Video: Why the Malignant Narcissist Are Dangerous!

Narcissism expert Ross Rosenberg explains why the malignant narcissist are the most dangerous of all narcissistic personality disorders (NPD). (hat tip Bob Wenzel's Target Liberty)

Malignant Narcissism - “NPD on steroids:”

- Stalin, Hitler, Castro, Mussolini, Saddam Hussein

- Paranoid, suspect deceit, doubt loyalty

- Defy, challenge & demean authority figures

- Aggressive and controlling

- Manipulatively cast themselves as victims

- Outwardly selfish and unapologetic

- Emotionally, physically and/or sexually abusive

- Reckless indifference (psychopathic tendencies)

- Grandiose:

- Fantasies of power

- Entitled

- Believe they have a special destiny in life

Interesting quote:

[5:56] Malignant narcissist…enjoys the idea of protecting people…protecting motherland…fatherland. But during their ascent to power they will kill, murder, hurt anyone who gets into their way…similar to a sociopath. Because their narcissistic urge is to get power and protect their legion of followers impels them to almost anything. And once in power the Malignant narcissist will maintain his/her power structure...

Video: Inflation Propaganda in 1933 Resonates Today

How do you promote more government intervention?

Simple, use demand side macro economics where mathematical aggregates are presumed to replace people's valuations and preferences and therefore people's actions.

The same propaganda made to promote inflation in the 1930s (from an MGM informercial), based on demand side macro, has fundamentally been the same propaganda used today.

For statists, inflation IS the Holy Grail to any SOCIAL ills.

Yeah, based on their naive and absurd logic Zimbabwe should have been the most prosperous nation on earth. (video: Hat tip: Professor William Anderson)


Here is a reminder why inflation will ALWAYS fail over the long run. From the great Professor Ludwig von Mises, (bold emphasis mine)

The favor of the masses and of the writers and politicians eager for applause goes to inflation. With regard to these endeavors we must emphasize three points.

First: Inflationary or expansionist policy must result in overconsumption on the one hand and in malinvestment on the other. It thus squanders capital and impairs the future state of want-satisfaction.

Second: The inflationary process does not remove the necessity of adjusting production and reallocating resources. It merely postpones it and thereby makes it more troublesome.

Third: Inflation cannot be employed as a permanent policy because it must, when continued, finally result in a breakdown of the monetary system.

And it should be noted that in Zimbabwe's case (or many other episodes of hyperinflation) had been the result of the third point--failed attempt at the permanence of inflationary policies.

Let us not forget today's crisis has been borne out of, or a product of EARLIER inflationary policies where the repercussions has been manifested through MALINVESTMENTS and unwieldy DEBT. This is the BOOM BUST cycle.

Yet, the approach by contemporary central bankers and governments have been to resort to more MORE inflationism thereby increasing the intensity of the inevitable crisis. And this is what we are seeing today and will worsen as time goes by.

The idea that inflation can be tamed or modulated represents myopia or presumptuousness or stultified thinking. Once monetary inflation has been set loose, no one will exactly know how and when money will percolate into the economy and this is why hyperinflation exists. (yes inflationistas overestimate on the superiority of their knowledge, when they can't even predict the markets!!!)

The answer to our economic ills is NOT government but ECONOMIC FREEDOM or to allow the necessity of adjusting production and reallocation of resources according to will of the consumers.

Video: Peter Diamandis: Abundance is our future

Peter Diamandis, Founder and Chairman of the X PRIZE Foundation, an educational non-profit prize institute whose mission is to create radical breakthroughs for the benefit of humanity, in a talk at the TED explains why he thinks the world is headed for abundance.



Essentially Mr.Diamandis is banking on the explosive growth of human capital facilitated by technology (information age) through the following media

Technologies riding Moore’s Laws:
1. Infinite Computing
2. Sensor and Networks
3. Robotics
4. 3D Printing
5. Synthethic Biology
6. Digital Medicine
7. Nanomaterials
8. Artificial intelligence

Here are some noteworthy quotes

When I think about creating abundance, it is not about creating a life of luxury…it is about creating a life of possibilities. It is about taking that which was scarce and making it abundant. You see scarcity is contextual and technology is a resource liberating force. 6:34

It is not about being scarce it’s about accessibility. 8:17

By the way the biggest protection against population explosion is making the world educated and healthy 12:26

3 billion new minds would never been heard before are connecting to global conversation. What do these people want? What would they consume? What do they desire? Rather than having an economic shutdown we are about to have is the biggest economic injection ever. These people represent tens of trillions of dollars injected in the global economy 12:47

In spite of the restrictive role of governments, I share his optimism that people will find ways and means to circumvent them mostly through technological innovations.

