Judge Andrew Napolitano on Evangelii Gaudium

Another response to the Pope's Evangelii Gaudium. This time, it's from Judge Andrew Napolitano:

"The problem with modern capitalism — a problem that escaped the scrutiny of His Holiness — is not too much freedom, but too little. The regulation of free markets by governments, the control of the private means of production by government bureaucrats, and the unholy alliances between governments, banks and industry have raised production costs, stifled competition, established barriers to entry into markets, raised taxes, devalued savings and priced many poor out of the labor force. The Pope would do well to pray for those who have used government to steal freedom so as to satisfy their lust for power, and for those who have bowed to government so as to become rich from governmental benefits and not by the fruits of their own labors."

"Traditional Catholic social teaching imposes on all of us a moral obligation to become our brothers’ keepers. But this is a personal moral obligation, enforced by conscience and Church teaching and the fires of Hell — not by the coercive powers of the government. Charity comes from the heart. It consists of freely giving away one’s wealth. It is impossible to be charitable with someone else’s money. That’s theft, not charity."

"If the government takes money from you to buy the person a fish, half of the money will be wasted."

"The Pope seems to prefer common ownership of the means of production, which is Marxist, or private ownership and government control, which is fascist, or government ownership and government control, which is socialist. All of those failed systems lead to ashes, not wealth. Pope Francis must know this. He must also know that when Europe was in turmoil in 1931, his predecessor Pius XI wrote in one of his apostolic exhortation: 'No one can be at the same time a sincere Catholic and a true Socialist.' ”

http://www.lewrockwell.com/2013/12/andrew-p-napolitano/preaching-marxism/

Salvation through Government Spending

"In the early nineteen thirties, in the depth of the Great Depression, the theory became fashionable that the cause of all depressions was lack of purchasing power. The people just did not have enough money, and because of unwarranted pessimism they were refusing to spend enough even of what they had. The solution was therefore simple: at such a time the government should boldly increase its own spending, 'prime the pump,' and 'get things moving again.' Naive advocates of this theory assumed that more government spending was the whole answer. The more sophisticated advocates saw that the increased spending would not give people more purchasing power if the government kept the budget balanced and took it all away again in higher taxes. . .The trick, in other words, was deliberately to unbalance the budget—to run a deficit." - Henry Hazlitt, Man vs. The Welfare State, 1969, pp. 4-5

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Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr (1808-1890) is right when he said, "the more things change, the more they stay the same" (Les Guêpes, 1849).

Instant Utopia

"In the last generation politicians and governments have been promising the voters that they could not only bring perpetual full employment, prosperity, and 'economic growth,' but solve the age-old problem of poverty overnight. And the end result is not merely that accomplishment has fallen far short of promises, but that the attempt to fulfill the promises has brought an enormous increase in government spending, an enormous increase in the burden of taxes, chronic deficits, chronic inflation, and a constant loss in the buying power of the people's earnings and savings. . . Another result of the promise of instant utopia has been a gigantic growth of governmental power—of interference in the details of everybody's business and everybody's life. As this power has increased, it has also become concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. . . One mark of the welfare state everywhere has been the gathering of power into the hands of one man. This is no mere unfortunate coincidence; it has been inevitable." - Henry Hazlitt, Man vs. The Welfare State, 1969, pp.1-2

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Is there truth in the above quotation from Henry Hazlitt? Try to assess the governments of the world today on the basis of the idea in this quotation and then judge for yourself whether Hazlitt's analysis is accurate or not.

In the Philippines, if my memory still serves me right, I think all the presidents in my lifetime so far had given their promise to fight poverty. However, from Marcos, Cory, Ramos, Erap, Arroyo, and now Pnoy, none of them have succeeded in alleviating the condition of the poor, but instead, again, if my common sense is right, I think Filipinos now are poorer than ever. I accept that there are people who do not share this common sense, and could easily come up with the latest data to contradict this personal observation. But as far as myself is concerned, I think Hazlitt's analysis describes if not most, I think all of the governments today including our own.

