Clinton: Communist China & USA will “Rise or Fall Together”
February 23, 2009 by FCD Administrator
Filed under Featured, Guest Articles, Principle 04
Breitbart.com | US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Sunday urged China to keep buying US debt as she wrapped up her first overseas trip, during which she agreed to work closely with Beijing on the financial crisis. Clinton made the plea shortly before leaving China, the final stop on a four-nation Asian tour that also took her to Japan, Indonesia and South Korea, where she worked the crowds to try to restore America’s standing abroad. In Beijing, she called on authorities in Beijing to continue buying US Treasuries, saying it would help jumpstart the flagging US economy and stimulate imports of Chinese goods.
“By continuing to support American Treasury instruments the Chinese are recognising our interconnection. We are truly going to rise or fall together,” Clinton said at the US embassy here.
Clinton had sought to focus on economic and environmental issues in Beijing, saying Washington’s concerns about the human rights situation in China should not be a distraction from those vital matters. Beijing’s human rights record emerged nonetheless as an issue, as Chinese activists on Saturday reported being harassed or intimidated by Chinese authorities in a bid to stop them speaking out or meeting Clinton while she was here.
“Plainclothes police blocked me from leaving my home. They were afraid I would try to meet with Hillary Clinton or others in her delegation,” democracy campaigner Jiang Qisheng told AFP by phone on Sunday.
Clinton and Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi largely agreed to disagree on human rights as they pledged future joint action on the economy and climate change.The goodwill, also on display in her talks with President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao, could raise hope for a new era of cooperation between the two largest greenhouse gas emitters and two of the world’s top three economies.
“Now it is more important than any time in the past to deepen and develop China-US relations amid the spreading financial crisis and increasing global challenges,” Hu told Clinton, according to state media.
Clinton began her day Sunday by attending a Protestant church service in western Beijing at which an AFP journalist saw plainclothes police taking away some visitors who attempted to enter the church.Their identities could not be confirmed. Later, Clinton met Chinese women’s rights advocates at the US embassy but continued to steer clear of speaking on contentious human rights issues.Instead, while taping an interview on a Chinese talk show, she focused on the need for China to help finance the massive 787-billion-dollar US economic stimulus plan by continuing to buy US Treasuries.
“Because our economies are so intertwined the Chinese know that in order to…” <<<Read Full Story>>>
Was Ayn Rand Right, 52 Years Ago?
January 11, 2009 by FCD Administrator
Filed under Current, Guest Articles
By Stephen Moore (Wall Street Journal) | Some years ago when I worked at the libertarian Cato Institute, we used to label any new hire who had not yet read “Atlas Shrugged” a “virgin.” Being conversant in Ayn Rand’s classic novel about the economic carnage caused by big government run amok was practically a job requirement. If only “Atlas” were required reading for every member of Congress and political appointee in the Obama administration. I’m confident that we’d get out of the current financial mess a lot faster.
Many of us who know Rand’s work have noticed that with each passing week, and with each successive bailout plan and economic-stimulus scheme out of Washington, our current politicians are committing the very acts of economic lunacy that “Atlas Shrugged” parodied in 1957, when this 1,000-page novel was first published and became an instant hit.
Rand, who had come to America from Soviet Russia with striking insights into totalitarianism and the destructiveness of socialism, was already a celebrity <<<Read the Full Story>>>
Forbes: How Capitalism Will Save Us
December 29, 2008 by FCD Administrator
Filed under Current, Money & Economics, Principle 07
By Steve Forbes (Forbes Magazine) |We are experiencing the devastating consequences of a chain of major economic policy errors, which, to use a current cliché, created the perfect storm. These government blunders temporarily paralyzed the global credit system and are now sending the U.S. and Europe into recession, while sharply cutting back Asia’s growth rates.
Left to its own devices, the credit crisis, which began in August 2007, would have crushed economies as severely as did the Great Depression.
Belatedly, but thankfully, governments recognized that the only way to get credit flowing again was for them to make quick and direct massive infusions of new equity into beleaguered banks, as well as commit to other emergency measures hitherto unimaginable.
If sensible rescue efforts continue–and they will–the immediate crisis will quickly pass. Shell-shocked businesses and consumers won’t recover rapidly from the trauma of recent months, especially as we now cope with recession. But the downturn shouldn’t be prolonged: The economy here and those overseas should start to pick up no later than next spring.
