Libertatis Æquilibritas

You Gotta Fight For The Right

2009-02-12T19:24:00.000-08:00

The theme for today's article is your rights. The rights which are as important a part of you as your breath and your life. The rights which were not granted to you, or given to you, but belong to you by natural right. The rights which you possess as a free individual. The rights the government would like to deny you. The rights they claim you don't possess.

In order for you to understand what rights you possess, you first have to understand what rights are. They aren't granted to you. Those are privileges. They aren't allowed to you. Those are permissions. They are an inherent aspect of your very existence. You do not need to appeal to the state for them. You don't need to abase yourself to some assumed authority. You simply own your rights.

For instance, you have the right to defend yourself. You have the right to freedom of locomotion. You have the right to freedom of expression. You have the right to do what you wish with you life, your labors, and your private property.

Yet the state believes that they can abrogate those rights. They believe that they can decide what you can and cannot do with your life. At its root, this is based in the belief that they own you. It isn't enough for them that you don't hurt others. It isn't enough for them that you don't lie, or cheat, or steal, or rape, or murder. You aren't to be allowed to make decisions about your own life either.

We all know that the government believes that they have the right to prevent you from engaging in consensual sex as part of a mutually agreed upon commercial arrangement. They won't let you imbibe recreational drugs of your choice purchased without threat or fraud. They won't let people engage in private intimacy or pursue loving commitments if they are of the wrong gender. They won't allow you the freedom to disassemble, or to be offended, or to object to their demands.

Under the current system, the rights of all people are decided solely not by the will of the majority, but by the will of those politicians elected by the majority. Even when their actions go against the will of the majority, they simply revert to protestations of their access to special knowledge which justifies those actions. And of course, by its very nature, that special knowledge is unknowable to the people.

Think of how often they tell you that they are making decisions about war based on intelligence they can't share with you. Or how often they are making decisions about the economy based on a “big picture” you can't see. Or how often they act on an international scale based on policy you don't have access to. They claim that this is a representative republic, yet how can you pick people to represent you based on information you don't have that they won't share?

So they allege that companies do not have the right to vie for their own customers with incentives and bonuses, all in the name of “competition.” And they allege that private establishments aren't allowed to set their own rules as to the use of completely legal substances on their property, in the name of the “rights” of their voluntary customers and employees to fresh air. And they allege that the private citizens must relinquish the use of the analog frequencies to the government for their own financial gain, of course, they want to pretend that it's for your own good, after all, you'll get better picture quality. But you weren't given the option were you? You didn't ask for this, and if you did, other people aren't allowed to opt out.

So ultimately, they decide what privileges to allow you to have. And there's nothing you can do. Because they decide whether you have the right to protest. Whether you have the right to defend yourself. Whether you even have the right to own the means of protest and defense. After all, those aren't really rights anyway.

Not when you only have them at their indulgence.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho_capitalism

The Future is Now

2009-01-28T07:31:00.000-08:00

President Obama has begun to fix this country and return it to a path of prosperity and righteousness. He has instituted new policies allowing for states to set their own standards with regards to auto emissions in order to clean up the environment. He has mandated more humane treatment of detainees and less corruption in the white house. He has informed our victims over seas that “we have not been perfect” and “the Americans are not your enemy.”

Of course, it hasn't all been roses. He had to cut federal funding for contraception out of the economic stimulus package. Iran has reacted to his peaceful overtures with open hostility, and China chose not to air his comments during his inauguration about governments that, “cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent.”

And I suppose those aren't his only problems. The economy has continued to plummet, and corporations aren't helping. Citigroup recently purchased a 50 million dollar jet after receiving 45 billion from the government. Apparently they needed that bailout money because of the rising cost of transportation. And some people are predicting that his emissions plan will drive the cost of autos up, further crippling the Detroit manufacturers. And the communists in Russia think he'll be lucky to make it all the way through his first term.

But let's not let the bad news get us down. We're on a path towards repairing America's image in the world. Obama's economic stimulus plan is just around the corner, and that should fix everything. He's taken steps to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, and soon, his presidential appointees will be able to begin addressing the housing crisis. Good times are just around the corner.

So don't be concerned when you hear that states are considering legislation that would force manufacturers and retailers to encode ammunition and make records of those who purchase it. Don't think it odd if you hear that the United Nations doesn't consider self defense a human right. Don't think twice about whether or not the government plans to censor speech that doesn't comport to their agenda.

After all, it's a new day in America. We are returning to our roots. We're going to be a great nation again. People will respect us. This country will be a powerful, admired force for justice in the world.

So what if our economy is destroyed. So what if corporations continue to exploit their relationships with their friends in government to get free money to pay their bills. So what if free speech is abridged in the name of fairness. So what if the right and responsibility of each individual to provide for his own defense is restricted, regulated, or denied.

Besides, we've got hope. And change. I mean come on, Lincoln and Roosevelt violated the civil rights of hundreds of thousands of Americans in the name of saving the union. Why shouldn't Obama continue in the grand tradition of those historic figures?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism

It's a Party for Us

2009-01-19T20:49:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow President Elect Barack Obama will be sworn in officially as the 44th President of the United States of America. His inauguration is expected to be attended by a record two million people. By comparison, George W. Bush's inaugurations had an attendance of roughly three hundred thousand each.

Most importantly to you and I, is that it is expected to cost roughly 160 million dollars. That's right, 160,000,000 dollars. Obama's supporters are defending that number by saying that George W. Bush's inauguration in 2005 cost roughly 157 million dollars, so that makes it ok. Of course, even their own figures show that more than 40 million of that was privately funded, while the full 160,000,000 dollars for Obama's inauguration appears to be state funds.

But putting that aside, apparently in the world of the leftist statists, two wrongs make a right. Of course that kind of logic is to be expected. They have to justify their behavior somehow, and for all of history the refuge of the villain has been, “look what that guy's doing!” Sadly, the rightist statists think that they spending just 115 million dollars of taxpayer money on their guy was something to brag about.

So in the midst of a global financial crisis, which Obama himself claims “may have devastating long term effects,” he plans to throw himself a party costing 160,000,000 dollars. At a time when he claims “government at every level will have to tighten its belt.” Apparently he means every other level.

The average tax burden of an American family is roughly 23,000 dollars. This average includes the highest and lowest tax payers. Go grab a calculator and find out how many families it will take to pay for his inauguration. Here, I'll save you the trouble. It's nearly seven thousand families.

Seven thousand families. That's how many people are working, day in and day out, so that Barack Obama can have one party, for one day. While people all over the country are losing their homes. Losing their jobs. Losing their hope.

It's disgusting. Perhaps this is some heretofore undeclared aspect of Obama's “economic stimulus plan.” Perhaps he wants to entice us with all the jobs this will create. Perhaps he thinks we're all just too stupid, uninformed, or apathetic to notice or care.

Perhaps he's right.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism

A Sad Update

2009-01-18T22:31:00.000-08:00

I recently posted an article about a friend of mine who owned a local restaurant. He was being harassed by the city on the grounds that because he didn't have the correct signatures, from the right people, on the right form, his restaurant was unsafe to eat in. You can read more about it below.

I'm sorry to say that his restaurant has gone out of business as of the new year. While I can not directly attribute this to the actions of the city, as many other small businesses and restaurants have also recently closed their doors, I can state unequivocally that the city drove away customers, cost him revenue, and increased his operating expenses with their harassment and bureaucratic entanglements.

They never asserted that his restaurant was inherently unsafe or that he was engaged in some unhygienic practice. Their complaint, from the beginning, was that one signature he obtained from one contractor doing construction on his building was invalid because that contractor had allowed his license with the city to expire. Because of that, they hung signs in his windows informing the public that it was unsafe to eat there, driving away his custom.

This is the end result of the state. Empty buildings. Locked doors. Dark storefronts. Their actions result in failure, deprivation, and ultimately death.

I am not exaggerating here. This was the death of entrepreneurialism. This was the death of opportunity. This was the death of capital. This is the state in it's purest form.

The state can only manifest itself in death. It can not create, it can not encourage, it can not be a thing of brilliance. If it could, it would not require the use of force to achieve it's ends. The state is violence and oppression and death. Those who worship the state worship these things. Those who work for freedom and liberty are the ones who truly value life.

So now, there is one more dark empty building on the roadside. Where once commerce took place, now there is only silence.

These are your tax dollars at work.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism

Tomorrow is Another Day

2009-01-18T22:01:00.000-08:00

Everyone is caught up in the throes of a global economic meltdown. I've cataloged in the past how many of the contributing factors which led to this can be traced back nearly eighty years to FDR's New Deal, and even further back to the creation of the federal reserve and the inception of fiat currency in America, but history aside, we are living it.

Small businesses are closing their doors nation wide, and businesses are cutting hours, laying off staff, and reducing payroll. But they are not alone. Major international corporations are also feeling the pinch, and are desperate to find ways to survive. Gannet publishing, the largest U.S. based newspaper publisher, is going to be forcing some 40,000 employees nationwide to take one week off without pay in an effort to save money. Some have been forced to declare bankruptcy, including Circuit City, Nortel Networks, a leading producer of phone technology, and petrochemical giant LyondellBasell.

Of course, when companies reduce their employees pay through staffing cuts and unpaid furlough, they also reduce their expendable income, leading to further profit losses nationwide, necessitating ever greater spending cuts. When the economic upheaval reaches such a level, when it has pervaded the auto industries, the technology industries, the retail industries, the service industries, the manufacturing industries, even the pornography industry, businesses face no simple choices. Survival becomes a matter of making the right decisions, quickly, and trying to convince the consumer that the ever decreasing amount of expendable income he does possess is most wisely spent patronizing your establishment. Even then, without a lot of luck businesses will continue to fail.

But there is one corporate entity which is able to create solutions to their own economic shortfalls. That would be your friendly, benevolent, always looking out for what's best government. They're feeling the pinch too, but they've got some ideas. First, there's President Elect Barack Obama's economic plan. It includes

getting credit flowing again
reform the oversight and regulation of the finance sectors
supplement individuals who are struggling to make mortgage payments
improve oversight of taxpayer funded services
increase public welfare in the form of unemployment and food stamp benefits
supplement state costs for public services with federal funding
build more bridges and roads
make government buildings more energy efficient
computerize medical records
increase school funding
and making sure everyone has access to high speed internet

You can find more information on his plan at these sites, although specifics seem to be hard to come by.
http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/other-views/story/857902.html
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/09/the-paperless-obama-plan/
http://www.necn.com/Boston/Politics/2009/01/10/Obama-details-economic-plan/1231592146.html

Now, read that list slowly. Really think about it. You are a smart person. You are a capable person. You are able to answer some questions on your own. How will the government get credit flowing again, and if they could, why haven't they already? How will increased oversight, which I have shown you in previous articles is rank with corruption, regulatory capture, and waste, jump start a failing economy? How will more welfare programs and government stimulus checks improve the lives of people who will then have to fund those very expenses from their own pockets through taxation and inflation? How will increased federal spending to the states in the form of building improvements, road work, and public service reimbursements get you more money in your wallet? How will computerized medical records and high speed internet keep international corporations from going out of business? You are not stupid.

But you are scared, and it is that fear that the government is more than happy to use to manipulate you into supporting their initiatives. The reality is that increasing funding to our failing government schools, even if we grant the premise that they serve some positive purpose, which I don't, will not help get us out of this economic crisis. Even if increased funding was some benchmark of improved performance, and it isn't, the theoretical benefactors of that funding, the schoolchildren, are in no position to rescue this economy. While having high speed internet will certainly help some businesses increase revenues and cut costs, and computerized medical records would help streamline the medical industry making healthcare more affordable to some, neither of these moves is sufficient or integral to preventing a complete economic collapse, which is what we are facing.

Most important however, even more important than addressing whether or not any of these ideas are anything more than pure government opportunism, is where the funding for these schemes will come from. You see, government is facing the same financial hardships as the rest of us. In California, the state government has decided that in lieu of issuing tax returns to their citizens, they will issue IOU's, with the promise that when things get better, the citizens will get their money. Pause on that.

A tax return occurs because you accidentally overpaid the government ahead of time in estimation of your final tax burden. When your final tax burden was assessed, and they realized you paid them too much, they are supposed to return the difference. Imagine if you gave the clerk at McDonald's your money before you ordered your food, and when he realized you overpaid, he gave you back the change. Only in this instance, the state of California has decided to keep the change. It's not their money, it never was, they were holding it, interest free, against a future debt you expected to incur. Upon finding out that your did not actually incur that debt, or that it was less than anticipated, they are keeping the money.

This is no joke, and it is certainly no laughing matter. Only a state which claimed proprietary ownership of you, your possessions, your labor and it's fruits would believe that they have the inherent right to keep this money, and this state is doing exactly that.

In the state of California, some have suggested that the solution is more taxation, meaning that they should take away more of their citizens money, when they have already shown both incompetence in it's stewardship and an unwillingness to return what they have taken in error. Others have suggested that they should receive greater amounts of federal funds, meaning that the citizens of other states should be burdened additionally, in these uncertain times, so that someone deemed more deserving may benefit from what you worked hard to earn. All of this is being bandied about with little or no awareness of the irony of it all. That a failing idea can be fixed with stricter adherence to it's precepts, and greater commitment to it's goals.

Don't make the mistake of thinking that this sort of behavior is some kind of quirk of the California legislature, or that they are simply proposing these ideas because they have been out in the sun too long. This is how states do business. Circuit City has to entice you to spend money there, and failing that, they are closing their doors. The state on the other hand, simply takes what you have. If your resist, they use force. When you don't have enough for them to take, they take it from someone else. You exist only to fund the state, and your agreement is not necessary. That is how the state addresses tough financial times. We need only look to history to learn what they will do.

But ultimately, we know what they will do. They will simply create the money out of whole cloth. Oh, they will increase taxes and raise tarrifs and levy fines, but most will simply be imagined into reality. Some will be printed new, but a large percentage of it will never even exist. It will simply be created by an entry in a ledger, checks will be printed and passed, and numbers moved from column a to column b. The end result is of course the same, more inflation and devaluation. But that's a problem for another day.

And we still haven't addressed today's problems yet.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism

Same Stuff, Different Year

2009-01-08T18:46:00.000-08:00

The holidays are over, and as much as we may have enjoyed the momentary distractions of hearth and home, I know I did, the world at large once again intrudes into our daily lives. Bit by bit, news of corrupt politicians, government “solutions”, and violent police oppression seeps out of our televisions and radios and sour the new year.

Of course, the automobile manufacturers got their Christmas present and may have more on the way, and while we didn't get our money by New Year, congress is still planning on printing those checks. And though I can't take credit for predicting it, the porn industry is also applying for a bailout. While the chances that they will receive anything from the government are slim, they make a compelling argument. After all, if sales really are down more than 20%, hundreds of thousands of “actors,” directors, cameramen, key grips, best boys, composers, networking specialists, truck drivers, and sales clerks may be facing unemployment. If that argument works for the investment banks and the automakers, why isn't it good for the gander?

Then again, with Barack “the future” Obama set to take office in a few days, perhaps this is all idle frustration. After all, he has a plan. He says his plan will immediately help jumpstart the economy by doubling the production of alternative energy within three years, improving the efficiency of federal buildings and homes, computerizing medical records, equipping schools with 21st century classrooms, expanding broadband across the country, and investing in science and new technologies. I'm not sure what computerized medical records and energy efficient government buildings have to do with a global mortgage crisis begun over seventy years ago by the creation of government agencies designed specifically to create the kind of situation that exists today, but I'm sure he knows what he's doing.

By the way, that isn't sarcasm, I do mean that. I'm sure he does know what he's doing. I don't believe these people are idiots. Well, some of them no doubt are, and others are simply along for the ride, but many of them know exactly what they are doing. I saw a liberal propagandist on television the other night who proposed that “only government can save business.” His position was that businesses are crippled by the cost of supplying health care to their employees and that by assuming those responsibilities via a universal health care system, government would unburden businesses allowing them to thrive.

He's not stupid enough to believe this of course. Universal health care would have to be funded, and businesses would fund it through taxation. By putting the decisions in the hands of an organization as inherently and fundamentally inefficient as government costs will increase, meaning that the actual cost to businesses will be higher than if they chose to supply these benefits to their employees directly. And anyone who understands even the basic fundamentals of business economics know that businesses pass operating costs, including taxation, onto their customers, meaning ultimately the customer would pay more for the employees to have health care under a government system than they do now. Which in turn means less expendable income to spend, which means less business growth, not more. Of course, all of this ignores completely the fact that many, if not most, businesses don't offer health care, or have employees who choose not to take advantage of it, meaning that the costs alluded to aren't universal anyway.

The entire position is specious, but it is exactly the kind of argument used by statists to compel free people to relinquish their freedom. By creating a crisis that doesn't exist, “businesses can't succeed because of the cost of supplying health care,” and alluding to the suffering it could cause, “businesses may fail as a result,” they create a sense of desperation. Then they present the only possible solution. Give the government more power, and more money.

Of course at this point, the extrapolation stops. They don't want to discuss the next inevitable question, where will the funding come from, because the answer puts the lie to their position. They also aren't interested in discussion of whether or not their position is valid, or whether or not alternative solutions exist, which is why they spout ridiculous statements like, "the debate is over," or claim that only "ideological extremists" fail to support their position. Just because you arbitrarily call an end to debate doesn't grant you victory be default. In fact, any objective debater would take quite the opposite position. If you must call a premature end to debate in order to declare victory, your position must lack the merit to win when confronted openly and honestly.

The left doesn't own a monopoly on this kind of manipulation of course. Regardless of your position on international terrorism, I defy you to explain any possible situation where overseas adventurism prevents terrorist acts on American soil. There may be perfectly reasonable arguments for armed action in any number of scenarios, even preemptively, but arguing that it somehow prevents acts of violence against innocent people by well funded, creative, determined individual extremists, almost surely already here, and possessing no compunction against taking human lives to acheive their goals is whistling by the graveyard.

But the American public has not been taught much of argumentation. It used to be considered an important skill. It used to be considered an important part of intelligent discourse. Now it has been replaced with ad hominem attacks, argument by uninformed opinion, and a kind of penile comparison of “patriotism” and “depth of compassion” where people justify or dismiss arguments on passion instead of reason. Sadly, many people fail to even realize the difference.

So when Obama calls for “drastic measures” to avert a “crisis that, at some point, we may not be able to reverse,” “intelligent” people beg for deliverance. When a study declares that you are a racist because you are apathetic to the hurt feelings of others, “educated” people fall all over themselves to prove otherwise. When the government, who created the problem in the first place, insists that they can fix it, “free” people are more than willing to make “small” sacrifices today for nebulous promises of some future security.

No, failure here is inevitable. There aren't enough people who can even recognize the problem, and certainly not enough of those even who are equipped to address it. So enjoy the new year. Don't let it get you down. We don't have the power to fix it, not yet, so like a violent thunderstorm it must simply be endured. But with hope. For like the storm, it will pass. The light of freedom will pierce the dark clouds of oppression and someday our children, or theirs, will feel the sunshine on their faces. It will happen. It must. No sufficiently oppressed people will fail to seek their own freedom. No advances in technology are not coupled with advances in liberty. In the meantime, live as free as you can, and find joy where you may.

Of course, the statists know this, and will try to hinder or impede progress as much as possible. But ultimately, they can't turn back the clock. Just as feudalism and tribalism, slavery and serfdom, autocracy and theocracy, slide away into history, so too shall all forms of state authority. They can't turn back the clock, and in the end, it merely counts the seconds until true freedom is achieved.

Music is reversible, but time is not

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism

Dawn Comes in the Morning

2008-12-09T15:49:00.000-08:00

Sorry I haven't posted here recently. I've been busy with both the hustle and bustle of the holiday season as well as some personal hardships. These forces have combined to make me sit down and reflect on what I have. I believe that we are each confronted with difficulties in our lives, and few of them are unique, and that when this happens we must make a decision. Will we allow ourselves to be burdened and oppressed by the difficulties we face, or will we choose happiness? Will we make a decision, here and now and again and again, to focus on our own power and our own possibilities, and to find a way to press on with hope? Sometimes the wind is at your back, and sometimes you have to lean into it, but if we keep taking steps we will keep moving forward.

So in that vein I have been thinking about ways to achieve true freedom. Freedom from tyranny, violence, and lies. Instead of focusing on the problem we must focus on the solution. Society is an imagined construct, it can not act, and it can not hold responsibility. Instead, it is the individual who is always responsible for history. So what can individuals do to move away from statism and towards voluntarism?

Firstly, I believe that we can work to become divorced from the state system. Think critically about what services you rely on the state to provide, and find private solutions instead. Learn to be self reliant instead of reliant on others. If you rely on government schools, then school your children at home or in the private sector. If you rely on the government to provide protection, then learn to protect yourself and acquire the means to do so. If you rely on the government to insure the safety of the products you purchase and the foods you eat, then go out and do your own homework. Eat at restaurants where you know the food is safe. Read consumer reports and research vehicles before you purchase them. Ask for references before you engage in business contracts. These are simple activities that you can do which will increase your ability to be self reliant and decrease your need for the state.

