blupete Essays


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TITLE. SYNOPSIS.
On Rights.
(16K)
September '2000.
"Whatever a person claims a right there should arise out of the same fertile soils of imagination that gave rise to it, the figure, as tradition has it, of a veiled woman who declares, 'My name is Duty, turn and follow me.'"
On Unions.
(14k)
September '2000.
"What is a union but a combination of persons in furtherance of their own interests. What is it but a political group which the government has looked down on, in favour. What is it but a privileged bunch with a 'right' given by the rest of us, to combine and act in concert against the rest of us."
Economics: A Historic Look.
(26k)
October, 2000.
"The arrangements within any relationship, whether between individuals or social groups, are underpinned either by force or persuasion. War, slavery, and government coercion are examples of force. Commerce is the great example of intercourse which comes about and which is maintained by persuasion."
The Industrial Revolution.
(41k)
October, 2000.
"There is a great myth about the Industrial Revolution, perpetuated by writers such as Dickens, viz., that it caused unspeakable misery to the people at large. On the contrary, I do not think any student of history can come to any other conclusion than that the average happiness, to take England as an example, in the early nineteenth century was considerably higher than it had been a hundred years earlier."
Economic Terms.
(55k)
November, 2000.
"Let us consider Malthus and his four rules for formulating definitions. The first of these rules is that when people use words they should expect others to interpret them in their ordinary sense, or dictionary meaning. The second rule -- given that some distinction is required -- is to adopt the meaning as used by the "most celebrated writers."
On Economics.
(45k)
November, 2000.
"How do we extend human cooperation beyond the family system? Thankfully, though few it seems have come to the realization, we do not have to get people -- short of obeying the criminal law - to do anything. There is in place a natural engine which drives people to choose for themselves the exact nature and extent of their own contributions to the extended economic order, and to choose for themselves the exact nature and extent of their allocations from the extended economic order. This engine is egocentric; it drives each of us to cooperate with one other, for our own self-interest, and, as it happens, quite naturally, in the interests of the larger order of things. I talk of the market."
On Taxes.
(25k)
December, 2000.
"I do not argue that Government is not needed. It is needed. And a government, as John Locke wrote, 'cannot be supported without great charge, and it is fit every one who enjoys his share of the protection should pay out of his estate his proportion for the maintenance of it.' Government, in these modern days, has gone far beyond the role that Locke envisaged for it; its involvement in our everyday activities and the resulting encroachment on our liberty, is an argument to cut it back separate from that which asserts, that governmental expenditure has turned those in control of it into modern robber barons who bleed the people beyond all that which might be expected for the running of good government."
Politics and The Lie of Legitimacy.
(63k)
February, 2001.
"While people in a democracy may well categorize themselves as being politically free, they inevitably suffer socially from that subtle and searching oppression which the dominant opinion of a free community may exercise over the members who compose it. Increasingly, however, the oppression is not so subtle. ... Democracy, the theme of it can never wear trite, is called a democracy because it looks to the interest, not of the few, but of the many. It is the sacred duty of an elected assembly, owed to the whole of the population; not to give in to any one of its parts for the sole benefit of that part; and this is to be, no matter how meritorious the cause of that part, as for example, the "rights" of women, or "rights" of aboriginals. There is, unfortunately, however, an inherent tendency of myopic politicians to yield to the organized at the expense of the unorganized. Any decision of any assembly must be in favour of its constituency, viz., the people who brought it into being by the electorial process. A government that is confused about its mandate in this regard falls under the sway of special interest groups."



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Peter Landry