Y u not luv r gubmint?

What does the government do?  It keeps the peace, it declares wars against invading enemies, it provides for the general welfare, and establishes justice throughout the land.  Justice, defense, peace, those are all laudable goals that I'd totally give half my paycheck for.  Sure looks to me like the government is carrying out my will.  I'll just go delete all my old posts and start singing Hosannas to our leaders.

Obviously that's not going to happen so then why is it then that I detest the government?  First, it's not the government per se.  I have no problem with the concept of courts, military, and police.  I do have a problem with a forced monopoly over a given geographic territory that everyone must pay into.  Such a concept is laughed at in most areas of life.  Taking a page from Tom DiLorenzo's playbook, what if someone were to say,

"We couldn't possibly distribute food efficiently in a free market, therefore we need to establish one grocery store in a given territory.  No competition will be allowed.  Customers will be able to vote every year on what goods will be carried.  When they show up to the store a shopping cart will be sitting for them with groceries already picked out for them by the elected store managers.  Prices too will be determined by the managers.  Oh, and everyone must spend a portion of their income (again defined by the managers) at the store.  If you want to buy food elsewhere, well, we might allow that, but it doesn't change the fact that you must spend the obligatory amount defined by the store manager"?

I'm guessing the possibility for abuse of such power is obvious to most people and so is the restriction of choice.  But carrying out this analogy, dissenters of such a system would be accused of being anti-food just as detractors of social security today are considered anti-elderly or pro-euthenasia.

Why is it that the worst possible solution has so successfully been sold to people as the only solution?  To rephrase what was just written above, Hans-Herman Hoppe put it this way

Assume a group of people, aware of the possibility of conflicts; and then someone proposes, as a solution to this eternal human problem, that he (someone) be made the ultimate arbiter in any such case of conflict, including those conflicts in which he is involved. I am confident that he will be considered either a joker or mentally unstable and yet this is precisely what all statists propose.

This solutions is bad on both ethical and utilitarian grounds.  It fails ethically because it uses force to make sure alternative products are not offered and because the level of participation is not freely or contractually agreed upon.  It's bad by utilitarian arguments because it is logically true from the axiom of human action that hegemony makes one party better off at the expense of another while voluntary trade is beneficial for all parties.  One can get into many contradictions if they don't understand the important difference between homesteading and conquest.  Anyone confused about how I can promote exclusivity of property owners or contractual government but not of the state should read my post on Home Owners Associations.

I've been putting off blog posts because I seem to think they need to be of publishable quality (in which case I've failed in every post) thus I've made the barrier to starting a blog artificially high.  So I'm stopping here even though I've just scratched this topic of why the good of the state in theory is very different than the state in practice, and how we can understand this difference by analyzing its means.  But one last comment on the title of this post.  I know many many smart people who promote the state, which is why I'm so confounded by their 1st grade logic when it comes to the state.  We may be the most advanced civilization in the history of the world, but our fundamental means of interacting with each other on issues of politics are barbaric and 20 centuries behind our technological and scientific abilities.

Taxation with Representation

In a recent Facebook argument I was called out for equating taxation to theft and calling it an act of aggression.  "That was the way of the Kings and of taxation without representation," I was told.  Any reader of my blog will recognize that I don't care if taxation is with or without representation because the root feature of taxation is the extraction of wealth from individuals with or without their consent.  My blog post with the R.C. Hoiles quote is particularly relevant.  The absurdity of representation seems so obvious to me that I have to give the state a gold star in propagandizing the Boobus Americanus.

There are roughly 300,000,000 people in the United States and there are 435 members of congress.  I could expand this to 536 if we include all elected federal politicians, but since congress has the power of the purse let's start with them.  That means that roughly one member of congress represents over a half-million citizens.  Some are minors but the congressman has no qualms about spending their tax money without representation via deficit spending.  Some are criminals and have lost their "right" to vote.  But there are many political prisoners (non-violent drug users and tax evaders) who have not violated natural law so denying criminals a vote further pushes the agenda of those in power.  So lets say 200,000 citizens come out to vote for a representative.  The winner does not need a majority to claim power, just a plurality.  Those who disagreed with his policies are now out of luck and are at the mercy of this new overlord.  But even then, this is a federal official so if you're lucky to get a liberty fighting congressman you're now doing battle with the other 434 congressmen representing the other 299.5 million other citizens (but mostly the representatives).

Making matters worse in this lonely fight against the horde is that the congressman has no obligation to fulfill his campaign promise.  Sure impeachment is an option, but no congressman has ever been impeached ... ever, yet approval of congress is around 12%.  Additionally, each voter probably made his decision between two (very) imperfect candidates on a small handful of policy stances, or maybe just one.  Yet, the voter must suffer through all the policies he disagrees with because that's how our system "works".

This is "representation", an Orwellian term if I've ever heard one, and it sucks.  It's a tool of the state, and as with all means of the state it's an abomination of civilized man.

Oh, but we have very strong protections for the minority.  This is the second part of the argument as to why taxation is not theft.  The same people who say this also claim that the constitution is a living document and many call themselves "believers in mob rule" i.e. democrats.  (I realize that "believers in mob rule" is hyperbolic to most, but "rule of the people" does not capture the point that this "rule" includes legitimized theft and murder which is indicative of a mob, not of a civilized people)  These democrats have Nancy Pelosi as one of their representatives who openly mock questions of constitutional authority.  They also abuse the general welfare clause until it's ashamed and crying in a ditch.

But what minorities are they talking about?  The rich are a minority and every democrat I know is willing to get line with a Louisville slugger to make sure this minority pays "their fair share".  What about the minority (majority?) of drug users who get their civil liberties trampled?  Non-citizens foreign and domestic are a minority/majority that are routinely imprisoned, robbed, or killed by the state.

I've done an amateur job describing the absurdity of the state as a representation of the people's will, for a brilliant analysis please read "How to Win an Election" by Mark Brandly.

Ironically, this facebook argument concluded by acknowledging that my ideas will never be represented because I'm part of a minority.  I'm part of a minority that believes in liberty, that believes in unanimous representation as happens in the market.  I am against aggression of any form and would seek restitution in a free or in an un-free society.  It sucks to be in a powerless minority in the United States of Fascialist America.

Children are a problem

Nothing has been more life changing than the study of Austrian economics and natural rights philosophy.  Some would put marriage or children at the top of the life changing experiences list, but to me those seem gradual in comparison.  In "The Matrix", Neo wakes from his bullet wounds and sees the world for what it is and agent Smith for what he is; he has decrypted the matrix.  There is order to the chaos, to the world that he couldn't quite understand before this revelation.  What a perfect analogy for the man who opens "For a New Liberty" -- Rothbard is my Morpheus.  This doesn't stop Smith (the state) from coming after Neo.  After all, Neo is threatening the crops of humans Smith feeds from... the analogy is almost literal.  But Smith can no more put bullets in Neo's head than the state can put collectivist propaganda in mine.  It probably sounds conceited to claim such enlightenment, and no doubt I come off as sounding like a know-it-all.  In this post I'm trying my best to open myself up to doubts and expose the questions I have.  Unfortunately, I don't think I can just take the blue pill.

There is a small handful of cases where objective moral reality has left me scratching my head.  It hasn't deserted me, but in these cases it becomes more of a guide post than the goal.  Non-homesteading adults and children is where the libertarian has to stand-up from his armchair and look at a reality beyond non-aggression.  Unprovoked violence is never okay, but since unconsented physical force must be used for the survival of babies and often children, non-aggression looks very different.  Walter Block uses a theory of homesteading whereby the parent earns homesteading right by feeding, clothing, sheltering, and I assume not abusing children.  They can at any point give up these homesteading rights and allow another individual to homestead the child.  Block takes a similar approach to abortion where the mother can choose to stop homesteading the fetus and let someone else care for it; viability of the fetus is beside the point.  And here we quickly see the dilemma of libertarians.  According to this approach we can be justified in the death of a child if we simply stop feeding him and do not exhaustively search for another willing human to take up homesteading rights.  This would be the extreme "armchair libertarian" approach.

On the other hand, I do not believe the state can intervene.  I cringe at the idea of the state owning or homesteading children.  It conjures images of Sparta (which is synonymous with the movie "300" in my poorly educated mind) and modern day African child soldiers.  But pondering for another second what state ownership of children looks like I realize it looks a lot like our current education and military system in the United States.  Children stand up and recite a pledge of allegiance to a state, they sing songs about the state, they learn how their state protects them and has protected them throughout history, these lessons are taught by agents of the state in a forced monopoly of education, then army recruiters come on school campuses and snatch up the poor souls who have been told for 13-15 years how honorable it is to serve and die for the state.  If the state is in dire straights it will look to its draft list that it has coerced every 18 year old male to sign and then kidnap them, give them guns, and send them to die for the state.

