Author: WyattPitts

What did Professor Hasnas mean when he claimed that the idea of the rule of law is a myth? According to Wikipedia “The rule of law is a political ideal that all citizens and institutions within a country, state, or community are accountable to the same laws, including lawmakers and leaders. It is sometimes stated simply as ‘no one is above the law’.” What does Professor Hasnas mean by no one is above the law? According to taylorfrancis.com, “This chapter begins with what is intended as an entertaining reprise of the main jurisprudential arguments designed to show that there is no such thing as a government of laws and not people and that the belief that there is constitutes a myth that serves to maintain the public’s support for society’s power structure.”

Professor Casey claims that the idea of political representation is an empty one. How does he defend this argument? Political representation is when politicians represent the citizens and act in the best interest of the citizens. How did he defend this idea? He said that “representation is insufficient to cover the brutal fact that despite our sophisticated modern states, the elegant rhetoric, and persuasive propaganda, some rule, and others are ruled.”

How was the standard of living affected by the Industrial Revolution? According to Wikipedia, “Standard of living is the level of income, comforts and services available, generally applied to a society or location, rather than to an individual. Standard of living is relevant because it is considered to contribute to an individual’s quality of life.” Many people say that nothing changed during the Industrial Revolution, but they are wrong. It actually had lots of positive effects. It increased the standard of living, production of goods, wealth, and more that I do not know. 

The New Deal was a wise series of government actions that healed the problems afflicting the economy. It didn’t really help. The economy was already healing before the New Deal was a thing. The New Deal just made it go a bit faster. It was not very wise though. According to the National Archives (.gov), “Roosevelt’s “New Deal” aimed at promoting economic recovery and putting Americans back to work through Federal activism. New Federal agencies attempted to control agricultural production, stabilize wages and prices, and create a vast public works program for the unemployed.“

Different African government successes for different African economies. One of these was Zaire under Mobutu Sese Seko. There were big copper mines in Zaire, but most of the money that came out of selling the copper went to Mobutu. He spent big amounts of money building monuments and statues of himself. He made all these thing that people could and couldn’t do like wear western clothing. He drove out Asian merchants and Belgian technicians and businessmen. In the 1980s the copper prices fell. Because of this Mobutu had to call back the Asian merchants and Belgian technicians and businessmen, and cause high price inflation. 

Another African government was Kenya under Jomo Kenyatta. His government had a one party rule. He didn’t tax people too much and there were no mineral deposits. The land was not very substantial for farming, but he still did better then Mobutu did.  He even encouraged tourism! These two were extremely different with their government. 

Arguments advanced by the Public Choice school of economics. According to Wikipedia, “Public choice refers to the behavior and process of what public goods are provided, how they are provided and distributed, and the corresponding matching rules are established. Public choice theory expects to study and influence people’s public choice processes to maximize their social utility.” According to Econlib, “Public choice economists make the same assumption—that although people acting in the political marketplace have some concern for others, their main motive, whether they are voters, politicians, lobbyists, or bureaucrats, is self-interest.“

Front-loading and political engineering. According to the dictionary, front-loading means to “distribute or allocate (costs, effort, etc.) unevenly, with the greater proportion at the beginning of the enterprise or process.” Political engineering is when a military spreads a project around to different infirmities to make sure that the job gets done. 

Marx’s criticisms of capitalism and how I would respond to them. According to the dictionary, capitalism is “an economic and political system in which a country’s trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit.” This is what the USA does and it works wonderfully! I’m sure you know who Karl Marx is, so I’ll save you time in getting to the point. According to Econlib, “Marx condemned capitalism as a system that alienates the masses. His reasoning was as follows: although workers produce things for the market, market forces, not workers, control things. People are required to work for capitalists who have full control over the means of production and maintain power in the workplace.” How do I respond to this? I would change my job, wouldn’t you?

What Is To Be Done? This is a novel written by Vladimir Lenin. According to Wikipedia, “In What Is to Be Done?, Lenin argues that the working class will not spontaneously become political simply by fighting economic battles with employers over wages, working hours, and the like.”

New Economic Policy. According to Britannica, “The New Economic Policy reintroduced a measure of stability to the economy and allowed the Soviet people to recover from years of war, civil war, and governmental mismanagement. The small businessmen and managers who flourished in this period became known as NEP men.” 

Ukrainian terror-famine. this famine was actually a man made famine. According to Wikipedia, “The Holodomor, also known as the Great Ukrainian Famine, was a man-made famine in Soviet Ukraine from 1932 to 1933 that killed millions of Ukrainians. The Holodomor was part of the wider Soviet famine of 1930–1933 which affected the major grain-producing areas of the Soviet Union.”

The primary values of fascism. According to World101, “Many experts agree that fascism is a mass political movement that emphasizes extreme nationalism, militarism, and the supremacy of both the nation and the single, powerful leader over the individual citizen.” Fascism doesn’t sound like something that I want to happen today, but what are the primary values. According to Wikipedia, “Common themes among fascist movements include: authoritarianism, nationalism (including racial nationalism), hierarchy and elitism, and militarism. Other aspects of fascism such as perception of decadence, anti-egalitarianism and totalitarianism can be seen to originate from these ideas.” 

