 | | The Daily Reckoning | Saturday, July 21, 2012 |
- Dismantling the false dilemmas presented by today’s political class,
- Readers weigh in on (potential) potholes along the road to expatriation,
- Plus, all this week’s reckonings archived for your alternative consideration...
---------------------------------------------------------------
Innovate or Die...
That is the rather pressing theme of this year’s Agora Financial Investment Symposium in Vancouver, Canada. And in the run-up to this year’s event, we’ve got a special offer for you...
As always, we’re recording the entire line-up of speakers and are making them available to you on both MP3 and CD formats. But this year we’re going a step further...
For the first time in the 13-year history of the Symposium, you will also be able to SEE all of the presentations, in stunning HD Video!
So even if you weren’t able to join us at this year’s event, you don’t have to miss out on a single piece of analysis or recommendation.
And right now, before we kick-off the event, they’re available at an incredible discount. Click here to get yours now. But hurry, the price will go up as soon as the conference begins.
|  | | | | | | Joel Bowman, checking in briefly from Paris, France... | |  | | Joel Bowman | Well, we received a rather astonishing volume of emails after publishing the article below during the week. We argued, as you can read, that free markets provide a largely unexplored option for individuals vexed by the current “either-or” political environment.
A rich debate followed on the DR homepage under the piece...and carried over into our own bordeaux-infused dinner conversations here in La Ville-Lumière.
We present it again, as this weekend’s feature article, for your learned consideration...
[This article was originally published in these pages on July 18, 2012]
| | | | | The Daily Reckoning Presents | | The Illusion of Choice | | | | “If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.” ~ US President Barack Obama
“Whence does [the State] draw those resources that it is urged to dispense by way of benefits to individuals? Is it not from the individuals themselves? How, then, can these resources be increased by passing through the hands of a parasitic and voracious intermediary?” ~ Frédéric Bastiat
---
Tell me sir, “yes” or “no,” have you stopped beating your wife?
Of the myriad rhetorical tools employed in public discourse today, there are dangerous few more insidious than the false dilemma. Little surprise then that, as the election season circus rolls into towns across the country, this Weapon of Dialectic Destruction (WDD) finds itself a favorite of slick politicians working to curry favor with an increasingly ovine voter mass.
Simply put, the false dilemma is a sly trick of exclusion whereby a speaker (always generously) offers his or her audience the apparently favorable choice between two unfortunately poor options.
“With which horn do you wish to be gored?”
Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke furnished an infamous example when he told a hastily convened meeting in the conference room of then-House Speaker, the permanently-startled Nancy Pelosi:
“If we don’t do this [enact TARP legislation], we might not have an economy on Monday.”
News of the backroom political panic soon hit the streets. One could almost hear the trillions of excited neurons, misfiring in earnest around vacant braincases from sea to shining sea...
“Sure, creating a giant, taxpayer-sponsored slush fund from which Bernanke and his minions could (and would) dole out hundreds of billions of dollars to their bankster cronies is not exactly optimal...but not having an economy on Monday? Surely that’s worse, right?”
But were these the only two options? Your money or your...economy?
What about letting profligate institutions go broke? What about adhering to the market principle of Too Stupid to Succeed rather than capitulating to The State’s self-serving version: Too Big to Fail? Where might the economy be if the weak hands had been eliminated from the market, ceding what remaining value they had on the books to institutions that had exercised prudence and good judgment while future bailout recipients busily indulged in excessive risk-taking and reckless profligacy?
We’ll never know, of course...because Bernanke, Paulson, Pelosi & Co.’s false dilemma scared enough people into thinking there was “no other option.”
Known variously as the either-or fallacy, the fallacy of exhaustive hypotheses or, more colloquially, plain ol’ black and white thinking, the false dilemma is both deceptive and destructive. First, because it lures unsuspecting listeners into a misguided belief that their choices are limited to those offered by the speaker and, second, because it attacks the creative process by which new ideas come to “market” by slamming the door closed on alternative possibilities.
Take the above quote, from none other than President Barack Obama. Speaking to supporters in Roanoke, Virginia on Friday afternoon, Mr. Obama channeled the intellectually insufferable Massachusetts Senate candidate, Elizabeth Warren, in declaring that:
If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.
Implied here is the false notion that, without roads built by The State...there would be no roads. Without schools constructed by The State...there would be no education. Without the “unbelievable American system”...creative individuals wouldn’t be allowed to thrive.
In other words...
- Choose The State, or choose illiteracy.
- Choose The State, or choose dirt tracks on which to haul your goods.
- Choose The State, or nobody will help you...nobody will cooperate with you...and you will be alone, unable even to survive, much less thrive.
Textbook false dilemmas.
Nowhere is a free market alternative presented. And it’s little wonder why. At the precise point the free market ends, the tyranny of The State begins. Nowhere do the two overlap. (Crony capitalism, mixed market economies and the rest are NOT free markets.) Clearly, therefore, it is in The State’s best interest to see that free market activity is marginalized as far as possible in order that The State itself might occupy ever more space in people’s minds and, by extension, in the economies they are “allowed” to build.
