Hayek: O Socialismo - A grande ilusão mortal

Hayek gives the main arguments for the free-market case and presents his manifesto on the "errors of socialism." Hayek argues that socialism has, from its origins, been mistaken on factual, and even on logical, grounds and that its repeated failures in the many different practical applications of socialist ideas that this century has witnessed were the direct outcome of these errors. He labels as the "fatal conceit" the idea that "man is able to shape the world around him according to his wishes."

"The achievement of The Fatal Conceit is that it freshly shows why socialism must be refuted rather than merely dismissed—then refutes it again."—David R. Henderson, Fortune.

"Fascinating. . . . The energy and precision with which Mr. Hayek sweeps away his opposition is impressive."—Edward H. Crane, Wall Street Journal

F. A. Hayek is considered a pioneer in monetary theory, the preeminent proponent of the libertarian philosophy, and the ideological mentor of the Reagan and Thatcher "revolutions."

About the Author

F. A. Hayek (1899-1992), recipient of the Medal of Freedom in 1991 and co-winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics in 1974, was a pioneer in monetary theory and a leading proponent of classical liberalism  in the twentieth century. He taught at the University of London, the University of Chicago, and the University of Freiburg.

Movimentação ilusória -

Os movimentos não estão no quadro mas na sua cabeça. Note como o movimento para quando você olha diretamente nesta parte do quadro. Uma prova que a realidade não está fora mas dentro da cabeça? Fonte

Bolsas para não (!) estudar

The Chronicle of Higher Education nota:
"... In a move meant to provoke thought about the value of higher education, Peter Thiel, a co-founder of PayPal, is giving 24 students money not to attend college for two years but to develop their ideas instead.The winners were announced today for a new fellowship that has sparked heated debate in academic circles for questioning the value of higher education and suggesting that some entrepreneurial students may be better off leaving college.
Peter Thiel, a co-founder of PayPal, will pay each of the 24 winners of his Thiel Fellowship $100,000 not to attend college for two years and to develop business ideas instead.
The fellows, all 20 years old or younger, will leave institutions including Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Stanford University, to work with a network of more than 100 Silicon Valley mentors and further develop their ideas in areas such as biotechnology, education, and energy.
More than 400 people applied for the fellowship, and 45 of them were flown out to San Francisco in late March to present their ideas to Thiel's foundation and the network of Silicon Valley mentors.
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Morte pelo governo

~Over 150,000,000 people have been killed in the 20th century, not in wars, but in democidal and genocidal...
Leia o livro no google-books

A guerra desnecessária

Were World Wars I and II inevitable? Were they necessary wars? Or were they products of calamitous failures of judgment?

In this monumental and provocative history, Patrick Buchanan makes the case that, if not for the blunders of British statesmen–Winston Churchill first among them–the horrors of two world wars and the Holocaust might have been avoided and the British Empire might never have collapsed into ruins. Half a century of murderous oppression of scores of millions under the iron boot of Communist tyranny might never have happened, and Europe’s central role in world affairs might have been sustained for many generations.

Among the British and Churchillian errors were:
• The secret decision of a tiny cabal in the inner Cabinet in 1906 to take Britain straight to war against Germany, should she invade France
• The vengeful Treaty of Versailles that mutilated Germany, leaving her bitter, betrayed, and receptive to the appeal of Adolf Hitler
• Britain’s capitulation, at Churchill’s urging, to American pressure to sever the Anglo-Japanese alliance, insulting and isolating Japan, pushing her onto the path of militarism and conquest
• The greatest mistake in British history: the unsolicited war guarantee to Poland of March 1939, ensuring the Second World War

Certain to create controversy and spirited argument, Churchill, Hitler, and “the Unnecessary War” is a grand and bold insight into the historic failures of judgment that ended centuries of European rule and guaranteed a future no one who lived in that vanished world could ever have envisioned.

