[draft…. About 50% complete]
The purpose of ‘Libertarians for Kennedy’ is to hope that RFK Jr. and those around him can learn from the Ron Paul Revolutions of 2008/12, and the more recent Javier Milei intellectual pro-real-Capitalism and freedom revolution he has managed to spark. These intellectual revolutions are the result of the ideas of ‘The Austrian School of Economics’ finally reaching mass audiences. Just like it took a while for the ideas of Galileo, Bruno, and Copernicus regarding the earth NOT being the center of the universe to spread, the same can be said about the socioeconomic ideas of the so-called ‘Austrian School of Economics’. We believe that RFK Jr. and those around him can ‘smell blood’, learn from the Ron Paul and Milei campaigns, and thus properly stumble upon the wisdom of ‘The Austrians’ and be likewise motivated to spread and apply their ideas to solve our socioeconomic problems. Although RFK Jr. is an unabashed supporter of Capitalism, the economic policies being proposed on his website and various videos, although certainly NOT Communist, are still very misguided and far far far from the clean and efficient Capitalism that would be preached by the great ‘Austrians’. Let us briefly criticize each of them.
We begin with a mini economics lesson. How do we discover the best information with which to order mankind? Via the ‘competitive knowledge discovery’ that emerges from the tradition of private property. From our freedom to use or transform our private property emerges the ‘freedom to trade’ it with anyone in the entire planet which inadvertently transforms mankind into a global supercomputer where companies are motivated to innovate and learn from each other(competitors) thus inadvertently cooperate to create and spread superior information and subsequent social order. It is our freedom as consumers to trade our life-and-order-sustaining wealth for the best cars with the latest innovations, and as producers to go into the auto-manufacturing business, which motivates existing auto manufacturers(competitors) to innovate-compete-copy-learn to produce the best cars. Just like in the Olympics we can discover the best athletes in the world due to global competition, so does having the ‘freedom to trade’ with everyone in the world allows the best ideas to compete and spread globally thus ensuring the best possible global order. Via advertising, competitors are motivated to spread the potential usefulness and superiority of their products-ideas as well as the defects-inferiority of their competitors thus accelerating the need to compete-copy-spread superior information and subsequent order. As cost-cutting ideas emerge and inevitably spread via competition leading relative prices to continuously fall, new profitable ideas easily arise and once again spread via competition in an endless cycle of knowledge generation-innovation. For example, computers were once very expensive, but once the price of making them came down enough, people easily realized that every home could have them, which gave birth to our computerized world and the Internet and all the great things that flow from it. The more wealth is produced, the more wealth must be offered in exchange for labor as companies compete against each other for the labor they need which helps explain why the economic pie grows for everyone. Profit and loss calculation motivates and enables all private sector orders-people-companies to guide their actions in the most profitable and thus pie-increasing way, and, very importantly, it also prevents them from consuming more than what they produce. Unless of course they are the recipients of aid, charity, etc. Morals are ways of acting, they too are knowledge which also emerges and spreads via economic competition to considerable degrees. It is hard-working, tolerant, courteous people who thanks to competition inevitably motivate everyone else to be likewise.