The armchair libertarian slightly wins out in these two desolate scenarios.  But there is a huge gray area in which we can think of individuals acting in a way to improve the lives of children who may be marginalized or abused.

I'm leaving the answer to the homesteading of children open and switching to what our societal norms contribute.  A brilliant commentary on this subject is the "Whale and Dolphin" episode of South Park. (http://www.southparkstudios.com/full-episodes/s13e11-whale-whores).  You'll have to watch it to get it, but I love how it asks (1) why do the Japanese not hate the U.S. for killing 200,000 citizens, and (2) where does the U.S. get off telling the Japanese how to be civilized.  Underlying these points is the question about how history and our personal experience skew what is normal.  And this is where I get back to the problem of children.

There are many-a-activist working to end female circumcision.  Societies that participate in the practice are supposedly barbaric, religious nuts, and hate women.  Female circumcision condemns them to a life absent of sexual pleasure.  What patriarchal backwards people they must be.  Yet, look at the practice of circumcision of males in this country.  This practice also reduces sexual pleasure and it is totally unnecessary, but it is extremely common even among my libertarian friends.  It seems to exist only because it has always existed.  If the practice of cutting off a baby's finger or performing an appendectomy at birth was introduced would we be so quick to accept it as a reasonable post-birth procedure?  So what does this mean?  Do I detest the actions of my friends who circumcise their children (I certainly don't) or do I say, "they homesteaded the child therefore they can mutilate his genitals?"  To tell you the truth, I have no clue.  If you do, please share.

An eye for an eye

Libertarian punishment theory is a muddy, sticky area that I don't much care to discuss.  However, in comparison to state punishment theory, the choice is black and white as to which is superior.  As Rothbard discusses in "The Ethics of Liberty", the state is concerned with retribution, seeing that the criminal is punished at any cost, even at the cost of the victim.  Here's the text from "The Ethics of Liberty" (Ch 13)

What happens nowadays is the following absurdity: A steals $15,000 from B. The government tracks down, tries, and convicts A, all at the expense of B, as one of the numerous taxpayers victimized in this process. Then, the government, instead of forcing A to repay B or to work at forced labor until that debt is paid, forces B, the victim, to pay taxes to support the criminal in prison for ten or twenty years’ time. Where in the world is the justice here? The victim not only loses his money, but pays more money besides for the dubious thrill of catching, convicting, and then supporting the criminal; and the criminal is still enslaved, but not to the good purpose of recompensing his victim.

Restitution is the focus of libertarian punishment theory.  The $15,000 ought to be paid back and so should the cost of capture and prosecution.  These latter costs are a difficult subject that I'm not attempting to tackle here -- economics gets a bit muddled when coercion is necessarily involved.  Whatever the market comes up with, true justice would be served only when the victim bears no cost of being made whole again.  When I hear statists proclaim how concerned they are about justice I wonder, "if justice is what we seek via the state, then why the hell does it cost so damn much?"  Justice should cost nothing to anyone who has not initiated force via fraud, theft, or violence.  And yet we're stuck paying taxes under the threat of violence to ensure "justice" is served; Orwell could not have written it better himself.

Restitution becomes more difficult to define when violence is involved because of the irreversible nature of violent actions.  Recently I heard Walter Block give a compelling explanation for the death penalty.  And before I paraphrase it, let me point out that in a market society it would be up to the victim or the victim's family to determine whether or not they want violent punishment.  There would be no district attorney making sure bad guys are hurt for the satisfaction of the state and at the cost of the people.

Block said that in the case of murder, the perfect restitution scheme would be a machine that could transfer life from one person to another.  If this machine could bring anyone back to life then death is kind of a moot point, but if it transferred life then the just thing to do would be to transfer life from the murderer to the victim.  Since we don't have such a machine, the murderer is still required to give up what he has taken, and thus restitution theory lies on the side of violent punishment.  If a violent criminal has tortured then it is permissible to torture the criminal in a similar fashion.  If he has raped then he also should be raped.  It gets a little gruesome and this is why dealing with violence in libertarian punishment theory is debatable and divisive.  But again, held up to the state, it is at least saner because it allows for the victim or victim's family determine whether or not punishment will be sought.

Proportionality is also central to restitution.  Critics say, "libertarianism is the idea that you can shoot someone for walking on your lawn."  This is one of the top 10 greatest signs of libertarian ignorance.  If the examples above don't illustrate it well enough, punishment that is extremely out of proportion to the crime is not restitution, it is retribution and vengeance.  Unproportional punishment is Achilles' desecration of Hector's body; it is not justice, and it is not libertarian.

For more on libertarian punishment theory, here's a round about reference.  Walter Block gives a good introduction starting at 1:17:48; this does not include the scifi machine discussed above.  The other hour is also great to watch where he makes a case for private roads and highways.

Now that I've outlined restitution and retribution, let's turn back to the title of this blog post: "An eye for an eye."  I chose this title to invoke a self-righteous attitude that conjures up the common extension "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind."  If only we were concerned about victims of violent actions that sought restitution via violence.  Instead, we live in a society that proclaims, "I'm taking your eye because you have two of them, why are you being so greedy wanting both?"  We are quickly blinding our society, crippling human innovation, and squelching human flourishing.  It's not always through direct violence but through the threat of violence from the state.  It's economic blindness that we're promoting.  I'd draw an analogy here between blindness and the political dogs in Washington, but I feel that would be insulting to the incredibly helpful and well trained seeing eye dogs.

I want to end by drawing the continuum of violence.  The state and its supporters (Republican and Democrat) are the most willing to use violence to achieve their ends.  They initiate force and promote a type of barbarism in our world.  Libertarianism asks one question, "when is it justified to use violence?" And it returns one and only one answer "in the instance of a prior use of violence or threat thereof".  Pacifists refuse to use violent punishment and some refuse to use any physical resistance towards an aggressor.

It's clear to me that anyone calling themselves Christian must lie between libertarian and pacifist.  I conclude this because of the Christian's mandate to forgive and to seek reconciliation.  Therefore, any Christian promoting state policies such as welfarism, the war on drugs, bans on gay marriage, social security, medicare, the war on terror, even the U.S. justice system are hypocrites.  I do not consider them Christian, but rather some kind of modern crusader blinded by their own ego and self-righteousness.  No doubt they're sincere, which makes it all the more difficult to convince them of their error.  I've spent two Sundays now talking to Mennonites and have been encouraged by their consistency.  Although my sampling pool is quite small, the ones I've talked to don't believe in America's "just" wars, in state power, or its welfare system.  I still find pacifism a bit creepy, but I can at least respect it knowing they're on the same side of the non-aggression principle.

Conflating Right and Duty

I heard about the Raymond Zack incident about 10 minutes ago.  A suicidal man ended up in frigid waters and died under the watchful eye of local police and firefighters.  The two defenses I've heard for our public servants are 1) the departments didn't have enough money for cold water rescues and 2) they have the right not to act.

The first one points to the problem I've brought up before and one Mises so well defined: socialism can't calculate.  If I had a choice in civil service I'd quit paying for these organizations that budget so poorly that they can't wade into the water and pull a man to safety.  Yet without this profit and loss mechanism, the more inefficient they are the more money they get!  On the market goods get better and cheaper, with socialism goods get worse and more expensive.

Point two brings up the very fundamental problem of conflating morality and legality or right and duty.  If only the statist could properly delineate the two we'd have a much more just society.  Here are a list of examples that I will use to clarify right and duty.

• Defending the victim of a mugger
• Stopping genocide in Rwanda
• Financially supporting the police department
• Owning a gun
• Police or firefighters protecting someone or their property

Defending the victim of a mugger
Let's start from the top.  If I see someone getting mugged and I let it happen with the means to stop it then it is immoral for me not to act.  However, it is perfectly legal for me not to act.  I am not the initiator of aggression; the mugger is.

Stopping genocide in Rwanda

Similarly, stopping genocide in Rwanda would be a good and noble thing to do.  While I don't have the expertise or equipment to do it personally, I could choose an organization that accumulates capital in armaments and has an excellent track record of only harming enemy combatants.  But like the mugging I am not (under natural rights) legally obligated to stop the genocide because again I'm not the aggressor.  And pacifists should have the right not to use, promote, or financially support violence under any conditions.  Unfortunately, in this country and in most of the world, we constantly confuse morality and legality thus it is illegal not to support the U.S.'s monopoly of foreign violence.  Instead of spending the resources to stop the mugger or stop the murderous tyrant we spend resources going after the bystander who has done nothing to violate the rights of anyone else.

