Inequality

“In order to make people equal, you have to treat them differently. If you treat people alike, so far as government is concerned, the result is necessarily inequality.

"You can have either freedom and inequality, or unfreedom and equality.”

~ Friedrich Hayek

"I want to help the poor"

Cartoonist unknown

"What 'social justice' advocates want is not justice, but to be in charge of deciding who gets what."

"What 'social justice' advocates want is not justice, but to be in charge of deciding who gets what. They want to substitute their own decisions for the decisions of millions of other people freely interacting in the marketplace. 

"That is why they speak in terms of results rather than rules – of ending up with equal incomes or equal outcomes rather than everyone being equally free to make is their own choices. It is not justice; it is power."

~ Thomas Sowell interviewed on his new book: 'Social Justice Fallacies'

They "aim to change science from an endeavour finding truth about nature to an endeavour that’s a lever for social justice."

"'Nature' magazine published [a] long comment [recently], written by eight indigenous authors from five countries. [It] is a ... surrender to 'progressive' views that aim to change science from an endeavour finding truth about nature to an endeavour that’s a lever for social justice. Surprisingly, though, Nature allowed the authors to use the 'progressive' term of 'decolonisation,' arguing explicitly that the science is the result of colonisation of knowledge by white men from the Global North—a situation that must be rectified, pronto.

"The authors give eight ways to rectify the 'colonisation,' all of them involving sacrificing merit for ethnicity, replacing modern science with 'other ways of knowing,' and demanding both professional, monetary, and territorial reparations, even from those who never oppressed anybody. ...

"[A]s I’ve written about in extenso, 'indigenous knowledge' is never on par with modern science. Yes, indigenous people can contribute empirical truths to science, but indigenous 'science' almost invariably consists of local knowledge helping people to live in their specific environment (in New Zealand, for example, it consists of stuff like knowing how to harvest mussels or where to catch eels), and isn’t generalisable to other places. It does not use the tools of modern science and, as in New Zealand, is often imbued with nonscientific aspects like ethics, morality, unsubstantiated lore, and supernatural trappings like teleology and myth.

"Yes, some aspects of indigenous 'science' can and should be worked into science classes, but most of it should be taught in sociology or anthropology class. ...

"As one of my colleagues said after reading this paper, 'The authors’ decolonisation/indigenisation ideology is not only antithetical to science, it’s also anti-Enlightenment, and as such challenges the whole idea of universities as places where ideas are tested on the basis of reason and evidence without the imposition of cultural authority'.”

~ Jerry Coyne from his post 'The journal Nature calls for “decolonization” of modern science'

"New Zealand has become trapped in a malaise of wanting to be seen to do good at the expense of achieving anything."

"[T]he Environmental, Societal and Governance mantra ... has proven to be a drag on commerce since it emerged two decades ago. ...

"Social responsibility, the forerunner of ESG, was a popular way for executives to appear virtuous while spending their shareholder’s money ... [Milton] Friedman ... claim[ed] that there is only one social responsibility of business: 'to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud.'

"The Chicago University economist was campaigning against business leaders voluntarily engaging in acts of moral worthiness with other people’s resources, but today we face a more pernicious evil; state-mandated virtue. ...

"Section 7A of the Financial Markets Conduct Act 2013 ... obligates certain large firms, from AA Insurance to Z Energy to prepare climate statements and report on their greenhouse gas emissions.

"It is an absurdly onerous regime that achieves nothing. ...'[C]limate change reporting,' harrumphed [Warehouse chair Joan Withers] to the NBR, 'is taking up more director’s time than financial statements' ... [with] not one carbon molecule less ... emitted as a result of the thousands of pages these reports produce. ... a symptom of a wider malaise. ...

"New Zealand has become trapped in a malaise of wanting to be seen to do good at the expense of achieving anything."

~ Damien grant from his column 'Why climate change reporting is achieving nothing'

Walter Williams on social justice

The late great Walter Williams's thoughts on property, rights and justice are ideal on  post-Budget morning:

• "My definition of social justice: I keep what I earn and you keep what you earn. Do you disagree?…how much of what I earn belongs to you—and why?"
• "If one person has a right to something he did not earn, of necessity it requires that another person not have a right to something that he did earn."
• "Nothing in our Constitution suggests that government is a grantor of rights. Instead, government is a protector of rights.
• "There is no moral argument that justifies using the coercive powers of government to force one person to bear the expense of taking care of another."
• "Government has no resources of its own…government spending is no less than the confiscation of one person’s property to give it to another to whom it does not belong."
• "We don’t have a natural right to take the property of one person to give to another; therefore, we cannot legitimately delegate such authority to government."
• "Exercise of a right by one person does not diminish those held by another."
• "No matter how worthy the cause, it is robbery, theft, and injustice to confiscate the property of one person and give it to another to whom it does not belong."
• "The better I serve my fellow man…the greater my claim on the goods my fellow man produces. That’s the morality of the market."
• "The act of reaching into one’s own pockets to help a fellow man in need is praiseworthy and laudable. Reaching into someone else’s pocket is despicable."

What's 'Woke'?

 What's 'woke'? and why is it called that? Philosopher Stephen Hicks has the simple explanation:

It comes out of the Left politically. Interestingly on the Right politically too (if we can use these labels, left and right, [since they're] both problematic.)

    But on the Right there’s the concept of the 'red pill,' which comes from the movie 'The Matrix.' So the idea then is that in some sense one is in a coma, perhaps a chemically-induced coma. But if you take a pill, the red pill, then suddenly the coma goes away, you wake up, and you see reality as it really is. And everything is quite different. 

    So the Left version of this comes out of the 'False Consciousness' tradition. It says that ... we are all raised [or] conditioned into a false narrative that says that [western civilisation is great] or that America is about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and justice and freedom for all and so forth. But that is a fake cover story that has been 'conditioned' into all of us. And what we need to do is to raise our consciousness—and in some cases get slapped upside the head—so that we wake up and look around and realise that we really are oppressed. 

    And that’s a kind of 'awakening,' to see the world as it as it really is. So woke is just a slang-y way of saying that 'I’ve woken up,' and now I can really see that this childhood naïve story about what a wonderful culture we’re living in is false, and that one has become sensitised, and now buys into the narrative of oppression and exploitation.

"...climate realism is slowly starting to take hold."

