Monday, November 19, 2012

November 19, 2012
I, Twinkie

Dear Laissez Faire Today Reader,

Jeffrey Tucker

Oh how everyone (of a certain class and income) makes fun of the Twinkie, the ultimate symbol of modern food decadence and phoniness. I don't get it. Have the critics ever tried one? They are so appealing and delicious: light, spongy, sweet, and creamy, all in a tiny package.

The news that the parent company Hostess was going out of business caused a huge run on Twinkies in my own community. Every store had an empty space where they should have been. The preppers were right: we should have stocked up for emergencies like this.

Meanwhile, the haters have been generating a legion of lies about Twinkies ever since food puritanism took over elite culture. Therefore, the urban myths are legion. You know them all. It can stand up to a nuclear holocaust. It is made entirely of artificial ingredients, the ultimate frankenfood. It is responsible for the obesity epidemic. And so on.
So don't you just know that plenty of cultural snobs and anti-market ideologues were experiencing serious schadenfreude at the news that the labor unions have strangled Hostess? They are probably thrilled to kick this snake out of the American garden of Eden they are trying to create and cast the whole line of products to the Mexican outer darkness.

It pains me. It really does. More than half a billion Twinkies are sold every year. They bring incredible joy to multitudes who don't happen to live next to an old-world French pastry shop. The market has been bringing this treat to the masses for 70 glorious years, and all that the cultural elite can do is sneer.

Let's take just a moment to give the Twinkie a bit of respect, as a symbol of the complex economic structures of our time that cannot be replicated by you, me, or any government in the world. It takes a giant market, an extended order of trade, and an unfathomably complex division of labor to make a Twinkie and deliver it to your pallet.

No, it would never existed in an economy planned by the government. Moving mountains and shipping ingredients all over the world just to please you and me? It would never be allowed. Plus, there is no way a government planner could make it happen. The processes are too complex and carefully calibrated by the price system to be economically feasible.

Let's quickly kill a few myths. Contrary to the claim, it is made of 100% natural ingredients. Everything in it comes from the earth -- as much a product of mother nature as a carrot or bean sprout -- with the only difference that it goes through a more extensive production process through time and space. And the reason for the long processes: to make a better product for you and me (which no one forces us to eat).

Twinkies have a remarkable and laudatory shelf life of 25 days, which is rather wonderful for something so puffy and moist. it stays fresh for a time long enough for you to consume it and enjoy it. Time was when hardtack was pretty much all that could last for long travels. Do the food puritans want us eating that rather than yummy sweets? (I don't want to hear the answer.)

It's a myth that it can survive a nuclear explosion but it seems to me that it would be a good thing if it could. Why should survivors of war-torn lands not have access to good food that contains essential proteins in eggs and a source of energy in its cane sugar?

And let's give a hand for the Hostess company's marketing too. Unlike the Apple and Monsanto, the Twinkie benefits from no monopoly protection from government. Anyone can make an imitation and plenty do, such as Mrs Freshley's Gold Creme Cakes and Little Debbie's Golden Cremes. Still, the Twinkie survives with a high name-brand status, or did until the unions killed it. This nicely demonstrates that "intellectual property" is not necessary for profitable production over a long period of time.

It turns out that there is an entire book that details what is in a Twinkie and how it is made. It is Twinkie, Deconstructed, by Steve Ettlinger (Hudson Street Press, 2007). He began the book to try to figure out what all the strange ingredients listed on the label actually are. There are 39 of them, and he devotes a chapter to each one, discovering one by one that every ingredient serves the essential purpose of making the product better. If he began the project with the goal of exposing this frankenfood, he came away from the long project with profound respect for the food item.

As Ettlinger tells the story, the Twinkie was the invention of Charles Dewar, vice president of Continental Bakeries, who figured out how to idle shortbread pans for a different purpose besides make a strawberry treat, which he could not make in the off season (in the old days, there were such things as off seasons). The basic ingredients were the same as they are now (wheat, sugar, soybeans, and eggs).

