Entrepreneurs Beat Regulators

Michael Lewis has written a book entitled Flash Boys which exposes the shady world of "Dark Pools" which capitalize on inefficiencies in market trading down to the level of milliseconds -- where a stock can experience about 500 quote changes and about 150 trades in the time it takes a single pixel on a high-end TV to change color, or one beat of a tsetse fly's wings. Large stock trading institutions could be ripping off smaller traders to the tune of $160 million a day,  Lewis says in an adaptation of his book in the New York Times Magazine.

If you think government regulators can compete with high-speed Wall St. sharks, fuggitaboutit. International Business Times reports,

the regulators don’t seem prepared to handle or to even understand the nature of the risk – “it’s over their heads,” says one former bank executive. “They have no idea what is really happening.”

Once a bureaucrat gets sharp enough to figure out what's going on, the regulator knows there's more money to be made in the market than in civil service.

Lewis tells the amazing story of how a geeky entrepreneur with an ethical sense of fairness (Brad Katsuyama) figures out how the big boys are trading, and actually creates his own stock exchange, which now competes with the majors, saving smaller traders billions of dollars. 

The Free Market regulates itself better than the government does.

Don't ask me for stock tips. I'm willing to admit I don't know what I'm talking about. The problem is, government regulators and politicians are not.

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Jeffrey Tucker: DO's and DON'Ts for Talking Liberty

Our lives are great when we make them so, not because a bureaucrat has somehow intervened to improve our lot. The myth that government is somehow supporting or sustaining civilization is an embedded part of our civic culture, but it is a myth easily refuted by daily experience. Monitoring what we do day-to-day, we discover that it is actually private enterprise that we depend on for all the comforts and excitements of life.
This is an inspiring realization. The notion that government is necessary is a very negative commentary on the capacity of people to manage their own affairs. Once you see the anarchy all around us, you realize that humanity is bursting with creativity, energy, the desire to get along, the impulse to fix problems, and the passion to value others and be valued ourselves. Government has only one power in the end, and that is the power to stall and thwart this constructive process with force. If by doing so it prohibits peaceful behavior, it normally diminishes the quality of life for all of us.

Jeffrey Tucker: Do's and Don'ts for Talking Liberty, p.19

LIBERTY.ME

Chuck Slay

My Brother-in-law Chuck Slay has died. I'll update this post with a eulogy. Please pray for my sister Amy.

Robert W. Welch, Jr. (1899-1985)

Robert Henry Winborne Welch Jr. was born on this day, December 1, 1899.

He was home-schooled until he enrolled in high school at the age of ten and was admitted to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill at the age of twelve.

Welch made a fortune in the candy business, making caramel lollipops, renamed Sugar Daddies, and he developed other well-known candies such as Sugar Babies, Junior Mints, and Pom Poms. Welch retired a wealthy man in 1956.

Welch's credo was, "Less government, more responsibility, and --with God's help -- a better world." Will Grigg has said this about Welch [my hyperlinks]:

Unlike the reflexively bellicose people who call themselves Conservatives today, Mr. Welch was never a militarist; in one commencement address he gave in the mid-1950s he pointed out that there was no reason why the American people and the people of the USSR would consider themselves enemies if it weren't for the behavior of the governments presuming to rule them. In matters of social policy, Welch opposed abortion, euthanasia, and infanticide, like most conservatives, but also opposed the death penalty (as do I) and condemned torture. He was not preoccupied by the supposed threat of immigration, and didn't believe in enlisting the government in crusades to purify people's moral behavior through the righteous application of coercion. In a remarkable speech he gave in 1979 -- when most conservatives were worried about the Soviets -- Welch predicted that the U.S. would become universally hated for the government's practice of "imperialism by the dollar, as a substitute for the sword."

If Robert Welch were around today, the Fox-aligned Right would consider him a liberal.

Welch founded the John Birch Society in 1958. In a speech he gave at the founding of the JBS, Grigg says "Welch described pious Muslims as allies in the struggle against the lawless state."

Death Panel Results

My mother's "Death Panel" met recently, and I received the results this morning.

Medicare will no longer be paying for her feeding tube pump, the daily disposable feeding tube bags, and the space-age formula that's been keeping my mom alive since her home was destroyed by a tornado.

No, I don't know why Medicare has been paying for this for all these months, and why they've decided in their infinite wisdom and compassion to now terminate their coverage. Trying to make rational sense of government decrees is often futile. It would be too easy for me to make all kinds of conspiratorial speculations. My sister is going to drive up to the Big City on Monday and see what's up.