So the government's fight against poverty is not bringing the results that we all desired. Instead, what we see are failed promises and greater poverty. One question that bothers me is about the sincerity of those in office. Are they really sincere in their goal or is it just a political slogan? Let us grant that they are sincere, and then another question must be asked: Why are they failing to produce the desired results despite their sincerity? Is it not because they are mistaken in their basic understanding of the nature and function of the government?

Instead of alleviating the condition of the poor, Hazlitt identifies seven inevitable outcomes of government's fight against poverty. And these outcomes are actually addictive for those in power and leading to economic trap and disaster. What are these outcomes? They are as follows:

• Increase in government spending

• Increase in taxes

• Chronic deficits

• Chronic inflation

• Constant loss in the buying power of the people's earnings and savings

• Gigantic growth of governmental power or interference in the details of everybody's business and everybody's life

• Concentration of power in fewer hands that will finally end in dictatorship. 

All these outcomes or results are obvious now in the US. Here in the Philippines? I think it is still not so obvious, but our instincts feel it.

Interventionism and Neo-Malthusian Solution to Overpopulation

For the past several days, I was sidetracked by numerous readings, but I accomplished almost nothing in terms of writing a review. So among numerous ebooks I have on economics, I choose Henry Hazlitt's "The Conquest of Poverty" for review. But it has twenty chapters. It's too big for me in view of the fact that I also have many teaching responsibilities. So I decided to digest the book two chapters at a time. 

In reading the first two chapters, I selected three quotations, which I consider best capture the idea of the chapter. In chapter 1, the "Problem of Poverty", my chosen quotation is about the impact of government intervention on the economy of Argentina and Russia. Here is the quote:

"Foolish governmental interference led the Argentine, once the world's principal producer and exporter of beef, to forbid in 1971 even domestic consumption of beef on alternate weeks. Soviet Russia, one of whose chief economic problems before it was communized was to find an export market for its huge surplus of grains, has been forced to import grains from the capitalist countries. One could go on to cite scores of other examples, with ruinous consequences, all brought on by short-sighted governmental policies." (p. 19)

This quote from Hazlitt speaks about the economic destruction resulting from government intervention in the affairs of the free market. Hazlitt can identify additional examples, but he limits himself only in the experiences of Argentina and Russia.

Photo Credit 

In chapter 2, "Poverty and Population", the name of Thomas Robert Malthus plays a significant role. This is because he wrote a book that is considered a landmark in the discussion about the correlation between poverty and overpopulation. 

The two quotations I selected talk about the contrast between Malthus and neo-Malthusians' solutions to the problem of overpopulation and poverty. Malthus as an individualist and libertarian, the solution he proposed to overpopulation was both voluntary and simple. For him, the role of an individual particularly individual responsibility is primary. A responsible individual will not bring a child into this world without first finding the necessary livelihood to support him. 

However, the neo-Malthusians didn't follow the footstep of Malthus. Since the neo-Malthusians are collectivist in ideology, they came up with a different solution. Their remedy to overpopulation resorted to government coercion, propaganda, sterilization of men and women, and even abortion. To my mind, this shows their determination to stop populationg growth at any cost. Moreover, they justified their action by claiming that since it is the community's responsibility to keep an individual alive, it is also the community's prerogative to decide whether to procreate or not. 

Photo Credit

Here are the two quotes from chapter 2: 

"What, then, is the solution? Most of the neo-Malthusians, unfortunately, are collectivist in their thinking; they want to solve the problem in the aggregate, and by government coercion. They not only want governments to flood their countries with propaganda for The Pill, The Loop, and other methods of contraception, encouraging even abortion; they want to sterilize men and women. They demand 'Zero Population Growth Now.' A professor of 'human ecology' at the University of California declares that the community cannot 'watch children starve.' Therefore: 'If the community has the responsibility of keeping children alive it must also have the power to decide when they may be procreated. Only so can we save ourselves from the degradation of runaway population growth.' " (p. 29).

