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"What Is Austrian Economics?" (Mises Institute)
"I, Pencil," by Leonard E. Read (The Freeman)
"The Epistemological Basis of Anarchism,"
by Roy A. Childs, Jr. (TLD)
"Polite totalitarianism," by Ronald N. Neff (TLD)

Posted February 3:
The next section of "Anarchism & Justice,"
by Roy A. Childs, Jr. — a must-read for TLDers.
 

Posted February 2, 2012.

Kangaroo scientists take another leap. Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, are now saying that sugar is toxic and addictive —

But let's hit the pause button right there.

So far, I'm still on the bus with these boffins, pretty much (though I don't like loose talk about addiction, which is a murky concept indeed). I've been on and off the Atkins Diet several times over the past seven or eight years; and especially when I'm on it, I like to harass my friends with the dire (and somewhat hysterical) dictum, "Just as chocolate is poison to dogs, sugar is poison to humans!" Even when I'm not Atkinsizing, I keep candy, ice cream, and high-octane colas on the Index Victuum Prohibitorum, and I sample cookies, cakes, and pies only at birthday parties and other such free-for-alls.

Now, all of that being said, let's hit Play:

— and "should be considered a controlled substance just like alcohol and tobacco." That's from the editor's intro of a Time magazine piece on the subject, "Should Sugar Be Regulated like Alcohol and Tobacco?" by Bonnie Rochman, February 2, 2012. Rochman writes: "To counter our consumption, the [report's] authors advocate taxing sugary foods and controlling sales to kids under 17."

There they leap again.

The leap I refer to is the one from science to ideology, and it's a giant one indeed. The moment these marsupial M.D.s and Ph.D.s bounce from describing their scientific findings to making policy recommendations, they recast themselves as ol' Joe Blow sittin' beside the cracker barrel and workin' his jaw. In other words, their opinion about what should happen to our liberty is no weightier than ours.

In fact, we may want to accord it even less weight. I've noticed — haven't you? — that nowadays scientists almost always accompany their headline-worthy biological or environmental findings with a certain kind of policy proposal: one that involves not weakening leviathan's crushing and ruinous power but strengthening it. And that occurs in an era when a grievously large proportion of scientific research is financed by one level of government or another. If I may again trot out one of my favorite formulations: Comrades, it is no accident. [Nicholas Strakon]  Ω

A related column of mine from 2007:
"Global warming: What if the Left is right?"
 

Posted January 26, 2012.

Clip joints. According to the telescreen out of Fort Wayne, an Indiana state representative who was sponsoring a bill to abolish licensing of barbers and cosmetologists has now withdrawn it because — in the newsreader's words — he "got a lot of compelling testimony last week from cosmetologists and others in the industry to keep regulation in place." (Print version of WANE-TV story, January 26, 2012.)

Rep. David Wolkins (R-Winona Lake), who introduced the bill, is quoted in an earlier Indianapolis Star story as saying, "This bill was dumped in my lap because I'm the 'smaller-government person' in the House. I have nothing in it other than I am the carrier." Circus clowns have nothing on brave, principled statesmen in the ability to back-pedal at lightning speed. According to the story, Wolkins also said, "It has created a headache. They're all up in arms."

"They," the Star writes, include "the Professional Beauty Association, a national organization of salons, spas, distributors, and manufacturers" who are "opposed to the legislation, [and say that] the bill will kill cosmetology schools, put local product distributors out of business, jeopardize the livelihood of Indiana's barbers/cosmetologists, and threaten the health and safety of consumers."

Nice to see that the "health and safety of consumers" at least get a mention, at the end. But it's plain to see that the consumers aren't the chief concern here; the main thing is the desire of established operators to stay legally protected from unruly competitors. Where are the quotes from those endangered consumers, terrified at the prospect of greedy, heartless, exploitative, unhealthy, extremist laissez-faire free-market dog-clip-dog capitalism breaking out in Indiana?

The story itself is instructive, but so is the way the Fort Wayne TV station (which is government-friendly) reported it. According to the Progressive fairy-tale ideology long promoted by the government schools, it should have been the customers who pressed for the regulations to be retained. But the TV newsreader and her scriptwriter were blind to the aspects of the story that — in light of the System's traditional party line — should put it in the man-bites-dog category. After all, "business always opposes regulation," right? Absent was any declaration along the lines of, "Oddly enough, it's the industry itself that's calling for the regulation to be retained." (Media consumers do hear "oddly enough ..." fairly often in the course of "straight" news coverage.)

Have we been deep-dyed in statism for so long now that the old Progressive fairy tales are no longer considered necessary? Or any mental activity whatsoever? [Nicholas Strakon]

Modine Herbey comments. Yes. Ω
 

Our writers include anarcho-pessimists, Old Believers in the West, unreconstructed Confederates, neo-Objectivists, and other enemies of the permanent regime. We are conscientiously indifferent to considerations of thoughtcrime. Thus, from individualist and Euro-American perspectives, we confront the end of civilization — and do our level best to name its destroyers. (More about who we are.)

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Nicholas Strakon