A conquista dos Estados Unidos pela Espanha

The Conquest of the US by Spain

by Ralph Raico

The year 1898 was a landmark in American history. It was the year America went to war with Spain — our first engagement with a foreign enemy in the dawning age of modern warfare. Aside from a few scant periods of retrenchment, we have been embroiled in foreign politics ever since.
Starting in the 1880s, a group of Cubans agitated for independence from Spain. Like many revolutionaries before and after, they had little real support among the mass of the population. Thus they resorted to terrorist tactics — devastating the countryside, dynamiting railroads, and killing those who stood in their way. The Spanish authorities responded with harsh countermeasures.
Some American investors in Cuba grew restive, but the real forces pushing America toward intervention were not a handful of sugarcane planters. The slogans the rebels used — "freedom" and "independence" — resonated with many Americans, who knew nothing of the real circumstances in Cuba. Also playing a part was the "black legend" — the stereotype of the Spaniards as bloodthirsty despots that Americans had inherited from their English forebears. It was easy for Americans to believe the stories peddled by the insurgents, especially when the "yellow" press discovered that whipping up hysteria over largely concocted Spanish "atrocities" — while keeping quiet about those committed by the rebels — sold papers.
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Os primeiros economistas

In this second edition of his seminal study, Alejandro Chafuen covers the economic writings of the Late Scholastics working in the tradition of St.Thomas Aquinas, those whom J. Schumpeter called the first economists. Writing long before Adam Smith, they wrote on private property, trade, monetary theory and policy, value, price, entrepreneurship, the state, and much more, anticipating the insights of the Austrian School. In many ways, these Continental theorists were more advanced than the British Classical School. The second edition (the first edition was called Christians for Freedom) is much expanded and improved to become not only an important book on the history of thought but a crucial study in the development of the Austrian School. There is no more comprehensive account available.
Read reviews by Stephen W. Carson:
"Profits vs Society: Must We Choose?"
"Christianity's Free-Market Tradition"
ISBN 0739105418
Trade paperback.

Geometria é universal

Amazonian Children Understand ‘Universal’ Geometry Regardless of Schooling

By Elizabeth Lopatto

Amazonian children who never went to school understand the properties of points, lines and angles, proving the basic principles of geometry emerge regardless of education, a study said.
Eight children, ages 7 to 13, and 22 adults from the Mundurucu tribe in the Amazon, could identify the number of lines that can be drawn through two points, correctly complete unfinished triangles and estimate angles, according to a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The 18th-century philosopher Immanuel Kant argued that humans have an intuitive understanding of geometry, which enables mathematicians to derive new, useful results. Abstract geometry may be innate, or it may be learned naturally through day-to-day interaction with the world, the authors wrote.
The test results “suggest Euclidean geometry, inasmuch as it concerns basic objects such as points and line on a plane, is a cross-cultural universal that results from the inherent properties of the human mind as it develops in its natural environment,” wrote the authors, who included Elizabeth Spelke, a specialist in developmental studies at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
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Civilização paradoxial

“Our forefathers had civilization inside themselves, the wild outside. We live in the civilization they created, but within us the wilderness still lingers. What they dreamed, we live, and what they lived, we dream.” ~ T.K. Whipple

Desafio de Darwin

  Over the centuries, researchers have found bones and artifacts proving that humans like us have existed for millions of years. Mainstream science, however, has supppressed these facts. Prejudices based on current scientific theory act as a "knowledge filter," giving us a picture of prehistory that is largely incorrect.

Canibalismo medicinal

Mummies, Cannibals and Vampires charts in vivid detail the largely forgotten history of European corpse medicine, when kings, ladies, gentlemen, priests and scientists prescribed, swallowed or wore human blood, flesh, bone, fat, brains and skin against epilepsy, bruising, wounds, sores, plague, cancer, gout and depression.
One thing we are rarely taught at school is this: James I refused corpse medicine; Charles II made his own corpse medicine; and Charles I was made into corpse medicine. Ranging from the execution scaffolds of Germany and Scandinavia, through the courts and laboratories of Italy, France and Britain, to the battlefields of Holland and Ireland, and on to the tribal man-eating of the Americas, Mummies, Cannibals and Vampires argues that the real cannibals were in fact the Europeans. Medicinal cannibalism utilised the formidable weight of European science, publishing, trade networks and educated theory. For many, it was also an emphatically Christian phenomenon. And, whilst corpse medicine has sometimes been presented as a medieval therapy, it was at its height during the social and scientific revolutions of early-modern Britain. It survived well into the eighteenth century, and amongst the poor it lingered stubbornly on into the time of Queen Victoria. This innovative book brings to life a little known and often disturbing part of human history.