"After more than two decades of unyielding climate alarmism, climate realism is slowly starting to take hold.
    "How do I know this? Because ordinary, hard-working [folk] are no longer buying into climate alarmism hook, line, and sinker.
    "According to multiple polls, climate change is no longer a top concern for the vast majority of Americans. [And down as a concern by almost a quarter for NZers over the last five years from 2019 to 2024.]
    "They are finally starting to understand the truth about climate change, while simultaneously becoming aware that climate alarmists have ulterior motives at hand, many of which are in direct opposition to their fundamental best interests ....
    "Thanks to ... many allied organisations, [everyone everywhere is] more able than ever to receive accurate information dispelling common myths and lies pushed by climate alarmists. As anyone can read at ClimateRealism.com, the seas are not rising and weather events like hurricanes, heatwaves, droughts, etc. are not becoming more frequent nor deadlier. In fact, in many cases, the exact opposite is occurring.

"Another huge factor that helped [is] the dubiousness of the climate alarmist narrative is that their solutions make no sense, do not address the so-called problems, and all too often end with less liberty and more government. [Many] are beginning to understand that 'climate justice,' for instance, is mostly about wealth redistribution and has little to do with a cleaner environment. ...
    "To be clear, [most people] want to protect the environment and desire clean air and water.
    "They just don’t want their lives upended and their bank accounts drained under the phoney guise of saving the planet."

~ Chris Talgo from his post 'Dear Climate Alarmists, Welcome to Your Worst Nightmare'

Young men are resenting being resented

 

"Young men seem to be motivated, not so much by a specific issue, but by their resentment of the current culture. If true, the upcoming elections will express the 'Breitbart Doctrine,' named after the late conservative journalist Andrew Breitbart. This doctrine states 'politics is downstream from culture.' To change the politics of a society, you must change its culture because politics originates from culture which, in turn, originates from the values of individuals who constitute society. Simply stated, if a person’s values and culture are transformed, his politics transforms accordingly.
    "The culture surrounding young men is dramatically different from that of their fathers, and the change has not been kind. The Brookings Institute notes, 'Young men increasingly feel as though they have been experiencing discrimination.' For decades now, prominent voices of political correctness, which is now called social justice, have blamed men as a gender class for a long slate of social wrongs. And, for young men, the past few decades constitute all of their lives. This means they have heard about their collective guilt since birth, and it would be natural for them to feel resentful for being castigated as a class for social wrongs. Such young men are reportedly turning to Donald Trump as a symbol of more traditional and proud manhood. ... [!]"

   "Women need healthy and well-adjusted men to be life partners, loving family members, friends, good neighbours, co-workers, and the peaceful strangers you pass on the street. The last thing women need is to live beside a generation of resentful men who act on their resentment, especially if the feeling is justified."

~ Wendy McElroy from her post 'Ignore The New Power Demographic at Your Own Risk: Young Male Voters'

Socialists once argued that socialism was superior to capitalism because it would deliver a higher standard of living and more consumer goods. When it became abundantly clear that this was bollocks, the socialists shifted their arguments and began to claim that socialism—while perhaps economically inferior—was superior morally and philosophically. And thus was born the post-modern denial of that outrageous success in human progress, and environmentalists' objection to it. 

Stephen Hicks writes about this in his 2004 book Explaining Postmodernism. Ludwig Von Mises was on to this a half-century before when he penned his short book The Anti-Capitalist Mentality, explaining why the intellectuals of his day so loathed the free market.... 

The Noneconomic Objections to Capitalism

by Ludwig Von Mises

1. The Argument of Happiness

Critics level two charges against capitalism: First, they say, that the possession of a motor car, a television set, and a refrigerator does not make a man happy. Secondly, they complain that there are still people who own none of these gadgets. Both propositions are correct, but neither casts blame upon the capitalistic system of social cooperation.

People do not toil and trouble in order to attain perfect happiness, but in order to remove as much as possible some felt uneasiness and thus to become happier than they were before. A man who buys a television set thereby gives evidence to the effect that he thinks that the possession of this contrivance will increase his well-being and make him more content than he was without it. If it were otherwise, he would not have bought it. The task of the doctor is not to make the patient happy, but to remove his pain and to put him in better shape for the pursuit of the main concern of every living being, the fight against all factors pernicious to his life and ease.

It may be true that there are among Buddhist mendicants, living on alms in dirt and penury, some who feel perfectly happy and do not envy any nabob. However, it is a fact that for the immense majority of people such a life would appear unbearable. To them the impulse toward ceaselessly aiming at the improvement of the external conditions of existence is inwrought. ... One of the most remarkable achievements of capitalism is the drop in infant mortality. Who wants to deny that this phenomenon has at least removed one of the causes of many people’s unhappiness?

No less absurd is the second reproach thrown upon capitalism — namely, that technological and therapeutical innovations do not benefit all people. Changes in human conditions are brought about by the pioneering of the cleverest and most energetic men. They take the lead and the rest of mankind follows them little by little. The innovation is first a luxury of only a few people, until by degrees it comes into the reach of the many. 

It is not a sensible objection to the use of shoes or of forks that they spread only slowly and that even today millions do without them. The dainty ladies and gentlemen who first began to use soap were the harbingers of the big-scale production of soap for the common man. If those who have today the means to buy a television set were to abstain from the purchase because some people cannot afford it, they would not further, but hinder, the popularisation of this contrivance. 

The inherent tendency of capitalism is towards shortening the interval between the appearance of a new improvement and the moment its use becomes general.

2. The Argument of Materialism

Again there are grumblers who blame capitalism for what they call its mean materialism. They cannot help admitting that capitalism has the tendency to improve the material conditions of mankind. But, they say, it has diverted men from the higher and nobler pursuits. It feeds the bodies, but it starves the souls and the minds. It has brought about a decay of the arts. Gone are the days of the great poets, painters, sculptors and architects. Our age produces merely trash. ...

'Fallingwater,' Frank Lloyd Wright, 1936

Among those who make pretense to the appellation of educated men there is much hypocrisy. They put on an air of connoisseurship and feign enthusiasm for the art of the past and artists passed away long ago. They show no similar sympathy for the contemporary artist who still fights for recognition. Dissembled adoration for the Old Masters is with them a means to disparage and ridicule the new ones who deviate from traditional canons and create their own.

John Ruskin will be remembered — together with Carlyle, the Webbs, Bernard Shaw and some others — as one of the gravediggers of British freedom, civilisation, and prosperity. A wretched character in his private no less than in his public life, he glorified war and bloodshed and fanatically slandered the teachings of political economy which he did not understand. 