Financially supporting police or fire departments

The last three examples all sort of get rolled into one.  Under free association and property rights, no one should be obligated to support any institution they disagree with.  When police kill innocent people or firefighters let homes burn, we should be able to withdraw our support of these poorly managed and downright heinous organizations.  We should also be able to start a competing business.

Owning a gun

Liberals tout the right to choose, to own our bodies, etc. as essential to our right to freedom.  But they don't really mean that.  The most immediate and obvious choice in law enforcement is gun ownership.  As the saying goes, "when seconds counts, the cops are just minutes away".  The left believe in a right to defend ourselves because they believe in having police.  If they don't believe in defense then they should advocate not only gun control but the end to all police departments.  But it's not an end to defense or violence that they advocate, but an absolute monopoly on violence.  They are miles away from advocators of choice.

Police or firefighters protecting someone or their property

My connection to the topic is getting frayed so let me tie it back together.  If we are going to be forced to pay for the police then the excuse "police have the right not to act" doesn't fly with me.  If we're forced to pay then they should be forced to serve.  They should be forced to jump into the frigid water butt naked and save that man.  Firefighters should rush to the burning house and try putting out the fire even if the only means they have available to them is to piss on the flames.  Not doing so should be punishable with prison or death.

How did I come to this conclusion?  Well if it's punishable by prison and thus an implicit threat of violence/death to not support the police or fire department, then we are punishing the bystander of the mugger or the person who refuses to use violence to stop genocide.  Thus if the police or fire departments also fail to help people or make the situation worse, then they should be held to the same accountability and punishment as the tax evader (the passive bystander).

Of course I don't advocate violence against any non-aggressor, but the above paragraphs are the logically consistent conclusion one would have to draw if he is to advocate for the forced monopoly of law enforcement and fire fighting or the forced participation in the US military or US welfare state.  If the absurdities of the system were consistently carried out the system would (rightfully) collapse.  

Home Owners Associations

I'm surprised that I haven't had to deal with this in political discussions more often.  One time, when mentioning my HOA I heard, "some libertarian you are, they won't even let your change the color of your mailbox."  While this is true, I agreed to it before buying the house.  The more difficult question is, how can a majority of homeowners force me to pay more HOA dues simply by a vote?  Isn't this just a small scale state?  Even more difficult than that question is: if signing an HOA agreement indicates my consent, then buying a house within a state's authority should indicate my consent to be ruled by that state?  I knew something was amiss with this argument, but it took me several months to formalize it.  The answer came from Albert J. Nock, and I'd like to share it here.

I'll just get straight to the point, "[the state] did not originate in the common understanding and agreement of society; it originated in conquest and confiscation" (Our Enemy the State, by Albert J. Nock, Ch.2).  Ownership is derived from the principle of homesteading.  Subsequent ownership comes via trade or gifting.  The property on which an HOA is established was probably sold by a farmer to a housing development company (HDC).  The farmer or his family acquired this property via homesteading.  The HDC, by its observations of market activity, wagered that it would be more profitable and attract more clients if they put restrictions on the property.  A potential owner like myself has no claim to this property and so cannot make any legal claims about what can or cannot be in the contract.  I am free to negotiate, and when the contract is presented I am free to reject or consent to the stipulations of property ownership.

Aside: an interesting agreement I made at time of purchase is that I have no claim on the minerals/metals found on my property.  When I asked why, I was told that mining these minerals would ruin the aesthetics of the HOA.  That made sense to me and readily agreed.

Notice that the HDC is risking its capital.  If the HOA charges too much or is too restrictive then property values will be lower than what the HDC paid for them and will go out of business.  If the HDC imposes minor restrictions that everyone agrees to and ultimately beautifies and aesthetically unifies the area, then property values will be higher with the HOA than without it.

What happens when the HDC leaves and homeowners rule the HOA?  Well, first and foremost, I've consented to buy property on land that I previously had no claim to and so all contracts made thereafter are binding.  Second, the HOA is small, a few hundred families.  We all live in the community, we all pay the exact same HOA dues, and all of our home values are at risk when we increase or decrease services provided by the HOA.  No member is charged more than any other and so a majority can't rule over a minority without paying the same price.  The size is also important because we know the HOA board members and the neighbors that vote.  We have much more power to negotiate and convince a neighbor to give up an economically-damaging pipe dream than we do a politician 2000 miles away.

An HOA is an example of government, not the state.  It's not perfect... wait, yes it is.  It's not utopian; it's an example of how community ought to be established.  It's how homesteading, contract, and property rights -- the peaceful and voluntary means of human interaction -- can promote peace, flourishing, and happiness.  It may not be for everyone, but it is a perfect solution to deal with the limitation of human nature and limitation of nature itself -- of scarcity.

What about the second part of my question, doesn't my purchase of the home indicate my consent to the state in that geographical territory?  No.  The state did not homestead the property, the state did not put up its capital to purchase the property, and thus has no claim to the property period.  Whatever ownership the state claims is based on it's ability to conquer, not to interact peacefully.

Traveling to a parallel universe to test the state

The idea of the state is on its face absurd.  As I alluded to in a previous post, pro-state indoctrination is a reality of our culture.  However, unlike brainwashing, indoctrination is possible to escape with knowledge and logic.  The evil and illogic of the state is obvious to anarchists, but for some reason it's difficult for others to understand our position.  So in this post I'll attempt to guide readers through a gedunken experiment by traveling to a parallel anarchist universe to see what the indoctrinated anarchists think of instituting a state.  Afterwards, you can decide for yourself who is more justified in their skepticism.  Click the red book to the left to enter the worm hole (the one with the white strip near the bottom of its binding).  See it?

Okay, we're here.  Ahhhh! Watch out there's a godless unruled mob of barbarians headed our way to enslave us!  haha, just kidding, I love that one.

Since you haven't been here before let me explain what's going on.  We have been transported not to a parallel time but to a parallel wealth production.  Everything is similar to what we have in our universe.  Sure there are fewer roads but new modes of transportation are in development because the auto industry isn't getting massive subsidies via the tax funded road infrastructure.  And because savings haven't been systematically stolen through inflation, new cars cost a few hundred dollars and the average income is about $3000 per year.  Also, because new money isn't created and handed to benefactors of the state the gap between rich and poor is much smaller than what we know, but it's a healthy gap that promotes hard work, savings, and entrepreneurship.  Okay, enough with the utilitarianism, let's ask how these people suffer under freedom.

"You, sir! Don't you hate it when your police break down your door looking for drugs, shoot your dogs and your wife and then realize they have the wrong house?  And then the bastards get put on paid administrative leave?" (that doesn't happen, right?  Ask google and see prolibertate).  Some time passes while we stare at each other, "sir?", "yeah, I heard you, but who would pay for that kind of 'service'?  I've never seen that."  The man has a point, but I know human nature so I respond, "are you kidding me?  There are always evil men who want to use guns to get what they want, they're probably even wealthy and could hire other men.  That's why we have state run police."  The man looks perplexed not knowing how to respond.  After about 30 seconds he begins to speak, "so with this state police, everyone has to pay for it?  Even me who has had his wife killed in an illegal raid?"  

"Of course, we wouldn't want anarchy."  

The man shakes his head and widens his eyes in disbelief.  "And if I don't pay, I'll be locked up?" 

"Yep" 

"And if I rightfully refuse to be locked up..." 

"They'll kill you if you sufficiently resist."

"And then the murderers will be captured and prosecuted by other law enforcement companies interested in protecting natural rights and garnering customer support?"

"Whoa whoa whoa, that's crazy talk, you want a competing law enforcement agency!?  No, there must be a monopoly of violence in a geographic territory or else we'd just have shoot outs between different agencies"

The man is irritated now, "look" he says "law enforcement is dangerous enough as is, if one agency goes around stirring up trouble and getting their officers killed then they'll have to pay more to individuals willing to work there.  Also, if they unjustly kill a man they are tried for their crimes.  The officer and the hiring company will pay making it prohibitively expensive to continue imposing violence on others.  And most importantly, no one, except perhaps for a small few would pay for this injustice.  The shear numbers of courts, competing agencies, and citizens that desire justice will push this corrupt entity out of business."

I've got him cornered now, "but isn't it plausible that a man like Warren Buffett or some Saudi Sheik could make it his primary goal to destroy justice by the wealth you've let him accumulate?"  There's not much of a pause this time, "First, we don't have anyone with those means, we don't print dollars and give them to privileged people like your Warren Buffett.  And we don't give people land they have not homesteaded like your Sheik -- plus isn't he out of your 'geographical region'? 

