Fredagshumor

För ett tag sedan stötte jag på sajten ”RationalWiki”. Det verkar vara något slags forum för folk som tror de har svar på allt här i världen. Efter att först noterat den förutsägbara sågningen av allt religiöst och annat som inte är tillräckligt ”rationellt” tänkte jag att jag skulle slå upp lite frihetliga teman. Jag möttes av en sådan oväntad störtflod av oavsiktlig komik att jag bara måste dela med mig till mina vänner på mises.se.

Här alltså några urklippta ”rationella” citat från valda uppslagsord. Läs gärna själv hela texten för varje ord.  Humor av stora mått.

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Lew_Rockwell

There is a heavy overlap between writers at Rockwell’s site and the von Mises Institute, so you’ll get a lot of recycled material. There’s some actual Austrian economists like Tom DiLorenzo, Walter Block, and Peter Schiff (of course) writing there, so the site is rife with gold buggery. There’s massive amounts of legal history (real and pseudo), much of it dealing with Constitutional originalism. They also hate Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt.

Proving the old adage about the stopped clock, Rockwell promotes such vehement opposition to war he puts to shame even the moonbats.

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Thomas_DiLorenzo

Thomas DiLorenzo is an Austrian school ”economist” and pseudohistorian who holds a post as a professor of economics at Loyola College, Maryland and as a fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Instituteand formerly worked for the neo-secessionist League of the South Institute. DiLorenzo’s revisionist history has made him a popular ”scholar” within libertarian circles and among some of the nuttier Teabaggers. He is one of the foremost proponents of Neo-Confederate thought today. His body of work is most notable for being something of a synthesis of the alternate universe histories put forth by Neo-Confederates, free market fundamentalists, and libertarians, all in one package.

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Murray_Rothbard

Murray Rothbard was an Austrian school economist and influential leader of the modern libertarian movement. As T.H. Huxley called himself ”Darwin’s bulldog,” Rothbard might as well have called himself von Mises’ bulldog. Rothbard was one of the foremost proponents of the pseudo-psychology known as praxeology. Rothbard viewed property rights as paramount to freedom and so went even beyond von Mises, who was a minarchist, in advocating anarcho-capitalism. He was also known as a big critic of fractional reserve banking and the Federal Reserve. Because of his philosophy, he held many views that would be seen as progressive as well as ones that were batshit crazy.

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Ludwig_von_Mises

Ludwig von Mises is the patron saint of the Austrian school of economics, although not the actual founder of the school (that would be Carl Menger). He is revered as one of the chief gods of libertarianism for developing the Austrian method of praxeology, which he described as a ’general theory of human action'[1] Mises has had an immense amount of influence on libertarian thought and was greatly admired by the likes of F.A. Hayek, Ayn Rand and Murray Rothbard.

Mises’ greatest work is generally considered (among his followers, at least) to be the gargantuan doorstopper called Human Action, which fully codifies the method of praxeology. Unfortunately for Mises, it was pseudoscientific upon arrival in 1949 and is even more pseudoscientific in light of current knowledge.

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Federal_Reserve

What’s wrong with the anti-Fed crankery?

While one can find many legitimate criticisms of the Fed (incompetence, cronyism, etc.), much of the opposition to the Fed comes from a basic misunderstanding of how it operates or a conspiratorial view.

Conspiracy theories

The Fed has been a frequent subject of conspiracy theories alleging the Fed creates inflation, recessions, and even the Great Depression, through manipulation of the money supply.

Ownership

Critics of the Fed make a big deal out of the fact that the Federal Reserve is a private corporation partially governed by the same banks it is supposed to regulate rather than a federal government agency. So what? This is similar to the status of Amtrak, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the Tennessee Valley Authority, and the United States Postal Service, all examples of other major clusterfucks. Of course, being a major clusterfuck is not synonymous with being a conspiracy controlling the world — indeed, they are almost complete opposites.

Austrian school and free banking proponents

Much of the opposition to the Fed in non-conspiratorial circles (though there is some overlap) comes from the Austrian school, who are free banking proponents and generally draw on Ludwig von Mises’ arguments against central banking. Ron Paul is particularly known for his multi-decadal anti-Fed crusade in Congress. In short, they claim that the Fed creates the business cycle[12] through the expansion of the money supply which leads to ”malinvestment” due to easy money.

Ignoring Lessons from the US Free Banking Era (1837 to 1864)

The biggest flaw with the free banking proponents is they either are ignorant or ignore the many problems seen in the Free Banking Era of the US.

After the establishment of the Fed

The US only saw three major banking crises after the establishment of the Fed (Great Depression, S&L crisis, 2008 financial crisis) and only two since the creation of federal deposit insurance compared to one about every decade prior to that.[14] The business cycle has also seen shorter and smaller contractions.

Essentially, what this demonstrates is that certain libertarians[15] and Austrian schoolers like Ron Paul seem to love the idea of going back to the 19th century and having us all stuff gold bricks under our mattresses every time it looks like there’s going to be a run on the bank.

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Ron_Paul

Economics

Paul is associated with the Austrian school[19] of economics. Long-time Paul associate and staffer Lew Rockwell founded the Ludwig von Mises Institute, which runs columns by Paul. This is the reason for all of his goldbuggery and other crank economic ideas.

He doesn’t just want to audit and end the Fed, but also to audit Ft. Knox’s gold reserves, just in case someone replaced them with metal bars that are merely painted gold.[20]

On the positive side of the ledger, he was (along with Bernie Sanders of Vermont) a driving force behind the audit of the Fed that revealed its dirty dealings during the bailouts.

Woo promotion

”Already, Paul introduced a bill (The Health Freedom Protection Act) that would strongly and positively affect Mercola.com and many other natural health organizations and advocates, along with the field of natural health in general.” – Dr. Joseph Mercola

”Only Ron Paul believes in genuine health freedom. He’s the creator of the Health Freedom Protection Act, a bill that would reestablish Free Speech provisions for makers of superfoods, herbs, nutritional supplements and other natural remedies.” – Mike Adams of NaturalNews [24]

In other words, Paul, who is an actual MD, supports freeing the chains that bind the sellers of quack remedies and unproven nostrums from lying to their potential customers. It is recommended that you go to the link in the footnote and read it. You can skip all the stuff about Stormfront and neo-Nazis to get to the quackery report.

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Keynes

1st Baron John Maynard Keynes was an outstanding economic theorist whose work dominated pre-World War Two economic theory, during which it reached its maximum expression. In contrast with the Austrian School of Hayek and Mises, and the Chicago/monetarist schools associated withMilton Friedman, both of which advocate for economic freedom and came to be dominant in the 1980s with the rise of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher and ”supply side economics.”