He was a bigoted detractor of the market economy and a romantic eulogist of the guilds. He paid homage to the arts of earlier centuries. But when he faced the work of a great living artist, Whistler, he dispraised it in such foul and objurgatory language that he was sued for libel and found guilty by the jury. It was the writings of Ruskin that popularised the prejudice that capitalism, apart from being a bad economic system, has substituted ugliness for beauty, pettiness for grandeur, trash for art.

'Nocturne in Black and Gold: TheFalling
Rocket,' James McNeil Whistler, 1875

As people widely disagree in the appreciation of artistic achievements, it is not possible to explode the talk about the artistic inferiority of the age of capitalism in the same apodictic way in which one may refute errors in logical reasoning or in the establishment of facts of experience. Yet no sane man would be insolent enough as to belittle the grandeur of the artistic exploits of the age of capitalism.

The preeminent art of this age of “mean materialism and money-making” was music. Wagner and Verdi, Berlioz and Bizet, Brahms and Bruckner, Hugo Wolf and Mahler, Puccini and Richard Strauss, what an illustrious cavalcade! What an era in which such masters as Schumann and Donizetti were overshadowed by still superior genius!

Then there were the great novels of Balzac, Flaubert, Maupassant, Jens Jacobsen, Proust, and the poems of Victor Hugo, Walt Whitman, Rilke, Yeats. How poor our lives would be if we had to miss the work of these giants and of many other no less sublime authors.

Let us not forget the French painters and sculptors who taught us new ways of looking at the world and enjoying light and color.

Nobody ever contested that this age has encouraged all branches of scientific activities. But, say the grumblers, this was mainly the work of specialists while “synthesis” was lacking. One can hardly misconstrue in a more absurd way the teachings of modern mathematics, physics, and biology. And what about the books of philosophers like Croce, Bergson, Husserl, and Whitehead?

Each epoch has its own character in its artistic exploits. Imitation of masterworks of the past is not art; it is routine. What gives value to a work is those features in which it differs from other works. This is what is called the style of a period.

In one respect the eulogists of the past seem to be justified. The last generations did not bequeath to the future such monuments as the pyramids, the Greek temples, the Gothic cathedrals and the churches and palaces of the Renaissance and the Baroque. In the last hundred years many churches and even cathedrals were built and many more government palaces, schools and libraries. But they do not show any original conception; they reflect old styles or hybridise diverse old styles. Only in apartment houses, office buildings, and private homes have we seen something develop that may be qualified as an architectural style of our age. Although it would be mere pedantry not to appreciate the peculiar grandeur of such sights as the New York skyline, it can be admitted that modern architecture has not attained the distinction of that of past centuries.

The reasons are various. As far as religious buildings are concerned, the accentuated conservatism of the churches shuns any innovation. With the passing of dynasties and aristocracies, the impulse to construct new palaces disappeared. The wealth of entrepreneurs and capitalists is, whatever the anticapitalistic demagogues may fable, so much inferior to that of kings and princes that they cannot indulge in such luxurious construction. No one is today rich enough to plan such palaces as that of Versailles or the Escorial. The orders for the construction of government buildings do no longer emanate from despots who were free, in defiance of public opinion, to choose a master whom they themselves held in esteem and to sponsor a project that scandalised the dull majority. Committees and councils are not likely to adopt the ideas of bold pioneers. They prefer to range themselves on the safe side.

Side table by Eileen Gray, chair by Marcel Breuer

There has never been an era in which the many were prepared to do justice to contemporary art. Reverence to the great authors and artists has always been limited to small groups. What characterises capitalism is not the bad taste of the crowds, but the fact that these crowds, made prosperous by capitalism, became “consumers” of literature — of course, of trashy literature. The book market is flooded by a downpour of trivial fiction for the semi-barbarians. But this does not prevent great authors from creating imperishable works.

The critics shed tears on the alleged decay of the industrial arts. They contrast, e.g., old furniture as preserved in the castles of European aristocratic families and in the collections of the museums with the cheap things turned out by big-scale production. They fail to see that these collectors’ items were made exclusively for the well-to-do. The carved chests and the intarsia tables could not be found in the miserable huts of the poorer strata. 

Those caviling about the inexpensive furniture of the American wage earner should ... [realise that w]hen modern industry began to provide the masses with the paraphernalia of a better life, their main concern was to produce as cheaply as possible without any regard to aesthetic values. Later, when the progress of capitalism had raised the masses’ standard of living, they turned step by step to the fabrication of things which do not lack refinement and beauty. Only romantic prepossession can induce an observer to ignore the fact that more and more citizens of the capitalistic countries live in an environment which cannot be simply dismissed as ugly.

3. The Argument of Injustice

The most passionate detractors of capitalism are those who reject it on account of its alleged injustice.

It is a gratuitous pastime to depict what ought to be and is not because it is contrary to inflexible laws of the real universe. Such reveries may be considered as innocuous as long as they remain daydreams. But when their authors begin to ignore the difference between fantasy and reality, they become the most serious obstacle to human endeavours to improve the external conditions of life and well-being.

The worst of all these delusions is the idea that “nature” has bestowed upon every man certain rights. According to this doctrine nature is openhanded toward every child born. There is plenty of everything for everybody, they say. Consequently, everyone has a fair inalienable claim against all his fellowmen and against society that he should get the full portion which nature has already allotted to him. The eternal laws of natural and divine justice require that nobody should appropriate to himself what by rights belongs to other people. The poor are needy therefore only because unjust people have deprived them of their birthright. It is the task of the church and the secular authorities to prevent such spoliation and to make all people prosperous.

Every word of this doctrine is false. Nature is not bountiful but stingy. It has restricted the supply of all things indispensable for the preservation of human life. It has populated the world with animals and plants to whom the impulse to destroy human life and welfare is inwrought. It displays powers and elements whose operation is damaging to human life and to human endeavours to preserve it. Man’s survival and well-being are an achievement of the skill with which he has utilised the main instrument with which nature has equipped him — reason.

Men, cooperating under the system of the division of labour, have created all the wealth which the daydreamers consider as a free gift of nature. With regard to the “distribution” of this wealth, it is nonsensical to refer to an allegedly divine or natural principle of justice. What matters is not the allocation of portions out of a fund presented to man by nature. The problem is rather to further those social institutions which enable people to continue and to enlarge the production of all those things which they need.

