Reason.tv‘s Zach Weissmueller sat down with Saad to discuss why most Ferrari owners are men, whether or not advertising executives manipulate our minds, the strong political opposition to the evolutionary sciences from across the spectrum, and the evolutionary significance of Sir Mix-a-lot‘s “Baby Got Back.”
About 10 minutes. Interview by Zach Weissmueller. Shot by Sharif Matar; edited by Weissmueller.
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The Framework
These are the books that built the austro-libertarian movement as we know it – all available in the perfect size and for the right price. There was a time when a month’s salary couldn’t acquire these books – if you could find them. And then they were also huge and unwieldy. We’ve fixed that with these brilliant and fun pocket editions.
I managed to read this article while having coffee today in a exquisite café in front of the Palace Museum in Weimar. It was very hard to try understanding the author’s ideas while he refuses to accept that the value of a product is the result of an objective theory of valuation done by the consumers and sellers in specific contexts. He gives for granted that labor force is the one deterministic condition behind production and trying to get his point seems quite difficult at points. Nonetheless, this is a great opportunity to understand the mainstream ideas of Karl Marx theories in regard to Globalization and what some of them call “Global Capitalism / New Imperialism”. Here’s the intro and then a link to the article via EbscoHost,
The article discusses the ways in which the growth of the global capitalist labor force has altered the imperialistic nature of global capitalism, as represented by powerful multinational corporations, by negatively affecting wages in both developing and wealthy countries. The authors rely heavily on philosopher Karl Marx’s theories on the industrial reserve army and capital accumulation, which posit that wealth accumulation will invariably lead to increased suffering for the working masses. They go on to explain the exploitative nature of global labor arbitrage, which essentially means a corporation’s benefiting from low wages in developing countries. The process of arbitrage is related to the development of massive global supply chains.
And as Ayn Rand cleverly mentioned in regard to Deficit Financing,
The government has no source of revenue, except the taxes paid by the producers. To free itself—for a while—from the limits set by reality, the government initiates a credit con game on a scale which the private manipulator could not dream of. It borrows money from you today, which is to be repaid with money it will borrow from you tomorrow, which is to be repaid with money it will borrow from you day after tomorrow, and so on. This is known as “deficit financing.” It is made possible by the fact that the government cuts the connection between goods and money. It issues paper money, which is used as a claim check on actually existing goods—but that money is not backed by any goods, it is not backed by gold, it is backed by nothing. It is a promissory note issued to you in exchange for your goods, to be paid by you (in the form of taxes) out of your future production.
PARIS — A day after European leaders unveiled their latest plan to save the euro, top officials opened talks with China in an effort to lure tens of billions of dollars in additional cash, giving China perhaps its biggest opportunity yet to exercise financial clout in the Western world.
China is expected to demand significant concessions, including financial guarantees and limits on what Beijing sees as discriminatory trade policies, in exchange for any investment in Europe’s emergency stability fund. The head of the rescue fund, Klaus Regling, got a cautious reply from Chinese officials Friday during a visit to Beijing, where he said he did not expect to reach an investment deal with China anytime soon.
A senior Chinese official, Vice Finance Minister Zhu Guangyao, said China — like the rest of the world — was still waiting for the Europeans to deliver crucial details on how the rescue fund, the European Financial Stability Facility, would operate and be profitable before deciding on whether to participate. via: China Is Asked for Investment in Euro Rescue by Liz Alderman and David Barboza.
When an economy falls into a recession, we typically observe a cluster of people making similar investment mistakes. According to historian Stephen Davies, these investment errors occur because governments or central banks manipulate the supply of money. These manipulations place artificial downward pleasure on interest rates, creating false signals that entice individuals to invest in what end up being unprofitable ventures. Booms and busts are not a new phenomenon of this century, but rather, have occurred throughout history both in America and around the globe.
Globalization & Capitalism 