That soon? Despite the crisis, the global economy still retains enormous strengths. Between the early 1980s and 2007 we lived in an economic Golden Age. Never before have so many people advanced so far economically in so short a period of time as they have during the last 25 years. Until the credit crisis, 70 million people a year were joining the middle class. The U.S. kicked off this long boom with the economic reforms of Ronald Reagan, particularly his enormous income tax cuts. We burst from the economic stagnation of the 1970s into a dynamic, innovative, high-tech-oriented economy. Even in recent years the much-maligned U.S. did well. Between year-end 2002 and year-end 2007 U.S. growth exceeded the entire size of China’s economy. Obviously China’s growth rates were higher, but China was coming off a much smaller base.
The world is flush with cash. It’s frozen because of fear, but the cash is there. Productivity gains are burgeoning.
So, will this global boom resume next year, slowly at first and then with increasing momentum? It should. Whether that happens, however, depends on the next, highly dangerous phase: <<<Read the Full Story>>>
>>>Learn more about Capitalism and becoming a capitalist
Newsweek: Ayn Rand caused America’s Crisis?
December 14, 2008 by FCD Administrator
Filed under Brain-Off Awards, Principle 04
Barret Sheridan (Newsweek) | It’s not easy being Alan Greenspan these days. As the former Federal Reserve chairman, he urged government regulators to take a light touch while banks like Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers buried themselves-and the economy more generally-under a mountain of debt. Now that his reputation is plummeting faster than the stock market, he’s been forced to admit a “flaw” in his hands-off ideology.
Of course, things look entirely different to members of “free-market advocacy groups,” as they like to be called. One such group is the Ayn Rand Institute, named after the matriarch of the movement, whose antigovernment and anti-regulation views are embodied in her best-selling novels “Atlas Shrugged” and “The Fountainhead.” Indeed, Greenspan himself was a friend of Rand’s, and a devotee of her extreme free-market philosophy…[Read Full Article]
Hillary’s Credentials, Obama Hipocracy?
December 9, 2008 by Stephen Anderson
Filed under Current, Guest Articles, Principle 04
By Matthew Coper – CNSNews.com | (CNSNews.com) – President-elect Barack Obama designated Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) to be his next secretary of state Monday, despite having spent much of the previous two years questioning her foreign-policy credentials.
During the campaign for the Democratic nomination, Obama mocked Clinton’s primary claim that she possessed the necessary foreign policy experience to be president.
“What exactly is this foreign policy expertise?” Obama said to reporters in March, while flying from a campaign event in Texas. “Was she negotiating treaties? Was she handling crises? The answer is no.”
In spite of these doubts, Obama praised Clinton’s credentials Monday, saying she would be able to advance America’s interests due to her knowledge of world affairs and familiarity with world leaders.
“She is an American of tremendous stature who will have my complete confidence, who knows many of the world’s leaders, who will command respect in every capital, and who will clearly have the ability to advance our interests around the world,” he said.
Obama said that his new foreign policy team, which will be led by Clinton, would change America’s foreign policy for the better.
“I am confident that this is the team that we need to make a new beginning for American national security,” he told reporters at the announcement.
However, Obama had expressed exactly the opposite view of Clinton during the primary campaign.
“It’s what’s wrong with politics today. Hillary Clinton will say anything to get elected,” Obama said in a January radio ad. “Hillary Clinton. She’ll say anything and change nothing.”
Obama also said Monday that he>>>>Read the Full Article
Shhhhh, Don’t tell them its Socialism!
October 30, 2008 by Steve Lohr (International Herald Tribune)
Filed under Featured, Guest Articles, Principle 02
New York (International Herald Tribune)|If the U.S. government moves ahead with a plan to take ownership stakes in American banks, as seems likely, it would be an exceptional step – but not an unprecedented one.
The United States has a culture that celebrates laissez-faire capitalism as the economic ideal, but the practice is sometimes different. Over the past century, the U.S. government has nationalized railways, coal mines and steel mills, and it has even taken a controlling interest in banks when that was deemed to be in the national interest.
The corporate wards of the state typically have been returned to private hands after short, sometimes fleeting, stretches under government stewardship.
Finance experts say that having Washington take stakes in U.S. banks now – like government interventions in the past – would be a promising step in addressing an economic emergency. The plan being weighed by the Treasury Department, they say, could supply banks with sorely needed capital and help restore confidence in financial markets. Across Europe, governments rolled out similar initiatives Monday.
