The Popular Interpretation of the "Industrial Revolution" - Ludwig von Mises - Mises Daily

The Popular Interpretation of the "Industrial Revolution" - Ludwig von Mises - Mises Daily: "The factories freed the authorities and the ruling landed aristocracy from an embarrassing problem that had grown too large for them. They provided sustenance for the masses of paupers. They emptied the poorhouses, the workhouses, and the prisons. They converted starving beggars into self-supporting breadwinners.

The factory owners did not have the power to compel anybody to take a factory job. They could only hire people who were ready to work for the wages offered to them. Low as these wage rates were, they were nonetheless much more than these paupers could earn in any other field open to them. It is a distortion of facts to say that the factories carried off the housewives from the nurseries and the kitchens and the children from their play. These women had nothing to cook with and to feed their children. These children were destitute and starving. Their only refuge was the factory. It saved them, in the strict sense of the term, from death by starvation."

"The factories turned to the production of more refined and therefore more expensive goods only at a later stage, when the unprecedented improvement in the masses' standard of living they had caused made it profitable to apply the methods of mass production also to these better articles."

"The outstanding fact about the Industrial Revolution is that it opened an age of mass production for the needs of the masses. The wage earners are no longer people toiling merely for other people's well-being. They themselves are the main consumers of the products the factories turn out. Big business depends upon mass consumption. There is, in present-day America, not a single branch of big business that would not cater to the needs of the masses. The very principle of capitalist entrepreneurship is to provide for the common man. In his capacity as consumer the common man is the sovereign whose buying or abstention from buying decides the fate of entrepreneurial activities. There is in the market economy no other means of acquiring and preserving wealth than by supplying the masses in the best and cheapest way with all the goods they ask for."

"The early industrialists were for the most part men who had their origin in the same social strata from which their workers came. They lived very modestly, spent only a fraction of their earnings for their households and put the rest back into the business. But as the entrepreneurs grew richer, the sons of successful businessmen began to intrude into the circles of the ruling class. The highborn gentlemen envied the wealth of the parvenus and resented their sympathies with the reform movement. They hit back by investigating the material and moral conditions of the factory hands and enacting factory legislation."

"Vast areas — Eastern Asia, the East Indies, Southern and Southeastern Europe, Latin America — are only superficially affected by modern capitalism. Conditions in these countries by and large do not differ from those of England on the eve of the "Industrial Revolution." There are millions and millions of people for whom there is no secure place left in the traditional economic setting. The fate of these wretched masses can be improved only by industrialization. What they need most is entrepreneurs and capitalists. As their own foolish policies have deprived these nations of the further enjoyment of the assistance imported foreign capital hitherto gave them, they must embark upon domestic capital accumulation. They must go through all the stages through which the evolution of Western industrialism had to pass. They must start with comparatively low wage rates and long hours of work. But, deluded by the doctrines prevailing in present-day Western Europe and North America, their statesmen think that they can proceed in a different way. They encourage labor-union pressure and alleged prolabor legislation. Their interventionist radicalism nips in the bud all attempts to create domestic industries."

It's a WikiLeaks World, Get Used to It | Jim Harper | Cato Institute: Commentary

It's a WikiLeaks World, Get Used to It | Jim Harper | Cato Institute: Commentary: "No matter where right or wrong lie in the posting of classified military reports on WikiLeaks.org, one lesson should be clear: This is how it's going to be. Technology will continue to undercut secrecy — not just in the military, but in all large organizations."

"Secrecy should be treated as a weakness, to be avoided whenever possible."

"Secrecy is sometimes necessary, and propaganda is a legitimate dimension of war, but as technology and tools of transparency make their way even to remote battlefields, secrecy and propaganda that are at odds with the evidence on the ground will necessarily be less effective."

