F. A. Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty (1960).
What a free society offers to the individual is much more than what he would be able to do if only he were free.
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F. A. Hayek
Author: Redactor
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Washington’s First
Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness.
On January 8, 1790, President George Washington delivered the first State of the Union address in New York City.
Rumors that Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos has been pushing the Post in a more commonsensical editorial direction could very well be true.
A recent Post editorial slams progressives who “think of taxation the way teenage boys think about cologne: if some is good, more must be great.”
I’m no fan of even a moderate amount of that brand of cologne. But anyway. The Post is discussing a proposed ballot measure backed by the ultra-lefty Service Employees International Union.
SEIU troops are currently collecting signatures. And before they’ve even gotten enough to post it to ballot, the people being targeted have started moving.
Out of state.
The measure would impose a new 5 percent tax on billionaires. Some of the state’s billionaires, including Google cofounder Larry Page and Palantir cofounder Peter Thiel, aren’t willing to wait and see whether it actually reaches the ballot and passes in November. Why? The measure would apply retroactively “to those who were California residents on January 1, 2026.”
Some Democratic lawmakers are saying “good riddance,” as if it’s possible to loot billionaires who don’t wait around to be looted. Or that it’s good for state coffers to lose their billionaire entrepreneur “contributors.”
The Post says the retroactivity would open the measure to legal challenges, but that if it gets passed and survives litigation, “it’s a safe bet this won’t be a one-off. Funding ongoing expenses like health care with one-time taxes isn’t sustainable. Progressives will want to return to the well until they’ve sucked it dry.”
And no one should know better than Californians how dangerous dry wells are.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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F.A. Hayek
Planning in the specific sense in which the term is used in contemporary controversy necessarily means central planning — direction of the whole economic system according to one unified plan. Competition, on the other hand, means decentralized planning by many separate persons. The half-way house between the two, about which many people talk but which few like when they see it, is the delegation of planning to organized industries, or, in other words, monopoly.
F.A. Hayek, “The Use of Knowledge in Society,” 35 American Economic Review 519 (September 1945), included as Chapter V in Individualism and Economic Order (1948).
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Winter War
On January 7, 1940, the Finnish 9th Division completely destroyed the much-larger Soviet forces on the Raate-Suomussalmi Road, in a crucial battle during Finland’s Winter War.
Didja hear? Omigod. Minnesota’s Tim Walz, everyone’s favorite Failed Vice Presidential Candidate and sympathizer with the Chinese Communist Party, is not running for reelection — he no longer seeks to serve as one of the top three worst governors ever.
In his whiny announcement, Governor Walz verged on apoplexy. “Those bumbling Somali fraudsters screwed everything up! The optics have gone to @#$%&!; citizen journalist, my [insert alternative grawlix here]! And Trump is mean!” Look, if you don’t believe me, I’ll fax you the transcript.
OK. I may be paraphrasing.
But I’m close. Associated Press reports his bitter comments on why the jig is up. Walz is waltzing out of the campaign because he can’t give it “my all” because of the “extraordinarily difficult year for our state” because of the latest revelations of how crappily and dishonestly he functioned as governor.
Walz said: “Donald Trump and his allies — in Washington, in St. Paul, and online — want to make our state a colder, meaner place.” These baddies “want to poison our people against each other by attacking our neighbors . . . want to take away much of what makes Minnesota the best place in America to raise a family.”
All very elusively allusive. What could Senor Real Man possibly be talking about? Why would any Minnesotan — say, an honest taxpayer — want to attack another Minnesotan — say, someone living high off the hog on the taxpayer dime, effectively taking money from the mouths of babes? Or a dishonest politician cooperating with and benefiting from just such massive taxpayer-funded fraud?
Don’t run, Walz. Don’t run. Stay right where you are.
So that prosecutors can find you.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Man’s concern is not with government; he should look on government as no more than a very secondary thing — we might almost say a very minor thing. His goal is industry, labour and the production of everything needed for his happiness. In a well-ordered state, the government must only be an adjunct of production, an agency charged by the producers, who pay for it, with protecting their persons and their goods while they work. In a well-ordered state, the largest number of persons must work, and the smallest number must govern. The work of perfection would be reached if all the world worked and no one governed.
Charles Dunoyer, De la liberté du travail (1845), David M. Hart, translator.
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Maria Montessori
On January 6, 1907, Maria Montessori opened her first school and daycare center for working class children in Rome, Italy.
In 1912 on this date New Mexico became the 47th state of America’s United States.
On this date in 1941, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt delivered his “Four Freedoms” State of the Union speech, emphasizing vague “freedoms” that enabled government to usurp definable freedoms.
On January 6, 2021, lame duck President Donald John Trump gave a speech in Washington, D.C., aiming to rouse his supporters to pressure the U.S. Senate not to certify some states’ Electoral College votes in Election 2020, to address “election fraud.” Before his speech ended, some of his supporters (along with false flag agents) broke into the Capitol to set off one of the great political controversies of our time.
The U.S. military captured Venezuela’s dictator, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife, Cilia Flores, on Saturday; a lot of people who hate Donald Trump are complaining about the president’s decision to “arrest” the foreign head of state.
Sure, it’s an act of war.
Authorized by Congress? Not really, but that’s hardly unusual.
There is that 2020 indictment, unsealed by the U.S. Department of Justice during Trump’s first term, accusing Maduro and senior Venezuelan officials of conspiring with Colombian guerrilla groups (like the FARC) to traffic massive quantities of cocaine into the United States. This was updated in a superseding indictment unsealed over the weekend, which added Maduro’s wife, son, and others as defendants.
Specifically, the charges are:
- Narco-terrorism conspiracy.
- Conspiracy to import cocaine.
- Possession of machine guns and destructive devices.
- Conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices.
Considering that Venezuela is a sovereign state and can have whatever drug policies or gun laws it wants, all this might seem a tad . . . ridiculous.
Most people, however, will likely be moved by two very different lines of thinking:
- Maduro was an evil tyrant
,and it’s good that his murderous regime has been (sorta) toppled; and - The operation was skillfully done, demonstrating U.S. military strength.
Is the effort coherent and compatible with other international military stances of the United States? Debatable.
How does it affect, say, the U.S. position on Taiwan? Will this encourage or discourage the People’s [sic] Republic [sic] of China?
One could argue both ways. As a successful demonstration of military might, it will likely dissuade the Chinazis. But if it turns world opinion against the U.S., the opposite will likely prove true.
Still, isn’t it hard to side with a dictator? I mean Maduro.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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La spoliation ne déplace pas seulement
la richesse, elle en détruit toujours une partie.
Spoliation does not merely displace wealth; it always destroys a part of it.
Vilfredo Pareto, Les systèmes socialistes (1902-1903), Vol. II, p. 54, David M. Hart, translator.