The World Council of Churches, an ecumenical organisation of Protestant Churches, declared in 1948: “Justice demands that the inhabitants of Asia and Africa, for instance, should have the benefits of more machine production.” This makes sense only if one implies that the Lord presented mankind with a definite quantity of machines and expected that these contrivances will be distributed equally among the various nations. Yet the capitalistic countries were bad enough to take possession of much more of this stock than “justice” would have assigned to them and thus to deprive the inhabitants of Asia and Africa of their fair portion. What a shame!

The truth is that the accumulation of capital and its investment in machines, the source of the comparatively greater wealth of the Western peoples, are due exclusively to laissez-faire capitalism which the same document of the churches passionately misrepresents and rejects on moral grounds. 

It is not the fault of the capitalists that the poorer countries did not adopt those ideologies and policies which would have made the evolution of autochthonous capitalism possible. 

Neither is it the fault of the capitalists that the policies of these nations thwarted the attempts of foreign investors to give them “the benefits of more machine production.” No one contests that what makes hundreds of millions in these nations destitute is that they cling to primitive methods of production and miss the benefits which the employment of better tools and up-to-date technological designs could bestow upon them. But there is only one means to relieve their distress — namely, the full adoption of laissez-faire capitalism. What they need is private enterprise and the accumulation of new capital, capitalists, and entrepreneurs. It is nonsensical to blame capitalism and the capitalistic nations of the West for the plight the backward peoples have brought upon themselves. The remedy indicated is not “justice” but the substitution of sound, i.e., laissez-faire, policies for unsound policies.

It was not vain disquisitions about a vague concept of justice that raised the standard of living of the common man in the capitalistic countries to its present height, but the activities of men dubbed as “rugged individualists” and “exploiters.” The poverty of the backward nations is due to the fact that their policies of expropriation, discriminatory taxation, and foreign exchange control prevent the investment of foreign capital while their domestic policies preclude the accumulation of indigenous capital.

All those rejecting capitalism on moral grounds as an unfair system are deluded by their failure to comprehend what capital is, how it comes into existence, and how it is maintained — and what the benefits are which are derived from its employment in production processes.

The only source of the generation of additional capital goods is saving. If all the goods produced are consumed, no new capital comes into being. But if consumption lags behind production and the surplus of goods newly produced over goods consumed is utilised in further production processes, these processes are henceforth carried out by the aid of more capital goods. 

All the capital goods are intermediary goods, stages on the road that leads from the first employment of the original factors of production, i.e., natural resources and human labour, to the final turning out of goods ready for consumption. They all are perishable. They are, sooner or later, worn out in the processes of production. If all the products are consumed without replacement of the capital goods which have been used up in their production, capital is consumed. If this happens, further production will be aided only by a smaller amount of capital goods and will therefore render a smaller output per unit of the natural resources and labor employed. To prevent this sort of dissaving and disinvestment, one must dedicate a part of the productive effort to capital maintenance, to the replacement of the capital goods absorbed in the production of usable goods.

Capital is not a free gift of God or of nature. It is the outcome of a provident restriction of consumption on the part of man. It is created and increased by saving and maintained by the abstention from dissaving.

Neither have capital or capital goods in themselves the power to raise the productivity of natural resources and of human labor. Only if the fruits of saving are wisely employed or invested, do they increase the output per unit of the input of natural resources and of labor. If this is not the case, they are dissipated or wasted.

The accumulation of new capital, the maintenance of previously accumulated capital and the utilisation of capital for raising the productivity of human effort are the fruits of purposive human action. They are the outcome of the conduct of thrifty people who save and abstain from dissaving, viz., the capitalists who earn interest; and of people who succeed in utilizing the capital available for the best possible satisfaction of the needs of the consumers, viz., the entrepreneurs who earn profit.

Neither capital (or capital goods) nor the conduct of the capitalists and entrepreneurs in dealing with capital could improve the standard of living for the rest of the people, if these noncapitalists and nonentrepreneurs did not react in a certain way. If the wage earners were to behave in the way which the spurious “iron law of wages” describes and would know of no use for their earnings other than to feed and to procreate more offspring, the increase in capital accumulated would keep pace with the increase in population figures. All the benefits derived from the accumulation of additional capital would be absorbed by multiplying the number of people. However, men do not respond to an improvement in the external conditions of their lives in the way in which rodents and germs do. They know also of other satisfactions than feeding and proliferation. Consequently, in the countries of capitalistic civilisation, the increase of capital accumulated outruns the increase in population figures. To the extent that this happens, the marginal productivity of labour is increased as against the marginal productivity of the material factors of production. There emerges a tendency toward higher wage rates. The proportion of the total output of production that goes to the wage earners is enhanced as against that which goes as interest to the capitalists and as rent to the land owners. 

To speak of the productivity of labour makes sense only if one refers to the marginal productivity of labour, i.e., to the deduction in net output to be caused by the elimination of one worker. Then it refers to a definite economic quantity, to a determinate amount of goods or its equivalent in money. The concept of a general productivity of labour as resorted to in popular talk about an allegedly natural right of the workers to claim the total increase in productivity is empty and indefinable. It is based on the illusion that it is possible to determine the shares that each of the various complementary factors of production has physically contributed to the turning out of the product. If one cuts a sheet of paper with scissors, it is impossible to ascertain quotas of the outcome to the scissors (or to each of the two blades) and to the man who handled them. To manufacture a car one needs various machines and tools, various raw materials, the labour of various manual workers and, first of all, the plan of a designer. But nobody can decide what quota of the finished car is to be physically ascribed to each of the various factors the cooperation of which was required for the production of the car.

For the sake of argument, we may for a moment set aside all the considerations which show the fallacies of the popular treatment of the problem and ask: Which of the two factors, labour or capital, caused the increase in productivity? But precisely if we put the question in this way, the answer must be: capital. What renders the total output in the present-day United States higher (per head of manpower employed) than output in earlier ages or in economically backward countries is the fact that the contemporary American worker is aided by more and better tools. If capital equipment (per head of the worker) were not more abundant than it was three hundred years ago, say, then output (per head of the worker) would not be higher. What is required to raise, in the absence of an increase in the number of workers employed, the total amount of America’s industrial output is the investment of additional capital that can only be accumulated by new saving. It is those saving and investing to whom credit is to be given for the multiplication of the productivity of the total labour force.

