Beautiful Anarchy

The Economics of Life Itself : Beautiful Anarchy is the writing platform of Jeffrey Tucker, in which he covers economics, art, popular culture, and politics from a pro-liberty, anti-state point of view.
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  • Jeffrey Tucker

American Culture Has Become Unbearably Toxic Feb 20, 2018

This rant has been a long time coming. I promise that we'll be back to regular programming soon. For now, please consider: It took two weeks in Mexico, away from the daily grind in the US, to gain full consciousness about how insufferable and hateful American culture has become. Here I was in beautiful Mexico, experiencing daily life in both resorts and cities, eating glorious and healthy food, enjoying the lovely hospitality of the people, participating in a vibrant commercial life, seeing how people delight in the daily task of living, growing, making life better each day. I saw smiles...

By Jeffrey Tucker Vote48 6

How and Why Trumpism Rebooted Itself Dec 29, 2017

There’s so much talk about the terrible features of our new political times. I’ve written plenty. I wrote an entire book about the rise of right-wing collectivism and how it poses special dangers for human liberty. Trump rode this very wave into office. That is his orientation. Or maybe it was his marketing plan for electoral victory. After one year, we are not seeing much in the way of real protectionism (beyond the normal), no real crackdown on weed, no greater centralization of executive power beyond what was there. He faced such a huge backlash on his immigration ban that...

By Jeffrey Tucker Vote5 0

Bitcoin Mining Is Costly, Just Like Gold Mining Dec 20, 2017

The classic criticism against the gold standard is that it was too costly. Why are these guys wasting resources to suit up, dig into mountains, desperately seeking a finite resource, and slogging the results all the way to Treasury Department? There is a reason that Bitcoin is being called Digital Gold. This is all just silly. We know how to make money: you print it. It’s far cheaper to print than mine. A paper standard will save a tremendous amount of resources that can go to other purposes. There is a plausibility to the claim. We do know how to...

By Jeffrey Tucker Vote3 0

Of Course the Alt-Right Is Against Capitalism Dec 19, 2017

Some people on the left are starting to worry about getting trolled by the alt-right. This is because the alt-right has become aggressively anti-capitalist, pro-welfare state, and in favor of a government that specifically promotes white interests, not a free market that offers no privilege to anyone. “The alt-right is looking to expand its ranks,” declares Salon, “and prominent leaders of the notorious white supremacist movement apparently believe that leftists are an ideal target for their recruiting efforts.” This follows a huge investigative piece that appeared in The Nation, in which a reporter from the publication attended a number of...

By Jeffrey Tucker Vote4 1

Why Are Scented Candles So Darn Expensive? Dec 17, 2017

A century ago, having electric indoor lighting was a luxury of the rich. It was a dangerous technology at the time – one thing goes wrong and the whole house is up in flames – but people took the risk. 150,000 years of lighting rooms with wax and oil was just too much. The future would be about glass bulbs and electric filaments. If you were rich and believed in the future, you had your home wired. If we did not learn to dominate nature, our existence on earth would be short-lived or constantly threatened by beasts, pests, and weather. What happened to...

By Jeffrey Tucker Vote1 0

It’s Not Just Socialists We Need to Worry About Dec 15, 2017

Jeffrey A. Tucker, who is the Director of Content for the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE), has published the book Right-Wing Collectivism: The Other Threat to Liberty in September. Last week, Kai Weiss talked with him via Skype about the book and the threat of right-collectivism. ___________________________________________________________________ Kai Weiss: Let’s start off with an easy question. What was the purpose of writing this book? Why was it important right now to take a closer look at the right-collectivist movement? It’s another way to control people, it’s another cultural model for managing society from the top-down. Jeffrey Tucker: Right collectivism is on the rise around the world, both...