In other countries, the government bank-investment programs are routinely called nationalization programs. But that is not likely in America, where nationalization is a word to avoid, given the cultural aversion to anything that hints of socialism.
“Putting this plan on the table makes a lot of sense, but you can’t call it nationalization here,” said Simon Johnson, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management. “In France, it is fine, but not in the United >>>Read the Full Article
The U.S. Constitution: An EULA
September 17, 2008 by Guest Author
Filed under Guest Articles, Principle 03
By Ammon Nelson
The text of the Constitution does not define citizenship for us, so how do we define citizenship in the United States? It is actually in the US Code Title 8, Chapter 12, Subchapter III, Part I, § 1401, where we read:
The following shall be nationals and citizens of the United States at birth:
a) a person born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof;
… and then there are more specific definitions of other ways one becomes a citizen at birth. I suggest that everyone have a look at Title 8, and specifically Chapter 12 of the US Code. It was both a confusing and enlightening experience for me, and I am left with a question in my mind.
Why is birth, when it happens under the jurisdiction of the United States a qualification for citizenship by itself? Is all it takes to be “worthy” of having someone else risk their life and property to defend my freedoms, for me to be born to the right people in the right place and the right time? It seems to me that this is just a derivative of the divine right of kings. If you happen to be lucky enough to be born under the right circumstances to the right people, you are inherently more worthy of citizenship than someone who was not so fortunate. Anyone else must study for years, establish residency and take an oath of allegiance. Why am I, being a natural born citizen of the United States, not required to take an oath of allegiance in order to benefit from that agreement? Of course those, like children and the mentally handicap, who are not able to make such an oath for themselves, fall under the stewardship of their guardians, and are thus protected by the commitment of their guardian.
A satirical article in the Deseret News addressed the issue of citizenship and the US Constitution. It reads:
It is a generally accepted fact that the Constitution of the United States of America is obsolete and no longer applicable to our times. By “generally accepted,” I mean by me.
In this age of iPods, iPhones and iRaq, it is clear that the current generation is not interested in the tenets of a document written more than 200 years ago. We forget the text messages we received less than 200 seconds ago. No, as important as the Constitution was to our forebears — who spoke of each amendment with solemnity while working actively to undermine them — the digital age requires a digital solution, a solution that captures the nobility of that sacred parchment, a solution that can be easily achieved with a mouse click.There is only one realistic possibility: The Constitution must be replaced be an End-User License Agreement.
The Constitution, by not requiring any such action, is far too lenient. Any bum, lowlife, scoundrel or complete moron can be born in this country and be declared president by the Supreme Court. Any inept buffoon has the right to free speech and the ability to turn that into a radio contract with Fox News. Any self-serving and morally bankrupt individual is granted the freedom to bear arms and use that freedom to shoot an attorney while on a hunting expedition. No citizen of the United States has to do a darn thing to enjoy the Constitution’s protections!
Key Points
- Agency implies stewardship – the agency gained through citizenship has an accompanying stewardship. Anyone who does not accept that stewardship, should also lose their citizenship.
- The government is not an organization, government does not exist as such. “The Government” is an agreement using our right to govern our own lives.
- The US Constitution is not out of date, or archaic. It is much more than a mere document with sentimental and significant historical context. It is a very real agreement between the citizens of the United States and those they elect to take on the stewardship of part of their self-government.
Conclusion
The Constitution IS an end-user license agreement (EULA), or at least it should be. The Preamble states, “We the people of the United States … do ordain and establish this constitution of the United States of America.” It is an agreement for the end user – us. Citizenship is something that must be earned. It is not an entitlement because of our parentage.
Action Items
- Study Title 8, Chapter 12 of the US Code and find out what it takes to become a citizen of the United States. Think about why some people do so much to obtain that privilege and seek to meet those requirements yourself whether you are applying for citizenship or not.
- Write an essay on what citizenship in the United States means to you. If you are a citizen of another country, write about what citizenship in your country means to you and how you can best help promote the cause of freedom in your own community and nation.
- Make a personal pledge to be worthy of citizenship in a country that values and protects freedom and liberty above comfort and security.
Sources
Jeffrey R. Wilbur Let’s replace Constitution with user agreement, Deseret News, August 31, 2008.
