Le socialisme, en bref

"The good news is that, according to the Obama administration, the rich will pay for everything. The bad news is that, according to the Obama administration, you're rich."

-P.J. O'Rourke

La propriété privée: condition nécessaire à la responsabilité

Via mises.org:

Responsibility means that one is accountable for one's actions, but this is impossible if the authority for decision making does not lie with the actor himself. In its fullest sense, responsibility means the acceptance by the actor of the full burden of this accountability, an awareness that he cannot pass the buck, so to speak, but alone must bear the moral weight of the consequences of his actions. A society of responsible citizens, then, is not one in which the masses play follow the leader; rather, it is one in which, as a rule, the individual makes no attempt to place outside himself the locus of accountability for his own decisions, nor asserts the right to have others relieve him of it. Responsibility is therefore strongly associated with such qualities as maturity, self-control, and intellectual autonomy, while it correlates negatively with dependence, subservience, and social conformity. This is why it is axiomatic in libertarian philosophy that liberty and responsibility must necessarily go together, and why Viktor Frankl said that the Statue of Liberty in New York should be offset by a Statue of Responsibility in California.

Explication

To understand politics, you have to break the word down.

Poli (poly) - mathematical term for "many"

Tic (ticks) - blood sucking parasites.

Le commerce comme unificateur pacifique

Entrez dans la Bourse de Londres, cette place plus respectable que bien des cours; vous y voyez rassemblés les députés de toutes les nations pour l'utilité des hommes. Là, le juif, le mahométan et le chrétien traitent l'un avec l'autre comme s'ils étaient de la même religion, et ne donnent le nom d’infidèles qu'à ceux qui font banqueroute; là, le presbytérien se fie à l'anabaptiste, et l'anglican reçoit la promesse du quaker. Au sortir de ces pacifiques et libres assemblées, les uns vont à la synagogue, les autres vont boire; celui-ci va se faire baptiser dans une grande cuve au nom du Père par le Fils au Saint-Esprit; celui-là fait couper le prépuce de son fils et fait marmotter sur l'enfant des paroles hébraïques qu'il n'entend point; ces autres vont dans leur église attendre l'inspiration de Dieu, leur chapeau sur la tête, et tous sont contents.

-Voltaire, Lettres Philosophiques, 1734

Warren Buffett: de capitaliste à corporatiste

Via Reason.com:

In the summer of 2008, when several investment houses and the government-sponsored mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac teetered on the brink of financial collapse, Buffett was “uncharacteristically quiet,” as the London Guardian observed. It was only on September 23 that he became a highly visible player in the drama, investing $5 billion in Goldman Sachs, which was overleveraged and short on cash. Buffett’s play gave the investment bank a much-needed cash infusion, making a heck of a deal for himself in return: Berkshire Hathaway received preferred stock with a 10 percent dividend yield and an attractive option to buy another $5 billion in stock at $115 a share.

Wall Street was on fire, and Buffett was running toward the flames. But he was doing so with the expectation that the fire department (that is, the federal government) was right behind him with buckets of bailout money. As he admitted on CNBC at the time, “If I didn’t think the government was going to act, I wouldn’t be doing anything this week.”

Buffett needed the bailout. In addition to Goldman Sachs, which was not as badly leveraged as some of its competitors, Buffett was heavily invested in several other banks, such as Wells Fargo and U.S. Bancorp, that were also at risk and in need of federal cash.

Le Mythe pernicieux du 'Noble Primitif'

Par David Deming:

The late Joseph Campbell maintained that civilizations are not based on science, but on myth. "Aspiration," Campbell explained, "is the motivator, builder, and transformer of civilization." Our technological society has been built on Francis Bacon's myth of the New Atlantis. Bacon was the first person to unambiguously and explicitly advocate the practical application of scientific knowledge to human needs. "The true and lawful goal of the sciences," he explained, "is that human life be endowed with new discoveries and powers." Writing in the early seventeenth century, Francis Bacon predicted lasers, genetic engineering, airplanes, and submarines.

Competing with Bacon's vision of a society based on science is the older and more persistent fable of the Noble Savage. The Noble Savage is not a person, but an idea. It is cultural primitivism, the belief of people living in complex and evolved societies that the simple and primitive life is better. The Noble Savage is the myth that man can live in harmony with nature, that technology is destructive, and that we would all be happier in a more primitive state.

Before Jesus Christ lived, the Noble Savage was known to the Hebrews as the Garden of Eden. The Greek poet Hesiod (c. 700 BC) called it the Golden Age. In the lost Golden Age, people lived in harmony with nature. There was no disease, pain, work, or conflict. Everyone lived in perfect peace. Insects didn't bite you. There were no extremes of temperature, and you could wander naked through the fields. If you happened to be hungry, all you had to do to satisfy your craving was reach up and pick a sumptuous ripe fruit off a nearby tree.

Doug Casey et le service social du profit

Notice one more thing: making money honestly means creating something other people value, not yourself. The more money I want, the more I have to think about what other people want, and find better, faster, cheaper ways of delivering it to them. The reason someone is poor – and, yes, I know all the excuses for poverty – is that the poor do not produce more than they consume. Or if they do, they don't save the surplus.

-Doug Casey