Author Archives: fgmarks

What I See When I See a Wind Turbine, by Vaclav Smil From the March 2016 issue of Spectrum, the magazine of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Wind turbines are the most visible symbols of the quest for … More →

America has been plagued for many years by mass shootings in public places. The loss of life has been dreadful: 663 deaths since 2003 according to an article in the print edition of Time magazine of August 4, 2019.

I have received the comment that follows from a scientist who read Landscapes & Cycles published in the Blog section of Capitalism: The Liberal Revolution. 

On May 25, 2020, a man named George Floyd died of asphyxiation in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He died lying prone on the pavement with a police officer’s knee on his neck.

Landscapes & Cycles is an excellent book, one of the very best of nearly forty books on climate science that I own and have studied. The book’s subtitle is “An Environmentalist’s Journey to Climate Skepticism.

For the United States to resemble Sweden economically, it would Reduce its corporate tax Abolish Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Abolish occupational licensing Abolish minimum wage laws Eliminate taxes on property, gifts, and inheritance Reform Social Security from defined benefits … More →

GLOBAL WARMING FOR THE TWO CULTURES is a lecture by Richard S. Lindzen, presented to the Global Warming Policy Foundation, London, England on August 8, 2018. The lecture is reproduced here with the permission of the author. Welcome address by … More →

Sunlight and wind are provided by nature. Sunlight and wind are widely considered at present to be renewable and sustainable sources of energy. Sunlight and wind can be harnessed by converting them to energy that is used to do work, … More →

As of the end of the second decade of the 21st century, in some urban and suburban areas of America, many people in a variety of occupations do not earn enough income to afford to rent or buy a residence.

Whether or not climate change is a factor in recent destructive wildfires in California and Australia, there is another factor—forest management—that, unlike climate, is within human power to control.

Sixteen-year old Greta Thunberg of Stockholm, Sweden has become famous for her widely publicized concern about climate change.

The text below is quoted from “Austin’s Fix for Homelessness: Tiny Houses, and Lots of Neighbors: Texan Good Samaritans built a village for those in need–no public funding necessary,” by Megan Kimble,* Reason Magazine, November 12, 2018.

Climate science has become a hodgepodge of unreliable statistics, arbitrary research techniques and politicized groupthink.

The opinion essay that begins in the third paragraph below was published on August 7, 2018 in The Australian, the most widely circulated daily newspaper in Australia.

  The misery and plight of the people of Venezuela in the second decade of the 21st century is virtually beyond belief and unimaginable for most residents of the United States.

The current President of the U.S. has imposed tariffs on imported steel and aluminum effective March 23, 2018 and proposes tariffs on products imported from China.

On May 7, 1915, 1,198 people perished in the sinking of the British ocean liner Lusitania, in a totally preventable act of war.

The subject of global warming has evoked differing opinions among scientists and citizens on the proposition that human activity is causing dangerous warming of planet earth. It is said by proponents of that proposition that the science is settled, and … More →

In their acceptance speeches at the respective political party conventions in 2016, the problem of unfunded liabilities for social welfare programs, primarily Social Security and Medicare, was not mentioned by either of the candidates for the office of President of … More →

This is follow up to the original post entitled The Voyage of Laura Dekker, posted here on September 2, 2014.

The Washington Post reported in 2014 that under U.S. and state laws, in a federal program known as “Equitable Sharing,” since 2001 state and local police have seized $2.5 billion from people who were not charged with a crime. 

Reproduced below is a recent article from the New York Times about the Internal Revenue Service program of seizing bank accounts of people who are never charged with any illegal act—except making too many cash deposits of less than $10,000.

America is a true world country, made up of people from every other country. America is unique in its rapid acceptance of immigrants who are readily assimilated into the population with no stigma or ill will attached to their foreign … More →

“Pay Your Bills by Mail,” is a neatly printed bumper sticker on U. S. Postal Service (USPS) trucks, as of summer 2014. A sticker like that does not appear on USPS trucks at the whim of an individual mail carrier. … More →

Many people believe that protecting the safety of the public is an indispensable service of the state that cannot be provided by free and private enterprise; and that the state protects safety in health care by licensing and regulating physicians, … More →

The Los Angeles Times reported on August 1, 2014 that members of “militias” are patrolling the U.S. Mexico border on private lands at the request of the landowners. See “Militias patrolling Texas border draw scrutiny, concern,” by Molly Hennesy-Fiske, Los … More →

On July 26, 2014 we published a new chapter of Capitalism: The Liberal Revolution (CTLR), entitled Credit and Reputation, https://www.capitalismtheliberalrevolution.com/chapter/credit-and-reputation/ On July 29, 2014 we noticed a column in the Los Angeles Times directly relevant to part of the CTLR … More →

In a prior post we pointed to the Federal Reserve System (the Fed) as the engine of inflation and the source of repeated booms and busts. See “Inflation, booms and busts, their pathology and their cure,” at https://www.capitalismtheliberalrevolution.com/blog/inflation-booms-and-busts-their-pathology-and-their-cure/ In this … More →

Never in history has a country that financed big budget deficits with large amounts of central-bank money avoided inflation. The Federal Reserve (the Fed) has been creating enormous amounts of money for years. The Fed is playing with fire, risking … More →

National socialist political actions have been the ruination of Argentina. The Peronist political party is a parasite which has attached itself to the Argentine nation and continually eats away at the economic life of the people. Argentina, like Venezuela, is … More →

David W. Harvey is a professor at The City University of New York. He is an avowed Marxist. The Wikipedia biography of Dr. Harvey states that in 1961 he was awarded a Ph. D. degree by Cambridge University. His field … More →

The official motto of the police department of the City of Los Angeles is “To protect and serve.” The Mission Statement of the Santa Barbara County Sheriff states that “We, the members of your Sheriff’s Office . . . are … More →

On May 17, 2014, Lufthansa, the flagship German airline, suspended ticket sales to Caracas, the capitol of Venezuela, joining ten other airlines that have taken similar actions due to Venezuela’s currency controls. As of April, international airlines had an equivalent … More →

“Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future”—Niels Bohr The quotation from the great physicist Niels Bohr begins this post, as acknowledgment that the forward-looking statements below include both explicit and implicit predictions of rising inflation and a corresponding rise … More →

In our blog post of March 22, 2013, entitled “Your Money and Your Life,” we said that the U.S. Congress, the Department of the Treasury, and the Federal Reserve are pursuing a policy of debasing the U.S. dollar. The continuous … More →

Following the introductory comments in the first two paragraphs immediately below, there are quotations from “When North Korea roars, South Korea yawns,” by Jung-yoon Choi and Barbara Demick, Los Angeles Times, April 6, 2013. Sub-title: “Decades of living next door … More →

In recent years there has been a plethora of negative articles about America. The tenor of these articles is that America is not what it once was; that America is on a downward trend in global influence and prosperity;  that … More →

In the book of which this blog is a part, Capitalism: The Liberal Revolution (CTLR), the discussion of freedom would be incomplete without a discussion of money, for which a full chapter would be appropriate. Such a chapter is planned.

John Mackey is the co-founder of Whole Foods Markets, which has grown from a single store in Austin, Texas in 1978 to a group of 343 stores in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. The Harvard Business Review … More →