The Economist não gosta de eles

"... I have always been puzzled by the academic world's reverence for the French intelligentsia. Michel Foucault was a colossal bore—and a bore, moreover, who encouraged the practice of seeing history exclusively in terms of the exploitation of an ever-multiplying band of victims even as living standards rose to unprecedented levels. Louis Althusser was a wife-killing buffoon. Pierre Bourdieu laboured the obvious. Jacques Lacan produced incomprehensible bilge. (France has produced its share of greats, of course, most notably Raymond Aron, but they are routinely ignored).
Yet Foucault et al look like giants compared with the current crop of intellectuals, if the commentary on the Dominique Strauss-Kahn affair is anything to go by. Bernard Henri-Lévy, the author of perhaps the worst book on America ever written, "American Vertigo", which compounds its uselesness by mentioning Tocqueville, the author of the best book on America ever written, in its subtititle, has written a paean of praise to his friend, DSK, which is remarkable for its lack of sympathy for the unfortunate Muslim immigrant at the heart of the affair.
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The Economist: a idéia do progresso e o seu empobrecimento

The idea of progress

Why is the modern view of progress so impoverished?

Modern science is full of examples of technologies that can be used for ill as well as good. Think of nuclear power—and of nuclear weapons; of biotechnology—and of biological contamination. Or think, less apocalyptically, of information technology and of electronic surveillance. History is full of useful technologies that have done harm, intentionally or not. Electricity is a modern wonder, but power stations have burnt too much CO2-producing coal. The internet has spread knowledge and understanding, but it has also spread crime and pornography. German chemistry produced aspirin and fertiliser, but it also filled Nazi gas chambers with Cyclon B.
The point is not that science is harmful, but that progress in science does not map tidily onto progress for humanity. In an official British survey of public attitudes to science in 2008, just over 80% of those asked said they were “amazed by the achievements of science”. However, only 46% thought that “the benefits of science are greater than any harmful effect”.
From the perspective of human progress, science needs governing. Scientific progress needs to be hitched to what you might call “moral progress”. It can yield untold benefits, but only if people use it wisely. They need to understand how to stop science from being abused. And to do that they must look outside science to the way people behave.
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Educação - uma bolha?

Higher learning is just an overpriced, speculative investment that typically rewards graduates with dismal career prospects, says billionaire Peter Thiel

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O poder da rede

Professora do RN critica educação no estado e vira “heroína” nas redes sociais
Por Redação Yahoo! Brasil | Yahoo! Notícias – qui, 19 de mai de 2011.. .

Um vídeo que mostra a professora Amanda Gurgel criticando a situação da educação no Rio Grande do Norte durante uma audiência pública na Câmara dos Deputados de seu estado fez com que a professora ganhasse admiradores por todo o país.

O vídeo que mostra a fala de Amanda teve 180 mil visualizações no YouTube desde o dia 14, quando foi postado, e seu nome ficou entre os “trending topics” do Twitter - a lista dos temas mais comentados da rede social - entre quarta e quinta-feira.

Amanda mostrou seu contracheque de R$ 930 aos deputados e enumerou algumas das dificuldades encontradas pelos professores no estado, além dos baixos salários: transporte precário, salas de aula superlotadas e até a proibição aos professores de comerem a merenda oferecida aos alunos.
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A lei

“Property does not exist because there are laws, but laws exist because there is property.” — Frédéric Bastiat

Os imensos riscos das inovações

"There is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage than the creation of a new system. For the initiator has the enmity of all who would profit by the preservation of the old system and merely lukewarm defenders in those who would gain by the new one." -- Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince, 1513

O novo mundo dos livros

Amazon Kindle E-Book Sales Top Print

Amazon.com Inc. now sells 105 books for its Kindle electronic-readers for every 100 printed ones.