"Malthus was an individualist and a libertarian. His own proposed remedy for overpopulation was both voluntary and simple: 'I see no harm in drawing the picture of a society in which each individual is supposed strictly to fulfill his duties The happiness of the whole is to be the result of the happiness of individuals, and to begin first with them. No co-operation is required. Every step tells. He who performs his duty faithfully will reap the full fruits of it, whatever be the number of others who fail. This duty is intelligible to the humblest capacity. It is merely that he is not to bring beings into the world for whom he cannot find the means of support.' If each of us adhered to this principle, no overpopulation problem would exist." (p. 30).

Source: Hazlitt, H. 1996. The Conquest of Poverty. New York: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc. 

Major Crash

"A major crash is coming. The dot.com bubble and the housing bubble were not crashes, at least as I imagine a crash. They were the beginnings of corrections that were aborted by government economic intervention. The country survived these two major bubbles, but only at the cost of making the next one bigger. Government did not save us from these two events. They created them and by deferring their correction assured the next one would be bigger and more painful." - Monty Pelerin's World

http://www.economicnoise.com/2013/11/30/train-comin/

Someone Proud of Being a Conspiracy Theorist 5

Then what is the hope? The hope is for people of principle to educate their own children and other children who may want to come along for the ride. Educate them in the principles of persuasion rather than power. Parents are going to have to fund their own children’s educations, and to keep those children away from the public school textbooks. They are going to have to develop new curriculum materials. They are going to have to teach, or find reliable people on the Web to teach, in order to help their children avoid the indoctrination by all tax-funded education. That is the minimum place that we have to begin. Anything beyond this is gravy.

This is our principle of action: replacement, not capture. We should not attempt to take over the existing systems of power and influence; we should attempt to create alternatives that are more reliable, more efficient, and more beneficial to the general public. We can’t beat something with nothing. We also can’t beat the system by capturing the system and maintaining the system. We are not smart enough to do this, and in any case, we are not ruthless enough to do it.

What I have outlined here I was taught almost 50 years ago. Rushdoony understood this. Leonard E. Reed understood it, and so did the editor of The Freeman, Paul Poirot. These men persuaded me that the quest for power in today’s society is the devil’s own quest.

I do have a sense of optimism about the younger members of the movement, who follow Ron Paul . . . Paul understands these principles. He is the only politician in my generation at the national level who has understood this position. This is why he is now known to millions of people, and no other congressman is. He stood alone when it paid nothing to stand alone, and he is now the representative of a movement that could turn into an effective political force at the local level. He exercises this influence precisely because he has not sought to extend power to the Federal government. He has not been involved in a quest for power; he has been in a quest for the decentralization of power, and the de-funding of power.

When the Soviet Union proved that communism could no longer maintain power, Western Marxists lost their faith. They had been Marxists only because they believed in power, and they somehow believed that they, as intellectuals, would be powerful people in a Communist society. They had not read carefully what Stalin did to intellectuals. They had not read what the Pol Pot did to intellectuals in Cambodia. He sent them to the farms or had them executed, if they had hands without calluses or if they wore glasses. He knew an intellectual when he saw one. They died.

You don’t change the system from the inside. You create an alternative system, and you wait for the existing system to go belly up. That is how you change people’s minds.

You can’t beat something with nothing. This is why people don’t really want to change it. It costs too much money, too much commitment, and too much time. That is why we face a crisis. 

But, if individuals at the local level begin to organize, this may change. 

We also have to develop institutions that are based on persuasion rather than power. 

Source: https://www.lewrockwell.com/2010/07/gary-north/how-to-fight-conspiracies/

Someone Proud of Being a Conspiracy Theorist 4

It does no good to expose the conspirators. Hardly anyone will believe you, and even if the person does believe you, there’s not a thing you or he can do about it. The public has finally figured out that the system at the top is structured against them, because they saw what happened to the banks in 2008. They saw the banks get the bailout money, not the man in the street. This upsets them, because they wanted the bailout money. . . They have only come to this conclusion recently. The far Left and the far Right have known about it since 1913. But who took them seriously?

