Ecoer Logo
VOTING POWER100.00%
DOWNVOTE POWER100.00%
RESOURCE CREDITS100.00%
REPUTATION PROGRESS26.95%
Net Worth
0.401USD
STEEM
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Detailed Balance

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Account Info

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From Date
To Date
2019/08/16 07:32:27
authorsteemitboard
bodyCongratulations @fee.org! You received a personal award! <table><tr><td>https://steemitimages.com/70x70/http://steemitboard.com/@fee.org/birthday3.png</td><td>Happy Birthday! - You are on the Steem blockchain for 3 years!</td></tr></table> <sub>_You can view [your badges on your Steem Board](https://steemitboard.com/@fee.org) and compare to others on the [Steem Ranking](https://steemitboard.com/ranking/index.php?name=fee.org)_</sub> ###### [Vote for @Steemitboard as a witness](https://v2.steemconnect.com/sign/account-witness-vote?witness=steemitboard&approve=1) to get one more award and increased upvotes!
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permlinksteemitboard-notify-feeorg-20190816t073224000z
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2018/08/16 08:02:24
authorsteemitboard
bodyCongratulations @fee.org! You have received a personal award! [![](https://steemitimages.com/70x70/http://steemitboard.com/@fee.org/birthday2.png)](http://steemitboard.com/@fee.org) 2 Years on Steemit <sub>_Click on the badge to view your Board of Honor._</sub> > Do you like [SteemitBoard's project](https://steemit.com/@steemitboard)? Then **[Vote for its witness](https://v2.steemconnect.com/sign/account-witness-vote?witness=steemitboard&approve=1)** and **get one more award**!
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2017/06/26 10:10:39
authorfee.org
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2016/09/03 22:04:15
authorfee.org
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2016/08/19 11:09:18
authorfee.org
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2016/08/18 23:14:48
authorfee.org
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2016/08/18 23:08:54
authoranyx
bodyYou can verify with #2. :)
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permlinkre-feeorg-re-anyx-re-feeorg-re-cheetah-re-protectionism-is-all-around-us-20160818t003050-20160818t230852447z
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fee.orgreceived 0.013 SBD, 0.019 SP author reward for @fee.org / taiwan-s-social-safety-net-is-the-street-market
2016/08/18 23:08:36
authorfee.org
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2016/08/18 23:08:30
authortelos
bodyExcept that once a TV is designed, it can be manufactured amd sold to millions of people. Once a doctor is trained, he can see maybe 16 people a day. Colleges are constrained by space and teacher availability. This is literally comparing apples to oranges.
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      "author": "telos",
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2016/08/18 22:56:45
authortatianamoroz
permlinkhi-i-am-tatiana-moroz-singer-songwriter-activist-creator-of-the-1st-artist-coin-and-i-will-sing-you-a-song-less-than-3
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2016/08/18 22:54:54
authorcheetah
bodyHi! I am a content-detection robot. This post is to help manual curators; I have NOT flagged you. Here is similar content: https://fee.org/articles/protectionism-is-all-around-us/
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2016/08/18 22:54:39
authorfee.org
bodyShoot me an email at [email protected]. Added the link to the original post on fee.org. thanks!
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2016/08/18 22:53:54
authorfee.org
body@@ -3604,44 +3604,66 @@ %0A%3Cp%3E -Read more articles on our website at +This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the %3Ca @@ -3664,32 +3664,33 @@ he %3Ca href=%22http +s ://fee.org/%22%3Efee @@ -3688,22 +3688,71 @@ org/ -%22%3Efee.org. +articles/protectionism-is-all-around-us/%22%3Eoriginal article %3C/a%3E +. %3C/p%3E
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2016/08/18 22:50:51
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2016/08/18 22:48:45
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2016/08/18 22:47:42
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2016/08/18 22:47:42
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body<p>Imagine this. You are feeling under the weather. You pull out your smartphone and click the Rx app. A nurse arrives in 20 minutes at your home. He gives you a blood test and recommends to the doctor that she prescribe a treatment. It is sent to the CVS down the street, which delivers it to your door in 20 minutes. The entire event cost $20.&nbsp;</p> <p>Sounds nuts? Not so much. Not if health care were a competitive industry. As it is, medical care prices are up 105% in the last 20 years. This contrasts with the television industry, which is selling products that have fallen 96% in the same period.&nbsp;</p> <p>Take a look at this chart assembled by AEI. It reveals two important points. First, there is no such thing as an aggregate price level, or, rather what we call the price level is a statistical fiction. Second, it shows that competitive industries offer goods and services that are falling in price due to market pressure. In contrast monopolized industries can extract ever higher rents from people based on restriction.&nbsp;</p> <p><img style="width: 645px; height: 635px;" src="http://fee.org/media/17509/prices2-1.png?width=645&amp;height=635" alt="" data-id="140455"></p> <p>Consider each product or service shown. College is heavy subsidized, regulated, and exclusionary, and the costs are soaring. The textbook industry is hobbled by extreme copyright regulation, and can depend on captive buyers. Childcare is one of the most regulated industries in the country. Not just anyone can enter. Every aspect of childcare provision is controlled by the state.&nbsp;</p> <p>On the other hand, software, wireless service, toys and and TVs (see: free trade) exist in relatively freer market settings. The price pressure is down.&nbsp;</p> <p>It's not that complicated, folks. If you want good services, good products, innovative ideas, and low prices, you need competitive markets. The more you control, the higher the prices and the worse the results.&nbsp;</p> <img src="http://fee.org/media/11859/richard-2.png?center=0.42333333333333334,0.5033333333333333&amp;mode=crop&amp;height=287&amp;widthratio=1.3937282229965156794425087108&amp;rnd=131128161580000000" alt="Richard N. Lorenc"> <h5> <a href="http://fee.org/people/richard-lorenc/"> Richard N. Lorenc </a> </h5> <p><strong>Richard N. Lorenc</strong> is the Chief Operating Officer of FEE and Publisher of the <em>Freeman</em>.</p> <p style="font-style: italic;">This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the <a href="https://fee.org/articles/why-large-screen-tvs-are-affordable-and-health-care-is-not/">original article</a>.</p>
