Vortex Cato : limiting & reversing government obstruction & predation

				click ►▼, links, and ••• — September 15, 2011, 4 pm Denver explorersfoundation.org/cato.html (not a live link yet) — a vortex is a region of Explorers Foundation research and investment. This vortex is driven by interest in assuring that governments do not progressively or suddenly deprive their citizens of freedoms needed by explorers. It is named after an anti-federalist writer opposed to the ratification of the American Constitution. The Constitution, especially the Bill of Rights, was conceived as a cage for a dangerous beast, and in many ways has served and still serves that purpose. Nevertheless, the participants in this vortex believe that obstruction and predation is on the rise and must be reversed. Thanks to the Cato Institute for inspiration. -leif smith The well-being of explorers is most often inversely proportional to the power of government. —leif, 13 March 2010

				Oppose Government Restriction of Our Access to Dietary Supplements — Life Extension Foundation, February 2010

New Bill Seeks to Ban Consumer Access to Dietary Supplements •••

Don’t Give the FDA More Power to Ban Our Supplements! •••

Please take action to stop this. Excellent simple tools to do so are provided at the Life Extension Foundation's Legislative Action Center •••

				http://www.lef.org/magazine/index.htm

				Effective opposition to government (FDA) obstruction of individual freedom to obtain and offer information and goods pertaining to health and illness.

				Cato University 2010: ABOUT THIS YEAR'S PROGRAM, July 25-30 — Confronting Grasping Government Cato University 2010 takes a solid, two-stage approach to examining urgent contemporary issues. First, it provides a complete, energetic immersion into the foundations of libertarianism and individual liberty. These economic, philosophical, and historical principles are then focused into an incisive analysis of the genuine threats confronting them – and each of us – from vast, dangerous government growth. Each ascending step of a grasping government forces a descending step in the nation's freedoms and founding principles. As financial institutions, health care, housing, transportation, privacy, and much more, are grasped by government tentacles, what historical precedents, proven perspectives, present-day realties, and individual options can be wielded in response? We hope you'll join us to explore and learn. •••

				"Political Unification: A Generalized Progression Theorem", by Jörg Guido Hülsmann, is a study of the logic of the continuous extension and intensification of government power, published in the Journal of Libertarian Studies, Summer 1997. •••. The footnotes in this article are a rich source of further readings. The author subsequently wrote The Last Knight of Liberalism, a biography of Ludwig von Mises, published by the Ludwig von Mises Institute in 2008.

				The Cato Institute

				Law Enforcement Against Prohibition

				"Drugs are bad but the drug war is worse."

				Introductory Video

				Pathologies of Cultures and Governments,

				This will grow into a very long list of resources

				The Tyranny of Nice, about Canada vs. Mark Steyn, by Kathy Shaidle and Pete Vere, with an introduction by Mark Steyn [link]“

				Readings

				"The Catholic Second Amendment," by David B. Kopel — sent to EF by James C. Bennett

				Abstract: At the beginning of the second millennium, there was no separation of church and state, and kings ruled the church. Tyrannicide was considered sinful. By the end of the thirteenth century, however, everything had changed. The "Little Renaissance" that began in the eleventh century led to a revolution in political and moral philosophy, so that using force to overthrow a tyrannical government became a positive moral duty. The intellectual revolution was an essential step in the evolution of Western political philosophy that eventually led to the American Revolution.

				http://www.davekopel.com/Religion/Catholic-Second-Amendment.pdf

				Free Banking, Larry J. Sechrest

				"... the debate over central banking and free banking is the most important economic issue of the day. Central banking accepts all the methodological precepts of socialist central planning. It is constructivist. The planners pretend to know more than they can know. They presume that their knowledge is better than the market. They use their power to override market signals of prices and interest. And the results are about as successful as socialism, and he proves this point with the first formal model of central vs. free banking, one that combines Hayek, Selgin, and Garrison to show that a competitive system would be self correcting where a centralized one is not."