Secondly, you can secede economically from the system. Purchase products from some online vendors or from private individuals where taxes are rarely collected and difficult to enforce. Engage in unregulated economic transactions where you can set your own prices and freely contract with others. If possible, relocate to parts of the country where taxation and regulation are less intrusive. Rely on private organizations for your charitable giving, not the state. Whenever possible, make decisions which will give money to individuals, and not to the state.

Certainly economic secession isn't the answer to the problem, but it can be one tool you can use to lessen the power of the state. Less taxation is still theft, but it is also less theft. Less regulation on private contracts between consenting individuals is still unjust, but it is also less prohibitive. Economic secession will not in and of itself put an end to the state, but it will enable you with greater resources, greater self reliance, and greater opportunity.

While you may find these actions to be redundant based on the fact that those services are supplied, at least theoretically, by the state, you must remember the poor job the state does at each of these things. Your children will receive far better education, and have far more opportunities as a result, if you educate them privately. Protecting yourself will yield far greater results than relying on others to do so. Houses in unregulated municipalities may not be safe, but then again they may be, and you can get them inspected and choose only to purchase those that are. There are ways to handle your own business, without reliance on the state, and you will find the rewards worth it.

And most importantly, the state will not be around forever. With every “economic stimulus package,” and every corporate bailout, and every government “solution” the problem gets worse. The system is unsustainable. It will fail. And when it does, you want to make sure that you will be one of the people ready to thrive, not one of the sheep struggling to survive. If the electricity quit coming through the wires, and the trucks quit coming into WalMart, and the water quit coming through the pipes, how long do you think most people would survive? How long before true chaos became the rule?

Unfortunately, this is the end result of the state, and it will occur. Look through history. Every time the state fails, the people who were raised to rely on it struggle, and many of them die. Yet many survive, and people find ways to go on. They lean into the wind and mankind perseveres.

The state solution is no solution at all. It ultimately results in hyperinflation and chaos. But that is the problem. Don't focus on the problem. Focus on the solution. Focus on how you can live a life of freedom. Someday the state will collapse. It may happen in two years, or it may happen in twenty, but I don't think it will take two hundred. You may have to live through that tough time, and you definitely have to live through these tough times.

So live the best you can. Take care of yourself and your family, and find ways to live life as a free person. Encourage others to do the same. Encourage your friends and families to be self reliant. Encourage people to educate themselves. Encourage people to seek their own solutions to their problems, instead of ceding more and more authority to the state. They may use violence to take what you have and shackle you in chains, but you decide whether you are free or a slave. A free man in chains can be an inspiration to those around him. A slave is no inspiration at all. Be free. Live free. And be thankful that you are. In that way, you can bring freedom to others. Raise you children to be free.

Someday there will be a generation of men and women who do not know the evils of statism. They will live unencumbered by the chains of tyranny, violence, and lies. They will prosper and grow and fall and rise based on their own merit. We can help to bring this about. We can live our lives with the knowledge that someday, people will be free and we played a part in bringing that about. We can make that happen.

We can make the morning.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism

Coming to a Country Near You

2008-11-26T19:49:00.001-08:00

1923 Weimar Republic inflation: A German woman feeding a stove with Papiermarks, which were more valuable as fuel than as money.

This is what happens when your money becomes worthless. This is hyperinflation. Today, be thankful this isn't you. Yet.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism

Tomato(R) Tomato(D)

2008-11-24T22:17:00.000-08:00

This country recently faced a difficult decision. Millions upon millions of Americans went to the polls to decide which of two men would lead our nation into the future. They cast their vote to determine whether tax and spend economics, foreign adventurism, government interference in the free markets, crony capitalism, violent oppression, vice laws, theocracy, and fascist control of businesses and private commerce were to be the law of the land, or, well, ummm...

While nearly half of those who recently voted in the national elections are somewhere between mildly disappointed and suicidal that their candidate lost in the election, I'd like to offer a slightly different perspective, which I believe may be both disheartening, and in its own way, comforting.

While the major media, both political parties, some corporate concerns, and members of academia would like you to believe that democrat and republican politicians can be easily pigeonholed, certain historical realities would seem to belie that fact.

You are supposed to believe that democrats want big government, social welfare, and peace, while republicans want small government, free market solutions, and war. Those in power propagate these stereotypes so that they can frame the argument to their immediate advantage in order to manipulate the people into voting for the leaders they want elected. In reality, both parties are more than happy to steal, spend, and kill whenever it meets their current needs.

Since Lyndon Johnson in the sixties, democrat presidents have overseen increases in spending which were smaller than the increases in revenue, while republican presidents have done the opposite. This means that while both parties have presided over constant increases in spending and debt, democrat presidents have actually increased spending less than revenue has grown, and republicans have drastically increased the debt by increasing spending far beyond the increases in revenue. So clearly, the myth that republicans want small government and less spending isn't historically accurate.

So what about social welfare? Well, since the fifties welfare spending has steadily increased, but it really started blowing up in the seventies. Regardless of which party was in power, the government has continued to increase welfare spending at an ever increasing rate. While they would like you to think that it is only democrats who increase welfare spending, this is simply untrue. And that is before you take into account corporate welfare.

Corporate welfare includes everything from tax cuts, and economic subsidies, to direct payments, loans, and bailouts from the state to private business concerns. In recent years, this kind of welfare has equaled something close to 100 billion a year, approximately one fourth of the total yearly cost of social welfare, but recently, this amount has exploded. 20 billion dollar loans to automakers, 160 million dollar loans to insurance companies, and 700 billion dollars worth of loans to wall street have all added up to nearly a trillion dollars in additional corporate welfare this year alone, more than twice the amount spent on social welfare programs, and all under a republican president.

This really only leaves the issue of war. While liberals cry out for peace while accusing those evil conservatives of being bloodthirsty warmongers, and those on the right wrap themselves in the flag and march ever onward into the teeth of the enemy, the history of this country has far more wars begun by democrats than republicans.

While modern republican presidents did get us into Grenada, Panama, Afghanistan, and Iraq twice, the modern democrat party is responsible for entering World War I, World War II, Korea, Viet Nam, Somalia, and Kosovo, as well as limited military action in Iraq, the Sudan, and parts of Russia, Africa, and Eastern Europe. You can hardly make the case that they have some kind of special monopoly on peace.

So if both parties believe in increasing government revenues and spending and debt, increasing the size and scope of government, and engaging in multiple overseas wars, which are used as an excuse to further increase the size and scope of government and its debt, then does it really matter which of the two major party candidates was elected?

Some of you still think it does. But I would propose that the difference between Obama and McCain was only in how they defined the problems facing this country. Obama thinks poor people are being taken advantage of. McCain thinks that people need helping sending their kids to college. Obama thinks that the government should pay for your health care. McCain thinks that the government should give you money, and you should pay for your health care. Both candidates think that the government should regulate your property rights, your right to bear arms, recreational drug use other than alcohol and tobacco and caffeine, your right to buy and sell goods, and to enter into contracts, among other things. Regardless of how they define the problems facing the nation, their solutions are the same. More taxes. More spending. More government oversight. More state authority. More power, less freedom.

So if your candidate won, I'm afraid you're going to be disappointed. He won't end war, or eliminate poverty and disease and injustice. He will increase the power of the state at the expense of the people. And if your candidate lost, don't feel too bad. Things won't be drastically different under the other guy than they would have been under your guy. You'll still have socialized medicine, an ever growing welfare state, and increasing public debt. Republican or democrat, they are almost all statists at heart. That R and D stuff is just to keep you distracted.

If you pay attention to their actions, instead of their words, the whole thing becomes pretty obvious. The two parties go back and forth, eating away at your liberties from the ends without every really repairing the damage done by the other. They aren't opposing each other, they're opposing freedom and liberty and reason. They're opposing you. Both of them. Always.

The only real difference between the two parties is the bumper stickers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism

It's Just Another Movie

2008-11-22T08:15:00.000-08:00

I know a man who is a local business owner. He owns a restaurant. One day, the city approached him in his shop and told him he needed to install a mop sink in the floor of his shop. Health code demanded it.

Easy enough. The very next day, he opened up the phone book and called a plumber to come out and install this mop sink. He paid the plumber, got his signature on some of the paperwork the city had left for him, and mailed it all of to the city. Problem solved.

A few weeks later, he received a letter from the city informing him that he was being fined four hundred dollars for failing to comply with health codes. He contacted the city and asked what health code he was in violation of, and they told him that they'd warned him to get a mop sink, and he'd failed to comply. He explained that he had in fact gotten the mop sink, and had sent in the paperwork to prove it. They told him that yes, they'd received that paperwork, but the plumber who installed the mop sink had an expired license, and so his signature was unacceptable, and so he would have to get a new mop sink installed by a licensed plumber. Finally, they told him that instead of a new sink, if he got an architect to approve the placement of the mop sink, and a licensed plumber to approve the installation of the mop sink, then they would approve his paperwork.

So he called another plumber. This man came out, looked at the sink, and said, you need a new part here, it will cost you twelve hundred dollars. The owner of the restaurant couldn't afford twelve hundred more dollars, on top of what he'd already paid to have the sink installed, so he called another plumber.

Before the third plumber could come out, he had a city health inspector arrive to inspect his business. The inspector looked at everything. His sanitation, his food safety practices, his cooking temperatures, and his mop sink, and approved. He passed his health inspection.

Later on, someone else from the city arrived and explained to him that because he had failed to turn in the approved documentation proving that he'd installed a mop sink, they were hanging a temporary public health warning in his front window. He tried to explain to the person that he had a mop sink, and offered to show it to him, but the city employee wasn't interested. The paperwork wasn't properly filled out, so as far as the city was concerned, it wasn't safe to eat here anymore.

People would arrive every day to eat at this man's restaurant, and as they approached the front doors, they would see the big yellow public health notice, and turn around and walk away. Time after time, customers who had arrived to do business with him left before even opening the door because of the sign in the window.

Then another plumber came to look at the sink. He said everything looked fine, but before he would sign the cities paperwork, he wanted eight hundred dollars for the inspection. So my friend called another plumber.

One day, someone from the city came to do a building inspection. They looked at his handicapped access, they looked at his emergency doors, they looked at his facilities, and they looked at his mop sink. Everything being in order, they passed him on the inspection.

Later on, someone else from the health department showed up and noticed the public health warning hanging in the window. They asked him why it was there, and he explained the situation. They called there supervisor, and returned to tell him that he didn't have to have the sign hanging in his window, because he was addressing the problem, so they took the sign down.

Then he had another plumber come out and look at his mop sink. This one said everything looked fine, and agreed to sign the city's paperwork. The papers were signed and delivered to the city, and for now, the problem appears to have been addressed.

But in the intervening months, how many customers turned away at his doors while the public health notice was up? How many hours were wasted by city employees, private plumbers, and this business owner while he tried to address their concerns? How much money was lost in travel expenses, unproductive man hours, and lost business?

Not because the city mandated that he have certain equipment in his business. Once they told him he needed a mop sink, he got it the very next day. Not because the city was truly concerned with public health, after all, merely having a mop sink is no guarantee that it will be used. Not because the city was concerned with compliance, because he offered to show the city inspectors where the mop sink was, and they informed him it wasn't the sink, but the signature, that was the root of the problem. Not because he was failing to meet health or building codes, because he passed his inspections.

No, all that waste was the result of paperwork being filled out improperly. You can argue that it was his responsibility to ensure that his plumber was licensed, but once the work was done, and the paperwork sent in, he believed the problem was addressed. The reality is that this kind of thing can only happen under an oppressive state authority. He needed a mop sink. He called a professional. He got a mop sink. That wasn't at the root of the cities concern.

They didn't really want him to get a mop sink. They wanted him to get a signature from someone they had previously approved. Someone who was paying them money in exchange for permission to operate a business. When it turned out that the person he'd contracted to do the work wasn't paying his protection money, they punished my friend. Not because it was his fault, but because they have a vested interest in making sure that the only plumbers who can get business are the ones who have paid for the privilege. Otherwise, no one would pay.

And so like so many other government practices, they punish the consumer for the actions of the provider. Because the plumber failed to keep his protection money current, the consumer is punished for purchasing his services.

This is the kind of insidious consequence of living under subjugation. In order to ensure that people will comply with their theft, they set enforce their demands with violence. No men with guns arrived to shut down his business, but if the city had decided to shut him down, and he had decided to stay open, you can be sure the men with guns would not have been far behind. They can't allow for people to ignore their edicts, even in the simplest things, or else no one would listen.

What if the city had shown up and put him out of business, mop sink and all, just because he had the wrong signature on his paperwork? How much would have been lost then?

For want of their fees the signature was lost. For want of a signature the
mop sink was lost. For want of a mop sink the business was lost. For want of the business the savings was lost. For want of the savings the mortgage was lost. For want of the mortgage the home was lost. For want of the home the life was lost.

For want of a nail the kingdom was lost.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism

Santa Claus is Coming to Town

2008-11-21T08:21:00.000-08:00

For now, congress has closed the door on a proposed bailout of the major American automakers. Lawmakers feel that the automakers failed to convincingly argue for their need for the money, as well as describe a plan for how they would restructure their business model once they had the money so that they wouldn't have to come begging for more in a few months.

But congress didn't close that door completely. They've given the automakers two weeks to come up with a new plan. If they can, and they are “convincing” enough, then congress will consider giving them 25 billion dollars of tax payer money. Of course, that would be in addition to the 25 billion dollars of tax payer money that congress has already given the automakers, just two months ago.

So if we just gave them 25 billion dollars, and just two months later they need 25 billion more dollars, then is it now the role of government to subsidize the American auto industry to the tune of roughly 150 billion more dollars a year from now on? Apparently, the successful self reliant people of this country are now being called upon to fund not only failed individuals, and failed banks, and failed insurers, and failed agricultural industries, but we are now to fund failed automakers as well.

Part of the defense of an auto bailout is that we can't afford the loss of jobs nationwide. By some estimates, as many as 1 in 12 American jobs is dependent on the auto industry, and every day the number of proposed job losses grows by leaps and bounds. They argue that if this industry fails then America will face further economic hardship, and that we just can't allow that to continue.

So you see, it's really in your best interest to bailout these auto manufacturers. After all, we can't afford to lose jobs, or to lose the revenue generated in the economy by this industry. But what if it were the porn industry? By some estimates, pornography generates between 4 and ten billion dollars annually. It also employs thousands of people, from actors, to directors, sound and lighting technicians, camera men, internet tech specialists, delivery drivers, and store clerks. If the porn industry were to suddenly face economic collapse, and all those people were facing unemployment, and all that money was going to disappear from the revenue stream, do you think congress would consider bailing them out, even though it would require far less money to do so?

Let's pick something a little less controversial. How about video games? In 2007 the industry made close to 19 billion dollars, more than twice that of pornography, and employs roughly 25,000 people in the U.S. alone. What if this industry were to face collapse, possibly causing programmers, marketing personnel, hardware manufacturers, delivery drivers, and sales clerks to all face unemployment? What about all the boutique stores which specialize in video games? They would also face shutting their doors. What about all the online video gaming services? What about all the ancillary marketing that takes place in and around video games? Even Barack “the future” Obama advertised in a video game recently. Would the government consider bailing out this industry, even though it would cost far less than the 25 billion dollars the auto industry is asking for again? What about all those poor video game fans who would lose their sole source of enjoyment in this world?

I think we all know the answer. While congress is more than happy to bailout insurance companies like AIG, and banks like CitiBank, and automakers like GM, there is no way they are going to bailout the pornography industry, or the video game industry, or the cigarette industry, or the firearms industry, no matter how many jobs stand to be lost. It doesn't have to do with the welfare of the people, and you know it. It has to do with who has the ear of the king. And because of that, you also know that the automakers will get their money, they'll just have to wait until christmas to open their present.

The idea that a proposed loss of jobs is any justification for government subsidization of private industry is based on pure fear mongering. You could be next! You could lose everything! If we don't act, the whole country will descend into chaos and zombies will roam the streets! It's ridiculous. Remember before they passed the 700 billion dollar wall street bailout bill, you know, the one they still haven't spent a dime of, and they were telling everyone that people would be thrown out on the street, and get kicked out of school, and no one would get their paycheck next week because business used credit to pay their payroll, and your ATM wouldn't give you money? Remember how they said that would all happen if they failed to pass this bill? Well, they still haven't spent a dime of it, and yet, you still have a home, and kids still go to school, and your ATM still works, and you're still getting paid. Now that doesn't make any sense. Hmmmm.

It is the same dog and pony show here. Everyone will lose their jobs and have to start eating rock soup if the automakers go under. Baloney. People will still need jobs, so there will still be jobs. People will still need to get places, so there will still be cars manufactured and sold. Maybe these companies won't be doing it, and maybe the companies that do won't be paying as much, but maybe that means they'll have a stable business model that won't require regular injections of government subsidies to survive.

Besides which, the worker doesn't own his job, and doesn't have any specific right to be employed. The company owns the jobs. The worker owns his labor. The company exchanges a job, and monetary compensation for the labor that the worker can provide. The more difficult, unpleasant, or skilled the labor the worker is able to provide, the more money he is generally able to get in return for that labor. It isn't GM's or our government's responsibility to employ anyone. If GM has a job, and you have labor, you may enter into a contract with them to exchange the two. Just because people might lose jobs doesn't justify using stolen money to prop up a failing business so that people can do jobs for which there is no current market demand.

I'm not saying there isn't a demand for cars, clearly there is, and so there is also a demand for people who can make cars. What I'm saying is that if there was a market demand for cars to be produced under the business model that these companies are using, then they wouldn't be facing complete financial collapse. Clearly, there are other auto manufacturers who are not facing complete financial collapse, because there is a market demand for their business model. It isn't that people don't need cars, it's that these failing companies are failing to produce them in a cost effective manner.

And that shouldn't be any surprise. After all, they know damn well that they can simply appeal to the king for money whenever their purse is light. And so what if it comes off of your back, the government is going to send you a bailout check soon too, so you don't need to worry. They'll just keep printing money, and passing it out, and everything will be fine. I'm sure that'll work.

It always has before.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism

Those Who Reject the Argument

2008-11-20T08:14:00.000-08:00

Well, there you go. It took a little longer than I'd expected, and certainly some of those articles were a bit dense and lengthy, but there are the answers to the six great challenges. They are by no means exhaustive. I was trying to inspire you to think about these concepts in a new light, not to put forever to bed the questions. As I said at the beginning, the answers I've given you here are only possibilities, no one can truly say how the market would meet the demand for education, or roads, or currency going forward, because we've never been truly free of the state.

Further, I told you at the beginning that no answer would suit the committed ideologue. That is still true. Many people support the state for many different reasons, and to some, no alternative, no matter how rational and well reasoned, no matter how their interests could be served, no matter how plainly you paint the image of their suffering, could sway them to deny it.

I believe that people support state authority for many reasons, but at their most basic, I believe these reasons can be summarized in four motivations.

The first is simple ignorance. I don't meant that in a derogatory sense, nor to imply a lack of intelligence or education. What I mean to say is that most people have either never been confronted with, or never even imagined, the idea of a stateless society, except perhaps in the most limited “Mad Max” sense of the concept. It's not that these are irrational or unintelligent people, they simply haven't looked at the issues yet. These people are the easiest to reach, you must simply present the cases for and against the state, and they are able to come to the conclusion on their own.

The second reason people support the state is out of base self interest. They are getting something from the existence of the state and so seek to maintain the status quo. They are not necessarily bad people, or even greedy people, but they believe they profit in some way from the state. This can range from welfare mothers to corporate executives, there is no social class which holds the monopoly on this position. These people see their lives as improved by state action, and so will cling tenaciously to their benefactor. These people can be reached. You must simply show them in a convincing way how their lives would be improved free from theft and violence. Just as no social class is singular in their view of the state as their provider, so too is no social class unique in their suffering under the weight of government authority. We all suffer the theft of wealth from the economy. We all suffer when innocent individuals are lost to the war on drugs, or poverty, or terror. How many innovations or works of art have we lost because the government stole the wealth of those who would have created them? How many philosophers and scientists have we lost because their ancestors were killed by government violence before they were conceived? All are punished.

The third reason people support the state is fear. They are afraid of being preyed upon. They are afraid of their fellow man. They are afraid of responsibility. They are afraid of being self reliant. They are afraid of being unique. And so they turn their sovereign authority over to others. I've heard people say “humanity isn't ready to be free from subjugation.” I've heard people say “If I had a gun, I know I'd be irresponsible with it, so you shouldn't have one either.” This kind of thinking is irrational. They are so confined by their fears, that they blindly accept oppression and domination for some measure of perceived security. These people will be far more difficult to convince, because their position is not based in logic. You can't argue or educate or enlighten them out of this hole. You can attempt to show how their security would be vastly improved, and you can attempt to address the root of their fear, but since they are constrained by emotion and not reason, there is only so much you can do for them. We must teach our children to act on logic, not on feelings, this is the only way we can someday address those who would sacrifice everything, and everyone, to their passions.

The final reason people support the state is simple evil. They see the state as a means of gaining power over others, and they pursue that means as far as they can. They relish in the ability to crush hope and life and justify it all by hiding behind the morality of the majority. It's ok to hold slaves, because everyone agrees, except the slaves of course, but they don't get a vote. It's ok to put people in prison camps because we were elected to defend the nation. It's ok to imprison millions of non violent Americans because most people don't agree with their hobbies. Like sadists, these people find gratification in the suffering of others. They can not be reached. They are beyond reason, beyond emotion, and beyond compassion. There can be no compromise with evil.

