The NFL Gets a Little Less Statist… Kinda

The Raiders are moving to Las Vegas. This has caused a deal of controversy in different groups. Fans, obviously, aren’t happy. Many sports pundits believe that the NFL is all about money (well, duh). Yet, some players are happy because Nevada has no state income tax. The owners definitely are happy, voting the move in a 31-1 fashion. The Nevadians, I assume, are having mixed feelings. On one hand, they get a new football team – a feat many believed impossible given the vices Vegas promotes and the NFL’s stance on it – on the other hand, they just granted the NFL $750 million in public funding.

Let’s tackle the state income tax first.

From an article on Liberty Hangout,

California’s highest marginal income tax rate is 13.3%, but Nevada has no state income tax, which means a player making $10 million will get to pocket an extra $1.3 million – about as much as the average American will make in their entire lifetime.

So while players are still required to pay the 39.60% marginal income tax to the federal government, they won’t have to pay the onerous Californian state income tax.

Yet, should NFL players be obligated to pay nearly 40% of their income to the government at all? Studies show that 1 in 6 former NFL players go bankrupt after two years of retirement.

Perhaps they are all really bad at financially planning the rest of their life. After all, playing in the NFL is a rather short-lived career. The the average career is anywhere from 3.3 years to 6 years.

Undoubtedly, the players are somewhat to blame for their financial sufferings after retirement. However, maybe if the federal (and in many cases the state) government(s) didn’t steal so much money from them, they would see more financial success after football.

Hey, I only said slightly less statist…

I love football, but I have a big beef with them too.

No my beef isn’t that their entire existence is to make money. Money is a virtue. It is used in order to provide the most amount of value to the most amount of people. It makes exchanges easier. Yet, the NFL makes money in nefarious ways.

The NFL gets public funding to fund all their new stadiums. Of course, public funding is just a euphemism for plundered funds. They steal from the taxpayers to subsidize their stadiums, regardless of if the people really wanted a new NFL team or not. Instead of allowing owners to make these huge financial investments out of their own pockets, the government grants them a socialist pass to steal those funds.

This is the biggest problem in the NFL, and in all sports, today.

This makes them the third NFL team to be relocated in the past 14 months. In those past 14 months, we have experienced *relatively* stable and good economic conditions, at least in the minds of most people.

It would be tragic if the relocation of these teams happens during an economic crises. If times are tough, and people are forced to pay for a stadium, they will only grow worse.

The new stadium would be a form of malinvestment. I doubt any owners, receiving free money from the taxpayers, would stop production of the new stadium. They might be completely unaware that it is a malinvestment since they don’t have their own money invested.

This will just make the recession longer and harder, will reduce the standard of living of most people in the town (excluding die-hard Raiders fans living in Las Vegas), and might curb relocation attempts in the future.

While this might be good news for potential future victims of the coerced subsidization of stadiums, the Browns are still in Cleveland. And that’s tragic for all of us.

Source: Gimme Liberty

Today I discuss an article from High Existence called “10 ‘Spiritual’ Things People Do That Are Total Bullshit”. The article hits home on all the negative effects of taking spirituality too seriously. Further, I add why this New Age movement is doomed because of the underlying communistic nature. It’s a contradiction too. On one hand, spiritual people pride themselves in their highly individualistic sense of self, yet believe in the mantra that we are all one.

The main problem from this New Age movement is their hatred of greed and money. Since they don’t understand capitalism or how real wealth is created, they deem it as evil. The High Existence article touched upon this, and it was a breath of fresh air from this community. I relate many of the points to libertarianism as a whole as well.

I conclude by messing up many a word, while commenting on Steve Bannon’s latest comments on Republicans in Congress and their love for the Cato Institute and Austrian economics…. If only they actually cared about Austrian economics.

Listen:

16 – Why the New Age Movement is Doomed

Source: Gimme Liberty

This past week David Rockefeller passed away. He once expressed,

“Some even believe we are a part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as ‘internationalists’ and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure – one world, if you will. If that’s the charge, I stand guilty and I am proud of it.”

Social media has exploded with an overwhelmingly joyous reaction to David Rockefeller’s death. It might be the only issue where libertarians can agree on most with new age socialists of the Bernie Sanders variety, as the several other factions of libertarianism. Many of us fear the New World Order, however some introspection is due on behalf of the socialists, minarchists, and other varieties of conservatives.