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      "body": "<p>Imagine this. You are feeling under the weather. You pull out your smartphone and click the Rx app. A nurse arrives in 20 minutes at your home. He gives you a blood test and recommends to the doctor that she prescribe a treatment. It is sent to the CVS down the street, which delivers it to your door in 20 minutes. The entire event cost $20.&nbsp;</p>\n<p>Sounds nuts? Not so much. Not if health care were a competitive industry. As it is, medical care prices are up 105% in the last 20 years. This contrasts with the television industry, which is selling products that have fallen 96% in the same period.&nbsp;</p>\n<p>Take a look at this chart assembled by AEI. It reveals two important points. First, there is no such thing as an aggregate price level, or, rather what we call the price level is a statistical fiction. Second, it shows that competitive industries offer goods and services that are falling in price due to market pressure. In contrast monopolized industries can extract ever higher rents from people based on restriction.&nbsp;</p>\n<p><img style=\"width: 645px; height: 635px;\" src=\"http://fee.org/media/17509/prices2-1.png?width=645&amp;height=635\" alt=\"\" data-id=\"140455\"></p>\n<p>Consider each product or service shown. College is heavy subsidized, regulated, and exclusionary, and the costs are soaring. The textbook industry is hobbled by extreme copyright regulation, and can depend on captive buyers. Childcare is one of the most regulated industries in the country. Not just anyone can enter. Every aspect of childcare provision is controlled by the state.&nbsp;</p>\n<p>On the other hand, software, wireless service, toys and and TVs (see: free trade) exist in relatively freer market settings. The price pressure is down.&nbsp;</p>\n<p>It's not that complicated, folks. If you want good services, good products, innovative ideas, and low prices, you need competitive markets. The more you control, the higher the prices and the worse the results.&nbsp;</p>\n\n<img src=\"http://fee.org/media/11859/richard-2.png?center=0.42333333333333334,0.5033333333333333&amp;mode=crop&amp;height=287&amp;widthratio=1.3937282229965156794425087108&amp;rnd=131128161580000000\" alt=\"Richard N. Lorenc\">\n<h5>\n<a href=\"http://fee.org/people/richard-lorenc/\">\nRichard N. Lorenc\n</a>\n</h5>\n<p><strong>Richard N. Lorenc</strong> is the Chief Operating Officer of FEE and Publisher of the <em>Freeman</em>.</p>\n\n\n<p style=\"font-style: italic;\">This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the <a href=\"https://fee.org/articles/why-large-screen-tvs-are-affordable-and-health-care-is-not/\">original article</a>.</p>",
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2016/08/18 22:47:00
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2016/08/18 04:26:30
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2016/08/18 02:35:42
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bodyHey, do you have verification that you are fee.org? I can whitelist you if you intend to continue cross-posting articles so you don't get the comment. However I would ask that you do three things to get on the white list: 1 - Include a link in the steemit article to the original post on your website, 2 - Make sure your website links to the steemit article/blog, 3 - Be sure to only cross post new articles (not repost old stuff).
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2016/08/18 01:45:45
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2016/08/18 00:59:45
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2016/08/18 00:52:24
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2016/08/18 00:41:15
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bodyYes, that should be the case. FEE.org is the Foundation for Economic Education. We focus on educating people on Austrian Economics. Carl Menger was a famous Austrian Economist who came up with the idea of subjective theory of value. All value is subjective! Something that the Steemit platform is based on. So we are playing around with the Steemit platform to see how it works!
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2016/08/18 00:31:00
authorcheetah
bodyHi! I am a content-detection robot. This post is to help manual curators; I have NOT flagged you. Here is similar content: https://fee.org/articles/protectionism-is-all-around-us/
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2016/08/18 00:30:03
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2016/08/18 00:30:03
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body<html> <p>In political speak, a protectionist is someone who is against free trade. They want to protect American businesses, and indirectly American workers, from cheap labor offered abroad.</p> <p>The underlying argument is that American workers require, or benefit from, protection from competition.</p> <p>This same argument is used to restrict many other liberties.</p> <p>Crusaders against immigration lament that low wage earning immigrants steal jobs from, and drive down the wages of American born workers.</p> <p>Opponents of Uber and AirBnB claim that hotel owners, and taxi drivers, need to be protected from cheap competition offered in the sharing economy.</p> <p>Even advocates of the minimum wage are protectionists. They feel that workers need to be protected from other workers who would offer to sell their labor at a lower price. This was evident in the first debate over the minimum wage, when white workers felt they needed protection against cheaper, african american labor.</p> <p>The minimum wage was first implemented in the United States nationally in 1931 by the Davis-Bacon act. During the debate in the House of representatives, Rep. William Upshaw (D-Ga.) complained of the “superabundance or large aggregation of Negro labor.” Rep. Miles Allgood (D-Ala.) <a href="http://www.gastongazette.com/article/20160113/NEWS/160119600">said</a>, “That contractor has cheap colored labor that he transports, and he puts them in cabins, and it is labor of that sort that is in competition with white labor throughout the country.”