03
Feb
2015
Potpourri
==> My latest at Mises CA, urging caution about that neat Texas jobs growth graphic that’s been floating around.
==> David Beckworth–who wants a kinder, gentler Market Monetarism–sent me Bill Woolsey’s reply to my stuff about Switzerland. Sure, as with any intervention, you could do follow-up interventions to postpone the bad consequences. In this case, Woolsey (among other things) says that the Swiss might have to restrict the issuance of large-denomination bills, to thwart the desires of people to save. And this is at the “Monetary Freedom” blog, mind you.
==> Bryan Caplan has an interesting reconsideration of the famous “…I’ll defend to the death your right to say it” slogan.
Rabbit holes are deep.
If anyone has energy and data, the right way to do it is draw out wiggly lines for all the states and show where Texas sits in the mix.
Most people who say the “…I’ll defend to the death your right to say it” slogan wouldn’t actually die for that person’s right to speak. And I don’t blame them, I wouldn’t either. There are people I would die for. If a small child was being attacked and if the choice was for me to die or him/her to die, I can honestly say I think I would die for them. For most everyone else, including Charlie Hebdo, forget about it. My subjective valuation of your lives is not very high. If you insist, I might send some roses to your funerals.
Wrote this on Caplan’s blog:
I believe you are not quite interpreting the quote correctly. The quote is speaking of the RIGHT to free speech. It is not a quote on defending someone saying a particular thing which has the later result of your own death.
Rights are an idea.
Just consider history, and how many millions of people have fought each other over what are essentially ideas. These ideas of course have implications to border and boundary negotiations and conflicts. And that is exactly what the quote from not Voltaire is talking about. It is saying that it is honorable to fight for the RIGHT to speak, because the RIGHT to speak has implications to border and boundary negotiations and conflicts!
So to use the scenario of handing out cartoon pamphlets, to defend someone’s RIGHT to hand out cartoon pamphlets, and their RIGHT to say anything they want, the correct way to use the analogy is to say that yes, it is honorable for a person to defend that which makes free speech possible, namely, defending their person and lands from invading totalitarian speech censors.
That is what defending the RIGHT to speak entails on the ground.
Time to have your mind blown, Bob.
A restriction of large denomination bills is exactly what competing banks in a free market banking system would do.
http://jpkoning.blogspot.ca/2013/06/does-zero-lower-bound-exist-thanks-to.html
“Let’s suppose a free banking system.”
“Now let’s suppose that the Fed…”
Ooookay