Life Behind the IRon Drape: Government Intervention

Blog description.

Accentuating the Liberal in Classical Liberal: Advocating Ascendency of the Individual & a Politick & Literature to Fight the Rise & Rise of the Tax Surveillance State. 'Illigitum non carborundum'.

Liberty and freedom are two proud words that have been executed from the political lexicon: they were frog marched and stood before a wall of blank minds, then forcibly blindfolded, and shot, with the whimpering staccato of ‘equality’ and ‘fairness’ resounding over and over. And not only did this atrocity go unreported by journalists in the mainstream media, they were in the firing squad.

The premise of this blog is simple: the Soviets thought they had equality, and welfare from cradle to grave, until the illusory free lunch of redistribution took its inevitable course, and cost them everything they had. First to go was their privacy, after that their freedom, then on being ground down to an equality of poverty only, for many of them their lives as they tried to escape a life behind the Iron Curtain. In the state-enforced common good, was found only slavery to the prison of each other's mind; instead of the caring state, they had imposed the surveillance state to keep them in line. So why are we accumulating a national debt to build the slave state again in the West? Where is the contrarian, uncomfortable literature to put the state experiment finally to rest?

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Showing posts with label Government Intervention. Show all posts

Friday, June 15, 2012

Bernard Hickey - The Great Interventionist: Currency Controls

I see on Twitter today mercantilist Bernard - affectionately known on this blog as Kim Jong - is still pushing his demand for currency controls. Time to reinstate an old post from Life Behind the IRon Drape v.1. for Bernard and all those who want government to intervene in our currency - Hattip to Donald J. Boudreaux at Cafe Hayek :

You seem to believe that a weak currency is an economic advantage, so I offer you the following contract. I shall exchange all the money in your house at the rate of 50 cents for each $1. Further, I will exchange all the income coming into your house, giving you 50 cents for each $1. You now have a weak currency and so will become an economic powerhouse (according to your theory), whereas poor old me am going to be hamstrung with a strong currency. I am, however, quite willing to offer you this contract/service. Do we have a deal? If so, we'll swap bank account numbers, you put all your money in my bank and I'll simply put half of that back in return. If no contact, why not?

Furthermore, I've seen Bernard write before that Singapore's economic meddling in this regard is something to aspire to. Evidence is abundant to the contrary, for example, from a Singaporean:

The high cost of living [in Singapore] coupled with low wages and domestic purchasing power condemns the average Singapore worker to an ignominious, monotonous and stressful working life. Singapore workers have to work harder to earn the same amount of money and save for a longer period to purchase the same product.

In 1991, Goh Chok Tong, then the Prime Minister, promised Singaporeans that we would be able to achieve the “Swiss standard of living” within a decade. Ten years later, we have a living standard which is closer to Russia than Switzerland. Like Singapore, the Russians has a low wage and domestic purchasing power and Russia, especially the city of Moscow, has one of the highest cost of living in the world.

So, Bernard: do we have a contract?

UPDATE:

No takers. Right, so you wouldn't abide your household being run like this, yet you'd force it on a country. Interesting.