So profoundly have certain false dilemmas bored their way into people’s “thinking” that supposedly able-minded individuals have stricken the very possibility of free market cooperation from their mental map.
Indeed, some confused people even contend that, were we to ignore the iron-fisted directives of The State, we would promptly descend into a Mad Max-style dystopia, in which a collection of unchecked territorial monopolies would roam the planet, stealing and damaging property at whim and torturing, imprisoning and killing whomever they so wished.
Strange then that these same people would “remedy” this apocalyptic nightmare by supporting The State...a collection of unchecked territorial monopolies that roam the planet, stealing and damaging property at whim and torturing, imprisoning and killing whomever they so wish.
These individuals are sorely misled...victims of the false dilemma. They are so misled, in fact, that they find themselves circling back to a position that sees them fervently supporting an entity that tirelessly labors to turn their worst fears into harsh reality. Worse still, they continue to mislead others by repeating such vapid nonsense.
Unlike The State’s obedient apologists, advocates of the free market don’t need to pretend to know the best solution to each and every problem — something F.A. Hayek called the pretence of knowledge. We simply need to cede the discovery process to free individuals acting in their own self-interest.
When confronted with a problem deserved of our best solution, voluntarists first ask, “Is there a peaceful, market-based solution here? Might, for example, freely-associating individuals work together to build schools, roads and bridges? Might free competition stand guard against coercive monopolies? Might the market process of creative destruction weed out inept and/or corrupt businesses, rather than reward them with stolen property?”
Like the election process itself, in which well-intentioned voters saddle themselves with the misguided obligation to choose the “lesser of two evils,” the false dilemma lulls individuals into thinking there is no alternative, no preferable option, no choice that does not, at least to some degree, rely on compromising their values and morals. No choice that does not involve the hired gun of The State. No choice, in other words, that does not render them party to evil.
Surely we can think a little harder than that, Fellow Reckoner, beyond the iniquities perpetrated by the political left and the right. Instead of a system based on force and coercion and violence, instead of extracting money from people for “services” by threatening to put them in cages, peaceful, cooperative individuals learn in time to welcome and celebrate a system such as here described by Hayek:
“Spontaneous order is a system which has developed not through the central direction or patronage of one or a few individuals but through the unintended consequences of the decisions of myriad individuals each pursuing their own interests through voluntary exchange, cooperation and trial and error.”
When it comes to false dilemmas, we need not slavishly impale ourselves on one of The State’s two horns, but only to open our eyes. The free market alternative invites decent people everywhere to stand up and confidently declare, “It’s time to cut the bull.”
Regards,
Joel Bowman
for The Daily Reckoning
Email: joel@dailyreckoning.com | | New breakthrough fuel could power your car |
It took the earth 300 million years to make the oil we burn.
Imagine if we could squeeze that whole process into just a few months... a few weeks... or even a few days. Because that’s exactly what could be happening.
At least a half-dozen labs and companies are working on this, right now.
If they get it right, we could literally “make” as much gas for your car as you need. We could make fuel for planes, trains, and diesel trucks this way too.
Find out more by clicking here.
| | | | | ALSO THIS WEEK in The Daily Reckoning...
| Obama: The Shaq of Spending
By Joel Bowman
Paris, France
We wrote the other day about the power of memes — ideas, styles or patterns of behaviour that spread through cultures and societies. In the digital age, memes can replicate with virtually infinite fecundity, near perfect fidelity and enjoy a potential longevity far beyond that of a gene. Like their biological cousins, however, memes can be both productive — contributing to generally increased knowledge and truth discovery — and harmful — dragging the minds they encounter further away from the reality of a situation. Consider the following graph...
Becoming a “Permanent Tourist”
By Doug Casey
Buenos Aires, Argentina
There really is almost no place you can run, no one place where it’s reasonably safe to be a citizen these days. We’re heading toward a time like in the book, Atlas Shrugged, when the productive people in society are just going to stop producing. Why should anyone work hard to create value when a substantial portion of that value will get diverted into fighting off regulators and other government goons, only to have half of what you do make seized to pay for those very same thugs?
Market-Rigging and Price-Fixing
By Eric Fry
Laguna Beach, California
“Markets are so rigged by policymakers that I have no meaningful insights to offer.” That’s what Nomura International’s Investment Strategist, Bob Janjuah, griped five months ago. Since then, policymakers have stepped up their market-rigging, while new revelations of past market-rigging have also come to light. It’s starting to feel like the financial markets are all rigging and no ship.
Shorting Armageddon
by Patrick Cox
Marco Island, Florida
The title above is the short version of the title I’m using next week for my presentation to Agora Financial Investment Symposium in Vancouver. It reflects my belief that this moment of financial uncertainty, like all those before it, is a golden opportunity for investors with vision to buy emerging disruptive technologies at truly bargain prices.
| | | | The “Lost” Gold Bible Congress Never Wanted Anyone To See
“Locked away” for almost 3 decades. Kept virtually secret...until now.
You’ll soon discover why all the secrecy surrounds this book...and why it would be to your great benefit to read this book now.