</p> <p>Opposition to immigration, trade, the sharing economy, and a wage set by the market is all the same tired argument, rebranded to hide its proven failure.</p> <h3>It's Always Anti-Competitive</h3> <p>Protectionism fails because the harms of protectionist policies are guaranteed to exceed the benefits. Any benefits transferred to the producers are passed onto the consumer in the form of higher prices. However, because less exchange takes place at a higher price, there is a deadweight loss to the economy as a whole.</p> <p>Protectionism is propped up by a political system of concentrated benefits and dispersed costs that make it difficult to defeat. Imagine you own a hotel, and a bill is sitting on your legislator's desk to ban AirBnB.</p> <p>You will make it known to your legislator, that your support for him, and the support of 100 other hotel owners like you, depends on him signing the bill. Meanwhile the hundreds of thousands of consumers who are hurt by this bill, care more about other things.</p> <h3>The Damage Adds Up</h3> <p>The individual consumer may not care much about the hurt she suffers from a more expensive hotel, but it adds up. Hundreds of thousands of goods are more expensive because of tariffs or quotas. Hundreds of services become more expensive for everyone because of occupational licensing laws.</p> <p>Because of the incentives within the system, this will be one of the most difficult economic problems to fix. It requires vigilance, it requires us to call our representatives while they consider protectionist laws, it requires us to vote for non protectionist candidates. If we do all this, we can rid ourselves of the largest drag on our economy.</p> <h5><a href="http://fee.org/people/daniel-gold/">Daniel Gold</a></h5> <p><img src="http://fee.org/media/17491/danielgold.jpg?anchor=center&amp;mode=crop&amp;height=287&amp;widthratio=1.3937282229965156794425087108&amp;rnd=131159166230000000" alt="Daniel Gold" width="400" height="287"/></p> <p>Daniel Gold is a student at Carleton College.&nbsp;</p> <p>Read more articles on our website at <a href="http://fee.org/">fee.org.</a></p> </html>
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      "body": "<html>\n<p>In political speak, a protectionist is someone who is against free trade. They want to protect American businesses, and indirectly American workers, from cheap labor offered abroad.</p>\n<p>The underlying argument is that American workers require, or benefit from, protection from competition.</p>\n<p>This same argument is used to restrict many other liberties.</p>\n<p>Crusaders against immigration lament that low wage earning immigrants steal jobs from, and drive down the wages of American born workers.</p>\n<p>Opponents of Uber and AirBnB claim that hotel owners, and taxi drivers, need to be protected from cheap competition offered in the sharing economy.</p>\n<p>Even advocates of the minimum wage are protectionists. They feel that workers need to be protected from other workers who would offer to sell their labor at a lower price. This was evident in the first debate over the minimum wage, when white workers felt they needed protection against cheaper, african american labor.</p>\n<p>The minimum wage was first implemented in the United States nationally in 1931 by the Davis-Bacon act. During the debate in the House of representatives, Rep. William Upshaw (D-Ga.) complained of the “superabundance or large aggregation of Negro labor.” Rep. Miles Allgood (D-Ala.) <a href=\"http://www.gastongazette.com/article/20160113/NEWS/160119600\">said</a>, “That contractor has cheap colored labor that he transports, and he puts them in cabins, and it is labor of that sort that is in competition with white labor throughout the country.”</p>\n<p>Opposition to immigration, trade, the sharing economy, and a wage set by the market is all the same tired argument, rebranded to hide its proven failure.</p>\n<h3>It's Always Anti-Competitive</h3>\n<p>Protectionism fails because the harms of protectionist policies are guaranteed to exceed the benefits. Any benefits transferred to the producers are passed onto the consumer in the form of higher prices. However, because less exchange takes place at a higher price, there is a deadweight loss to the economy as a whole.</p>\n<p>Protectionism is propped up by a political system of concentrated benefits and dispersed costs that make it difficult to defeat. Imagine you own a hotel, and a bill is sitting on your legislator's desk to ban AirBnB.</p>\n<p>You will make it known to your legislator, that your support for him, and the support of 100 other hotel owners like you, depends on him signing the bill. Meanwhile the hundreds of thousands of consumers who are hurt by this bill, care more about other things.</p>\n<h3>The Damage Adds Up</h3>\n<p>The individual consumer may not care much about the hurt she suffers from a more expensive hotel, but it adds up. Hundreds of thousands of goods are more expensive because of tariffs or quotas. Hundreds of services become more expensive for everyone because of occupational licensing laws.</p>\n<p>Because of the incentives within the system, this will be one of the most difficult economic problems to fix. It requires vigilance, it requires us to call our representatives while they consider protectionist laws, it requires us to vote for non protectionist candidates. If we do all this, we can rid ourselves of the largest drag on our economy.</p>\n<h5><a href=\"http://fee.org/people/daniel-gold/\">Daniel Gold</a></h5>\n<p><img src=\"http://fee.org/media/17491/danielgold.jpg?anchor=center&amp;mode=crop&amp;height=287&amp;widthratio=1.3937282229965156794425087108&amp;rnd=131159166230000000\" alt=\"Daniel Gold\" width=\"400\" height=\"287\"/></p>\n<p>Daniel Gold is a student at Carleton College.&nbsp;</p>\n<p>Read more articles on our website at <a href=\"http://fee.org/\">fee.org.</a></p>\n</html>",
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2016/08/17 23:14:36
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bodyYes, that should be the case. FEE.org is the Foundation for Economic Education. We focus on educating people on Austrian Economics. Carl Menger was a famous Austrian Economist who came up with the idea of subjective theory of value. All value is subjective! Something that the Steemit platform is based on. So we are playing around with the Steemit platform to see how it works!