The cost of the little plastic bags that hold the formula is something like $500 a month. The liquid food is also a bit more expensive than a Happy Meal at McD's, though I can't say for sure, as it's been a long time since I've eaten out. I'm grateful that you've been paying for all this through your taxes. Caring for her is my 24/7 job, and I'm working in my spare time to create an income-generating enterprise that will pay the bills by working at home.

If you would like to make a generous, year-end, tax-deductible donation to the non-profit, tax-exempt educational organization that might pay me enough to cover these costs, it would be most appreciated. Currently, generous donations to Vine & Fig Tree are paying the rent for storage of Vine & Fig Tree's library and office equipment, and my mother lives in a spare room. Yesterday was only the most recent of a long series of days of thanksgiving for the generosity of many.

If you have questions or suggestions, feel free to leave a comment below. I'll update this post when I learn something new.

Thank you very much.

Vine & Fig Tree Home Page

George Washington and Theocracy in 1789

On this day in 1789, President George Washington violated the yet-undreamed of "separation of church and state" by leading the nation in a day of national prayer and thanksgiving for the new Constitution.

The modern myth of "separation of church and state" really means a separation of God and government. Not a single person alive in 1789 imagined that the new federal Constitution created a "secular" government, that is, a government that believed it could ignore God with impunity, rather than a government "Under God."

Read about George Washington's promotion of the True Religion here:

Government-Sponsored Prayer and Thanksgiving to the True God

Tell Elaine Huguenin that Leni Riefenstahl Has a Cold.

You are a Jewish cinematographer.

You hear a knock at the door.

Don't worry. It's not the Gestapo. It's the Justices of the New Mexico Supreme Court.

They report that Leni Riefenstahl has a cold, and has called in sick.

Since you're a gifted filmmaker, Our Dear Leader has requested that you complete the film project that Ms. Riefenstahl began, a documentary called Triumph of the Will.

You will be praised for your work. The film will be recognized around the world as one of the greatest documentaries ever made.

In case you're not up on historic films, Triumph of the Will  is a 1935 film made by Leni Riefenstahl. It chronicles the 1934 Nazi Party Congress in Nuremberg, which was attended by more than 700,000 Nazi supporters. The primary purpose of the film is to make Hitler and Nazism look good. No, great.

The Independent wrote in 2003: "Triumph of the Will seduced many wise men and women, persuaded them to admire rather than to despise, and undoubtedly won the Nazis friends and allies all over the world."

As an observant Jew, you respectfully and courteously decline to work on the film.

I'm sorry, but that just won't do.

That kind of selfishness violates New Mexico's "anti-discrimination" law.

You remind the New Mexico Supremes of the "freedom of religion" in our increasingly-irrelevant Constitution, and how that cannot be consistent with forcing a Jew to work on a Nazi propaganda film.

But the New Mexico Supreme Court unanimously disagrees. John Stonestreet comments:

       And still even more troubling was the concurring opinion of justice Richard Bosson. He acknowledged that, under New Mexico law, [believers] are “compelled . . . to compromise the very religious beliefs that inspire their lives.” He admitted that this compulsion will “leave a tangible mark on  [believers] and others of similar views.”
       Nevertheless, this compromise is, according to Bosson, “the price of citizenship.” While  [believers] are free to believe whatever they want, outside of their home they “have to channel their conduct, not their beliefs, so as to leave space for other Americans who believe something different.”
       Bosson called this compromise “part of the glue that holds us together as a nation, the tolerance that lubricates the varied moving parts of us as a people.”

In other words, the Nazis are not required to compromise their desires to show tolerance for the Jews, it is believers who must compromise.

And "religious freedom" in the United States means as much as it does in North Korea, Saudi Arabia, or the "former" Soviet Union: you can believe anything you want, as long it stays in the space between your ears, and Big Brother doesn't know about it.

The U.S. is becoming a joke. Christians must never trade their heavenly citizenship for U.S. citizenship.

"Our citizenship is in heaven" (Philippians 3:20)

Missouri vs. A Free Market Internet

Update, 8/20/2013
Campaign for Liberty opposes the bill favored by Amazon.com
The bill is supported by big businesses and pro-tax forces.
Maybe Amazon is exploiting Associates like me to lobby for a bill that will help Amazon crush competition.

I need to do more research on this issue.
I wonder if Governor Nixon's office will educate me.