Cornell University Law School Website
Ammon Nelson was born the second of ten children. Raised in West Valley City, he graduated from Granger High School in 1992 and served an LDS mission to the Northeast region of Brazil. He graduated from Salt Lake Community College in 2000 and from the University of Idaho, in Moscow, ID, in 2003. He enjoys discussing philosophy, performing and learning music, and spending time with his family. He currently lives in West Valley City with his wife, the former Heather Mann, and their six children. He works for the Nucor Building Systems of Brigham City, Utah, and has been a part of the FreeCapitalist Project since September 2006.
An Ear for An Ear?
August 13, 2008 by Matthew Pilling
Filed under Guest Articles, Principle 12
TAYLORSVILLE, UT | 13 August 2008 | The Fairness Doctrine, under the Media Ownership Reform Act, a bill that would force broadcasters to give equal air time to opposing sides of issues, has made the rounds in Congress lately. After being brought up by Democrats for consideration a few months ago, it was countered by the Republican sponsored Broadcaster’s Freedom Act, a bill that would ban the Fairness Doctrine from ever being passed. In childish response, House Speaker Pelosi then vowed that the Broadcaster’s Freedom Act would never come to the floor for a vote. At a virtual stalemate, both bills have been tabled as Congress has broken for their summer vacation. There has been talk that the Fairness Doctrine could be brought back to light after the inauguration of a new president.In covering the ongoing banter, both the liberal and conservative wings of the media have focused almost exclusively on how they perceive the doctrine affecting their rights to free speech. Liberals feel that talk radio and other venues have been unfairly overrun by right wing nuts and that their side of the story isn’t being heard. Conservatives feel that regulated free speech is a horrific contradiction of terms that can never work. And, while free speech is important enough to have been the front-runner amendment in the Bill of Rights, focusing on it alone will cause us to miss the bigger picture—the fact that freedom itself is at stake in this debate.
Key Points
- The Declaration of Independence and Constitution are the greatest and most significant examples of proper use of free speech. After seeing that their cries for change had fallen on deaf ears, the Founders set forth a system of checks and balances that would allow for grievances to be effectively addressed.
- Regulation of free speech is a removal of those checks and balances. If one cannot address his views of a problem without fear of sanction, he has no avenue in which to protect his freedoms.
- While the Fairness Doctrine doesn’t provide direct sanctions against speech, it takes steps in that direction by limiting the amount that can be said. Effectively slicing broadcast time in half, it forces stations to cap the discussion from either side of any issue. Failure to provide equal airtime to either side (or to find someone willing to fill the necessary time slots for both sides) would result in sanctions.
- Plato said, “Where no contradiction is evident, there is no cause for reflection.” Opposing views are needed in the debate process to help us refine our views of truth and error.
However, forcing the public to listen to views that are unprincipled or flat-out wrong will cause gradual acceptance of these ideas. Sales trainings often teach that repeated exposure to a concept will eventually break down objections and build familiarity and acceptance. This is also a tactic of the socialist agenda. - Continued exposure to diametrically opposed ideas will lead to schizophrenic confusion and inaction (if the public are dumb enough to not turn off the radio when needed). Liberals foster this sense of helplessness in order to create a need for and dependence on government solutions, which is also a tactic of the socialists.
- In the free market system intended by the Founders, there is no need for a doctrine to mandate fairness. People are free to share their opinions and the system will sort out good from evil, truth from concoction. Dollars follow value and market will see that voices that are meant to be heard are heard.
Conclusion
Because a free market system will see that truth is brought to the forefront, one must question the motives of anyone who seeks to regulate or eliminate that system. If elected officials are doing what they believe is right, they will feel no need to regulate what is said about their actions. As they often have no idea what is right or do things that they know to be wrong, they fear people’s opinions and shy away from criticism.
It has been said that no single drop feels that it is responsible for the flood. But, regulated speech is always one of the first drops to hit the masses as the floodgates of socialism are opened. Viewing the Fairness Doctrine as either fair or harmless shows a wanton disregard for the principles that maintain and guard our freedoms. To see such a doctrine being considered in a free country is ludicrous. To see that it is being pushed by liberal minds who have often considered themselves the defenders of free speech is infuriating.
Action Items
- Read the First Amendment to the Constitution.
- Post here as to what you believe the Founders intended with this amendment and how Americans have mistranslated that intent.
- Consider contacting your Congressman to express your concern about the loss of freedom that the Fairness Doctrine would lead to.
