Liberty is not to be enjoyed, indeed it cannot exist, without the habits of just subordination; it consists, not so much in removing all restraint from the orderly, as in imposing it on the violent.
On January 28, 1912, Belgian economist Gustave de Molinari died. Molinari was one of the last major economists of the French Liberal School, heir to Frederic Bastiat, and a prominent advocate of free trade. His last book, The Society of To-morrow (the only one of his many books to be translated into English in his day) envisioned a future of extremely limited government, and argued against the growing tide of socialism and war that was becoming all too apparent as the future of Europe.
Indeed, the old liberal order of Europe ended with the beginning of the Great War, exactly two and one half years after Molinari’s demise.
On Jan. 28, 1981, President Ronald Reagan lifted the federal government’s remaining domestic petroleum price and allocation controls in the United States, helping to end the 1970s energy crisis and begin the 1980s’ oil glut.
The deregulatory move had been begun by Democrats in Congress, particularly Sen. Ted Kennedy, but had been placed on a gradual schedule, and the whole effort clouded with talk of “windfall profits” and a tax on those allegedly unfair returns on investment.
“‘Confidence games’ (or ‘cons’)” are, according to scholars Barak Orbach and Lindsey Huang,* “a distinctive species of fraudulent conduct” perpetrated “to further voluntary exchanges that are not mutually beneficial.”
In their paper, Orbach and Huang list a number of typical cons, noting that many “cons succeed by inducing judgment errors — chiefly, errors arising from imperfect information and cognitive biases.”
This is not an extended analysis of how a major con could be pulled off, but inducing a “mass formation psychosis,” which I’ve talked about before, is key. Government lockdowns and mask mandates have been very effective in creating pandemic hysteria, leading to government vaccination mandates.
But perhaps it is how government officials deal with data that we most clearly see the confidence game aspect.
The province of Alberta has just been caught using misdirection and disinformation to keep up the fear levels, distracting us from considering the negative impact of the vaxxes. Government officials “claim very impressive vaccine effectiveness by following the fraudulent standard set by the drug manufacturers in the pantomime clinical trials,” as the Metatron Substack page explains, “to ignore the adverse outcomes in the first two weeks post administration.”
The beneficial effects of the vaxxes, we are told, take a fortnight to go into effect. But when governments place all hospitalizations and deaths for those 14 days under the rubric of “unvaccinated,” they misinform — effectively burying negative side-effects of the promoted therapeutic. And the switcheroo is not insignificant: Alberta had counted more than half of its vaccinated deaths as unvaccinated.
Tellingly, the province took off its website the data that showed all this.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* “Con Men and Their Enablers: The Anatomy of Confidence Games,” 85 Social Research 795 (2018), Arizona Legal Studies Discussion Paper No. 18-27).
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Confidence games are an ancient social phenomenon, an opportunistic exploitation of judgment errors to advance voluntary exchanges that are not mutually beneficial. The game has many varieties and is here to stay. Society cannot eradicate confidence games, but laws, policies, and ethical norms may reduce their social costs.
Barak Orbach and Lindsey Huang, “Con Men and Their Enablers: The Anatomy of Confidence Games” (Social Research: An International Quarterly, Volume 85, Number 4, Winter 2018),
On Jan. 27, 1973, President Richard Nixon’s Secretary of Defense, Melvin R. Laird, announced an end to the military draft in favor of a system of voluntary enlistment. Since 1973, the United States armed forces have been known as the All-Volunteer Force.
The Selective Service System, the federal agency that would administer a military draft, continues to be funded, however. Furthermore, American males continue to be forced to register for the draft.
President Joe Biden called Fox reporter Peter Doocy a “stupid s.o.b.,” sans the abbreviation.
Biden had balked at answering questions about Ukraine, so Mr. Doocy asked him about inflation: “Do you think inflation is a political liability ahead of the mid-terms?”
“That’s a great asset: more inflation,” Biden mumbled into the hot mic. “What a stupid . . .”
Now, had I said that, I would hasten to explain that I was being sardonic. Of course inflation is a liability. Dubbing it a “great asset” was certainly sarcasm. It could be nothing other. Inflation is a horror show.
But the negative characterization of Doocy that immediately followed undermines that Irony Interpretation. Does it sound ironic? And if the insult is earnest, does it not suggest that the preceding declaration about inflation is not only earnest, but in the Contempt Mode that Democrats have been adopting to criticism in recent years?
Of course inflation is great!
For them.
After all, inflation does help a few at the expense of the many. It helps insiders at the expense of the outsiders. This is ancient wisdom.
Insiders in government gain through inflation, getting to “spend first,” while we on the outside — in society — suffer from decreased purchasing power.
After the event, Biden contacted Doocy. “It’s nothing personal, pal.”
But the objective issue is whether Biden was being sarcastic about inflation.
While we may argue over who will have the last word on monetary policy, it was Doocy who had the last laugh . . . at himself: “nobody has fact-checked [Biden] yet and said it’s not true.”
But then, fact-checkers ain’t what they used to be.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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The rulers wanted to fool people, since they saw that people have a kinship with what is truly good. They took the names of the good and assigned them to what is not good, to fool people with names and link the names to what is not good. So, as if they were doing people a favor, they took names from what is not good and transferred them to the good, in their own way of thinking. For they wished to take free people and enslave them forever.
“The Gospel of Philip,” as translated by M. Meyer, in The Nag Hammadi Scriptures (2007), p. 163.
It’s nice to be invited.
Either former NBA basketball player Yao Ming or a Chinese Communist Party handler standing just behind him had the idea of inviting Enes Kanter Freedom to visit China, where Yao Ming would be his tour guide.
Mr. Freedom, a current NBA player, is a sharp critic of the Chinazi regime and advocates boycotting the Beijing Olympics. Yao Ming says the proposed trip would help Freedom to “have a more comprehensive understanding of us.”
Enes Freedom has accepted the invitation, conditionally.
Enes Freedom is ready to learn more about China and Chinese government policies in the company of Yao Ming. But will the Chinazi government permit the trip to proceed as outlined?
We know the answer.
On the other hand, Enes invited Yao to visit Taiwan to witness how “democracy is thriving.”
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.
Henry David Thoreau, Journals (November 11, 1854).
To see Washington politicians and political hacks behaving badly, demanding the power to roll over the rights of those with whom they disagree, is not nearly as frightening — because it’s now so mundane — as to witness that insiders’ itch also infecting the grassroots of the body politic like a viral contagion.
Specifically alarming? A new Heartland Institute/Rasmussen Reports survey of voters finds a plurality of self-identified Democrats (48 percent) support slapping fines and imposing prison sentences on Americans “who publicly question the efficacy of the existing COVID-19 vaccines.”
No joke, as President Biden would say . . . but I’m telling the truth.
Here’s the precise question asked: “Would you strongly favor, somewhat favor, somewhat oppose or strongly oppose a proposal for federal or state governments to fine or imprison individuals who publicly question the efficacy of the existing COVID-19 vaccines on social media, television, radio, or in online or digital publications?”
Thankfully, the overall numbers less portend a totalitarian future, where speech would be thoroughly policed and suppressed (like China today). Pro-censorship Americans total only 27 percent of the population, with fully two-thirds of us opposed to shredding the First Amendment.
Still, per this poll, it isn’t free speech alone that Blue Team members are increasingly willing to jettison in fear of COVID:
Constitutional rights belong to everyone . . . “in sickness and in health.”
Right? Democrats?
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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