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 Dear Governor Nixon,

My home was destroyed by the Branson tornado last year. I was taking care of my mother at the time, and she was airlifted to a Springfield hospital and returned to me on a feeding tube. I am now her full-time caregiver.

I can't get a job outside the home, so I depend on the internet to bring in money.

I just received a letter from one of my internet income sources that they have terminated my income due to the unconstitutional Missouri state tax collection legislation passed by the state legislature and signed by you on July 5, 2013, with an effective date of August 28, 2013.

I wish Missouri politicians would recognize that any legitimate social goal that needs to be achieved will be achieved more efficiently and more personally by Missouri businesses, churches, and voluntary associations operating in a Free Market than by any socialist program coming out of Jefferson City. You should be cutting government spending instead of taking more money from people who are already struggling to make ends meet. And you shouldn't use government coercion to protect your special interests from competition.

----------------------------------------------------

From: "Amazon.com Associates Program"
Date: August 14, 2013, 7:18:05 PM CDT
Subject: Amazon Associates: Important Account Notification

Greetings from the Amazon Associates Program.

We are writing from the Amazon Associates Program to notify you that your Associates account will be closed and your Amazon Services LLC Associates Program Operating Agreement will be terminated effective August 27, 2013. This is a direct result of the unconstitutional Missouri state tax collection legislation passed by the state legislature and signed by Governor Nixon on July 5, 2013, with an effective date of August 28, 2013. As a result, we will no longer pay any advertising fees for customers referred to an Amazon Site after August 27 nor will we accept new applications for the Associates Program from Missouri residents.

Please be assured that all qualifying advertising fees earned prior to August 28, 2013 will be processed and paid in full in accordance with your regular advertising fee schedule. Based on your account closure date of August 27, 2013, any final payments will be paid by October 31, 2013.

While we oppose this unconstitutional state legislation, we strongly support the federal Marketplace Fairness Act now pending before Congress. Congressional legislation is the only way to create a simplified, constitutional framework to resolve interstate sales tax issues and it would allow us to re-open our Associates program to Missouri residents.

We thank you for being part of the Amazon Associates Program, and look forward to re-opening our program when Congress passes the Marketplace Fairness Act.


Sincerely,

The Amazon Associates Team

The U.S. is Bankrupt

Detroit has acknowledged its bankruptcy.

Washington D.C. has not.

"Official" acknowledgement does not change reality.

Detroit Today, Washington Tomorrow - Prof. Laurence Kotlikoff @ PBS NewsHour

The United States is Bankrupt because Americans believe they are "entitled" to other people's wealth.

h/t Gary North

The 2nd Amendment vs. Family Values

I'm surprised (not really) that many who espouse "family values" also champion the Second Amendment.

I'm already on record repudiating the Second Amendment.

I Repudiate the Second Amendment.

But consider this real-world scenario.

Given Obama's record of job destruction (over 90% of jobs created in his administration are part-time; unemployment statistics are vastly understated), imagine your neighbor -- desperate for a job to feed his family -- answers a public announcement in the classifieds of government jobs opening up. He applies and gets a job going door-to-door confiscating guns.

Charlton Heston famously quipped that if they came for his gun, they'd have to pry it from his cold dead fingers.

Of course, no defender of the Second Amendment expects to have cold dead fingers. He intends to make sure the jackbooted government thug coming for guns is the one who has the cold dead fingers.

That sounds macho enough, but the "jackbooted government thug" is your next-door neighbor.

And your claim boils down to this:

"It is more important that I retain possession of a firearm than it is for the kid next door to have a father."

Obviously, once the kid next door loses his father, you will have your gun pried from your cold dead fingers by a vastly superior armed federalized SWAT team that was backing up your next door neighbor.

The time for armed revolution against the tyranny in Washington D.C. has long passed. It's too late for that now.

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Little Libertarians on the Prairie, part 4 or 5

Previously:

Little Libertarian House on the Prairie, Nov 28, 2009

More on "Little Libertarian House on the Prairie", Feb 4, 2010

Rose Wilder Lane: From Communist to Libertarian, April 15, 2010

Some additional sources in the comments.

Now this:

Little Libertarians on the Prairie - Boston.com

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Carl Menger, Postmillennialism, and Judgment

At the opening of the Mises University, Tom Woods mentioned [video - audio] the description by Mises of Carl Menger's sadness over the decline of liberalism and the rise of statism in Europe. Here's what Mises said:

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Around Christmas, 1903, I read Menger's Grundsätze der Volkswirtschaftslehre (Principles of Economics) for the first time. It was the reading of this book that made an "economist" of me.

