There are many women who become pregnant but – for a variety of reasons – do not wish to have a baby.  On the other hand there are many women who either cannot, or do not want to become pregnant but would like to have a baby.  How exactly did abortion become the solution to this imbalance?  Why can’t this be settled in the peaceful marketplace?

There are many grocery stores who purchase food, though they do not want to keep it.  On the other hand there are many people who cannot or do not want to grow their own food.  This imbalance is corrected in the marketplace where both the grocery store owners/staff and the buyers of food benefit by acquiring something they wanted from the other party more than what they give away.

I’m not advocating the buying and selling of children, who cannot be owned in the first place.  Rather I’m defending the right of parents to sell their parental title should they decide it is for the best.  If the State did not threaten peaceful market actors with their law, private arbitration agencies would rise up in a very short period of time that would offer to pay the mother’s medical expenses on top of parental title transfer fee, offer counselling and find the best home for the child.  The black market of child trafficking would vanish and the abortion debate would disappear.

Virtually every government on earth imposes trade tariffs on exports and imports in ‘their’ domain.  The story goes that they don’t want too much money leaving their country through imports, nor do they want too much tangible stock leaving their country through exports – which would drive up local prices.  Ironically, nobody would have to worry about the higher prices at home should exports increase, if only import tariffs didn’t exist – as the same (or similar) products could be bought back into the country at the market rate.  So why not just do away with both tariffs?

Well, local unions support tariffs on imports to discourage cheaper or more quality competition from overseas and so they happily trade their votes for high-tariff politicians in exchange for protection from these foreign businesses.  But is there any benefit to this “protectionism” in reality?

Imagine the only people you could buy from or sell to were your immediate relatives.  How much do you think you’d get done if that was your entire economy?  Your wife makes food & clothes from the animals that you feed with the crops you work on to maintain all day long with your brother.  You father is a blacksmith who gives you tools in exchange for food. Your mother died at 31 because no one in your family is a doctor.

The jump from trading in a family-only economy to a nationwide economy is comparable to the jump from trading in a nationwide economy to global economy.  In short, the more the merrier!

REPOST: This is a duplication with the outro song stripped as it lead to the video being disabled in many countries. Original video with outro is here: School Sucks Podcast

According to certain Irish government officials, there are employers out there who – for whatever reason – want to guarantee a minimum productive output from their staff by paying them pennies for their time.  They want hungry, weak, stressed and unkept staff who will jump at the first opportunity for a higher wage in employment elsewhere.  It is therefore assumed that the workers of our proud nation need protection from these unscrupulous exploiters – and so the state has imposed a minimum wage.

Today it stands at €8.65 for those over 18 years of age.  Well, I thought to myself, if they can simply legislate to increase take home pay to guarantee people a decent wage – why not make the minimum wage €100 or €1,000?  Why €8.65?  If €1,000 is too high and €100 is too high, then how do we know €8.65 isn’t too high?

If unemployment would move close to 100% if the minimum wage was €1,000 – assuming no employer will pay their staff more money in wages than they can hope to recouperate from them over the same period – than couldn’t we assume the current rate of €8.65 is also contributing to the unemployment rate.  Who’ll hire a new young worker in need of employment experience to sweep floors for €8.65?  I certainly wouldn’t pay that for such a simple service.

I recently saw a sign hanging on a pole that read “Keep Your Parental Rights!  Vote No!“.  The sign was reference to a referendum that was being held to add new text to the Irish Constitution augmenting the legal rights of a child.  Though the text wasn’t overtly revolutionary, it was loose enough to be interpreted in a way that, in effect, gives the State more representative weight than the parent of a child in certain circumstances.

What this means in practical terms is… absolutely nothing.  It’s a piece of paper for crying out loud.  A person does not derive their rights from a constitution – they just have them by being human.  A constitution can showcase pre-existing rights but it cannot give new ones or take them away – no matter how many people vote yes or no.

Arbitrary law only has power if it is obeyed.  A right is something you demonstrate, not something you read or write.  Yes or no, the outcome of a vote is entirely irrelevant.  Rather, it’s important to be a grown up and take responsibility where one ought and not listen to the dictates of the lunatic mob of voters.

Forget the common reasons you are told you shouldn’t smoke.  Forget the magical power tobacco supposedly has to override the will and force you to be… addicted (I smoked for 7 years believing I was addicted – I had to stop smoking to realise I wasn’t).  Forget the dramatic threat of fatal lung cancer which has a startlingly low evidence to authoritative opinion ratio.

Sure, there are real issues like diminished lung capacity, poor skin and yellow teeth but these are things that not everybody cares about.  I have a real reason…

Cigarette tax significantly funds the State.  79% of the price of 20 cigarettes goes directly to the State.  That’s €7.27 stolen from the retail price of €9.20.  That means without tax, a 20 box could retail at €1.93.  The Irish State is expecting over €1 Billion this year from Excise and VAT on Tobacco.

So while I doubt smoking is going to kill you, I recommend you avoid it.  But if you must, please buy your tobacco from the black market and stop supporting the State.

All tax is legalised theft as there is no clear consent from the paying party.  Which is why I’m so confused by the rhetoric of the latest Irish Property/Water Tax protest.  If the property tax is wrong, why aren’t all the others?  Why single this one out?  All business owners have been paying their own property tax (commonly called rates) for many years now and no one has made this much racket.  Let’s take a look at some of the others…

We pay almost a quarter markup in VAT on practically every product we buy. We pay Capital Gains Tax on our acquisitions of land, buildings, minerals or mining rights, exploration or exploitation rights in a designated area of the Irish Continental Shelf, shares (not quoted on a stock exchange) and assets in Ireland.