Saying No Is Not Nihilism | Michael D. Tanner | Cato Institute: Commentary

Saying No Is Not Nihilism | Michael D. Tanner | Cato Institute: Commentary: "It was shortly after Rand Paul won the GOP Senate primary in Kentucky, and MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell was mystified. Why would anyone want to be a senator, she wondered, if he opposed most government programs? 'After all,' she mused, 'isn't that what [legislators] do? They legislate.'

And therein, perfectly encapsulated, is the bias of the mainstream media and the elite political classes, a belief that if there is a problem — any problem — then government must do something to fix it."

"Republicans should not try to do things like the Democrats — only a little less expensively or with a little less bureaucracy — but instead should present an agenda of personal and economic liberty. After all, cutting taxes and reducing regulation is a positive alternative to a Democratic jobs program. Repealing the government takeover of the health-care system is a way to give people better health care. Allowing younger workers to invest a portion of their Social Security taxes is a positive alternative to the debt and taxes to come from a bankrupt system."

Evidence and Denial | Richard W. Rahn | Cato Institute: Commentary

Evidence and Denial | Richard W. Rahn | Cato Institute: Commentary: "Keynesian economics, practiced during the late 1960s and 1970s, became thoroughly discredited with the stagflation of the 1970s — which, in theory, was impossible under the old model — and the subsequent Reagan supply-side boom."

"The economy performed better under Reagan's supply-side policies than President Carter's economic team had forecast it would if their man had been re-elected and continued his high-tax, Keynesian policies. The economy is now performing worse than Mr. Obama's economic team forecast with its Keynesian policies."

Congress Ignores Middle-Class Service Sector | Daniel Griswold | Cato Institute: Commentary

Congress Ignores Middle-Class Service Sector | Daniel Griswold | Cato Institute: Commentary: "American factories can churn out all that stuff with fewer workers because the typical worker is so much more productive than in decades past. Workers today are better educated and armed with cutting-edge equipment, computing power and production methods that enable them to produce far more in an hour of work than their predecessors. Rising productivity is the essence of progress and the foundation of rising living standards.

Manufacturing does represent a smaller share of total employment and output than in decades past, but this is inevitable in an advanced economy. Every rich nation in the world has followed the same path. Manufacturing tends to peak as a share of the economy when per capita income reaches about $15,000. Beyond that, every nation can be said to be deindustrializing."

"Since the early 1990s, two-thirds of the net new jobs created have been in service sectors where the average pay is higher than in manufacturing."

"In 1900, 40 percent of American families earned their living on the farm. Today, fewer than 2 percent of Americans are employed in the agricultural sector. Yet we remain a global leader in agricultural production.

Despite the loss of millions of agricultural jobs in the past century, our fantastically more productive farms continue to produce record output. American farmers today produce twice as much milk as they did in 1900, more than three times as much pork, more than three times as many eggs, nearly four times as much wheat, more than four times as much beef, five times as much corn and eight times as much chicken as a century ago.

Soaring productivity in agriculture and manufacturing has made the goods produced in those sectors more affordable for all Americans. The relative decline of those sectors has freed workers and capital"

Russ Feingold: In the News - Press Releases

Russ Feingold: In the News - Press Releases: "Included in the CSNA are such cost-saving efforts as ending automatic pay raises for members of Congress, cancelling the remaining Wall Street bailout funds, ending unjustified agri-business subsidies, cancelling the purchase of C-17 aircraft the Pentagon doesn’t even want and many others."

The Antiregulation Case - Eric Perkerson - Mises Daily

The Antiregulation Case - Eric Perkerson - Mises Daily: "In addition to the government's major contributions to the risk of this type of disaster, including an incredibly generous liability cap and heavy incentives to drill in deeper, riskier waters, there is virtually nothing in the economy outside the sphere of state intervention.[3] As columnist Sheldon Richmond succinctly puts it, the free market 'has an airtight alibi. It didn't exist.'"

"Regulation, as a proposed solution to this issue, limits the scope of actions that can legally be taken by entrepreneurs and businesses. It either gives them regulations that tell them what they must do, or it gives them regulations that tell them what they must not do. The calculating decision-making of entrepreneurs is replaced by the arbitrary direction of bureaucratic regulators. Profit and loss are no longer tools of decision-making. They are circumvented and ignored.