I enjoy reading books about conspiracies. I especially enjoy reading heavily footnoted, carefully documented books about conspiracies. I enjoy books that do three things. First, they follow the money. Second, they follow the confession of faith. Third, they follow the media. If you show me what leaders believed, how they financed their beliefs, and how they got out their message to the general public, you have shown me what I really need to know about the history of any organization, any society, and any government. I don’t care whether you’re talking about conspiracies or the good old boys who were aboveboard about everything. You have to show me what they believed, how they financed what they believed, and how they got their message out to the voters.

Almost no book does this. You can look at the anti-conspiracy books, and they may follow the money, but they don’t usually concentrate on what the fundamental ideas were all about. And they almost never talk about media, except after 1930.

So, I am a conspiracy theorist. I believe there are lots of conspiracies, and most of them fail. 

The problem is not the conspiracies. The problem is the widespread acceptance by the voting populations around the world that it is legitimate for the government to send out tax collectors and extract wealth from certain groups of society in order to fund the favored boondoggles of some other group in society. The moment people think that they can make a living by voting instead of making a living by producing, they turn the government and the social order over to one or another conspiracy.

Secret or not, they could not get into our wallets unless we allowed them to. It is the essence of the conspiracy to persuade the public that the right and moral thing to do is to allow the state to help some group. As soon as the conspiracy persuades the public of this, the game switches from persuasion to power. It switches from donations to taxation. It switches from liberty to tyranny.

Source: https://www.lewrockwell.com/2010/07/gary-north/how-to-fight-conspiracies/

Someone Proud of Being a Conspiracy Theorist 3

Think about the World Wide Web. The establishments of the world did not think in 1990 that anything like this would be possible. The basic communications technology existed, but until Tim Berners-Lee developed a system for setting up addresses on the Internet, the World Wide Web did not exist. The Web now is undermining establishments all over the world. Yet there are people who are convinced that the Web is itself a conspiracy, and the conspirators are somehow using the Web to gain control over the population. I realize that there are not many of these people, but I do get e-mails from time to time telling me that the Web is capable of being used effectively by the conspiracies against defenders of truth, justice, and the American way.

The problem is not the conspiracies; the problem is the corruption in the hearts of the people. The fact that the voters would allow and even promote the creation of the modern welfare state is indicative of the fact that larceny is in their hearts. It does no good to replace one conspiracy with another conspiracy if you leave the system intact that enables the conspiracies to gain power.

This goes back to the famous chapter 10 in F. A. Hayek’s book, The Road to Serfdom. The chapter is titled, “Why the Worst Get on Top.” Hayek argued that the modern socialist state, meaning the modern welfare state, encourages the worst people to get on top, because the worst people are the most successful in seeking and maintaining power.

Because central economic planning centralizes power, it grants to the state the right to confiscate the wealth of the public. We should not expect kindly people to be successful in the pursuit of power within such a system. We will find, and what we have found, is that the most ruthless people seek out the levers of power, precisely because the levers of power enable them to achieve their goal: control over other people.

. . . it is a moral obligation to preach and teach against the welfare state, because the welfare state is based on the principle of theft. It is based on the principle of the right of one group legally to extract wealth from another group. The moral foundation of the welfare state is corrupt.

Source: https://www.lewrockwell.com/2010/07/gary-north/how-to-fight-conspiracies/

Someone Proud of Being a Conspiracy Theorist 2

I was fortunate in the fact that I first discovered about conspiracies from my study of America’s entry into World War II. I wrote a high school term paper in 1958 on how Roosevelt maneuvered the United States into the war by pressuring the Japanese government to attack us. I have not changed my mind. This alerted me to the fact that wars are major means of expanding the power of the Federal government. I understood early that Presidents maneuver the country into war in order to expand their own power and the government’s power over the general population. Presidents find that the public does not oppose the entry into war, once we’ve gone into war. All resistance ceases. The expansion of the government then can go on without resistance. This is beneficial for the groups that are associated with weaponry. It is also beneficial to all the groups associated with the banking system, which funds the expansion of the arms industry.