What raises wage rates and allots to the wage earners an ever increasing portion out of the output which has been enhanced by additional capital accumulation is the fact that the rate of capital accumulation exceeds the rate of increase in population. The official doctrine passes over this fact in silence or even denies it emphatically. But the policies of bureaucrats and labour unions clearly show that their leaders are fully aware of the correctness of the theory which they publicly smear as silly bourgeois apologetics. They are eager to restrict the number of job seekers in the whole country by occupational licensing and anti-immigration laws, and in each segment of the labour market by preventing the influx of newcomers.

That the increase in wage rates does not depend on the individual worker’s “productivity,” but on the marginal productivity of labour, is clearly demonstrated by the fact that wage rates are moving upward also for performances in which the “productivity” of the individual has not changed at all. There are many such jobs. A barber shaves a customer today precisely in the same manner his predecessors used to shave people two hundred years ago. A butler waits at the table of the British prime minister in the same way in which once butlers served Pitt and Palmerston. In agriculture some kinds of work are still performed with the same tools in the same way in which they were performed centuries ago. Yet the wage rates earned by all such workers are today much higher than they were in the past. They are higher because they are determined by the marginal productivity of labour. The employer of a butler withholds this man from employment in a factory and must therefore pay the equivalent of the increase in output which the additional employment of one man in a factory would bring about. It is not any merit on the part of the butler that causes this rise in his wages, but the fact that the increase in capital invested surpasses the increase in the number of hands.

All pseudo-economic doctrines which depreciate the role of saving and capital accumulation are absurd. What constitutes the greater wealth of a capitalistic society as against the smaller wealth of a noncapitalistic society is the fact that the available supply of capital goods is greater in the former than in the latter. 

What has improved the wage earners’ standard of living is the fact that the capital equipment per head of the men eager to earn wages has increased. It is a consequence of this fact that an ever increasing portion of the total amount of usable goods produced goes to the wage earners. None of the passionate tirades of Marx, Keynes and a host of less well known authors could show a weak point in the statement that there is only one means to raise wage rates permanently and for the benefit of all those eager to earn wages — namely, to accelerate the increase in capital available as against population. If this be “unjust,” then the blame rests with nature and not with man.

* * * * 

Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973) was the acknowledged leader of the Austrian School of economic thought, a prodigious originator in economic theory, and a prolific author. Mises' writings and lectures encompassed economic theory, history, epistemology, government, and political philosophy. (Some cogent quotes here from the great man.)

This post previously appeared at the Mises Blog.

"Logical fallacies are not the only errors that retard thinking. Conceptual fallacies do, too, and often in subtler, more destructive ways."

"Logical fallacies are not the only errors that retard thinking. Conceptual fallacies do, too, and often in subtler, more destructive ways. ..."[These f]allacies ... include package-deals, anti-concepts, frozen abstractions, floating abstractions, and stolen concepts. Below are definitions and examples of each, along with brief indications of the principles they violate. ...

"The fallacy of package-dealing consists in conceptually combining things that are superficially similar but essentially different and, thus, logically do not belong under the same concept. If and when we commit this fallacy, we muddle our thinking about the subject in question and make clear communication impossible. ... 

    "An extremely common instance of package-dealing is the mental blending of 'majority rule' and 'rights-protecting social system' under the term 'democracy.' ... 'Power' is a[nother] package-deal when used to equate 'economic power' with 'political power.' ...

"An anti-concept is a kind of package-deal, in that it combines ideas that logically don’t belong together. But an anti-concept is different from a regular package-deal, in that it is intended to cause conceptual confusion and harm. As [Ayn] Rand defines it, an anti-concept is an unnecessary and rationally unusable term intended to replace and obliterate some legitimate concept(s) in people’s minds. ...

    "The alleged meaning of 'social justice' [for example] is 'the moral imperative of treating people fairly with respect to various social matters.' Its actual meaning is 'the moral imperative of coercively redistributing wealth and forcing individuals and institutions to act against their judgment for the sake of various groups whose individual members allegedly can’t think or live on their own.' In other words, 'social justice' is the soft bigotry of low expectations—fused with the hard coercion of a government gun.
    "The purpose of the anti-concept of 'social justice' is to obliterate the concept of actual justice in people’s minds. And, when people accept the phrase as legitimate and try to use it, that is what it does. ...

"The fallacy of freezing an abstraction consists in making a false equation by substituting a particular conceptual concrete for the wider abstract class to which it belongs. Like a package-deal, it involves integrating concepts in disregard of the need for crucial distinctions.
    "[Ayn] Rand’s seminal example of this fallacy is the equating of 'morality' with 'altruism' by substituting a particular morality (the morality of self-sacrifice) for the whole, general class 'morality.' ...

"Conceptual knowledge is hierarchical. Higher-level concepts, such as mammal, animal, mile, and tyranny, presuppose and depend on lower-level concepts, all the way down to first-level concepts, whose referents are at the perceptual level, such as dog, bird, inch, and force (e.g., a punch in the face). In order to know what a mammal is, you must first understand a chain of more basic concepts, including fertilization, reproduction, animal, and various kinds of animals (e.g., cats, dogs, birds, fish). Without this more basic knowledge, the concept of mammal wouldn’t and couldn’t have meaning in your mind.
    "This principle of hierarchy applies to all conceptual knowledge. Higher-level (more abstract) concepts can be understood and have meaning in someone’s mind only to the extent that he grasps the lower-level (more basic) concepts that give rise to them. And there are essentially two ways people can violate this principle: via floating abstractions and via stolen concepts. 

    "When someone uses a word or phrase that is not supported in his mind by a structure of more basic ideas that are ultimately grounded in perceptual facts, he is using a floating abstraction—an abstraction disconnected from reality in his mind, disconnected from the things the idea refers to, disconnected from the facts that give 't meaning.
    "For example: 'Everyone has a right to a living wage.' If someone uses the word 'right' this way, he doesn’t know what a right is. He doesn’t know what the concept means, what it refers to in reality. He doesn’t know the facts that give rise to our need for the concept. (Or, if he does, he is committing a more grievous fallacy; see concept-stealing below.) ... 'America is a democracy.' If someone thinks or says such a thing, he doesn’t know what “democracy” means (see “democracy” as a package-deal above). The term is a floating abstraction in his mind. 'From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.' If someone chants such nonsense, he has no idea what 'free' means. The term is a floating abstraction in his mind.
    "Floating abstractions abound. Be on the lookout for them in your own mind and in the claims of others. ...