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2016/08/17 23:11:09
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2016/08/17 23:03:45
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bodyHi! I am a content-detection robot. This post is to help manual curators; I have NOT flagged you. Here is similar content: https://fee.org/articles/taiwan-s-social-safety-net-is-the-street-market/
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2016/08/17 23:02:48
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2016/08/17 23:02:48
authorfee.org
body<p>Free-marketers are often ridiculed for suggesting the welfare state can be substantially replaced by free enterprise: that we’re smoking funny weed to even suggest that able-bodied adults would be better off with more invigorating freedom instead of a debilitating dole..</p> <h3>The Case of Taiwan</h3> <p>Well, we have a fantastic case study in exactly this: Taiwan. With a GDP per capita about half US levels -- between Spain and Portugal -- Taiwan has a tiny welfare state paired with regulations that are both light and lightly enforced.</p> <p>Result? An explosion in commerce, and apparently near-zero homelessness. Walk anywhere in a Taiwanese city and the streets are alive, all day and all night, with a rotating cast of pop-up businesses that employ mainly low-skill labor while making life a joy for consumers.</p> <p>To give a flavor, take one street near my university, Wenhua St. in Taichung. Starting around 5am, farmers drive in and spread out their produce on folding tables along the street. Shoppers are diverse: elderly who can walk instead of driving out to a megastore, mothers with kids, fathers cooking up breakfast.</p> <p>Around 7am the farmers pack up and in move the breakfast joints, unloading folding tables and stacking chairs off their pickup trucks. Sandwich places, noodle shops, omelettes and full English breakfast. These go until a bit past noon, when they fold up everything on their trucks and out come the night crew: a different set of restaurants selling fried chicken or dumplings, vendors selling clothes, watches, kids’ toys. As the night wears on the beer joints open, selling hot soup and a cold beer. Families, teens, and singles throng the streets until 3am, when the street cleaners come out in preparation for the farmers coming at 5.</p> <p>So hundreds of jobs, small rivers of entrepreneurial income all running off one little street. Each patch of street is recycled 3 or more times a day according to what customers want. And none of it would be legal in most US cities.</p> <h3>The Beauty of Laissez-faire</h3> <p>Three interesting results come out of this laissez-faire approach to small commerce. First, streets in Taiwan are full of shoppers all day and all night. There are none of those dangerous urban deserts that abound in American cities like DC and New York. You can safely roam around at 3am any day of the week, and find tons of pop-up bars or restaurants, packed with laughing people enjoying the night.</p> <p>Second, because laissez-faire allows a robust market to develop, street food in Taiwan is safe, delicious, and ridiculously cheap. We pay between $1.50 and $2 for a full meal, in a country where overall costs are half the US level. So, adjusting for price levels, we pay $3 to $4 for what would cost us easily 3-5 times that in the US. As a result, my family doesn’t eat out once a week like back in the States; we eat out 2 or 3 times a day.</p> <p>Why so cheap? Because the market is substantially left to self-regulate: if a vendor sells bad or dirty food, word spreads and they’re out of business. Other vendors, indeed, enforce this since the reputation of the whole street is at risk. The result is that vendors scrupulously clean their equipment every day; indeed there are services that go around cleaning your food-stall on hire. It’s like nested deregulation: an unregulated service provided to an unregulated service that is, ultimately, “policed” by customers themselves.</p> <p>From my perspective as a customer, the end result is fantastic: clean, delicious food that we can afford to eat every single day of the month. By the way, that is apparently what most Taiwanese now do: it’s standard for people to never cook in, but rather to just pick up $2 meals every night for the family, only cooking for special occasions or for a midnight snack.</p> <p>Third, and possibly most important, is the impact on jobs and self-sufficiency. A Taiwanese friend announced he’d lost his job, and his friends’ first question was: what kind of shop will you open during your job-hunt? Since it’s so easy to start a pocket-business, there’s an entire industry that caters to them. You can lose your job, take the bus, rent a food stand for a month, pay $50 to slap on some signage, have it delivered to some high-traffic spot and get cranking that night on fried twinkies, sausage-buns, whatever you think people want to eat. So sling sausages by night, keep looking for work in the daytime, and when you find a job just take the stand back for your deposit.</p> <p>Freedom and opportunity: that is what underpins true welfare and security. The results are striking: in 3 years here, in a city bigger and poorer than St. Louis, I have never once seen a homeless person. The closest I've seen is an elderly lady who grows orchids and sells them out of a bag.</p> <p>So choose one: job-killing regulations and a welfare state, or reduce burdens on small business and set the people free.</p> <img src="http://fee.org/media/17445/peter_st_onge.png?anchor=center&amp;mode=crop&amp;height=287&amp;widthratio=1.3937282229965156794425087108&amp;rnd=131157361380000000" alt="Peter St. Onge"> <h5> <a href="http://fee.org/people/peter-st-onge/"> Peter St. Onge </a> </h5> <p>Peter St. Onge is an assistant professor at Taiwan's Fengjia University College of Business. He blogs at <a href="http://www.profitsofchaos.com/" target="_blank">Profits of Chaos</a>.</p> <p> Read more articles on our website at <a href="http://fee.org/" target="_blank">fee.org</a></p>
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      "body": "<p>Free-marketers are often ridiculed for suggesting the welfare state can be substantially replaced by free enterprise: that we’re smoking funny weed to even suggest that able-bodied adults would be better off with more invigorating freedom instead of a debilitating dole..</p>\n<h3>The Case of Taiwan</h3>\n<p>Well, we have a fantastic case study in exactly this: Taiwan. With a GDP per capita about half US levels -- between Spain and Portugal -- Taiwan has a tiny welfare state paired with regulations that are both light and lightly enforced.</p>\n<p>Result? An explosion in commerce, and apparently near-zero homelessness. Walk anywhere in a Taiwanese city and the streets are alive, all day and all night, with a rotating cast of pop-up businesses that employ mainly low-skill labor while making life a joy for consumers.</p>\n<p>To give a flavor, take one street near my university, Wenhua St. in Taichung. 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Each patch of street is recycled 3 or more times a day according to what customers want. And none of it would be legal in most US cities.</p>\n<h3>The Beauty of Laissez-faire</h3>\n<p>Three interesting results come out of this laissez-faire approach to small commerce. First, streets in Taiwan are full of shoppers all day and all night. There are none of those dangerous urban deserts that abound in American cities like DC and New York. You can safely roam around at 3am any day of the week, and find tons of pop-up bars or restaurants, packed with laughing people enjoying the night.</p>\n<p>Second, because laissez-faire allows a robust market to develop, street food in Taiwan is safe, delicious, and ridiculously cheap. We pay between $1.50 and $2 for a full meal, in a country where overall costs are half the US level. So, adjusting for price levels, we pay $3 to $4 for what would cost us easily 3-5 times that in the US. 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By the way, that is apparently what most Taiwanese now do: it’s standard for people to never cook in, but rather to just pick up $2 meals every night for the family, only cooking for special occasions or for a midnight snack.</p>\n<p>Third, and possibly most important, is the impact on jobs and self-sufficiency. A Taiwanese friend announced he’d lost his job, and his friends’ first question was: what kind of shop will you open during your job-hunt? Since it’s so easy to start a pocket-business, there’s an entire industry that caters to them. You can lose your job, take the bus, rent a food stand for a month, pay $50 to slap on some signage, have it delivered to some high-traffic spot and get cranking that night on fried twinkies, sausage-buns, whatever you think people want to eat. So sling sausages by night, keep looking for work in the daytime, and when you find a job just take the stand back for your deposit.</p>\n<p>Freedom and opportunity: that is what underpins true welfare and security. The results are striking: in 3 years here, in a city bigger and poorer than St. Louis, I have never once seen a homeless person. The closest I've seen is an elderly lady who grows orchids and sells them out of a bag.</p>\n<p>So choose one: job-killing regulations and a welfare state, or reduce burdens on small business and set the people free.</p>\n\n<img src=\"http://fee.org/media/17445/peter_st_onge.png?anchor=center&amp;mode=crop&amp;height=287&amp;widthratio=1.3937282229965156794425087108&amp;rnd=131157361380000000\" alt=\"Peter St. Onge\">\n<h5>\n<a href=\"http://fee.org/people/peter-st-onge/\">\nPeter St. Onge\n</a>\n</h5>\n<p>Peter St. Onge is an assistant professor at Taiwan's Fengjia University College of Business. 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2016/08/17 19:50:03
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2016/08/17 16:33:27
authorhoruslo
bodyIf you believe in God, you believe that the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela will recover, yes, have faith and still believe in God. On the other hand If you believe in mathematics and modern science, you know that there is no mathematical solution or chemical formula to save the country. That we should be realistic, Venezuela the same or worse than Syria at the level of deaths from violence and has such a large inflation as any country in Africa and increasingly increasing inflation and the dead. Hope and theories are not solutions, believe in miracles either. It is not my intention to offend anyone, I regret the situation of any country or person who does not feel safe in the place you live, just want to expound the harsh reality.