Sales of the e-books for the Kindle, introduced in 2007, surpassed hardcover titles in July 2010, and overtook paperbacks six months later, the Seattle-based company said today in a statement.
“We had high hopes that this would happen eventually, but we never imagined it would happen this quickly,” said Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder and chief executive officer, in the statement.
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Destruição criativa - o iPad elimina o PC

The iPad is wreaking havoc on the personal-computer market.
Hewlett-Packard Co. (HPQ)’s consumer PC sales plunged 23 percent last quarter, and the company lopped $1 billion off its annual sales forecast. And while rival Dell Inc. (DELL) beat analysts’estimates because of corporate demand, its sales to consumers slumped 7.5 percent. More than 70 million tablets like the Apple Inc. (AAPL) iPad will be sold in 2011, a total that will balloon to 246 million in three years, Jefferies & Co. said yesterday.
“You’re walking into a buzz saw,” Jane Snorek, a seniorresearch analyst at Nuveen Asset Management in Milwaukee, said of the iPad. Her firm manages more than $200 billion in assets.“The tablet is going to replace at least the home computer.”
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Sabedoria

"The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool."
~ Shakespeare (1564-1616), "As You Like It", Act 5 scene 1

Educação nova

"The illiterate of the 21th century won't be those who can't read/write, but those who can't learn, unlearn, and relearn." ~ Alvin Toffler

Concurso ANPOCS

Concurso Brasileiro ANPOCS de Obras Científicas e Teses Universitárias em Ciências Sociais - Edição 2011

PRAZO PARA INSCRIÇÕES: Dia 27/05/2011 (vale a data de postagem)
O concurso é aberto a todos os autores de obras científicas (livros publicados no ano de 2010), dissertações de mestrado e teses de doutorado (defendidas no ano de 2010 e indicadas pelos Centros de Pesquisa e Programas de Pós-Graduação filiados à ANPOCS). Para demais informações e critérios de inscrição e premiação acesse o edital 2011.

Acesso ao Edital 2011
Acesso aoformulário para inscrição

ATENÇÃO!
As obras científicas podem ser inscritas pelos próprios autores ou indicadas também pelos Centros de Pesquisa e Programas de Pós-Graduação filiados à ANPOCS.

Em caso de dúvidas, favor contatar o Sr. Bruno Ranieri: bruno@anpocs.org.br

10 inovações recentes que mudaram o mundo

Game-Changing Disruptions

It takes a lot to shift the course of an industry. For every truly disruptive company, there are dozens that try and fail – and plenty of copycats that follow, but fall short of the new model.
Being disruptive doesn't always mean being first to the market with an idea. It's about executing it better than any competitor – and staying ahead of the curve from there.
Slideshow

Como controler o povo

"If those in charge of our society -- politicians, corporate executives, and owners of press and television -- can dominate our ideas, they will be secure in their power. They will not need soldiers patrolling the streets. We will control ourselves." -- Howard Zinn, historian and author

Inovação tecnológica

The Rate and Direction of Invention in the British Industrial Revolution: Incentives and Institutions

K)

Ralf Meisenzahl, Joel Mokyr NBER Working Paper No. 16993 Issued in April 2011 NBER Program(s): PR During the Industrial Revolution technological progress and innovation became the main drivers of economic growth. But why was Britain the technological leader? We argue that one hitherto little recognized British advantage was the supply of highly skilled, mechanically able craftsmen who were able to adapt, implement, improve, and tweak new technologies and who provided the micro inventions necessary to make macro inventions highly productive and remunerative. Using a sample of 759 of these mechanics and engineers, we study the incentives and institutions that facilitated the high rate of inventive activity during the Industrial Revolution. First, apprenticeship was the dominant form of skill formation. Formal education played only a minor role. Second, many skilled workmen relied on secrecy and first-mover advantages to reap the benefits of their innovations. Over 40 percent of the sample here never took out a patent. Third, skilled workmen in Britain often published their work and engaged in debates over contemporary technological and social questions. In short, they were affected by the Enlightenment culture. Finally, patterns differ for the textile sector; therefore, any inferences from textiles about the whole economy are likely to be misleading. LINK

XII Congresso Internacional do FoMerco

O evento sera realizado na EURJ do Rio de janeiro nos dias 14-16 de setembro. Os resumos podem ser enviados no site http://www.fomerco.com.br/inscricoes .
O resumo devera ter 900 caracteres com espaço e a data limite é 30 de junho.

