H.L. Mencken on the urge to save humanity

The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false face to rule it.

~ H.L. Mencken

Mark Weisbrot on how Venezuela's economic critics have been wrong (2012)

Although some media have talked of Venezuela’s impending economic collapse for more than a decade, it hasn’t happened and is not likely to happen.

After recovering from a recession that began in 2009, the Venezuelan economy has been growing for two-and-a-half years now and inflation has fallen sharply while growth has accelerated. The country has a sizeable trade surplus. Its public debt is relatively low, and so is its debt-service burden. It has plenty of room to borrow foreign currency (it has borrowed $36 billion from China, mostly at very low interest rates), and can borrow domestically as well at low or negative real interest rates.

So even if oil prices were to crash temporarily (as they did in 2008-2009), there would be no need for austerity or recession. And hardly anyone is predicting a long-term collapse of oil prices.

~ Mark Weisbrot, "Why Chávez Was Re-elected," The New York Times, October 9, 2012

Mark Weisbrot on how Venezuela nationalizing its oil industry led to improved living standards

Since the Chávez government got control over the national oil industry, poverty has been cut by half, and extreme poverty by 70 percent. College enrollment has more than doubled, millions of people have access to health care for the first time and the number of people eligible for public pensions has quadrupled.

So it should not be surprising that most Venezuelans would reelect a president who has improved their living standards. That’s what has happened with all of the leftist governments that now govern most of South America. This is despite the fact that they, like Chávez, have most of their countries’ media against them, and their opposition has most of the wealth and income of their respective countries.

~ Mark Weisbrot, "Why Chávez Was Re-elected," The New York Times, October 9, 2012

Journalist lauds Hugo Chavez's economic miracle (2013)

[Hugo] Chavez became the bugaboo of American politics because his full-throated advocacy of socialism and redistributionism at once represented a fundamental critique of neoliberal economics, and also delivered some indisputably positive results. Indeed, as shown by some of the most significant indicators, Chavez racked up an economic record that a legacy-obsessed American president could only dream of achieving.

~ David Sirota, "Hugo Chavez's economic miracle: The Venezuelan leader was often marginalized as a radical. But his brand of socialism achieved real economic gains," Salon.com, March 6, 2013

Alan Greenspan sees negative interest rates spreading to the U.S. (2019)

You’re seeing it pretty much throughout the world. It’s only a matter of time before it’s more in the United States.

~ Alan Greenspan, "Alan Greenspan says it’s ‘only a matter of time’ before negative rates spread to the US," CNBC interview, September 4, 2019

Ludwig von Mises on how private property and the free market allows non-conformists to exist

In the political sphere, there is no means for an individual or a small group of individuals to disobey the will of the majority. But in the intellectual field private property makes rebellion possible. The rebel has to pay a price for his independence; there are in this universe no prizes that can be won without sacrifices. But if a man is willing to pay the price, he is free to deviate from the ruling orthodoxy or neo-orthodoxy.

What would conditions have been in the socialist commonwealth for heretics like Kierkegaard, Schopenauer, Veblen, or Freud? For Monet, Courbet, Walt Whitman, Rilke, or Kafka? In all ages, pioneers of new ways of thinking and acting could work only because private property made contempt of the majority's ways possible. Only a few of these separatists were themselves economically independent enough to defy the government into the opinions of the majority. But they found in the climate of the free economy among the public people prepared to aid and support them. What would Marx have done without his patron, the manufacturer Friedrich Engels?

~ Ludwig von Mises, "The Rise of Capitalism," Liberty & Property

Jordan Peterson on the right to offend

You're going to come out on stage and you're going to say something important about something vital, and you're not going to offend one person in a thousand?  Well, you can't say anything about anything important ever without offending, probably with the person you're talking to.  Important speech about important issues, especially contentious issues, is instantly offensive.

~ Jordan Peterson, "Free Speech and the Right to Offend, 0:23-0:44 mark, YouTube, March 14, 2018