I don't mean to imply that everyone who supports vice laws or terrorist internment or other forms of government oppression are evil. I believe that like all support of the state, their behavior can be generally ascribed to the four previous motivations. Certainly some are evil, but some are afraid, or gain from the system, or simply don't know any better.

I believe that most people fall into the first category, with the majority of those remaining falling into the second. There are a small amount which fall into the third, but they are mostly individual beneficiaries of state action. The fourth category is the most vile, but also the most limited. There are very few people, even amongst our government, who are truly evil. The woman working at the DMV, though she supports an oppressive idea that your property must be licensed and registered with the government, and that by extension you only own and operate it with their permission, is not an evil woman. She wants what most people want, to feed their family and pay their bills. She doesn't see that her paycheck comes from money stolen from her neighbors, and if you pointed it out, she'd say, “Well that's just tax money.” Just tax money. People say it everyday as though that justifies everything.

Even those charged with using violence on behalf of the state, law enforcement and military personnel, are not generally evil. They believe as they have been taught. That they are the protectors. That they are doing right. That they stand against evil. And often they do. When a cop kills a murderer to defend the innocent, he has stood against evil. But when he pulls a person over for failing to display their license plates, arrests that person, impounds the vehicle, and writes the person a fine, he has done evil. He doesn't know it, and wouldn't see it, but it's there none the less.

Most people can be reached. You must simply sit down with them, listen to their fears, and explain the situation. They don't always come around immediately, but if they are objective and honest, and seek truth above all else, they will eventually. There is simply no other logical consequence. Only those blinded by emotion could come to any conclusion other than a stateless society.

If uninstigated violence is inherently wrong. If theft is wrong. If slavery is wrong. If man has the right to create his own life with his own hands, free from the oppression of others, than there is only one solution. Half measures are a compromise with something we know to be wrong. There can be no justification for rape and murder, no matter how dire the consequences, nor how mitigated the act. If evil is wrong, than any evil, in any measure is equally so. There can be no question of degrees where upon doing evil becomes doing good. If we are truly to be free, we must be wholly free. We must put aside any state, and all states. One may be better than another, but none are truly righteous. Only individuals, in a perfect state of freedom, oppressing none, can be truly righteous.

We can be truly righteous.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism

The Scale of Economies part IV

2008-11-19T07:12:00.000-08:00

Well, there is actually ample historical precedence for how this would be accomplished. When credit cards first achieved widespread usage in America, there were no stores accepting them. The credit card was invented before there were signs in every window proclaiming “We accept all major credit cards.” How was this possible? How could a private means of exchange become liquid?

By the provider of that means of exchange offering certain benefits to merchants willing to accept it. In this case, credit card companies offer guaranteed payment on debt, and simplified transactions. They even offer the less obvious benefit of encouraging customers to spend more money than they may otherwise by divorcing the expense from the point of sale. Because of the money illusion, customers are more willing to swipe their card for one hundred dollars, and send a hundred dollar check to the bank later, than they are to remove five twenty dollar bills from their wallet for the same purchase.

These may not seem like incredible benefits to you, but look around. What major company doesn't accept credit cards these days. By offering a few simple and inexpensive benefits to merchants, credit card companies have convinced nearly everyone to accept their private means of exchange, and even to pay a fee to do so.

Private currencies could do the same. They could offer benefits to merchants such as, guaranteed exchange in any currency of the merchants choice for their currency, or even offering to discount their currency to merchants who agree to accept it by 1%. While that may not seem like much, imagine what a business could do with a 1% increase in operating funds over the course of a year. The company providing the currency would make the expense back when everyone decided to buy and use their currency because of the vast number of merchants willing to accept it.

Merchants either accepting or requiring a variety of different currencies wouldn't be a major burden on the consumer either. Consider that regardless of your individual bank, all companies that accept checks will accept your check. This isn't because they know your bank and have an agreement with them specifically. It's because banks have agreements with each other to honor debts and credits. This is done through clearing houses who oversee the financial transactions. This system would continue to exist.

And if you used automatic deposit and withdrawal from your bank account? Banks that wanted your business would offer services where they would convert your currency to the currencies accepted by your creditors at the most favorable exchange rate to you. Any bank that didn't offer this service would run the risk of losing their customers to one that did.

So liquidity isn't really an issue either. Private local currencies, such as the Ithaca Hour, have no problem encouraging local companies to accept them as means of exchange. In fact, companies are happy to do so, because it increases their business and frees up other forms of currency for trade outside the community.

What other concerns do people have, now that we've addressed fungibility, liquidity, and stability? Well, what if the company providing the currency goes bankrupt? Would that leave the bearers of their currency penniless?

Any reputable private currency company would make their business and management practices open to the public and highly transparent. Any company that didn't would automatically be viewed with skepticism and avoided by most customers. In fact, some private currency companies already do this and as a result, the well managed companies are able to increase market share and stability. If consumers saw their currency provider struggling, they would have an incentive, and more importantly an opportunity, to take their business elsewhere. An opportunity you don't have under the current fiat money system.

Additionally, competitors who recognized a failing currency provider could offer incentives to his customers to move over to their currency, such as offering to exchange his currency for his competitors at 105% value. Customers would be only to happy to switch over to his currency for a 5% increase in their holdings. Again, this already happens between banks who offer financial incentives to their customers to close their checking accounts with their competitors and open new accounts with them. These aren't ground breaking concepts, their already in practice.

In reality, private currencies already exist in the form of private credit cards, checking accounts, local currencies, and electronic money transmitters. These are real private means of exchange, they just aren't generally thought of in those terms. They aren't a fairy tale or a myth, and the systems for their viability are already in place. The only real difference is that most of them are backed by fiat money instead of real commodities, and that change would only be for the better.

Governments don't want private currencies because in order to be viable they would have to be stable and resist inflation, and that doesn't allow for them to steal the wealth and leave the people empty handed. So they want you to be scared. Hopefully now you're less scared and more equipped to consider the idea of private currencies and stateless economies. Hopefully you can now take a rational view of how they would work, and what you stand to gain. Hopefully now you have begun to think about what you want in a currency, and who's offering to fill your market demand. Once we educate the uneducated, only the truly evil will stand in the way of rational thought.

That will be the easy part.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism

The Scale of Economies part III

2008-11-18T16:23:00.000-08:00

The most common objections people have to private currency are fungibility, liquidity, and stability. By showing how private currencies can address these three fears, we are able to put to rest the reasoned objections to the idea, leaving us with only the blind irrational fear of the uneducated, and the malevolent self interest of those invested in the continuance of the state system, to overcome.

Fungibility is the property of good or commodity whose individual units are capable of mutual substitution. What this means is that any one unit of a commodity is equal in value, and can be traded for, any other single unit of that commodity. For instance, one united states penny has the same legal tender value of any other united states penny, or one barrel of oil has the same current value of any other barrel of oil. On the other hand, precious stones, such as diamonds, are not generally fungible, because one diamond is not the same as another diamond.

Fungibility has nothing to do with the trade value of the commodity against other goods and services. That is liquidity. An asset is liquid if it can be easily traded for other dissimilar assets without varying to any great degree the value of the assets being exchanged. For instance, a five dollar Federal Reserve Note has high liquidity because it can be traded for a great number of varying assets, such as McDonald's happy meals, without changing the value of either the five dollar note, or the happy meal.

Assets can be fungible, or liquid, or both. A mass produced plastic fly swatter may be fungible, but good luck trading it for anything of value. At the same time, while livestock can be easily traded, no two animals would be considered fungible.

Stability in this case refers to the property of a commodity to maintain a relatively predictable inherent value over time. With money, this is achieved by backing the currency with real asset and making that currency redeemable on demand of the bearer for is value in that currency. Currently, no major world economy practices this, which is why we have global economic upheaval, fluctuating exchange rates, and market inflation.

Generally, buyers of currency want their money to be fungible, liquid, and stable. That means that units of the same value are interchangeable, that the currency can be easily traded for real assets, and that the value of their currency will be relatively predictable going forward, allowing for real asset management. No widely held currency on this earth currently meets all three criteria. Most are fungible, many are liquid, and none are stable. So in discussing the possible pitfalls of private currency, we must first recognize the problems that exist with the “monopoly” money we use today.

By buyer of currency, I mean the individual. Any time you accept currency in exchange for goods or services you are in effect purchasing that currency. So, when you sell your used car, you are buying currency at the price of a car. When you collect interest on your savings account, you are buying currency from the bank at the price of allowing them to hold and invest your money for a short period of time. When you collect your paycheck, you are buying currency from your employer at the price of your time and labor. You are not a passive receiver of money. You are in fact, the purchaser of real asset, and as such, have a right to demand that that asset have and hold real value.

The reason its important to understand about your role in purchasing currency is because the makers of it, in this case central banks, understand their role in selling it to you. In fact, they make money doing it. Not only does the central bank make money by selling the money to the government, but when you purchase that currency yourself they stand to profit. For instance, if you collect the U.S. State quarters, then every time you buy one, but fail to spend it, the mint makes a profit. They count on this. Its called seigniorage. The government estimates they've made more than $5 billion dollars just on the state quarters that have been removed from circulation by collectors. Isn't that nice. Its like a secret little tax no one knows about that they use to increase revenue. A lot like a secret little tax no one knows about that they use to increase revenue.

So how could private currency address fungibility, liquidity, and stability? Well, fungibility is relatively easy. By printing consistently identical currency, and backing that currency with a commodity of real and sustainable value, such as precious metals or fossil fuels, each unit of currency will have the same relative value and can be easily interchanged. Stability is similarly addressed by the same measures.

When a currency is backed by, or even made of, a real commodity of consistent value then that currencies value will also be consistent. This is why historically currencies were either made of, or backed by, precious metals which hold a constant value by weight and purity. Unfortunately for the state, this made it hard to uncontrollably increase the money supply in order to fund the many wars they wished to participate in, and so they divorced the currency from its commodity backing and left it to “float.” The reason governments can get away with this is because of the money illusion.

The money illusion refers to the tendency of most people to think of their money in nominal terms instead of real terms. For instance, many people would say that there is no nominal value difference between a five dollar bill now, a five dollar bill ten years ago, and a five dollar bill eighty years ago. However, the reality is that in the last eighty years, the five dollar note has lost so much value, that what was five dollars then would cost you nearly sixty dollars now. Here's a quick little calculator to show you how worthless your money has become. By disguising the devaluation of the currency through inflation and seigniorage, and relying on the money illusion, the state is able to hide its theft from the people.

So private currencies could easily address fungibility and stability by backing their value with commodities. For that matter, so could fiat currencies, but then they wouldn't really be fiat currencies any more, and the state couldn't print them in any quantity they desired to fund their violence. So liquidity is the real concern.

How could private currency issuers insure their buyers that the currency would be accepted as means of exchange?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism

The Scale of Economies part II

2008-11-17T17:10:00.000-08:00

Let me ask you a question. Go back to the nightmare scenario where you are starving to death, cold, alone, and in the dark. Someone approaches you and offers you food, shelter, clothing, and electricity, in return for your time, your labor, or some physical commodity you do possess. Would you be willing to discuss terms of exchange, rather than suffer and die?

If the answer is yes, then you are already on the path towards understanding how a stateless economy could work. If the answer is no, and not based on fear, or ignorance, or pride, but really truly objectively no, and you would rather suffer and die than engage in commerce then I have bad news for you. No system, with or without a state can help you. Your self destructive behavior will bring you only ruin, and you will accomplish nothing with your life.

For the rest of you, you have already grasped the basic tenant of commerce. I have something you need, I need something you have, and we trade. It's uncomplicated and rational. I explained in my post on Fiat Currency about the coincidence of wants and the need for intermediate forms of exchange, so you already understand why currencies exist. The question now is how currencies exist, and how they could exist free from the state.

While the government maintains its violent monopoly on the printing of currency, several independent organizations have attempted to introduce their own private means of exchange. Ithica Hours, Toronto Dollars, and Calgary Dollars are all examples of private local currency. These currencies are used by community businesses to buy and sell goods amongst themselves. Any company who agrees to accept these currencies as legal tender may, even if they are from outside of the community, but since most of the businesses currently accepting them are locally owned and operated, most of the currency is reinvested in the local economy.

Other forms of alternative currencies include electronic currencies such as PayPal, which buys liquid currency from one user in exchange for electronic credit, and sells that currency to another for a fee, and Mon€o, which allows users to convert French currency into electronic currency and then spend that at retailers, who can then convert it back to French currency. These types of electronic currency are essentially backed by the locally traded Fiat Currency, but exist as separate means of exchange. There exist also a number of companies which offer digital gold currency. This type of currency is similar to representative gold notes which are redeemable to the bearer on demand for an equivalent amount of gold in grams, troy onces, or on occasion dinars.

I give these examples in order to illustrate a simple point. Alternative currencies are a reality. They have existed in competition to national currencies, they exist now, and they would thrive in the absence of legal tender laws and government monopolies. Legal tender laws historically exist to force people to accept money that they would not if free from coercion.

On their own, sellers would never accept valueless currency over valuable currency. Instead, valueless, or “bad,” currency would disappear from circulation and only valuable, or “good,” currency would be used. It is only when governments enforce legal tender laws that buyers accept bad currency. Under legal tender laws, bad currency drives out good, because sellers use the bad currency to purchase goods while hoarding the good currency, and buyers have no choice but to accept it. Meanwhile, the good currency may have greater intrinsic value than face value, and so can be traded against its intrinsic value instead, or traded internationally at greater than face value where legal tender laws may not have jurisdiction. This is called Gresham's Law.

It is specifically because of Gresham's Law that governments attempt to prevent the printing and pressing of private currencies. They know that their currency could not possibly compete with real commodity backed currencies, so they force buyers to accept their bad currency by law, knowing that in so doing they will push good currencies out of circulation.

But even in the face of government raids, legal tender laws, and a coercive violent monopoly, alternative currencies are spreading. The internet is being used to further the creation and use of electronic currencies. Communities are using their own local currencies concurrent with, or even instead of, fiat currencies. More and more people are trading energy, precious metals, and commodities for goods and services. And this is all because people know that the fiat currency is garbage, and they wish to trade value for value. Even when the state tries to prevent it, the market seeks fair trade. Value for value.

So, knowing that alternative currencies exist, and knowing what we desire in an alternative currency, how could the market provide them? How could they address people's fears of fungibility, liquidity, and stability? How could banks simplify exchange between competing currencies? How could buyers and sellers make sure that they avoided the coincidence of wants problem by always trading in common currency? Well, there are answers to these questions, but before I lay them out for you, consider the situation we have now.

People all over the world use different currencies. How do international banks make sure that international debts are payed in the proper currency? How do border towns conduct business with migrant customers? How are sellers able to accept a variety of major credit cards for the same good or service? How does your local pizzeria accept your check regardless of what bank it is written against? How do online sellers do business with people all over the world? Perhaps competing currencies work better than the man with the gun would like us to believe.

Perhaps it would work after all.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism

The Scale of Economies part I

2008-11-16T22:54:00.000-08:00

When people are confronted with the idea of a society devoid of government, they inevitably ask how the economy would work. How would people purchase goods and services? How would those goods and services be produced? How could people have faith in any monetary system which wasn't universal and monopolistic? How could competitive forms of currency be accepted consistently by varying businesses as means of exchange?

It's easy to understand how this kind of question can be raised. First of all, many people have little or no education in economics. I'm not saying they're stupid, or that their question is stupid. I'm just pointing out that they may have never been instructed in some basic ideas about markets, competition, and currency. Think back to your education. How many classes did you take in high school that dealt specifically with economics? What instruction did you receive, even in basic household economics such as budgeting, and balancing credit and debt? How many college courses were you required to take which addressed free market economics? What did they teach you in school about the gold standard, commodity based currencies, planned economies, supply and demand, or basic business structure?

Unless you chose a career in accounting or business, your formal education probably didn't include much about these topics. I know mine didn't. Even if you went into finance, you probably only learned a little about economic topics not directly related to your specific field of expertise. That's why I say it's easy to understand why people would ask these questions. For most people, their understanding of money, and it's role in their lives, is limited mostly to their day to day financial concerns. And that's what lies at the root of this question.

When people ask how an economy would work absent state oppression, they are asking a question which on its own may determine their position on voluntarism. What they are really asking, at its most basic, is will I survive. Will I be able to buy food? Will I be able to heat my home? Will I be able to even pay for shelter? Clothes? Much less other services such as education, transportation, and entertainment? What they are asking is, if the state disappeared, would I be able to survive, or would I die starving to death, alone and cold in the dark?

Fair question. Fortunately, the answer is that yes, you would survive. In fact, the quality of your life would improve dramatically. Freeing the monetary system from the currently established violent state monopoly would introduce more value, greater reliability, and more stability to all forms of currency. In a number of ways it would lead to both an improved quality of life for everyone, and a more efficient means of exchange, resulting in less waste and more purchasing power.

I've already established that our currency is worthless. It's backed by nothing, accepted in trade only because of the threat of violence, and has actually lost the vast majority of its theoretical value since its inception. In addition, the government has gone to great lengths to stamp out any perceived attempt by private individuals or groups to set up a competing form of currency. They have also attempted to teach in their government schools that un(state)regulated forms of currency and banking lead to chaos and suffering.

But the reality is actually quite different. Free banking, or systems of private currency and banking, benefit from the positive effect of competition which exists in any market system. In fact, an objective look at the history of free banking, will show you that while the systems were effective, it was repeatedly government intervention in the market system which led to bank and currency failures. When the government put laws in place which gave banks legal protection to change interest rates in violation of their customer contracts, they did so. Many of the concerns raised by people new to the idea of competitive currencies, such as would competing banks accept each other's currencies, have in fact already been encountered and addressed successfully.

But before we get too far ahead of ourselves, we must establish what it is that makes money uniquely important, and what features and benefits we would want to see in our currency. Remember, features are something a product does, and benefits are something a product does for you. Since under a free market system of banking and currency money would be bought and sold and subject to the same forces as any other good or service, providers would have to cater to us, the customers. So as a customer, what would I demand in order for them to secure my patronage?

Well, the value of money is that I can use it as an agreed upon basic unit of exchange to enter into commerce with a wide variety of individuals, offering a variety of goods. Instead of only trading the chickens I raise on my farm for everything I need, I can simply trade those chickens for units of currency and then trade those units of currency for the things I need. That way, I'm not prevented from acquiring milk just because the dairy farmer is a vegetarian.

So, understanding the importance and role of money, I would want money which was easily portable, widely accepted, held its value over time, and could be exchanged on demand for real asset. Not everyone will have the same criteria for their currency, and so competing currencies will inevitably arise. Some may wish their currency to be environmentally friendly. Some might wish it to be aesthetically pleasing. Some might wish it to be backed by specific industries or accepted internationally. Ultimately, it isn't important. Where there is a demand for a service, the market will meet it.

What we need to do is examine some ways that demand could be met, and how the consumer could protect himself from fluctuations in the marketplace. While opponents of free banking and alternative currencies will always resort to scare tactics and appeals to emotion, we must instead appeal to our rational selves, and seek the truth of these matters.

Please allow me to present you with my two cents worth.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism

Those Poor Unfortunate Souls part II

2008-11-15T20:57:00.000-08:00

In 1991, private citizens gave roughly 300 billion dollars worth of charitable donations, both in time and money. That included approximately 42% physical resources and 58% donated time. The same math gives us a total of nearly 700 billion dollars worth of resources donated in 2006. By comparison the American government spent approximately 1.3 trillion dollars on welfare in 1995, both through direct benefits and tax credits, roughly 20 percent of GDP. In 2006, the percent of GDP was roughly similar, but the growth in GDP in the United States resulted in that twenty percent increasing to roughly 2.6 trillion dollars in welfare expenditures.

So while the government stole and redistributed approximately 2.6 trillion dollars of private assets, individuals donated nearly a fourth as much on their own, free from government coercion, even after as much as 70% of their nearly worthless money has already been stolen from them.

But there is evidence that government subsidies to private charities actually decrease individual donations. This occurs for two reasons, one, private individuals are willing to allow their seized tax monies to replace their charitable giving, but also, charities reduce their fund raising efforts after receiving government grants. So when the government gives money to charities, it decreases the amount given by individuals.

And what about the people who are receiving money from the government? While there is some evidence that approximately 18 percent of welfare recipients move out of poverty within one year, studies show that more than twice that percentage amongst the poor not receiving welfare are able to do so. When left to their own devices, people are forced to find ways to survive. The majority of those who receive government welfare, more than 80% of them, do not move out of poverty.

One reason for that is the welfare trap. A person receiving welfare has an incentive to stay on the dole. People don't like the argument, and some will argue that it's cruel to point it out, but the reality is that in economics, you get more of what you subsidize, and you get less of what you tax. Welfare creates a perverse incentive, where some recipients are arguably better off to stay on the dole than to attempt to join the workforce.

Not all will feel that way of course, but the maximum amount of possible benefits ranges from $11,000 to $36,000 in some states. Those benefits can include housing, food and food stamps, utility subsidies, and even clothes, transportation, and a variety of other services. Not all people will be eligible for all benefits, and not all those eligible will elect to take advantage of all the services offered, but some will and many could. And those benefits are tax free.

