Third parties will never legitimately contend for the presidency. They have a snowballs chance in hell of making a real impact other than taking votes for another candidate.
They have a chance on a local level, that’s about it at this point.
Register Democrat and stop bitching about Trump and the Democratic Party. Do something about it. Take over the Democratic Party. I challenge any of you fuck faces to prove me wrong. Prove that shilling for a Ponzi scheme candidacy does something good for the people.
its so weird how so many prominent economists are fiscally conservative libertarians like… at least choose something that makes sense for the currently relevant system of oppression like social democracy, why would you try to insist on implementing an even more (implicitly) oppressive and more chaotic system of socioeconomics?
Because they understand that the free market is a much better alternative to our current economy and that social democracy is shit?
“it’s so weird how people who are educated on the subject of economics disagree with the economic policies I support. why don’t they try agreeing with me as I’m obviously right and the ones who spent their lives studying this are obviously in the wrong…”
Actually the lead economist who was all for the free market, Milton Friedman, realized how damaging free reign market economies can be due to human error. The 2008 market collapse caused him to realize the error of his ways but people still follow his old teachings and arguments. A free market economy works in theory but because humans are imperfect they cannot be successful in practice. People that still argue that the government had no place in markets need to realize that their way of thinking is outdated and irrelevant and that economics have evolved past them.
Never forget
“‘What happens, happens’ is more oppressive than ‘government planning and oversight’”. Tumblr economists, you never cease to amaze me.
I’m not sure what’s more unbelievable: the claim that Milton Friedman realized the “error of his ways” two years after he died, or that it was the unrestricted free market of the pre-2008 crash economy that would’ve done it.
I am sick of seeing anarchists who promote violence.
I want to make it very clear that myself and the rest of Rat Farm do not advocate or endorse any one/thing that promotes violence and antagonism/escalation tactics to further their cause. We are committed to the Non-Aggression Principle, an ethical stance that asserts that “aggression” (defined as initiation or threatening the use of force over any individual or individual’s property) is inherently wrong. However, this is not to be confused with Pacifism as the NAP does not preclude forceful self-defense.
DO NO HARM, TAKE NO SHIT
9/17/17
Have you read Edward Abbey’s master thesis about Anarchism and the Morality of Violence? Abbey examines some of the founding philosophies of anarchism and poses the question of whether violence is ever moral in an anarchistic context. Spoiler: it isnt.
I think my favorite thing when people argue that I’m not a Liberal, is that they have no idea what Liberalism is, they just argue that I can’t be one because I don’t agree with them and they’ve been told by the American mainstream that they’re Liberals when their politics, beliefs, principles and ideals don’t align with Liberalism.
Liberalism isn’t what the American Right and Left think it is, it isn’t what Rush Limbaugh claimed it to be, that man was using the term Liberal as a pejorative because the Far Left hated Liberalism and to be called one was the same as calling a Conservative a fascist back in the day, now all it does is convince morons that the Far Left are actually Liberals and provide the Far Left with an ideological smokescreen.
Liberalism is a very basic political and moral philosophy, now you might be asking, what is Liberalism? Liberalism is based on four foundational rights, that of the individual, liberty, consent of the governed and equality before the law.
Then there are secondary rights which are derived from the foundational rights, such as individual rights, including civil rights and human rights, liberal democracy, secularism, rule of law, economic and political freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, defense of self and property, private property and a market economy.
That’s it, that’s Liberalism, however Liberalism has spawned many other political and moral philosophies from its foundation, Conservatism and Libertarianism are two such examples, then there are others in which foreign enlightenment ideological frameworks were shoehorned into Liberalism, using it like a skinsuit, such as NeoLiberalism, Social Liberalism and so on.
The whole reason the Far Left on this platform have been shitting themselves over my use of the term Liberal is because they want to assert that Neo and Social Liberalism are the true forms of Liberalism when Conservatism and Libertarianism are closer to true Liberalism than those other two.
So yes, I am a Liberal, not a Conservative, not a Libertarian, or any other derivative of Liberalism, that’s it, and if you take issue with this, you can just die mad about it, now can’t you?
