Por uma taxa única de tributação

Flat Taxes - Conceitos-chave, por Rodrigo Adão da Fonseca.

Em Defesa da Taxa Única de Tributação, por Carlos Novais.

Leituras: The Constitution of Liberty c.20, por José Pedro L. Nunes.


The World Is Flat, The Wall Street Journal.

The case for flat taxes, The Economist.


A Brief Guide to the Flat Tax, por Daniel J. Mitchell.

The Flat Tax, por Robert Hall and Alvin Rabushka.

The Flat Tax: Revitalizing the American Dream, por Walter Williams, J. Kenneth Blackwell, John Fund e Steve Forbes.

The Beauty of the Flat Tax, por Bruce Bartlett.

The Freedom to Choose Flat Tax, por Stephen Moore.

Flat Tax — The British Case (pdf), por Andrei Grecu.


Post previamente publicado no Insurgente.

Davy Crockett

"Mr. Speaker – I have as much respect for the memory of the deceased, and as much sympathy for the sufferings of the living, if suffering there be, as any man in this House, but we must not permit our respect for the dead or our sympathy for a part of the living to lead us into an act of injustice to the balance of the living. I will not go into an argument to prove that Congress has no power to appropriate this money as an act of charity. Every member upon this floor knows it. We have the right, as individuals, to give away as much of our own money as we please in charity; but as members of Congress we have no right so to appropriate a dollar of the public money." Davy Crockett vs. Welfare

Sampaio defende hoje a obrigação moral do combate à pobreza

Tradução = Legitimidade moral para arranjar novas formas de extorquir impostos (taxa sobre movimentos cambiais?) para financiar programas inúteis, fomentadores de pobreza estrutural sem mobilidade social, e o crescimento de elites gestoras desses "combates".

Proposta:

1. Abolir todas as barreiras alfandegárias e regulamentares a produtos agrícolas, têxteis, etc?
2. Abolir o salário mínimo que impede os mais pobres entre mais pobres de ter acesso ao mercado de trabalho e formação
3. Perguntar se os trabalhadores preferem voluntáriamente continuar a pagar 33% do seu rendimento para a ficção da segurança social ou ver o seu salário líquido aumentar de imediato em 50%?
4. Deixar de financiar as cleptocracias do terceiro-mundo

Kirzner Links

Há um novo canal na página da Causa Liberal.

O Kirzner Links é uma colecção de links de e sobre o Professor Israel Kirzner. A ideia para esta página surgiu com a recente nomeação, pelo Professor Peter Boettke, de Kirzner para o Prémio Nóbel da Economia.

The Humanitarian with the Guillotine

Isabel Paterson, in The God of the Machine, one of the great books on political philosophy of this century, zeroed in on what she aptly called "The Humanitarian with the Guillotine." "The humanitarian," Mrs. Paterson wrote, "wishes to be a prime mover in the lives of others. He cannot admit either the divine or the natural order, by which men have the power to help themselves. The humanitarian puts himself in the place of God." But Mrs. Paterson notes, the humanitarian is "confronted by two awkward facts: first that the competent do not need his assistance; and second, that the majority of people, if unperverted, positively do not want to be ‘done good’ by the humanitarian." Having considered what the "good" of others might be, and who is to decide on the good and on what to do about it, Mrs. Paterson points out: "Of course what the humanitarian actually proposes is that he shall do what he thinks is good for everybody. It is at this point that the humanitarian sets up the guillotine." Hence, she concludes, "the humanitarian in theory is the terrorist in action." Just War by Murray N. Rothbard

A propósito do Egipto

No Egipto vence democraticamente o poder instituido. O que aconteceria na Siria? E no Iraque Sunita? E num Sul do Iraque Shiita independente, uma demo-teocracia do tipo iraniano? O que aconteceu na Argélia? E na Arábia Saudita, porventura um referendo popular derrubaria a monarquia que dizem intolerável? E o Irão? Bem, esses já têm eleições (e sempre tiveram) - até elegeram um Presidente secular. E o que dizer do desenvolvimento do Dubai, Quatar, Koweit (tudo monarquias absolutas) - existe aqui alguma incompatibilidade estrutural do Islão com ordem e liberdade económica? Era bom que Bush, como o fez na ONU em algumas passagens do seu discurso enfoque no comercio livre versus terrorismo e não à infantilidade (mais tipica do optimismo esquerdista) da confiança cega do voto universal e popular em culturas tribais, como solução para todos os problemas (até porque se resolveu alguns, trouxe muitos outros).