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2016/08/16 19:47:03
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body<html> <p>In his classic 1841 book on financial bubbles, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Memoirs-Extraordinary-Popular-Delusions-Madness/dp/1495373525">Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds</a>, Charles Mackay observed, “Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.”</p> <p>Mackay covered religious and political delusions, too. “We see one nation suddenly seized, from its highest to its lowest members, with a fierce desire of military glory; another as suddenly becoming crazed upon a religious scruple," he recounts, "and neither of them recovering its senses until it has shed rivers of blood and sowed a harvest of groans and tears, to be reaped by its posterity.”</p> <p>Venezuela is sowing its harvest of “groans and tears." Due to the breakdown of civil society in the country, <a href="http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/article95346812.html">even war-plagued Syrians feel more safe</a> in their homes than do Venezuelans. Venezuelans are so hungry that <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2016/07/20/news/economy/venezuela-world-worst-economy/index.html">they cried at the sight of food</a> in Columbia. Recently the hungry broke into a zoo <a href="http://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2016/08/10/thanks-socialism-venezuelans-are-so-hungry-they-broke-into-a-zoo-and-killed-a-horse-for-meat-n2200852">to kill a horse for its meat</a>. Literally, they have become serfs that may be <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2016/07/29/news/economy/venezuela-decree-farm-labor/">required to work 60 days or more</a> in agricultural fields.</p> <p>Venezuela has the <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/venezuela-the-country-that-should-have-been-so-rich-but-ended-up-this-poor-a7038421.html">world's worst rate of economic growth</a>, and the worst inflation rate. It has become like "<a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/venezuela-the-country-that-should-have-been-so-rich-but-ended-up-this-poor-a7038421.html">a gangster state</a> that doesn't know how to do anything other than sell drugs and steal money for itself." <a href="http://time.com/venezuela-brink/">Socialism has virtually destroyed civilization in Venezuela</a> making it seem like a "hurricane [has] swept things away."</p> <p>When the history of this tragic period in Venezuela is written, the population will have plenty of “culprits” to blame. In blaming many will eschew their own responsibility. Some will blame Chavez; others will blame Maduro. Some will follow their beloved leaders and continue to blame the "elite" and the capitalists. The true believers will continue to insist there is no inherent flaw in socialism; they will simply say mistakes were made that will not be made again.</p> <p>We are not the victims of the world we see. Our delusions, our beliefs have consequences. The fact that our delusions are often invisible to us does not make them any less powerful or any less consequential. Again, Mackay observed that a population subject to delusions “only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.”</p> <p>Venezuelans have not yet recovered their “senses.” &nbsp;Caracas radio host Glen Martinez stubbornly insists that the “reforms” that Chavez instituted will never be reversed. “We are not the same people we were before 1999,” Martinez said. Many share Martinez's sentiments; daily the true believers still march and &nbsp;promise to spill their blood in support of the government. &nbsp;&nbsp;</p> <p>There is no better book than Friedrich Hayek’s classic The Road to Serfdom to explain the popular delusions that helped to virtually eliminate the market economy and civil society in Venezuela. Writing during the depths of World War II, Hayek intended his book as a warning “to the socialists of all parties.” What happened in Venezuela can happen wherever a critical mass of the population begins to hold certain delusionary beliefs.</p> <h2><strong>Popular Delusion 1: Freedom Means Freedom from Necessity</strong></h2> <p>Hayek points out that freedom in Western countries traditionally meant “freedom from coercion, freedom from the arbitrary power of other men.”</p> <p>Socialists point to a “new freedom” which is “freedom from necessity” which releases us “from the compulsion of the circumstances which inevitably limit the range of choice of all of us.” &nbsp;</p> <p>Hayek adds, “the demand for the new freedom was thus only another name for the old demand for an equal distribution of wealth.”</p> <p>Believing that these two types of freedom can be combined is delusional. Hayek points out that the new idea of freedom “gave the socialists another word in common with the liberals and they exploited it to the full....Few people noticed [that the word freedom was being used differently] and still fewer asked themselves whether the two kinds of freedom promised really could be combined.”</p> <h2>Popular Delusion 2. Only Coercive Planning Can Coordinate Activity</h2> <p>Almost every individual and organization plans. Writes Hayek, there is no “dispute about whether we ought to employ foresight and systematic thinking and planning our common affairs.” &nbsp;</p> <p>Hayek thought that to plan or not to plan is not “the real question.” Instead, we should ask if “the holder of coercive power should confine himself in general to creating conditions under which the knowledge and initiative of individuals is given the best scope so that they can plan most successfully; or whether a rational utilization of our resources requires central direction and organization of all our activities according to some consciously constructed ‘blueprint.’”</p> <p>The humanitarian disaster in Venezuela has been a long time in the making. In 2010, the hungry waited while "2,340 shipping containers with more than 120,000 tons of rotting food (estimated to feed 17 million people for one month)" sat at the government run port of Puerto Cabello.</p> <p>Believing that the “coercive or arbitrary intervention of authority,” can coordinate and adjust our individual activities is delusional. With this delusion comes disbelief that a market economy can solve problems and advance society. Those who cherish such delusions may find themselves hungry.</p> <h2>Popular Delusion 3: Economic Choice is Not Necessary</h2> <p>Hayek enumerates the warning signs that a society is on the road to socialism. On the road to socialism, people blame “the system” for their troubles and “wish to be relieved of the bitter choice which hard facts often impose upon them.” They “are only too ready to believe that the choice is not really necessary, that it is imposed upon them merely by the particular economic system under which we live.”