will affect rulemaking. With the rulemaking process underway, there are growing concerns about the Act’s constitutionality. In particular, the Act has implications for the separation of powers, the role of congressional oversight, vagueness and unfettered regulator discretion, and due process. Does Dodd-Frank provide effective oversight by any branch of government, and how can constitutional concerns about the law’s grants of regulatory power be resolved?

via The Questionable Constitutionality of Dodd-Frank (U.S. Rep. Scott Garrett) – YouTube.

John A. Allison discusses Peter Wallison’s Book “Bad History, Worse Policy” on C-SPAN2

John Allison is the President and CEO of the Cato Institute. Prior to joining Cato, Allison was Chairman and CEO of BB&T Corporation, the 10th largest financial services holding company headquartered in the United States. During his tenure as CEO from 1989 to 2008, BB&T grew from $4.5 billion to $152 billion in assets. He was recognized by the Harvard Business Review as one of the top 100 most successful CEOs in the world over the last decade.

Allison has received the Corning Award for Distinguished Leadership, been inducted into the North Carolina Business Hall of Fame, and received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Banker. He is a former Distinguished Professor of Practice at Wake Forest University School of Business, and serves on the Board of Visitors at the business schools at Wake Forest, Duke, and UNC-Chapel Hill.

Allison is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He received his master’s degree in management from Duke University, and is also a graduate of the Stonier Graduate School of Banking.

via John A. Allison discusses Peter Wallison's Book "Bad History, Worse Policy" on C-SPAN 2's Book TV – YouTube.

Make It Hurt

Bill Whittle thinks that President Obama is trying to deliberately hurt America through the questionable sequester budget cuts. Why would the President of the United States try to punish the nation he has sworn to protect?

via PJTV: Making It Hurt – YouTube.

How to Destroy America

Also just for fun let me add these from the goals of the American Communist Party as reported in the Congressional Record in 1963:

17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers’ associations. Put the party line in textbooks.

18. Gain control of all student newspapers.

19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.

20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.

21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.

22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to “eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms.”

23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. “Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art.”

24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them “censorship” and a violation of free speech and free press.

25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.

26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as “normal, natural, healthy.”

27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with “social” religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a “religious crutch.”

28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of “separation of church and state.”

How NOT to Talk to People About Liberty

This week, we explain what NOT to do when talking to people about liberty… with special guest, Libertarian Girl!

The Libertarienne Show is hosted by Cathy Reisenwitz and produced by Sean W. Malone of CitizenA Media, LLC

via How NOT to Talk to People About Liberty – YouTube.

TANSTAAFL

TANSTAAFL h/t Robert A. Heinlein in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress “There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.”

Milton Friedman, recipient of the 1976 Nobel Prize for Economic Science, was one of the most recognizable and influential proponents of liberty and markets in the 20th century, and the leader of the Chicago School of economics.In this video from the grand opening of the Cato Institutess headquarters in Washington, D.C. in 1993, Milton Friedman gives a talk about popular political aphorisms, one of his favorites being the one he helped popularize in the title of his 1975 book, “Theres no such thing as a free lunch.”

Download the .mp3 version of this lecture here: http://bit.ly/X4cW9X

 

Truth About Gas Prices

The common explanation for rising gas prices makes an exciting news story: Villainous oil companies are taking advantage of helpless consumers. Prof. Art Carden explains that this popular story is inaccurate. Gas prices go up and down based on the laws of supply and demand. Political problems, such as barriers to the development of new sources and new energy sources, also contribute to rising prices. Gas prices would be lower if we didn’t have such barriers. Prices would also be lower if demand were not artificially increased through war and other wasteful expenditures.

via Why Are Gas Prices So High? – YouTube.

Has the Worm Turned?

You have to wonder when SNL takes on Obama’s nonsense.

 

 

Saturday Night Live opened the March 2, 2013 episode taking on the big sequestration fight in Congress, with Jay Pharaoh as President Obama admitting to the American people that “I really have no idea how money works or how budgets work,” but did his best to explain to the American people the real-world effects of the budget cuts.

via SNL – Obama Budget Cut Methods – YouTube.