Cambodja, Khmer Rouge e os "Liberators"

... e as maravilhas de uma politica externa activa (prova que mesmo os realistas cometem os piores dos erros):

Lewrockwell: (...) funny to see this regimist adding a new smear against Rothbard as well: that he cheered on Pol Pot. In fact, the Republicans supported this mass-murderer because they hated Prince Sianhouk for his neutralism, and the Khmer Rouge were fanatically anti-Vietnamese and would be de facto US allies. Thus the mass-murderer Nixon's massive "secret" bombing of Cambodia. Republicans continued to back Pol Pot right up through the Reagan administration.

William L. Anderson: Lew Rockwell's post regarding Cambodia points to a truly sorry tale of American politics. As everyone knows, the Khmer Rouge, one of the most fanatical of all communist movements, emptied the cities of Cambodia and killed millions of people, many through torture and murder and many from starvation.

Now, Pol Pot and his minions planned this whole thing when they were graduate students in France -- no doubt with the approval of their Marxist professors -- but the United States made the takeover much easier after having destroyed Cambodia through invasions and bombings in 1970. (Even LBJ, who was mostly responsible for the Vietnam War, would not go into Cambodia, but Nixon and Kissinger had no qualms about it.)

It did not take long for the news to come out about the outright murder and brutality of the Khmer Rouge government. The American left, however, refused to believe the stories and people like Noam Chomsky and Gareth Porter, who represented a wing of the United Methodist Church, openly praised the defended the regime. (That is why I will not listen to anything Chomsky has to say. He has yet to apologize for endorsing mass murder, so the man is a moral reprobate, period.)

In 1978, Vietnam invaded Cambodia and pushed out the Khmer regime, and it was then that many of the full horrors of what happened were revealed. However, the Carter Administration opposed the invasion and demanded that Vietnam leave and turn back the reins of government to the "legitimate" government of Pol Pot. The Reagan Administration continued what the Carterite State Department had begun.

The irony here is that the heroic "liberators" in this situation were the Vietnamese communists. But Americans, who were more responsible for the turmoil and carnage in Southeast Asia than anyone else, insisted that only the US of A could be "liberators" and everyone else was an Evil Commie. Thus, we had a situation in which the United States Government, claiming its "liberator" status, officially supported the return to power of one of the most genocidal regimes in all of history. And both Democrats and Republicans (Why am I not surprised?) took part in this sorry episode.

PS: Se alguém quiser fornecer outra perspectiva do assunto sou todo ouvidos...mas ainda existe quem pense que foi a vitória dos Vietcongs que conduziu à vitória dos khmers vermelhos (quando na verdade foi um erro americano que o induziu, o bombardeament do Cambodja levou directamente à deposição do Principe...esta mania de ajudar a derrubar monarquias - começou na Grande Guerra - para serem substituidas pelos piores regimes da civilização...).

Government and Hurricane: A Deadly Combination

Rothbard em 1989:

"(...) But why must taxpayers A and B be forced to pay for natural disasters that strike C? Why can't C and his private insurance carriers foot the bill? What is the ethical principle that insists that South Carolinians, whether insured or non-insured, poor or wealthy, must be subsidized at the expense of those of us, wealthy or poor, who don't live on the southern Atlantic Coast, a notorious hurricane spot in the autumn? Indeed, the witty actor who regularly impersonates President Bush on Saturday Night Live was perhaps more correct than he realized when he pontificated: "Hurricane Hugo – not my fault." But in that case, of course, the federal government should get out of the disaster aid business, and FEMA should be abolished forthwith.

(...)

How dare the mayor prevent people from returning to their own homes? When she finally relented, six days after Hugo, she continued to impose a 7:00 pm curfew in the town. The theory behind this outrage is that the local officials were "fearful for the homeowners' safety and worried that there would be looting." But the oppressed residents of the Isle of Palms had a different reaction. Most of them were angered; typical was Mrs. Pauline Bennett, who lamented that "if we could have gotten here sooner, we could have saved more."

