How I profited from efficient use of resources: and how the state ruined me

The problem

Leaving my subdivision you arrive at a "T" in the road.  You can turn left or right and there are two lanes to turn into which ever direction you choose.  As you approach the intersection you may move into the right lane to turn right, move into the left turn lane to turn left, or scratch your head about the ambiguous middle lane.  Upon a 5 second reflection, you realize that this middle lane can be used to turn either left or right without interfering with traffic (illustrated below).

Every morning this middle lane remains free of traffic.  I choose to use this lane.  Most people are trying to turn right so I often pass 15 cars waiting foolishly to turn right.  Some of these drivers disobey the rules of the road and cross into my lane as they turn.  Horns honk and I've found myself in 1 yelling match with a lady who didn't understand what is meant by staying in one's lane.  This kind of driving is reckless on their part and is against against the law - I know, I've downloaded and read the Texas drivers manual.

We live in a world of socialist roads, and yet I was still able to profit even under this system of compulsory monopoly.  I was an example for all my fellow drivers, showing them how we can better use the roads.  Unfortunately, most of them ignored me, buying into the value of "fairness" and "equality".  If one person has to wait 3 minutes to turn right then we all should!  Furthermore we should honk and yell and hate those 1% that efficiently use the roads, who seek out ways to expedite our commutes, and thus keep congestion down for everyone.  Bah! I say, I'm a libertarian, I'm about maximizing social utility, not making sure we're all equally miserable.

Truly, I felt like an entrepreneur every morning, profiting from others inability to see opportunities in front of them.  At the same time, I was teaching my fellow driver how to better use the roads while reducing the traffic problem.  I was astonished how few followed my lead, after about a year of being an example every morning, I saw only one other person use the middle lane.

WWTMD

Given the congestion, one might ask, What Would The Market Do?  A road company may observe the problem and then hire someone to stand out at the intersection for a few mornings and direct people to the middle lane.  After all, these are commuters i.e. repeat customers, so a few mornings is all it'd take to completely alleviate the problem.  The road company could hire me, but I'd probably end up yelling "come on you idiots, what do you think this lane is here for!?"  I'd then promptly, and appropriately, be fired.

Such a road company would have the goal of keeping costs down, congestion down, and safety up.  The solution would cost no more than a couple hundred dollars, perhaps even less if they just hung a sign that read, "Use the middle lane moron!"

What the state did

After one becomes a libertarian it takes roughly 6.8 minutes before someone asks, "But what about roads!? Herp derp!"  Yes, I'm being purposefully condescending, and disrespectful.  But it's because of what the state did that this kind of treatment is wholly justified.  It is absolutely disgusting and disturbing to witness what the state did to "alleviate" the congestion "problem".  Therefore, I say, anyone who praises the state for roads, must also love buying houses with broken windows.  They will witness the furthest extent of my wrath for their economic ignorance.

The state installed a goddamn stop light!  They spent tens of thousands of dollars, perhaps hundreds of thousands, to install a useless stop light!  This means that now all directions have to stop and wait for 550nm wavelengths to start radiating from the new electronics before drivers can be assured they have state permission to move their vehicle.  Previously, drivers driving along the straight (top of the "T") part of the road drove by without slowing down, further allowing traffic to flow rather than be regulated in a jolty, awkward manner.  Now, each morning and evening, they pray that their commute isn't needlessly slowed by this completely unnecessary contraption of the state.  

But I haven't even come to the most egregious part of the story.  The state, in their infinite wisdom have decided to outlaw turning right from the middle lane on a red light!!  Even though this causes no traffic problems at all, and is done all over the city, we are not allowed to turn right on red from the middle lane at this intersection!  Why couldn't they have hung my sign that read "use the middle lane, moron" and saved the tax payers thousands of dollars!?  Now I sit, on my way to work, and on my way back, at this stupid light, this beacon of government waste.  The community now needs more brakes to stop, more fuel to reaccelerate, and more thumbs to stick up their butts while we wait idling at a red light.  They should just inscribe and hammer and sickle on red to make sure we all know we're under state control and supposedly helpless without them. 

This light typifies the state in every aspect: the waste, the inefficiency, the compulsion, the favoring of socialism over entrepreneurship, and more as I explain below.  Sure, I could write the local authorities and ask them to remove the light, but the capital has already been used up, the light is installed and running.  Just like all new government programs, it is now a permanent fixture of life almost impossible to reverse.  I will have to continue paying for its upkeep, the electricity used to power it, the gas now being wasted sitting at a light.

Will the state lose market share for it's squandering of resources?  It can't, it outlaws competition and mandates payment for its poor management.  At the same time it will vilify those who speak out against it, it'll point to the roads and the Stop Lights all over town and ask, "how would these be provided if it were not for the state?"  Obviously, I could run things better.  Does this mean I should run for office?  Of course not, my skills are far more useful and productive being employed writing software to bring cheaper energy to all of society.  Furthermore, politics rewards those who are good at manipulating others, lying, gaining political favor, not those keen on efficiently employing scarce resources.

Why did the state install a light?  There was a congestion problem.  Inept and reckless drivers, those unwilling to stay in their lane or use the middle lane, are being bailed out by the state.  Just like the reckless banks or poorly managed auto companies, a moral hazard is being promoted by the state.  Drive poorly?  No problem, we'll install a light so you can continue endangering other drivers.  Responsible drivers, those that follow the rules, are being punished and forced to pay for the light and the bad behavior.

