Now that everyone has had a chance to read all three articles, I will now post responses to some of the key claims and arguments made in each one -- beginning first, again, with Jacob Hornberger’s “Liberal Delusions about Freedom”:
Actually, it is crazy, just not for the reasons most liberals seem to think it is. It’s crazy because Obamacare is the virtual opposite of the Canadian-style system most people envision when they hear the term “socialist health care.” http://propagandamatrix.com/forum/index.php/topic,5263.0.html
This is a classic illustration of how Austrian School types continually give Obama “left cover” by characterizing him as some sort of New Deal "liberal," when in reality he is both a corporate fascist and puppet of Wall Street intent on quietly dismantling the New Deal via IMF-style austerity measures. Webster Tarpley has made this very point countless times on his radio show over the past two years.
What Mr. Hornberger is either unaware of or unwilling to admit to is that there were, in fact, “coercive transfer programs.” Specifically, there was (a) government-protected rent-seeking on the part of land speculators, and consequently a “forced transfer of wealth from workers to landowners,” (b) government-sanctioned fractional reserve lending (i.e. loaning non-existent “money” in exchange for collateral-backed IOUs and charging usurious interest on it), and consequently a forced transfer of wealth from the productive class to the non-productive, parasitic banking class, and (c) banker-orchestrated, government-allowed monetary contractions -- most notably the “Crime of '73” -- and consequently a forced transfer of landholdings and other pledged collateral from bankrupted farmers and business owners to criminal financiers. But because those three coercive transfer programs were not implemented by government directly, but rather by private interests for private gain with the aid and protective cover of government sponsorship and approval; because Austrian Schoolers tend to regard all government “regulations” -- not just most -- as bad and evil by definition, and would hence allow fractional reserve banking to go unchecked despite their professed opposition to it; and because they have an almost religious-like adoration for both land speculation and depression-inducing monetary deflations, they prefer either to ignore these privilege-based transfer programs altogether (particularly when gushing about the Gilded Age), or, when forced to address them, to define the utterly parasitic nature of these programs out of existence by characterizing them as mere “market activities.”
Actually it is Mr. Hornberger who’s engaged in deception by omission, here, because as that same government web site acknowledges, it was actually Thomas Paine -- one of the very “Founding Fathers” in whose memory Hornberger so loves to wrap his Austrian School snake-oil -- who pioneered the idea of a "social insurance" program -- the key difference being that Paine advocated financing it with a tax on “ground-rent” rather than a tax on wages: http://geolib.com/essays/paine.tom/agjst.html
Translation: “Anyone who supports Social Security -- or a social safety net of any kind -- is, by definition, a socialist, fascist, and philosophical soulmate of Adolf Hiter!”  If you were a top international banker who wanted to “divide” the anti-NWO/pro-America movement against itself so that it might be more easily “conquered,” isn’t that just the sort of ridiculously inflammatory rhetoric you would urge your propagandists and disinfo artists to aggressively employ? I know I would if I were one. So even if Mr. Hornberger isn’t a paid “agent” (as opposed to an overzealous, unwitting “dupe”) of the ruling elite, he may as well be!
If that is true, then why did Hitler-admiring industrialists and financiers attempt to overthrow FDR for the purpose of installing a “fascist dictatorship”? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-o8MVvQd7w Oh, that’s right! Austrian School cranks don’t want us asking annoying questions like that, do they? We’re just supposed to accept, without question, that political reality is as conveniently black-and-white as they make it out to be, with virtually no shades of grey. Either you blindly accept each and every aspect of Austrian School dogma as divine gospel, or you’re automatically “delusional” about freedom, and very likely a freedom-hating fascist! Now does everyone see why I regard the Austrian School as little more than a glorified cult? Turning now to Mr. Sumner’s article:
In fairness to Mr. Hornberger and to Austrian Schoolers generally, they have always been (to their credit) at serious odds with neocons like Glenn Beck on both civil liberties and foreign policy matters. So it is misleading at best to lump both into the same ideological category simply because they agree on certain economic issues. Indeed, that’s like calling Ralph Nader a “libertarian” since he actually agrees with most libertarians on civil liberties and foreign policy matters. I know of no time -- certainly not in the last 20 years -- in which Mr. Hornberger was in any way affiliated with, or supportive of, the Republican Party. As far as I can tell, he’s always been a 3rd party person. In fact it was he who gave the keynote address at the 1996 National Libertarian Party Convention. Republicans have always hated the Libertarian Party for the same reason Democrats have long hated the Green Party (particularly since 2000).