But this was scarcely the only case of a "welfare state" intervening and making matters worse for the victims of Hugo. As a result of the devastation, the city of Charleston was of course short of many commodities. Responding to this sudden scarcity, the market acted quickly to clear supply and demand by raising prices accordingly: providing smooth, voluntary, and effective rationing of the suddenly scarce goods. The Charleston government, however, swiftly leaped in to prevent "gouging" – grotesquely passing emergency legislation making the charging of higher prices post-Hugo than pre-Hugo a crime, punishable by a maximum fine of $200 and 30 days in jail.

Unerringly, the Charleston welfare state converted higher prices into a crippling shortage of scarce goods. Resources were distorted and misallocated, long lines developed as in Eastern Europe, all so that the people of Charleston could have the warm glow of knowing that if they could ever find the goods in short supply, they could pay for them at pre-Hugo bargain rates.(...)

Thus, the local authorities did the work of Hurricane Hugo intensifying its destruction by preventing people from [p. 97] staying at or returning to their homes, and aggravating the shortages by rushing to impose maximum price controls. But that was not all.

Perhaps the worst blow to the coastal residents was the intervention of those professional fofoes of humanity – the environmentalists.

Last year, reacting to environmentalist complaints about development of beach property and worry about "beach erosion" (do beaches have "rights", too?), South Carolina passed a law severely restricting any new construction on the beachfront, or any replacement of damaged buildings. Enter Hurricane Hugo, which apparently provided a heaven-sent opportunity for the South Carolina Coastal Council to sweep the beachfronts clear of any human beings. Geology professor Michael Katuna, a Coastal Council consultant, saw only poetic justice, smugly declaring that "Homes just shouldn't be right on the beach where Mother Nature wants to bring a storm ashore." And if Mother Nature wanted us to fly, She would have supplied us with wings?

"Tropa" ou instituição militar?

As forças armadas são uma necessidade constitucional de qualquer Estado, mas podem ser também, como sabemos da nossa história e da alheia, uma ameaça à ordem constitucional e à liberdade. Têm, por isso, de se pautar por regras muito rigorosas de disciplina interna e de obediência ao poder constitucionalmente legítimo.

Mas os militares portugueses têm um hábito muito antigo de se comportarem como simples funcionários públicos fardados, pouco habituados aos sacrifícios da vida militar e primacialmente preocupados com os aspectos pecuniários e burocráticos das suas "carreiras". Acontece que a condição militar não se compadece com uma atitude de fundo deste género e muito menos com acções públicas e organizadas de pressão sobre os órgãos de soberania, seja com que objectivo for.

A recente profissionalização das forças armadas e a valorização dos "corpos de elite" no seu seio é o caminho para afastar os vícios históricos criados na instituição militar pelo conceito pernicioso da "nação em armas", que transportou para o exército e para a armada a politiquice e o modo de estar do funcionário público.

Na verdade, os senhores militares entram para as forças armadas para servir e obedecer. Pode parecer seco e bruto dizer-se isto assim, mas não há outra forma de definir a condição militar dentro de um Estado constitucional: servir e obedecer. Quem não se acha moldado para essa vida, é bom que não queira nada com ela, para depois não se "queixar" de uma instituição cuja natureza é conhecida e que não sobrevive à cultura reivindicativa da lamúria e da pressão.

A liberdade constitucional dos "civis" fica ameaçada quando as pessoas que compõem os corpos armados do Estado se julgam com o direito de ignorar tudo isto e organizar manifestações que, além de contranatura, são pura e simplesmente ilegais. Só aqueles que estão apostados na partidarização dos militares podem menorizar este aspecto fundamental.

O que se espera agora é que o Governo puna exemplarmente os responsáveis por estes actos que violam a Lei e que as chefias militares saibam dar toda a sua colaboração nessa acção, sem complexos corporativos. Porque as chefias militares devem lealdade à ordem constitucional e aos órgãos de soberania que dentro dela exercem a autoridade política e não a uma corporação informal chamada "tropa". É que, se em vez de forças armadas, o que podemos ter é a "tropa", então mais vale dissolver-se esse corpo armado que se torna numa ameaça potencial à liberdade civil e corrermos o risco porventura menor de não termos condição militar.

Re: Anarquista por omissão?

