Resharing this brilliant lecture from Mises: Text version: https://mises.org/online-book/liberty-and-property/liberty-property Any group claiming to speak for the 'masses'/'the common man', and against cronyism, ought to be radical proponents of free markets, laissez-faire, tax scrapping, deregulation and total privatization. Especially those who call themselves 'liberators of the people'. The government is the ultimate cause of enslavement, cronyism and inequality. They ought to be advocating for introducing market competition, private property and abolishing state-granted monopoly privileges in every walk of life. This was the original left wing position, because no single entity or human being can sustain their position on top in a free market without providing useful services that the masses require and demand. They can only do so with the help of the government. Quote from the lecture: "Under capitalism, private property of the factors of production is a social function. The entrepreneurs, capitalists, and land owners are mandataries, as it were, of the consumers, and their mandate is revocable. In order to be rich, it is not sufficient to have once saved and accumulated capital. It is necessary to invest it again and again in those lines in which it best fills the wants of the consumers. The market process is a daily repeated plebiscite, and it ejects inevitably from the ranks of profitable people those who do not employ their property according to the orders given by the public."

* Peacock sounds intensify *

Gold standard making a comeback? Unless fiat currencies are going back to a fully-backed Rothbardian gold standard with market driven interest rates, full reserves, involving existing currencies simply representing physical or digital claims on units of gold, Nope.

This tree is missing Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Robert Murphy, Patrick Newman, Tom DiLorenzo, Jonathan Newman, Mark Thornton and David Gordon, who would all come under Murray Rothbard.

'The Fallacies of Public Finance' by Walter Block

The joy of clicking on those numbers on the top right-hand corner of your feed on Nostur and catching up with all the posts you missed 🤌 Such a simple but amazing feature

Another Sinner v Alacaraz banger Sunday Can watch it just for Sinner's backhand scorchers

Parks and Rec is a great show Just got around to bingeing it

Here's another Rothbard clip in which he talks about the power of ideas. Nothing about the future is pre-determined. Neither tyranny nor freedom is inevitable. Agency is real. View quoted note →

I simply cannot wrap my head around the fact that people who advocate for free speech and privacy do not show the same amount of vigour and enthusiasm for abolition of tax coercion, removal of trade barriers, rapid deregulation, total privatization, legalization of victimless crimes, abolition of fiat money and making property rights absolute. Surely, it is obvious that the state monopoly cannot co-exist with privacy and free speech? If the state considers the taking of a portion of your income by force 'legal', it could easily also justify the monitoring of all your financial and economic activity. The legal system wouldn't need to resort to deterrence (which requires mass surveillance) rather than punishment if it could allocate resources efficiently and provide services effectively, rather than relying on a capturable and corruptible monopoly provider like the state who does the opposite. It wouldn't need to monitor what you import and export if it doesn't think a certain category of goods are illegal to be traded. It wouldn't have to monitor your companies and their workings, operations and balance sheets if it didn't think you were engaging in production in a way that it thought was inappropriate. It wouldn't have access to your transactions if all of them aren't made through an institution which has bent the knee to the state. If anything the state declares as a crime is considered so, then it can just add an increasing amount of activities as being potentially leading to criminality, which it will monitor to ensure compliance. You wouldn't need to ask permission to speak your mind if nobody could enter or trespass your land without your consent, and if nobody can prevent you from using acquiring or using your property harmlessly in any way you deem fit. You could just build a hall, invite people and organise a conference. You could just set up an internet connection without a license. You can start a publication and build a reader base. You can build a movie theatre and broadcast whatever you want. You can protest all day everyday by buying a street or a plot. As long as the state exists and we depend on its monopoly for crucial services, privacy and free speech will always be under threat.

Bitcoin comes into existence by people peacefully competing with each other, absent of aggression. It is already legitimate. It doesn't need positive legislation to become so. 'I agree, but that's not how things work.' No, that is how things work. So to speak.

Ben a while since I shared a Rothbard quote: "We have to look differently at taxation. We have to stop looking at taxes as a mighty system for achieving social goals, which merely needs to be made “fair” and rational in order to usher in Utopia. We have to start looking at taxation as a vast system of robbery and oppression, by which some people are enabled to live coercively and parasitically at the expense of others. We must realize that from the point of view of justice or of economic prosperity, the less people are taxed, the better. That is why we should rejoice at every new loophole, new credit, new manifestation of the “underground” economy. The Soviet Union can produce or work only to the extent that individuals are able to avoid the myriad of controls, taxes, and regulations. The same is true of most Third World countries, and the same is increasingly true of us. Every economic activity that escapes taxes and controls is not only a blow for freedom and property rights; it is also one more instance of a free flow of productive energy getting out from under parasitic repression. That is why we should welcome every new loophole, shelter, credit, or exemption, and work, not to shut them down but to expand them to include everyone else, including ourselves." From: 'The Myth of Tax “Reform”' https://mises.org/mises-wire/rothbard-myth-tax-reform