By Jeffrey Tucker Vote2 1

This Bloodsport Needs to End Dec 14, 2017

Now that the special election is over, the mainstream press can stop reporting on Alabama as if it were Mars. Have some sympathy with the voters in this state, please. Not for the first time, a populist demagogue snagged the Republican nomination. His opponent had all the predictable views of the Democrats, which is to say similarly attached to an old-world model of political control. Those who held their nose and voted for the Republican didn't like his antics or views; they simply observed that once these people take office, they aren't even real people with much decision-making power. They...

By Jeffrey Tucker Vote2 0

How to Live Like a Bitcoin Millionaire Dec 12, 2017

The opportunity is to live every dream you have ever had. Now. The problem is that for every dream you realize, you have to relinquish some of your property. And every bit of that property is hard to come by, extraordinarily lucrative, and the single most in-demand thing on the planet earth. Among the crypto rich, it’s hip to be poor. You must be tight. Stingy. No signs of wealth.  So, yes, you could be living it up. Instead, you have become addicted to seeing your net worth rise and rise...oh, and rise further, and further, and rise again. And...

By Jeffrey Tucker Vote3 3

Be Desperately Grateful for Life Itself Dec 11, 2017

This year has been one of the greatest of my life, full of amazing changes that point to a bright future for all the things I care about. This year has also made me most grateful for life itself. Two dear friends have recently announced potentially life-threatening diseases, and I suffer to think of their turmoil and pain, and pray for their recovery. Both have been enormously valuable people in my life, and their suffering is my suffering. Also this year, a man who had a profound influence on me – so quiet, so cautious, so tender – passed away,...

By Jeffrey Tucker Vote6 1

What Really Matters about Bitcoin Dec 8, 2017

After Bitcoin hit $10,000, it, at last, seemed to dawn on the mainstream financial press that this thing matters. There has been a panic rush to catch up on the meaning of it all. Some have doubled down on the claim that the whole thing is a hoax. Others dismiss it as a bubble (indeed, all financial models would suggest that a correction is needed). Some bigshots have called for it to be banned as if it is even possible to ban a mathematical protocol. So much confusion out there! Having followed this technology from 2010, here are the ten...

By Jeffrey Tucker Vote2 0

In Defense of Bitcoin Hoarding Dec 7, 2017

In Internet slang, they are called the HODLers, the people who are clinging to their Bitcoin and refusing to spend it. Instead, they just refresh their wallet apps, feeling richer by day while deferring consumption. Many of these burgeoning millionaires live like paupers. I’ve met many of them: all over the U.S., in Israel, in Brazil. They believe that every dollar they spend today is two dollars they won’t make in a few months. Probably they are right. There is nothing selfish, strange, or weird about holding an asset that is rising in value. Bitcoin is undergoing a historic deflation,...

By Jeffrey Tucker Vote1 2

The Genius of the “Dilly Dilly” Commercial Dec 5, 2017

Sometimes a commercial appears that both shatters a paradigm and creates a popular meme that truly sticks. The genius is undeniable but extremely hard to manufacture from a formula. It just works. Think of “I’d like to teach the world to sing,” “Where’s the beef?”, “Mikey likes it!”, and “Do you have any Grey Poupon?” All these were huge cultural moments that managed to achieve what advertising is supposed to achieve: brand recognition, pride in consumption, affirmation of cultural identity. We had another one come to us in 2017. It’s Bud Light’s Dilly Dilly commercial that first ran during an...

By Jeffrey Tucker Vote3 3

The Obamacare Mandate Is a Tax, So the Senate Bill Is Correct Dec 3, 2017

The Washington Post is outraged. The New York Times even more so. Commentators are going nuts. “Using a tax bill to abolish the individual mandate amounts to a backdoor way of sabotaging Obamacare,” writes John Cassidy. “Republicans, and Donald Trump, have counted on that (as well as your limited outrage bandwidth) in slipping an Affordable Care Act mandate repeal inside their insidious tax bill,” writes Bridget Read. Obamacare’s much-despised individual mandate is, in fact, a tax. It is properly dealt with in a tax bill. All this howling is due to how the GOP-controlled Senate used a tax bill to...