Eu sabia que iriam levantar esse comentário...mas note-se que falei de "Estados minimos ou inexistentes", mas ainda assim ninguém neste momento pode afirmar que existe um "Estado" na Somália. O que tem existido são "Estados" vizinhos que apoiam o que chamam um "governo" localizado fora da Somália!. E de tal forma é perene que têm existido ameaças de invasão da Somália para combater a auto-soberania das diversas tribos e clãs, mas não concretizadas porque tem sido demonstrada a sua capacidade de se defenderem. E aliás, diga-se, que o único sítio onde sequer tentam controlar - sem êxito - é mesmo a sua capital.

Aliás, a menção de "estabilização" tem mais que ver com a diminuição do conflito por parte de quem tenta impor um "Estado" do que pela derrota daquilo a que podemos chamar de sociedade civil tipicamente (historicamente) "africana". Vamo ver, se existe local no planeta onde a instituição estatista mostra o seu pior é mesmo o terceiro-mundo.

Agora, antes da sociedade civil da Somália ser a primeira na zona, com acesso a GSM, existem à vários anos diversas empresas de telecomunicações a concorrer livremente (anárquicamente?) no..."fixo" (telefones tradicionais)...essse paradigma mesmo nas sociedades ocidentais de monopólios estatistas.

É portanto perece ou mesmo de "wishfull thinking" atribuir as virtudes do desenvolvimento da Somália a qualquer proto-estatismo central. Pelo contrário, dadas as condições daquele território, podemos vislumbrar que a total ausência de regulamentação económica e incapacidade de imposição de um qualquer centro de autoridade legislativa e securitária tem levado o território a prosperar em termos comparativos, que a maior parte dos países vizinhos - para não falar em liberdade objectiva. E já agora, o incidente com o internacionalismo humanitário de Bill Clinton, deu-se porque, mais uma vez, um antigo "apoiado" foi feito "inimigo" (uma mania americana) no meio de uma guerra civil onde as diversas tribos se revoltaram contra a tentativa de imposição de um Estado Central Islâmico...

Podemos especular se o Continente Africano não estaria muito melhor, se os actuais "Estados", que existem quase e só porque são sustentados pelo estatismo ocidental, desaparecessem...ou se atomizassem nas suas partes históricas-culturais-tribais, derrubando os mapas desenhados, forçando a queda de todas as barreiras ao desenvolvimento que as cleptocracias estatistas impõem à população.

Anarquista por omissão?

No corpo do mesmo texto citado pelo CN, pode ler-se:

As the political situation in Somalia continues to stabilize with the establishment of a new government, the increase of visitors to Somalia will drive the need to provide reliable and high quality GSM roaming and data services, as well as enable current subscribers to receive the highest voice quality with plenty of channel capacity to eliminate network blocking that may be experienced with other service providers. [destaque meu]

Fukuyama on the Neoconservatives

Via antiwarblog: The Atlantic is running a series that "attempt[s] to replicate what the French author Alexis de Tocqueville accomplished in the nineteenth century with his book Democracy in America," this time through the eyes of Frenchman Bernard-Henri Levy. His interview with Francis Fukuyama reveals an intellectual battle in the neoconservative movement:

Then we start talking about the war in Iraq, which, contrary to my expectations, he, unlike most other neo-conservatives, in fact condemned. We talk about one of his articles, "The Neoconservative Moment," which he wrote in reaction to a speech given by Charles Krauthammer at the annual dinner of the American Enterprise Institute, and which was published in the summer 2004 issue of the neo-conservative journal The National Interest. This article unleashed one of those vigorous debates Fukuyama seems so good at provoking; barely a dozen pages long, it has his typically provocative, cold tone, and his typically Zen-like way of breaking everything in sight without seeming to touch it.

What's the reason behind his condemnation of the war? What objection does he really have?No moral objection; for a Hegelian, such an argument would be nonsensical.No objection from a strategic point of view; the apostle of the end of history, this man who keeps telling us how the provinces of the empire will be brought into line with the victorious world order, could scarcely disagree with the plan to democratize Iraq.