… Looking for some blank dvd:s I instead unearthed this gem, deep in the bookshelf. A publication by “Kurt Saxon” - friend of the people, and friend of everyone’s goddamn right to build their own sub-machine gun and cook up some sulphuric acid in the bathtub. A true freedom fighter. …
If your libertarian love cares more about free markets than flowers, share these valentines with them to say “We go together like liberty and freedom.” ❤️
Married 68 years, free market economists Rose and Milton Friedman (recipient of the 1976 Nobel Prize for Economic Science) were not just skilled economists who cared about kids, they were a charming couple who will long be remembered.
Policymakers can reduce overdose deaths and other harms stemming from nonmedical use of opioids and other dangerous drugs by switching to a policy of “harm reduction” strategies. Harm reduction has a success record that prohibition cannot match. It involves a range of public health options. These strategies would include medication-assisted treatment, needle-exchange programs, safe injection sites, heroin-assisted treatment, deregulation of naloxone, and the decriminalization of marijuana.
Though critics have dismissed these strategies as surrendering to addiction, jurisdictions that have attempted them have found that harm reduction strategies significantly reduce overdose deaths, the spread of infectious diseases, and even the nonmedical use of dangerous drugs.
Women’s empowerment in many developing countries is in its early phases, but the right policies can set women everywhere on a path toward the same prosperity and freedom enjoyed by women in today’s advanced countries.
As a result, the value of all drugs seized by the average agent has fallen by 70% since FY 2013. Without marijuana coming in between ports of entry, drug smuggling activity now primarily occurs at ports of entry, where a border wall would have no effect. In FY 2018, the average inspector at ports of entry made drug seizures that were three times more valuable overall than those made by Border Patrol agents between ports of entry — a radical change from 2013 when Border Patrol agents averaged more valuable seizures. This is because smugglers bring mainly hard drugs through ports. By weight, the average port inspector seized 8 times more cocaine, 17 times more fentanyl, 23 times more methamphetamine, and 36 times more heroin than the average Border Patrol agent seized at the physical border in early 2018.
These low-, mid-, and high-range cost estimates are based on the most high-profile federal paid leave program proposed to date: The Family and Medical Insurance Leave Act (FAMILY Act).
The survey also did not ask questions about what paid leave policies Americans would like to see offered at private companies. Instead, the Cato 2018 Paid Leave Survey focuses on what people think about establishing a government-provided paid family leave program at the federal level.
The good news is that over the long term, freedom has spread to a diversity of countries too, including numerous ex-socialist countries, Latin American nations, one sub-Saharan African country (Mauritius) and several Asian countries that all belong to the top quartile of the freest countries in the index. Many are on the rise, and some, like Taiwan, have seen notable increases in freedom in recent years.
The United States ranks 17th in the fourth annual Human Freedom Index (HFI), the most comprehensive measure of freedom ever created for a large number of countries around the globe. Overall, the report finds global freedom has fallen slightly since 2008.
“The Rule of Law continues to be a weak point for the United States, which has relatively low ratings when it comes to such areas as the protection of property rights, the enforcement of contracts, and criminal justice,” says co-authorIan Vásquez. “The Rule of Law plays a fundamental role in upholding liberty, so anyone who cares about freedom in the United States should be concerned with its evolution.”
Explore the 2018 Human Freedom Index — released today in honor of Human Rights Day — and see how your country ranks. Then, join the conversation on Twitter with #FredomIndex18…
The report builds on the famous wager between biologist Paul Ehrlich and economist and former Cato Senior Fellow Julian Simon on the effect of population growth on the Earth’s resources. While Ehrlich warned that population growth could deplete resources and lead to global catastrophe, Simon saw humans as the “ultimate resource” who could innovate their way out of such shortages. The Ehrlich-Simon wager tracked the real price of a basket of five raw materials between 1980 and 1990, finding as Simon hypothesized that all measured commodities decreased in price by an average of 57.6 percent, despite a population increase of 873 million.
In addition, the authors develop the concept of price elasticity of population (PEP), which allows them to estimate the effect of population growth on the availability of resources. Over the time period studied the population grew from 4.46 billion to 7.55 billion, a 69.3% increase. The PEP indicates that the time-price of the basket of commodities declined by 0.934% for every 1% of increase in population. Every additional human being born on our planet appears to make resources proportionally more plentiful for the rest of us.