"More importantly, if these men were responsible for colluding to commit injustice, do you realize how easy it would be to send a special forces team to surgically extract them or to stop their small army.  And because we have not legitimized aggression, they could not get your funding and resources or lock up dissenters.  Their system would quickly collapse, they'd be taken out of power, and their wealth destroyed.  Contrast this with your governor or your president or even your police captain, what's stopping the evil men you worry about from seeking these positions where they can do orders of magnitude more harm." A little red in the face he exclaims, "have you even thought about your concerns past knee-jerk emotional reactions!?

"Fundamentally, why in the world would we give some men -- who are as flawed and morally depraved as I am -- rights that no other individual has, why would we let some men be above natural law?  And again, these evil men you talk about -- instead of being hampered by this political monopoly -- are empowered by an essentially unaccountable organization. " 

Something all of a sudden dawns on the man,

"... And why the hell were they after drugs in the first place!?  Who would pay the extremely high price that would go along with barging into homes looking for substances they disapprove of?  You guys need to leave this universe.  Your 'logic', if it can be called that, is completely backwards."

I have a feeling statists like ourselves aren't welcomed in this universe.  We'll have to come back later to talk to them about their courts, defense, and welfare systems.  Jumping through the worm hole we find ourselves back in our universe.  Watch out!  The state is after your money so it can give foreign "aid" to a regime that in 3 months we'll bombard with cruise missiles and drone attacks!  Ah, home sweet statist home.

Myopic Statism

It's redundant, but at least it clarifies the topic: myopic statism.

I hide facebook friends from my news feed for a reason.  Unfortunately, today I was using Amy's computer and was reminded of why facebook's hide feature is vital to my health and wellbeing. A friend posted this story where Harry Reid uses that wonderful political tool and argumentative fallacy (again, redundant) of the red herring: divert attention from the spending problem to the revenue problem.  Reid wants to eliminate tax breaks for oil companies.  For this post I'm going to step through the utilitarian and basic economic arguments against this idea.

As of yesterday afternoon at the Kroger around the corner, gas was selling for $3.899/gallon.  Taxing oil companies would push this up further.  In case this is your introduction to basic sense this might be a shocker, but companies don't pay taxes the consumers do.  Increased taxes means increased prices so that the consumer can't afford as much of the producer's good and the producer won't produce as much.  The net result is that society is poorer; less wealth is created.

Second, every government car, tank, and jet is powered by... wait for it... the oil companies!!!  So if the price of oil goes up so does the cost of government which means spending goes up which means taxes go up, which means there'll be a call to further tax oil companies, which means... get it?  This is the opposite of both Boehner and Reid's goals (not really though, politicians live for power and to rule over others, they just have to put up a front).

Next, consider what the oil companies do.  They invest in billion dollar projects that produce oil and gas for a few years.  When their wells stop being profitable they have to kill the wells.  Oil and gas may still be in the reservoir, but it makes no sense to continue using more resources to extract the oil than it will return.  Prices are the way to measure resources consumed vs. resources produced.  When the government comes in and adds a tax on the oil companies their price signal to kill wells comes earlier than it otherwise would.  The effect of eliminating tax breaks for oil companies means more resources will go unused sitting in subsea reservoirs.

It's important to note that oil companies are great enablers of life and prosperity.  Without them billions of people would die.  If this is not obvious then you don't grasp the degree to which petroleum has made civilization and our well being possible.  Contrast this with government that killed over 100 million people in the 20th century and continues to kill thousands in the 21st.  Statists are promoting the wrong organization unless they're sadistic homicidal maniacs... some are.

The statist has a great distrust in so called "big business".  It's understandable, I mean a company that wields billions of dollars a year has great power to create or abuse the stored potential in dollars.  If this is true, then how much more suspicious should we be of an organization that wields trillions and claims the right to violate property, civil, and human rights!!??  Companies are not above the law unless the government gives them special privileges (such as corporate personhood and limited liability).  Considering our founded fears of largeness and since this post is full of utilitarianism then let me propose this: the government should have no right to tax a company that has less revenue than the federal budget.  Seems like a good rule of thumb to me.

I recently attended the Offshore Technology Conference where I got a glimpse of the scope of human cooperation that goes into every drill site.  (again appealing to utilitarianism and the political obsession with jobs for jobs sake) the oil industry creates millions of jobs, most are extremely specialized and highly skilled.  Every part in the chain from the geologist to the rupture disc engineer to the subsea modeler (that's me) to the platform operators and the millions in between are an incredible testament to human achievement and cooperation.  Government on the other hand works on a very different premise; it's only resource is coercion.  It does not engage in cooperation without force.  It is anti-humanitarian, anti-progress, and anti-wealth.  Destroy the state and promote mankind!

"Tax the oil companies" is as myopic as the statist solution to "tax the rich" i.e. "majority tyranny over the minority".  Luckily, that utilitarian response has been done for me:

Your worst fears of business are already realized in the state

I don't make a habit of appealing to conspiracy theories, but it seems that public schools has some 'splainin' to do.  The logic of my fellow American and fellow earthling is lacking severely in the realm of political thought.  When you take a step back and view the world and its inhabitants for what they are you realize what a waste of time high school civics was.  Who needs a theory of legislating when the concept of the state is inconsistent with and a revolt against nature and humanitarianism?

Saying that we were brainwashed would discredit what I have to say, but I have not yet been able to come up with a better way to explain the absurd arguments for the state and against freedom.  For it seems to me that all the objections I hear opposing free markets are tens times more applicable to the state.  Here are a few examples.

1) "If roads were private we'd have corporations buying up all the roads and charging whatever they want"

So to avoid a monopoly of road ownership we need to establish from the onset a monopoly of road ownership given to the government.  This new monopoly has the power to extract funds from everyone, even those that rarely use the road or do not use the road at all.  This monopoly has the right to claim whatever land it wants to build new roads, and it gets to determine what the "fair" price of this land is.

With privatized roads perhaps a monopoly would arise, but competition would not be outlawed, eminent domain would not trample private property, and opting out of road use and thus road funding would be possible and legal.  Government is not liable for deaths that occur on their roads and they are less accountable in general because roads are bundled into a thousands of other government functions many of which (such as war) overshadow the inefficiencies of roads.  Is there any doubt that government roads are the worst possible solution?

2) "You want corporations to run the military?  You're an idiot"

Ad hominem attacks are all I ever get in this situation so this is the best I can do at representing the argument.  My same response about roads applies to this but it is even more important to have a private military than private roads.  Why?  Our military (or foreign presence in general), believe it or not, is responsible for a lot of bad stuff.  They assassinate, torture, murder, and provoke.  The first time I hear that my defense contractor is torturing people I cancel my subscription as I'm sure many others would.  We wouldn't have to wait 8 years to elect a new president who promises our war money back only to betray us when he takes office.  Such a military leader is liable for fraud and would be prosecuted.

The current military is funded by coercion, not consent.  Drafts add in the element of kidnapping by conscription.  Politicians are kept in power by the massive military industrial complex.  The synergy that exists with publicly funded military interests such as Blackwater, Ratheon, Halliburton, Boeing, etc. could not exist as they do today with private defense.  Defense companies that try to spend a trillion dollars in a year would find it impossible to find a customer base willing to agree to such a ridiculous scope of foreign entanglement.

I also hear that our defense is only as good as it is because people are forced to pay for it.  My response is (a) there's so much "defense" that we endanger ourselves by putting troops where they don't belong (b) there's far too much potential for abuse (see comments of torture above) and (c) a free society would be so prosperous that defense costs would be minimal expenditures and would most likely be handled by insurance companies.

3) "Without the FDA we'd be eating poisoned food"

No one says this, right?  Sigh, I'm afraid they do.  Chris Mathews said it about two weeks ago.  Guess what?  Businesses don't want to kill their customers!  It's bad for business!  I'm all for private regulation and of course competition in private regulation.  Why would we think a monopoly on regulation would be a good thing?  They can't go out of business, if they do a bad job they can say it's because they had insufficient funding and get more money... why would we expect this to be a good solution?

4)  "All that business cares about is the bottom line."

Lew Rockwell has said that "profits are an indication that services are being rendered on a voluntary basis".  "The Bottom Line" is how business calculates whether or not it is putting its resources to good use and serving people.  In this sense, all businesses should care about is it's bottom line; it provides a metric of how they benefit society.

