Year: 2023

הנה הגליון האחרון:

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You recall the old career thought experiment: “What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?”

So, here’s one: Calling to complain about an immodest advertisement.

My Yerushalmi friends only complain if it invades “their” neighborhood. But if you believe the land of Israel is going to be Judaized sooner rather than later, and by human effort blessed by Divine providence, well, you tend to do a lot more than if you believe it’s all bad and all going to get worse and nothing but Mashiach will help any.

That’s one Nafka Mina.

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הערה: לא ראיתי כ”כ לפני ואחרי. הקורא מוזמן לבדוק יותר במקור.

Whisperers in the ears of the regime (most memorably, N.Y.T.-wits) often advise “mixing concessions with force”.

But when a ruler is told of the wonders of benevolent dictatorship, he doesn’t hear what you and I do. All he hears is this: “BE a dictator, and also TALK about benevolence.”

The ignored half of the NYPD “Broken Windows” theory was to build up relationships with the community leaders blah blah. There’s a reason the other half was ignored, and you don’t need to be a psychologist to figure it out.

You have the same problem with Keynesianism. See, officially speaking, both perfectly wise and perfectly politically-independent (impartial) central bankers ought to either prudently contract or judiciously expand credit to alternately balance out the market’s “irrational” overspending and underspending. Let’s put aside the bonkers logic and the historical fact this crackpot “theory” was created to retroactively justify what Western governments had already decided and begun to do (and more).

The important point for today’s lesson, Boys and Girls, is that only half of the equation is ever obeyed, and you can probably guess which half, all by yourself (funnily enough, the court economists themselves never comment on this curiosity).

Shocking, I know…

Dr. Murray Rothbard rides to the rescue (bolding added):

In the deepest sense, then, the libertarian doctrine is not utopian but eminently realistic, because it is the only theory that is really consistent with the nature of man and the world. The libertarian does not deny the variety and diversity of man, he glories in it and seeks to give that diversity full expression in a world of complete freedom. And in doing so, he also brings about an enormous increase in productivity and in the living standards of everyone, an eminently “practical” result generally scorned by true utopians as evil “materialism.”

The libertarian is also eminently realistic because he alone understands fully the nature of the State and its thrust for power. In contrast, it is the seemingly far more realistic conservative believer in “limited government” who is the truly impractical utopian. This conservative keeps repeating the litany that the central government should be severely limited by a constitution. Yet, at the same time that he rails against the corruption of the original Constitution and the widening of federal power since 1789, the conservative fails to draw the proper lesson from that degeneration.

The idea of a strictly limited constitutional State was a noble experiment that failed, even under the most favorable and propitious circumstances. If it failed then, why should a similar experiment fare any better now? No, it is the conservative laissez-fairist, the man who puts all the guns and all the decision-making power into the hands of the central government and then says, “Limit yourself”; it is he who is truly the impractical utopian.

Read the rest here…

An inbuilt problem with violent crime — for the criminals themselves! — says the Book of Proverbs, is robbers think they can get a “free lunch”, as do birds eyeing “free” bird feed in a net laid out for them (Proverbs 1:17). They are psychologically incapable of “quitting while ahead” up until they “spill their own blood” (Proverbs 1:18 per Rashi and other commentators).

(If you think government = systemized, socially acceptable violent crime, you may be on to something.)

In fact, anti-communists may get angry at this, but there is some truth in the oft-heard apologia of True Communism never having been tried. No, even if handled by angels, commies would still have the Misesian “Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth” problem, among many others (not to mention it still being unjust, etc.). But the more salient point is, we need a social system custom-built for people, not angels.

The point is, don’t try advising the government to do what it congenitally cannot.