Certainly not the traditional conservative idea that some cultures are better adapted to freedom than others; I sense that Fukuyama isn't the least bit torn between two great poles, Irving Kristol and Samuel Huntington—between the ex-leftist who has on the whole remained faithful to the universalism of his youth and the postulator of a clash of civilizations who has great difficulty ridding himself of the stumbling block of relativism—and that it's the former who remains closer to his heart.

No, his great subject, his chief and indeed only disagreement, has to do with the relationship to time that he thinks he can sense in most of his friends who are unconditional supporters of this war—their misunderstanding of the time it actually takes to build democracy, and hence of opportunity and political tactics.It is here that Fukuyama aims straight for the neoconservative position on gov't, foreign policy and state-building.

Lévy continues:

These people are strange, is the gist of what he says to me.They've spent their whole lives preaching against giving too much power to the government. They told us to beware of the naiveté of the social-engineering specialists who purported to be able to eradicate American poverty with one wave of their political wand. And then they lost all perspective as soon as it was a question of eradicating such poverty, along with the roots of despotism, 6,000 miles away.

And they have complete faith in a political decision when it's an issue—as a nation and a government are being constructed—of winning not just the war but also the peace. And they adopt the same "messianic" tone for which they've so often reproached their progressive adversaries as soon as it's a matter of building a Western-style democracy, ex nihilo, in a country that's never harbored such a concept!Odd, this Hegelian who condemns the messianism of others.Odd, this historicist who used to tell us that the absolute Spirit was about to arrive, and who starts praising the delays and difficulties of post-history.

Paradoxical, the spectacle of this disciple of Kojève, fed on Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit and on the prosopopeia of the Idea, reproaching others for their excessive idealism.But captivating, nonetheless.First of all because it's another sign, this time inside a single ideological family, of the intensity, the vigor, the quality, of debate that so struck me during the Democratic and Republican conventions: Hegel plus Leo Strauss … Hegelian providentialism chilled, almost reduced, by the "Greek" skepticism of the author of The City and Man … That is the Fukuyama equation.

Those are the metaphysical—thus political—coordinates of this agnostic-universalist, this pessimistic progressive. And it's more than a variation—it's actually a new position on the American political chessboard.But above all I get the impression of finding here the first serious—I mean theoretically articulated—objection to the war. Before that operation was launched, I had written that because it mistook the target, because it was aiming at Iraq instead of worrying, for instance, about Pakistan, it was morally right but politically wrong.

Quietly, almost whispering, with that special smile whose very reserve oddly reveals a certain intensity, Fukuyama tells me that these people are to him—theoretician that he is of the inevitable triumph of democratic order—what Lenin was to Marx: by trying to act like angels, behaving as if time were not an issue, they condemn themselves to acting like idiots.

The problem with neo-conservatives is not, as Europeans think, their lack of a moral center or their cynicism. On the contrary, it's an excess of morals. It's the victory of mysticism over politics. They're noble spirits who don't do enough actual politics.

Estados minimos ou inexistentes

Unlike Most of Africa, 'Chaotic' Somalia Gets GSM Roaming

Somafone First To Turn On GSM Roaming In Somalia. MOGADISHU, Somalia (BUSINESS WIRE) Sept. 9, 2005 - Somafone, the newest GSM operator in Somalia, who is committed to delivering the highest quality of service, the latest GSM features and the lowest airtime and international rates, announced today that it has deployed international roaming and SMS capabilities from TECORE Wireless Systems, opening up the opportunity to establish roaming agreements with operators worldwide.

Kirzner Links

Alguns links sobre Israel Kirzner, recolhidos por Miguel Noronha.

Bem dito

Tribunais e quartéis: close
"12 Set Os senhores militares dominam o assunto, conhecem muito bem o tema dos «direitos adquiridos». Fizeram, aliás, uma revolução em Abril de 1974 por causa disso. Foram os militares que nos libertaram do regime antigo e acabaram com todos os direitos adquiridos que a sociedade de então mantinha." Sérgio Figueiredo, negocios.pt

Viver perigosamente...é para quem pode

Uma das facetas do problema parece também passar pela forma como os diques foram construidos e mantidos (New Deal, esse grande passo para a invasão do socialismo - e a subversão do modelo Federal- na América). O natural seria os diques serem privados ou pagos pelo Municipio (a partir de um orçamento financiado por impostos municipais). Claro que sendo um cidade empobrecida, os diques serem um programa federal, dirão, faz sentido. Mas não fez.