"Now, if someone goes beyond merely using a concept that is disconnected from reality and uses a concept while denying or ignoring more basic, lower-level concepts on which it logically depends, he is committing the fallacy of concept-stealing.
    "Here, as with floating abstractions, the operative principle is the hierarchical nature of conceptual knowledge. Higher-level, more abstract knowledge is built on lower-level, more basic knowledge, all the way down to sensory perception, our direct cognitive contact with reality. Concept-stealing consists in using a higher-level concept while denying or ignoring a lower-level concept(s) on which it depends for its meaning.

    "Examples: ... When someone claims that an experiment has shown that determinism is true—that all human action is antecedently necessitated by forces beyond our control—he steals the concepts of 'experiment' and 'true.' ... When someone claims the senses are invalid, he steals the concept of 'invalid.' (Invalid, in this context, means 'incapable of delivering knowledge of reality.') ....

    "Stolen concepts are rampant in philosophic discussions. And they not only cause confusion; they also make way for much mischief and lead people to waste ungodly amounts of time pondering and debating things that don’t exist, don’t make sense, or don’t matter. Be on the lookout for them. ...

"Keeping your thinking connected to reality is essential to success in reality. And that’s the only kind of success there can be."

~ Craig Biddle from his post 'Conceptual Fallacies and How to Avoid Them'

"To Fix Economics, Try *Teaching* Economics"

 

"Economics education has major problems. Doctoral programmes are churning out applied mathematicians and statisticians with little to no knowledge of price theory. At the undergraduate level, social control ('market failure!') and activism ('inequality!') have replaced careful reasoning about markets and politics. Very few programmes instil in students an appreciation for the power and universality of the economic way of thinking."

~ Alexander Salter from his article 'To Fix Economics, Try Teaching Economics'

2020" When "racial politics " took "a deranged and very strange step backwards."

"What came to be known as ‘wokery’ had long been in gestation. .... The first year of lockdown was ... when ... [p]erceptions of race shifted profoundly. The idea that individuals and institutions were ‘unconsciously’ or ‘systemically’ racist had already been established; but this belief, intimating that there was something inherently problematic with white America itself, was now pushed to its extreme. To be white now became problematic in itself. Whiteness became a mark of original sin.
    "Anything associated with the white man and mainstream America was now deemed racist. A pamphlet titled ‘White Supremacy Culture’, published in the late 1990s by academic Tema Okun, proved highly influential. In it, Okun denounced as racist the following ‘white’ values: perfectionism, a sense of urgency, worship of the written word, individualism and objectivity. ‘In this worldview’, writes Bowles, ‘if black people do somehow exhibit urgency or perfectionism, it means there has been internalised whiteness. And that is a type of death for that black person.’ The new racism had simultaneously demonised whiteness and pathologised blackness.
    "Racial politics had taken a deranged and very strange step backwards. ...
    "The grotesque excesses of identitarian politics in America may seem like something from another planet."

~ Patrick West, from his review 'The year America went mad' of Nellie Bowles's new book Morning After the Revolution: Dispatches from the Wrong Side of History

After the UK election, what is the future of British conservatism?

Conservative Party MP (and Austrian economics enthusiast) Steve Baker lost his High Wycombe seat in the UK election. He was asked about the future of the Conservative Party, about which he has himself been severely critical even when in government, and if "small c" conservative policies were the cause of Britain's problems. [Starts at 9:16]

“GB NEWS INTERVIEWER: What is the future of British conservatism?”

“Whatever problems Britain has got, they weren't caused by government being limited, by taxes being too low, by budgets being balanced, or by debt being too low — or even by money being too tight with high interest rates, because we haven't had those. …
    “The problem is that we've had big government. High spending. Lots of debt, QE and cheap credit. That is not conservative economic policy. And the problem is we've really — and I've said this in all the interviews I've done for 50 years — the [whole] Western world has been living systematically beyond its means and using cheap credit and now QE to cover the gap. And you can't do that without manufacturing Mass Injustice. This is why people can't afford houses — young people particularly. If you pump lots of cheap credit into houses don't be surprised if the price soars, particularly when planning law constrains the supply of land.
    “These are disastrous policies. But in the end, they arise because the state spends too much. So the future of conservatism actually is to face the real world as it is which is that you can't spend more than you're earning in the long run. And your viewers know that.”

 Meanwhile, Razi Ginsberg and Morgan Carter at the Ayn Rand Centre UK observe that things can only get worse ...

"Envy was once considered to be one of the Seven Deadly Sins..."

"Envy was once considered to be one of the Seven Deadly Sins, before it became one of the most admired under its new name, 'Social Justice'."

~ Thomas Sowell, from his book The Quest for Cosmic Justice

 

Sowell on "income distribution"

Income 'distribution': "The cold fact is most income is not distributed. It is earned.”

~ Thomas Sowell, from his book Wealth, Poverty & Politics

 

What's 'woke'? Let me explain.

 

You hear it all the time now. 'Woke.' "He's woke." "She's woke." "That's woke." Woke, woke. woke. You hear it all the time.

But awake to what?

James Lindsay likes tweaking 'woke' noses, and he's a fairly knowledgable chap on the subject. "There's a right name for the 'Woke' ideology," he explains, "and it's 'Critical Constructivism.' 

Critical constructivist ideology is what you "wake up" to when you go 'Woke'." He explains in a lengthy Twitter thread:

Reading this book [above], which originally codified it in 2005, is like reading a confession of Woke ideology. Let's talk about it.
    The guy whose name is on the cover of that book is credited with codifying critical constructivism, or as it would be better to call it, critical constructivist ideology (or ideologies). His name is Joe Kincheloe, he was at Magill University, and he was a critical pedagogue.
    Just to remind you, critical pedagogy is a form of brainwashing posing as education — it is the application of critical theory to educational theory and praxis, as well as the teaching and practice of critical theories in schools. ... [C]ritical pedagogy was developed ... to use educational materials as a 'mediator to political knowledge,' i.e., an excuse to brainwash.
    The point of critical pedagogy is to use education as a means not to educate, but to raise a critical consciousness in students instead. That is, its purpose is to make them 'Woke.' What does that entail, though? It means becoming a critical constructivist, as Kincheloe details.

As some people have said, it always starts with teacher mis-education. 