In the course of human existence, we will be presented with just two choices: one world state or no state(s).

The Rockefellers and the Soroses of the world are not hiding what they wish to create. They want to rule the entirety of the world. They wish to wield the monopoly on the legitimacy on the use of force across the entire globe. Reaching new heights of power, prestige, and corruption.

Absolute power corrupts absolutely.  

They will be able to achieve new levels of destruction, of chaos, of unrest. They will have complete control over the world state’s policy, be it economical, social, or political.

They will be unchecked in their power, unrivaled by any state of the past. We will arrive in a new time where despotism is the new democracy. Where irrationality is the new rational. Where force is the new reason, and war is the ultimate peace.

It would be worse than the Irish under British rule. The Jewish living under Hitler. The Chinese under Mao.

We’ve already strayed way too far down this road to arbitrary imprisonment. Where thoughts become illegal. Where dissenters are ridiculed and executed. Where individuality is extinguished.

There are only two defenses for this kind of future: private property anarchy and capitalism. Only a respect for property rights – to not allow the government to deceive us of what is rightfully ours, not theirs – can halt this nefarious behavior. You can only act voluntarily if you implicitly believe in property.

While capitalism is the only economic system to bring about the wealth and prosperity needed to convince the people that there is an alternative.

Their greatest fear is that their plans will be thwarted by ideas. It’s no coincidence that in general time preferences are raising, political ideas are met with violence, and reason is met with contempt.

They are winning, but the fight is long from over. We hold the keys to develop a future based on trust, understanding, and mutual trade rather than lies, deception, and violence.

Pro-tip: Embrace our destiny.

Source: Gimme Liberty

Anarchy (anarcho-capitalism) isn’t a utopian idea, having a state is. I tear down the argument claiming that anarchy is just utopian, and counter it with how having a state is the real utopian idea. If you can’t trust people, trusting some of those people to have an institution with a monopoly on the legitimacy on the use of force is a really bad idea.

Instead, anarchy argues that since everyone acts in their own self-interest then all people should abide by a similar moral code, and nobody should have a monopoly on the use of force.

There’s still rules (just no rulers) and people can still force. Actually, more people are able to use force to protect their private property against all potential invaders, as the state is a common invader in society today.

If people aren’t fit to rule over themselves, then how are people fit to rule over other people?

#CheckmateStatists

Listen:

15 – States are Utopian, Not Anarchy 

Source: Gimme Liberty

Marvel’s last Defender arrived on Netflix late last week. Marvel has been consistently releasing impressive anti-authoritarian movies and television shows as part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe – which might be the greatest idea the market has ever discovered. I’ve only seen the first few episodes, but Iron Fist seems to be a departure from this anti-authoritarian streak.

Big business, rather than big government, is the ultimate antagonist in this series.

A plane crash with his parents left a young Danny Rand to be raised by Chinese monks. Fifteen years later he comes back to Hell’s Kitchen as the Iron Fist and tries to reclaim the business his dad created – Rand Corporation.

His childhood friends, who now run Rand Corporation, are reluctant to allow him to back into the business his father created. At first, you feel bad for Danny Rand, who desperately wants his name back. His property. Rand Corporation.

There’s only one problem: Danny Rand is a socialist.

After struggling to recover his identity, the key that will grant him his right to his father’s inheritance, he immediately begins destroying the business with his socialistic ideas. Marvel’s writers did an egregious job explaining it.

After Rand Co. worked for 10 years on a cure to a disease, they finally brought the drug to market. Danny didn’t allow them to sell it for a profit. The businessmen and women in the room disputed that “this is not how business works.”

That’s it. No talk about all the money they have invested in this drug. Or the labor that went into creating this drug. No explanation whatsoever, just “this is not how business works”.

I find it ironic that the writers of this script didn’t realize Danny Rand was both fighting for his property and promoting socialist views. Two diametrically different ideas.

Despite its downfalls, I still find this series enjoyable. I hope Marvel decides to take a more anti-government stance when Danny Rand meets up with Daredevil, Jessica Jones, and Luke Cage to form The Defenders.

Source: Gimme Liberty

President Trump recently released his budget plan, and the EPA is expected to be cut by 31 percent. Progressives believe this will cause the world to burn. I just wish he’d cut the other 69 percent too.

It’s not that I don’t like the environment, and I wish for the place where I live to vanish from the Milky Way. Or that I want all the animals and plants to go extinct leaving humans with no food.