Hayek: A Constituição da Liberdade

O New York Times comenta a nova edição de Hayek's "Constitution of Liberty": "... Hayek’s skepticism about the effects of “big government” are rooted in an epistemological observation summarized in a 1945 article called “The Uses of Knowledge in Society.” There he argued that most of the knowledge in a modern economy was local in nature, and hence unavailable to central planners. The brilliance of a market economy was that it allocated resources through the decentralized decisions of a myriad of buyers and sellers who interacted on the basis of their own particular knowledge. The market was a form of “spontaneous order,” which was far superior to planned societies based on the hubris of Cartesian rationalism. He and his fellow Austrian Ludwig von Mises used this argument against Joseph Schumpeter in a famous debate in the 1930s and ’40s over whether socialism or capitalism offered a more efficient economic system. In hindsight, Hayek clearly emerged the winner.
“The Constitution of Liberty” builds on this view of the limits of human cognition to make the case that no government can know enough about a society to plan effectively. The government’s true role is more modest: to create laws that are general and equally applied; these laws constitute the matrix in which the spontaneous interactions of individuals can occur. (It may, however, surprise some of Hayek’s new followers to learn that “The Constitution of Liberty” argues that the government may need to provide health insurance and even make it ­compulsory.) ..."
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Dinâmica contra estagnação

"Não há estabilidade nos assuntos humanos e todos os esforços para impor estabilidade em cima de algo que é instável por natureza representa um intervencionismo inútil que em vez de melhorar faz as coisas ainda mais precárias." 
Antony Mueller

O outro lado da história

"... the most intense persecution of Christianity occurred not in the Roman Empire, but in the twentieth century, especially in the Communist world. A large part of this story, hidden and ignored, is told in a new book by Robert Royal, The Catholic Martyrs of the Twentieth Century (Crossroad Publishing).
It is hard to tabulate or even estimate the number of Catholics and other Christians murdered by modern tyrannies. The figure certainly runs into the tens of millions ...
After World War II, Communism’s triumph in Catholic Central Europe – the bitter fruit of the Anglo-American alliance with the Soviet Union – brought ferocious assaults on Catholics..." Joseph Sobran (1946–2010)

Mais uma ilusão cognitiva

Escreve João Luiz Mauad:
"O trágico massacre de Realengo, ocorrido recentemente no Rio de Janeiro, perpetrado por uma mente doentia, que vitimou treze crianças inocentes, deixou no senso comum a estranha sensação de que vivemos numa era de violência sem precedentes. Mas essa é uma falsa crença, segundo Steven Pinker. Pesquisas focadas em diferentes períodos históricos confirmam que os nossos ancestrais eram muito mais violentos do que nós. Salvo raros períodos excepcionais, a violência esteve em constante declínio ao longo da história e, muito provavelmente, estamos vivendo o momento menos violento de nossa espécie..."
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Veja também

O país dos prisioneiros

"It is time to take prisons seriously. The United States incarcerates more people than any country in the world today and throughout history. The financial costs are tremendous and rising. One in every one hundred Americans is jailed within this so-called land of the free. Many have committed no violent crimes. Not a few are in for supposed political crimes. Some are wholly innocent of both yet languish in captivity. What are the sociological, political, economic, cultural, and historical consequences of incarceration? ...-- Leia mais
Note também: "California Prison Academy: Better Than a Harvard Degree. Prison guards can retire at the age of 55 and earn 85% of their final year's salary for the rest of their lives. They also continue to receive medical benefits..."
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He's still alive

“It is harder to kill a phantom than a reality.”
— Virginia Woolf

Liberdade e prosperidade nos países em desenvolvimento

Freedom and Prosperity in the Developing World (San Jose, Calif., 5/7/11)

The Independent Institute is proud to announce an exciting event Saturday, May 7, at San Jose State University, "Economic Liberalism and the Free Society in the Developing World." Co-hosted by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, this one-day conference features enlightening talks on liberty in Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, and the Middle East.