The name he came up with from seeing a billboard for "Twinkle-Toe Shoes." It was a great plan, and the cakes were hugely popular, except for one thing. The shelf life (the holy grail of food retailing) was only two days. The market for the cake was huge but the company couldn't satisfy the demand. It took decades of research and experimentation but the probably was finally solved in the 1950s, and that's when the ingredient list became longer.

For most of the Twinkie bakeries around the country, the wheat for the cake flour (which is highly specialized) comes from small, family farms (including Amish farms) that have only a few employees, thanks to technology. The enrichment blend of ferrous sulfate and B vitamins is added to white flour on government mandate, presumably to end the disease pellagra. If you don't like the extra vitamins and iron, call your congressman.

Ettinger explodes other myths such as that Twinkies roll off an assembly line and go straight to the packet. Not so. They are baked and browned just like regular cakes, and that's because, well, they are regular cakes. But do they need to be so sweet? The sweeteners work as preservatives, adding color, and causing the ingredients to blend better. Plus, we like sugar. But not too much, which is why corn syrup is also in there because it doesn't crystallize.

(If U.S. sugar tariffs didn't drive up the price so high, the company might have been able to withstand union pressure more. Also, while I'm against corn subsidies as much as the next guy, every baker knows that corn syrup has its place. And anyone who blames it for the rise in obesity might take note that the average daily calorie intake of Americans has risen by 600 since 1980, and corn syrup only accounts for 10% of that. A more obvious factor: people eat vastly more because they can afford to and it's there to eat.)

The demonized preservative in the Twinkie is the miracle food compound called sorbic acid. How the ancients would have loved this stuff! It's sole job is to keep the mold away. Mold is the stuff that forms around moist areas such as your bathtub. If there isn't anything in food that molds -- think of pita chips -- you don't need it. But once you add leavenings, eggs, cream, and put a wet and spongy thing inside a plastic bag, you have got a serious mold issue. You know this if you have even baked a cake and let it sit out for a few days.

Sorbic acid -- it was discovered in berries in 1859 in berries but today is made as a gentle petroleum product with less toxicity than salt -- is the earth's greatest enemy of mold. It is an amazing compound that makes grocery stores possible. If you see something like that in a bag that says "no preservatives," run don't walk. It could be deadly. As it is, the Twinkie only contains tiny trace amounts, just enough to make the product safe for you and me.

People today use the word preservative as if to insinuate that it is some poison that capitalistic corporations insert into our food to profit from poisoning us. Actually, people have struggled to preserve food since the beginning of time. The line between food that gives health and food that kills is a tiny turn of time, practically one minute to the next.

Modern preservatives were discovered at the dawn of modernity, at the height of the Renaissance when music and painting became truly beautiful, when the masses starting eating like kings, and when the common person first had a chance at social mobility. Preservatives meant that the average person had a greater chance at not dying from eating.

If you doubt it, put flour, milk, and egg in a bag and put it on the counter overnight. I wouldn't suggest eating it.

Don't tell me that Twinkies kill. They are made the way they are precisely so that the food will not kill -- thereby solving a huge problem that has vexed us for millions of years. Preservatives preserve your life. As a result, anyone can have access to a legendary dessert treat without having to bake at home or live close by to a pastry shop.

The market works astonishingly hard for you to have a Twinkie. Its creation is the culmination of work that began in the ancient days and continues to now, and it combines technology, an unfathomably complex division of labor, trade among all nations from China to the Middle East to Oklahoma, and a level of capital sophistication that just blows the mind.

Put it down if you want to -- that's your right -- but don't take its existence for granted, much less celebrate when the coercive power of unions shut them down. The unions and sugar tariffs are doing to a great company what mold does to food. Sadly, we've got no ingredient to defend enterprise against parasitism. The U.S. is made that much worse off without the Twinkie. Our loss is Mexico's gain.

Jeffrey Tucker
Laissez Faire Club

Sunday, November 18, 2012

The Establishment Has Some Splainin To Do!