So why would a person who was receiving between ten and forty thousand dollars a year, tax free, for doing little or no work at all, choose to get a minimum wage job working forty hours a week making less than $12,000 a year after taxes? Perhaps because they have pride. Perhaps because they see it as an opportunity to get ahead. Perhaps they see it as the start of a new life where they can move up from an entry level position through hard work and promotions. But perhaps they don't see the incentive at all. And that's why many of them, once on the dole, stay on the dole.

Private charities on the other hand are in a much better position to see to private needs. If a person on the dole has their car break down and can't get to work, the government will tell them to wait until their next check comes in. A private charity on the other hand, could give them money today to get it fixed, or pay for a taxi, or give them a new car. They are able to diagnose and address the need immediately, while the state can only incorporate them into their bureaucracy. Under the state, some will be helped, most will be hurt, and all will be oppressed.

I come from the teach a man to fish school. Even toiling under oppression, people are willing to do what they must to survive. Those who support the state as the solution to perceived social injustices believe that they are doing people a favor by adding their names to the welfare roles. I believe that we would do people a greater good by encouraging them to become self sufficient. And we could. And when we did, there would be far fewer people in need of real aid. And those in real need could receive it.

I've already shown how a stateless society would do a better job of educating the people, and education is an important part of staying out of poverty and off welfare. In fact, a study from 1992 showed that more than two thirds of welfare recipients had the lowest levels of literacy, well below that of unskilled laborers. Additionally, victims of child abuse are more likely to be on welfare later in life, and I've shown how a stateless society can address psychopathic behavior and reduce violent crime. Already we can see how the number of those applying for assistance would decrease in the absence of the state. But would charitable giving increase in the absence of the state? I believe it would.

And there's evidence to support that belief. For one thing, when comparing people with similar incomes, those who work give more than three times as much as those who receive government assistance, even though they have roughly the same expendable income. For another, those who believe that the government does not have a responsibility to take care of those who can't take care of themselves are 27% more likely to make charitable donations than those that do. The reality is not that people who don't support social welfare are selfish, or cruel, or uncaring. It's provably the opposite. They believe that charity is important, and should be the responsibility of individuals, not governments. Accomplished not through theft and violence, but consciously and freely given.

So once we reduced the number of people applying for charity by improving education, health, and opportunity, while decreasing violence, crime, poverty, and disease, what would we be left with? Well, there would still be some who through no fault of their own became mentally or physically disabled. There would undoubtedly be others who chose a life of poverty. I believe that the $700 billion dollars we already give would cover those truly in need, without even taking into account the increases which would occur in the absence of the state. When their money had more value, and 70% of it wasn't being stolen from them, people would be more willing to give to charity. So could a system with fewer hungry mouths and more to go around support those truly in need?

The answer is yes. And it wouldn't rely on violence and theft to do the job. No matter the need, there can never be a justification for inflicting suffering on one person so another person can benefit. That yellow brick road leads to evil. We tiptoe down it, thinking one step at a time can't hurt. But the reality is it hurts not only the person we intend to suffer, but also the person we intend to help.

Able bodied people can and will find ways to survive. The truly unfortunate can and will find help in the charitable acts of their neighbors. We need to find a path to humanitarianism which does not sacrifice the rights to life, liberty, and happiness of some for the sake of others. The dogs of society will howl, but we have to ignore them.

We have to decide where our future lies.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism

Those Poor Unfortunate Souls part I

2008-11-14T08:03:00.000-08:00

Only a monster could be confronted with the amount of suffering we see in the world and not be moved. Poverty, sickness, death, crime, man's inhumanity to man. In the face of such things, most people are stricken with a great sense of loss, and helplessness.

Often, when confronted with the idea of a stateless society, people fear that the weakest amongst us would be left behind. Children, the disabled, those barely able to achieve subsistence due to poverty or disease. Regardless of what group of people you are most concerned about, they are the unfortunate. Those who, either through some unfortunate twist of fate or through their own missteps, have fallen by the wayside. Perhaps they have become wards of the state. Perhaps they exist only due to the efforts of charity. Perhaps they have lost everything and slipped through society's cracks, and live now homeless and hopeless, waiting only to die.

Most people are caring individuals, who want little more than to feed, clothe, and shelter their families, and be able to enjoy some measure of peace and freedom in their lives. When they are confronted with the idea of the unfortunate, they see in these sad examples their own mortality. How often have you heard things like, “What if it was your sister,” or “I can't imagine having to live like that,” or, perhaps darker, “Better him than me.”

It is their immediate and visceral reaction to empathize on some level with the unfortunates. They see that part of their humanity which all people share reflected in these poor souls, and feel fear. It is understandable. To do otherwise would reveal them to be uncaring.

And so, having never before entertained the idea of an alternative to the state to address the unfortunate, they fear for them and by extension for themselves. What would happen if the “safety net” of the state wasn't there. What would happen to these poor souls without the state there to help them out of poverty, to help them out of sickness, to help them recover from disabilities or at least to exist with them, to help sick children recover? What would happen if the same fate were to befall us? Who would be there to help?

First, you must consider the question. If a person is really, honestly concerned with the well being of the unfortunate, then they are already presenting the solution to their own problem. The unfortunate have always been, and will always be, on the receiving end of charity and benefaction. Those who truly care about others will see to their well being. The other alternative is that the person presenting the challenge doesn't really care about the unfortunate and is simply arguing the point, in which case they are hypocrites who are attempting to obfuscate the situation by raising concerns they don't genuinely hold. So, if you are presenting this challenge, then ask yourself, do I care about the well being of others, or am I simply antagonistic to voluntarism and really couldn't care less about my fellow man? I'll not judge your response, but understanding your motivation will help you to define your position.

I choose to assume that most people who raise this objection are genuinely concerned with their fellow man. They legitimately care about what happens to the weakest amongst us, and want what's best for them. If I am right, and what's best is their concern, then it is incumbent upon us to determine what is really best.

In order to do that, we will look at how private and public charitable acts work. What is their effectiveness? How many people are helped, and how successfully?

It is my position that people are helped best when they are helped just enough to succeed, but not so much as to encourage them to become dependent on the assistance to the exclusion of their own action. They should be taught to be free, not kept in perpetual bondage. A slave need not fear for shelter or food, because his master will wish him to be strong enough to work. A free person must effort his own existence, but in so doing will find opportunities far beyond those offered in subjugation.

So, does government create a system which encourages self reliance, or does it create a system which encourages reliance on others? How are private and public systems of charity funded, and which use their funds to greater effect? These are the kinds of questions we must answer in order to determine what is truly best, not only for the unfortunate, but also for ourselves. Remember, it is our own fear, our recognition of our universal humanity, which drives our empathy for others. It is in our own best interest to aid them, not in any way we can, but in the best way we can.

Are we?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism

Educating the Children part III

2008-11-13T08:33:00.000-08:00

The average cost per student to the government schools is often quoted as being somewhere in the range of $8,000 dollars per year. However, this figure only considers direct spending on student instruction, and fails to account for the associated costs of infrastructure, including future pension obligations and administrative costs. In some districts, once adjusted for these considerations, the cost per student is tripled. In D.C., the average cost per student is nearly $25,000.

By comparison, the average tuition cost of private schools is less than $5,000 per student. And already 11% of America's children are being educated in private institutions, even though their parents are already paying for them to get a “free” education from the government.

In fact, while the government schools are failing our children, private schools are succeeding. But that isn't the concern raised by most people. The concern you hear most often is that private schools are only for rich people. This however, is also patently false.

If you research the government school system in America, you will find reference after reference touting the benefits of universal “free” education. Think back to our discussion about the roads. The schools are not “free.” We can easily see that it costs as much as $25,000 dollars to educate a student in some government schools, where do you think that money's coming from? It's coming from the taxpayers. It is privately held asset, seized through force, and directed towards a service many people will never use.

I've already pointed out the cost difference in educating children in government versus private schools. The reality is that private schools spend far less to educate students than do government schools. Part of the reason people are afraid they can't afford to privately educate their children is because of the burden put on them by government.

In order to afford the ridiculously inflated cost per student in the government school system, the government must spread that cost across the entire taxpaying base, not just those who have children currently attending the schools. That means that many people who don't use the schools are paying for them anyway, and in order to educate your children privately, you must in effect pay twice for their schooling, once to the government, and once to the private school.

Often people argue in favor of taxation by pointing out that you get something in return. But my parents pay taxes to fund the government school system and their children are not in it. I pay taxes to fund the government school system and I have no children. You may argue that we all benefit from a well educated youth, and I would agree, but we've already seen that the product of the government school system could hardly be considered well educated.

Think of it this way. If I mug you on the street, but in return I give you a poorly crafted hammer, does that justify my crime? Is it ok to steal as long as you give something in return, even if that item is of poor quality, was never asked for, and may never be used? The answer has to be no. Yet that kind of logic is used to support taxation to pay for government schooling.

In reality, if you eliminated taxation and the government school system, there would still be a need for education. There always has been, and as you have seen, that need has historically been fulfilled in the absence of government intervention. The concern about cost exists in part because families are having to pay twice for private education, and in part because there is no perceived need for low cost private schooling for low income families. After all, they can attend the “free” government schools.

But where there is a need for low cost private schools it is being filled. In economically depressed parts of the country, there are still private schools, and they charge some of the lowest tuition rates in the country as a reflection of the local economy. If the government school system was abolished, there would be an immediate rush to fill that void with a wide range of schools offering different services at different prices.

Look at it this way, not everyone eats at Red Lobster. Not everyone eats at The Four Seasons. Not everyone eats at McDonald's. But everyone eats. Entrepreneurs have filled every market niche in food service, because there is a need. And they have established a menu of prices and services to fit every economic level.

It would be the same in education. Private schools cost less than you think. There wouldn't only be schools for the rich, because the poor have money to spend as well, and someone would find a way to offer a service to them, at a lower cost, and yes, possibly a lower level of service, which they could afford.

Before you argue that that means only the rich would get the good education, I must remind you of a few things. Right now, the government school systems use force to fund a poorly performing system which graduates one in five functionally illiterate pupils. In the absence of government, there would be far less poverty than there is now, resulting in far more people being able to attend more expensive private schools. The cost to the average consumer, to attend a good private school now, is less than $5000 per year. In the absence of the state, with valuable currency and no taxation, in a system where schools truly had to compete and parents weren't paying twice for their children's education, $5000 would be easily affordable.

And there would be schools which charged far less than that. All those students who are currently attending the “free” public school system would still need an education. Schools would rise up overnight rushing to fill the need of the consumers. This always happens. Remember when everyone got excited about low carb diets, and suddenly every restaurant was offering burgers wrapped in lettuce and every grocery store had lean chicken and low carb frozen entrees? When the market perceives a need, it fills it. In a variety of ways, at a variety of costs, it finds a way to get every consumer it can to buy every product they can. That's how the market works. It works in food service. It works in transportation. It works in communication. It works in education.

If we're smart enough to let it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism

Educating the Children part II

2008-11-12T08:26:00.000-08:00

Prior to the institution of government schooling in America, there was near universal literacy. In 1840, nearly 97% of the free adult population could read and write. Additionally, between 55 and 70 % of free school aged children were attending private academies. Another 20 to 30 percent were still being educated at home at that time. The overall rate of education for free people in America was roughly 75 to 99% by region. This was prior to government schooling.

It was around this time that the States began to separately legislate compulsory schooling. At first, the laws only required that students attend what we would today consider “elementary” school, and allowed for private schools. Over time, and under the banner of “common education for all,” states attempted to outlaw private schools all together, allowing for a government created monopoly on schooling, but in Peirce v. Society of Sisters, the Supreme Court ruled that free citizens had the right to determine the course of their children's education, although the more basic question of whether or not the state had any right to compel education was not addressed by the Justices. In fact, the appellants argued that,

No question is raised concerning the power of the state reasonably to regulate all schools, to inspect, supervise and examine them, their teachers and pupils; to require that all children of proper age attend some school, that teachers shall be of good moral character and patriotic disposition, that certain studies plainly essential to good citizenship must be taught, and that nothing be taught which is manifestly inimical to the public welfare.

But perhaps we should raise that question. With the advent of compulsory education, the government was now able to use their monopoly on education as a tool with which people could be trained, coerced, and punished. White legislators denied funding for black schools, and even poor white schools in the south. In the north, where the local governments saw fit to educate their black citizens, literacy amongst black people was significantly higher.

Further, while they claimed that their interest was in promoting literacy to boost the economy, we have already seen that literacy was near universal prior to compulsory education. In fact, from the inception of compulsory education to 1993, functional literacy had fallen by between 30 to 50%. Roughly half of adults surveyed were barely able to fill out basic information about themselves on a form, find and interpret simple phrases from short passages, or do basic single digit mathematics, “using numbers that can be easily located in printed material.”

So if in fact, the stated goal of government provided compulsory education is literacy, they have failed miserably. Worse, public schools have become a breeding ground for juvenile crime and violence. In 1999-2000, 71% of schools reported some incidences of violent crime, with 20% of public schools reporting a serious violent crime such as rape, assault, or murder. The frequency with which students at public schools reporting being the victim of violent crime is nearly 50% higher than that of their private school classmates.

Government schooling, which was pitched as an effort to increase the educational level of the people, has clearly had the opposite result. Rates of functional literacy have lowered, basic knowledge and skills has decreased, and scores on standardized testing have actually fallen, as reported by the government itself. Either we are to believe that the state truly has our best interests in mind, and they are completely incompetent and so we must seek alternatives, or we are to believe that this is a systematic attempt to dumb down the education level of the proletariat, making them more dependent on the state and less likely to seek their own freedom. Either way, the results are clear, and so too must be our actions.

Poor education leads to poverty, crime, sickness, depression, and death. A good education is no promise of freedom from these things, but it gives a person a better chance going forward. So how can we get a good education, and how much would it cost?

How much is government education costing us now?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism

Educating the Children part I

2008-11-11T16:22:00.000-08:00

Many consider the education of the future generations to be one of the most important responsibilities of any society. I have already shown you that education leads to less crime and less poverty. It can also lead to less sickness, less depression, healthier marriages, and longer lives. Even pre-school education has a proven positive net effect both on the individual and on society as a whole. It would seem irrefutable that education is the foundation on which any successful thriving society must be built.

Perhaps that is why so many, when confronted with the idea of a stateless society ask, but what of the children? How would they be educated? Who would fund their education? Without compulsory education, how could we be sure they would receive any at all?

It is the fundamental duty of society, in the eyes of many, to provide for the education of the young, and without the constant threat of state violence, how could we possibly fulfill that duty? That is what I hope to answer. I will provide you with some evidence of how education was provided before compulsory government education, and show you how it is provided now. I will offer some ideas of how it could be provided in the absence of the state, and some on how it would be funded. It is my hope that even if you fail to fully accept the ideas I will present, you will at least be opened to the idea that the government is not the only answer to the question of how education can be provided, and that in fact, it is a poor provider which has failed our children in every way.

I have already conceded the need for a good education. Even the very poor education which our children receive under the compulsory government school system can be shown to increase longevity, wages, and mental health, and decrease poverty and incidences of destructive behavior. I will not argue against the positive role education plays in the lives of everyone who is blessed with it, nor will I effort to convince you that anyone would be better off without it. Some would argue that education isn't for everyone, I strongly disagree. Regardless of the career path a person chooses, be they inventor, author, or garbage collector, an education can only serve to improve their quality of life. Certainly, the world needs garbage collectors, but I would rather live in a world where they are well read men of reason. No one's quality of life is diminished by expanding their mind and increasing their potential.

The fear that without the state many would go uneducated is based in large part on faulty reasoning and fear mongering, both of which I argue are encouraged and propagated by the state. It is based in the misconception that prior to compulsory government education, only those privileged and wealthy few had access to education, and that the vast majority of boys and girls were unlettered and ignorant. This is simply untrue.

In prehistoric man education was generally passed through oral tradition. Men and women were generally grouped in small, nomadic communities, and information was transmitted from generation to generation through poetry, dance, song, and practice. Children were taught all the skills they needed by example. It was a system which relied heavily on apprenticeship and immersion.

With the advent of animal husbandry and crop domestication communities began to move away from hunting and gathering and towards settled communities based around an agricultural economy. While this resulted in more stable social and technological advances, it also resulted in a move away from a system of economic egalitarianism, where each member of a society was required to know all the basic skills to survive and had equal access to resources, to one of specialization and division of labors, where different members of the society developed a range of unique skill sets specific to their role in the community. This also made it more difficult for the full range of necessary skills to be translated to the next generation through oral tradition, and so with the advent of written languages in roughly 3500 BCE, information could now be transmitted through the written word and specific knowledge could be taught individually to those members of the community who required it. Over time this would lead to knowledge being concentrated in libraries and institutions of learning, where interested students could have access to an ever growing collection of knowledge.

In some parts of the ancient world education was reserved for those in service to the state, or the very wealthy, while in other countries some degree of basic education became generally widespread. As time would go on, vocational education and basic knowledge would become more and more the responsibility of the family and the employer, while higher education was available to those who could afford it.

During the middle ages education was closely related to the activities of the local religious organizations. Whether in Asia, Europe, or the Middle East, it was primarily those religious leaders who were charged with the education of the young. Much education took place in Buddhist temples, or Mosques, or Churches, and was heavily influenced by the local religious traditions of the teachers. Much of what we think of today with regards to institutions of higher learning comes from this period in history. During this time, education became available to more and more people, both as a consequence of its growing importance in society, and due to the increasing economic power of the people brought on by advances in technology and trade.

Around the 16th century, countries throughout Europe and Asia began to institute laws regarding compulsory education. While many of these laws called for the universal education of children, they did not initially require that the educational institutions to be provided by the state. In fact, many of these laws required that communities establish private schools which were to be funded by tuition funds.

Even after the general institution of compulsory education, most education remained private. In America, it wasn't until the mid to late 19th century that universal government schooling became the law throughout the country. Today, while the majority of the education in America is provided by the state, a growing percentage of students are being educated in alternative school settings, including private schools, charter schools, and home schooling.

I offer you this brief history of education so that you can see that it has not traditionally been the state which educated children. Traditionally it has been provided, either for profit or charity, by communities, religious institutions, families, and employers. It is only in the last few hundred years that it has even been mandated by the state, and only for slightly more than a hundred that it has been provided by the state, and even then only in the first world.

But what was the quality of schooling before compulsory education? What opportunities were available to parents who wished to educate their children? What was the literacy rate and education level of the population at large? What did society look like before the state took over the education of the youth?

And what has society looked like since?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism

The Problem of Evil part III

2008-11-10T14:48:00.000-08:00

David D. Friedman wrote a poem called “Anarchy is not Chaos,” the final verse of which reads,

Now law and order, on the other hand
The state provides us for the public good;
That's why there's instant justice on demand
And safety in every neighborhood.

Even removed from its context, the absurdity of this verse is obvious to every person living in this country now. A study done in 1999 by the Hearst Corporation showed that,

81% agree that politics influences court decisions; 56% feel that most juries are not representative of the community; 68% do not agree that it is affordable to bring a case to court and 87% feel that having a lawyer contributes a lot to the cost of going to court; only 10% felt that courts in their communities handled cases in an excellent manner with 20% feeling that criminal and family cases are handled in a poor manner and 30% feeling that juvenile cases are handled in a poor manner; and 44% felt that judges were out of touch with what was going on in their community.

Obviously, citizens of this great nation feel little faith in the system of justice they are presented with now. They feel that the system of “blind” justice which we are currently being afforded by our leaders is politically corrupt, out of touch, and ineffective. Under a stateless society, justice would be purchased on the open market, just like anything else. Systems of justice which were viewed as corrupt and ineffective would soon find themselves out of business. Judges whose decisions were seen by the public as unfair or innapropriate would no longer be hired to arbitrate. There are already examples of this kind of justice system elsewhere in the world.

Another solution to this kind of problem would be Dispute Resolution Organizations. Dispute Resolution Organizations, or DROs, would oversee contract agreements between parties and arbitrate any disputes over those contracts. For instance, if one person contracts to provide labor for another, they would submit their contract to a DRO for ratification. Implicit in the terms of the contract may be clauses dealing with early termination of the employment, such as forfeiture of monies or property.

What's more, the DRO needn't resort to violence to enforce the terms of the contract, they could simply record the offenders failure to abide by his contractually agreed upon obligations, making it impossible for him to engage in future contract action until and unless he abides by any outstanding arbitration. Ebay already uses a similar system of reporting on their website. Users who do business in an honest and positive manner increase their reputation, and by extension their business, while those who are dishonest or fail to meet customer expectations get a lower reputation and lose customers as a result. A more detailed explanation of how DROs can handle civil disputes can be read here.

But DROs can also be used to resolve criminal action. Individuals could insure themselves against criminal action with their own DROs. Anyone who became the victim of criminal behavior would appeal to their DRO for satisfaction. Having done so, their DRO would contract with private investigation in order to determine the identity of the perpetrator. Once they identified the criminal, they would contact his DRO and inform them that he was suspected of criminal activity and that they would be pursuing prosecution.

If the prosecution was successful, his DRO would immediately contact the offender's banking institution and recommend freezing any assets held by the offender in order to pay for the prosecution as well as compensate his victim.