This example illustrates everything that's wrong with the state and everything that's right with the market.  I came up with a simple, cost effective solution to help congestion.  I profited from it and the state came along and ruined me.  On a very minor scale I experienced the frustration Joe Stack must have felt before flying his plane into an IRS building.  This monstrosity, the leviathan known as the state destroys all that is good and peaceful and replaces it with machinery that hinders social progress and suppresses human flourishing.  So in summary, fuck the state, fuck our socialist roads, and fuck the moronic drivers that don't know how to turn from a fucking middle lane!

Hegemony is Hegemony is Hegemony

One of the first Facebook friends I lost occurred because I equated taxation to slavery.  It was unthinkable to him that I would, in any form, draw similarities between "society enabling" taxation and demoralizing chattel slavery.  After all, the local tax assessor doesn't knock on my door, whip in hand, waiting for me to pay my municipal taxes so maybe I should just stop talking in hyperbole.

Rothbard restored my resolve in equating slavery and taxation.  In chapter 2 of Man, Economy, and State, Rothbard covers interpersonal interactions.  There are two ways in which we can interact with one another, either by mutually beneficial voluntary trade or through threats of violence i.e. hegemony.  What's remarkable about the analysis is how he formalizes hegemony using praxeology.  Axiomatically, one person loses and another gains under a system of hegemony.  If both were to profit from the transaction, an ulterior motive to comply would not be needed and we'd be back to voluntary trade.  The ulterior motive under hegemony is to avoid the pain of the violence threatened.  A person faced with a threat of violence has to determine what is higher on his value scale: the suffering that would result if the threat were carried out or carrying out the demands of the aggressor.  In this way both parties "profit" but only because one party imposed a threat.

The state imposes a threat on every citizen to comply with its rules.  This includes paying taxes, not smoking indoors, not taking drugs, not speeding, not using insider information, and not buying products from any country the state doesn't like (to name a few).  To disobey does not imply a crime, it does not imply that any aggression has taken place; it simply means that you have not listened to the threat closely enough, and you should be prepared to suffer the consequence.  In the case of taxation, the state has not shown itself to be legitimate owners over all things in a given territory, it just says so under threat of force.  This is hegemony; this is how some people lose and others gain.  The state does not persuade you to pay for its torture, its drone attacks, its invasions; it simply demands you do so or else.  Every minute spent paying off these demands is to prevent violence from the state, it is not for an end that you yourself seek (generally speaking), the end is to avoid your kidnapping, imprisonment, or death.  You do not work to satisfy your desires, to accomplish your goals; it is to accomplish the goals of the state.  Because your only choice is to work for the state or to be punished by the state, you are the state's slave.

Slavery is not per se violent just like the state is not per se violent.  It is possible to imagine a slave owner or state that never used violence, although the latter is very difficult to imagine.  However, both must, by definition, use threats of violence.  If they did not then a slave owner would be an employer and the state would be a business, no hegemonic rule would exist if threats of violence were not used.  Chattel slavery described the cases where violence was carried out to alter behavior.  This is similar to the violence used today to prevent people from taking drugs (google Jose Guerena).  In most white collar cases of tax evasion or insider trading no violence actually takes place but fines are collected and people are imprisoned.  What about "white collar" style slavery?  I'm guessing it occurred, perhaps often, that some slaves were never whipped or harmed.  Some might have gone along doing just what they're told, much like we do with the state.  Plus, slaves were expensive, and they were an important asset to the plantation.  It's likely that some farmers didn't wish to harm their investment the same way people don't harm their horses, cattle, or sheep dogs (border collies) today.  The state puts far less emphasis on human life than the plantation owner, this is evident by the tens of millions killed by their own state in the 20th century.  However, if the beating of slaves was as ubiquitous as we've been lead to believe then it's likely that the proud black workers were not so easily conjoled into accepting their slave owner as their great benefactor.  They would likely have resisted more than the modern, putty-brained american who can't imagine life off the plantation.  If Kunta-Kinte were a 21st century american he would have requested to be called Toby while bending down to lick his new owner's boot.  This is not to say anarchists should be more courageous (I'd say foolish) in standing up against the state, it's simply to point out that slaves didn't accept that they were legitimately owned and neither should we.  Slavery is wrong, not because violence is carried out, but because threats of violence are used against an innocent person to change his behavior, to extract from him the product of his labor.

I no longer consider taxation equal to slavery, but have conclude that taxation is in fact worse than slavery because the state attempts to seize for itself not only your labor but your will and your mind.  Under the state, children are subject to compulsory education (paid for by taxation) where the kids are told daily how the state protects them, and how it has protected their parents, grandparents, and without the state we'd be enslaved (by a different state of course, not necessarily a worse one).  It's clear that this brainwashing is incredibly effective as evident by my ex-friend and by most of the people I encounter who embrace the gun of the state.  Under state hegemony people actually begin to believe that their enslavement is the best possible outcome, that if they weren't slaves, a much worse fate would await them.  The state has successfully convinced them that in their heart of hearts that two and two really make up five.

It's truly sick, and I refuse to accept that humans can do no better than mass hegemony, mass farming of human potential, and the imprisoning of young minds.  Krishnamurti said, "It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society" and so I will not apologize for equating taxation to slavery.  Hegemony is hegemony is hegemony regardless of its form.  It is not the way civil people act. Cooperation, compassion, trade, fortitude, hard work; these are compatible with a peaceful society.  Fraud, murder, aggression, hegemony, and callousness; these are compatible with barbarism, with the state.  These are in fact the modus operandi of the state apparatus, they must be defied if we seek peace and human flourishing.  

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.