The world is a closed system in the way that a piano is a closed system. The instrument has only 88 notes, but those notes can be played in a nearly infinite variety of ways. The same applies to our planet. The Earth’s atoms may be fixed, but the possible combinations of those atoms are infinite. What matters, then, is not the physical limits of our planet, but human freedom to experiment and reimagine the use of resources that we have.
For nearly 250 years, the United States has recovered from enormous economic and political shocks, including the Civil War, two World Wars, the Great Depression, and the high inflation and oil crises of the 1970s. Following each of these events, the U.S. economy returned to its previous economic trend.
Amazon has chosen New York City and Arlington, Virginia, for new corporate headquarters after the cities ponied up more than $2 billion in subsidies to the retail giant.
Workers in the two cities will be winners as labor demand gets boosted, but business subsidies make losers of taxpayers, other businesses and good governance.
Fairness.Subsidies give Amazon an unfair edge other tech firms in New York City and Northern Virginia.
Alternatives.New York and Virginia would have generated more durable growth by cutting business taxes across the board by $2 billion. That would have boosted investment by many businesses, and thus created more balanced prosperity.
Diversity. Industry clusters such as Silicon Valley are successful not because they have big companies, but because they have a start-up culture that nurtures growth companies with venture capital. Rather than favoring big companies, state and local politicians would better spur growth by reducing tax and regulatory barriers to spawn a diversity of new companies.
Corruption. Allowing politicians to hand-out business subsidies at their discretion generates corruption because the hand-outs get swapped for campaign cash and outright bribes.
Bureaucracy. Amazon-style subsidy deals are jobs programs for accountants and lawyers.
Lobbyists. The high-profile Amazon win will inspire more companies to shake down politicians for subsidies.
Dependency.Just as welfare undermines individual productivity, corporate welfare undermines business productivity.
Bad Decisions. Subsidies induce companies to make bad decisions that backfire.
Politics. High-profile subsidy deals are politically risky.
Priorities. State and local governments face serious problems that may sink their economies in coming years such as large unfunded pension costs. They should fix those problems rather than trying to micromanage the economy.
Rather than subsidizing big businesses, the states should aim to create a diverse business ecosystem — an Amazon, if you will — by cutting taxes and regulations for all types of investment. If states adopt low tax rates and repeal unneeded regulations on zoning, licensing, and other activities, growth will take care of itself.
Companies such as Twitter and Facebook will sometimes make content moderation decisions that seem hypocritical, inconsistent, and confusing. But private failure is better than government failure, not least because unlike government agencies, Twitter has to worry about competition and profits.
“Refugees have killed fewer Americans than duck face! This isn’t just cherrypicked liberal, snowflake data. According to the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, the chances of you being killed by a refugee terrorist are one in three point six BILLION. It’s not gonna happen.“ — Hasan Minhaj
Of the original 102 Pilgrims who arrived in North America aboard the Mayflower in the fall of 1620, only about half survived to celebrate the first Thanksgiving, in November 1621. The rest perished through starvation and lack of shelter. The survivors gave thanks for a plentiful harvest. And good local harvests were vital, for in a world without global commodity markets or effective transport and communications, food shortages often meant starvation.
To better measure educational outcomes, Stan J. Liebowitz, Cato adjunct scholar and Ashbel Smith Professor of Economics at the University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) with Matthew L. Kelly, a graduate student at UTD, compare state test scores for each of three subjects (math, reading, and science), four major ethnic groups (whites, blacks, Hispanics, and Asian/Pacific Islanders) and two grades (fourth and eighth), for a total of 24 potential observations in each state and the District of Columbia. They give each of the 24 tests equal weight and base their ranking on the average of the test scores.
The authors also briefly examine additional factors that affect student performance. They find states with stronger unions tend to get worse academic outcomes. Unions are negatively related to student performance, presumably through opposing the removal of underperforming teachers, opposing merit-based pay, or because of union work rules. Additionally, the authors’ results indicate that having a greater share of students in charter schools is positively related to student achievement.
Although this study constitutes a significant improvement on leading state education rankings, it retains some limitations. There exists substantial variation in education quality within states and disagreement about desired educational outcomes. However, state-level rankings do provide an intuitively pleasing basis for lawmakers and interested citizens to compare state education policies. The authors’ main goal is to provide rankings that more accurately reflect the learning that is taking place by focusing only on academic achievement and disaggregating scores, rather than scoring inputs and state-wide test scores.