Personally I met Carl Menger only many years later, He was then already more than seventy years old, hard of hearing, and plagued by an eye disorder. But his mind was young and vigorous. Again and again I have myself why this man did not make better use of the last decades of his life. The fact that he still could do brilliant work if he wanted to do so was shown by his essay, "Geld" ("Money"), which he contributed to the Handwõrterbuch der Staatswissenschaften (Encyclopedia of State Sciences).

I believe that I know what discouraged Menger and what silenced him so early. His sharp mind had recognized the destiny of Austria, of Europe, and of the world. He saw the greatest and most advanced of all civilizations [nineteenth and twentieth century Western Europe] rushing to the abyss of destruction. He foresaw all the horrors which we are experiencing today [1940, World War II]. He knew the consequences of the world's turning away from true Liberalism [not the contrary Leftist so-called liberalism in the United States] and Capitalism. Nonetheless, he did what he could to stem the tide. His book, Untersuchungen über die Methode der Socialwissenschaften und der Politischen Economie insbesondere (Problems of Economics and Sociology, translated by Francis J. Nock and edited by Louis Schneider) was meant as a polemic essay against all those pernicious intellectual currents that were poisoning the world from the universities of Great Prussia. The knowledge that his fight was without expectation of success, however, sapped his strength. He had transmitted this pessimism to his young student and friend, Archduke Rudolf, successor to the Austro-Hungarian throne. The Archduke committed suicide because he despaired about the future of his empire and the fate of European civilization, not because of a woman. He took a young girl along in death who, too, wished to die; but he did not commit suicide on her account.

My grandfather [on my mother's side] had a brother who died several years before I was born. The brother, Dr. Joachim Landau had been a liberal deputy in the Austrian Parliament and a close friend of his party colleague, deputy Dr. Max Menger, a brother of Carl Menger. One day Joachim Landau told my grandfather about a conversation he had had with Carl Menger.

According to my grandfather, as told to me around 1910, Carl Menger had made the following remarks: "The policies as conducted by the European powers will lead to a horrible war that will end with gruesome revolutions, with the destruction of European culture and the destruction of the prosperity of all nations. In preparation for these inevitable events investments only in gold hoards, and perhaps obligations of the two Scandinavian countries can be recommended." In fact, Menger had his savings invested in Swedish obligations. Whoever foresees so clearly before the age of forty the disaster and the destruction of everything he deems of value, cannot escape pessimism and psychic depression. What kind of a life would King Priam have had, the old rhetors were accustomed to ask, if at the age of twenty he already would have foreseen the fall of ancient Troy! Carl Menger had barely half of his life behind him when he foresaw the inevitability of the fall of his Troy.

The same pessimism overshadowed other sharp-sighted Austrians. Being Austrian afforded the sad privilege of having a better opportunity to recognize fate and destiny. Grillparzer's melancholy and peevishness arose from this source. The feeling of facing powerlessly the coming evil drove the most able and noble of all Austrian patriots, Adolf Fischhof, into loneliness.

For obvious reasons I frequently discussed Knapp's Statliche Theorie des Geldes (State Theory of Money) with Menger. His answer was, "It is the logical development of Prussian police science. What are we to think of a nation whose elite, after two hundred years of economics, admire such nonsense, which is not even new, as highest revelation? What can we still expect of such a nation?"

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Of course, one can have hope in the long-term Christian Reconstruction of the world and still have reason to believe in the short-term judgment of statism in a particular nation or culture. Mises seems to have avoided Menger's "psychic depression," sustained perhaps by a sense of duty, an obligation to share knowledge and provide answers, even if the answers are rejected by a majority (1 Peter 3:15). Theonomy trumps eschatology.

In fact, the judgment of statism in history, while tragic in a human sense, is a vindication of God's Word, and thus a cause of hope and rejoicing. The Theocratically-meek shall inherit the earth, often after the fall of pride-blinded Troy.

Menger was a humanist.

A Man Worth Knowing

I enjoyed re-reading an article by John Adams' biographer David McCullough entitled "A Man Worth Knowing." Good 4th of July reading.

