Perspective Mexicaine sur la nature de l'État

The twentieth-century state has proved itself a force more powerful than the ancient empires and a master more terrible than the old tyrants and despots: a faceless, inhuman master who functions not like a demon but like a machine. Civil Society has almost completely disappeared: nothing and no person exists outside the state. It is a surprising inversion of values that would have made Nietzsche himself shudder: the state is Being and exception; irregularity and even simple individualism are forms of evil, that is, of nothingness.

The state is neither a factory nor a business. The logic of history is not quantitative. Economic rationality depends on the relationship between expenditure and production, investment and earnings, work and savings. The rationale of the state is not utility nor profit but power — gaining it, conserving it and extending it. The archetype of power does not lie in economics but in war, not in the polemic relationship of capital to work but in the hierarchical relationship of commander to soldier.

-Ottavio Paz, Mexicain d'origine, prix Nobel de Littérature 1990

Merci à Lew Rockwell.

La faillite des gouvernements: moralement et financièrement sain

Via le blogue de Lew Rockwell:

Government Bankruptcy Is a Great Idea

Posted by Lew Rockwell on January 21, 2011 08:51 AM

State governments, like municipal governments, should go bankrupt rather than raise taxes on their victims. In fact, as part of bankruptcy, taxes should be drastically lowered, bonds repudiated, pensions abolished, and employees fired. A great start towards solvency and decency. Remember, the money for all these “services” is extracted through violence and the threat of violence. But there is talk of constitutional problems of state bankruptcy in federal bankruptcy courts, because of states rights, so there should be a federal agency to supervise it! Oh brother. In fact, states can do it on their own and ignore the feds, using their own courts. Come on, California, get the ball rolling. Jerry Brown, unlike the awful Arnold, be a hero.

Les contribuables Québécois renflouent les victimes de Norbourg

Les contribuables Québécois, dans un bel élan de générosité, renflouent les victimes de Vincent Lacroix à la hauteur de 55 millions $ par le biais de l'AMF (je comprends que l'AMF ne paiera pas l'entiereté de ce montant), en plus d'un montant de 31 millions $ ayant déjà été payé en 2007.

Via le site du Montreal Gazette:

The $55 million will be paid by Quebec securities regulator the Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF), Northern Trust Co. Canada, Concentra Trust, accountant Rémi Deschambault and accounting firms KPMG and Beaulieu Deschambault, with no admission of responsibility.

Droit naturel vs Pain et Jeux

Freedom is not an endlessly expanding list of rights — the ‘right’ to education, the ‘right’ to health care, the ‘right’ to food and housing. That’s not freedom, that’s dependency. Those aren’t rights, those are the rations of slavery — hay and a barn for human cattle.

-PJ O'Rourke

Merci à Antagoniste.net.

Les malinvestissements et le gouvernement, version éthanol

This is not just hype — it’s dangerous, delusional bullshit. Ethanol doesn’t burn cleaner than gasoline, nor is it cheaper. Our current ethanol production represents only 3.5 percent of our gasoline consumption — yet it consumes twenty percent of the entire U.S. corn crop, causing the price of corn to double in the last two years and raising the threat of hunger in the Third World.

– Jeff Goodell, via Zero Hedge

La fausseté de la nécessité gu gouvernement dans le financement de la science

Par Anita Acavalos:

Overall, we have seen the significance of the profit and loss mechanism in allocating funding for science projects and deciding on a micro scale how these projects should be managed. The elimination of this profit and loss mechanism is bound to lead to inefficiency as government bodies will not be able to use it as a guide to determine exactly which research projects can bear the most fruit. Finally, we have seen how the public funding of science tends to distort its results because “science is nothing if it is not truth, and truth is hard to reconcile with politics.”

L'incompétence et la malhonnêteté des médias

I believe 90% of everything in the news is bullshit. I watch it and read it purely for entertainment. And to have an idea what other people are supposed to believe.

-Doug Casey