By Jeffrey Tucker Vote5 1

Fed Official Decries Bitcoin as “Not Backed” Dec 2, 2017

Randal K. Quarles, a Trump administration appointee to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors and Vice Chair for bank supervision, has given a lengthy speech (“Thoughts on Prudent Innovation in the Payment System”) that directly targets Bitcoin as a danger to the monetary and financial system. To reiterate, an official speaking for the nation's central bank that manages the global reserve currency – the institution that has long bragged about its power to bail out the entire world with the magic powers of the alchemist – has put down Bitcoin for being untrustworthy, unbacked, and unsound. Discrediting Crypto The timing...

By Jeffrey Tucker Vote2 4

History Is Malleable in the Land of the Dead Dec 1, 2017

We tend to think of the past as settled. There is nothing we can do to change it. But this is not entirely true. How we think about the past – the good guys and bad guys, the justice and injustice, the causes and effects – has a profound effect on our perceptions of the present. Our understanding comes to be revised based on new information as it comes to light. In this sense, the past is not settled. It is a living reality. Big thoughts, right? They come to me courtesy of an animated film now rocking the theaters. I’ve...

By Jeffrey Tucker Vote1 0

The Frozen Sisters Grapple with Tradition Anxiety Nov 30, 2017

It’s beyond me why the Disney short showing before the new movie Coco (which itself is fantastic) is getting such terrible reviews. It might have something to do with an aspect of Internet culture. Tradition anxiety is prompted by the depth of the history associated with the winter holiday. You can make a bigger splash on social media by brutally criticizing something than by praising it. Then the tipping point arrives and everyone somehow has to agree something is terrible even when it is not (the paradigmatic case of Rebecca Black’s “Friday” comes to mind). In any case, I found...

By Jeffrey Tucker Vote2 0

Why Doesn’t James Scott Want to Talk about Property? Nov 29, 2017

One of the most exciting books of 2017 is James Scott’s Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States (Yale 2017). It deals with all the salient questions (that I care about in any case). In prehistoric times, how did human beings discover how to feed themselves? How did we decide to become settled in one spot rather than move around as hunters and gatherers? And the biggest question: where did the state come and why? Scott is properly seen as a critic of the modern state, if not a full-blown anti-statist radical. The core of Scott’s fascinating...

By Jeffrey Tucker Vote2 0

Why Does Trump Fear Merging Media Dinosaurs? Nov 29, 2017

In a strange blast from the past, the Trump administration has rejected an uncontroversial vertical merger proposed by AT&T and Time Warner. Oh sure, it’s petty. It’s arbitrary and capricious. It’s economically unjustified. The principal players are right to object. Still, it’s nothing new. Antitrust has always been this way, from Standard Oil to Microsoft. It’s always been about power, not economics. Vertical mergers haven’t been controversial in a long time. But this one is different, so far as the Trump administration is concerned. It’s a reminder of the old days when Washington was in freak-out mode about Hollywood’s “studio...

By Jeffrey Tucker Vote1 0

Are You a Genius or a Fraud? Nov 28, 2017

One time, when I was a small child, I saw Hank Aaron go to bat. He had already hit his 500th home run. I was looking forward to seeing this genius do his thing. I was devastated when he struck out. Some genius, I recall thinking. As an eight-year-old, my first thought was that I could have done exactly what he did. Of course, Hank knew something that I, at the time, did not. Genius is about averages, not every time at bat. If every time you strike out, you imagine that you might be a fraud, you will make...

By Jeffrey Tucker Vote3 1

Dropping Traffic Rules and Signs Would Make Us Safer Nov 26, 2017

This morning, I was sitting at a stop light and heard a terrifying screeching. A black sedan headed my direction from the oncoming lane was careening across six lanes of traffic, with squealing brakes and tires, through the intersection, flying forward some 75 or so yards and finally landing against a pole with a mighty impact. Terror shot through everyone in the vicinity. Green means go. The problem was that there were cars in the way. What happened? The woman behind the wheel had been driving 45 mph and saw a green light ahead of her. Green means go. The problem was...

By Jeffrey Tucker Vote2 3

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