McCullough also covers the life of Adams' wife, Abigail. He notes,

Something I always like to emphasize is that there never was a simpler past. We hear often, "Oh, that was a simpler time," but it's always wrong. In one plaintive letter, [Abigail] writes: "Posterity who are to reap the blessings will scarcely be able to conceive the hardships and sufferings of their ancestors." And we don't. We don't know what they went through—epidemics of smallpox or dysentery, which could take the lives of hundreds of people just in the little town of Quincy, Massachusetts. It was by no means a simpler time. They had to worry about things that we don't even think about any more, and suffer discomforts and inconveniences of a kind that we never even imagine. We have little idea of how tough they were. 

After recounting a day in the life of Abigail Adams, McCullough concludes:

Her day didn't end until 9 or 10 at night when the children would go upstairs to their bedrooms, where it could be so cold that the water in the bowls that they used to wash their faces was iced over. And then she would sit down at the kitchen table with a single candle and write some of the greatest letters ever written by any American.

Abigail's letters put the majority of American bloggers to shame.

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A couple of clarifications:

Without taking anything away from McCullough's definition of "happiness," one should add the connection with "blessedness."

Second, McCullough buys into the "myth of the revolutionary minority" -- the idea that only a minority of Americans supported the Revolution against Britain. Not true. As John Adams recalled,

“The revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people and in the union of the colonies, both of which were accomplished before hostilities began.” 

Today a majority of Americans do in fact repudiate the ideals of the American Founding. A majority believe that the government is God, because the government brings us salvation. Adams would see this new American Civil Religion as the central danger we face today. Not taxes. Not representation -- Congress represents all too well the entitlement mentality of a majority of Americans. The central issue is religion. Or as Adams would call it, "idolatry."

And Adams is partly to blame. The Supreme Court of the United States declared decades ago that it is "unconstitutional" for your local public school teachers to teach students that the Declaration of Independence is really true. It can be taught as historical myth or irrelevant artifact, but not as Truth.

Tragically, much of this can be laid at the feet of Adams, insofar as he appointed John Marshall to the Supreme Court. McCullough naively recounts this appointment as one of Adams' "accomplishments."

1773 Boston Tea Party = Vandalism

The original "Boston Tea Party" was an unChristian act of vandalism. No true Christian should participate in such acts of violence. I'm willing to believe that Sam Adams, John Hancock, Paul Revere, and others who were involved in this ignoble act repented of their deeds.

Ann Coulter, in contrasting the "Tea Party Movement" and the "Occupy Wall Street" protests of October 2011 writes:

     First of all, the Boston Tea Party was nothing like tattooed, body–pierced, sunken-chested 19-year-olds getting in fights with the police for fun. Paul Revere's nighttime raid was intended exclusively to protest a new British tea tax. (The Wall Street protesters would be more likely to fight for a new tax than against one.)
     Revere made sure to replace a broken lock on one of the ships and severely punished a participant who stole some of the tea for his private use. Samuel Adams defended the raid by saying that all other methods of recourse -- say, voting -- were unavailable.
    Our revolution -- the only revolution that led to greater freedom since at least 1688 -- was not the act of a mob.
     As specific and limited as it was, however, even the Boston Tea Party was too mob-like to spark anything other than retaliatory British measures. Indeed, it set back the cause of American independence by dispiriting both American and British supporters, such as Edmund Burke.     George Washington disapproved of the destruction of the tea.
     Benjamin Franklin demanded that the India Tea Co. be reimbursed for it.
     Considered an embarrassment by many of our founding fathers, the Boston Tea Party was not celebrated for another 50 years.
     It would be three long years after the Boston Tea Party when our founding fathers engaged in their truly revolutionary act: The signing of the Declaration of Independence.
     In that document, our Christian forebears set forth in blindingly clear terms their complaints with British rule, their earlier attempts at resolution, and an appeal to the Supreme Judge of the world for independence from the crown.
     The rebel armies defending that declaration were not a disorganized mob, chanting slogans for the press and defacing public property.
     Even the Minutemen, whose first scuffle with the British began the war, were a real army with ranks, subordination, coordination, drills and supplies. There is not a single mention in the historical record of Minutemen playing hacky-sack, burning candles assembled in "peace and love," or sitting in drum circles.
     A British lieutenant-general who fought the Minutemen observed, "Whoever looks upon them as an irregular mob will find himself very much mistaken."
     By contrast, the directionless losers protesting "Wall Street" -- Obama's largest donor group -- pose for the cameras while uttering random liberal clichés lacking any reason or coherence.

Neo-conservatives like Ann Coulter disapprove of the violence of "irregular mobs," but not the systematic, institutionalized violence of empires like the U.S. "No" to the "Tea Party," but "YES" to the nation-wide American Revolution.