I just value the human mind – that which distinguishes us from animals – more valuable than the planet we inhabit.

Before humans began building capital goods from the land resources mixed with their labor, the Earth was a brutal jungle. Kill or be killed. The only goal was survival.

What freed us from this primitive violence of nature was human ingenuity. What were once tools for slaughter became tools for production. Where violence once existed, mutual exchanges made peace possible. If the human mind is superior at only one thing it is to create, rather than destroy.

Earth without humans would regress into the wicked wilderness of the past. Humans without Earth could create or find a suitable planet to occupy. For this to be feasible, we need to create the most amount of wealth before Earth’s doomsday.

Despite the concerns of bleeding heart environmentalists, Earth’s doomsday is far in the future. Whatever good (or nefarious) intentions the members of the EPA have, what is objectively true is that they diminish the standard of living of citizens of our country.

Simply their existence performs this task. Every time money is forced out of your paycheck into the hands of the EPA, you have less real wealth. Goods that are deemed harmful for the environment will cost more money, as is implicit with more laws and regulations. Double whammy!

This indirectly lowers the chances we might have of ever leaving Earth, as it diminishes our standard of living while we still are on Earth.

I trust the human mind to solve complex problems, such as abandoning our home planet. When we deprive future generations of the wealth that could have been created, we are only diminishing their chances of survival.

Rather than depleting some of our scarce resources on the EPA, we would better serve future generations by refocusing those resources to (private) space exploration, 3D printing, or any other way of actively preventing our demise.

 

Source: Gimme Liberty

I have been reading Ayn Rand’s magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged, and just read the part where Dagny Taggart visits Atlantis. Atlantis is a retreat for the victims of the looters of the oppressive government. Their only rule is to pledge “I swear by my life and my love for it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.”

Atlantis is the place where men with minds refuged their minds. Where what they made was for them, and for them alone. Where they could voluntarily exchange their products of their mind with others, and create wealth.

In other words, Atlantis embodies property rights. In other other words, Atlantis is Ancapistan.

Atlantis serves as an example of how life could function free of the use of force. How wealth is truly created. It’s more than just fiction – it is a thought deduced and the logical conclusion of a society based on laissez-faire. On voluntary exchanges. On capitalism.

It exemplifies reason and rational thought in the vile face of unforgiving parasites – attacking each the mind, spirit, and body – hoping the host does not become aware that they are sucking the very life out of them.

It serves as a beacon for a world that can be created, since it has already been created – in one individual’s mind.

 

Source: Gimme Liberty

Should we put term limits on members of Congress?

This discussion has split libertarians the same way the government forced the break up of the Avengers. Which side will lead to the most amount of liberty?

Those in favor of term limits point to career politicians, in which 79 members of Congress began serving under Bill Clinton as of 2015.

Some familiar names include Nancy Pelosi, Mitch McConnell, and John McCain. All are some of the worst people in Congress. Watch Rand Paul explain why he thinks McCain makes a strong case for term limits.

They also refer to something on my list of 21 Ways to Better Understand Politics. Point #10 which said politicians spend over half of their time in office fundraising for the next campaign cycle.

However, there’s an even stronger case against term limits. The most evident is heroes for the cause of liberty such as Rand Paul, Thomas Massie, and Justin Amash (and maybe Austin Petersen?) would be forced to give it up. Who knows if these people would be replaced by another candidate who values liberty.

Further is an idea first put forth by Hans Hermann-Hoppe in his book, Democracy The God That Failed. Hoppe argued that monarchy is superior to democracy because the private ownership of government generally lowered other’s time preference scales. Privately owning the government placed incentives upon the kings to get as much future value as possible, which spread throughout the kingdom. This translated into lower taxes, less total war, more savings and more respect for property rights, among other benefits.

Extrapolating from this logic, putting term limits onto members of Congress would raise their time preference scales even higher than they are now. In reality, you’d see politicians trying to do as much harm (in their mind, good) as they could before leaving office.

Since they wouldn’t have to worry about getting reelected, they would be even less accountable than they are now.

The best way to stop career politicians from eroding our liberty is to stop voting for the politicians who do it. More government is rarely a valid solution to a problem ultimately caused by government. In this scenario, it would backfire and end up hurting liberty more than intended.