You see, our current criminal justice system is retributive in nature. At some point, we began to equate evil action with time out. Certain crimes call for a specified amount of time locked in a box. No effort is made to compensate the victim, or to return him to the state he was in prior to the crime. Instead, the criminal is punished for what he did to society as a whole, and the victim must find some measure of satisfaction in the suffering inflicted on the offender. Under a compensatory system of justice, the criminal is required to make reparations for his behavior directly to the offended parties, the victim is made whole again, and the criminal is made responsible instead of made to suffer.

If the crime were of a non-violent nature, and satisfaction could be achieved through financial reparations, then monetary compensation may be sufficient. The offender would be considered a high future risk, resulting in higher insurance fees and fewer opportunities to contract with others, but even these costs may be mitigated over time if he shows a real intention to reform his behavior.

If however, the crime was of a violent nature, and financial reparations were insufficient to make satisfaction, then his DRO could give him two alternatives. Either he could agree to a period of therapy and education while he worked to support the costs of his own rehabilitation, after which time he could return to society, or he could be blacklisted. No one would contract with him. He could be denied all services, including energy and water. Since the roads would be privately owned, he couldn't even leave his own home because people would deny him access to their property. If anyone chose to do business with him, they would be aiding a convicted and unrepentant offender and could be similarly blacklisted. With no food, water, or energy, and no way to leave to get resources, the offender wouldn't last long on his own.

But what of false accusations? A false accusation can be as damaging as the crime it alleges. Under a compensatory system of justice, false accusations would be resolved by the DRO of the accused counter suing the accuser. Once adjudicated, the falsely accused party would be compensated by the seized assets of the accuser. You can learn more about how DROs can address criminal behavior by reading Caging The Devils: The Stateless Society and Violent Crime.

It can be seen that the voluntary society has the ability to address civil and criminal justice in a far fairer and more reasonable fashion than our current system. It can help to prevent crime before it is committed by educating the youth more effectively, and decreasing the environmental factors which can contribute to psychopathic behavior. It can reduce poverty and increase opportunity. It allows for non violent arbitration of disputes and eliminates violent activity related to vice crimes. The small amount of remaining crimes which may occur can be effectively investigated, prosecuted, and resolved.

In the beginning, we established that the fear of crime was rooted in our fear of mortality. We are still mortal. But we can face it as free people. We need not let our fear prevent us from acting in our best interest. The state is oppressive and cruel. Behind its every action is the specter of the very violence we fear. We must allow reason to rule our passions. We must be willing to explore freedom as an alternative to subjugation. We must still face death, but we need not fear it. Seasons don't fear the reaper, nor do the wind, the sun or the rain.

We can be like they are.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism

The Problem of Evil part II

2008-11-09T00:34:00.000-08:00

The first and most important thing to remember is that violent crime is far less common than many people fear. I've already shown in the bigger gun argument that the odds of being a victim of a violent crime are less than half of one percent. What many people don't know is that only 3% of all crime results in injury. Violent crime is not the constant bogeyman that many people imagine, but it does occur, and we must try to understand why, if we wish to understand how to prevent it.

There is no single explanation for rape, assault, and murder. Any specific instance could have one factor or many, and there is no single theory for why these crimes are committed. Some common theories are anger, fear, and sadism.

Crimes committed as a result of deep rooted anger tend to be explosive and compulsive in nature. They may be brutal and violent, and may occur sporadically. Such a criminal may lash out, choosing his victim seemingly at random, and then behave for some time thereafter. But eventually he will lash out again when his anger reaches its boiling point.

Crimes committed as a manifestation of fear are the result of feelings of inadequacy on the part of the perpetrator. He or she feels weak and incapable of making themselves important or noticed. In these cases, the goal of the attack is to feel power over the victim. Often the criminal will only use enough violence to control the victim, and will demand that the victim validate them emotionally. Since this is inevitably a fiction unsatisfying, the criminal will offend again and again, thinking that their next victim will make them complete, often resulting in habitual behavior.

The final motivation is sadism. This criminal has so focused on their own aggression and violent tendencies that they have become sexualized. This criminal derives pleasure from the suffering of their victims and will often spend a significant amount of time planning the assault, which may become bizarre or ritualized. They will often attempt to extend the suffering of their victims so that they can take pleasure in their continued anguish, often culminating in the death of their victim.

All three of these motivations are the result of psychopathic behavior. Psychopathic behavior is the result of the interaction between genetic predisposition and environmental factors. While some genetic markers for psychopathic behavior will inevitably be passed from generation to generation, environmental factors, such as parental neglect, poverty, and a poor education can all be addressed by society, even in the absence of the state, thereby reducing incidences of psychopathy and by extension, violent crime.

A 1993 study found that nearly half of adult Americans are functionally illiterate. Another study by the Justice Department found that one fifth of high school graduates can't read their own diplomas. And while statistics show that slightly more than half of the of inmates in state prisons have a high school degree or its equivalent, only approximately 11% have any college education. And when a high school degree doesn't necessarily equate with literacy, it isn't exactly a sign of a good education.

A study performed by the Rand Corporation in 1996 showed that incentives to complete a high school education were among the most effective strategies to reduce crime rates, more than three times as successful as draconian “three strikes” laws. Even early education at the preschool level has proven effects on reducing adult and juvenile crime. In the Department of Justice's “Blueprints for Violence Prevention” they found significant evidence that training parents on proper parenting techniques, and encouraging the education of young people were important factors in preventing criminal behavior later in life.

But the government schools don't do a good job of either educating the young, or encouraging continued education. Studies have shown that private schools have almost twice the graduation rate as public schools when comparing students of similar income levels in the same area. Other studies have found that,

In the majority of cases, private schools are more effective than government schools, and more efficient as well given their lower expenditures. Academic achievement is usually significantly higher in private schools, holding student characteristics constant, and these gains are most often robust to controls for peer group effects when these are included. The earnings of private school graduates may be significantly higher as well, though the weight of evidence on this point is more limited.

Privately-managed schools tend to have better-maintained facilities and more orderly classrooms than government schools. This is true whether the private schools are government subsidized or not, but the difference appears to be largest between unsubsidized private schools and government schools.

The evidence is overwhelming that privatization of the schools leads to better education and higher rates of graduation. Since we have shown that education is a key element in reducing adult crime, it is clear that once again, the private sector is better equipped to address this issue.

I have addressed in previous posts how poverty would be drastically reduced in a stateless society by virtue of the increased value of currency and the removal of the drain of government taxation. We have now also seen how the state fails to properly educate its citizens, and how the private sector does a much better job. The final important factor is proper parenting.

Mistreatment of children doubles the chances of those children committing crime later in life. Additionally, approximately 20% of abused children grow up to become abusers themselves, leading to a repeating cycle of abuse, crime, and victimization. Helping parents to learn proper parenting techniques can reduce child neglect and juvenile crime by 50 to 60%. In Britain, the courts have begun ordering parents of delinquent children to attend parenting classes in order to reduce juvenile crime. The British government has done studies on crime prevention which they say have shown that parental education is “the most cost effective way to reduce crime.”

Many different organizations offer parenting education. A simple google search for “parenting classes” returns over one million results. Hospitals, churches, online courses, people have a wealth of resources to assist them in becoming better parents. Parents who fail to educate themselves can not blame a lack of opportunities. Instead, those most in need of education are the ones most likely to resist assistance.

So how could a stateless society encourage those parents most in need of education, and most likely to raise future offenders, to improve their parenting? One way would be through social censure. In a society owned entirely by free people, those who mistreat their children could face denial of basic services. Parents known to be guilty of neglect could face higher insurance premiums unless they enrolled in and completed education courses designed to reduce their high risk behavior. Since there is a proven connection between poor parenting and criminal behavior, all of society would have a vested personal interest in offering and promoting continuing education for all parents, not just those with a demonstrated history of neglect.

Having shown how a stateless society could holistically address crime prevention, we must finally address how it would handle those unavoidable instances of criminal behavior which would on occasion occur. How could a society, lacking the massive law enforcement apparatus of the state, protect the good from the bad and remove the true monsters from amongst the innocent?

How could it make you safe?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism

The Problem of Evil part I

2008-11-08T07:30:00.000-08:00

Evil. It is pervasive. It has always existed. It has been a part of human existence since our very beginning. Regardless of your religious or spiritual belief system, or lack thereof, there are some generally agreed upon evils which good men and women fear. Rape. Assault. Murder. Theft. Fraud. Arson. What is this fear rooted in? How does government address the very real danger of evil men? How could a society without government address it? This discussion may at times become dark and challenging, but it is one we must have.

What is it about these crimes which makes them so fearful to us. I propose that it is the theft of the only thing which is ours by natural right. Our lives. We must gain through labor every other thing in our world. But our lives, our bodies, our manifest energies are ours from birth. They are given to us, free of charge, and all the days which follow from that are ours to create.

Certainly, they are not completely free. Our mothers must ingest a huge amount of energy in order for their bodies to create the tissue necessary for us to come into being. Our parents spend an enormous amount of their resources educating us, feeding and clothing us, sheltering and protecting us. But the body itself, it is ours. And every breath and every day we have to cherish as our first, and most true possession.

And when someone commits evil against us, they attempt to take that singular possession away from us. Either through tortuous action, such as rape, through deprivation of our future potential, in murder, or through confiscation of the physical embodiment of our energies, in property crimes. We must learn to understand the root of our fear, and why it is so wrong for these evils to be committed against us, if we are to truly understand how best to defend against them, and how to make ourselves whole once we have suffered them.

Humans fear their mortality. Much of human history has been an effort either to defeat death, or to be remembered after we die. Artists have filled museums, legions have conquered foreign lands, and statues have been erected in the honor of great men, all in an effort not to be forgotten after they were gone. It is the subject of every major religion, and has been addressed by poets, authors, and scientists throughout time. Some scientists believe that in the future we will be able to achieve some kind of immortality, but for now, many people live in fear of losing their life.

It is precisely that fear which drives this challenge to a stateless society. Without the state to protect me, what will keep evil men from taking either my life itself, or the symbolic representations of it? It is this fear that prevents fair, intelligent, open minded individuals from rationally considering and discussing any alternative to the state law enforcement apparatus as a viable means of protection and justice system. Passion rules reason, and so, they find themselves trapped by their fears. I will seek to address some of those fears, and show how a stateless society could not only prevent evil more effectively, but also address it more justly after it has occurred.

In my response to the bigger gun challenge, I laid out a case for the inability of the government to deter crimes before they are committed, protect you from crimes while they are being committed, or adequately resolve crimes after they have been committed. I have repeatedly pointed out that your self defense is your responsibility, and only yours, always. I know it may seem I belabor the point, but it is important to do so, because many people have chosen to abdicate that responsibility in the mistaken belief that others will take up the mantle for them. It simply will not happen.

No one else can ever be as concerned with your well being as you can. No one else is as personally invested, and everyone else has their own well being to address first. Even if you decide not to act in your own defensive self interest, that doesn't alleviate you of the responsibility to do so, or make it any one else's obligation. Even if you actively hire bodyguards and security personnel to protect you, it is still your responsibility to make yourself safe. Relying on any other force, private or public, to act in your defense, even if they are contractually obligated to do so, while refusing to act in your own defense is folly. You must rely on yourself.

So the first and most important thing that people living in any society, stateless or otherwise, must do is prepare for their own defense. This doesn't mean that everyone has to be a gun toting martial artist, although I strongly advocate both firearms ownership and self defense training. Instead it means that you must make decisions in your life which limit the dangerous situations you put yourself in, understand fully how your decisions impact your safety, and maximize your chances of surviving danger when you encounter it.

Everyone has the right to engage in dangerous behavior. If you wish to walk around a dangerous part of town with large quantities of money while drunk, you certainly have that right. And just because you are engaging in dangerous behavior doesn't give anyone the right to victimize you. At the same time, when they do, you must accept the fact that you have put yourself into a situation which increases your chances of being victimized. It never excuses evil when innocent people make themselves easy targets, but making yourself a hard target can go along way towards limiting your encounters with evil men.

But sometimes evil things happen. Evil people break into homes where no one is doing anything to make themselves a target. Sometimes, even when a person is doing everything right, they can still become the victim of evil. So how would a stateless society address these instances of truly, unmitigated, random violence?

First, we must classify crimes as crimes of forethought and crimes of passion. Deliberate evil action requires planning, motive, opportunity, and means. Crimes of passion occur generally without prior preparation and are the result of a person improperly responding to stimulus they are unprepared for. Crimes of forethought are the result of evil, while crimes of passion are generally the result of an inability to cope.

Many of the crimes which occur are the result of government prohibition. Without government, there are no more vice laws. This means that all non-violent vice crimes evaporate immediately. Additionally, because the extremely high profits of vice crime are the result of prohibition, and these high profits fund a large number of related criminal activity, much related crime evaporates as well.

Take for example a drug dealer. He is able to sell his product with an extremely high profit margin because of the difficulty the customer has in acquiring it. Under the current system he is forced to resolve all business disputes extra-legally, because he is prohibited from appealing to the state law enforcement apparatus. Often, this results in violent action.

Under a stateless society, he is able to sell his product legally, which means others are too. Remember, in free market capitalism the goal isn't to make as much profit as possible, it is to make as little profit as possible, and make your fortune by increasing your volume. If you have too high a profit, then your competitors will undercut your prices and put you out of business. So now he's competing for customers with the general store and the pharmacy. Now when he has a business dispute, he is able to hire a private arbitrator to resolve the dispute. He needn't resort to violence, and if he does, his customers and competitors can pursue legal action against him, which they are unable to do under the rule of the state. Suddenly the cost of criminal activity surpasses the cost of honest business, and with his legally acquired profits, he can no longer afford to fund criminal behavior.

Many other crimes occur as the result of our depressed currency. When people are unable to afford basic services, they may turn to crime in desperation. It doesn't excuse their decision, but it is important to understand the factors which may motivate people to steal. Without government, their currency would have more value, and 70% or more of it wouldn't be going back to the government. Now affording basic services is no longer the burden it was before, and people are less likely to resort to theft when a few hours of work could produce better results, without the risk of legal repercussions.

But property and vice crimes aren't really what concern people. Rape, assault, and murder are what concern people.

So what factors contribute to rape, assault, and murder?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism

The Utilities part III

2008-11-07T07:12:00.001-08:00

So having seen that the cost of services would certainly adjust, in many cases downward, and that the value of your currency would skyrocket, we can now put cost to bed as a concern with regard to public services. We have addressed the role of government in providing public services. Now I will address the viability of private providers.

We've already seen that many of the public services are being provided by private interests now. The few services which are primarily state owned and run are the roads and the postal services. Even in those areas, private providers are already supplying more and more of these services to the public. But they could easily provide the entirety of these services.

The postal service could be easily and effectively provided by private couriers. Fewer and fewer letters are being mailed today because of the increased use of electronic communications. This has led to a shift in the postal services from their traditional role as mail carriers to parcel delivery. This service is already being offered by a number of private couriers, both locally and globally. The response of the USPS has been to increase prices and eliminate jobs, resulting in decreased customer service. These kinds of business practices can only succeed in an industry supported by a coercive monopoly. In the free market, businesses would have to increase customer services and adjust costs to the market in order to compete more effectively with alternative means of communication, or else face irrelevance.

Imagine a system where couriers competed for your package by offering lower prices, convenient locations, fast and accurate delivery, and special services such as package tracking, scheduled on site package pick up, or wireless access to their full suite of shipping services. The simple truth is that it is only through their oppressive violent monopoly that the government can maintain there stranglehold on the postal services. Given a choice, people are choosing alternatives, either electronic, or private, and without the threat of government interference, these alternatives would flourish.

The roads can also be supplied effectively, efficiently, and at a reasonable price to the consumer by the private sector. There could be a variety of methods by which these roads were provided and paid for. In purely residential areas homeowners could share the cost of the roads and pay fees to have companies maintain and improve those roads on a regular basis. Some of these costs could be offset by charging tolls for people moving through the area who did not live there. These fees could contribute to the cost of maintaining the roads. The rest of the cost could be shared by people living in the area, and while any homeowner would certainly have the right not to help pay for the roads, he would then be charged a toll at the higher non-resident rate.

Other roads would probably be wholly owned by private concerns who would set and collect fees for their use. They would of course maintain and improve their roads on a regular basis, or else their customers might choose to take an alternate path to their destination, in effect selecting their competitors roads over their own.

Frequent users of certain roads would probably receive some type of discount. Those who used them for commercial purposes, such as pizza guys and couriers, would probably pass on their cost to the customer, or contract with the owner of the road for passage for all agents of their company over a certain amount of time for a set price. There are many different possibilities, and more than likely, there would be many different practices.

As for the collection of tolls, that would seem relatively simple. Private roads would be monitored by the owner, who would confirm the identity of the people using his roads, contact them, and arrange payment. Most people would probably pay a user fee per a set distance electronically via debit card or EFT. Others might arrange for bulk purchase of rights of passage, and there would probably be some allowance for delayed payment within a reasonable time. Anyone who failed to pay for the use would be subject to higher rates in the future, possible litigation, and probable denial of service. In fact, these kinds of toll collection are already in practice around the world.

Well run privately owned roads would also have a financial incentive to monitor their roads for disabled vehicles, and get a tow or repair truck out to the disabled vehicle as quickly as possible at the vehicle owners expense. A stalled or disabled vehicle would block traffic and discourage people from taking that road to their destination, thereby costing the owner of the road money. Even with todays technology people with GPS systems can receive real time updates on traffic conditions along their route. Almost the instant a vehicle became an obstacle to traffic, the road's owner would begin losing money. It's even possible that some road owners would offer towing as a free service to entice more people to drive on their roads thereby increasing profits.

Some large businesses might also offer roads at a reduced cost, or even free, to customers who purchased their products, or shopped at their stores, or simply to increase their name recognition. Imagine the Philadelphia Steelers Freeway, or the Taco Bell Interstate. In reality, there are a number of ways roads could be provided to the consumer.

In fact, there are so many ways that these services could be provided to end users, that there is simply no way to accurately predict the way the market would look. Unrestrained by government regulation and left to the innovators and the entrepreneurs, public services might be offered in ways which have not even been previously conceptualized. There may even be new services offered for which there is no current recognized demand.

The simple fact is that most public services are already being offered by private companies for a better price, more effectively, and without the use of coercive force. In fact, there are numerous examples of government price controls and government granted monopolies creating shortages, and stifling innovation. Even in those areas where the government maintains its monopoly, private interests have found a variety of ways to meet an increasing customer demand for alternatives and solutions.

But the key problem with this argument is that it presupposes that without government to hold our hand, people are incapable of succeeding in life. We wouldn't be able to find a way to transport goods and people. We wouldn't be able to get water and power. We wouldn't be able to have telecommunications. We'd all be starving to death, freezing in the dark. This is ridiculous. Many services are already offered by non governmental organizations. An estimated 250,000 homes in America are already autonomous and don't rely on public utilities at all. Where governments interfere, you have price controls, bad business, and failure. Even the threat of competition in the marketplace is enough to drive down prices and increase product quality. The arguments in favor of free market utilities are numerous, and the arguments against them are often specious and fear mongering. We have found ways to achieve these things. We just haven't found the best way yet. But we can.

Yes we can.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism

The Utilities part II

2008-11-06T06:45:00.000-08:00

Government regulations exist for one reason only, to produce results which might not otherwise occur in a free market. This is indisputable. While one may argue as to the need for such regulations, one can not argue as to their purpose. So the discussion must then be about what results we wish to produce, why they aren't produced naturally by the free market, the demand for those results, and the consequences of the efforts to produce them, compared to the consequences of inaction.

Some will argue that it is the responsibility of governments to insure equity within the marketplace. If in fact that were the case, then regulation would be necessary, as the free market is inherently a meritocracy, and as such, while arguably distributing success fairly, it does not distribute it equally. However, in order to accomplish this, regulatory agencies such as the FCC, FDA, and OSHA must set strict rules about the manner in which businesses may operate, including when and with whom they may compete, whom they may employ, and how much they may charge for their products and services. In order to do this, they must use coercive force. So if you believe that it is the role of government to create equity, then you are saying that it is acceptable to threaten people's lives and livelihoods in order to produce results which would not otherwise occur in a free market system.

Besides the use of coercive force, there are other problems with government regulation. One is the problem of regulatory capture. Regulatory capture is when an agency empowered to officiate over an industry, presumably on behalf of the consumer, becomes beholden to the commercial interests which dominate the industry. For instance, when the FDA, whose stated purpose is to protect “the public health,” devotes a significant portion of its resources to banning, controlling, and censoring vitamins and dietary supplements, while simultaneously allowing dangerous drugs like Vioxx into the market, the bias in favor of the industry it's supposed to regulate, and against that industry's competitors, would seem to be evident.

And this kind of regulatory capture is not singular to the FDA. The meat industry is able to stall or prevent a number of food safety regulations proposed by The United States Department of Agriculture. This is only predictable. It's in the best interest of these industries to attempt to influence an agency which is able to create laws with the backing of violence, and since they have far more resources individually then you do, they are able to. Of course, without government regulation, businesses could still behave in this fashion, but their decisions would only affect individual companies, and lack the threat of violence to enforce them.

Remember, I'm not arguing that evil would cease to exist in a society without government, instead, I'm arguing that that evil would be committed by individuals instead of governments, on a much smaller scale, affecting fewer people, and supported by their own resources instead of by the resources of the people seized through force.