How does this apply to government?  "All politicians care about is a vote".  While businesses daily have to fight for your vote, for your confidence, politicians only have to do it every 2, 4, or 6 years.  But more importantly than this is that politicians can be elected by benefiting the majority at the expense of the minority.  Businesses are putting their own resources on the line while politicians confiscate others' resources for the benefit of their constituents.  Businesses do not pander to the majority because profits are often found by serving a minor niche in society previously unfulfilled.  It is a far more efficient and ethical way of human interaction and cooperation.

5) "Business pollutes and destroys the environment"

Yes, some businesses pollute, but government is in charge of upholding private property rights.  The US government has, since the industrial revolution, found that it was in the public's interest to allow producers to pollute family farms and households.  For over a hundred years the individual has had little recourse when it comes to polluted land.  Businesses that pollute should be fined and these fines will make it prohibitively expensive to continue doing business.

The tragedy of the commons is not a problem of the free market it's the problem of collectivism.  Consider a basket of shared resources.  Human nature and scarcity being what they are, it is only natural to consume as much of these resources as possible because not doing so results in someone else consuming the scarce resources.  Only through property rights can resources be conserved, replinished, and rationed.  Today's modern and most disturbing examples of pollution and tragedy of the commons are found in our water ways.  Government does not allow ownership of the oceans, rivers, lakes etc. and so we have massive pollution and over fishing.  Buffalo were nearly wiped out because the US government opened the middle of the country to every cowboy (real ones, driving cattle) which used up the vegetation and left the land barren.  The buffalo were hunted for meat and this open country was in bad sorts.  The establishment of property rights in the plain states saved the buffalo and it can save our oceans, lakes, and rivers. 

I might continue this to another post.  Other topics would include money creation, courts, police, banking and the FDIC, healthcare, social security, parks, and I'm also open to suggestions.

My IP dilemma

Recently I was asked to continue work on my graduate research.  The research was to develop code to model multiphase flow.  As a student, I worked on the 2-phase code and am now being asked to expand the work into 3 phases.  However, I just found out that Chevron claims ownership of the code.  I never signed a contract, but supposedly since I signed a contract with Notre Dame, and they signed a contract with Chevron I don't "own" the code.  Ironically, the methodology (my dissertation) is free to use.  So, anyone could write the code following my dissertation, but no one can see my code.

The consequences of this private code / public knowledge issue is quite convoluted.  The purpose of IP according to Chevron is to slow down the competition from gaining the technology.  But what about me?  I developed the code so even if I don't own it I'd be able to quickly reproduce it.  I was told this reproduction would be "suspicious", it's suspicious that I would rewrite the code when I have access to the original code.  So even though anyone could reproduce the code, it would be "suspicious" if I - the one who understands it best - reproduced it.  Furthermore, how am I supposed to work on developing the code further when I am no longer at Notre Dame and I no longer have the right to use the code?

If I do develop the 3-phase code I'd be doing it outside of ND, and I never signed a contract to give IP rights to Chevron.  What then?  I won't belabor this issue anymore now.  What's underlying the problem is the application of property rights to non-scarce goods.  My code is infinitely reproducible and my use of the code does not hamper Chevron's use.  In fact, Chevron doesn't even understand the code and thus only uses a fraction of its potential while simultaneously banning my use of it.

Democracy: Trying to be God

I recently heard about R.C. Hoiles, a multi-millionaire newspaper tycoon, who said

school texts exposed the political "error" of the divine right of kings … they never explained the error in the divine right of the majority. [They] simply substituted the divine right of the majority for the divine right of kings."

Usually I approach political arguments Rothbard-style by applying natural rights.  But what other rights have been accepted as legitimate in human history?  The divine right is one.  Supposedly, God has the right to murder and it is just.  God has a history of (justly) withholding resources from his people even including night when the sun/earth stayed still for 3 days.  So when kings were looked upon as images of God, they could get away with murder, hoarding, and stealing.  Then we had the enlightenment and Kingdoms vanished (roughly speaking).  But what emerged was really no different as Hoiles points out.

No individual or groups of individuals can claim divine right.  Though this truth was known long ago, we remain in a dark age of political nonsense.  For obeying their god-king, we laugh at peasants of old, then we walk to the polling booth to elect our own human incarnation of divinity.  It is the ultimate sin to play God and so it is equally sinful to condone and participate in the political means.  All Christians should reject monarchy, democracy, aristocracy, etc. as the sin of acting as God.  But the serpent is crafty and so many will baulk at that conclusion.  The price for eating the fruit was death, and considering god-kings killed over 100 million people last century (not including war casualties), the threat is more than theological.

Democracy is not the goal

In the lead up to the US involvement in World War I, president Wilson claimed that we must go to war in order to "make the world safe for democracy".   How did anyone buy this as the goal?  Since then it appears that no one has questioned that democracy is a goal in and of itself, but is it?  What does democracy provide that is so necessary?  I'll answer these questions in a round about way so bear with me.

I have attended one John Birch Society meeting.  The meeting leader shocked me when he said "democracy is mob rule, a republic is the rule by law".  I dismissed the first part as something a crazy JBS member would say because I have been led to believe the democracy is the most just and necessary form of government.  However, those words had a lasting impression and started the crack in my hollow statist philosophy.

Over the next couple years I looked at democracy differently.  An argument on facebook about expanding Grand Rapids bus routes by increasing property taxes accelerated my disdain for democracy.  How is it, that those that will pay less of the tax, but use the bus more, can force those who will probably not use the bus but end up paying for most of the increased costs?  This was straight up bullying, and I was chided for "not wanting to help my community".  Being anti-democratic is a blanket accusation to cover a multitude of sins (i.e. libertarian beliefs).

So what is the best democratic system, if we were to maintain it.  In the bus case I figured only property owners should be allowed to vote since they would be the ones paying the taxes.  In general elections, I figured there needed to be a barrier to entry where one would have to pay a small amount to show he was dedicated to politics.  Not only would this barrier be arbitrary but the idea failed to recognize the inherent barrier of taking the time register, scheduling a trip to the polling booth, and paying for transportation to and from the booth.  Maybe a test to show political competency?  John Stossel asked the "Man on the street" simple questions like "How many senators come from each state?" Sure, most people know these answers, but knowing how many senators there are is superfluous in choosing freedom over serfdom.

Ultimately, the only way to prevent the non-payers from looting the payers is to give a voter as many votes as dollars he has paid to the government.  But this is just capitalism, right?  Vote with your wallet?  Absolutely not, there is a huge difference between democracy and capitalism.  Well, okay, one is a political system and the other is economic, but the important distinction can still be made.  Voting with the power of your tax dollars would give you the power to exercise the political means (aggerssion).  Capitalism is the accumulation of capital through voluntary, economic means.  These two systems are conflated in the minds of the statists that I've encountered.  When I propose capitalism, laissez-faire style, they quickly answer "but the rich would just control us."  The rich would not control us anymore than Wal-Mart controls us today, and actually less so since Wal-Mart benefits from government regulations that push smaller stores out of business.  They benefit from economies of scale that allows them to absorb the increased regulations and taxation, then benefit from government granted corporate personhood, and lobbying power that makes them far more powerful than they would be in a free market.

It is at this point I realized that democracy is unworkable so what about that republic thing the JBS guy was talking about?  Well, it sounds like a nice idea but Tom Woods in a Lew Rockwell podcast pointed out that no piece of paper (e.g. the constitution) can restrain an organization who is also the sole regulator of this paper.  Even our so called "checks and balances" are slanted since for example the supreme court is just a different head of the same beast.  The 17th amendment was created to reduce the balance between the states and federal government, and the 10th amendment is considered quaint or inapplicable in our modern world.  So now the federal government is a sovereign and unrestrained entity.  It is a fantasy to think that the "rule of law" can restrain the powers of the institution that makes and interprets the rules of law.

To finish up, I need to answer the question, "what is the goal"?  Well, this post was inspired by John Denson's speech at the Mises supporter's summit.  He rightly says that liberty is the goal, democracy is only a means (and a piss poor one) at achieving that goal.  Jeffrey Tucker says at the same meeting, "when we as a society are faced with a problem, wouldn't it be great if we said, 'what we need to solve this problem is more liberty'"(paraphrased).  Intervention begets intervention and we so often fail to see the problems of the previous intervention and thus we infinitely repeat our mistakes.  This makes us poorer, yet paradoxically our material well being is constantly increasing -- this is not because of the state but despite it.  Our great benefactors are the geniuses of enterprise.  It is a flat out sin against nature to not recognize their heroism but rather condemn them.  It is equally unconscionable to exalt the political class who oppress us and destroy the great potential of social power.