Source: Gimme Liberty

A post by The Atlantic from 2014 claimed that Millennials’ political views are incoherent. As the article still stands true, and is gaining traction once again, I have decided to release a list of 21 Ways Millennials Can Better Understand Politics:

1. Whatever position John McCain or Lindsey Graham holds, the opposite is more than likely the truth.
2. Paul Krugman, and many other “economists”, completely change their economic stances depending on which party is in the White House.
3. All media is biased. The left just tries to pretend that they are not biased, while the right is more honest about it.
4. If a politician says only the rich (or Mexico) will pay for it, they are lying. You will eventually have to pay for it.
5. Politicians don’t pay taxes, they are paid by taxes. Big difference.
6. Taxation is theft because it is not voluntary. All exchanges, in order to not be theft, must have the consent of all the parties involved.
7. All three branches of government have an incentive to secure their career and gain more influence and power by expanding the size of the state.
8. Identity politics is a dangerous marketing scheme used by Democrats (and the Alt-Right) to divide the people based on attributes out of their control (e.g. race, gender, etc.) and to pit them against other groups for votes.
9. Our voting habits are forcing our unborn children (and grandchildren) to a life of debt.
10. Politicians spend over half of their time in office fundraising for the next election cycle.
11. The Federal Reserve is the government’s bank which has the power to control interest rates (causing malinvestments) and print money through a process called quantitative easing (which causes inflation). Both policies are highly dangerous to our prosperity.
12. America is the most generous nation in the world when it comes to private philanthropy. We like to give. We don’t need forced to give.
13. Children were able to get educated (and still do in the poorest places in the world) without a Department of Education, or any sort of governmental funding for education.
14. The state has oppressed minorities the most. For example, the minimum wage was originally put in place because whites were losing their jobs to minorities. The logic behind it was if they implemented a minimum wage, the minorities would be placed out of the labor market.
15. Politicians are acting in their own self-interest. Politicians don’t care about you. If they pretend to, they just want your vote.
16. The Democratic Party is not the party for the poor. The Republican Party is not the party for the rich. These are just marketing tactics. They are the parties for themselves.
17. The state is responsible for the most heinous acts ever committed by mankind. Slavery and war are just two examples.
18. All politicians lie in hopes your memory is too short to remember it. Truth always comes second to getting reelected.
19. Most of what the government does today would be considered unconstitutional by our founders.
20. Government has no accountability. If they screw up, they claim that they just didn’t have enough funding. In other words, they get a raise for their mistakes.
21. The state is an institution funded off of theft – whether through taxation, inflation, or eminent domain – and fundamentally cannot be fixed.

Source: Gimme Liberty

Rachel Maddow had a YUGE reveal on her show last night – she found Trump’s tax returns from 2005! Yes, someone dug up Trump’s taxes from over 10 years ago. Maddow hyped this up way too much before the airing of her show. When the facts were revealed it claimed that Trump paid $38M in taxes, making over $150M in that year.

The percentage comes out to be a little over 25% of his income. Technically, he was in the tax bracket to pay about 35% of his earnings for that year, but when you make over $150M, you can afford to hire the best people (as Trump would say) to pay the least amount of taxes. Again, the guy just barely making enough to be in the 35% tax bracket may not have this luxury. Most probably wind up paying more in taxes (as a percentage) than Trump. Don’t let a politician fool you into thinking the ultra rich will pay their “fair share”. Whatever that even means.

I’m glad Trump was able to get his taxes reduced, but honestly, he should’ve kept the $38M he paid in taxes. Humanity would have benefitted much more had he done that.

The problem with economic problems, is there what is seen and there is what is not seen. Here we see Trump paying $38M in taxes. What we don’t see is how many more people Trump could have hired if he kept that money.

The rich are the only people to create jobs because they have the capital to do so. Even if you are entrepreneurial minded, if you don’t have the capital you can’t hire anybody. The government doesn’t hire anyone, rather they create perverse incentives for the poor and cunningly cage them in an endless cycle of poverty.

When they steal your money, it’s largely wasted, sometimes even on burying past corruption, as recently happened with the Pentagon. Except it was $125B instead of Trump’s meager (in comparison) $125M.

Imagine how many jobs someone like Donald Trump would create for people with $125B instead of using it to cover up past corruption. The country would have so much more wealth.

And sure, Trump went bankrupt four different times, I know. But how many times would the federal government have gone bankrupt if they couldn’t print or borrow any amount of money whenever they please? My guess is once. They would have never been able to recover from that.

Source: Gimme Liberty