(hat tip Professor Mark Perry)

Video: What's Wrong with Internet Censorship

Cato's Julian Sanchez explains what is wrong with internet censorship

From Cato:

Internet censorship is not the answer to problems of piracy online. Cato Institute research fellow Julian Sanchez explains that internet censorship won't effectively address the problem of piracy and will threaten innovation and the liberties of Americans by engaging in unconstitutional prior restraint.

By the way, after a furious backlash, bi partisan legislators are reportedly backing off from supporting the bill.

Video: Ron Paul: A Victory for the Cause of Liberty

Mr. Ron Paul has had a remarkable showing at the New Hampshire Republican primaries. In contrast to other opponents whose surge and fall has been abrupt, Mr. Paul's rise has, so far, been surprisingly consistent.

Here is Mr. Paul's fantastic speech after a strong second place finish (hat tip Bob Wenzel)


Despite mainstream media's blatant blackout in the coverage of Mr. Paul in the recent past, the apparent snowballing of the Ron Paul revolution have been symptomatic of the marginal changes in the way forces of decentralization have been upending traditional media and the way conventional top down politics has functioned. As mainstream personality the former chief economist of the IMF Simon Johnson said, despite his flawed criticism, Ron Paul must be taken seriously.

Yet unknown to most, such phenomenon has partly been facilitated or amplified by the advances of technology.

Importantly, Mr. Paul in the above video underscores on what has been a growing or deepening trend: the emerging receptiveness of the public to the cause of liberty as previously discussed.

Ron Paul's campaign, even if he loses the nomination, will serve as showcase to inspire, not only in the US but around the world, the importance of civil liberties and economic freedom.

Interesting signs of times.

Reason TV video: Anatomy of Government Stimulus Failure

Jim Epstein of Reason.tv documents in the following video, what went wrong with Obama's stimulus spending program which features the case study of Silver Spring, Maryland. (hat tip Professor Russ Roberts).

Among the many reasons: red tape, prioritization of political objectives, cronyism, wrong targets, insufficient knowledge and more..., which has led to unintended consequences and most importantly to taxpayer losses.



This isn't a problem confined to the US, rather this needs to be seen as universally applicable, even to the Philippines. Politicians find it so easy to spend on other people's money which eventually not only fails to achieve its objectives but increases the overall burden of the people (through higher taxes and wastage of scarce resources). Yet government's failure has usually not been remedied by discipline, i.e. withdrawal of funding, but instead gets rewarded by more spending.

GOP CNN Nevada Debate: The Unflinching and Remarkable Ron Paul

Watch Ron Paul's remarkable consistency, detailed and candid responses in the GOP CNN Nevada Debate (hat tip Lew Rockwell Political Theater)

Video: Understanding Human Action (Praxeology)

Here is a short video explaining human action (praxeology) [sourced from Mises Blog]

From Ludwig von Mises (bold emphasis mine)

Choosing determines all human decisions. In making his choice man chooses not only between various material things and services. All human values are offered for option. All ends and all means, both material and ideal issues, the sublime and the base, the noble and the ignoble, are ranged in a single row and subjected to a decision which picks out one thing and sets aside another. Nothing that men aim at or want to avoid remains outside of this arrangement into a unique scale of gradation and preference. The modern theory of value widens the scientific horizon and enlarges the field of economic studies. Out of the political economy of the classical school emerges the general theory of human action, praxeology. The economic or catallactic problems are embedded in a more general science, and can no longer be severed from this connection. No treatment of economic problems proper can avoid starting from acts of choice; economics becomes a part, although the hitherto best elaborated part, of a more universal science, praxeology.

Video: Understanding Liberty and Equality

Professor James Otteson, in the video below, explains the relationship between Liberty and Equality


From LearnLiberty (bold emphasis mine)

Two central values in American political life are liberty and equality. But are these two values in tension with one another?

As philosophy Prof. James Otteson explains, it depends on how you define them. There is more than one way to think about liberty, and more than one way to think about equality. For example, when talking about equality, there are two different central conceptions. The first is formal equality, equality that comes from the form of institutions. An example of formal equality is equality before the law: all laws apply equally to everyone. Formal equality is a central tenet of the classical liberal tradition, and compatible with individual liberty.

But a second conception of equality is material, or substantive, equality. Material equality holds that people ought to be equal in material respects, such as wealth or resources.