Ron Paul's 32 Questions

by Ron Paul

Recently by Ron Paul: Farewell to Congress

This is extracted from his Farewell to Congress address.
Excessive government has created such a mess it prompts many questions:

Why are sick people who use medical marijuana put in prison?
Why does the federal government restrict the drinking of raw milk?
Why can’t Americans manufacturer rope and other products from hemp?
Why are Americans not allowed to use gold and silver as legal tender as mandated by the Constitution?
Why is Germany concerned enough to consider repatriating their gold held by the FED for her in New York? Is it that the trust in the U.S. and dollar supremacy beginning to wane?
Why do our political leaders believe it’s unnecessary to thoroughly audit our own gold?
Why can’t Americans decide which type of light bulbs they can buy?
Why is the TSA permitted to abuse the rights of any American traveling by air?
Why should there be mandatory sentences – even up to life for crimes without victims – as our drug laws require?
Why have we allowed the federal government to regulate commodes in our homes?
Why is it political suicide for anyone to criticize AIPAC ?
Why haven’t we given up on the drug war since it’s an obvious failure and violates the people’s rights? Has nobody noticed that the authorities can’t even keep drugs out of the prisons? How can making our entire society a prison solve the problem?
Why do we sacrifice so much getting needlessly involved in border disputes and civil strife around the world and ignore the root cause of the most deadly border in the world-the one between Mexico and the US?
Why does Congress willingly give up its prerogatives to the Executive Branch?
Why does changing the party in power never change policy? Could it be that the views of both parties are essentially the same?
Why did the big banks, the large corporations, and foreign banks and foreign central banks get bailed out in 2008 and the middle class lost their jobs and their homes?
Why do so many in the government and the federal officials believe that creating money out of thin air creates wealth?
Why do so many accept the deeply flawed principle that government bureaucrats and politicians can protect us from ourselves without totally destroying the principle of liberty?
Why can’t people understand that war always destroys wealth and liberty?
Why is there so little concern for the Executive Order that gives the President authority to establish a "kill list," including American citizens, of those targeted for assassination?
Why is patriotism thought to be blind loyalty to the government and the politicians who run it, rather than loyalty to the principles of liberty and support for the people? Real patriotism is a willingness to challenge the government when it’s wrong.
Why is it is claimed that if people won’t or can’t take care of their own needs, that people in government can do it for them?
Why did we ever give the government a safe haven for initiating violence against the people?
Why do some members defend free markets, but not civil liberties?
Why do some members defend civil liberties but not free markets? Aren’t they the same?
Why don’t more defend both economic liberty and personal liberty?
Why are there not more individuals who seek to intellectually influence others to bring about positive changes than those who seek power to force others to obey their commands?
Why does the use of religion to support a social gospel and preemptive wars, both of which requires authoritarians to use violence, or the threat of violence, go unchallenged? Aggression and forced redistribution of wealth has nothing to do with the teachings of the world great religions.
Why do we allow the government and the Federal Reserve to disseminate false information dealing with both economic and foreign policy?
Why is democracy held in such high esteem when it’s the enemy of the minority and makes all rights relative to the dictates of the majority?
Why should anyone be surprised that Congress has no credibility, since there’s such a disconnect between what politicians say and what they do?
Is there any explanation for all the deception, the unhappiness, the fear of the future, the loss of confidence in our leaders, the distrust, the anger and frustration? Yes there is, and there’s a way to reverse these attitudes. The negative perceptions are logical and a consequence of bad policies bringing about our problems. Identification of the problems and recognizing the cause allow the proper changes to come easy.

from www.lewrockwell.com

Friday, November 16, 2012

From Renew America

A false dichotomy between fiscal and social issues

By Robert Maynard

One of the supposed lessons that some Republicans apparently are taking from the recent electoral defeat is that the GOP should stay away from social issues and stick to fiscal issues. Putting aside the fact that this is pretty much what the Republican campaign did at both the national and state level, I see the dichotomy between fiscal and social issues to be false one. Furthermore, a large part of the GOP's base is more animated by social issues than fiscal ones. The idea that a party is going to have long term success by ignoring the concerns of its most passionate ground troops has never made any sense to me in the first place. I do understand the need to frame the issues in a way that reaches out beyond the base, but not to ignore them all together.