In graduate school in 1965, this suggestion was considered a form of lunacy. Later, this began to change when Johnson pushed deeper into Vietnam, and the Gulf of Tonkin attack turned out to be a myth. In graduate school, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was untouchable. He was retroactively the great saint of the 20th century. Any suggestion that Franklin Roosevelt deliberately lured the country into war was considered conspiratorial crackpotism. I was one of the crackpots, so I generally kept my mouth shut on this issue, except in an upper division course on revisionist histories of World War I and World War II — the only such class in the United States in 1962.

This attitude has not changed today. The difference is, today more historians are willing to admit that Roosevelt did maneuver the Japanese into war. What we find, however, is that these historians say that Roosevelt’s action was wise. They applaud the fact that he used conspiratorial tactics to get the country into war. Anyone who says it was wrong for Roosevelt to have done this is regarded as a crackpot, but at least these days you can say that Roosevelt did it. You just are not supposed to say that was a bad thing that he did. 

Source: https://www.lewrockwell.com/2010/07/gary-north/how-to-fight-conspiracies/

Someone Proud of Being a Conspiracy Theorist

I would like to share a series of excerpts from a proud "conspiracy theorist", Gary North. I took these excerpts from his two articles posted in LewRockwell.com. The second article is very long and not many people today are patient enough to read such a long content. So readability is the reason why I divided North's articles into five.

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I have been a conspiracy buff for over 45 years. I got my spurs at age 16 when I wrote a paper on Roosevelt and Pearl Harbor. As far as I am concerned, that one is still in the top five. 

Over the years, I have stumbled into lots more conspiracies. Their name is legion. Some are more evil than others. Some are harder to prove than others. Some are hidden in plain sight — or, in the case of 9/11, plane site. Others are deep.

There are so many of them that no one can pursue all of them. In fact, the mark of a deranged conspiracy buff is someone who pursues dozens of them at once. He believes that there is one grand conspiracy behind all of them. . .

All of us who have spent any time following through on this or that conspiracy have met these deranged people. Their world is filled with conspiracies. 

I feel sorry for them. They do not specialize. They really do not know much about any of these conspiracies. . .

. . . For these people, there are only four kinds of people: conspirators, the ignorant masses, disciples, and enemies. 

Source: http://www.lewrockwell.com/2006/01/gary-north/my-conspiracy-is-bigger-than-your-conspiracy/

A man who sees conspiracy everywhere is a gravedigger. . .a gravedigger gives up hope. He works diligently, but he has no future. He is not going to be able to escape the plans of the executioners. This is how thousands of conspiracy theorists view their own efforts. They give up any thought of reforming the system that has been infiltrated. They offer no plans to replace it. They just wring their hands and cry, “The Conspiracy! The Conspiracy!”

I recall one man who spent his life clipping newspapers and photocopying items about how conspirators have done this or that. I never heard him offer a solution. I never heard him offer a theory of civil government or economics that would serve as an alternative. Yet he spent 35 years in the presence of the libertarian activists and conservative leaders. I never heard him quote an idea from Mises, Rothbard, Hayek, or anyone else. He was completely devoid of ideas. His entire life was spent with no theory of God, man, law, sanctions, and the future. He had no theory of conspiracies and causation. He only had clippings.

. . . people who are looking for ways to avoid personal responsibility for working to change the infiltrated system have a tendency to blame the conspiracy for having infiltrated any organization that might plausibly produce significant social change. In other words, they dismiss the activities of individuals who really are working diligently to transform the system. 