So the government neither supplies the vast majority of public services, nor appropriately regulates those services. Now that we understand the role government plays in supplying those services, we must address the cost f those services.

First, it is important to remember that none of these services are free. It may seem obvious to many of you, but I often hear people argue that the roads are free, or their water or internet service is provided by their school or landlord, or that phone, sewage, or postal services are so inexpensive as to be nearly free. The reality is that none of these services are free. Ever. They cost someone resources to produce, market, and deliver to the end user, and those costs must be paid.

Many times, these costs are either disguised or disbursed. For instance, if your internet service is provided for you by your landlord, you may think of it as “free.” In reality, the cost of providing that service is simply built into your rental fees. State owned utilities may offer services, such as the roads, which seem to the end user to be “free,” but the cost of those services are actually disbursed amongst the entire taxpaying base. So while you may not pay while you're using the service, that doesn't mean that you didn't pay to use the service. And of course, even if you never use the service, you still had to pay for it.

It is important to remember that these services carry costs, because part of this argument is based on the misconception that while you are receiving these services for free or nearly free now, you would have to pay an exorbitant amount in a stateless society. This is simply untrue.

The cost of regulation compliance alone is estimated at roughly 1.4 trillion dollars a year, nearly 15 percent of the total economy. These costs, like all costs incurred by businesses, are passed on to the consumer. That means that end users are paying an additional 1.4 trillion dollars for goods and services, every year, just so companies can comply with government regulations, which I've already shown are at least questionable. Now, in a stateless society, some of these costs would still exist. Responsible companies would still maintain safe and clean facilities, and pass on that cost to their customers. But many regulations, such as the cost of enforcing bans on dietary supplements claiming they can cure headaches, lead to wasteful spending, and those costs would disappear, putting more money back into the economy and reducing the cost of the related goods and services.

Similarly, market competition has a proven cost reducing effect. In public service industries where the government enjoys a coercive monopoly, the lack of competitive forces effects prices by not effecting them. In an environment where no one enjoyed a coercive monopoly on the marketing and delivery of public services, providers would be forced to compete in price and customer service in order to attract customers. Under those circumstances, prices would have to adjust to match their value to the consumer.

Additionally, in a stateless society, your money would have far greater purchasing power. Removing taxation would immediately reduce the cost of goods and services by more than 22 percent. Even worse, since the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913, the federal reserve note has lost 94% of its purchasing power to inflation. Additionally, by some estimates, nearly 70% of your money goes back to the government through taxation, tariffs, and fees. This combines to reduce your purchasing power to approximately 1.8 percent of the face value of your currency. In a system with commodity based monies, you would have the full value of your currency, increasing your purchasing power by nearly 5000 percent.

But that's not the end of it. Each dollar collected by government is a dollar not invested in the growth of the economy. A mere 3 percent tax increase from 21 to 24 percent costs the economy nearly 200 percent of the value of the money taxed over 50 years. And that number increases exponentially with greater taxation. That's money that never existed, was never invested, never earned, and never spent. By removing that money from the economy, government continues to depress the standard of living of all Americans, rich and poor. What's more, in many industries, wages are growing slower than inflation, so every year, people are actually making less than the year before.

Even if the price of public services increased, and in some areas it may due to the removal of dangerous and immoral price controls, your increased purchasing power would more than make up for it. Would the cost of these services be as much of a fear if 15 percent of the money in the economy was put back in the hands of the consumer, and another 43 percent returned by the complete abolition of government and government spending, and inflation wasn't progressively robbing you of the value of your money year after year, and money was worth 50 times what it is today?

What would you be concerned with if you were making 50 times what you make now?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism

The Utilities part I

2008-11-05T08:06:00.000-08:00

The Utilities. It would seem that many people are deeply concerned with where they get their utility service. They feel that water, waste removal, electricity, gas, phones, internet service, roads, and postal delivery are necessary for their existence, and fear that without a state authority, these services would dry up and people would be unable to survive.

It's understandable. Our society has become deeply dependent on these services, and without them simple hygiene, food safety and preparation, communication, transportation, and basic commerce would all be in jeopardy. The need for these services would seem to be beyond dispute, even to the point that many people consider these to be necessities, not luxuries.

But the challenge here isn't to the need for utilities. The challenge is that without government, many if not all of these services would disappear. What is it that motivates this fear? Perhaps it's a misunderstanding about the role government plays in bringing the products to the consumer. Perhaps it's a misunderstanding about the real cost of these products to the consumer. Perhaps it's a misunderstanding about the viability of a private model for these services. I intend to address these three concepts herein.

First, it is important to understand how these services are being provided to the customer today, and to explore some examples of how they could be provided in the future. Most of these services are already being provided, in whole or in part, by private concerns.

Water has been historically, and is to this day, offered primarily by publicly owned agencies. Approximately 10% of the worlds water services are privately owned however, and in England, where the water and sewage services have been privatized since 1989, albeit under strict governmental regulation, drinking and recreational water quality increased, even bringing water quality in line with previous standards which had not been met when the government was in charge.

There are several different classes of electricity providers. Some is provided by cooperative utilities, some by “public,” meaning state owned, companies, some by investor owned companies, and a very small amount is produced by companies who are not utilities for their own private use, and then sold to the local utility provider at wholesale cost, which is then sold to the end user at retail. In 1998 in America, roughly 75 percent of the electricity sold to end users was being provided by investor owned, or cooperative electricity retailers, meaning that the vast majority of electricity is already being supplied by private organizations.

Natural gas is almost solely provided by private concerns. In fact, in 2000, roughly 94 percent of the natural gas in the country was supplied by investor owned utilities.

Telephone and internet services are also provided primarily by private companies, many of which are publicly traded, and are regulated heavily by the FCC.

Roads are provided both by governments and by private organizations, with a variety of cost structures and services. While government owned and operated roads remain the norm, there is an increasing movement towards the privatization of roads, and in some parts of the world private ownership of roads has surpassed public. In Sweden, two thirds of the roads are owned by private road associations. Similarly, England and Wales are thought to have around 40,000 privately owned roads, whose maintenance is the sole responsibility of the local residents. As well throughout America there are a number of residential roads owned by home owners associations, housing cooperatives, and private developers and businesses. There are also a number of private, toll funded highways and roads throughout the developed world.

Postal service is provided largely by governments, although this is due in large part to their self-established and coercive monopoly. In fact in America, there are laws requiring that delivery of all non urgent letters must be payed for through the United States Postal Service, even if delivered by an unrelated private concern. The United States Supreme Court has upheld the USPS monopoly, stating that they are not subject to antitrust liability as a part of the federal government, and that only employees and agents of the USPS are legally allowed to deposit “mailable matter” in any letterbox approved by the United States government. There are even documented cases of agents of the USPS raiding businesses and demanding proof that the mail they were sending through competing couriers was in fact “extremely urgent,” and when deciding that it was not, fining them thousands of dollars. Even in the face of this violent monopoly, a number of independent couriers, such as FedEx, DHL, and UPS are responsible for millions of deliveries every year.

So we can see that even a cursory glance at the utilities industries shows that the majority of the services people depend on every day are provided by private concerns. It is then obvious that the majority of the fear that people feel about the removal of government from the utilities is unfounded, simply due to the fact that the role of government in providing utilities is far smaller than many people realize. In reality, the state plays far more of a regulatory role than a production role. And so we must address the performance of the utility regulators.

Are they, in fact, making things better, or making things worse?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism

The Bigger Gun part II

2008-11-04T11:24:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I presented you with The Bigger Gun argument. Essentially, that without the state, your rights would be constantly imperilled by anyone who was able to exert greater force than you. Today I will respond to that arguement.

There are many actions we can take to make ourselves safe. Firstly, we can prepare for our own defense. An armed citizenry is the primary defense against violent crime and foreign invasion. Throughout history, it has always been the bulwark against personal victimization and the aggression of nations. It was one of the key assumptions by our military which discouraged the invasion of Japan in WWII, and it was a contributing factor to Hitler's decision not to invade Switzerland during the same war.

Secondly, people would provide for their common defense. They did before the widespread practice of government law enforcement. It's in their best interest. In fact, they still do, in the form of neighborhood watch organizations, community activism, and concerned citizen groups.

Thirdly, they would purchase security. Private security is already available, and in fact, is the most widely practiced form of security enforcement. Think for one moment, about the number of police employed in your city. Now think about the number of private security officers employed in the same area. Every large business, school, bank, hospital, office building, sports arena, and parking garage employs private security, in addition to many smaller businesses, restaurants, and venues.

Believing that people will do other than provide for their defense, individually, collectively, and commercially, is to believe that people would willingly sacrifice their security rather than cooperate in order to create an environment which would enable the safe exchange of ideas, goods, and services, free from fear of violence and fraud. We may be animals, but we are thinking animals, and over time, we have formulated many systems to provide economic and social stability, this process would not suddenly cease without the influence of government. In point of fact, I believe it would flourish in a free marketplace.

Some argue that private security firms would be de facto mercenary organizations, employed by greedy individuals and fielded to violently seize the property and rights of free peoples. At first, this seems a likely result of privatization, but under closer scrutiny, it is extremely unlikely.

The cost of fielding an armed force of any size for aggressive purposes is hugely expensive. There would be the cost of training, arming, and providing for a large number of men, all costs passed on to the customer, as well as additional costs associated with the greater danger of aggressive as opposed to defensive action. Even governments are unable to absorb these costs without diffusing them amongst the entire taxpaying base, and even then the costs are crippling. Criminal organizations are only able to do so because the prohibition of many of their goods and services leads to demand side profit margins of multiple tens of thousands of percents. The idea that private individuals would absorb that cost in order to potentially steal the assets of others is unrealistic. Additionally, since private security firms would be competing for business, launching aggressive campaigns would immediately increase the market share of their competitors by forcing their potential victims to seek protection. The cost of taking through force that which is the property of another quickly surpasses the cost of negotiating honestly and acquiring property legitimately.

Additionally, in a stateless society, while there may be no state law enforcement, there would still be repercussions for acting in an immoral fashion. Individuals who made a habit of behaving in a violent or fraudulent manner could be denied even basic services such as food, housing, clothing, utilities, and transportation. Would you allow a known and unrepentant rapist to eat at your restaurant? Or a serial murderer to rent your studio apartment? Companies which behaved rapaciously would face similar penalties. The market already punishes the behavior of those companies which harm others, but the persons directly responsible for those harms are often shielded from personal liability by corporate protections.

Corporations are state enterprises. In exchange for protection from personal liability, companies pay higher taxes to the state and create fictitious entities which assume liability for harm. Then, when individuals seek restitution against the company, they sue the fictitious corporate entity instead of the individual actors responsible. Shifting liability away from individuals and onto fictitious entities is both immoral, and dangerous, as it further separates consequence from action and creates the incorrect impression that individuals are not personally responsible for the harm they commit. Without corporate protection, business owners would act in a more responsible fashion, and be much less likely to cause harm through action or inaction.

If they did, the market would have a response for that too. There is already an industry for consumer reports. There are companies whose only business is to inform the public about the good and bad practices of everyone from Microsoft to Subway. There are consumer report magazines, websites such as Angie's List, radio shows like that hosted by Clark Howard, and innumerable other avenues to get the information to the public. Additionally, there are many private companies who test and certify the safety of products and the truthfulness of companies' claims. In a stateless society these industries would flourish, as lacking any government authority to report their problems too, individuals would be by necessity more apt to research the reputation of those companies with which they did business, and would punish companies whose actions they found unconscionable.

Remember, without the sponsorship and protection of the state, companies would find it far more difficult to grow to the size and scope we see today. Businesses would only be able to achieve such status by consistently offering their customers a quality product at a competitive price over a course of years. Are we then to believe that, after reaping the benefits of positive business practices for so long, they would suddenly become evil enterprises and devote all their resources to the subjugation of the masses?

Even if they did, each individual employee of that company would be liable for any harm he committed, thereby removing many of the laborers necessary to commit great acts of oppression. Additionally, they would immediately lose their customer base, and by extension their operating capital, and give rise over night to a number of entrepreneurs who recognized a need for private security and moved to fill it. No company would survive such a move, and their competition would be more than happy to absorb their market share. Unless we are to believe that even in the face of that subjugation, people would continue to do business with that company, and thereby supply it with the very resources it needed to further subjugate them.

No, only the state is able to pull off that magic trick. By controlling a monopoly on force, education, currency, and the legal system, they are able to compel, through fear mongering, economic manipulation, indoctrination, and intimidation, an entire society to not only willingly subject themselves to slavery, but to work every day to fund the system of slavery under which they toil, and to decry any who would suggest that individual freedom might be better than collective oppression.

So the bigger gun argument eventually devolves into one in which you have on one side those who support a system of unreliable crime investigators, who fail to prevent or deter crime, which is supported by theft and fraud on the part of that organization, being the state, which purports to protect you from those very indignities, while on the other side you have those who support a system where both crime is deterred and honesty encouraged, while also removing much of the motivating economic factors which lead to crime by eliminating the state and putting the full burden of the cost of criminal activity on the individual, and which is supported through voluntary contracts which are competed for by a variety of security firms who are constantly seeking to improve the value of their product, as well as its price.

In the final analysis it would seem that to some, it is better to be a slave because most of the time, it's not so bad, and while I can't actually do anything about it, I can complain, as long as I don't complain too loudly, and if I'm murdered someday, as long as it wasn't the government who was responsible, they might find out who killed me and he might face some form of punitive justice, which would all make it worthwhile in the end because I'm afraid that I might someday be the victim of something which, statistically speaking, there is almost no chance of experiencing, and I don't believe that I, nor anyone else, is capable of defending themselves.

And, believe it or not, I'm actually alright with that argument. People have the right to make themselves slaves.

But what right do they have to make others slaves as well?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism

The Bigger Gun part I

2008-11-03T17:18:00.000-08:00

The bigger gun. This is one of the first and most common challenges offered by those who are new to the idea of anarcho-capitalism. It is asked, in one form or another, whether in a system devoid of the protections afforded to the citizens of the state anyone would be safe from the violence perpetrated upon them by others. Essentially, the argument is that only the presence of the state, and its massive law enforcement apparatus, spares us from being constantly preyed upon by violent men.

First, let's examine the premise. The proponent of this position is arguing that without government to protect us, evil men would immediately take whatever they desired through force, and there would be no way to stop them, because no matter your force of arms, someone with a bigger gun could always overcome you. It is only the overwhelming force of the state, through its police and military might, which prevents this from happening immediately. Right now. This very minute.

On its face, this seems a frightening proposition. Especially to a people who have been taught most of their lives to appeal to a government authority when confronted with danger. In school, when confronted with a bully, tell your teacher. In life, when confronted with violence, call the police. In business, when confronted with injustice, write your congressman. The lesson being constantly taught and reinforced is that the government is the only legitimate authority empowered to resolve conflict. And, having been taught thusly, it is understandable that people would accept this as fact. So, lacking that government authority to whom they must appeal, and seeing no other alternative, they are afraid.

This argument usually begins with the proposal that your neighbor, lacking resources, would use force to seize yours. Then, it is extrapolated from that point to involve the next business, city, state, and country over, until we are continuously preyed upon by criminals, terrorists, and mobs, which are then of course preyed upon by bigger, stronger, criminals, terrorists, and mobs, until all mankind is embroiled in constant violence and chaos. And only the government prevents this.

This position is somehow inviting to many who are antagonistic to the idea of anarcho-capitalism. But its premise is deeply flawed. It would seem that proponents of this argument believe that society is so rife with evil men that only the “thin blue line” protects every day citizens from being victims of crime, and our rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are constantly in jeopardy. If this is indeed the case, it would seem to make the argument against central authority, not for it.

If society is so filled with evil men, surely they would quickly overpower any government, especially a representative one, and so assume authority to rape and pillage under color of law. If instead, there is no such glut of evil men, then the argument fails on its face, and, at least with regards to this argument, we have proven no need for central authority.

There are evil men, and there will continue to be evil men regardless of the type of society in which we live, this is reality. The idea that most men are evil, and that evil is only held in check by the constant threat of state authority is simply not reality. All people spend the vast majority of their lives in a state of anarchy. No one is holding a gun to your head and telling you what to eat, whom to marry, where to work, and when to sleep. You make thousands of decisions, every day, with no consideration what so ever of the possible government response. And while you may even do some greedy things, and some mean spirited things, and some dishonest things, you are not raping, murdering, and defrauding your fellow man with your every thought and deed.

The idea that it is government which prevents violence, and that without it crime would be rampant, is unsupported by several facts. Firstly, any person with more force than you can take your rights away now. Right now. If someone walked up to you with a gun and demanded the computer on which you are reading this, no government would prevent them. They could take your property, and kill you, and no one will protect you. It is your responsibility, and only yours, to protect yourself. Always. The Supreme Court has ruled on this. It is established law, and it is the natural order. You must defend yourself.

So in reality, the government doesn't protect you, it instead arrives after you've been the victim of a crime, and investigates that crime and attempts to capture the perpetrator. Some would argue that it doesn't even do that, but for now, we'll grant the premise that they are legitimately trying to solve crimes. However, in reality, the vast majority of crimes, even violent crimes, go unsolved. In fact, nearly 80% of crimes go unsolved, with only 55% of violent and 84% or property crimes being solved. So even if we alter the argument from the government preventing crime to the government resolving crime, we see that we are still not adequately served by the state.

So then the argument must shift once again to the idea that the threat of falling into that small minority of crimes which the government solves is a deterrent against criminal action. However, if this is true, then why do we have prisons all over the country which are overflowing with criminals? Either the possibility of capture is a poor deterrent, or we are to believe that it is a highly effective deterrent, and there are simply a huge number of potential criminals who behave out of fear. In fact, studies show that the threat of arrest and imprisonment is a poor deterrent, notice specifically where it says,

“None of the analyses found imprisonment to reduce recidivism. The recidivism rate for offenders who were imprisoned as opposed to given a community sanction were similar. In addition, longer prison sentences were not associated with reduced recidivism. In fact, the opposite was found. Longer sentences were associated with a 3% increase in recidivism.”

In fact, specific preventative action, such as closed circuit cameras, on site security, and armed citizens, is a better deterrent against criminal action. Take special note of the table where alarm systems, armed citizens, and security cameras, all rank higher amongst convicted criminals as deterrents than active police patrols do.

Not only is government obviously an unreliable defender of your rights, the idea that crime is rampant is also false. In fact, in 2007, the estimated chance of being the victim of a violent crime was less than five tenths of one percent. Yet the fear that many people have of being the victim of this crime is so pervasive, that they are willing to trade freedom for the illusion of security. In reality, the number of deaths caused by governments throughout the twentieth century alone surpasses a quarter billion, dwarfing even the most inflated criminal statistics, and far beyond the scope of even the most dedicated criminal mind.

So we see that it is not the state which protects us from and prevents crime, it is in fact our own actions. So what actions could we take which would prevent the rampant crime which people fear? What actions are people taking already every day?

What actions would you take to defend your life, or your spouse's, or your children's?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism

Unfortunate delays

2008-10-27T15:05:00.000-07:00

Unfortunately, when I got up this morning to post part one of a two part article addressing the first challenge to anarcho-capitalism, the bigger gun argument, the computer I use was completely dead. So, until I am able to repair it and continue my regular posting, I am unfortunately on hiatus.

I will try to return to form as soon as possible, until then, some excellent information can be found for free at www.freedomainradio.com. Make sure and read the free online books Practical Anarchy, and Everyday Anarchy. You can find them here.

I'm hopeful that this will only be a temporary delay.

Veritas omnia vincit

2008-10-26T14:48:00.000-07:00

I didn't always believe that the government was the problem, and eliminating it the solution. While shunning party affiliation, I began as something similar to a small government, socially conservative republican. Over time, as I began to think and rethink my positions, and more importantly, my justification for those positions, I came to some realizations.

Government is inherently inefficient, and lacking competition, has only altruism to compel it towards efficacy. Because of this, private industry is capable of doing everything better, at less cost, and with greater consumer influence. If I am truly free, then I have the right to my body, my property, and my actions, so long as those actions do not directly cause provable harm to others, even if they do cause provable harm to me. Because of this, no one has the right to use force to protect me from the consequences of my own actions, similarly, I have no right to use force against others except in my own immediate defense.

Believing these things to be true, and I do to this day, I gradually moved away from a belief which had been instilled in me since childhood. That government was inherently good. That it had my best interests at heart. That it was made up of kind hearted, well meaning individuals who wanted to make my life better. I began to describe it as a “necessary evil.” I began to say things like “the government which governs least, governs best.” I began to support less taxation, and more personal responsibility. But I still believed that we needed some government. So I became more of a constitutional libertarian.

But as I continued to analyze my beliefs, and the arguments which supported them, I could not help but face the inconsistencies on which I relied. Taxation is theft, so let us only do it a little, when absolutely necessary. No one has the right to use force against others, except in immediate self defense, but let's allow police to arrest people who don't have driver's licenses. I am responsible for the government I elect, but they should be able to keep important secrets from me which may affect the decisions I make on election day, because we don't want our enemies to know. Something can be somehow “evil,” yet “necessary” at the same time. And more and more, I thought that government was not the answer, so we needed less of it. So I became a minarchist.