- Support freedom in talk radio—listen to FreeCapitalist Radio live or via podcast, or check your local listings for a chanel in your area.
MRFC Principles:
(7, 9, 11, 12)
Source
“Fairness Doctrine Vote Not In The Cards”, FMQB.com, Aug 1, 2008.
(Matthew Pilling is a member of the FreeCapitalist movement known as the Canadian Capitalist. Despite his time in the Great White North, Matthew loves America and all that it stands for. He lives with his wife and two children in Taylorsville and works in finance.)
The Wrong Approach to Rebuilding Iraq
August 13, 2008 by Matthew Pilling
Filed under Guest Articles, Principle 01
TAYLORSVILLE, UT | 12 August 2008 | As the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report on Iraq’s stockpile of resources, outrage erupted on the Senate floor. And that outrage will most likely spill over into the minds and hearts of many Americans.
The reason for the outrage—while Americans have been paying the lion’s share of the bill for Iraqi reconstruction, Iraq has been building up a budget surplus that is projected to reach $80 billion by year’s end. Since 2003 the “United States has put about $48 billion toward reconstruction.” Spending by Iraq for its own reconstruction has been significantly less. Rising oil prices have caused Iraq’s revenues to soar, yet they are spending American taxpayer money to rebuild their nation. “The export of crude oil accounted for 94 percent of Iraq’s revenues from 2005 to 2007, the GAO reported.”
The outrage is understandable. The war and reconstruction have been costly. Despite buzz that the war has been all about oil money, major oil contracts have been handed out almost exclusively to non-American companies. Additionally, Americans were told that this was a cost they would not be responsible for. “Bush administration officials said on the eve of the war that Iraqi oil money would pay for reconstruction.” Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz is quoted as telling the House Appropriations committee, “We’re dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon.’”
With an already troubled economy, many Americans have questioned covering the cost of the war itself, let alone the costs of rebuilding. Sen. Carl Levin says, “It is inexcusable for U.S. taxpayers to continue to foot the bill for projects the Iraqis are fully capable of funding themselves.” And, while I agree that this should not be the duty of the American tax payer, I would say that it is equally inexcusable for us to push Iraqis to use government dollars for projects that should be privately funded. If Iraq is to ever have true freedom (something we don’t even have here), our focus cannot be the amount of money they do or don’t have. Our focus has to be adherence to the principles that form and guarantee freedom.
Key Points
- War and its devastations create a uniquely strenuous circumstance. The needs of the people are magnified as basic utilities, systems, and resources are rendered inoperable. Regardless of circumstance, principle is ignorant of need. God is the author of prosperity and He does not play dice with the universe. Principles govern at all times and in all conditions. When need is used as the basis for policy decisions, principle is discarded and freedom and prosperity will consequently die. It is when needs are greatest that principle must be adhered to if lasting solutions are to be found.
- For example, it would have been much more convenient for our Founders to avoid war with Great Britain and just remain subject to the crown than to stand for that which they knew to be right. Yet, had they chosen any path other than the principled one, we would not be the country we are today with the freedoms we enjoy.
- The Iraqi Government will never be able to stand and protect a free people if it is built on a flawed foundation. There are two major flaws being ignored in this foundation:
- Encouraging the government of a prospective free nation to be the owner of oil reserves and incomes (or of any “public” property).
- Establishing the habit of using government incomes to meet the needs of the people.
- Both of these flaws are plays taken straight out of the communist handbook. E.C. Riegel said, “When government undertakes to solve man’s problem for him it undertakes the mastery of society and it cannot be both master and servant.”
Conclusion
It is a difficult thing to perceive that the American Government can help establish a proper framework and set a proper example of freedom when we have strayed so far here at home.
Even if the Founding Fathers had chosen to enter a war like this (which they would not have chosen), they would clearly see the dangerous precedent being set here. While it has long been that oil and its revenues have been the property of the Iraqi government, this practice should be abolished in the process of setting up a free nation. Ownership of oil and its subsequent revenues should be private. James Madison said, “I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on the objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.” I have never had to endure the immediate ravages of war and therefore have no concrete understanding of what it would be like. Regardless of the calamities, however, I believe that if I were an Iraqi, my request would be simple: “Let freedom ring, and let it ring completely.”
Action Items
- Recognize teaching opportunities as you hear others complain that the Iraqi Government isn’t covering the cost of reconstruction. Share how freedom can’t be achieved by creating a socialistic welfare state.