"Economic Liberalism and the Free Society in the Developing World" (San Jose, Calif., 5/7/11)

Reformas na Cuba

Cuba's Dishonest Reforms

Raul Castro says Cuba's ruling clique will govern the country for ten more years because Cuba "lacks a reserve of well-prepared substitutes." There may be an element of truth in his claim. But if so, Raul and brother Fidel bear the blame: just a few years ago, to take but one example, they purged a couple up-and-coming "reformers" in their administration who spoke as if they wished someday to become forces for liberalization: Carlos Lage and Felipe Perez Roque.

"Cuban-Style 'Updating,'" by Alvaro Vargas Llosa (4/27/11) Spanish Translation

Liberty for Latin America: How to Undo Five Hundred Years of State Oppression, by Alvaro Vargas Llosa

The Che Guevara Myth and the Future of Liberty, by Alvaro Vargas Llosa

Lessons from the Poor: Triumph of the Entrepreneurial Spirit, edited by Alvaro Vargas Llosa

Como publicar as suas músicas online

Your music on iTunes and more. TuneCore artists have earned over $70 million with zero royalties lost - Be Heard! Get your own songs, albums, ringtones, and demos on iTunes, AmazonMP3, Rhapsody, Spotify and more. Get 100% of the royalties and keep all your rights. Upload your music now! Distribute Your Demos, Singles, EPs & Albums Keep 100% of your royalties Own the rights to your songs TuneCore customers have earned over $70 million What We Do TuneCore is a music delivery and distribution service that gets music you created (even cover versions) up for sale on iTunes, AmazonMP3, Napster, etc., without asking for your rights or taking any money from the sale or use of your music. TuneCore lets artists upload their songs and album cover art. With TuneCore, artists can monitor how their music is selling and get their money the moment it becomes available. How does it work? TuneCore has arrangements with leading digital music retailers that let us place your music in their online stores and subscription services. You get 100% of the money that your music earns from digital distribution. "We used TuneCore to get Drake's song 'Best I Ever Had' up on all digital download services like iTunes and Amazon. They made it very easy to do and it was great to be able for Drake to start reaping the benefits of his art so easily." - Al Branch, GM, Hip Hop Since 1978 "Use TuneCore to get your music everywhere" -Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails

O futuro da liberdade

Is There Hope for Liberty in Our Lifetime?

by Jacob H. Huebert

Speech given at the Mises Circle in Chicago on April 9, 2011. The video and audio recordings are available through Mises.tv.
Is there hope for liberty in our lifetime? It's tempting to think so.
As I discuss in the first part of my book, Libertarianism Today, libertarianism used to be of interest only to a tiny handful of people scattered across the country. As I've heard Walter Block and others say, if you were in the libertarian movement a few decades ago, it was easy to feel like you knew almost everyone else in the movement.
This was even true to a considerable extent when I first became involved in libertarianism about 15 years ago. I only discovered libertarianism because I happened to know someone who saw that I was interested in political ideas (conservative ones at the time) and suggested that I subscribe to The Freeman magazine published by the Foundation for Economic Education. But of course most people didn't know anyone who could recommend The Freeman to them, and they almost certainly didn't hear about libertarianism on television, in their schools, or in any major periodicals, apart from Henry Hazlitt's Newsweek column.
Now, of course, everything has changed. You meet people who call themselves libertarians everywhere. And, sure, some of them don't necessarily understand what that means, but it's remarkable that they even know the word "libertarianism." And what's really remarkable is how many of them do know what it means. I've done some speaking at law schools across the country over the past year, and I've been surprised by students who come up to me and start telling me that they read LewRockwell.com every day, that they're reading books about Austrian economics by Murray Rothbard from the Mises Institute. Even when I was in law school less than a decade ago, this was unheard of.
There are two big factors that have contributed to this, and each has built on the other: one is the Internet, and the other is Ron Paul.
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O declínio do ideal acadêmico

Leia o livre no google books

O conceito de uma sociedade de lei privada

The Idea of a Private Law Society by Hans-Hermann Hoppe

"... In sum, protection and security contracts would come into existence. Insurers (unlike states) would offer their clients contracts with well-specified property descriptions and clearly defined duties and obligations. Likewise, the relationship between insurers and arbitrators would be governed by contract. Each party to a contract, for the duration or until fulfillment of the contract, would be bound by its terms and conditions; and every change in the terms or conditions of a contract would require the unanimous consent of all parties concerned. That is, in a private law society, unlike under statist conditions, no "legislation" would exist. No insurer could get away with promising its clients protection without letting them know how or at what price, and insisting that it could unilaterally change the terms and conditions of the protector-client relationship. Insurance-clients would demand something significantly better, and insurers would supply contracts and constant law, instead of promises and shifting and changing legislation.