Material equality poses real challenges to classical liberalism, and according to Otteson, also faces challenges of its own. Otteson outlines three major challenges to material equality: first, it may be impossible, both to measure, and to achieve. Second, material equality interferes with human diversity. Humans have different talents, different interests, and different values, which in a free society get reflected in a range of goods & activities that individuals acquire and pursue. To try to enforce some kind of material equality would mean interfering with this diversity.

That leads to the third problem, which is that material equality interferes with human dignity. Part of what it means to have human dignity is to have the capacity and the freedom to make choices. These choices are reflected in the way we live our lives; to respect the free choices that people make is to respect their dignity. Enforcing material equality would necessarily interfere with the free choices that people make.

Video: Paul Romer on how 'Charter Cities' can change the world

Stanford and New York University's Paul Romer gives a fascinating talk at the TED on how rule based Charter Cities which empowers choices for people and leaders, can significantly improve the world. (hat tip: Tom Palmer)

Mr. Romer concludes with a noteworthy quote,

The reason we can be so well off even though there are so many people on earth is because of the power of ideas. We can share ideas with other people when they discover them they share with us. It’s not like scarce objects where sharing means we each gets less, when we share ideas we get more. When we think about ideas in that way we usually think about technologies, but there is another class of ideas, the rules that govern how we interact with each other...

If we can keep innovating in our space of rules, and particularly innovate in the sense for coming up with rules for changing rules so we don’t get stuck with bad rules then we can keep moving progress forward and truly make a better place...

Video: Attack On Libertarianism Using Somalia

Here is a terse video attacking Libertarianism which misleadingly uses Somalia as a "Libertarian's Paradise". (hat tip Bob Wenzel)

Why the video is short?

Because it deliberately applies the “cum hoc ergo propter hoc” or correlation is causation fallacy. The video's implication: Because Somalia has no government therefore she is poor PERIOD. By making it short the video eludes the required proofs. So this easily would dupe the ignorant.

Again, reference point matters.

I would like to say that Somalia IS NO LIBERTARIAN UTOPIA. But we certainly can learn some lessons from her experiences.

Yet it is very important to point out that even before Somalia overthrew her government she has already been poor. So it would be wrong to adduce poverty to statelessness.

And the reason for the impoverished state is that Somalia had been ruled by a nasty communist regime; the Somali Democratic Party (1969-1991). So essentially Somalia has swung from the extremes of total government to statelessness.

So the appropriate question is “has Somalia been better off at her current state or with the communists?”

The obvious answer is that Somalis said NO to communism.

Here is a briefer of Somalia from Wikipedia,

Somalia, from 1991 to 2006, is cited as a real-world example of a stateless society and legal system. Since the fall of Siad Barre's government in January 1991, there had been no permanent national government in Somalia until the current Transitional Federal Government. Large areas of the country such as Puntland, and Galmudug are internationally unrecognized autonomous regions, while Somaliland is a de facto sovereign state. The remaining areas, including the capital Mogadishu, were divided into smaller territories ruled by competing warlords. In many areas there were (and still are) no formal regulations or licensing requirements for businesses and individuals.

One would ask, if Somalis has been better off why the civil wars?

Again the Wikipedia,

With worsening conditions in Somalia, rebels of the United Somali Congress (USC) led by Mohamed Farrah Aidid attacked Mogadishu and on January 26, 1991, Barre's government was taken out of power.

In May 1991, the northernwestern Somaliland region of Somalia declared its independence. This Isaaq-dominated governing zone is not recognized by any major international organization or country, although it has remained more stable and certainly more peaceful than the rest of Somalia, neighboring Puntland notwithstanding.

UN Security Council Resolution 794 was unanimously passed on December 3, 1992, which approved a coalition of United Nations peacekeepers led by the United States to form UNITAF, tasked with ensuring humanitarian aid being distributed and peace being established in Somalia until the humanitarian efforts were transferred to the UN. The UN humanitarian troops landed in 1993 and started a two-year effort (primarily in the south), known as UNOSOM II, to alleviate famine conditions.

Many Somalis opposed the foreign presence. In October, several gun battles in Mogadishu between local gunmen and peacekeepers resulted in the death of 24 Pakistanis and 19 US soldiers (total US deaths were 31). Most of the Americans were killed in the Battle of Mogadishu. The incident later became the basis for the book and movie Black Hawk Down. The UN withdrew on March 3, 1995, having suffered more significant casualties. Order in Somalia still has not been restored.

Yet again another secession from Somalia took place in the northeastern region. The self-proclaimed state took the name Puntland after declaring "temporary" independence in 1998, with the intention that it would participate in any Somali reconciliation to form a new central government.

A third secession occurred in 1998 with the declaration of the state of Jubaland. The territory of Jubaland is now encompassed by the state of Southwestern Somalia and its status is unclear.