How I perceive statists

Reading my previous post, one might assume that I actively spit on statists.  After all, racists are villified and despised, what would that make statists in my eyes?  One problem with the spitting approach is that I'd quickly die of dehydration due to the vast numbers of statist, the second problem is that I'm more tolerant than that.  I know, I know, liberals have already claimed tolerance as an exclusive trait they possess, but I'm afraid that's not true.  In fact, their "tolerance" isn't really tolerance at all, it's tolerance for the actions they already approve of.  Want to smoke dope and let a dude marry a dude?  No problem.  Want to keep the money you earn and give it to the charities and businesses you want?  Intolerable!!  Liberalism... true liberalism, the exercise of freedom, is true tolerance.  It's belief in social AND economic freedom.

So how do I perceive statists and how do I interact with them?  Well, very similarly to the way I interact with racists.  Racism and statism usually only make up a tiny portion of a person's character.  Many of hem are generous and kind, they raise families and hold jobs, they are great sources of knowledge and can teach me a lot.  However, they cannot be my moral authority.

To an anarchist, an adherent to the non-aggression axiom, any ethical philosophy espoused by a statist is contradictory or wrong.  For instance, it's hard to take the racist seriously when he tells you, "love your wife, give to the poor, and never talk to a nigger lovin' jew [yes that's a real and oft-used term]".  I might be able to take something away from that message, but it's only because I subscribe to a superior ethical authority with which I can filter.

When an ethical philosophy does not address statism, or if its logical conclusion is not statelessness, then it fails to be an ethical philosophy, and its institutions and followers fail to be ethical authorities.  This is why the church has stopped being a moral authority (more on this in a later post, and yes I'm using ethics and morality synonymously).  It can probably teach me a thing or two, but since its purpose is to be a moral authority, take that away and it's hard to see the purpose in joining (okay, really, I'll stop with the church stuff, more in a later post).

Most statists are great people, that do many great things.  I despise their wickedness, but love working with them and having peaceful, voluntary interaction.  I hope more come to realize that statism is an ideology, it is not a philosophy:

I'd Rather be a Racist than a Statist

Local news is the worst at using provacative titles to lure you into watching.  The reader is forewarned that my title is accurate.

What is a racist?  A racist is not per se violent, he believes that one or some races are superior to others.  And by labeling the one superior labels the other inferior.  This is different than saying one race is better at some things (by their genetics or social factors) than other races, which is a racial observation wrong or right.  It is the dehumanization of a race in the mind of a racist that identifies him as such.

What is a statist?  A statist, on the other hand, per se condones voilence and the threat of violence against peaceful people who have not violated natural law.

A racist will probably choose not to engage in certain activities with people of certain races.  Such activities are usually social since if a racist decides not to engage in business with another race his profits will be hurt.  The previous statement is not always true.  For example, a racist bar owner, who caters to racist patrons (or a non-racist bar owner who caters to racist patrons) would see his business hurt by the inclusion of the despised race.  The racist mechanic on the other hand who refuses to work on a truck owned by a person of a certain race will only be hurting himself.  We all discriminate.  Some stores find it detrimental to their business to include those who refuse to wear sox or shoes.  The NAACP unifies around the ability to exclude people of different skin color.  And Calvin College finds that they thrive by hiring professors who are members of the CRC denomination or are willing to undergo more frequent reviews if they are not.  The racist is simply exercising freedom of association, which is a consistent extension of our natural rights to self and property.

A statist will achieve his goals not by exercising freedom and respecting the rights of others, but by violating natural rights and aiming to destroy freedom.  Hyperbolic?  Not in the least.  To quote Nock, "every increase in political power is countered by a roughly equivalent decrease in social power".  The freedom to exercise social power, whether in commerce or charity, is taken away by any increase in state power.  How can we be said to be a free people when some are forced into supporting the will and convictions of others?

Our society is completely backwards on the issues of racism and statism.  This was typified recently by the hysteria over Rand Paul's comments about the Civil Rights Act.  If you don't know, when asked what he thought about the CRA he said that he abhors racism but he doesn't think we should be telling business owners what to do.  Paul was saying that what we needed in 1964 was to repeal mandated segregation, not mandate desegregation.  The government told businesses what to do before the CRA and they were telling businesses what to do after the CRA.  Desegregation was well on it's way as a revolt against Jim Crow laws, the best thing for freedom was to simply legalize desegregation.  The same can be said about slavery.  We didn't need a civil war, simply legalize freedom in some states, let the south secede, and slavery in the south would collapse as slaves fled to the north.  A fantasy?  No, slavery collapsed in all other countries around the world by the 20th century without violence.

It may appear that I've gone off track but both examples are very relevant: legalize freedom first, denounce the state's choke hold on us, and then deal with second order immoralities.  Yes I'm calling racism a "second order immorality" by which I mean there are first order problems.  State violence, which is a first order immorality, cannot be used to cure the "wrong thinking" of peaceful people.  Other first order problems would include violence of individuals against individuals so in no way am I saying the KKK is better than the state or any other violent racist group.  But they should be described in that order: violent, then racist.

I grew up learning how to be statist and a racist.  I'm sickened by this fact, but I believe my faith in the state had a much greater potential to destroy lives than my racism.  After all, I voted for Bush ... twice, who's responsible for the murder of innocents; I cheered on the Iraq war, and I believed in trickle down economics through subsidies to successful corporations.  My tendency to racism on the other hand never lead to violence or theft and always took a back seat when it came to commerce.  I defended the Rodney King beating because I trusted state law enforcement and my racism kept me blinded to the tragedy.  My time in College helped me to respect all people or so I thought, but I still defended the Rodney King police officers and officers of the DEA.  It wasn't until studying libertarianism that I truly came to respect all people, by which I came to respect their natural rights.  My eyes were opened to the atrocities derived from state monopolization of law enforcement, and of the selective and racist crack-down on the unjust war on drugs.

To summarize, in a free society you have the right to be an asshole, but no asshole has a right to loot from some and give to others or to initiate violence.

Leave Apple alone!!

A law by which anyone can be found guilty is no law at all.

Walter Block's joke about antitrust goes like this.  Three men were sitting in prison, inmate 1 asks inmate 2 "what are you in for?"  "The government said I was guilty of price gouging for charging over the market price".  Inmate 1 then he asks inmate 3 the same question; he replies "well, I was guilty of charging under the market price so I was arrested for predatory pricing."  They turn to inmate 1 who confesses, "I was arrested for charging the market price and am accused of collusion and cartelizing."  Antitrust is a sham, and sometimes I feel like slapping Teddy Roosevelt right off Mount Rushmore.

Apple is under attack again by the FTC.  What are they guilty of?  How about being awesome?  Even if you don't like Apple, there's no reason for this.  Apple has built an amazing infrastructure for distributing digital content, they have built amazing hardware to play it back on, and one can argue they have even made Apple into an ethos.  Despite the competition, and some higher performing hardware (like some 4G phones) it continues to dominate the market.  All Apple actors (consumers, producers, and developers) have come to the Apple platform voluntarily.  App makers could abandon iTunes altogether and develop solely for the Android.  If Apple's fees and app regulation are so onerous, why don't they?  Well, I suppose if they do become unbearable then the developers and consumer will abandon Apple because it's voluntary and not compulsory like some other organization I know.

Whatever you think of Apple, in no way does the FTC have a right to tell them how to run their business.  Besides the obvious reason that no injustice has occurred, the government is the worst offender of antitrust principles.  The government claims monopoly privileges for itself.  It claims the right to prevent any and all private participants from entering the market.  Antitrust supposedly protects the public from monopoly activity, high prices, and lack of competitive options in an industry.  This is exactly what the government claims must exist in every area it over sees.  The FTC itself claims the right to regulate commerce and to extract whatever funds it needs for its operations from businesses and the public.  It is sick that this kind of double speak is allowed, and that companies like Apple and the public at large suffer because of it.

Admittedly, a lot of what's said at LewRockwell.com is unlikely to attract the non-libertarian to libertarianism.  Knowing this full well, I loved this post back in June about bureaucrats being upset about their crummy government issued blackberrys (blackberries?).  What I found interesting about the post, factually, is that Apple has a relatively small lobbying budget.  I don't know if Google's and Microsoft's lobbying power has anything to do with the FTC investigation, but how sad would it be if millions had to be spent on lobbyists just to avoid expensive government investigation?  Ron Paul doesn't get visited by lobbyists because his exercise of government power is minimal and thus provides no incentive for the corporate lobbyist.  Leftists who claim to protect the public and are all too willing to use government power are also too easily duped into furthering the goals of one corporation over another thus extending and strengthening fascism in America.  Albert J. Nock once believed the state was an effective force for helping the weak, but he soon realized that not only was the state's modus operandi completely unjustifiable -- "rooted in conquest and confiscation" -- but it was the least effective tool to help those whom he cared to protect.

