Le document secret qui a transformé la Chine...

...d'un enfer collectiviste 100% planifié a une économie semi-libre qui est encore planifiée mais avec des poches saines de liberté économique.

Via Economic Policy Journal et NPR.org:

Current day China is a mixed bag of central planning and free market activity. There likely will be a great economic crash in China because of the central planning, which has resulted in things like 40 million plus vacant apartments. But China, even with this central planning, is much better off than during the complete planning of the Mao reign.

National Public Radio has this fascinating report on how, in part, China broke free from the Mao inspired chains:
In 1978, the farmers in a small Chinese village called Xiaogang gathered in a mud hut to sign a secret contract. They thought it might get them executed. Instead, it wound up transforming China's economy in ways that are still reverberating today.

The contract was so risky — and such a big deal — because it was created at the height of communism in China. Everyone worked on the village's collective farm; there was no personal property.

"Back then, even one straw belonged to the group," says Yen Jingchang, who was a farmer in Xiaogang in 1978. "No one owned anything."

At one meeting with communist party officials, a farmer asked: "What about the teeth in my head? Do I own those?" Answer: No. Your teeth belong to the collective.

La citation du jour

What moral system should government follow? The same one individuals follow. Do not steal. Do not murder. Do not bear false witness. Do not covet. Do not foster vice. If governments would merely follow the moral law that all religions recognize, we would live in a world of peace, prosperity, and freedom. The system is called classical liberalism. Liberty is not complicated.

-Ron Paul, Liberty Defined, p. 211.

L'épargne et l'investissement: les formes de charité les plus efficaces, et les plus éthiques

Par FA Harper, via Mises.org:

In this essay I shall be dealing, however, with one aspect of economic charity — a form inferior to charity of the mind and the spirit. People spend vast sums trying to do good with economic alms in forms which, to me, seem open to serious question. In their haste to do good and to bask in the glow of immediate glory as purveyors of alms, they are being exceedingly wasteful of the means of benevolence. The methods they use would come to appear unbenevolent, I believe, if they would view them by the test of alternatives in the longer perspective of economic science. That is the thought I should like to explore here, in honor of Professor Mises.

A certain Talmudical philosopher once offered us this apothegm:

The noblest charity is to prevent a man from accepting charity, and the best alms are to show and enable a man to dispense with alms.[1]
A profound observation! It deserves to be kept in mind constantly as we fumble along in attempts to do good to others.

Corée du Nord: Camps de travail forcé pour les citoyens n'ayant pas exprimé un 'deuil suffisant' à la mort de Kim Jong Il

Via Economic Policy Journal:

More proof most government leaders are nutty madmen (North Korea edition)

PIK.TV reports:
North Korean citizens, who did not take part in the mourning ceremonies for the country’s late Leader Kim Jong-il, are facing up to six months in labor camps, Interfax reported January 11.

According to the South Korean media sources, “People’s Courts” took place all over the country starting December 29 to condemn those who did not show enough emotion after the death of “the great leader” Kim Jong-il.

The People’s Court hearings were reportedly over by January 8. The behavior of those people, who criticized the three-generation principle of ruling the country, was also a matter of discussion during the court meetings.

It was reported earlier that 2012 calendars were fully taken out of stores because the date of death of the late Leader Kim Jong-il was not marked in them.

Kim Jong-il died December 17 of a heart attack in his armored train. The North Korean government, now headed by his son, Kim Jong-un, has promised to continue implementing “the great revolutionary leaders’ ideas” with the aim of reuniting the Korean Peninsula.

La liberté économique: cause de la liberté d'expression artistique

Via The Free Man:

In the early 1500s Albrecht Dürer was perhaps the most famous artist in northern Europe. A recent article in The Economist reports that he was also a shrewd businessman. In today’s world of popular artists — from Steven Spielberg to Lady Gaga — the pairing of business and “entertainment,” if regretted by some, is noncontroversial. But many still see the true artist and the profit-seeking business person as coming from radically different places.

Historically speaking, however, cases like Dürer’s seem to have been fairly common. Tyler Cowen explains in his book In Praise of Popular Culture, for example, that the artists of Renaissance Florence were men of business. Michelangelo and Raphael sculpted and painted timeless masterpieces for prelates and princes, but each had an eye for the bottom line.

Le rôle pernicieux de l'État dans la mort des langues locales

Par Danny Hieber, via Mises.org:

The history of the world's languages is largely a story of loss and decline. At around 8000 BC, linguists estimate that upwards of 20,000 languages may have been in existence.[1] Today the number stands at 6,909 and is declining rapidly.[2] By 2100, it is quite realistic to expect that half of these languages will be gone, their last speakers dead, their words perhaps recorded in a dusty archive somewhere, but more likely undocumented entirely.[3]

What causes this? How does one become the last speaker of a language, as Boa Sr was before her death in 2010? How do languages come to be spoken only by elders and not children? There are a number of bad answers to these questions. One is globalization, a nebulous term used disparagingly to refer to either global economic specialization and the division of labor, or the adoption of similar cultural practices across the globe.

The problem with globalization in the latter sense is that it is the result, not a cause, of language decline. Another bad answer, encompassed in the former definition of globalization, is trade and capitalism. Trade does not kill languages any more than it kills any other type of cultural practice, like painting or music. Trade enhances the exchange of cultural practices and fosters their proliferation; it does not generally diminish them. Historically, regional trade has fostered the creation of many new lingua francas, and the result tends to be a stable, healthy bilingualism between the local language and the regional trade language. It is only when the state adopts a trade language as official and, in a fit of linguistic nationalism, foists it upon its citizens, that trade languages become "killer languages."

Le NDAA: Un petit pas pour Obama, un grand pas pour Big Brother

Via The Atlantic:

Obama Makes It Official: Suspected Terrorists Can Be Indefinitely Detained Without a Trial