Although perhaps a bit oversimplified, the above is (despite what Austrian Schoolers want desperately for everyone to believe) a fairly accurate assessment of just how anti-“golden” life for the average worker was in those days. More on that later.
Thinly-veiled race-baiting, straight out of MSNBC’s playbook, and completely inappropriate -- not to mention unnecessary, considering how much historical reality supports Sumner’s asssment of the 1880s over Hornberger’s. I’ve been following Mr. Hornberger politically for many years, and I can assure Mr. Sumner that Hornberger is no more a “racist” than Ralph Nader is a “fascist.”
Now here is where I part company for the moment with Mr. Sumner, and express my general agreement with the Austrian School about the true nature and purpose of compulsory government schooling. I should probably add, however, that my approach to education reform, though similar to theirs in some respects, is nevertheless different in others.
Does this mean Mr. Sumner supports the government policy of letting countless millions of poor Mexican immigrants break our immigration laws, all so the modern-day robber barons who’ve hijacked our government can (a) want less for slave labor and (b) bankrupt more easily and quickly our already-strained social safety net?
Does Mr. Sumner realize that many if not most of the criminals who commited those horrible crimes would today be working as cops, CPS workers, TSA thugs, or Homeland “Security” goons? Does that type of predatory, psychopathic behavior magically become less wrong merely because the person engaged in it happens to have on a fancy government uniform? To hear the corporate whore “news” media -- including MSNBC -- talk (deafening silence itself being a form of political speech), it does!
The same type of “liberty” you get from having economic WAR waged against you by Obama's ruling-class string-pullers, perhaps? Or, considering you have an obvious political bias of your own, is that a question you’d rather not answer, since that would mean having to question the legitimacy of the Democrat-vs.-Republican paradigm?
Oh puh-leeze! If that’s what you think FEMA’s primary purpose is, Mr. Sumner, then you’re either deeply delusional or a bald-faced liar! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Klqv9t1zVww http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/MAR402B.html http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/september2005/060905femasabotaging.htm
Now we have your beloved FDA looking the other way while companies like Monsanto not only “taint” our food, but play genetic roulette with it! And why do establishment liberals say virtually nothing about this? Because -- when they’re not signing petitions to ban water -- they’re spending all their time and energy waxing alarmist about plant food!
It is, of course, good that women were granted the right to vote. But what good is the right to vote if -- due to an utterly rigged “election” system -- there’s nothing to vote for?
-- James Bovard, Freedom In Chains, p. 132
Thanks to the aforementioned “war” that Obama the Wall Street Puppet is helping to wage against We the People, today’s robber barons are quickly regaining that particular “freedom.” (As I’m certain any sweatshop owner will readily attest, the more desperate people are for employment, the less they tend to complain openly about how badly their employers “treat” them. So don’t let those fake smiles at Wal-Mart fool you.)
News flash: that is exactly what’s going on now, and the Democrat-controlled Congress and White House refuse to even acknowledge this as an issue, let alone counteract it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJUEULWEP9c http://ampedstatus.com/af-pak-war-racket-the-obama-illusion-comes-crashing-down
Again, bad as that was, how is it any different from what we have today -- particularly after more than a year of a Democrat-controlled White House and more than three years of a Democrat-controlled House and Senate? http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=19027 http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=16488 http://www.infowars.com/top-senate-democrat-bankers-own-the-us-congress/ http://www.prisonplanet.com/obama-puts-monsanto-lobbyist-in-charge-of-food-safety.html
For reasons given above, one doesn’t even have to take a long trip to experience certain of those “joys.” One need only remove one’s partisan blinders and open one’s eyes to the reality that surrounds him. It’s called America.
By that measure, would you characterize either President Obama or Democratic Congressional leaders as “advocates” of the free market? If so, don’t be surprised if it isn’t just “conservatives” and “libertarians” who laugh at you!