</p> <p>Chavez was a master blamer; for many years, the population found their own hatreds nourished by his. Capitalism was a frequent target of Chavez’s lies: “[Capitalism is] an infernal machine that produces every minute an impressive amount of poor, 26 million poor in 10 years are 2.6 million per year of new poor, this is the road, well, the road to hell."</p> <p>Like other tyrants, Chavez didn't neglect the old, reliable villain of the Jewish people. He railed, “The descendants of those who crucified Christ... have taken ownership of the riches of the world, a minority has taken ownership of the gold of the world, the silver, the minerals, water, the good lands, petrol, well, the riches, and they have concentrated the riches in a small number of hands.”</p> <p>In blaming "the system," Hayek observes that even well-meaning people ask, “If it be necessary to achieve important ends," why shouldn't the system "be run by decent people for the good of the community as a whole?”</p> <p>As Jeffrey Tucker has observed, “<a href="https://fee.org/articles/socialists-are-scarcity-deniers/">socialists are scarcity deniers</a>.” &nbsp;Socialists exploit the fact that, in Hayek’s words, “we all find it difficult to bear to see things left undone which everybody must admit are both desirable and possible." In societies turning to socialism, there is no appreciation of scarcity. There is no appreciation that “things cannot all be done at the same time, that anyone of them can be achieved only at the sacrifice of others.”</p> <p>Thus, there is support for coercive planning, because individuals “feel confident that they will be able to instill into the directors of such a society their sense of the value of the particular objective.” In other words, there is the delusion that planners will follow their wishes and they will receive more of the goods that they want, sparing them from the necessity of making a choice. Why choose between spending your own savings on housing or education if you've been assured that you are entitled to both at society’s expense?</p> <p>It is delusional to assume that the role of an effective political leader is to control the uncontrollable. To believe that scarcity can be eliminated and hard choices averted is delusional.</p> <p><img src="https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/ea/4f/e3/ea4fe30e5ad7fe21a5a9adb51b57312e.jpg" width="736" height="489"/></p> <h2>Popular Delusion 4: There is a “Common Purpose”</h2> <p>It is essential to understand why there can be no such thing as the “common purpose.” All coercive plans will be win-lose, benefiting some and harming others. Hayek explains, “The welfare and happiness of millions cannot be measured on a single scale of less or more. The welfare of the people, like the happiness of a man, depends upon a great many things that can be provided in an infinite variety of combinations.”</p> <p>The hard to give up delusion of socialists is that there are coercive plans that will benefit all. Venezuelans have seen the means of production nationalized in the name of the common good and with every intervention their standard of living fell further.</p> <p>Nothing can be done for its own sake in a totalitarian state. “Every activity must derive its justification from a conscious social purpose” determined by the totalitarian rulers. “There must be no spontaneous, unguided activity, because it might produce results which cannot be foreseen and for which the plan does not provide. It might produce something new, undreamt of in the philosophy of the planner.”</p> <h2>Popular Delusion 5: The Ends Justify the Means</h2> <p>Those who would coerce believe they know what is best for you. If a few eggs have to be broken, that’s a small price to pay for the socialist omelet. &nbsp;Hayek warns that the idea of "the ends justify the means" leads to amoral totalitarianism: “There is literally nothing which the consistent collectivist must not be prepared to do if it serves ‘the good of the whole’ because ‘the good of the whole’ is to him the only criterion of what ought to be done.”</p> <p>Since there is no majority to agree on a specific plan of action to promote a nonexistent “common good,” the worst get on top in a centrally planned economy.</p> <p>The “worst” will take advantage of the fact that agreement can be more readily forged by focusing on a “negative program.” This negative program revolves around stirring up primitive hatred contrasting “us and “them.” &nbsp;If Venezuelans were not susceptible to the stirring of delusional passions, Chavez and Maduro would’ve been unsuccessful in obtaining “the unreserved allegiance of huge masses.”</p> <p>The “masses” that the “worst” seek to mobilize will include those who themselves are not grounded on principles. Hayek cautions that those having “imperfectly formed ideas are easily swayed;” their “passions and emotions are readily aroused.”</p> <h2>The End of the Road</h2> <p>“To make a totalitarian system function efficiently,” Hayek observed, “it is not enough that everybody should be forced to work for the same ends. It is essential that the people should come to regard them as their own ends.” &nbsp;</p> <p>The end game is a population that doesn’t realize it is on the road to literal serfdom. Hayek writes: “If the feeling of oppression in totalitarian countries is in general much less acute than most people in liberal countries imagine, this is because the totalitarian governments succeed to a high degree in making people think as they want them to.”</p> <p>This is why a totalitarian state seeks to eliminate private schools and socialize education.</p> <p>In 2012 the Chavez government implemented "<a href="http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/04/24/how-maduro-is-interfering-in-venezuelas-schools/">Resolución 058</a>." “The resolution states that all decisions in every school — public or private — must involve parents, teachers, students, workers, and the community” in order to "construct a new model of socialist society." This model includes the belief that the State is the source of well-being.</p> <p>Venezuelans will have to recover from their delusions “one by one.” A point in time will come that, due to their suffering, a critical mass of Venezuelans will no longer think as the government wants them to think. In the meantime, let us remember that Hayek wrote The Road to Serfdom to warn that the descent into socialism can happen anywhere. Let us have empathy for the suffering of the Venezuelans; and as Hayek would have hoped, let us also watch and learn. &nbsp;</p> <p><br></p> <p><a href="https://fee.org/people/barry-brownstein/">Barry Brownstein</a></p> <p>Barry Brownstein&nbsp;is professor emeritus of economics and leadership at the University of Baltimore. He is the author of&nbsp;<a href="http://smile.amazon.com/The-Inner-Work-Leadership-Barry-Brownstein/dp/0984425403?tag=foundationforeco"><em>The Inner-Work of Leadership</em></a>. He blogs at&nbsp;<a href="http://www.barrybrownstein.com/">BarryBrownstein.com,</a> <a href="http://www.givingupcontrol.com/">Giving up Control,</a> and <a href="http://www.americashighestpurpose.com/">America’s Highest Purpose</a>.</p> </html>