The role of governments and thus coercion should be minimized because governmental or ‘public sector’ bureaucracies, being coercive monopolies which get their life or order-sustaining wealth through taxes and compulsion are immune to the competitive-information-spreading incentives which motivate private sector entities to keep up with the competition in terms of information and hustle. Government plans can’t work if people are free to not go along with or fund them, so they inevitably require compulsion and thus potentially making criminals out of people who harm no one but rather do something else with their wealth or just do things differently. Refusing to pay a single dollar that goes to the NYC public(monopolistic) school bureaucracy which consumes about $30,000 per year to “educate” a K-12 student is a criminal act. Taxes and all unnecessary transfers of wealth to the government, besides being an obvious coercive burden to the people that had to sacrifice a part of their lives to earn such wealth and now have less wealth to trade for the things they want, simply destroy the more productive and efficient private sector jobs the taxed-away spending or wealth would have sustained and replaces such productive and efficient jobs for inefficient government(monopoly) ones, or worse, things like militarism and wars. Government regulations are coercive-competitionless-monopoly information which is not subject to continuous improvement-replacement via competition so they paralyze entire industries slowing down ‘competitive knowledge discovery’, driving up costs (more lawyers-regulators-bureaucrats), and potentially making criminals out of people who harm nobody but just prefer to do things differently. This explains why the increasingly regulated/paralyzed healthcare sector has grown from consuming 5% of the economy in 1960 to over 20% today culminating in the current CovidMania tyranny. By comparison the Software/IT sector has few regulations, there is no American Computer Programmer’s Association monopolizing/paralyzing the knowledge relating to software like the American Medical Association does for medicine so free competition motivates the creation and spread of innovations at breakneck speed. Thus freedom and resulting ‘competitive knowledge discovery’, NOT coercive-centralized-competitionless-monopoly-government control by “experts” or “great leaders”, as opposed to leading to chaos-injustice, is what 1) motivates the discovery and spread of superior information and resulting order-civilization, 2) shields us from being coerced into going along the plans of others, 3) civilizes us, and 4) discovers THE TRUTH! With this in mind we continue.
- Raise the minimum wage to $15, which is the equivalent to its 1967 level.
Nothing screams economic ignorance like minimum wage laws which ban people from working who’s skill level attracts a pay rate lower than the minimum wage such as in the case of young people and seniors. Whenever a person works, one is just producing labor and the wealth it creates at a certain rate. For example, if a teenager uses a tree-trimmer to produce one mowed lawn valued by someone who pays for it at $50 in 10 hours, his ‘rate of production’ is $50 / 10 hours = $5/hour. If next month he uses a riding lawn mower and mows the same lawn in 1 hour, he will have increased his ‘rate of production’ 10-fold to $50/hour. If John has an idea that can generate wealth at a rate of say $12/hour he can pay-employ Tom for $10/hour to profit $2/hour. The fact that Tom chooses to trade his labor with John for $10/hour means that John is providing Tom the best option at the moment and thus benefiting his life. A $15/hour minimum wage law would outlaw all production that does not occur at a rate faster than $15/hour. Tom would be jobless. Minimum wage laws just outlaw business ideas and thus pie-increasing restructurings of society that do not occur faster than a legally mandated minimum. People who can’t help produce above this rate, teenagers, the elderly, immigrants who may not speak english and need extra help and thus costs, are made unemployable.
- Prosecute union-busting corporations so that labor can organize and negotiate fair wages.
Competition between employers automatically pays workers a “fair” wage. Microsoft would love to pay a good programmer in Seattle $10/hour, but since the programmer can produce programming services at a rate of $70/hour he is hired by Amazon for $60/hour, which motivates Microsoft to also pay a “competitive wage”. “Competitive wages” are fair wages because both worker and employer freely find trading with each other their best option. Making criminals out of people who don’t want to trade should be seen as immoral and horrendous.
- Expand free childcare to millions of families with programs like that pioneered by the state of New Mexico.
There is no such thing as “free childcare”. The huge number of people providing this “free childcare” must consume vast quantities of wealth which must ultimately come from tax-payers-workers who are the only people who actually create wealth. Remember, the government does not create any wealth, all the wealth it consumes comes from the workers. The wealth needed to sustain this “childcare” would destroy the jobs that would be sustained by the workers had they’d be free to keep their wealth instead of being coerced into paying for some government-managed-competition-less childcare scheme that, due to the lack of ‘competitive knowledge discovery’ that all coercive-government programs face, would just be another wealth-destroying bureaucracy that produces much much less than it consumes. Should Americans be made criminals for not wanting to fund this scheme?
- Drop housing costs by $1000 per family and make home ownership affordable by backing 3% home mortgages with tax-free bonds.
Just like government competition-immune regulations have paralyzed ‘competitive knowledge discovery’ in medicine leading to sky-rocketing costs and government backed myths-errors-calamities like the HIV->AIDS->DEATH and the current vaccinations schedule (myths-errors which RFK Jr. has valiantly helped defeat), building regulations and Zoning laws keep housing expensive and prevent people from living in tiny homes which would immediately end homelessness and greatly increase the wealth Americans would have for other things. Most of us today would prefer to live in a $10,000 tiny home with Internet access than a mansion 40 years ago. It is yet another economically ignorant statist idea to coerce civilization into one way of housing, etc. Again, end building regulations and within one year everyone will have adequate housing.