As I said, I think the dichotomy between social and fiscal issues is a false one. The cornerstone of the social order is the family and thus social endeavors tend to relate to family affairs. Like the ancient Greeks, the early Americans did not see economics as something separate from family issues. According to the entry under economy in the "Online Etymology Dictionary" The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek oikonomia, meaning "management of a household or administration" (from oikos meaning "house" plus nomos, meaning "custom" or "law"), hence "rules of the house(hold)." In other words, the discipline of economics had its origin in the family unit.

It wasn't until recently that the concern of economics was treated in a more narrow fashion. An intellectually honest approach to promoting a free society, which is at the heart of the American conservative agenda, cannot separate the concerns of economics from social and moral concerns. We all remember Adam Smith for his work 'The Wealth of Nations" and his notion of "the invisible hand,"what we forget is that Adam Smith was not strictly an economist, but a moral philosopher who applied his moral philosophy to the discipline of economics. Smith's major work was a piece entitled "The Theory of Moral Sentiments," where he theorized that man has a natural sentiment towards benevolence. This was the basis of his notion of an invisible hand. Society does not need a top down order imposed on it to ensure that the less fortunate get taken care of because man has a natural sentiment toward benevolence. This sentiment was to be cultivated through a social order that began with the family, but included Churches and the other institutions of what is often referred to as "civil society." This order was the essential foundation needed to maintain a free society.

Austrian Economist Ludwig Von Mises carried on this understanding in modern times. In his economic treatise entitled "Socialism," Von Mises critiqued a command and control economic system, dedicating a whole chapter to the family. Von Mises saw the family, like private property, as a natural part of the social order stemming from human nature. In his view, command and control approaches to economics were utopian attempts to socially engineer human nature. Such approaches sought to undermine both the family and the free market, as these both were seen as obstacles to the socially engineered society.

Conservatives today need to at least acknowledge the role that the family and the moral-cultural sector plays is sustaining a free society. Not only would such an acknowledgement motivate the conservative base, but it would represent a more complete defense of a free society. This does not mean proposing policy initiatives, which get the government more involved in family life. Government intrusion into the moral-cultural sector is as much a threat to a free and prosperous society as such intrusions into the economic sector are. We do not want to go from having the government play the role of "big momma" to playing the role of "big daddy."

What we can and should do is point out the destruction of the social order that has resulted from government meddling. We do this when it comes to economics and job creation, but it is even more of a factor in the smooth functioning of the social order and this has a major impact on achieving the sought after goal of social justice. A good place to start to become familiar with this dynamic is to read a book entitled "The Dream and the Nightmare: The Sixties Legacy to the Underclass" by the Manhattan Institute's Myron Magnet. For a more quantitative analysis of the impact that the dissolution of the family has on our society, there is a report by the Institute for American Values entitled "The Taxpayer Cost of Divorce and Unwed Child Bearing." Here is their conclusion:

There is an appendix at the end, which tabulates the costs for each state.

One of the concerns that conservatives have is to promote economic opportunity. This is a powerful way of combatting poverty as numerous studies have shown that freeing up the economy leads to more mobility of capital and higher mobility of capital leads to greater income equality over time as people move from one income bracket to another. There is a good reason for the saying that the best poverty fighting program is a job. The problem is that not all communities have the human capital to take advantage of job opportunities. Holding and keeping jobs requires a basic work ethic that our society has come to take for granted. In addition, few companies are going to offer jobs in crime infested areas no matter what the tax and regulatory incentives are. Political scientist Charles Murray has written about how our society is "Coming Apart" and a class divide is widening where one sector of our society is increasingly missing out on the benefits of income mobility. The main problem is a breakdown of the family structure and of what has been derisively referred to as "family values." Perhaps we should adopt the term "functional values" to indicate that they are essential to the smooth functioning of a free and prosperous society, not to mention a just social order.

In short, conservatives/Republicans should not make the mistake of creating a false dichotomy between fiscal and social concerns. In fact, we should get out in front of the left and point out that there is indeed a class divide that is impoverishing the poor and undermining the ideal of social justice. This problem is aggravated by both the fiscal and social policies of modern day liberalism/progressivism.

© Robert Maynard

Monday, November 12, 2012

What's The Matter With Kansas?