A fourth self-proclaimed entity led by the Rahanweyn Resistance Army (RRA) was set up in 1999, along the lines of the Puntland. That "temporary" secession was reasserted in 2002. This led to the autonomy of Southwestern Somalia. The RRA had originally set up an autonomous administration over the Bay and Bakool regions of south and central Somalia in 1999.

So we have a combination of foreign meddling and competing tribes. We might say that foreign meddling to impose a national government may have been a significant factor in creating tribal frictions.

We see such relevance in the repeated foreign incursions on Somalia’s fishing grounds which partly depleted local fisherman’s livelihood that has spawned famously notorious Pirate Industry which I earlier wrote about.

How about today?

Again the Wikipedia, (bold highlights mine)

The various Somali militias had at that point developed into security agencies for hire. Due to that development, security had much improved and an economic rebound occurred. Somalia was then arguably partly in a state of anarcho-capitalism, where all services were provided by private ventures. According to the CIA, Somalia's telecommunication firms provide wireless services in most major cities and offer the lowest international call rates on the continent.

In 2000, Abdiqasim Salad Hassan was selected to lead the Transitional National Government (TNG).

This was followed in 2004 by the establishment of the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) of the Republic of Somalia, the most recent attempt to restore national institutions to the nation after the 1991 collapse of the Barre regime and the ensuing civil war. On October 10, 2004, Somali parliament members elected Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, the former President of Puntland, to be the next president and head of the TFG. The other institutions adopted at this time were the Transitional Federal Charter and the selection of a 275-member Transitional Federal Parliament.

Though internationally recognized, the TFG's support in Somalia was waning until the United States-backed 2006 intervention by the Ethiopian military, which helped drive out the rival Islamic Courts Union (ICU) in Mogadishu and solidify the TFG's rule. Following this defeat, the ICU splintered into several different factions. Some of the more radical elements, including Al-Shabaab, regrouped to continue their insurgency against the TFG and oppose the Ethiopian military's presence in Somalia. Throughout 2007 and 2008, Al-Shabaab scored military victories, seizing control of key towns and ports in both central and southern Somalia. At the end of 2008, the group had captured Baidoa but not Mogadishu. By January 2009, Al-Shabaab and other militias had managed to force the Ethiopian troops to withdraw from the country, leaving behind an underequipped African Union (AU) peacekeeping force.

Over the next few months, a new President was elected from amongst the more moderate Islamists, and the Transitional Federal Government, with the help of a small team of African Union troops, began a counteroffensive in February 2009 to retake control of the southern half of the country. To solidify its control of southern Somalia, the TFG formed an alliance with the Islamic Courts Union and other members of the Alliance for the Re-liberation of Somalia. Furthermore, Al-Shabaab and Hizbul Islam, the two main Islamist groups in opposition, began to fight amongst themselves in mid 2009.

As a truce, in March 2009, Somalia's newly established coalition government announced that it would implement shari'a as the nation's official judicial system.

As one would note, there has been so many and continuous foreign meddling in Somalia in the attempt to foist a national government, on what seems to be a society averse to government.

As Professor Ben Powell writes, (bold highlights mine)

The Somalis again have united against this attempt by outsiders to force a government on them. Unfortunately, the result has been an increase in the power of the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC), who, since June, has gained control over much of southern Somalia, including the former capital, Mogadishu. An estimated 600 militias have joined the UIC since the TFG moved into Baidoa in February.

Every government of Somalia has exploited the country’s population. International meddling created the TFG and, unintentionally, a more powerful UIC. If either group were to become a true government, the population likely will once again become oppressed. In the meantime, the two groups appear headed back into civil war, which will likely result in the kind of chaos the country has not experienced since 1995.

Prime Minister Gedi of the TFG recently said, “It is totally misguided not to accept the government. The alternative is chaos.” Unfortunately, he’s got it exactly backwards. It is, in fact, the attempts to impose a government on Somalia that create chaos.

Aside from the wireless services which offers the “lowest international call rates on the continent” as cited by above by Wikipedia, the current economy of the 9.1 m population of Somalia, again as tersely described by Wikipedia, (bold emphasis mine)

Although it states that no reliable statistics are available for the period in question, the United Nations claims that Somalia, already one of the poorest countries in the world, has become even poorer as a result of civil war. However, the CIA Factbook maintains that gains were made during the early 2000s; "despite the seeming anarchy, Somalia's service sector has managed to survive and grow. Mogadishu's main market offers a variety of goods from food to the newest electronic gadgets. Hotels continue to operate, and militias provide security."