Se a própria existência de uma cidade (cujos habitantes recorrem desproporcionadamente a Estado social) fosse posta em causa pela realidade económica dos seus habitantes não poderem sustentar os diques e a sua localização abaixo do nivel do mar numa zona de furacões...ela - a cidade - nem sequer existiria de todo, pelo menos com a acutal dimensão.

É assim, a falta de realismo económico (ou liberdade económica), que em última análise contribuiu também para que um local de pobreza (relativa) tenha sido tão atingido. Os que estavam, era porque queriam estar... e porque podiam estar...

"Until Katrina! Mother Nature has a unique, and sometimes deadly, way of reminding us of the penalty for defying her will. New Orleans, geographically, can best be described as an historical mistake. It would be unthinkable to construct a city in such a location now. Even if private developers wanted to do it, the political environmental lobby existing in America today would never tolerate such a violation or exploitation of the Mississippi River’s wetlands. For decades governments have restricted or outright forbidden any sort of habitable development of America’s wetlands. America’s wetlands have become "sacred ground" to be preserved in perpetuity by the force of government edicts.

So what’s going on in the aftermath of Katrina in New Orleans? Governments are about to spend billions of taxpayer dollars to reconstruct a city in a geographical depression below sea level next to an ocean subject to hurricanes. To describe the land area of New Orleans as merely wetlands is the ultimate understatement. Much of the city would be part of the ocean but for the levees! In fact, the whole of Louisiana from the existing site of New Orleans south is slowly returning to the sea. Virtually everyone knows the entire area is a high-risk area to both hurricanes and continual flooding from the Mississippi River. If nothing habitable existed there today, nothing ever would under existing governmental edicts protecting wetlands. So, why is government about to expend tens of billions of dollars to do something which they would forbid any private developers to even consider doing now?

Nobody is asking that question, let alone answering it. Even to ask the question subjects one to criticism for not being compassionate toward the refugees evacuated from the cesspool which once was New Orleans. Guilt is imposed upon anyone who would selfishly suggest it’s an insane idea to rebuild another city in an ocean. And yet it is! Why build a government-funded city where it can only survive until another failed levee again returns it to the sea? Why build a government-funded city below sea level when dry land exists all over America not exposed to flooding or hurricanes? And finally, why should Americans be taxed billions of dollars to build an "American Venice" facing annual hurricane risks?

Perhaps the most serious question which must be asked is why anyone would choose to live below sea level next to a high hurricane-risk ocean?" Why? by Robert Anderson

Bastiat chega ao "Mainstream"...150 anos depois

Are disasters really good for the economy?
Early assessments of Katrina illustrate 'fallacy of the broken window'
By Martin Wolk MSNBC

Economists have been living up to their reputation as “dismal” scientists in recent days, predicting that despite the devastating human tragedy, Hurricane Katrina ultimately could have a positive impact on the economy.(..)

Part of the answer has to do with the way we measure economic activity. Gross domestic product may rise next year as a result of goods and services purchased to rebuild the affected region, but that does not take into account the $100 billion or more in housing and other infrastructure destroyed by the storm and its aftermath.

“We measure gross economic activity instead of net economic activity, so everything tends to look like incremental activity over time,” said David Joy, vice president of RiverSource Investments, the asset management arm of Ameriprise Financial.

Part of the answer has to do with the way we measure economic activity. Gross domestic product may rise next year as a result of goods and services purchased to rebuild the affected region, but that does not take into account the $100 billion or more in housing and other infrastructure destroyed by the storm and its aftermath.

The broken window fallacy

The basic flaw in the logic behind such accounting was attacked a century and a half ago by French thinker Frederic Bastiat who referred to the “fallacy of the broken window.”

Imagine a boy who has broken a window, he said in his 1850 essay “That Which is Seen and That Which is Not Seen.” Onlookers inevitably find a silver lining in the added work for the window repairman: “What would become of the glaziers if no one ever broke a window?"

Yet this thinking fails to take into account that the boy’s family, which will be paying to replace the window, will have to divert funds that could have been used to buy new shoes or a book instead.

“Everybody falls into that same fallacy all the time on just about everything,” said Bob McTeer, former president of the Dallas branch of the Federal Reserve and a fan of Bastiat’s work. “They look at what is happening without looking what would have happened.”