- Cut energy prices by restricting natural gas exports.
As with medicine, energy production is one of the most regulated and thus paralyzed-competition-immune sectors of the economy. Remove regulations to introduce more ‘competitive knowledge discovery’ and see the price of energy plummet and innovations in energy production skyrocket just like the price of everything that is software-IT related. Making criminals out of people who want to trade natural gas with other fellow human beings in other countries is yet another economically ignorant idea.
- Support small businesses by redirecting regulatory scrutiny onto large corporations.
We should be reducing paralyzing-competition-immune regulations and thus increasing efficient ‘competitive knowledge discovery’ for everyone! In every sector! Hello McFly!
- Secure the border and bring illegal immigration to a halt, so that undocumented migrants won’t undercut wages.
Securing the border and having some streamlined immigration process is consistent with a free society and the desires of most Americans, however the ‘won’t undercut wages’ is typical economically ignorant tribalistic nonsense. Immigration is the fastest way to both grow the economy and rapidly increase the prosperity and well being of a fellow human being. A person living in a poor undeveloped country may produce wealth at a rate of say $5/day, but by just moving to a country with a more advanced and productive order like the USA can now produce at say $8/hour or $64/day for a 13-fold increase in rate of production. Americans now gain yet another person who can actually buy our stuff instead of poor people who can’t. The more wealth is produced the more wealth is then traded for your own labor, products, services.
- Negotiate trade deals that prevent low-wage countries from competing with American workers in a “race to the bottom.”
Americans are supposed to be a free people, how can some economically ignorant bureaucrats make criminals out of fellow human beings for trading with each other. We never would have had the Internet and all the increasingly cheap Web-IT stuff that is revolutionizing the world if computers and electronics and all the cheap stuff that is made by cheaper labor overseas had to be produced by unionized fat Doritos-eating diabetic pill-popping “Made in the USA” workers. Hiring cheaper labor overseas just makes cheaper products that save consumers money and helps keep American companies competitive with companies in other countries who are free to hire cheaper labor wherever it may be. Among many other benefits.
- Rein in military spending and use the resources to fund infrastructure, health care, higher education, child care, and domestic prosperity.
Definitely. The USA military budget should be cut by at least 90%, however, the taxes-wealth should be given back to the workers so that they can keep the wealth they traded a part of their lives to create and spend it as they desire, not some usual competition-immune-wasteful-inefficient Socialist-government program.
- Reverse the chronic disease epidemic that is a $3.7 trillion drag on families and the American economy.
Who discovers how to “Reverse the chronic disease epidemic”? How do we do it? Who created this problem to begin with? It was the AMA, CDC, and countless regulatory and thus coercive-competition-immune bureaucracies that preached myths-errors which have destroyed the health of Americans. Deregulate the healthcare sector! Licensing just makes criminals out of health practitioners who don’t want to preach the myths (HIV->AIDS, vaccinations, etc.) that are destroying our health. How can alleged free people be made criminals for giving medical advice that disagrees with a competition-immune-priesthood of Scientism headed by bureaucrats like Fauci? It is the ‘competitive knowledge discovery’ that arises from people’s freedom, NOT some white guys with lab coats allegedly “following the science” and then making criminals out of millions who choose to do things differently, that discovers the best way to achieve good health. If there is one prominent leader that should be for freedom in the scientific-medical world it should be RFK Jr.
- Clean out the corruption in Washington, D.C., which funnels so much of our nation’s wealth to giant corporations and billionaires.