When extreme poverty (percentage of individuals living on less than PPP$1 a day) was last measured by the World Bank in 1998, Somalia fared better than many other countries in Africa, over some of whom Somalia also had superior infrastructure. The CIA World Factbook counsels that "Statistics on Somalia's GDP, growth, per capita income, and inflation should be viewed skeptically", while estimating Somalia's GDP per capita at $600.

In the absence of a Somali state and its institutions, the private sector grew "impressively" according to the World Bank in 2003, particularly in the areas of trade, commerce, transport, remittance and infrastructure services and in the primary sectors, notably in livestock, agriculture and fisheries. In 2007, the United Nations reported that the country's service industry is also thriving. Economist Peter T. Leeson, in an event study of "the impact of anarchy on Somali development", found that "[t]he data suggest that while the state of this development remains low, on nearly all of 18 key indicators that allow pre- and post-stateless welfare comparisons, Somalis are better off under anarchy than they were under government." Powell et al. concur that in absolute terms, Somalia’s living standards have improved and compare favorably with many existing African states, but also report that living standards have often improved "relative to other African countries since the collapse of the Somali central government."

It would be a nightmare for governments and politicians around the world to see a stateless society succeed. So the intuitive response is to view data from a stateless government “sceptically”.

Just imagine if Somalia should succeed then there could be mass revolutions to overthrow governments around the world. That's something governments won't want to happen.

So obviously there will always be a reason to keep Somalia poor.

And this video is part of such propaganda.

Video: Public Choice: Why Politicians Don't Cut Spending

Professor Ben Powell in a short video explains, from the public choice perspective, why politicians are intuitively reluctant to cut spending. (source Learn Liberty)

The Daily Show Explains US Foreign Policy On Libya

Hilarious but politically poignant stuff from Jon Stewart (HT Bob Murphy)

The Daily Show - Odyssey Dawn - Unconstitutional War
Tags: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Video On US Income Inequality: What Statistics Don’t Say

In this video, Professor Steve Horwitz explains the myth behind mainstream’s presentation of “income inequality”. (hat tip: Professor Art Carden)

Jupiter: Giant Of The Solar System

Last year I noted that despite man's great leap in technological advancement, we are still NO match to the awesome powers of nature-the ultimate black swan.

This documentary video of the planet Jupiter presents a good example. (HT: Bob Murphy)

Jupiter has greatly contributed to life on earth by playing the role of an enormous vacuum cleaner through its massive gravity field (which serves as a defensive shield) that has, so far, kept us free from the risks of catastrophic impact from comets, asteroids and other space objects.

From this point of view, the idea that man is primarily responsible for nature's changes is a speck, irrelevant and represents fatal conceit or intellectual arrogance.

Fibonacci: Nature By Numbers

Here is a cool documentary video of the Fibonacci number sequence or the Golden Mean as seen in nature. (HT: Cafe Hayek)

Video Interview Of Milton Friedman: In Defense of Free Trade

Here is a great video of the late Milton Friedman debunking protectionism which the US steel industry had wanted to impose against the Japanese in the 70s. (Hat tip Professor Mark Perry)

The premises are fundamentally the same today except that the economic actor at the receiving end of protectionism involves China instead of the Japan.

Some notes:

Import dollars eventually find their way back.

There are invisible and visible effects from policies (ala Bastiat). What makes the protectionist advocacy attractive to the public is the visibility of the effects (loss of jobs of steelworkers), while ignoring the invisible benefits (expansion of jobs in the other industries and importantly lower consumer prices).

As for Japanese mercantilism or a policy of unilateral free trade: “Why should we object to the Japanese giving us foreign aid?”

Video: Remembering 2010

Great stuff... (hat tip Professor Russ Roberts)


...it's been a good life indeed (great music from One Republic)

Video: Law of Unintended Consequences-Best Intentions, Bad Results

Many bear this silly or oversimplistic notion that laws and or regulations are immaculate. And that all it takes is for people is to have the right sense of ethics to conform or comply with them.

They believe that the way to prosperity is no more than actions via best intentions. Such naive outlook ignores the fact that best intentions are defined or qualified differently by different individuals (value preferences).

And people are not automatons. People’s actions, operating in a world of scarcity, have intertemporal effects. This means some actions may have positive results over the short term at the expense of the long term and vice versa.This applies to laws and regulations as well.

Bottom line: many laws predicated on best intentions, produce bad results.

This video from Reason shows some great examples

BBC’s Hans Rosling: 200 Years of Remarkable Progress and a Converging World

Great video from BBC's Hans Rosling on 200 years of human progress. (hat tip Professor Don Boudreaux)