Secession petitions filed in 20 states

States with citizens filing include Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas. Oddly, folks from Georgia have filed twice. Even stranger, several of the petitions come from states that went for President Barack Obama.

The petitions are short and to the point. For example, a petition from the Volunteer State reads: "Peacefully grant the State of Tennessee to withdraw from the United States of America and create its own NEW government." Of all the petitions, Texas has the most signatures so far, with more than 23,000.
Of course, this is mostly a symbolic gesture. The odds of the American government granting any state permission to go its own way are on par with winning the lottery while getting hit by a meteor while seeing Bigfoot while finding gluten-free pizza that tastes like the real thing.

An article from WKRC quotes a University of Louisville political science professor who explained that these petitions aren't uncommon. Similar petitions were filed following the 2004 and 2008 elections. Still, should the petitions garner 25,000 signatures in a month, they will require an official response from the Obama administration.

From the We the People site:

The right to petition your government is guaranteed by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. We the People provides a new way to petition the Obama Administration to take action on a range of important issues facing our country. We created We the People because we want to hear from you. If a petition gets enough support, White House staff will review it, ensure it's sent to the appropriate policy experts, and issue an official response.

Not everybody who wants to secede is polite enough to write a petition. Peter Morrison, treasurer of the Hardin County (Texas) Republican Party, wrote a post-election newsletter in which he urges the Lone Star State to leave the Union.

"We must contest every single inch of ground and delay the baby-murdering, tax-raising socialists at every opportunity. But in due time, the maggots will have eaten every morsel of flesh off of the rotting corpse of the Republic, and therein lies our opportunity... Why should Vermont and Texas live under the same government? Let each go her own way in peace, sign a free trade agreement among the states and we can avoid this gut-wrenching spectacle every four years."

My Take: all we need is to get Oklahoma on board and along with Texas, because Kansas is land locked we would then have access to a point of entry on the sea. I love this. People are fed up!

Saturday, November 3, 2012

From Laissez Faire Today

Gas Lines are Not Sandy's Fault by Jeffrey Tucker

Jeffrey Tucker

It's crazy in New York and New Jersey, and commentators are mystified. Hurricane Sandy was bad enough. That's a natural disaster, and we are dealing with it.

But then came the unnatural disaster in the form of the government's response. This is where the real catastrophe begins.

Check out the mess in New Jersey. The New York Times reports that "widespread gas shortages stirred fears among residents and disrupted some rescue and emergency services as the New York region struggled to return to a semblance of normalcy after being ravaged by Hurricane Sandy."

Fights, anger, lines, craziness everywhere. Emergency shipments of gasoline are pouring in. Mail trucks are stuck. Supply trucks are stuck. Ambulances need fuel and can't get it. The government is trying to get gas to the place, but is hampered by traffic jams and chaos all around.
New Jersey has these weird laws that require that gas stations pump the gas for you. Why? To save jobs? I don't know. But they are there. As a result, service station attendants are slaving, breathing in serious fumes for 18 hours a day and desperately trying to keep the peace.

The images show scenes right out of the 1970s. There are long gas lines as far as the eye can see. Tempers are inflamed. Meanwhile, generators and cars need gas. People's lives are at stake. Some have successfully found gas in Pennsylvania, but you have to have enough gas to get there.

Who can account for such bizarre things as these? Probably the greedy capitalists at work here, right? After all, the state is fielding thousands of complaints of price gouging.

Actually, gouging -- if by that you mean raising prices according to market conditions -- is exactly what will fix the problem. But producers are not allowed to do so. The price system has been abolished. Like socialism.

Gov. Christie himself has made it clear: "We will not hesitate to impose the strictest penalties on profiteers who, in direct violation of our consumer protection laws, seek to capitalize on the misfortune of others in the midst of a crisis and recovery period."

Even more absurdly, "The state had set gas prices at $3.59 on the highways last week," reports the Times.

It's serious. Last year, merchants paid huge fines for raising prices more than 10% in an emergency. This means that they cannot respond to changes in supply and demand. A disabled price system means chaos. When the price is too low, producers drop out and consumers overutilize. Scarce resources are not being replenished, and those that exist are being irrationally squandered.