What was life like for the businessman in Nazi Germany? Not very good. For one they had price control. This means that the government decides how much you can or can’t sell something for. They also lived in a socialist society under HitlerAccording to the dictionary, socialism is “a political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.” . 

What is the idea of a “living Constitution”? A living constitution is a constitution that can be changed. This isn’t a good ides, because one day your right could include having guns, but the next day you’re not allowed to have guns. People could also change the law to fit their standards and be against others. A living constitution isn’t a strong constitution. A living constitution doesn’t protect your rights. 

What is nullification? According to Wikipedia, “Nullification, in United States constitutional history, is a legal theory that a state has the right to nullify, or invalidate, any federal laws which they deem unconstitutional with respect to the United States Constitution. There are similar theories that any officer, jury, or individual may do the same.”

What are the compact and nationalist theories of the Union? According to Wikipedia, “In United States constitutional theory, compact theory is an interpretation of the Constitution which holds that the United States was formed through a compact agreed upon by all the states, and that the federal government is thus a creation of the states.” According to Wikipedia, the nationalist theory is “It holds that each nation should govern itself, free from outside interference (self-determination), that a nation is a natural and ideal basis for a polity, and that the nation is the only rightful source of political power.”

Can smaller political units contribute to the cause of liberty? Yes. Most of the time smaller political states have more freedom economically. Just because they do not have a large military, doesn’t mean that they always lose battles. some can be won with economic power. 

What problems do price controls cause? According to the Dictionary, price control is “a government regulation establishing a maximum price to be charged for specified goods and services, especially during periods of war or inflation.” Price controls can do things like cause shortages, make hour long lines, and make things become too expensive. price control doesn’t work, but the governments around the world keep doing it. I don’t know why, but it isn’t anything good to do. 

What is the origin of money? Well what is money? Money is a medium of exchange. A medium of exchange is something everyone wants and is worth something. But the government can’t just say “This is money. It is worth something. Starting today, it is the new medium of exchange.” That wouldn’t work. People used to get things using barter, which is trading one thing for another. This was difficult because you had to find someone that had what you wanted, but also wanted what you had. So people started using gold as a medium of exchange. They traded their item for gold and then bought what they wanted. This was happening for years, but gold was hard to carry around because it was too heavy. So the government introduced paper money that represented gold. One dollar of paper money represented one dollar of gold. They couldn’t print more money without finding gold. This worked greatly and society thrived, but then the government got greedy and started printing as much money as they wanted without finding gold. This caused inflation and it ruined everyone who made their savings in paper money. The government robbed everyone of their money and they still do it today. 

The “benefit principle” and its problems. According to Wikipedia, the benefit principle is “a concept in the theory of taxation from public finance. It bases taxes to pay for public-goods expenditures on a politically-revealed willingness to pay for benefits received. The principle is sometimes likened to the function of prices in allocating private goods.” What are its problems though? According to Hello Vaia, “Two main drawbacks of the benefit principle of taxation are: it’s often difficult to accurately determine the level of benefits each individual receives from public services, and it may exacerbate wealth inequality as lower income earners may pay a disproportionately higher amount for services compared to higher income earners.”

The Washington Monument Syndrome. According to Wikipedia, “The Washington Monument syndrome, also known as the Mount Rushmore syndrome or the firemen first principle, is a term used to describe the phenomenon of government agencies in the United States cutting the most visible or appreciated service provided by the government when faced with budget cuts.” The Department of Interior needed to make budget cuts, so they shut down the Washington Monument knowing that the public would demand them to reopen it. 

Outcomes of anti-poverty programs. Anti-poverty programs were supposed to keep people out of poverty by giving them things. The outcome was that more people wanted to be in poverty to get free things. 

The primary problem facing a policymaker trying to design a program to benefit people in unfortunate circumstances. According to standardfusion.com, some problems facing policymakers are, “Inconsistent Document Creation and Editing, Poor Policy Maintenance, Lack of Accountability, Outdated Documents, Improper Policy Mapping.”

How can private-property rights help solve environmental problems? The environmental problem that I will talk about is pollution. Now there are many types of pollution. There’s just throwing trash on the ground (which is what most people think about when they hear the word pollution), there’s air pollution, noise pollution, hunting pollution, and many more. How can private-property rights help with pollution though? I’ll explain hunting pollution, because it’s the most understandable.  Imagine that there’s a forest that nobody owns with lots of animals. A lot of people are going to take their guns and go shoot all those animals, because nobody owns the property so no one owns the animals. But there’s this one person that thinks “If I only shoot a little bit of animals this year and leave enough animals to reproduce, then there will be enough animals for hunting next year.” That guys an idiot. Any animals that he doesn’t shoot, someone else will. But what if that guy owns the forest. He can make a number of animals that everyone can shoot, then there will be enough for next year. 

What have been some of the problems with the federal prohibition on certain drugs? Prohibition is a law that makes it illegal to sell certain drugs. What’s the problem? According to DocsTeach, “Prohibition was enacted to protect individuals and families from the “scourge of drunkenness.” However, it had unintended consequences including: a rise in organized crime associated with the illegal production and sale of alcohol, an increase in smuggling, and a decline in tax revenue.” So it was a complete failure.