. . . whenever I found myself surrounded by people who attribute most of what takes place in life to a single conspiracy, I would be wise to disassociate myself from that group. He was convinced that it does no good to participate as a gravedigger. The goal is to transform society, and the way to do this is through religious and intellectual evangelism. 

. . . word and deed evangelism is a system. He (North referring to his father-in-law) was convinced that any form of evangelism, for whatever perspective, that does not include programs for transforming the world is simply spinning its wheels. He called this pietism. He also called it Neoplatonism. He was convinced that both pietism and Neoplatonism were basic to 20th-century Christianity. 

Source: https://www.lewrockwell.com/2010/07/gary-north/how-to-fight-conspiracies/

Count Your Blessings

I find reading Leonard Read's books both intellectually stimulating and spiritually refreshing. Though he is not a theologian and the way he sees the Bible is different from mine, I admire the way he applies both the Old and the New Testament to the realm of politico-economic problems. Chapter 6 of "Accent on the Right" is another example of such application. Its title is "Count Your Blessings". And due to the beauty of the ideas presented in the chapter, I could not help myself sharing them. Below is an excerpt from that wonderful chapter: 

To COUNT one's blessings is to accent what's right. But this might rarely be recognized as an item in the infinite realm of righteousness were we unaware of "Thou shalt not covet" as a wrong...

While many people deplore covetousness, few will compare it to murder, theft, adultery as an evil. Nor will they think of it as having any bearing on our current politico-economic problems. This wrong assessment may be due to the fact that "Thou shalt not covet" brings up the rear of the Mosaic thou-shalt-nots.

I suspect that the ordering of the Commandments had nothing to do with a sin-grading scheme. Only one of the ten had obvious priority and it became the First Commandment...And covetousness, more subtle and an afterthought, concludes the list. But on reflection, covetousness is as deadly as any of the other sins indeed, it tends to induce the others.

Covetousness or envy generates a destructive radiation with ill effect on all it touches.

Psychosomatic illnesses can be traced as much to envy as to hate, anger, worry, despondency.

But consider the social implications, the effects of envy on others. At first blush, the rich man appears not to be harmed because another covets his wealth. Envy, however, is not a benign, dormant element of the psyche; it has the same intensive force as rage, and a great deal of wisdom is required to put it down. Where understanding and self-control are wholly lacking, the weakling will resort to thievery, embezzlement, piracy, even murder, to gratify his envy and "get his share."

However, if the evil act can be screened, if the sense of personal guilt and responsibility can be sufficiently submerged, that is, if self-delusion can be effected, gratification of covetousness will be pursued by the "best people."

The way is an open secret: achieve anonymity in a mob, committee, organization, society, or hide behind legality or majority vote.

Our "best people," including the highly "educated," gratify their envy with no qualms whatsoever. But their salved conscience in no way lessens the evil of covetousness; quite the contrary, it emphasizes to us how powerfully this evil operates at the politico-economic level. This subtle evil is indeed the genesis of more obvious sins.

We should also note the extent to which this "guiltless" taking of property by coercion is rationalized. Accomplices, bearing such titles as philosophers and economists, rise to the occasion; they explain how the popular depredations are good for everyone, even for those looted. Thus, we find that covetousness, unchecked in the individual, lies at the root of the decline and fall of nations and civilizations.

Envy is a lust of the flesh as opposed to an elevation of the spirit. The Hindus saw it clearly for what it really is: "Sin is not the violation of a law or a convention but ... ignorance ... which seeks its own private gain at the expense of others...." William Penn grasped the point: "Covetousness is the greatest of om monsters, as well as the root of all Evil."

As a person cannot be in two places at the same time, so is it impossible for the eye to be cast covetously at the material possessions of others and cast aspiringly at one's own creativity...It's either hatch or rot, as with an egg; envy leaves the soul, the spirit, the intellect, the psyche to rot, and there can be no greater evil than this. 

When it is clear that covetousness thwarts Creation's purpose...it surely behooves each of us to find a way to rid himself of this evil.

I believe the way is simple to proclaim: Count your blessings!