That's why price ceilings mean shortages. Gas shortages cause social disasters. We are seeing this in real-time in New Jersey. It's a man-made disaster caused by stupid government officials, elected officials, and bureaucrats.

Can it really be that observers of this situation have no clue about the cause? Can it be that fairly intelligent reporters and politicians are truly that stupid when it comes to basic economics? I fear that the answer is yes. We are dealing with a governor who either has a brain the size of a pea or is so craven toward popular opinion that he is willing to throw away all rationality just to suck up to the bourgeoisie that knows not the first point of economic logic.

Hence this lesson. There is no real distinction between responding to economic conditions and so-called gouging. A law against gouging is a law against economic behavior. Merchants need to raise prices -- not to reflect higher costs (though costs could rise), but to reflect changing conditions of supply and demand. A higher price would signal consumers to conserve. A higher price would also call forth greater supply -- without having to have the government intervene with special shipments. A higher price would also settle the crowds down a bit and stop the insane attempt to stockpile as much as possible at the low price.

Price controls are causing human suffering -- yet again. And this time, the toll is very high, even if it will always remain somewhat invisible.

I've been writing on price-gouging laws for at least a year, fully expecting something like this.
In my article called "The Day Your Life Fell Apart" from last July, I wrote:

"So you hop in the car and set out for new gasoline. The storms have caused the usual anti-gouging mania. Station owners have been hauled before Congress in the past just for having raised prices in a storm -- a time when they should be raising prices. Stations fear bad PR and even laws against the practice, and so they can't properly ration supplies.

"You drive and drive, but every gas station in a 10-mile radius of your house is out of gas. In fact, after all this driving, you are nearly out of gas. You creep home and beg the neighbor for some gas, but he has the same problems: bad can, and the stored gas doesn't work right."

How well I recall getting floods of email from people telling me that I was exaggerating, that price-gouging laws are not that awful. They certainly are nothing like national price controls that lead to mass shortages. They are mere agents of consumer protection. Did I really want to unleash greedy merchants to rob people in the middle of an emergency?

Well, I might as well say it: My article, if anything, underestimated the extent of the damage caused by anti-gouging laws. If you live in New Jersey, these laws are ruining your life. If you are running a business on a generator, need to get somewhere in your car, need fuel for your chain saw, or otherwise need some power to manage your life, these laws are your enemy.

Maybe next time you will store up some gasoline? Don't think of it. Ethanol mandates have made gas difficult to store for a long time. Also in this crisis, people are discovering that their gas cans don't work right. The culprit is again government regulations.

Economic liberty is crucial to life functioning. Even the smallest intervention can cause calamity. Enough small interventions can cause the collapse of what we call civilization under certain circumstances. Markets are never more important than in an emergency, and government is never more useless, threatening and counterproductive than during a crisis. The events following Hurricane Sandy make the point very clear: Our choice is between liberty and human suffering and death.

All these regulations are like knives at your throat. Some of them have workarounds. You can hack your gas can. You can shop for gas that is not ruined with corn additives. You can prepare by storing up water and food. But in the end, as Ludwig von Mises said, there is no escape for anyone when civilization is headed to destruction.

We are rarely presented with a case that so clearly illustrates the explanatory power of economics. It turns what would otherwise seem inexplicable into something entirely predictable. The lesson we must learn before it's too late: Let the price system work.

Jeffrey Tucker
Email
Laissez Faire Club

Friday, November 2, 2012

That's Why We Were Started As A Constitutional Republic And We Couldn't Keep It!

Democracy Is a Terrible System, Period
by Doug French

Douglas French

The election year of 2012 reminds us of the sheer waste and lunacy of democracy. Like soccer's World Cup or the Summer or Winter Olympics, presidential elections in the United States come every four years. The campaign is a carnival that begins the minute after a winner is declared in November.

Each successive campaign is said to be dirtier than the last. Each candidate touts change and hope, but delivers neither. No matter who wins, the government is elected, every time. Thousands of bureaucrats march off to work the day after the election no matter who wins. Four years later, the same government employees will likely go to bed early on election night not caring who wins, because their jobs, which stand in the way of freedom each and every day, will be unaffected by the election results.