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      "body": "<html>\n<p>In his classic 1841 book on financial bubbles, <a href=\"https://www.amazon.com/Memoirs-Extraordinary-Popular-Delusions-Madness/dp/1495373525\">Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds</a>, Charles Mackay observed, “Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.”</p>\n<p>Mackay covered religious and political delusions, too. “We see one nation suddenly seized, from its highest to its lowest members, with a fierce desire of military glory; another as suddenly becoming crazed upon a religious scruple,\" he recounts, \"and neither of them recovering its senses until it has shed rivers of blood and sowed a harvest of groans and tears, to be reaped by its posterity.”</p>\n<p>Venezuela is sowing its harvest of “groans and tears.\" Due to the breakdown of civil society in the country, <a href=\"http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/article95346812.html\">even war-plagued Syrians feel more safe</a> in their homes than do Venezuelans. Venezuelans are so hungry that <a href=\"http://money.cnn.com/2016/07/20/news/economy/venezuela-world-worst-economy/index.html\">they cried at the sight of food</a> in Columbia. Recently the hungry broke into a zoo <a href=\"http://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2016/08/10/thanks-socialism-venezuelans-are-so-hungry-they-broke-into-a-zoo-and-killed-a-horse-for-meat-n2200852\">to kill a horse for its meat</a>. Literally, they have become serfs that may be <a href=\"http://money.cnn.com/2016/07/29/news/economy/venezuela-decree-farm-labor/\">required to work 60 days or more</a> in agricultural fields.</p>\n<p>Venezuela has the <a href=\"http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/venezuela-the-country-that-should-have-been-so-rich-but-ended-up-this-poor-a7038421.html\">world's worst rate of economic growth</a>, and the worst inflation rate. It has become like \"<a href=\"http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/venezuela-the-country-that-should-have-been-so-rich-but-ended-up-this-poor-a7038421.html\">a gangster state</a> that doesn't know how to do anything other than sell drugs and steal money for itself.\" <a href=\"http://time.com/venezuela-brink/\">Socialism has virtually destroyed civilization in Venezuela</a> making it seem like a \"hurricane [has] swept things away.\"</p>\n<p>When the history of this tragic period in Venezuela is written, the population will have plenty of “culprits” to blame. In blaming many will eschew their own responsibility. Some will blame Chavez; others will blame Maduro. Some will follow their beloved leaders and continue to blame the \"elite\" and the capitalists. The true believers will continue to insist there is no inherent flaw in socialism; they will simply say mistakes were made that will not be made again.</p>\n<p>We are not the victims of the world we see. Our delusions, our beliefs have consequences. The fact that our delusions are often invisible to us does not make them any less powerful or any less consequential. Again, Mackay observed that a population subject to delusions “only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.”</p>\n<p>Venezuelans have not yet recovered their “senses.” &nbsp;Caracas radio host Glen Martinez stubbornly insists that the “reforms” that Chavez instituted will never be reversed. “We are not the same people we were before 1999,” Martinez said. Many share Martinez's sentiments; daily the true believers still march and &nbsp;promise to spill their blood in support of the government. &nbsp;&nbsp;</p>\n<p>There is no better book than Friedrich Hayek’s classic The Road to Serfdom to explain the popular delusions that helped to virtually eliminate the market economy and civil society in Venezuela. Writing during the depths of World War II, Hayek intended his book as a warning “to the socialists of all parties.” What happened in Venezuela can happen wherever a critical mass of the population begins to hold certain delusionary beliefs.</p>\n<h2><strong>Popular Delusion 1: Freedom Means Freedom from Necessity</strong></h2>\n<p>Hayek points out that freedom in Western countries traditionally meant “freedom from coercion, freedom from the arbitrary power of other men.”</p>\n<p>Socialists point to a “new freedom” which is “freedom from necessity” which releases us “from the compulsion of the circumstances which inevitably limit the range of choice of all of us.” &nbsp;</p>\n<p>Hayek adds, “the demand for the new freedom was thus only another name for the old demand for an equal distribution of wealth.”</p>\n<p>Believing that these two types of freedom can be combined is delusional. Hayek points out that the new idea of freedom “gave the socialists another word in common with the liberals and they exploited it to the full....Few people noticed [that the word freedom was being used differently] and still fewer asked themselves whether the two kinds of freedom promised really could be combined.”</p>\n<h2>Popular Delusion 2. Only Coercive Planning Can Coordinate Activity</h2>\n<p>Almost every individual and organization plans. Writes Hayek, there is no “dispute about whether we ought to employ foresight and systematic thinking and planning our common affairs.” &nbsp;</p>\n<p>Hayek thought that to plan or not to plan is not “the real question.” Instead, we should ask if “the holder of coercive power should confine himself in general to creating conditions under which the knowledge and initiative of individuals is given the best scope so that they can plan most successfully; or whether a rational utilization of our resources requires central direction and organization of all our activities according to some consciously constructed ‘blueprint.’”</p>\n<p>The humanitarian disaster in Venezuela has been a long time in the making. In 2010, the hungry waited while \"2,340 shipping containers with more than 120,000 tons of rotting food (estimated to feed 17 million people for one month)\" sat at the government run port of Puerto Cabello.</p>\n<p>Believing that the “coercive or arbitrary intervention of authority,” can coordinate and adjust our individual activities is delusional. With this delusion comes disbelief that a market economy can solve problems and advance society. Those who cherish such delusions may find themselves hungry.</p>\n<h2>Popular Delusion 3: Economic Choice is Not Necessary</h2>\n<p>Hayek enumerates the warning signs that a society is on the road to socialism. On the road to socialism, people blame “the system” for their troubles and “wish to be relieved of the bitter choice which hard facts often impose upon them.” They “are only too ready to believe that the choice is not really necessary, that it is imposed upon them merely by the particular economic system under which we live.”</p>\n<p>Chavez was a master blamer; for many years, the population found their own hatreds nourished by his. Capitalism was a frequent target of Chavez’s lies: “[Capitalism is] an infernal machine that produces every minute an impressive amount of poor, 26 million poor in 10 years are 2.6 million per year of new poor, this is the road, well, the road to hell.