Awareness of blessings is a state of consciousness and is not necessarily related to abundance and affluence. He who is rich in worldly goods but unaware of his blessings is poor, and probably covetous; he who is poor in worldly goods but aware of his blessings is rich, and assuredly without envy.

Exactly how unaware we are of our blessings can be seen by committing them to paper - actually counting. While they are in infinite supply, observe how few are recognized. Now, throw the list away; for these must be alive each and every day in the consciousness, not stored on paper, not mechanically canned.

As progress is made in an awareness of our blessings, we are struck by how greatly they outnumber our woes and troubles. In a state of unawareness, the woes loom enormous, and we tend to covetousness; in awareness the woes are but trifles, and the covetousness fades away.

What a remarkable cure for covetousness! While the cure rids us of our woes, it also puts us on the road to social felicity; and a further dividend is wisdom.

Source: Leonard E. Read, "Accent on the Right", 1968, pages 52-57

Published May 1968

Copyright 1968 by Leonard E. Read.

Permission to reprint granted without special request.

Notes from "The State" by Bastiat

Note # 1

"The State! What is it? Where is it? What does it do? What should it do? We only know that it is a mysterious being; and, it is certainly the most petitioned, the most harassed, the most bus­tling, the most advised, the most reproached, the most invoked, and the most challenged of any being in the world."

Note # 2

"...you have designed Uto­pias, and if so, that you are look­ing to The State for the realiza­tion of them."

Note # 3

"The hundred thousand mouths of the press and of the platform cry out all at once—"

• Organize work and the workmen. Cover the country with railways. Irrigate the plains.
• Reforest the hills.
• Establish model farms.
• Educate the youth.
• Assist the aged.
• Equalize the profits of all trades.
• Lend money without interest to all who wish to borrow.
• Restrict commerce.

Note # 4

"The mission of The State is to enlighten, to develop, to ennoble, to strengthen, and to sanctify the soul of the people."

Note # 5

"...it has been proven that The State has no means of granting privileges to some without adding to the labor of others."

Note # 6

"The State is the great fiction through which everybody endeav­ors to live at the expense of everybody."

Note # 7

"The State quickly perceives the advan­tages it can derive from the role entrusted to it by the public. It will be the judge, the master of the destinies of all. It will take a lot: then much will remain for itself. It will multiply the number of its agents, and increase its functions, until it finally acquires crushing proportions."

Note # 8

"I contend that the personifica­tion of The State has been in the past and will be in the future, a fertile source of calamities and revolutions. There is the public on one side, The State on the other, considered as two distinct beings; the latter obligated to bestow upon the former, the former hav­ing the right to claim from the latter a flood of human benefits."

Note # 9

"The State has two hands, one for receiving and the other for giving—a rough hand and a smooth one. The activity of the second is necessarily subordinate to the activity of the first."

Note # 10

"It is utterly impossible for it to confer a specific benefit upon some of the individuals who make up the community, without inflicting a greater injury upon the community as a whole."

Note # 11

"Our demands, therefore, place The State in an obvious dilemma! If it refuses to grant the requested benefit, it is accused of weak­ness, and incapacity. If it tries to grant their requests, it is obliged to load the people with in­creased taxes—to do more harm than good—and to bring upon it­self general displeasure from an­other quarter."

Note # 12

"To live upon credit, that is, to exhaust the future, is cer­tainly a temporary method of reconciling them—an attempt to do a little good now, at the expense of a great deal of harm in the fu­ture."

Note # 13

"Citizens! At all times, two political systems have been in existence, and each can justify itself with good reasons. According to one of them, The State should do a lot, but then it should take a lot. Ac­cording to the other, this twofold activity ought to be limited. We have to choose between these two systems."

Source: 

The State by Frederic Bastiat published at The Freeman on April 1, 1965. 

The Role of Hyperinflation in the Rise of Hitler into Power - Notes from Hazlitt's "Lessons of the German's Inflation"

I started a thread in a theological forum in Facebook about inflation. Initially, I shared two articles from "The Freeman" both written by Henry Hazlitt in 1976. 