The citizenry is pummeled with public service announcements to "make your voice heard." It is your civic duty to vote. You have nothing to complain about if you don't. But, in fact, government wants you to vote, but then sit down and shut up. Leave the governing to the professionals, while you pound your chest and wave Old Glory.

There are thousands of elections every year. Political positions from constable to governor are elected constantly. So with all of these layers of democracy -- this great thing that America spends so many lives and so much money exporting -- is America freer? With this constant turnover of political blood, is business allowed to operate unfettered? After all, we are led to believe democracy is synonymous with freedom. No democracy, no freedom.

America was attacked on Sept. 11 because they hate us for our freedoms, we're told. America is so free it has the highest incarceration rate in the world, with 750 prisoners per 100,000 citizens. More than 2.3 million people are locked up, and many more millions are on probation. Is this is the upside of this great thing -- democracy?

The Federal Register, a publication with all the country's (federal, nonclassified) rules is now over 81,000 pages long. President Obama's Affordable Care Act is 906 pages. The Dodd-Frank Act totals 849 pages. Once upon a time, in 1913, the Federal Reserve was created with only 31 pages. The U.S. Constitution required only six pages.

Democracy is getting wordier. The more words, the more pages, the more rules, the less free we become. But we still have democracy, so we must be the luckiest people in the world. This is the greatest nation in the world... because of democracy. Because we have a say.

The idea of democracy is sacrosanct. To question it implies that you are in favor of despotism and tyranny. Democracy fans conveniently ignore the fact that despots and tyrants are freely elected every year.

President Hugo Chavez retained power in Venezuela this year, winning comfortably despite running his country's economy into the ground with his socialist revolution of nationalizing key industries, tight exchange controls, and price controls on certain basic goods.

As the European economy continued to lurch toward meltdown, French voters elected Francois Hollande in 2012. The first three things Hollande did were raise the minimum wage, reduce the retirement age from 62 to 60, and raise the top tax rate to 75%. A conspiracy theorist would assume Hollande is deliberately trying to demolish what's left of the French economy with these policies.

In Moscow, Vladimir Putin was again elected president of Russia. Despite police repression and the thuggery of the previous Putin regime, pro-Putin rallies were much more popular than anti-Putin rallies. "This is the time to build a bridge to Putin, before the most talented people move out of Russia," said curator Marat Gelman.

As the United States elections draw near, the incumbent president is leading or tied in the polls. In his four years, he has not really deviated from his predecessor's policies that were generally reviled by those in his party. He has presided over the largest expansion in public debt in world history, with the result being economic growth that is the weakest since the Great Depression. And this guy is likely to win. If he doesn't, his opponent will govern just as he (and the ones before him) did.

Those of us paying attention are left to merely sigh and roll our eyes, reminded of H.L. Mencken's line, "Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard."

Meanwhile, democracy continues on unquestioned. The politicians may be crooked, the taxes ruinous, the bureaucracy unwieldy, and the regulations outrageous, but the source of these outcomes is never questioned. The hope of democracy depends on the idea that all we need is the right people in power.

If democracy isn't working, it's not democracy's fault. The problem is only that the right people have not been elected yet. This theory has been tested for hundreds of years and the results are the same, yet people still hope and believe. The worst rise to the top in politics, F.A. Hayek explained. To be elected, politicians must appeal to the least intelligent and most gullible. And because democracy makes politics and power available to everyone, it attracts those seeking status, fame, glory, recognition, attention, appreciation, dignity, and even dominance. The right people will never be attracted to politics, only the wrong people will.

To challenge democracy is brave. To do it in print is heroic. The authors of the book you hold clearly and concisely dismantle the myths of democracy. If you come to this book already enlightened, their arguments will augment your arsenal. If you haven't yet shaken democracy's hold, your view of the world is about to be turned upside down. This is a book you will read in one sitting, and in the end its ideas will strip you of the statist baggage that has weighed you down. The world's future, with problems that seem hopeless, will suddenly become brighter. One short book will make you understand why "no democracy" is the only path to true freedom.

Yours,

Douglas French