And the Democrat-controlled White House and Congress have done what exactly (legislatively, not rhetorically) to eliminate corporate personhood? .... [20 seconds later] .... Hello? You still there? And now for Hornberger’s response to Sumner:
In his masterwork, Progress and Poverty -- the first regular market edition of which was published in 1880 -- Henry George explains that it was economic necessity, far more than anything else, that drove countless “wives” and “children” to work long hours in dangerous, dehumanizing factories; and that this necessity had, in turn, been imposed on them by overprivileged landlords and slumlords via parasitic rent-gouging. http://schalkenbach.org/library/george.henry/ppcont.html Albert Jay Nock -- to whom many Austrian School ideologues pay homage (ironically enough) -- explains in the following excerpt how the equally horrid economic conditions that plauged Britain throughout most, if not all, of the 19th century were mere symptoms of the very same root cause: ------------------------------------- "This imperfect policy of non-intervention, or laissez-faire, led straight to a most hideous and dreadful economic exploitation; starvation wages, slum dwelling, killing hours, pauperism, coffin-ships, child-labour -- nothing like it had ever been seen in modern times....People began to say, perhaps naturally, if this is what State absentation comes to, let us have some State intervention. "But the State had intervened; that was the whole trouble. The State had established one monopoly, -- the landlord's monopoly of economic rent, -- thereby shutting off great hordes of people from free access to the only source of human subsistence, and driving them into the factories to work for whatever Mr. Gradgrind and Mr. Bottles chose to give them. The land of England, while by no means nearly all actually occupied, was all legally occupied; and this State-created monopoly enabled landlords to satisfy their needs and desires with little exertion or none, but it also removed the land from competition with industry in the labour market, thus creating a huge, constant and exigent labour-surplus." [Emphasis original] -- Albert Jay Nock, Free Speech and Plain Language, pp. 320-1 ------------------------------------- To eliminate this original layer of privilege that had been bestowed to rent-seeking landlords and speculators, Henry George advocated the Single Tax, which, if fully implemented, would have quickly eliminated the widely perceived need for all of the additional layers of privilege that (as an inevitable consequence of George’s remedy not being implemented) were eventually granted to the working class as a means of offsetting the poverty-creating effects of the original layer just enough to neutralize the threat of armed revolt. Austrian Schoolers have always been vehemently opposed to eliminating that original layer of privilege, and, consequently, have spent the last century helping to fuel -- however unwittingly -- popular demand for the very “welfare state” protections and safeguards about which they incessantly whine. And the more one learns about who financed the Austrian School’s rise to apparent prominence, the more one realizes why:
-- Webster Tarpley, World Crisis Radio broadcast, 9/27/08
-- Richard M. Ebeling, “The Life and Works of Ludwig von Mises,” Volume 13 Number 1, Summer 2008
In my experience, neither establishment liberals nor Austrian School ideologues “love” the “poor.” But even if either group did, that of course wouldn’t change whether or not the policy agenda they advocate would, if fully implemented, actually help the poor not be poor in the first place. (And I’m sure Mr. Hornberger knows this, which is why this is a pathetic and shameless appeal to emotion on his part.) If, metaphorically speaking, it’s a choice between (a) an “unloving” good doctor who actually cures the disease, (b) a “loving” liberal doctor who merely treats the symptoms of the disease while leaving the underlying root cause untouched, and (c) a “loving” Austrian doctor who, in a sweet, caring voice, tells his financially bankrupt would-be patients they must have faith that the mystical, God-like entity euphemistically called the “free market” will see to it that “charity” groups will give them the money they need to secure his services, and that in the mean time he has some divinely-inspired Austrian School literature for them to read, I’d choose the first option, and I suspect most others would as well. But for establishment liberals and Austrian Schoolers alike, truth and intellectual honesty are both secondary to ideology, so each group wants desperately for the masses to not even be aware of the first option, lest the oh-so-precious dogma of each group be seen for the ideological snake oil it really is.
As contrasted with ideological snake-oil salesmen such as Mr. Hornberger, whose greatest fear is a mass awakening to the aforementioned “original layer of privilege,” and how -- in the Gilded Age about which Austrian School cranks so love to wax nostalgic -- it was this privilege, more than anything else, that made so many people poor and destitute in the first place. Because if such an awakening occurred, people everywhere would realize that the primary purpose of the Austrian School all along has been to protect and entrench this privilege -- not eliminate it -- and would consequently see their (the Austrian School’s) bumper-sticker slogans about “liberty” and the “free market” not as something to mindlessly cheerlead and applaud at Tea Party rallies, but as a sick joke.
Unfortunately for Mr. Hornberger, the very same thing can be truthfully said about both his article and the Austrian School cult he fronts for. Neither side of this controlled-opposition “debate” is part of the solution. On the contrary, both are part of the problem.