You’ll also see why I’m doing everything in my power to get this book into your hands for FREE by following one simple step
Click here to read more.
| | | | The Weekly Endnote...
| | | We received — and continue to receive — a torrent of reader mail regarding our Group Research Project. As you’ll remember, we encouraged readers with expat experience to write in and share their experiences. What were the pros/cons of leaving the U.S. (or, for that matter, any other “home country”)? The good...the bad...and the ugly. And, of course, any tips for others looking to do the same. In short, what was their “Expat Experience”?
We asked and, as usual, you responded. Here are a few insights:
First up, Reckoner Paul G. writes in with a word of caution to flighty, would-be expats...
Don’t lock the door on your way out!
I’m not here to burst the bubble, rain on the parade or cast doubts on anyone’s dream/fantasy. But I would advise caution to anyone thinking that they can pack up, move to another country and leave their problems far behind. As a frequent visitor to South America over the past 12 years I’ve come across countless returning expats, some of whom spent thousands of dollars only to have to cash in and often lose everything when they realized the challenges of living as an expat weren’t worth the effort. The typical obstacles they face on a day to day basis are daunting..., the lack of trust, the ever devaluation of the US dollar, the cultural differences, being gringo priced/gouged, being a walking target for petty crime, etc. It takes a tremendous amount of energy trying to deal with these issues when what the typical retiree wants is simplicity and a low stress lifestyle.
Used to be that a gringo could go somewhere like latin america, the costs savings of living there would outweigh any frustrations with local culture. Not anymore! The devalued dollar has seen to that. Real estate prices have caught up to and even surpassed much of north america. I can buy a cheaper house here in Calif. these days than in any of the habitable areas of South America including all of Chile, the better areas in Lima, Peru, Cuenca Ecuador etc. I could go on. Best advice is to take a few months to visit before cutting the USA lifeline, even then remember that your perceptions as a visitor will vastly differ from someone who has spent years living there.
DR: Thanks, Paul. All good points. And, of course, the more research you do before heading “O.S.”, the easier the transition will be. As we’ve said in this space before...the prison walls aren’t easy to climb but, for those who can make the effort, it may be well worth it.
*** Also, for Americans looking to visit Argentina, we might suggest checking the maximum amount of US dollars you’re allowed to bring in on your person. You can easily change money in the country, as every porteño from the Pampas to the Rio del Plata is looking to get out of their rapidly diminishing pesos. (Thanks to La Presidenta for that market distortion.) You’ll have no troubles finding willing buyers for your greenbacks...often at much higher exchange rates than the “official” rates.
Next, Reckoner Larry writes from the scene of next week’s Agora Financial Investment Symposium...
I enjoy reading your newsletters and was intrigued by the letters from the expats that left to live in Canada, specifically Vancouver. I live right downtown a couple of blocks from the Fairmont in the most beautiful city in the world.
Having said all that I am leaving for good for very much the same reason as the US expats.
Tax freedom day is June 11 , 50% of my hard earned money wasted . “Free” medical as long as I want to wait 1 year to get a procedure (50,000) of us left last year to purchase attention elsewhere.
Should I mention that our mighty leaders don’t have to wait in line?
The government of Canada follows the lead of the US in almost everything so expect to have the same onerous laws here very soon.
Soon to be a little bit more free somewhere else...
DR: As our friend, and perennial Vancouver Symposium favorite, Doug Casey, likes to say, “Best to be treated like a welcome tourist than a domestic milk cow.”
If you’re still looking to grab a seat at this year’s shindig, the pickings are pretty slim. We might still have a handful of tickets. Check here.
And finally, this one from Reckoner Philipp, checking in from Zurich...
I saw this statistic in a Swiss paper saying that out of these 1800 people who returned their US-passport, 300 are from Switzerland. This is an amazing number for a small country like Switzerland. The US Embassy in Berne had to hire additional staff.
The report did not specify whether these people have been US-born citizens or Swiss citizens with an additional US-passport. Fact is; if you live in Switzerland with a US-passport you can not open a bank account, you can not buy a condo or a house because no bank will advance a mortgage to you.
Companies also have become very restrictive hiring US-people because of the extended regulatory requirements and paperwork involved.
---
As always, we welcome your thoughts. Email them to the address below and...
..enjoy your weekend.
Cheers,
Joel Bowman
Managing Editor
The Daily Reckoning
P.S. If you won’t be joining us in Vancouver for this year’s Agora Financial Investment Symposium next week, but worry that you’ll miss out on all the action, don’t fret. You can still secure yourself a discounted copy of our DVD/MP3 recordings of the event. Get in early and, in addition to beating the rush, enjoy a hefty discount too! Details Here.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Here at The Daily Reckoning, we value your questions and comments. If you would like to send us a few thoughts of your own, please address them to your managing editor at joel@dailyreckoning.com
| | |  | | | | 
Popular Posts
-
Plus: PayPal's sneaky move, new AI coming, best time to post on Facebook ...
| | 
The Daily Reckoning U.S. Edition
No comments:
Post a Comment
Keep a civil tongue.