I understand the temptation to turn away from the truth. I understand the temptation to willingly believe a lie, because I was. And when I was confronted with the illogical position that government was the problem, so the solution was simply less, I would just change the subject with myself. Because I was still emotionally wedded to that belief. And every day, with every news broadcast, and radio show, and political campaign, that belief was reinforced. But eventually I had to listen to the truth. Because I couldn't respect myself knowing I was living a lie. So I became an anarchist.

But even then, I had questions. Questions which, I came later to learn, are not uncommon to anyone who honestly explores this idea. You see, we are born into government, we must grow into anarchy. And so no one who is today an anarchist “came by it honestly.” Questions which I feel we, as anarchists, must be willing to explore if we have any hope of convincing others of the nobility of our cause. A friend of mine said, “it isn't enough to prove their points wrong, we must present them with a vision of how great the alternative could be.”

He's right. So, in the coming days, I will seek to address what I believe are the most common questions about the idea of anarcho-capitalism. I call them the six great challenges.

Without government as a stabilizing force, wouldn't whoever had the biggest gun always be in charge?

Without government to build and maintain the infrastructure, where would basic utilities and services such as water, electricity, and roads come from?

How does a society without government law enforcement address evils such as rape, murder, theft, fraud, and arson?

How would an anarcho-capitalist society provide for the education of children?

How would a society without an established social welfare system adequately see to the needs of the poor, sick, disabled, and mentally challenged amongst us?

How would an economy devoid of fiat currency, issued, backed, and enforced by a central authority operate?

It is these questions which will be asked of anyone professing a belief in anarchism, and it is these challenges which we must be willing to address.

To some degree, the answers are unknowable. Just as no sports fan can predict the super bowl champion of 2020, and no computer science professional can predict the power of microchips fifty years from now, no anarchist can accurately describe the future. We can however make some predictions based on current trends, existing technologies, and natural laws. And it is those ideas which I will hope to present. Understand, no answer will suffice for the committed ideologue, but if you are intellectually honest, seek always the truth, and divorce yourself from prejudice, you may find my approach to these challenges provoking. Veritas vos liberabit? Perhaps.

Perhaps someday it will set us all free.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism

You can always get what you want

2008-10-25T13:43:00.000-07:00

Recently, I've discussed problems with the voting system, and according to this article, almost half of the voters polled do not feel confident their votes will be counted accurately. I've discussed the fact that politicians make a lot of promises that they will eventually fail to keep, and this article discusses the fact that both major party candidates may have no choice but to renege on many of their campaign promises in the face of a ballooning budget defecit. I've warned you of the growing call for international control over the world's finance sectors, and this article points out how world leaders are calling for, “new rules in dealing with international finance.”

It's not because I have some special ability to predict the future. In fact, these are very predictable results of the current system. Regardless of what those in power say, you can watch their actions and discern, with a high degree of success, what their intentions and goals are.

They want you to feel like you have a very real role in what's about to happen to the people of this country. So they have evolved an elaborate system of voter registration, local party officials, and campaign volunteers to make you feel like you are part of the solution.

They want you to be dependant on them to survive, so they attempt to involve themselves in every possible decision and transaction throughout your day, and consistently remind you that they're there to help when you can't do it on your own.

I know that some of my readers disagree with my position on the two candidates, and I understand that. To some degree, I agree that there are basic ideological differences between them, and even between their parties. However, whether tax money will be used to help crack addicted single mothers overcome their addictions, or to subsidize American farmers who are unable to compete in an international marketplace, or to “spread the wealth around,” or to build more military bases overseas, I still stand by my position that once the initial theft of private assets by the government occurs, all actions which result from it are immoral. If a person approaches you in the street and demands your wallet at knife point, are you concerned with whether he will buy whiskey or diapers with it? It is the theft which is important, not the way the money is spent.

Most people would agree that there is a point where too much taxation is unconscionable. Not everyone of course, some people support 100% taxation, but most people have a limit where they feel it is immoral for the state to seize so much of the fruits of their labor. If you draw the line anywhere, then I want you to consider what makes that action immoral. While not my argument originally, I think Stefan Molyneux is right to ask if some is bad, how can less be ok, but none be just as bad as some. If it is immoral to steal, how can it be moral to steal a little, but equally immoral not to steal at all?

Our government wants to use the same illogical argument. I pointed out in a recent post that they seem to think that taxation and federal interference are crippling during tough economic times, but when the economy is soaring, we can take the hit. If it's bad when we're down, it's bad when we're up. Just because we can absorb it during good economic times doesn't mean it isn't crippling. It is. They're just content to have crippled slaves, but not dead ones.

Now they're exploring lots of different ways to spend the 700 billion dollar bailout they recently approved. Remember, the one that they had to rush through in order for us to survive the crisis. You know, they one they promised was specifically for buying devalued mortgage-backed securities from tottering banks to unclog frozen credit markets? You know, the one they still haven't spent a dollar of? Good thing they rushed that through before the “catastrophe” occurred.

So now they want to put that towards insurance companies. But isn't risk an inherent part of insurance? Isn't that how they do business? If we bail out insurers for having to pay out on claims, then why have insurers at all? Why don't we just eliminate insurance and have the government bail us out directly?

What about the auto industry? Why are we bailing them out? If they can't make money selling a quality product, why do we want to subsidize their inability to compete? Do we want low quality over priced products that don't meet our needs and for which there is little demand? Or do we want the kinds of vehicles we desire to dominate the marketplace?

Subsidizing companies that can't compete just doesn't make sense. Remember, in a truly free economy, which we don't have, the only reasons you can't compete are product quality, customer service, and price. So if they aren't meeting our needs in those areas, don't we want them to fail so that those companies which do will succeed?

You always get more of what you subsidize. If we pay people to produce quality, we will get higher quality. If we pay people to make babies, we will get more babies. If we pay people not to produce, we will get less production. If we give the government more money, we will get more government. It's not rocket science, it's social science.

What do you want more of?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism

Fox and the henhouse

2008-10-24T08:19:00.000-07:00

We are taught in school that the founding fathers believed that, like fire, government was, “a dangerous servant, and a fearful master.” It was their underlying belief in the dangers that government represented that led them to build a form of government rife with self regulation. We are taught that the inclusion of “checks and balances” in our government system prevents government from becoming overly large, intrusive, or powerful.

But what are these checks and balances? Think back, you were taught that the government is divided into three basic branches. Executive, which deals with law enforcement. Legislative, which deals with the creation of law. And Judicial, which deals with disputes over law. So, in theory, the Executive branch couldn't do anything not specifically allowed by the Legislative, and if they tried, it could be appealed to the Judicial branch, who would moderate the dispute.

Now, because we are told at a young age that this is just and in our interest, many people hold up this system as a prime example of why our form of government is safer than others. And they are right. It is safer than totalitarianism, or communism, or monarchism. It is not however, safe.

All three branches of government receive their money from the same place. The taxpayer. All three branches of government rely on the same mechanism to enforce their position, violence. All three branches of government have a vested interest in increasing government power and expanding government authority. What vested interest do they have in preventing the other branches from doing anything they want?

I suppose you could argue that there is a competitive factor. No legislator wants to be upstaged by any executive. I suppose you could argue that there is an economic factor, money diverted to the executive branch won't go to the judicial. I suppose you could argue that there is a territorial factor, no member of the judiciary wants legislators to usurp their authority. I suppose you could argue that people are just inherently good and would never do anything bad.

But competition doesn't interfere with them any more than it keeps teammates on sports teams from stealing the ball from each other. It would put their common goal out of reach. The economic factor doesn't hedge their behavior, because there is always more money which can be seized from the people. When you are holding the gun the only answer to “how much to take” is “as much as I want.” The territorial factor doesn't work, because, for example, judges make law all the time through legal precedent. And if there is any truth to the argument that people are inherently good and would never harm each other, than the argument in favor of the state has lost, and we can now do away with it forever. If we are too corrupt to self govern, how can we be pure enough to govern others?

Think. Either checks and balances work because people are inherently selfish and evil, in which case we certainly can't give them a gun and put them in charge of others, or they work because people are inherently giving and pure, in which case we don't need to give them a gun and put them in charge of others.

So then the argument becomes that some people are good, some evil, and we must put the good ones in charge of the bad ones. But clearly half the country think certain people are good, and the other half think they are bad. So is fifty percent of the country evil? How could we have decayed to a point where half of the country is so vile? And if that's your position, then you must recognize that under the current system, we allow for evil to triumph every two years.

What kind of system, which we are taught is the fairest, most just of them all, would allow for evil to control everyone and everything based on a popularity vote? Are we then to believe that the majority of people would get it right? But the majority of people supported slavery, segregation, the Japanese internment, vice laws, poll taxes and denying the right to vote to women. Now, in some areas, the majority of people are supporting the decriminalization of certain drugs, and allowing non-citizens to vote. What if the majority of people supported rape, or murder, or theft through violence? Does just being supported by the majority make it ok?

It does in a system where the majority is holding the gun on everyone who disagrees with them. If you are a conservative, do you want Barack Obama to have the right to pick up any person, anywhere on earth, accuse them of a thought crime and detain them without notification, cause, a trial, or any hope of release? If you are a liberal, do you want John McCain to have the right to take away everything you own, give it to someone else, and then force you to do labor for others for the rest of your life or face poverty and possible imprisonment?

The government will never self-regulate to any long lasting degree. Yes, in some cases, legislators will be tried by the judiciary for corruption. In some cases, judges will be denied the bench for past decisions which are deemed unjust. But in some cases the power of the executive will be increased, in contradiction to existing law, by the legislative branch. And in the long run government grows, and grows, and grows.

Imagine three thieves who agreed to share everything they acquired equally and took a vote before stealing anything. If the profit is shared equally amongst the three, why would any of them vote against another committing a crime? Each one stands only to gain from the avarice of the others, and so would encourage his actions, not deter them. Yes, there is a check, and he could stop the actions of his brother, but why would he? It isn't that their aren't checks and balances, it is that they are a ruse to disguise what is really going on.

Because what is really going on isn't pretty.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism

That's not a knife

2008-10-23T07:06:00.000-07:00

I promised that I would tell you about fiat currency and the damage it's done, not just to this country, but to the world. Some of my readers have pressed me to do so sooner rather than later, so today I will go into some detail about what fiat currency is, how it came to be, and why it's so dangerous. I'll think you'll find it illuminating.

Before any serious discussion on the importance of currency can begin, it's important to understand what money really is. Money exists as a symbolic representation of units of energy. In a barter and trade system, goods and services produced are traded between free people in exchange for goods and services needed. Unfortunately, what one person may produce may not be needed at all times by those people who produce what is needed. For instance, a dairy farmer produces milk. In exchange for the feed for the cows he milks, he could trade milk to the hay farmer. In exchange for chairs and tables, he could trade milk to the carpenter. As long as everyone is in need of milk, the dairy farmer can trade for his needs.

But what if the carpenter is lactose intolerant? What if the hay farmer needs goats milk instead of cows milk? Then suddenly the dairy farmer is unable to receive the goods and services he needs. This problem is referred to as the “coincidence of wants” problem. Now, perhaps the dairy farmer could trade his milk to the goat farmer in exchange for goats milk and then trade that to the hay farmer, but it is easy to see how this system quickly becomes overly complex and inefficient. Soon the labor required to perform a series of trades in order to acquire goods and services to exchange for those needed by the dairy farmer becomes cumbersome and exponentially increases the associated cost.

This is where money comes in. In order to facilitate the exchange of goods and services, societies create forms of currency which act as an intermediate, agreed upon basic unit of exchange, representative of the energy required to generate it. As long as this intermediate commodity is not perishable and is in relatively consistent demand year round, then it can be reliably traded between free people. So now, the dairy farmer converts his milk into gold coins, which are then converted into chairs and tables. Or feed for cattle. Or live chickens. Or whatever else the dairy farmer needs. This is the basic philosophy behind the concept of money.

Currency exists in several forms. The earliest forms of currency were commodity based, which means that they were actual items with recognizable value, such as gold, and silver, or in some cases spices, crafted goods, or animal hides. The value of these commodities was based on the labor required to originally acquire them, so for instance, gold's value is based on the amount of labor required to find, mine, and refine it into a valuable substance.

This system is still cumbersome however, and so people began to use representative currencies. Representative currencies are notes of exchange which can be reliably traded for the commodities by which they are backed. So the value of representative money is equal to having that commodity in hand. The benefits of such a system are obvious. Now the dairy farmer could carry a bill fold filled with notes of exchange instead of a bag full of gold coins. Additionally, while commodity based currencies are actually made of commodities, representative currencies are backed by them, and as such, can be backed by a variety of commodities which are unrealistic as forms of currency on their own. Representative currencies could be backed by gold or silver, but also oil, water, whiskey, or pizza. It is the public's faith in the redeemability of the note which lends it its value.

This brings us to fiat currency. Fiat currency is not backed by anything. Anything. It is called fiat currency because its value is based on a government's order that it be accepted as a form of payment. It has no intrinsic value, and it can not be reliably exchanged for anything. In the absence of faith in the government which issued it, this money loses all value and becomes worth less than the paper it's printed on. Supporters of fiat currency will argue that it is backed by every commodity because it can be reliably traded for anything within the confines of the society which exchanges it, but in reality, even when traded for real goods or services, it is still not ultimately backed by real asset, and can never be redeemed by the holder. Essentially, the last person holding the bill when faith in the issuing government collapses is empty handed.

This isn't the worst part. The worst part is that because this money is not based on real asset, governments are free to print it at will. You can't create commodity based currencies in greater numbers than the commodities themselves exist. Representative currencies are protected from excess printing by the constant possibility of redemption. Any issuer of representative commodities who was unable to physically convert his printed currency would be guilty of an actionable fraud. But fiat currency can be printed in ever increasing numbers because there is no physical asset limiting its redemptive value.

Real commodity backed currencies hold their value. They resist inflation, devaluation, and counterfeiting. Even a sudden influx of their backing commodities wouldn't affect their value, because those comoodities still required energy to generate. The problem for governments is that these types of currencies act as a check on their power. You can't invade a foreign country, where the further you move from your revenue source the greater your constant operating costs become, if you have to trade in real currency along the way. You would have to bring your bags of gold and spices with you, and when you ran out, you'd be stuck. Effectively, this acted to leash aggressive nations to their homeland, and limited foreign adventurism. Now, countries only need a printing press, and they can generate limitless amounts of money, which they then order people to accept as payment.

There are other issues as well. Fiat currency is issued by central banks to the government as debt, which must be repaid with interest. While some argue that this is incorrect, such an arguement can be found here, even the numbers represented there clearly show that the treasury is not fully reimbursed for the cost of borrowing the reserve notes from the central banks. Saying that the treasury is reimbursed for some of its costs does not equate to "Federal Reserve Notes do not cost the Treasury any net interest." Additionally, some fiat money, such as the United States Nickel actually have an intrinsic value far below that printed on their face. This means that people are actually being forced, by government fiat, to trade for more than the value of the currency. The net result of all of this is that there is inherent debt in a fiat currency system, which must be passed from person to person like a hot potato.

Fiat money is nothing new. There are articles on the internet, such as this one, which describe the history of fiat money over thousands of years. It always fails. It's always eventually replaced by commodity backed currencies. But it is scariest in its terminal stage.

The terminal stage of fiat money is hyper inflation. Throughout the life of any fiat currency, there is constant inflation as a result of unrestricted printing. As people begin to lose faith in the currency itself, the issuing authority begins to print at a much more rapid pace in order to take advantage of its assumed value before it is lost. It is during this time that people begin wheeling buckets of money into the bakers to buy a loaf of bread.

It's not a joke, or a conspiracy theory. You can find more information on fiat money here, and here. It's been done again and again throughout history, and always to the same results. The government's argument is that this time it'll be different.

Don't bet the house on it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism

The real victims of victimless crimes

2008-10-22T08:17:00.000-07:00

Almost without fail, when the discussion begins someone brings up the example of WalMart as a justification for the need for central authority. WalMart practices unfair business practices. WalMart exploits Chinese child labor. WalMart puts smaller operations out of business. WalMart treats their employees unfairly. And we need a powerful state to protect us from these problems.

First of all, WalMart using it's huge purchasing power as leverage to negotiate for lower costs on goods and services is not an unfair practice. Most sellers will give bulk discounts to their customers in order to secure their patronage. WalMart exploiting foreign slave labor may disgust us, but in many of those cases the children and peasants working in those factories, while working under conditions none of us would ever accept, are still working under conditions far better than their peers. The inability of small operations to compete with WalMart is their own fault, not WalMart's. Anyone who can offer a quality product at a competitive price will always be able to compete. If you can't, that's the result of your product's quality, or it's price. Not the result of what your competition is doing down the street. The argument that WalMart treats its employees unfairly is a non-starter. Those employees negotiate for their wages and benefits. They compete for those wages through their value to the company, and if they don't like working there, they're welcome to work somewhere else. If WalMart is so untenable a situation for its employees, then they wouldn't have any. And in cases where there were employee abuses, those employees pursued legal recourse, as is their right.

But the silliest part of the entire argument is the statement that all these issues make the case for government. Even if we grant the premise, that WalMart is evil and corrupt and we need to be protected from their actions, then we must objectively say that government is part of the problem, not the solution. Any time someone argues that an ongoing problem is justification for government they are ignoring the fact that we have government now, and it's not fixing the problem. In reality, millions of people already don't do business with WalMart because they find their business practices objectionable, and when those lost profits outweigh the benefits of those practices, WalMart will change the way it does business. In fact, that has happened, and they are. You can find more information about it here.

You see, government isn't protecting you from anything. In point of fact, government policies create suffering that would not otherwise exist. Vice laws, such as those regarding drugs, gambling, and sex workers, will never successfully address demand, and so by extension supply. Drug dealers still have a market, gamblers find places to lose their money, and because of the difficulty they have in bringing their product to market, and the lack of real competitiveness in their industry, they are able to charge enormous prices at the consumer level. Worse, when customers are wronged by those with whom they do business, they lack any legitimate avenue of recourse, and must turn to violence or crime in order to seek restitution.

In places where prostitution is legal, sex workers are able to negotiate favorable terms with their employers, receive regular medical care, and seek legal redress for any wrongs they suffer. Where it is illegal, they are plied with drugs, extorted and beaten, and have no legal rights. In fact, studies show that where prostitutes work indoors in legitimate businesses they are less likely to be victims of violent crime. Your personal opinion of prostitution is not what is important here. In San Francisco they are spending 11 million dollars a year to battle the sex trade. That's 11 million that was seized from decent law abiding people. 11 million they could use to pay their mortgage, put their kids through college, or reinvest in a struggling economy.

You are more than welcome to look down on these women and their chosen profession. You can tell people you find it disgusting, sinful, reprehensible, and evil. You can choose not to do business with them and encourage others to do the same. But making it illegal isn't addressing the problem. Instead, vice laws are creating problems.

Some people will argue that regardless of the actual result of prohibition, it is an important moral statement for a society to make. It doesn't matter if it doesn't work, it says we don't support this behavior. But in reality it does matter if it doesn't work, because the money used to support it is being stolen from free people all over the country. And the government isn't accomplishing their stated goals, because it still happens, and the violence being used to enforce it is hurting many more people every day than can be shown to be harmed through it's practice.

Many people take issue with the harvesting and selling of elephant ivory. So, after receiving international pressure from customers and animal rights organizations, EBAY has decided to stop allowing the sale of ivory on its website. It didn't require a law or state to accomplish this, it happened as a natural result of the pressure placed on EBAY by the marketplace.

For the record, I don't support prostitution. I think it's sad, unhealthy, and emotionally crippling. I also think that people should have every right to do stupid, dangerous things on a voluntary, contractual basis. If a person wants to engage in promiscuous sex, in return for a ten dollar movie and a fifty dollar meal, that's ok. But if that same person wants to engage in promiscuous sex in return for sixty dollars, we'll spend 11 million dollars per year to hunt them down, arrest them, and put them in prison with murderers and rapists.

I can't support that either.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism

Frightened animals beset on all sides

2008-10-21T11:35:00.000-07:00

Thailand's former Prime Minister has been found guilty of corruption for facilitating, “his wife's purchase of lucrative Bangkok real estate from a state agency in 2003,” and sentenced to two years in prison. Of course, they'll have to get their hands on him first since he fled the country months ago. This may sound somewhat familiar.

If you recall, Senator Ted Stevens is still defending himself against accusations that he failed to pay for a quarter million dollars in home furnishings. His defense is that the items involved in the renovations were put there against his will, and that they were just loans. “We have lots of things in our house that don't belong to us.” Of course. When you put it that way, it makes perfect sense. You can find more of this ridiculous argument here. Apparently politicians around the world share at least some similiarities of philosophy.

It's important to apply some objective logic to the argument in favor of central authority. If people are so corrupt that they need to be governed, then how can you possibly justify putting those same people in power over others. If greed and avarice are so pervasive that voluntary self governance is impossible, then how can one justify the idea of governing over others? The very arguments they use to justify the need for central authority are self defeating and contradictory. And even a cursory look at the history of government corruption shows that. Never forget Lord Acton.