Fallout New Vegas

The blog will get a little less attention than it's been getting because I've started Fallout: New Vegas.  My last Fallout character sucked up 65 hours of my life.  In keeping with my libertarian convictions I plan on helping out the self-governing, non-militant, state free societies factions.  The New California Republic (NCR) for example will have a hard time finding a friend in my character.

Statehood is only viable when the productive capacity of a people can support the parasites of the state.  Small towns, tribes, and our ancient ancestors were stateless for this reason.  Slaves are desirable because their output is greater than their consumption, if a slave only produced as much as he consumed then there would be no point in having a slave.  Similarly, the state exists when production of others is great enough that it can support a state and when the state's burden is small enough as to prevent an uprising.

These ideas were most recently brought my attention by Jeff Riggenbach when he reviewed this book in his "The Libertarian Tradition" podcast: "The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia" by James C. Scott.  Riggenbach's only complaint is that Scott does not distinguish between government and the state.  If you've read "Our Enemy the State" by Albert J. Nock then you'll be able to sort out the differences and not be confused by this otherwise great book (according to Jeff Riggenbach, I haven't read it).

Republicans and Democrats

I've heard libertarians say that there's no difference between left and right.  I disagree, here's the difference:

The right are disingenuous about fiscal and regulatory policy
The left are disingenuous about foreign and social policy

If only the opposite were true, and if good policies had more staying power than bad policies, America would be fairly libertarian country.  And of course there's no difference between Obama and Bush, McCain and Dodd, Romney and Jerry Brown.

The ends justify the means?

The following 3 paragraphs throw out some concepts to consider and then a more cohesive thoughts in 4th.

Whenever arguing foreign policy, welfarism, the nanny state, or whatever our wise overlords (TM, Tom Woods) might be getting us into, we have to ask "what is moral?".  Preventing someone from jumping off a building is moral, but not if it means pushing 10 people off the building to distract the one you're saving.

Walter Block (yes, I'm citing him again) takes the side of deontology.  That is, if you have to kill one person to save 10, what is moral?  Deontologically speaking (actions and not results define morality), it's not okay to murder so it's immoral to kill the one.

The issue gets a little muddier when you consider the "initiator of aggression".  A store owner who kills an innocent bystander because he's defending himself during an armed robbery is not responsible for the death of the bystander, but the robber who initiated aggression.  Muddier yet, Nazi prison guards who claim to have saved Jews by not killing as many as their ruthless fellow Nazi are still responsible for the lives they ended.  And as a final example, consider "Lost" the TV show when Mr. Eko had to kill to save his village, in this case you might argue the one who gave the ultimatum is initiating the aggression so isn't the person who pulled the trigger only a proximate cause of death?  I include these ideas for completeness, but are extreme and rare examples of moral choice.  In most cases it's easy to delineate the aggressor for the victim.

So what does this have to do with helping the least among society?  (this is supposed to be part 2 of the answer).  I'm not interested in helping the disabled if it means pushing people off of buildings.  That is to say, I cherish basic morality above the extension of morality: altruism.  Since yesterday was Valentines day, let's say Fred forgot to buy flowers.  Since he loves his wife he wants to do something and sees Tom with a bouquet of roses walking down the street.  Fred's love for his wife motivates him to stab Tom, take the flowers, and give them to his wife.  One response would be, "what a loving husband, he's willing to kill for his wife."  Fred has just used the political means (using Oppenheimer's definition) to provide a gift.  I'm repulsed that anyone would praise Fred and I am equally repulsed by those who say "Obama cares about the less fortunate".  Tom is foremost a murderer and a thief.  And I say this with some hesitation since the Patriot Act just got extended, likewise Obama is foremost a murderer and a thief.

There are rationalizations (not good ones) for taxation and offensive wars.  Taxation and market regulation are the main issues for this topic.  These rationalizations are built on economic fallacies, namely the static wealth pie.  That is, to the political scientist, there is a fixed amount of wealth in the world and it is the job of the political hack to figure out the best way to divvy it up.  This ties in well with my last post so I won't belabor this point.  Industrialization, contrary to what Upton Sinclair, lifted people out of poverty; there is vastly more wealth now then there was 200 years ago.

Sure, there is a fixed amount of natural resources (not including cosmic sources like the sun, which I suppose is fixed too), but they don't count as wealth unless they are transformed into something useful.  The ones who create wealth are those who homestead the natural resources.  When they transform them into something that serves the needs and desires of others they can accumulate capital with their profits and expand operations.  Those who do not satisfy the needs of others go out of business or their operations are severely limited.

When we take the issue of "divvying up the pie" back to homesteading we see that there is no aggressor, only voluntary interactions in the accumulation of wealth by the economic means.  Therefore, we conclude any confiscator of private property (including wages and profit) is the immoral aggressor.  Anything he does with the stolen loot should not be heralded as humanitarian any more than Fred's flowers show an act of love.  True love, true humanitarianism can only come by the economic means.  Serve others by trading, entering into contracts, and working.  Any use of the political means negates any positive outcome because it leaves another party violated.

I've spent two posts on "negative statements" or reasons to not worry yourself about the poor and disabled, that there are more fundamental problems to worry about.  I won't promise that the 3rd post will be much different but I'll try to include some positive statements.  I can't prescribe too many positive statements because no market anarchist pretends to know how the market ought to work (except free of the state), all I can do is propose how things MIGHT work.

Nature's default

This is the first of a 3 part post on supporting the least among society.

I stole this idea from Tom Woods, and if you're interested I could probably dig up the video somewhere.  He asks what the world (as in nature) hands us at birth?  What were our ancestors and ancient ancestors given at birth?  The answer is nothing except parents, and the parents were given nothing except their parents ad infinitum (at least practically).  Nature provides us with nothing -- it does not clothe us or hand feed us -- and so nature's default position is poverty.

Our parents give us food and shelter, but what are they entitled to?  What food can they eat?  Cavemen were not handed food stamps redeemable at Walmart.  They lived in grinding poverty, constantly searching for food, not eating for days, and their children after breastfeeding did likewise.  They lived in tribes, were hunters and gatherers.  They survived but not very luxuriously.

If cavemen got together and developed a constitutional republic they would still be in poverty because governments produce nothing.  Even what governments "provide" they do so by stealing, not by trading.  Only producers, the division of labor, and trade could lift humanity out of poverty.

We live in a world of abundance; this much human life could not exist without it.  What we call "poverty" is not even close to the default position of nature.  Perhaps it is in some parts of Africa, but in the United States the cavemen would laugh at us for where we put the poverty line (e.g. a family of 3 making $18,310 or less per year).  It's a shame that some people live in leaky apartments, but my mother-in-law, just a few decades ago, lived without in-door plumbing and was not considered impoverished.  Calling something "poverty" does not justify theft from the non-impoverished.  The term itself is subjective and relies on comparing the well being of some to others.  This subjectivity of poverty and thus the "necessary" welfare is partly why I oppose the state's efforts to help the less fortunate.  I don't want people to live at the default position of nature, but I see no justification in using the threat of violence to make me help anyone rise above that.

What I'm trying to do here is draw an absolute or at least a baseline: Poverty is nature's default position for mankind.  In my opinion, if you want to help the poor then end the regressive burden of government.  End the drug war that destroys poor families, end sales and sin taxes which are regressive, end minimum wage that necessarily unemploys the poor, end the Fed and inflation that steals wealth from the elderly and cash based families, end all foreign wars that steal the young from the poor (admittedly, we have a volunteer Army, but the poor would be in much safer occupations), end foreign aid to kleptocracies, end the corporatist distribution of wealth from the poor to the rich, end our militarized police force, and most importantly end the state.  For more on the regressive burden of government, check out Chapter 8 of Murray Rothbard's "For a New Liberty".  Also in there is the Mormon Church's excellent model for a welfare program.

Populations models and Minimum wage

I'm holding off on my Liberty vs Utilitarianism post for which I needed the definitions in my last post.  I also wanted to subtitle this post "How to convince a liberal engineer that minimum wage is bad".

Walter Block has many of his talks and guest appearances on the Mises Torrent (should try to add a link for that).  For the second time now, I've heard him debate this hack, Jared Bernstein, on minimum wage.  At the beginning of one of these debates, Walter lays out the logical conclusion that 1) it is not an employment law, namely it doesn't say that so and so must be hired, but it is inherently an unemployment law, it says it is illegal to hire someone below some dictated amount.  And 2) it increases employment higher than it would other wise be. This second point is what I want to focus on and the wording is very important.

