Dylan Saba on racist assumptions about Palestinians living in Gaza

It is precisely anti-Palestinian racism that allows people to say that there is no distinction between Palestinians living in Gaza and Hamas, which is exactly the messaging of the Israeli government.  They're saying it openly.  They're saying that they're not treating them differently and they're saying that Gaza is full of terrorists.  That distinction is based on racist assumptions about Palestinians.  It's based on the abiliy to paint Muslims and Arabs and Palestinians with a broad brush, that is to paint them as a threat to Israeli safety and Jewish safety.  So that is what is behind the smears and what allows the naked genocidal rhetoric on the Israeli side and on the U.S. side in supporting these actions.

~ Dylan Saba, "Zionist anti-Palestine censorship is surging," The Chris Hedges Report, 16:25 mark, November 24, 2023

David Bergland on the reification fallacy

"Reification" is a fancy word for treating a concept or a label as something that actually exists.  The fallacy is in forgetting that the concept or label doesn't really exist, only people do.  "Government," for instance, does not exist as a thing separate from the people who make it up.  Certainly it is necessary to have a term like "government," just as we have terms like church, school, army, union, corporation, family and so on.  But, none of these labels (groups) has an existence apart from and greater than the individuals in it.

Whenever you hear someone discussing what the government, or the bureaucrats, or the big corporations, or the unions did, always ask, "Which individuals did what things?"  Only individuals can act and they should, of course, be responsible for their actions.

One purpose for engaging in this fallacy is to depersonalize people you want to mistreat.  It is much easier to call for heavy taxation of "the big corporations" than to call for reducing the dividends of the pensioners, widows, and orphans who depend on pension funds which own shares in many big corporations.  Another purpose is to argue that you, an individual, are less important than labels such as "society," so you should sacrifice your interests.

~ David Bergland, Libertarianism in One Lesson, pp. 9-10

James Montier on Modern Monetary Theory and fiscal policy

MMT is aligned with functional finance, which simply says fiscal policy should aim to generate full employment rather than a balanced budget. There’s this fallacy that what’s true for a household is true for government. So you hear from all sorts of policy wonks that the U.S. and XYZ nation are running out of money. Well, that’s just not possible.

~ James Montier, strategist, GMO, "In Defense of Modern Monetary Theory," Barron's, July 27, 2019

Lew Rockwell on morality

If something is wrong for you and me, it is also wrong for the cop, the soldier, the mayor, the governor, the general, the Fed chairman, the president.  Theft does not become acceptable when they call it taxation, counterfeiting when they call it monetary policy, kidnapping when they call it the draft, mass murder when they call it foreign policy.

~ Lew Rockwell

Mises on man's fallibility

If one rejects laissez faire on account of man's fallibility and moral weakness, one must for the same reason also reject every kind of government action.

~ Ludwig von Mises, Planning For Freedom, p. 44