				"As long as money remains a tool of the state, that tool will continue to serve the state as a well-spring of income redistribution, social engineering, and military adventurism. A laissez-faire approach to money and banking is more than merely conductive to efficiency and stability. It is likely to prove to be the necessary precondition for prosperity, justice, and peace."

				The above quotations are from the review at http://www.mises.org/store/Free-Banking-P517.aspx

				Tiger by the Tail, F. A. Hayek

				competitive free market money

				Explorers Foundation Glyphs

				429 Law Enforcement Against Prohibition - abolish laws that cause more crime than they stop

				385 "Constraining Government Regulation", by Bryce Wilkinson - for New Zealand Business Roundtable

				116 The Ludwig von Mises Institute

				Works of Ernst Gellner

				GELLNER RESOURCE PAGE

				A comment on a review of Deepak Lal's Unintended Consequences: The Impact of Factor Endowments, Culture, and Politics on Long-Run Economic Performance (Ohlin Lectures)

				Ah, what a shame Lal doesn't get into the question of England's particular role in the breakout to Promethean growth. At the risk of being tedious on this point, I would again urge people interested in this question to read Alan Macfarlane's The Riddle of the Modern World, particularly his last section on Ernst Gellner and the "conditions of the exit", that being Gellner's term for the breakout from Smithian to Promethean growth. On the question of the nuclear family as the stimulus to (rather than the consequence of) the Industrial Revolution, read Macfarlane's Origins of English Individualism, and his Marriage and Family in England. The latter suggest that the pre-existence of the nuclear family in England predated the Church-driven changes that Lal credits, and in fact may have been survivals of earlier Germanic practices, as was English common law. The idea that an industrial revolution could have emerged from the Smithian-optimal military-bureaucractic states of the Continent is almost as unlikely as the conceit of a Promethean takeoff in pre-conquest India that Lal rightly dismisses. —Posted by Jim Bennett at ••• on Samizdata.net •••

				The Bruges Group

				The Bruges Group is an independent all-party think tank. Our independence is our strength allowing us to be free to follow our own policy agenda and put the national interest above party political considerations. Set up in February 1989, its aim was to promote the idea of a less centralised European structure than that emerging in Brussels. Its inspiration was Margaret Thatcher's Bruges speech in September 1988, in which she remarked that, "We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to see them re-imposed at a European level".

				http://brugesgroup.com/

				EU: The Case Against a Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base

				Costly, Complex and Counterproductive: The Case Against a Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base Damon Lambert The Bruges Group has produced a groundbreaking study analysing the EU's attempt to control the taxation of businesses through a policy known as the Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base (CCCTB). It is a classic EU policy, which the European Commission hopes will create a pan-European tax authority, a one-size-fits-none approach that benefits the bureaucrats at the cost of the ordinary taxpayer. The EU’s latest tax power grab will reduce the GDP of the fragile UK economy by £73 billion over the next 10 years, equal to each UK inhabitant paying £1,200 each or the equivalent of British taxpayers having to pay an extra 1.5p in the basic rate of income tax for each of those years. Brussels plan to control corporation tax would also harm the business environment in Britain. It will force up corporate tax bills, greatly add to tax complexity and massively increase the administrative burden that British businesses are forced to deal with. Forcing UK industries to join the 'Taxodus' and leave Britain. Furthermore, the CCCTB will mean that Britain shall lose a total of £58.4 billion of investment over 10 years.

				Complete article: http://brugesgroup.com/mediacentre/index.live?article=14033

				Essential Liberty and The Patriot Post ("The Voice of Essential Liberty")

				http://essentialliberty.us/about/project/

				The Patriot Foundation Trust •••

				Participants in this vortex - September 2011

				James C. Bennett, author of The Anglosphere Challenge

				Robert Himber, Robert Himber Creative Services

				Tony Ryan, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition

				Leif Smith, Explorers Foundation

				.oOo.