We pay Income Tax on every profit arising from quarries/mines, works, tolls, fairs, bridges and railways – on any profession not mentioned specifically by the tax schedule, on interest on money or debts, annuities, discounts, profits on government debt, interest on certain government debt, income on securities outside the state, from rent and income from possessions outside the state.  There’s Pay-Related-Social-Insurance on our earnings as employees, employers or from self-employment which is separate to the Income Levy we also pay from our payslips.

Then there’s Deposit Interest Retention Tax charged on our savings on other investments and Stamp Duty charged on residential and non-residential property, long leases and on company share transfers, bank cheques, bank cards and insurance policies.  There’s Capital Acquisition Tax which is charged on inheritances and gifts and there’s Discretionary Trust Tax.  There’s a Corporation Tax and a Withholding Tax.  There’s an Excise Tax on oil, tobacco and alcohol.  There’s a Plastic Bag Tax, a Vehicle Registration Tax and a separate Motor Tax.

I could go on but all I want to is encourage those fighting this tax – not to get sidetracked.  Is it right to fight this tax?  Yes, but I hope this is just the first battle in war against legalised theft and not just a one-off.

In a world with infinite quantities of all desirable things, no one would ever need a job.  The demand to hire someone comes from a felt unease or lack on the part of an employer.  The very purpose of a job is to correct the imbalance between lack and desire on the part of the employee as much as the employer.  As technology advances, these jobs can be fulfilled with fewer employees, or even no employees at all.

It was apparently commonly asked of the abolitionists “If we get rid of laws protecting slavery, who will pick the cotton?”.  Well, machines of course!  Jobs are good only when they fulfill a real desire on the part of the employer and employee – if the same job can be accomplished without people it’s far preferable.  Over the last few centuries alone, machines have put millions of people out of work – are we are poorer?  Of course not!

Being the contrary people that they are, politicians around the world  concentrate on “growth” and creating more jobs, frequently claiming the unemployment rate is too high.  They may as well be saying, “we do not have enough scarcity to be addressed“, and so if they are serious they will want to break things and find faults where there are none just to stimulate demand for employees.  They will invent new laws and taxes, just to hire more accountants, teachers, police and tax collectors.  We in the market concentrate on quite the opposite, we want fewer jobs.

Don’t get me wrong, a job is a great thing when you need it, but don’t forget why you’re really there – to put an end to your employer’s problem or lack.  If you see the job through to completion, you’ll be redundant – and that ought to be your target.

I wonder how close we can get to the ideal 100% unemployment rate.

Q.  Which is the greater crime to you?

• A.  killing a random civilian
• B.  killing a random cop
• C.  killing a random Toaiseach, President or Prime Minister
• D.  all of the above are exactly equal crimes

In ethical and moral terms, the correct answer is, as you probably answered, D – that all crimes are equal.  I’m guessing you answered D because you probably have your brain switched on while you read.  This is normally not the case while you watch TV.  How many times have you watched a movie or TV show where the greatest threat the villian presents is that they will assassinate the President?  And how many times have you been at least slighty jarred by news of a cop killing while in the same 30 minute segment you could easily stomach news of a random civilian being killed?

The greatest crime on earth is not the shooting of a cop or a president – those are equal to any other killing in every possible way.  This may seem foundational to some, but I think it’s necessary to summarise with the following statement: killing a President is the same as killing anybody else – not worse.

So your €150 electricity bill is way passed due and you’re about to be cut off.  You just blew your account balance paying your phone bill and rent last week.  You have €50 in your current account.  Your credit card is maxed and you don’t have an overdraft.  All you have is a debit card linked to your current account.

You think to start your day by withdrawing the €50 and taking it from there.  Not so fast!  Rather, map out the nearest establishments that provide cashback on purchases.  Most have a limit of €50 on top of your purchase, though I have seen up to €100 issued at a time.  Larger supermarkets, bookshops and chemists are usually good targets.

“So I withdraw my €50 from a shop instead of an ATM, what’s the big deal?”, I here you protest.  Here’s the big deal…  When typical chip & pin card machines process a transaction in Ireland, they send a query to your bank’s central server through a payment gateway.  When you purchase a product, the purchase amount is not immediately removed from your account – that happens at the end of the day, when the machines batch all the transactions in one go.  This saves the payment gateway a fortune in fees, called interchange.

The purchase amount is however, temporarily locked in the account and cannot be spent until it is due to be processed.  When cashback is requested however, this is only logged by the payment gateway, and not the bank.  What this means is that even though the money in your account is locked and due to be removed at the end of the day, it still reports as the available balance for cashback.  In practical terms, this means a €10 buffer could be set aside for the actual purchase of goods to be suplimented with €40 cashback per purchase.  From the first establishment, you might purchase a 95c pack of gum and get €40 cashback, to the second, perhaps a €1.40 bottle of Fanta with €40 cashback.  Rinse and repeat, while keeping track of your €10 buffer as this depletes with every purchase of goods.

Out of curiosity, I may or may not have tested this theory and gotten from €47 in my current account, to over €300 in 45 minutes without an overdraft.  Of course all it takes to cut you off is one of those machines being batched, and you’ll still end up with a negative balance at the end of the day which you’ll of course have to pay sometime – but it’s good to know if you get in a tight spot.