- Ponder difficult moments of need in your life. Do you stick to principle, regardless of the gravity of the situation?
- Consider how you offer help to others. Do you teach them to help themselves, or do you create dependence?
MRFC Principles: 1 (1, 3, 13)
Sources
CNN, Iraq’s oil-fueled surplus could hit $80 billion, report says, CNN.com, August 6, 2008
Robert H. Reid, US officials defend Iraqi budget surplus, Associated Press, August 6, 2008
E.C. Riegel, Private Enterprise Money, a Non-Political Money System, 1944 (For more of Riegel’s writings, click here).
James Madison, speaking on the house floor, concerning a $15,000 appropriation for French refugees from San Domingo, 1794.
(Matthew Pilling is a member of the FreeCapitalist movement known as the Canadian Capitalist. Despite his time in the Great White North, Matthew loves America and all that it stands for. He lives with his wife and two children in Taylorsville and works in finance.)
Fast Food Slow Down in L.A.
July 30, 2008 by Matthew Pilling
Filed under Guest Articles, Principle 07
TAYLORSVILLE, UT | 30 July 2008 | Amidst the ongoing news of a heated and controversial election, failing companies and markets, and myriad world conflicts, talk of fast food seems a low priority. The city of Los Angeles thinks otherwise, however. In a unanimous vote, the city council voted on Tuesday decided to “place a moratorium on new fast food restaurants in an impoverished swath of the city.”Their reasoning? “A proliferation of such eateries and above average rates of obesity.”
Their goal? “To attract restaurants that serve healthier food.”
Their problem? For whatever reason, restaurants that serve healthier food have not already freely chosen to operate in the area, and the number of fast food restaurants is not likely to be the thing that has kept them away.
Key Points
- After analyzing market conditions and local customer base, many restaurants have decided that it is in their best interest to operate in other areas of town.
- The only real incentive that the government has to attract new business to the area is tax breaks.
- Use of tax breaks to attract a business to an area that doesn’t have the customer base to support it is a recipe for failure. While lower taxes appear to increase profit margins, the increase is synthetic. Without revenues from a loyal customer base that can afford the products offered, there will be no need for tax breaks—there will be nothing to tax. Both the business and the government will be frustrated when the venture doesn’t work.
Blocking other ‘less desirable’ establishments from opening is an abuse of the city’s power. If the market supports the fast food joints, they should have the freedom to operate as they please, where they please. - If people really are looking for healthier choices, then the market will support the restaurants that offer those choices. Those businesses should compete based on their merits, rather than on government-given advantages.
Conclusion
Just like some of the left believe that they should keep the price of gas high because it will force people to quit ‘damaging the earth’, the L.A. City Council believes that they can force the people to be healthy by limiting the amount of fast food available to them. This is faulty logic. Dollars follow value. That means that people spend on the things that are important to them. “They should have better things for children,” said Rebeca Torres, a South Los Angeles mother of four. “This fast food really fattens them up.” If the price and convenience of unhealthy fast food has caused people to ignore healthier options (inside or outside of restaurants), then it is unlikely that any amount of government planning will lead them to patronize healthier, government-sponsored restaurants.
When the Nazi’s came to believe that there were problems with certain groups in their society, they began eliminating them. Their impossible goal was the social engineering of a perfect race. While the tactics being used by the City of L.A. are significantly less harsh, they are based in the exact same vein of thinking. With all that is going on in the world today, fast food does seem a low priority. But, the underlying attempt at social engineering is highly disturbing and should be a high priority to any freedom loving capitalist.
Action Items
- Look at some of the ordinances passed by your city council. Do they generally tend to promote individual freedom or limit it?
- Pick an ordinance that has been in place for a long time. Does the ordinance really make any difference in the city?
- Make a list of ways that the community (citizens, not government) could persuade its citizens to effect the same changes without using force.
- Take a deeper look at your personal relationships. When you want something to change in someone else, do you persuade or try to force?
MRFC Principles:
(2, 4, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12)
Sources
Christina Hoag, LA blocks new fast-food outlets from poor areas, Associated Press, July 29, 2008.
(Matthew Pilling is a member of the FreeCapitalist movement known as the Canadian Capitalist. Despite his time in the Great White North, Matthew loves America and all that it stands for. He lives with his wife and two children in Taylorsville and works in finance.)