Simply take the broken window example to its logical extreme: If every window in town were broken there would be plenty of work for glaziers but few resources for other projects like building new houses or shops.

Similarly Katrina will suck away workers, materials and funds that otherwise could have been gone to other, potentially more productive uses elsewhere in the country."

A América, antes e agora

Vemos agora as "autoridades" a retirar as armas a todos os cidadãos e obrigá-los a sair dos bairros e casas.

Felizmente, e via CNN, ainda se vê americanos a dizerem coisas como (no caso, um causasiano aparentemente bem de vida); "Saiam da minha vida, saiam da minha vizinhança, siama da minha cidade. Se vierem cá para me tirarem as minhas armas vai haver tiros".

O "Estado" (e não "Bush", nem a ridicula acusação de racismo e ainda a mais ridicula tentativa de relacionar a pobreza relativa da cidade com descriminação ou o "american way of life") falha preventivamente (a manutenção federal dos diques - uma herança do New Deal) e falha após (nesta falha, situo o serviço de segurança...) e como dizia um:

"Obviously, the police there have been doing such a good job that people should now trust them wholly in their defense. "No need to have a gun in New Orleans now - New Orleans finest will protect you!"

It is inevitable that when you need a gun most, the goverment will try to take it away."

A velha américa é representada pelo cidadão a quem incomoda qualquer intromissão do Estado Federal (e em menor escala pelo seu próprio Estado) na sua vida. Anacronicamente, o pro-americanismo dos tempos que correm parece por vezes identificar-se com a grandeza e poder do seu Estado Federal.

Mises

Via MisesBlog: Bettina Bien Greaves wrote about "Mises's New York University Seminar (1948-1969)" and included some quotations she recorded over the years:

"What do people mean," Mises asked, "when they speak of measuring 'economic growth'? People would think it foolish to try to 'measure' love. But when they try to measure economic conditions they are in effect trying to measure 'love,' the 'love' or preferences people have for certain conditions and certain changes. The idea of economic measurement denies the distinction between human action and what takes place in the physical world outside of man."

[...] Mises's extemporaneous remarks were often vivid, colorful and succinct. Here are a few gems selected from my years of seminar notes:

*You say the secret is in selling something above cost. But the situation is really very different.The problem is to produce something for which consumers are willing to pay above cost.

*Education can only hand down what was present in the old generation. The innovator cannot be educated. There is no school for the inventor.

*Prices are like the snows of last winter. They come, but at the moment we catch them, they are already something of the past.

*Concerning statistical averages which conceal the truly significant factors: If a man has one leg on an iceberg and the other in a fire, the average is then all right.

*Ideas are called "imported and alien" when one doesn't like them. It is exactly the opposite with wine.

*Beginning with Omar Khayyam, wine has been advertised by the poets. Were the poets in the pay of the "Whiskey Trust"? Why not say that the desire for cleanliness is the result of the "Soap Trust" and its advertising?

*Concerning the idea of nationality: St. Francis of Assisi and Casanova were both Italians. But what did they have in common? Only the fact that they both used the same language, though for very different purposes!

*Why should the members of Congress be so nasty as to fix a minimum wage lower than their own?

The Voluntary City

The Voluntary City
Choice, Community, and Civil Society
Edited by David T. Beito, Peter Gordon, Alexander Tabarrok Foreword by Paul Johnson

Comments:

"The Voluntary City is, in several respects, a big book. It is also an important one. It opens up a number of windows on the organization of urban life and civil society generally. It addresses from many points of view, not the least of which is the past history of cities, questions that have hardly been addressed for several decades. The key question is the optimal mode of provision of a whole range of ‘public’ services, including housing, transportation, education, medical care, police and law courts. This book may well lead to a reconsideration of how these services might be better provided through voluntary, market-based arrangements than by the ministrations of urban planners and other experts of the modern welfare state.”—NATHAN ROSENBERG, Fairleigh S. Dickinson, Jr. Professor of Public Policy, Stanford University

PS: Um livro a ler pelas "cidades" que um dia se atrevam a regressas ao bom e velho estatuto de "Cidade-Estado", desligando-se pacificamente do centralismo (democrático) que as abafa.