Note what we've already said, though. Yes, Marcuse. Yes, intersectionality. Yes, CRT and Queer Theory et cetera. Yes, yes, yes. That's Woke, BUT Woke was born and bred in education schools. I first recognised this right after [Helen Pluckrose and I] published our 2020 book 'Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything About Race, Gender, and Identity—and Why This Harms Everybody.'
    Critical pedagogy, following people like Henry Giroux and Joe Kincheloe, forged together the religious liberationist Marxism of [Paulo] Freire, literally a Liberation Theologian, with the 'European theorists,' including both Critical Marxists like Marcuse and postmodernists like Foucault.
    In other words, when Jordan Peterson identifies what we now call 'Woke' as 'postmodern neo-Marxism,' he was exactly right. ["Yes, no, and sort of," says philosopher Stephen Hicks.] It was a neo-Marxist critique that had taken a postmodern turn away from realism and reality. The right name for that is 'critical constructivism.'

CRITICAL CONSTRUCTIVISM CONTAINS (OR SYNTHESISES) two disparate parts: 'critical,' which refers to Critical Theory (that is, neo-Marxism or Critical Marxism), and 'constructivism,' which refers to the constructivist thinking at the heart of postmodernism and poststructuralism.
Critical Theory we all already generally understand at this point. The idea is pretty simple: 

• ruthless criticism of everything that exists; 

• calling everything you want to control 'oppression' until you control it; 

• finding a new proletariat in 'ghetto populations'; blah blah blah.

    More accurately, Critical Theory means believing the world and the people in it are contoured by systems of social, cultural, and economic power that are effectively inescapable and all serve to reproduce the 'existing society' (status quo) and its capitalist engine.

    Critical Theory is not concerned with the operation of the world, 'epistemic adequacy' (i.e., knowing what you're talking about), or anything else. They're interested in how systemic power shapes and contours all things and how they're experienced, to which they give a (neo)-Marxist critique.
    Constructivism is a bit less familiar for two reasons:
We've done a lot of explaining and criticising Critical Theory already, so people are catching on, and it's a downright alien intellectual landscape that is almost impossible to believe anyone actually believes. 

You're already very familiar with the language of constructivism: 'X is a social construct.' Constructivism fundamentally believes that the world is socially constructed. That's a profound claim. So are people as part of the world. That's another profound claim. So is power. I need you to stop thinking you get it and listen now because you're probably already rejecting the idea that anyone can be a constructivist who believes the world is itself socially constructed. That's because you're fundamentally a realist, but they are not realists at all.
    Constructivists believe, as Kincheloe says explicitly, that nothing exists before perception. That means that, to a constructivist, some objective shared reality doesn't exist. To them, there is no reality except the perception of reality, and the perception of reality is constructed by power.
    I need you to stop again because you probably reject getting it again. They really believe this. There is no reality except perceived reality. Reality is perceived according to one's social and political position with respect to prevailing dominant power. Do you understand?
    Constructivism rejects the idea of an objective shared reality that we can observe and draw consistent conclusions about. Conclusions are the result of perceptions and interpretations, which are colored and shaped by dominant power, mostly in getting people to accept that power.
    In place of an objective shared reality we can draw conclusions about, we all inhabit our own 'lived realities' that are shaped by power dynamics that primarily play out on the group level, hence the need for 'social justice' to make power equitable among and across groups.
    Because (critical) constructivist ideologies believe themselves the only way to truly study the effects of systemic dominant power, they have a monopoly on knowing how it works [despite the contradiction in terms], who benefits, and who suffers oppression because of it. Their interpretation is the only game in town.
    All interpretations that disagree with critical constructivism [they insist] do so for one or more bad reasons, for example:

• not knowing the value of critical constructivism, 
• being motivated to protect one's power on one or more levels, 
• prejudice and hate, or
• having bought the dominant ideology's terms, etc. 

CRITICAL CONSTRUCTIVISM IS PARTICULARLY HOSTILE to 'Western' science, favouring what it calls 'subjugated knowledges. This should all feel very familiar right now [hello Mātauranga Māori], and it's worth noting that Kincheloe is largely credited with starting the idea of 'decolonising' knowledge. 

    Kincheloe, in his own words, explains that critical constructivism is a 'weltanshuuang,' that is, a worldview, based on a 'critical hermeneutical' understanding of experienced reality. This means it intends to interpret everything through critical constructivism.
    In other words, critical constructivism is a hermetically-sealed ideological worldview (a cult worldview) that claims a monopoly on interpretation of the world by virtue of its capacity to call anything that challenges it an unjust application of self-serving dominant power.
    When you are "Woke," you are a critical constructivist, or at least suffer ideological contamination by critical constructivism, whether you know it or not. You believe important aspects of the world are socially (politically) constructed, that power is the main variable, etc.
    More importantly, you believe that perception (of unjust power) combined with (that) interpretation of reality is a more faithful description of reality than empirical fact or logical consistency, which are "reductionist" to critical constructivists.
    This wackadoodle (anti-realist) belief is a consequence of the good-ol' Hegelian/Marxist dialectic that critical constructivism imports wholesale. As Kincheloe explains, his worldview is better because it knows knowledge is both subjective and objective at the same time.
    He phrases it that all knowledge requires interpretation, and that means knowledge is constructed from the known (objective) and the knower (subjective) who knows it. It isn't "knowledge" at all until interpretation is added, and critical constructivist interpretation is best.
    Why is critical constructivist interpretation best? Here comes another standard Marxist trick: because it's the only one (self)-aware of the fact that 'positionality' with respect to power matters, so it's allegedly the only one accounting for dominant power systems at all.

WE COULD GO ON AND on about this, but you hopefully get the idea. Critical constructivism is the real name for 'Woke.' It's a cult-ideological view of the world that cannot be challenged from the outside, only concentrated from within, and it's what you 'wake up' to when Woked. [A different name for 'Critical Constructivism': Cognitive Onanism.]
    Critical constructivism is an insane, self-serving, hermetically sealed cult-ideological worldview and belief system, including a demand to put it into praxis (activism) to recreate the world for the possibility of a 'liberation' it cannot describe, by definition. A disaster.
    There is a long, detailed academic history and pedigree to 'Woke,' though, so don't let people gaslight you into believing it's some right-wing bogeyman no one can even define. It's easily comprehensible despite being almost impossible to grok like an insider.
    People who become 'Woke' (critical constructivists) are in a cult that is necessarily destructive. Why is it necessarily destructive? Because it rejects reality, and attempts instead to understand a 'reality' based in the subjective interpretations of power .....
    Furthermore, its objective is to destroy the only thing it regards as being 'real,' which are the power dynamics it identifies so it can hate them and destroy them. Those are 'socially real' because they are imposed by those with dominant power, who must be disempowered. Simple.