In the private sector corrupt companies lose wealth due to corruption and can no longer keep costs as low as competitors who discover better information and ways to avoid the corruption so the companies with corruption eventually go bankrupt and sell-dissolve their assets which are then bought by the less corrupt companies. This does not happen in governments since they can just keep raising taxes and face little competition. Let’s quote the great freemarketeer Herbert Spencer:
“How invariably officialism becomes corrupt every one knows. Exposed to no such antiseptic as free competition — not dependent for existence, as private unendowed organizations are, upon the maintenance of a vigorous vitality; all law-made agencies fall into an inert, over-fed state, from which to disease is a short step. Salaries flow in irrespective of the activity with which duty is performed; continue after duty wholly ceases; becomes rich prizes for the idle well born; and prompt to perjury, to bribery, to simony. … Officialism is habitually slow. When non-governmental agencies are dilatory, the public has its remedy: it ceases to employ them, and soon finds quicker ones. Under this discipline all private bodies are taught promptness. But for delays in State-departments there is no such easy cure. …
“Consider first how immediately every private enterprise is dependent upon the need for it; and how impossible it is for it to continue if there be no need. Daily are new trades and new companies established. If they subserve some existing public want, they take root and grow. If they do not, they die of inanition. It needs no act of Parliament, to put them down. As with all natural organizations, if there is no function to them, no nutrient comes to them, and they dwindle away. Moreover, not only do the new agencies disappear if they are superfluous, but the old ones cease to be when they have done their work. Unlike law-made instrumentalities…these private instrumentalities dissolve when they become needless. …
“Again, officialism is stupid. Under the natural course of things each citizen tends towards his fittest function. Those who are competent to the kind of work they undertake, succeed, and, in the average of cases, are advanced in proportion to their efficiency; while the incompetent, society soon finds out, ceases to employ, forces to try something easier, and eventually turns to use. But it is quite otherwise in State-organizations. Here, as everyone knows, birth, age, back-stairs intrigue, and sycophancy, determine the selections, rather than merit. The “fool of the family” readily finds a place in the Church, if “the family” have good connections. A youth, too ill-educated for any active profession, does very well for an officer in the Army. Gray hair or a title, is a far better guarantee of naval promotion than genius is. Nay, indeed, the man of capacity often finds that, in government offices, superiority is a hindrance — that his chiefs hate to be pestered with his proposed improvements, and are offended by his implied criticism. Not only, therefore, is legislative machinery complex, but it is made of inferior materials.” (Spencer, 1853)
- Establish addiction healing centers on organic farms across the country.
In other words, let’s make criminals out of people who don’t want to have their wealth go to these coercive-competition-immune-government-run ‘healing centers’. Addicts just need jobs, unity with fellow co-workers, customers, other productive people and a clear path to prosperity which our disastrous economic policies like high minimum wages prevent.
- Make student debt dischargeable in bankruptcy and cut interest rates on student loans to zero.
- Cut drug costs by half to bring them in line with other nations.
What we need is NOT particular solutions by “experts” or “great leaders”. This is what economically ignorant people believe. People who understand economics know that what we really need is just the freedom whose emerging ‘competitive knowledge discovery’ will lead to the best outcomes and socioeconomic order. And for this we just need to make a proper understanding of economics a priority. Ludwig von Mises said it best:
“Economics must not be relegated to classrooms and statistical offices and must not be left to esoteric circles. It is the philosophy of human life and action and concerns everybody and everything. It is the pith of civilization and of man’s human existence…All present-day political issues concern problems commonly called economic. All arguments advanced in contemporary discussion of social and public affairs deal with fundamental matters of…economics. Everybody’s mind is preoccupied with economic doctrines…Everybody thinks of economics whether he is aware of it or not. In joining a political party and in casting his ballot, the citizen implicitly takes a stand upon essential economic theories…As conditions are today, nothing can be more important to every intelligent man than economics. His own fate and that of his progeny is at stake…all reasonable men are called upon to familiarize themselves with the teachings of economics. This is, in our age, the primary civic duty. Whether we like it or not, it is a fact that economics cannot remain an esoteric branch of knowledge accessible only to small groups of scholars and specialists. Economics deals with society’s fundamental problems; it concerns everyone and belongs to all. It is the main and proper study of every citizen.”
RFK Jr. needs to reach Milei and Ron Paul level economics wisdom, then be honest with the American people, and have faith that he and his team and friends will succeed in spreading the ideas of freedom.