One commenter gave his comment and shared the NSO link:

"Inflation in the Philippines goes down to 2.1 percent last August from 2.5 percent in July. The National Statistics Office (NSO) said that this was the lowest level since 2009."

I replied, 

" In the US, Austrian economists think that winning the inflation debate is vital in their fight for economic freedom. Here in the PH, the NSO data is already considered good news compared to other nations' economies. Matagal pa naman daw tayo bago makaranas ng "bagyo". I initiated this thread thinking that as Christian leaders, it is also part of our duty to know both sides of the story. The way mainstream economists use the term "inflation" is different from the way classical liberals use it."

And then I returned to the first article I shared and made some notes. Below are the notes I made:

Note # 1 - Examples of Hyperinflation in History

"When the inflation is sufficiently severe and prolonged, however, when it becomes what is called a hyperinflation, people begin at last to recognize it as the catastrophe it really is. There have been scores of hyperinflations in history—in ancient Rome under Diocletian, in the American colonies under the Continental Congress in 1781, in the French Revolution from 1790 to 1796, and after World War I in Austria, Hungary, Poland, and Russia, not to mention in three or four Latin American countries today."

Note # 2 - German hyperinflation as the most spectacular of all

"But the most spectacular hyperinflation in history, and also the one for which we have the most adequate statistics, occurred in Ger­many in the years from 1919 to the end of 1923."

"By November 15, 1923, the day the inflation was officially ended, it had issued the incredible sum of 92.8 quintillion (92,800,000,000,000,­000,000) paper marks. A few days later (on November 20) a new cur­rency, the rentenmark, was issued. The old marks were made converti­ble into it at a rate of a trillion to one."

Note # 3 - Three Stages of Inflation

Stage 1 - "...prices do not increase nearly as much as the increase in the paper money circulation. This is because the man in the street is hardly aware that the money supply is being increased. He still has confidence in the money and in the pre-existing price level. He may even postpone some intended pur­chases because prices seem to him abnormally high, and he still hopes that they will soon fall back to their old levels."

Stage 2 - "...when people become aware that the money stock has increased, and is still increasing. Prices then go up approximately as much as the quan­tity of money is increased. ...But Stage Two, in fact, may last only for a short time. People begin to assume that the government is going to keep increasing the issuance of paper money indefinite­ly, and even at an accelerating rate. They lose all trust in it."

Stage 3 - "...when prices begin to increase far faster than the govern­ment increases, or even than it can increase, the stock of money."

Note # 4 - Summary of German Hyperinflation

"At first inflation stimulated pro­duction because of the divergence between the internal and external values of the mark, but later it exercised an increasingly disadvan­tageous influence, disorganizing and limiting production. It annihi­lated thrift, it made reform of the national budget impossible for years, ... it destroyed incalculable moral and intellectual values. It provoked a serious revolution in social classes, a few people accumulating wealth and forming a class of usurpers of national property, whilst millions of individuals were thrown into pover­ty. It was a distressing preoccupa­tion and constant torment of innumerable families, it poisoned the German people by spreading among all classes the spirit of speculation and by diverting them from proper and regular work, and it was the cause of incessant politi­cal and moral disturbance. It is indeed easy enough to understand why the record of the sad years 1919-23 always weighs like a nightmare on the German people? "

"The demoralization that the debase­ment of the currency left in its wake played a major role in bring­ing Adolf Hitler into power in 1933."

Source: 

Lessons of the Geman Inflation by Henry Hazlitt

Austrian School

"The great practical advantage of the Austrian School is that it is a form of economic analysis that is founded in realism and helps us understand both progress and problems in the real world. Therefore, it is a useful tool for people in the real world, but is of little use, and indeed is a threat, to mainstream academic economists" (Hulsmann and Kinsella, eds., "Property, Freedom and Society", 2009, p.358).