Austrian Economics creates prosperity

The names "austrian school," or "austrian economics," may not sound familiar to most Americans, yet if we call it by it's modern name, perhaps you'll recognize it. It's modern name is supply-side, or trickle down, economics. Perhaps a more fitting name for it is free market economics.

Ron Paul, in his book "Liberty Defined," describes the history of this economic philosophy:

The school of thought is named for the country of its modern founder, Carl Menger (1840-1921), an economist at the University of Vienna who made great contributions to the theory of value.  He wrote that economic value extends the human mind alone and is not something that exists as an inherent part of goods and services; valuation changes according to social needs and circumstances.  We need markets to reveal to us the valuations of consumers and producers in teh form of the price system that works within a market setting.  In saying these things, he was really recapturing lost wisdom that had earlier been understood by Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850), J.B. Say (1767-1832), A.R.J. Turgot (1727-1781), and many more throughout history.  But history needs people like Menger to rediscover forgotten wisdom.

Andrew Mellon and Jack Kemp were two economists who renewed interest in this philosophy, encouraging Calvin Coolidge and Ronald Reagan respectively to adapt it.  Both Coolidge and Reagan reduced taxes and regulations, and with government out of the way, the American economies of the 1920s and the 1980s soared to its greatest heights in American history.

Paul continues:

The Austrian school champions private property, free markets, sound money, and the liberal society generally.  It provides a way of looking at economics that takes into account the unpredictability of human action (absolutely no one can quantitatively know the future) and the huge role of human choice in the way economies work (in markets, consumers drive decisions over production), and explains how it is that order can emerge out of the seeming chaos of individual action  In short, the ustrian School provies the most robust defense of the economic system of the free society that has ever been made.

The Austrian School "had achieved mainstream status before the so-called Keynesian Revolution of the 1930s swept away the older wisdom.

Liberty is freedom; progressive is sacrificing liberty

I think that a sense of liberty has been lost in the United States.  As our nation was formed based on the idea that a government was absconding personal liberties, America was founded on the idea of liberty.

So, what is liberty? Liberty is the natural right to exercise human rights in any manner a person chooses so long as it does not interfere with the exercise of the rights of others.  This means keeping the government out of our lives, as so to protect our personal liberties, i.e. natural rights.

History has proven that this is the only successful method of unleashing human energy and creativeness that build prosperous nations and protect people from systemic violations of human rights.

This was the definition of liberty accepted by Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, John Adams, James Monroe, James Madison, Ben Franklin, John Hancock, Alexander Hamilton, Charles Carroll, James Wilson, John Witherspoon, Benjamin Rush, Francis Hopkinson, George Washington, William Penn, along with a vast number of others.

The founding fathers, therefore, believed in the liberal philosophical system, republicanism, and capitalism.

Liberty, therefore, requires, if not demands, a responsible, limited government. The founders made this possible by creating a system of checks and balances, and through the creation of the founding documents that limit the scope of government, telling what it cannot do, not what it can do.  The idea here was to protect personal liberties, and make it so no government shall trample on natural rights, or the rights we are all born with.

In the early 1930s the term liberal was absconded by the progressive movement to shed a positive light on their movement.  This change was necessary to shed a positive light on their otherwise unpopular agenda.

The liberal movement continues to this day, although the progressives teach that it is controversial as opposed to common.  Yet, as we all know, it is progressivism that is controversial, not liberalism.

To believe in liberty is not to believe in any social or economic outcome, which is what progressivism does.  It requires acceptance of the disorder that results from the personal decisions that are made when the government does not intervene.

Progressives (a.k.a socialists, liberals, Marxists) believe in a dream.  They believe in a Utopia; a world where everyone has equal outcomes, which mainly refers to an equal share of the wealth.

In a progressive world, if your neighbor makes more than you, he must give you the difference no matter how hard you work. This is called redistribution of wealth.  In essence, progressives believe laws must be made to make this perfect world possible. They believe you must sacrifice some of your liberties for the good of the collective.

It is for this reason that Congress has succeeded at making laws "for your own good" requiring you to put money aside for retirement, healthcare, welfare, and charitable donations to causes that most people would not donate to.  This is what progressivism does. They do not care about your personal liberties, so long as you are sacrificing it for the general good.