By contrast, Austrian Schoolers, in their shameful attempt to make their economic snake-oil seem like a legitimate cure, ignore the question of to whom -- and on what basis -- wealth is ultimately distributed once it’s been brought into “existence.” Because they know that to not ignore this question would be to draw attention to other questions -- particularly the ones asked by John Stuart Mill in the following quote -- which they want desperately to remain unasked: ------------------------------------- “Suppose that there is a kind of income which constantly tends to increase, without any exertion or sacrifice on the part of the owners: those owners constituting a class in the community, whom the natural course of things progressively enriches, consistently with complete passiveness on their own part. In such a case it would be no violation of the principles on which private property is grounded, if the state should appropriate this increase of wealth, or part of it, as it arises. This would not properly be taking anything from anybody; it would merely be applying an accession of wealth, created by circumstances, to the benefit of society, instead of allowing it to become an unearned appendage to the riches of a particular class. “Now this is actually the case with rent. The ordinary progress of a society which increases in wealth, is at all times tending to augment the incomes of landlords; to give them both a greater amount and a greater proportion of the wealth of the community, independently of any trouble or outlay incurred by themselves. They grow richer, as it were in their sleep, without working, risking, or economizing. What claim have they, on the general principle of social justice, to this accession of riches? In what would they have been wronged if society had, from the beginning, reserved the right of taxing the spontaneous increase of rent, to the highest amount required by financial exigencies?” -- John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy, Bk 5, Ch. 2 ------------------------------------- Quote But the latter is a ridiculous question because poverty has always been the natural state of mankind. What Hornberger is either unaware of or unwilling to admit to is that this “ridiculous” assertion of his comes straight from Thomas Malthus: http://forum.prisonplanet.com/index.php?topic=117190.msg990315#msg990315
You would think that Austrian School “libertarians” wouldn’t be so blatant about their agreement with Malthusian dogma, considering their professed opposition to the global elite’s depopulation agenda -- which is rooted in Malthusianism.
Unfortunately for Mr. Hornberger and his ideological cheerleaders, the logic he employs in defense of the Austrian School’s 19th-century alternative to these statist programs is -- for reasons already given -- equally “faulty and fallacious.”
But what is in dispute is the extent to which these conditions were because of, not in spite of, the very tax and monetary policies that Austrian Schoolers are chomping at the bit to reinstitute.
True to Austrian School tradition, what Mr. Hornberger is counting on his readers to remain blissfully ignorant of is (a) the alarming extent to which life for the average landless wage-earner continued to be “nasty, brutish, and short” precisely where wealth was most abundant, (b) the extent to which these horrid economic conditions were the direct result of both the pro-land speculation tax system and deflationary “gold standard” he and his fellow Austrian Schoolers routinely endorse. But don’t take my word for it, nor the contrary word of some Austrian School ideologue blabbing about how wonderful things were back then. Read what a highly respected author who actually lived in 1880, and who observed the socioeconomic conditions of that era first hand, had to say on the matter: ------------------------------------- “I hold, and I think no one who looks at the facts can fail to see, that poverty is utterly unnecessary. It is not by the decree of the Almighty, but it is because of our own injustice, our own selfishness, our own ignorance, that this scourge, worse than any pestilence, ravages our civilisation, bringing want and suffering and degradation, destroying souls as well as bodies. Look over the world, in this heyday of nineteenth century civilisation. In every civilised country under the sun you will find men and women whose condition is worse than that of the savage: men and women and little children with whom the veriest savage could not afford to exchange. Even in this new city of yours with virgin soil around you, you have had this winter to institute a relief society. Your roads have been filled with tramps, fifteen, I am told, at one time taking shelter in a round-house here. As here, so everywhere; and poverty is deepest where wealth most abounds. “What more unnatural than this? There is nothing in nature like this poverty which to-day curses us. We see rapine in nature; we see one species destroying another; but as a general thing animals do not feed on their own kind; and, wherever we see one kind enjoying plenty, all creatures of that kind share it. No man, I think, ever saw a herd of buffalo, of which a few were fat and the great majority lean. No man ever saw a flock of birds, of which two or three were swimming in grease and the others all skin and bone. Nor in savage life is there anything like the poverty that festers in our civilisation. “In a rude state of society there are seasons of want, seasons when people starve; but they are seasons when the earth has refused to yield her increase, when the rain has not fallen from the heavens, or when the land has been swept by some foe--not when there is plenty. And yet the peculiar characteristic of this modern poverty of ours is that it is deepest where wealth most abounds…. “I read in the New York papers a while ago that the girls at the Yonkers factories had struck. The papers said that the girls did not seem to know why they had struck, and intimated that it must be just for the fun of striking. Then came out the girls' side of the story and it appeared that they had struck against the rules in force. They were fined if they spoke to one another, and they were fined still more heavily if they laughed. There was a heavy fine for being a minute late. I visited a lady in Philadelphia who had been a forewoman in various factories, and I asked her, ‘Is it possible that such rules are enforced?’ She said it was so in Philadelphia. There is a fine for speaking to your next neighbour, a fine for laughing; and she told me that the girls in one place where she was employed were fined ten cents a minute for being late, though many of them had to come for miles in winter storms. She told me of one poor girl who really worked hard one week and made $3.50; but the fines against her were $5.25. That seems ridiculous; it is ridiculous, but it is pathetic and it is shameful. “But take the cases of those even who are comparatively independent and well off. Here is a man working hour after hour, day after day, week after week, in doing one thing over and over again, and for what? Just to live! He is working ten hours a day in order that he may sleep eight and may have two or three hours for himself when he is tired out and all his faculties are exhausted. That is not a reasonable life; that is not a life for a being possessed of the powers that are in man, and I think every man must have felt it for himself. I know that when I first went to my trade I thought to myself that it was incredible that a man was created to work all day long just to live. I used to read the Scientific American, and as invention after invention was heralded in that paper I used to think to myself that when I became a man it would not be necessary to work so hard. But on the contrary, the struggle for existence has become more and more intense. People who want to prove the contrary get up masses of statistics to show that the condition of the working classes is improving. Improvement that you have to take a statistical microscope to discover does not amount to anything. But there is not improvement…. “Here is a broad general fact that is asserted by all who have investigated the question, by such men as Hallam, the historian, and Professor Thorold Rogers, who has made a study of the history of prices as they were five centuries ago. When all the productive arts were in the most primitive state, when the most prolific of our modern vegetables had not been introduced, when the breeds of cattle were small and poor, when there were hardly any roads and transportation was exceedingly difficult, when all manufacturing was done by hand — in that rude time the condition of the laborers of England was far better than it is today. In those rude times no man need fear want save when actual famine came, and owing to the difficulties of transportation the plenty of one district could not relieve the scarcity of another. Save in such times, no man need fear want. Pauperism, such as exists in modern times, was absolutely unknown. Everyone, save the physically disabled, could make a living, and the poorest lived in rude plenty. But perhaps the most astonishing fact brought to light by this investigation is that at that time, under those conditions in those 'dark ages,' as we call them, the working day was only eight hours. While with all our modern inventions and improvements, our working classes have been agitating and struggling in vain to get the working day reduced to eight hours. “Do these facts show improvement? Why, in the rudest state of society in the most primitive state of the arts the labour of the natural bread-winner will suffice to provide a living for himself and for those who are dependent upon him. Amid all our inventions there are large bodies of men who cannot do this. What is the most astonishing thing in our civilisation? Why, the most astonishing thing to those Sioux chiefs who were recently brought from the Far West and taken through our manufacturing cities in the East, was not the marvellous inventions that enabled machinery to act almost as if it had intellect; it was not the growth of our cities; it was not the speed with which the railway car whirled along; it was not the telegraph or the telephone that most astonished them; but the fact that amid this marvellous development of productive power they found little children at work. And astonishing that ought to be to us; a most astounding thing! “Talk about improvement in the condition of the working classes, when the facts are that a larger and larger proportion of women and children are forced to toil. Why, I am told that, even here in your own city, there are children of thirteen and fourteen working in factories. In Detroit, according to the report of the Michigan Bureau of Labour Statistics, one half of the children of school age do not go to school. In New Jersey, the report made to the legislature discloses an amount of misery and ignorance that is appalling. Children are growing up there, compelled to monotonous toil when they ought to be at play, children who do not know how to play; children who have been so long accustomed to work that they have become used to it; children growing up in such ignorance that they do not know what country New Jersey is in, that they never heard of George Washington, that some of them think Europe is in New York. Such facts are appalling; they mean that the very foundations of the Republic are being sapped. The dangerous man is not