To conclude, Woke is a real thing. It can be explained in great detail as exactly what its critics have been saying about it for years, and those details are all available in straightforward black and white from its creators, if you can just read them and believe them.

 

Javier Milei to the WEF: "You're all a bunch of parasites -- long live freedom, dammit!"

 

Javier Milei's speech overnight (translated) to Klaus Schwab's World Economic Forum. 

"This is actually wild to listen to. It sounds like a libertarian

podcast but its the main stage at the bloody WEF!"

NB: Presentation starts at 4:00, speech starts at 5:45

Argentine president Javier Milei went to the WEF's event in Davos, and told them they are a bunch of parasites.

And they deserved it.

But he had something infinitely more important to say: 

that the western world is in danger, and it's in danger because those who are supposed to defend the values of the west are co-opted by a vision of the world that inexorably leads to socialism, and thereby to poverty....

Leaders of the western world have abandoned the model of freedom ... We're here to tell you that collectivist experiments are never the solution to the problems that afflict the citizens of the world .... the key to prosperity is freedom.

Yesterday, Milei said he wanted "to plant the ideas of freedom in a forum that is contaminated by the 2030 socialist agenda." Today, he did just that — and more.

A fuller summary below of his speech, courtesy of @MileiExplains --  but first, a quick overview:

Today I am here to tell you that the western world is in danger, and it's in danger because those who are supposed to defend the values of the west are co-opted by a vision of the world that inexorably leads to socialism, and thereby to poverty.

Unfortunately, in recent decades, motivated by some well meaning individuals willing to help others, and others motivated by the desire to belong to a privileged class, the main leaders of the western world have abandoned the model of freedom for different versions of what we call collectivism.

"We are here to tell you that collectivist experiments are never the solution to the problems that afflict the citizens of the world, rather they are the root cause.

The problem with neoclassical (economists) is the model they love so much does not match reality, so they attribute their own mistakes to the supposed market failure, rather than reviewing the premises of their model.

On the pretext of the supposed market failures, regulations are introduced, which only create distortions in the price system, preventing economic calculation, and therefore, also prevent savings, investment, and growth.

Not even supposedly libertarian economists understand what the market is, because if they did understand it, they would quickly see that it's impossible for something alone the lines of market failure to exist.

Talking about market failure is an oxymoron, there are no market failures, if transaction are voluntary the only context where it can be a market failure is coercion, and the only one that is able to coerce is the state.

Faced with the theoretical demonstration that state intervention is harmful, and the empirical evidence that it has failed, the solution proposed by the collectivists is not greater freedom but rather greater regulation. Greater regulation which creates a downwards spiral until we are all poor, and the life of all of us depend on a bureaucrat sitting somewhere in a luxury office.

Whenever you want to correct a supposed market failure, inexorably, as a result of not knowing what the market is, or as a result of having fallen in love with a failed model, you are opening up the doors to socialism and condemning people to poverty.

Given the dismal failure of collectivist models, and the undeniable advances in the free world, socialists were lead to change their agenda. They left behind the class struggle based on the economic system, and replaced it with other supposed social conflicts, which are just as harmful to life as a community, and to economic growth.

Today's states don't need to directly control the means of production to control every aspect of the life of individuals. With tools like printing money, debt, subsidies, control of the interest rate, price controls, and regulations to correct the so called market failures, they can control the lives and fates of millions of individuals.

They say that capitalism is evil because it's individualistic and that collectivism is good because it's altruistic, of course with the money of others.

 Those who promote social justice, they advocate the idea that the whole economy is a pie that can be shared in better ways, but that pie is not a fixed given, it's wealth that get generated in what Israel Kirzner for instance calls a Market Discovery Process.

 If the state punishes the capitalists when they are successful, and gets in the way of the (Market) Discovery Process, they will destroy their incentives and the consequence is that they will produce less, and the pie will be smaller, and this will harm society as a whole.

Collectivism, by inhibiting the (Market) Discovery Process and hindering the appropriation of discoveries, ends up binding the hands of entrepreneurs and preventing them to provide better goods and services at a better price.

Thanks to free-enterprise capitalism, the world is now living its best moment, never in all of mankind's or humanity's history there has been a time of more prosperity than today. Today's world is more free, more rich, more peaceful, and more prosperous than in any other time of human history. And this is particularly true for those countries that respect economic freedom and the property rights of individuals.

The capitalist, the successful entrepreneur, is a social benefactor, who far from appropriating the wealth of others, contributes to the general well-being of all. Ultimately, a successful entrepreneur is a hero.

Libertarianism is the unrestricted respect for the project of life of others, based on the non-aggression principle, in defense of the right to life, to liberty, and to property. With its fundamental institutions being: Private property, markets free from state intervention, free competition, the division of labor, and social cooperation. Where you can only be successful by serving others with goods of better quality at a best price.

The impoverishment produced by collectivism is no fantasy, nor it is fatalism, it's a reality that we in Argentina have known very well for at least 100 years. We have lived through it, and we are here to warn you about what can happen if the countries in the western world -that became rich through the model of freedom-, stay on this road to serfdom.

We come here today to invite other countries in the western world to return to the path of prosperity. Economic freedom, limited government, and the unrestricted respect for private property, are essential elements for economic growth.

In concluding, I would like to leave a message for all entrepreneurs and business people here, and for those who are not here in person but are following from around the world: 

• Do not be intimidated either by the political caste nor by parasites who live off the state. 
• Do not surrender yourself to a political class that only wants to perpetuate itself in power and keep their privileges. 
• You are social benefactors, you are heroes, you are the creators of the most extraordinary period of prosperity we have ever seen. 
• Let no one tell you that your ambition is immoral. If you make money, it's because you offer a better product at the best price, thereby contributing to the general well-being. 
• Do not yield to the advance of the state. The state is not the solution, the state is the problem itself. 
• You are the true protagonists of this story. 
• And rest assured that starting today, you can count on Argentina as an unconditional ally. 

Long Live Freedom, Dammit!

Watch at the end. The audience response was something like: "Was that real?!"

Philip Bagus, The leading economist in the Spanish-speaking world of the Austrian economics school summed up Milei's speech this way:

And by the way, he didn't fly there by private jet. He went cattle class. 

And he paid his own way.

[Hat tipsAlex Tabarrok, Mauricio Ríos García, agustina vergara cid, Ryan Bourne, Milei Explains, The Vigilant Fox, Creative Deduction, DutchLibertarian]