Furthermore, as a result of the continual cooperation of various insurers and arbitrators, a tendency toward the unification of property and contract law and the harmonization of the rules of procedure, evidence, and conflict resolution would be set in motion. Through buying protection-insurance, everyone would share in the common goal of striving to reduce conflict and enhance security. Moreover, every single conflict and damage claim, regardless of where and by or against whom, would fall into the jurisdiction of one or more specific insurance agencies and would be handled either by an individual insurer's "domestic" law or by the "international" law provisions and procedures agreed upon in advance by a group of insurers.
Such a system would assure more complete and perfect legal stability and certainty than any system of security to which we can currently appeal...."
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O que é errada com a educação superior nos EU

Malcolm Harris

Bad Education

The Project On Student Debt estimates that the average college senior in 2009 graduated with $24,000 in outstanding loans. Last August, student loans surpassed credit cards as the nation’s single largest source of debt, edging ever closer to $1 trillion. Yet for all the moralizing about American consumer debt by both parties, no one dares call higher education a bad investment. The nearly axiomatic good of a university degree in American society has allowed a higher education bubble to expand to the point of bursting.
Since 1978, the price of tuition at US colleges has increased over 900 percent, 650 points above inflation. To put that number in perspective, housing prices, the bubble that nearly burst the US economy, then the global one, increased only fifty points above the Consumer Price Index during those years. But while college applicants’ faith in the value of higher education has only increased, employers’ has declined. According to Richard Rothstein at The Economic Policy Institute, wages for college-educated workers outside of the inflated finance industry have stagnated or diminished. Unemployment has hit recent graduates especially hard, nearly doubling in the post-2007 recession. The result is that the most indebted generation in history is without the dependable jobs it needs to escape debt.
What kind of incentives motivate lenders to continue awarding six-figure sums to teenagers facing both the worst youth unemployment rate in decades and an increasingly competitive global workforce?
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Princípios para uma sociedade livre

This is the Appendix to Ron Paul's new book, Liberty Defined.

1. Rights belong to individuals, not groups; they derive from our nature and can neither be granted nor taken away by government.
2. All peaceful, voluntary economic and social associations are permitted; consent is the basis of the social and economic order.
3. Justly acquired property is privately owned by individuals and voluntary groups, and this ownership cannot be arbitrarily voided by governments.
4. Government may not redistribute private wealth or grant special privileges to any individual or group.
5. Individuals are responsible for their own actions; government cannot and should not protect us from ourselves.
6. Government may not claim the monopoly over a people's money and governments must never engage in official counterfeiting, even in the name of macroeconomic stability.
7. Aggressive wars, even when called preventative, and even when they pertain only to trade relations, are forbidden.
8. Jury nullification, that is, the right of jurors to judge the law as well as the facts, is a right of the people and the courtroom norm.
9. All forms of involuntary servitude are prohibited, not only slavery but also conscription, forced association, and forced welfare distribution.
10. Government must obey the law that it expects other people to obey and thereby must never use force to mold behavior, manipulate social outcomes, manage the economy, or tell other countries how to behave

E pluribus unum

"We need a common enemy to unite us." -- Condoleeza Rice, March 2000

Pesquisa sem resultados

Muito dinheiro - poucos resultados. O fracasso dos subsidios governamentais para pesquisa do cáncer.

Forty years ago President Richard Nixon declared a "war on cancer". Yet in spite of $100bn (£60bn) of taxpayer-funded research in the US alone, the cancer mortality rate remains little changed. Dozens of much-hyped "cures" developed by drug companies are either useless or have marginal effect. What can be done?
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