Litigation, through tort law and strict liability, can provide monetary evaluations of the costs of environmental damage. The costs then imposed on environmental offenders are monetary costs, determined by legal standards in a court of law and by the damages to third parties. Governments can also make businesses pay directly for perceived damages.

The crucial difference between regulation and methods that put monetary costs on environmental damages is that monetary costs can fit into the framework of the market. They enable economic calculation in environmental policy. The public's value of the environment is weighed against the public's value of resources in the calculating and information-gathering market process. Simply assuming that the benefits of environmental policy will outweigh the costs is hardly satisfactory."

"Indeed, most externality problems occur where different actors on the market have conflicting goals with respect to a particular resource, such as ocean water. This arises when property rights are ambiguous or simply nonexistent.[6] In cases where property rights are clearly defined, then damage to any one's property by any other can be dealt with through tort law, and the externality problem is dealt with."

"No voting member of society is in a position to compare the full costs and benefits of an economic decision as complex as those involving resources and the environment.

Oil, as a factor of production, is not valued directly by consumers. It is valued based on the value given to the products it can be used to produce. Many people looking at the effects of the Deepwater Horizon crisis see the oil-soaked pelicans and the fishermen out of business, but these same people cannot possibly see all of the benefits of the use of oil accruing to everyone in the entire economy!

The information about the value placed on oil is communicated and known only through the market in the form of prices. It does not exist in the minds of voters, of individuals, but only in the market. If it is profitable to drill for oil even when all of the environmental damage is charged to the drillers, then the market signal is clear — people value the products more than they dislike the effects on the environment."

Bailouts for Journalists? | Jim Powell | Cato Institute: Commentary

Bailouts for Journalists? | Jim Powell | Cato Institute: Commentary: "An estimated 20 million citizens of the Soviet Union were killed by their own government, and Stalin was responsible for more those deaths than any other Soviet ruler. English author H.G. Wells reported that he 'never met a man more candid, fair and honest ... no one is afraid of him and everybody trusts him.' The English playwright George Bernard Shaw hailed Soviet prisons where victims 'could stay as long as they liked.' President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's ambassador to Moscow Joseph E. Davies purred that Stalin's 'eye is exceedingly wise and gentle.'"

ACTA: The War on Progress, Freedom, and Human Civilization - Gennady Stolyarov II - Mises Daily

ACTA: The War on Progress, Freedom, and Human Civilization - Gennady Stolyarov II - Mises Daily: "ACTA tramples on essential rights that have achieved even mainstream recognition: innocence until one is proven guilty, due process, personal privacy, and fair use of published content."

"Under ACTA, governments would be able to crack down on the fans of these creators, against those creators' own wishes!" "who would be the rights holder here — individual creators, or governments"

"Under ACTA, the very suspicion or allegation of having downloaded or even accessed copyrighted material online would render one's computer open to search without a warrant. Fines and other penalties would apply to refusing permission for a search" "Under ACTA, even viewing a website containing material that infringes a copyright — without the viewer being aware of said infringement's existence — would be considered aiding and abetting the infringement."

" On July 16, 2010, federal authorities shut down Blogetery.com, a site that hosted 73,000 blogs, under the allegation that some of these blogs reproduced copyrighted material. Any reasonable person will recognize, of course, that most of the blog owners probably committed no violation whatsoever, but millions of hours of human effort were nonetheless wiped out by this new kind of random, arbitrary censorship."

How Nigeria's plan to privatize its electricity company could light up Africa - CSMonitor.com

How Nigeria's plan to privatize its electricity company could light up Africa - CSMonitor.com: "Electricity is the critical technology for African countries to master. The difficulty is more political-economic than technological. State-ownership, while sometimes warranted, has been an utter failure in the electricity sector in Nigeria and in many other African countries."