the man who tries to excite discontent; the dangerous man is the man who says that all is as it ought to be.” [Continued…] -- Henry George, “The Crime of Poverty,” April 1, 1885 ------------------------------------- Quote As bad as things were in 1880 America, it was a golden era compared to the pre-industrial age. For land speculators and robber barons, yes, but not necessarily for the average worker. Quote This point was made as long ago as 1954 in a book entitled Capitalism and the Historians, which was edited by libertarian Nobel Prize-winning economist Friedrich Hayek. As noted above by Henry George, the obvious fallacy of that “point” (to the extent it applies to the working class) becomes obvious to anyone who reads Thorold Rogers’ authoritative, exhaustively-researched book, Six Centuries of Work and Wages, wherein Rogers explains how the progressive push for the 40-hour workweek was actually a mere effort to reclaim what the average worker used to enjoy:
-- Juliet B. Schor, The Overworked American, p. 46
This is a classic illustration of how Austrian Schoolers, in their cult-like zeal to appear anti-“socialist,” replace socialist half-truths with equally false anti-socialist half-truths. Did the industrial revolution make life better, or at least less intolerable, for many workers? Of course. But this, again, was in spite of, not because of, both the pro-land speculation tax system and deflationary gold standard they (Austrian Schoolers) endorse. With particular regard to said tax system, whenever this system is in place, there is always -- in the words of economist Fred Foldvary -- a "constanct race” between (a) the process by which labor-saving technology increases wages and (b) the process by which increasing numbers of people with increasing incomes all competing for access to the same amount of land enables titleholders to absorb much of these wage gains through higher rent demands while providing no service in return -- a parasitic process commonly referred to as rack-renting. In early 19th-century America, workers could always “move west” to escape the rack-renting that had long plagued the laboring classes of England, and which was now beginning to rear its ugly head in numerous population centers throughout the eastern half of the U.S. But by the late 19th century, all cheap land had been appropriated (much of it by land speculators), and it was at this point that industrial progress started to become less of a blessing to the working class and more of a curse, since continued increases in production were always met by higher and higher rent demands. Thus, whatever increase there was in the average worker’s quality of life during the 19th century was due in large part to the fact that so much cheap land was available. Once all land became appropriated, however, the paradox of “poverty admid plenty” quickly began to appear where wealth was most abundant. That’s the dirty little secret about the Gilded Age that Austrian School cranks don’t want anyone to know about. In summary: although Sumner’s article is not itself without its glaring flaws and omissions, it is nevertheless (insofar as the Gilded Age is concerned) a more accurate account of what life was like for the average worker in the late 19th century than Hornberger’s. Although Hornberger plays obligatory lip service to the notion that this so-called “golden era” was tarnished by certain “bad” things, he is noticeably careful not to identify what those things were or what caused them. And the reason for this convenient omission is obvious: because deep down he knows damn well that most if not all of those “bad” things would return with a vengeance if his beloved Austrian School’s economic agenda were fully implemented, and that most people would -- upon realizing this -- reject this insane agenda accordingly. What is perhaps most laughable of all, however, is that, since Hornberger describes 1880 as an economic “golden era” in the context of railing self-righteously against the “welfare state” that (much to the horror of “feudal aristocrats” everywhere) was instituted decades later by FDR and subsequently expanded by LBJ, he is clearly implying that the average worker was not only better off in 1880 than he was in, say, 1772, but better off than he was in 1972. Quite frankly, anyone who parrots this absurd belief is either a disinfo agent or a brainwashed dupe of someone who is. But then Ludwig von Mises -- a virtual deity to most Austrian Schoolers -- was admittedly financed out of obscurity by the Rockefeller Foundation. So is it really any surprise that the school of “thought” which von Mises (for all practical purposes) founded -- and to which Hornberger subscribes -- would turn reality on its head in order to make the Rockefeller-dominated Gilded Age seem like a worker’s paradise (as opposed to a robber baron’s paradise)? Certainly not to me. All that being said, I’d like to close with a point of clarification: I’m well aware of how horribly flawed and corrupt our welfare system is. I just reject the ridiculous notion that the only alternative to the current system is to (a) have no social safety net at all and (b) reinstitute the tax and monetary policies that gave rise to 19th-century robber barons, on the one hand, and dehumanizing sweatshops and widespread pauperism, on the other. |
"For the first years of [Ludwig von] Mises’s life in the United States...he was almost totally dependent on annual research grants from the Rockefeller Foundation.” -- Richard M. Ebeling http://forum.prisonplanet.com/index.php?topic=162212.0 -Geolibertarian | ||||
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Geolibertarian on the Gilded Age (This is great stuff)
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