\"</p>\n<p>Like other tyrants, Chavez didn't neglect the old, reliable villain of the Jewish people. He railed, “The descendants of those who crucified Christ... have taken ownership of the riches of the world, a minority has taken ownership of the gold of the world, the silver, the minerals, water, the good lands, petrol, well, the riches, and they have concentrated the riches in a small number of hands.”</p>\n<p>In blaming \"the system,\" Hayek observes that even well-meaning people ask, “If it be necessary to achieve important ends,\" why shouldn't the system \"be run by decent people for the good of the community as a whole?”</p>\n<p>As Jeffrey Tucker has observed, “<a href=\"https://fee.org/articles/socialists-are-scarcity-deniers/\">socialists are scarcity deniers</a>.” &nbsp;Socialists exploit the fact that, in Hayek’s words, “we all find it difficult to bear to see things left undone which everybody must admit are both desirable and possible.\" In societies turning to socialism, there is no appreciation of scarcity. There is no appreciation that “things cannot all be done at the same time, that anyone of them can be achieved only at the sacrifice of others.”</p>\n<p>Thus, there is support for coercive planning, because individuals “feel confident that they will be able to instill into the directors of such a society their sense of the value of the particular objective.” In other words, there is the delusion that planners will follow their wishes and they will receive more of the goods that they want, sparing them from the necessity of making a choice. Why choose between spending your own savings on housing or education if you've been assured that you are entitled to both at society’s expense?</p>\n<p>It is delusional to assume that the role of an effective political leader is to control the uncontrollable. To believe that scarcity can be eliminated and hard choices averted is delusional.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/ea/4f/e3/ea4fe30e5ad7fe21a5a9adb51b57312e.jpg\" width=\"736\" height=\"489\"/></p>\n<h2>Popular Delusion 4: There is a “Common Purpose”</h2>\n<p>It is essential to understand why there can be no such thing as the “common purpose.” All coercive plans will be win-lose, benefiting some and harming others. Hayek explains, “The welfare and happiness of millions cannot be measured on a single scale of less or more. The welfare of the people, like the happiness of a man, depends upon a great many things that can be provided in an infinite variety of combinations.”</p>\n<p>The hard to give up delusion of socialists is that there are coercive plans that will benefit all. Venezuelans have seen the means of production nationalized in the name of the common good and with every intervention their standard of living fell further.</p>\n<p>Nothing can be done for its own sake in a totalitarian state. “Every activity must derive its justification from a conscious social purpose” determined by the totalitarian rulers. “There must be no spontaneous, unguided activity, because it might produce results which cannot be foreseen and for which the plan does not provide. It might produce something new, undreamt of in the philosophy of the planner.”</p>\n<h2>Popular Delusion 5: The Ends Justify the Means</h2>\n<p>Those who would coerce believe they know what is best for you. If a few eggs have to be broken, that’s a small price to pay for the socialist omelet. &nbsp;Hayek warns that the idea of \"the ends justify the means\" leads to amoral totalitarianism: “There is literally nothing which the consistent collectivist must not be prepared to do if it serves ‘the good of the whole’ because ‘the good of the whole’ is to him the only criterion of what ought to be done.”</p>\n<p>Since there is no majority to agree on a specific plan of action to promote a nonexistent “common good,” the worst get on top in a centrally planned economy.</p>\n<p>The “worst” will take advantage of the fact that agreement can be more readily forged by focusing on a “negative program.” This negative program revolves around stirring up primitive hatred contrasting “us and “them.” &nbsp;If Venezuelans were not susceptible to the stirring of delusional passions, Chavez and Maduro would’ve been unsuccessful in obtaining “the unreserved allegiance of huge masses.”</p>\n<p>The “masses” that the “worst” seek to mobilize will include those who themselves are not grounded on principles. Hayek cautions that those having “imperfectly formed ideas are easily swayed;” their “passions and emotions are readily aroused.”</p>\n<h2>The End of the Road</h2>\n<p>“To make a totalitarian system function efficiently,” Hayek observed, “it is not enough that everybody should be forced to work for the same ends. It is essential that the people should come to regard them as their own ends.” &nbsp;</p>\n<p>The end game is a population that doesn’t realize it is on the road to literal serfdom. Hayek writes: “If the feeling of oppression in totalitarian countries is in general much less acute than most people in liberal countries imagine, this is because the totalitarian governments succeed to a high degree in making people think as they want them to.”</p>\n<p>This is why a totalitarian state seeks to eliminate private schools and socialize education.</p>\n<p>In 2012 the Chavez government implemented \"<a href=\"http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/04/24/how-maduro-is-interfering-in-venezuelas-schools/\">Resolución 058</a>.\" “The resolution states that all decisions in every school — public or private — must involve parents, teachers, students, workers, and the community” in order to \"construct a new model of socialist society.\" This model includes the belief that the State is the source of well-being.</p>\n<p>Venezuelans will have to recover from their delusions “one by one.” A point in time will come that, due to their suffering, a critical mass of Venezuelans will no longer think as the government wants them to think. In the meantime, let us remember that Hayek wrote The Road to Serfdom to warn that the descent into socialism can happen anywhere. Let us have empathy for the suffering of the Venezuelans; and as Hayek would have hoped, let us also watch and learn. &nbsp;</p>\n<p><br></p>\n<p><a href=\"https://fee.org/people/barry-brownstein/\">Barry Brownstein</a></p>\n<p>Barry Brownstein&nbsp;is professor emeritus of economics and leadership at the University of Baltimore. He is the author of&nbsp;<a href=\"http://smile.amazon.com/The-Inner-Work-Leadership-Barry-Brownstein/dp/0984425403?tag=foundationforeco\"><em>The Inner-Work of Leadership</em></a>. He blogs at&nbsp;<a href=\"http://www.barrybrownstein.com/\">BarryBrownstein.com,</a> <a href=\"http://www.givingupcontrol.com/\">Giving up Control,</a> and <a href=\"http://www.americashighestpurpose.com/\">America’s Highest Purpose</a>.</p>\n</html>",
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