However, in order to move the liberty movement forward, the name liberal could no longer be used.  Modern terms for this movement are conservative, libertarian, and tea party.

Liberty is not being watched everywhere you go. Liberty is being able to choose to drink soft drinks instead of milk, and being able to choose the size you sell or purchase.  Liberty is being able to decide for yourself what insurance policy you want to buy.  Liberty is being able to send your kids to the school of your choice. Liberty is being able to pray in school if you so choose, and being able to dress as you want, and voice your opinion without being stymied by a Fairness Doctrine.

Liberty is equal opportunity to succeed, yet not equal outcomes.  Liberty is the rich being able to keep what they earn. Liberty is being able to donate to the charities of your choice, not the charities of Uncle Sam's choice.  Liberty is the opportunity to rise into a better state of living, not creating for someone a better state of living at the expense of others.

Liberty can only be taken away by the government, and that is exactly what the progressive ideal is.  Liberty is what all people yearn for, and what millions of people have died for.  Liberty is also very fragile, as the success of the progressive movement has so openly shown.  Liberty is not runaway spending and personal debt.

When liberty is under attack, everything we hold dear to us is at risk. Governments, by their very nature, notoriously compete with liberty, even when the stated purpose for establishing a particular government is to protect liberty. Governments trample on liberty, and therefore progress, creativity, and prosperity.

In the past 100 years, progressives have been slowly, by the process of assimilation and a great public relations campaign, succeeding at taking away our personal liberties.  They have done this by making laws that tell them what they have do do, and by increasing the scope of government.

Thus, in order to protect liberty, we must limit the power and scope of government.  The simplest and most effective method of doing this is to teach our children the true meaning of liberty, and that it is a natural right that can only be extracted by government.

Our children must be constantly reminded of the thousand year struggle to learn and understand liberty, as for 99% of our history only the top 1% enjoyed the benefits of knowledge at the expense of the other 99%.  This is what makes America so exceptional, as it reverses this trend.

Our children must be taught not to be deceived into believing that government can make them safe from harm, provide fairly distributed economic security, and improve individual moral behavior.

History has shown over and over again that when governments are given a monopoly on the use of force to achieve these goals, that this power is always abused.  Perhaps there are no better examples of this than the collapse of democracies in both ancient Greece and Rome.

Perhaps most important, our children need to be taught to love and respect the founding documents which are intended to protect and preserve liberty.

Today, the seeds of progressivism that were planted in the early 19th century have grown to a full and flourishing tree, and an all out assault on our personal liberties.  We are, therefore, in need of a new revolution, only this time not to create a free nation, but to preserve one.

Without life there is no liberty; without liberty there is no life

The reason I don't go to Facebook much is because it gets frustrating all the stupid stuff that people put on there.  What I hate most is when people put stuff on that shows that they have never read the Constitution.

Recently a person posted this:

One failed attempt at a show bomb, and we all take off our shoes at the airport.  Thirty one school shootings since Columbine, and no change in the regulation of guns."  John Oliver

The problem with that statement is that it's against the law to use your natural rights to take away the natural rights of others.  It's illegal to kill people.  It's not illegal to own a gun.

In this way, the only way you could succeed at making a law banning the sale of guns would be to change the Constitution.  And the whole intent of the Constitution was to make it to the U.S. Government could not make a law taking away natural rights.  Since defending yourself is a natural right, the Constitution is rock solid in this regard.

Natural rights never change, and for that reason the Constitution should never change. If you want to prevent events like Columbine, you teach people the values of the Bible, which teaches one to "love and respect thy neighbor."

I'm not implying that any person needs to own a machine gun, let alone two. However, no democratic society should be able to vote away the rights of other people, let alone take away the life other people.  Taking away one will not solve the other.

Or, worded another way: without life there is no liberty, but without liberty there is no life.  Leave my life alone, and leave my liberties alone.

For 99.9% of history governments abducted from the populace the ability to enjoy natural rights and freedoms.  We had best not forget this and start passing laws based on emotion, because every law passed takes away another freedom.