Bernstein comes back with something like, "if Walter's simplistic theory actually were true then this would be a closed and shut case, but it isn't.  When you look at the data, moderate increases in the minimum wage do not result in more unemployment".  Walter explains that he has failed to uphold ceritus paribus (all things being equal) and wonders why Bernstein is so stingy with the raise, why not raise it to $10,000/hour?  Bernstein replies in his ad hoc style with "that's over the top".

Now, why is Bernstein willing to admit that raising the minimum wage to $10,000/hour would cause massive unemployment but raising it to $7/hour would have no effect except to raise the wages of the poor?  Let's put aside all the games economists play with the numbers such as not including those who stop seeking employment, or looking at immediate rather than long term effects, or not seeing the redistribution from low skill, low pay jobs to high skill jobs (which are not held by the same people).

Bernstein does not understand simple differential equations.  Take population models, our first introduction to stability, eigenvalues, and systems of first order, non-linear equations.  The rabbit and fox model is a favorite.  This will be easier if you remember what the time dependent plots look like, but you'll be able to follow either way.  Now, if the fox population increases, does the rabbit population decrease?  Answer: Just as with an increase in minimum wage, not necessarily.  Why?  Because the interaction term, or the rate at which foxes eat rabbits, in the differential equation (i.e. -a*x*y where x is the population of foxes, y is the population of rabbits, and a is positive coefficient) might be small compared to the intra-action of rabbits, the rate at which they multiply (b*y or is it b*y^2?).  An increase in the fox population may still give an unbounded population of rabbits.  It may, however, cause the rabbit population in the area to disappear if the increase in foxes is large enough or it may shift the equilibrium.

The market is very complex so I could go on for pages as to why you may not see an increase in unemployment, the easiest being inflation: inflate the money supply, raise the price of everything including labor.  But let's return to the importance of Walter's wording.  Ask the above question slightly differently, would an increase in the fox population cause the rabbit population to be smaller than it otherwise would be?  Yes, since "a" is not zero and neither is x nor y, this term necessarily pulls down the rabbit population.  In non-math terms, if one fox eats one rabbit then the rabbit population is smaller than it otherwise would be, ceritus paribus.  Is this contradictory to what I wrote above about an unbounded rabbit population?  No, because there is a time component.  Instead of rabbits increasing at the rate y=exp(5*t) it may increase as y=exp(1*t).  Either way an increase of foxes, or in our case in minimum wage (or the number of politicians who are akin to foxes), is detrimental to the rabbits.  And minimum wage is detrimental to those with small marginal revenue products who are also known as the poor.

Walter responded to Bernstein with, "I do agree with Jared on one thing, that this is a closed and shut case, you can't argue with the logic".

Definitions

I need to get this post out of the way and in preparation for my next post.

Our schools teach us legislative theory (how laws are passed) not political theory (whether or not passed laws are moral).  The country couples this boring issue with nationalism and lies about our "freedoms".  The result is a contradictory and incoherent populace in matters of politics.  If you want to see how Orwellian our society has become just tell someone that roads should be privatized and the department of education abolished; "Freedom is Slavery!" perfectly sums up the responses I've heard.  Anyway, it's difficult to have a discussion on political theory for more than 30 seconds before losing someone in simple vocabulary.

Natural Rights - I do not mean "absolute rights".  We are born into this world with nothing but our bodies and therefore our first right is to self.  Our parents homestead the right to raise us by giving us food and shelter, and when we are ready to homestead or buy our own property (which includes food and shelter) then we become adults and have rights to those things we have acquired in voluntary exchanges (e.g. land, food, money).

Anyone who uses our property or our bodies without permission is aggressing against us and is violating our natural rights.  In other words, to check to see if I have the natural right to murder or steal (as absurd as this sounds, it's the most common response I get when talking about rights) I have to see if I am violating anyone else's natural rights.  Obviously, if someone has homesteaded property and by default homesteaded their own body, murder and theft are a violation of someone else's natural rights and therefore not persimissible by the theory of natural rights.

Other non-trivial examples are helpful including pollution, yelling "fire" in a crowded theater, loud neighbors, slavery (voluntary vs coercive).  I won't elaborate on each one of those because I'd just be repeating Rothbard and Block.  Maybe I'll do that in another post.

Voluntary - This does not mean donation (I know, does this really need to be clarified?  Sadly, yes).  If I'm selling strawberries, someone might come by and want a half-flat (the unit by which strawberries are sold).  In a voluntary society he would just take his strawberries and then decide if he is willing to voluntarily give me some money, right?  That would be stealing, violating my property rights that I obtained from homesteading the strawberry field or buying them from a farmer.  Voluntary means that we can agree to exchange money for strawberries, or barter, or I can gift them to him.  If he does not want to pay the price I'm charging (say $100) then we agree that the exchange is not mutually beneficial.  If I coerce him into buying them (e.g. "buy my strawberries or I'll plug you") then the trade no longer is voluntary and I'm guilty of stealing his money.

Aggression - This is a very important term to get right.  It's the term I've had to clarify more than any others.  It is not a synonym for coercion; I can coerce someone without aggressing against them.  Aggression is violating someone's rights, an act of unprovoked violence or the initiation of violence.  If someone breaks into my house and I point a gun in his face then who's aggressing against whom?  The one breaking into my house is violating my property rights and I am now coercing him out of my house.  The intruder is the aggressor and my coercion is justified under the political theory of natural rights.

Homesteading - taking previously unowned property, mixing it with my labor, and producing something of utility.  This is difficult to understand in a densely populated world, but the "origination of property rights" is fundamental to libertarian theory and so homesteading is an important if somewhat abstract concept.

If I tend to a garden - water it, fertilize it, cover it during a freeze, etc - then I obviously have the right to what the garden bears, right?  Well, not necessarily.  I might have violated someone's property rights in order to raise this garden.  I might have known my neighbors were going to be on vacation for 4 months and so I tore down their house and planted my garden.  When they came back and locked me up I might say "Can't you see? I homesteaded this garden, it's mine!"  Why do they have the right to get restitution from me?  The home owners negotiated some deal to buy their house, the area developers negotiated a deal to buy some land prior to that, and some family of farmers homesteaded that land for 200 years before that and this is how we get to home ownership as a natural consequence of homesteading and voluntary exchanges.

Well, that's good for now.  Let me know what other terms I should add.

Jesus was not a liberal

Maybe if liberals stuck to the theocratic tyrant portrayed in the old testament they'd have a shot at claiming some legitimacy.  But since Jesus is exclusively a new testament character there's no way they're claim passes muster.

Jesus helped the poor, the sick, even the dead or so the Bible says.  He broke bread with prostitutes and tax collectors.  He told us to be generous and humble and moral.  I see where liberals might think he aligns with them but they must be blinded by self righteousness to see they are grossly out of sync with the morality taught by Jesus.

There's a huge difference between "go and do likewise" and "go and use state coercion to make everyone follow my edicts".  Jesus' message is extremely personal.  He describes how to behave, how to treat one another, what ideals to shoot for.  He does not say, "Go! Give to the poor, and if you find anyone that does not give as much as you think he should, lock him up.  Demonize the greedy and gang up on them and threaten violence so they may know my love."

One of the topics I'm trying to address in my blog is the assumption that anarchy is not pragmatic, that reality dictates a state.  When I started attending youth group in the 10th grade I was given the same lecture from my dad about Christianity: impractical, unrealistic.  Christian liberals, because of their ignorance about libertarianism, seem to wholeheartedly agree and condone state violence.  However, my dad was honest with himself and left the church thinking he couldn't live up to the ideals that were being preached.  Liberals have just applied a twisted theology so they can continue using praising the state and God (in that order?).  Liberty is the only political philosophy consistent with Christianity.

Don't think I'm giving Republicans a free pass here.  If we mix old testament wars with new testament evangelism then we get all the religious atrocities (e.g. crusades) along with modern neo-concervatism (e.g. American exceptionalism) and modern liberalism (e.g. the welfare state).  The right, not being quite as economically illiterate as the left, don't harp on financial issues as much as they do social issues or the seven deadly sins.  When Jesus tells the prostitute to "not sin again", republicans say "because if you do, we'll throw you in jail consequently making your 'profession' extremely dangerous and violent.  If you are beaten by a client or boss, don't look for justice because going to the cops will just lead to your arrest".

How much better would society be if we put aside the "crimes against God" conservatives worry about and the hoarding crimes of the left, and just focus on real criminals?  Violence and fraud should not be tolerated in a civilized society, but because we're so worried about non-violent drug offenders and tax evaders that the state has created more real crime and there are even fewer resources available to deal with it.