I've spent some time recently discussing the issues in the voting system. Here you can find an article about a dead goldfish receiving voter registration papers. Here you can find an article which mentions in passing how election officials in Palm Beach county, remember them, they were at the heart of the 2000 election recount, recently lost 3,500 votes in a judicial election. Or rather, as County Administrator Brad Merriman puts it, “They weren't lost. They were in the warehouse. They just were never counted.” Oh, never counted. That builds faith in the voting process.

Of course, some people are suggesting that we could fix many of the problems with the current process by which Presidents are elected by simply eliminating the electoral college. In this article proponents argue that the electoral college is unfair because one person could win the popular vote and still not be elected president. The counter argument is that a popular vote in urban centers would leave rural voters at the whim of their city dwelling brethren. So no matter how the vote is tallied, some people will always be ruled over by other people who do not share their beliefs, desires, or goals, and will be forced to act against their will by force. Perhaps it is time to scrap the system.

Americans are scared. They don't understand what's going on, because they were never properly educated. Just like everything else, the government does a lousy job of that too. Ask the teachers themselves. How often do they have to supplement the curriculum? How often do they have to buy supplies with their own money? How often do kids fail classes, only to be advanced by administrators so that they won't feel bad? It's not the fault of the educators, it's the fault of the system itself. People aren't taught to be rational, so they act on emotion. People aren't taught to be logical, so they don't question what they're told. People aren't taught to apply sequential reasoning so they don't think about the future consequences of today's decisions.

So they're scared. And it's understandable. And equally understandably, they're hoarding food, gold, and guns. Because the animal part of them knows that as security decreases, they may at some point be on their own. They may have to feed themselves. They may have to defend themselves. And the money they use to barter with may lose its value.

So while the candidates continue to waste time discussing how they'll fix the problem, and the government continues to waste resources pursuing non-violent trivialities as though they were serious criminal offenses, things get worse and worse.

Liberals like those at the Huffington Post believe that McCain can't possibly make things better, and conservatives say Obama can't be anything but a failure.

Is it possible they could both be right?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism

You gotta have faith

2008-10-20T16:32:00.000-07:00

Today it was revealed that the British government has repeatedly encountered UFO's in the skies over Europe. While this was probably the most interesting news story of the day, it was unfortunately not the one with which you should be most concerned.

Several days ago I mentioned an op-ed article suggesting that governments bailout the auto manufacturers. This shouldn't come as a surprise due to the widely reported economic troubles of Michigan giant General Motors. After all, if funneling public funds to private companies is the solution to industry instability, then why shouldn't everyone try to get a taste?

In point of fact, French President Nicolas Sarkozy is suggesting that his government do this precisely. In the face of a sluggish European economy, Sarkozy is suggesting that France “take national measures to help the development of electric cars, to create a network of service stations capable of replacing batteries, or supporting research into fuel cells,” in order to, “get the economic machine going.” You can find more in the article here.

But the auto and banking industries aren't the only one's struggling. Electronics giant Circuit City is considering whether they should liquidate millions of dollars in assets, including closing stores and eliminating jobs, or whether they should file for bankruptcy protection. Larger than anticipated cuts in consumer spending, and an inability to acquire sufficient credit to continue day to day operations is forcing them to confront some serious financial decisions.

This is the way it should work in a truly free economy. Some sectors struggle, prices drop, customers step in and buy goods and services at a lower cost, and then businesses begin making money again. To be fair, never having operated in a truly free economy, Circuit City can not be held completely responsible for their failure to compete. They are suffering as a result of the state's interference in the banking and mortgage industries just like you and I are, but when companies are faced with cash shortages, they have to confront tough choices. Either they will have to close stores, find more cash, apply for bankruptcy protection, or shut down completely. And in doing so, their competitors, such as WalMart and Best Buy, will increase market share. That's business. Especially when no one is offering them a bailout.

You see, unlike the government, when private individuals and companies are faced with cash shortages, they can't just print more cash to take care of the problem. They have to find the money somewhere, whether that means freeing up cash by liquidating assets or cutting costs, because they have a finite amount of resources, and have to allocate them wisely.

The government on the other hand has other plans. Already unable to pay for their extravagant spending here and over seas, already leveraged to the hilt, already facing trillions of dollars in debt, already burdening state and local governments with the expenses associated with this election, they are considering cutting everyone another bribe check. You see, people aren't happy that the government is bailing out the banks. And despite their best efforts to convince us it's in our best interest, people aren't buying, and they're concerned. So their solution is to print even more money and send everyone another “economic stimulus” check to get us to quit whining.

Ask yourself where they're finding all the money for these expenditures. Bailouts, wars, “voter stimulus” checks, it has to be payed for somehow. They don't have a big pile of cash or gold somewhere that they're grabbing handfuls of and sending over to Wall and Broad. They're just printing more, and more, and more money to pay for it all.

Someday I'll explain how our money has no real value. How it is fiat currency, printed privately, borrowed on interest, and impossible to repay. I'll explain just how much of a hole we are in by using a currency based on no real asset and only backed by the faith people have in the American government.

But for now ask yourself, how much faith do you have in the American government?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism

My new message board.

2008-10-19T22:40:00.000-07:00

I wanted to provide everyone with a place where they could ask questions, present challenges to this idea, and leave comments about the things you read here or elsewhere, so I created a new message board. You can find it at,

http://ownyourfreedom.proboards.com/

I will also include a link on the right side of the page. If you have any questions, feel free to post them!

What does voting change?

2008-10-19T11:53:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I presented some questions about the current problems with the voting system. Because the government wanted to improve the voting system, they now require that voter registration be centralized in each state. On its face, this would seem to simplify the system by taking several disparate lists and putting them together. However, if you believe that government is inefficient and corrupt, then the problems associated with this move are predictable.

Politicians and appointed government officials on both sides are engaging in everything from questionable to blatantly unlawful tactics to purge voters who might disagree with their party's candidate from the roles. Many voters are receiving letters in the mail informing them that they have lost their right to vote, and even when they are later informed that it was in error, either through their own actions or when the “mistake” is realized, many will probably still be discouraged from voting. And in an era when certain swing vote blocks, such as middle aged white women, could win the election for one candidate or the other, controlling turnout at the polls is essential.

Even the FBI investigation into voter fraud by the group ACORN is now being called into question by the Obama campaign. His campaign's insinuation that the administration is trying to, “sap the American people of confidence in the voting process,” would seem to imply that the government can't be trusted. Maybe its just this government he doesn't think you can trust. I'm sure you can trust his government.

In reality however, this investigation may have to be taken out of the FBI's hands. Since 9/11 more and more of the FBI's resources have been diverted away from their traditional role in domestic law enforcement and towards terrorism related investigations. As a result, they are now scrambling to investigate “possible frauds of millions of dollars” in relation to the current financial crisis. With so few resources available for investigating domestic crimes, the FBI has had to rely on private investigators to do much of their legwork, including investigation, and even setting up sting operations so authorities can make arrests. So while they would like you to believe that in the absence of the state there would be unsuppressed violence and no remedy for fraud, in practice they turn to the very private solution they decry.

They will tell you that your vote can change the course of the world. Yet, with so much being done by both sides to suppress, obfuscate, and discourage the vote, is it the future of the world they're interested in, or just the future of their power structure? In the face of an increasingly confused and corrupt voting system, the state would like you to believe that the coming election is the most important in recent history. But that's what they always say, and we seem to have the same problems we've always had.

It would seem that elections have little in common with change.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism

The integrity of the vote

2008-10-18T08:02:00.000-07:00

If we grant the premise that a representative republic is a fair and better form of government, of which the integrity of the voting system is the heart, then it would seem that a benevolent government would take all necessary actions to maintain that integrity. Yet, even in the face of rampant voter registration fraud, the United States Supreme Court found yesterday that Ohio state election officials did not need to scrutinize thousands of questionable new voter registrations. How could this happen? Surely, if it is the vote which decides the future of a republic, then a government which has your best interests at heart would do everything possible to insure the accuracy of that vote. Why would they intentionally allow, or inject, fraud into such an important system?

Think about the question. Why would they seem to want fraud in the system? What possible reason could there be? Why, when the system is already rampant with fraud, computer problems, and human error, would they not decide to at least take a second look at thousands of potentially fraudulent registrations? What could their motivation possibly be?

In every election, there are some disputed votes. There are calculation errors, there are mistakes made by voters, there are incomplete ballots, clearly, there are problems. Now, instead of acting to clarify a confusing situation, the Supreme Court has acted to further muddy the waters. Why? What do they gain by acting in this fashion?

In the 2000 presidential elections, both sides were desperately trying to gain an advantage during the recount. There were absentee ballots that were deliberately not counted. There were voters turned away at the polls for no legitimate reason. There were voters who claimed they accidentally voted for the wrong candidate. And both of the two major parties lobbied to get the votes counted in their favor, dismissing those votes held in counties which did not historically support their candidate, and emphasizing the importance of those votes in counties which did.

So with so much ambiguity in the voting process, which has to be the most important part of a representative government, what do those in powers stand to gain from more? Is it possible that those in power want there to be ambiguity? Is it possible that they want elections to be in dispute? Is it possible that they want the outcome of elections to be decided by government officials, instead of by a clear vote of the people?

My readers know I don't support this system. But the question to those who do has to be, what is your government trying to achieve? People often want to blame these problems on the other team. In reality, I believe that the traditional delineation between democrat and republican is less important than the difference between statists and those interested in individual liberty. While I'm willing to believe that there are more statists on the democrat side, I think that is simply a result of the voter to whom they must pander. I believe the statists want the election to be in doubt. I believe they want to take the decision making authority out of the hands of the voter. After all, they know what's best. It's for your own good.

You can trust them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism

The "anarchy" of Government

2008-10-17T08:39:00.000-07:00

The word anarchy conjures up certain images in the minds of most people. Images of riots, violence, and madness. The implication, which is learned early on in government schools, is that without the stabilizing presence of the state, people would immediately revert to their basest instincts. Despite the fact that this is historically unproven, and that some of the expected loss of civilized behavior would be based entirely on the previous reliance on the state, most people immediately assume this is what you mean when you say anarchy. In fact, in practice, this is what they mean when they say anarchy.

So then when referring to the recent FBI investigation into voter registration they would use the word anarchy. When referring to the repeated jailing of innocent people they would use the word anarchy. And when referring to the chaos in the stock markets and prices they'd probably use the word anarchy. But the reality is quite different.

Voter registration chaos is a predictable result of a system based on the tyranny of the majority. When only the majority gets a voice, those in the minority will predictably attempt to inflate their numbers, it's their only option. Remember, in our current system, there is no minority voice. Even where so called “minority” candidates are elected, they are the majority locally. Only the majority in any election gets a role in the decision making process.

Humans make mistakes. Whenever you have a system where a small number of people are theoretically tasked with the protection of a much greater number of people you will have errors. Compound that with the enormous number of non violent financial disputes that officers of the law are required to enforce and the possibility for error increases based solely on their case load. Combine that with the very real possibility of corruption and it should come as no surprise that there is chaos in our legal system.

Where you should have some predictability and stability is in the markets. Prices should naturally go up and down in accordance with supply and demand. The value of individual companies should be related to the value they offer to the consumer. Unfortunately, when the government interferes that predictability is lost. The reason the stock market and commodities prices are wildly fluctuating isn't because people can't determine the value of beans or corn or computers. It's because they can't predict the effect of government interference. The government has said that they will “inject liquidity” into the market place, but so far, they've been vague on where, how much, and specifically to whom. How can investors make even reasonably accurate predictions about the future value of companies when they don't know which companies will be allowed to fail, and which will be buoyed up by the state? Once again, we have chaos.

But chaos is not anarchy. Anarchy is at its heart the absence of the state. Chaos is not a natural or necessary result of that. In fact, it is the state which creates much of this chaos. They use this chaos, and the feelings of insecurity it creates, as a tool to encourage people to rely more and more on them. It is the state which makes the future unknowable.

And it would not be unknowable without state intervention. When there is excess inventory, there will be decreased production. When there is a state system which requires production to subsidize non production, there will be failure and suffering. One of the richest men in the world, Warren Buffett, is right in saying that this happens in free markets, and it's not a disaster, it's an opportunity. This is not mad science, this is not insanity. The absence of government would not make a system less predictable, but rather more, because there would be fewer artificial influences on that system. When constrained only by natural laws, systems are efficient and highly predictable.

People need to eat, so there would be a market for food. People need shelter, so there would be a market for houses. People need clothing, so there would be a market for clothes. People would get sick, so there would be a market for health care. With or without government, these things are still true. The difference is that government interferes and attempts to act as an agent of social change. Historically however, they have rarely if ever truly single handedly been the agent of that change, and attempting to do so, they often replace one evil with a far greater one.

It is not the work of good to do evil in its pursuit.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism

Elections are decided by promises and gifts

2008-10-16T08:22:00.002-07:00

As an anarchist, I don't believe in the governmental system. I believe that it's a system of oppression, supported by theft. However, if we grant the premise that a representative or direct democracy is a fair system of government, we must still be disappointed with the manner in which this country vets its future leaders.

In last nights debate, there were questions about how much businesses should be taxed. There were questions about whether the solution to what some see as a “health care crisis” should be price controls or government subsidies. There were questions about how much oil we should import from other countries. No questions about individual liberty. No questions about personal freedom. No questions about private property. No questions about the role free people play in their own lives. What mattered to the moderator was whether or not the candidates were sorry about all the mean things they said about each other. This is how Presidents are elected under the current system.

We continued to hear about the global financial mess. What you may not have heard is that things aren't as bad as they would like you to think. Although still high, jobless claims have fallen, consumer prices for clothes, gasoline, and automobiles has remained flat, and where there is some economic turmoil, it has more to do with the weather than the financial climate.

Yet countries around the world continue to move towards socialism, putting more and more of the burden of their economies on the backs of their tax payers. Despite concerns that the global economy is going into a recession, the EU plans to impede economic growth by placing emissions caps on businesses in order to fight global warming. Those countries which have expressed very real concerns that such measures will only deepen the recession are quickly shouted down by President Sarkozy of France and other powerful voices within the EU.

President Sarkozy was the same person who blamed “laissez-faire” capitalism for the current economic crisis. He claimed we needed “a better regulatory system” to inject “a strong dose of morality” into the markets, yet he has recently increased the travel budget for himself and his wife in the coming year by 29%. His defense that, “this is not tourism,” seems pathetic in the face of his accusations that the free market is unable to self regulate. It would seem that it is once again government which is unable to self regulate its spending of public monies.

It is not that free markets are unable to self regulate. It is that they are not allowed to do so. Whenever these companies are faced with billions of dollars in losses, the government moves in to shore them up instead of allowing them to restructure or fail as necessary. Remember, if your money has real value, then that value still exists. When one business fails because of their own practices, the remaining businesses who made wiser choices and stayed in business will increase their market share accordingly. If there is a genuine demand for their product or service, there will still be one even if they fail. But when you bail them out, again and again, the results are predictable.

But don't worry, there's enough free money to go around.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism

Let them eat cake

2008-10-15T08:33:00.000-07:00

Inevitably, when ever I mention Anarchy to someone, I immediately hear the same arguments. We need police to protect us. People wouldn't provide for their own defense. When confronted with violence, we can always call 911. People always argue that without government we'd have poverty, violence, and war. The reality is that at this time, we have more, and more powerful, government than at any time in history, and we are still laboring under all the same threats we always have. In fact, the government itself uses these very tactics to accomplish its own goals. If you really believe that government exists to protect us, then you must admit that it is a complete failure. Governments can't even get people to wash their hands.

The reality is that we will always have crime. You can't eliminate murder, rape, and arson. You can't get 100 percent of the people to be good to each other and stop stealing and lying. You can make whatever laws you want, with the most draconian enforcement policies you can imagine, and some people will still commit crime. The reality is that the only person who is ever responsible for your defense is you. You can't obligate someone else to provide you with protection without advocating slavery. You can assume someone else will protect you, but ultimately, that position is foolishness. You can't abdicate that responsibility. You can refuse to accept it if you wish, but whether you accept it or not, the responsibility for your defense still lies with you. And the government agrees.

While governments all over the world struggle with fixing the global economy, the fallout of the recent rescue bill is already being seen in other industries. Predictably, where other companies are struggling with the current financial climate, some are already calling for a bailout of more American industries. Will the government now talk of nationalizing the auto industry? Soon we can all get credit from the government, to buy cars from the government. When the government controls the means of production as well as the distribution of goods, you have something called socialism.

Some people have said that we need a government as a stop-gap during tough economic times. The reality is that in a free market, resources shift. If the currency has real value, then that value still exists, it's just shifting to other areas of the economy. While we might wish the money went to us, and not to places like pawn shops and repo men the reality is that money is still being exchanged for goods and services. People still have to eat, but maybe right now they're eating Campbell's instead of steak. That's ok.

I'd rather eat soup than eat cake.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism

Hammers and Nails

2008-10-14T11:59:00.000-07:00

This week the corruption trial of Senator Ted Stevens continues. He's accused of writing laws in such a way as to profit himself and his family personally, but his trial revolves around $250,000 dollars worth of home remodeling he may or may not have paid for in full. Such fine gentlemen as former Secretary of State Colin Powell and Senator Orrin Hatch are supporting Stevens in his defense.

While it seems obvious why some people refer to Stevens as the most corrupt politician in Washington, and I certainly don't support his funneling of public funds to friends and family, it does seem odd that he's being persecuted by the state for which he's worked so diligently, while Senator Dianne Feinstein is largely being given a pass for funneling over a billion dollars worth of defense and civil engineering contracts to companies her husband has financial interests in. Once again, we see that while any politician can personally profit from the hard work of innocent Americans, only the truly elite can get away with it.

In other news, not to be outdone McCain has introduced his own plan to “rescue” America from its current financial woes. While his plan does rely more on cutting taxes than government spending and is for this reason clearly the better plan, it still fails to realize that these should not be temporary emergency solutions. If ending taxation and removing regulation which discourages saving and spending are good for the economy in a down time, why aren't they good for the economy all the time? It would seem that the message is when the economy is doing well, we can afford for the government to leech off of its largess, but when it's down those parasites can kill it.

While the candidates argue over who will fix the problem better, the current administration is hard at work making things worse. Buying up stake in private banks, and removing the cap on the amount of money insured by the Federal Government in some private accounts will only burden the federal coffers, and by extension you and I, that much more. Ultimately, there simply won't be enough money to cover all of these promises, and much like social security in the near future, the government will have to renege on them.

So why make promises you know you can't keep? When individuals do it, we call it lying. We look down on liars and refuse to do business with them in the future. Yet when government does it, most people just consider it par for the course and keep going back to the well. And time after time, lie after lie, most people are content to place the blame for the failed promises on the other team.

In part, this may be because it's clear that government's don't respond well to dissent. Whether it's in Zimbabwe, or America, when confronted with a competitive, anti-state voice, governments respond the only way they know how, with force.

When your only tool is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism

A rose by any other name

2008-10-13T18:05:00.000-07:00

While the EU is entertaining the idea of an unprecedented power grab in an attempt to “rescue” the world's economies, they are simultaneously condemning Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe for taking, “control of key ministries in defiance of a power-sharing deal with opposition parties.” Apparently what's good for the goose isn't good for the gander. I'm not going to say that this has anything to do with race, or class, or politics, but it seems clear that in certain circles seizing powers which are historically reserved for the private sector is considered the privilege of the elite.

While still laboring amidst one of the worst financial crises in modern history, the American government has already decided to up the ante by introducing a second economic stimulus picture worth an additional 150 billion dollars, and Obama has a new plan to lend money to states and cities from the federal treasury, force mortgage holders to give their customers additional time to repay their loans outside of their original contractual obligations, and create financial incentives for businesses to give jobs so he can “spread the wealth around."

While on it's face, these may seem like sensible responses to the current situation, the reality is that it's just another example of increased government intervention in the economy. Companies don't need financial incentives to create jobs. There is already a financial incentive to create jobs. It's called profit. Companies will create as many jobs as there is a market demand for. Unless you set a precedent that the government will pay them to do so. Then they will hold out for government money they know will eventually come before hiring more workers, and in the meantime, the economy will stagnate while there aren't enough employees to produce the goods and services demanded by the customer base, driving up prices and lowering productivity.

Any time you require a company to go beyond the contractual agreements it has established between itself and it's customers, you are obligating one person's productivity to another. Any time you obligate one person to provide another with anything, especially when backed by the coercive use of force you have institutional slavery. Whether it's socialized medicine, extending banking obligations beyond pre-existing limitations, conscription, or cotton picking, it's slavery, and Robert Heinlein, was right when he said,

I don't think that any people or nation has a right to save itself at the price of slavery for anyone, no matter what name it is called.
Guest of Honor Speech at the 29th World Science Fiction Convention, Seattle, WA (1961)

Neither do I.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism

Consent of the Governed

2008-10-12T15:09:00.000-07:00

I've spoken about the increasing calls for central authority to resolve the current financial crisis, and I'm not the only one. A recent meeting of the G20 nations, a group consisting of the 19 largest economies and the EU, discussed a plan to, “overcome the financial turmoil, and to deepen cooperation to improve the regulation, supervision and the overall functioning of the world's financial markets,” (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,436571,00.html).

They're here to help. They want to make you safer. You can't do it on your own. Without their “supervision” you'd ruin everything they've built.

Ask yourself. What singular ability or special knowledge is government endowed with which makes them uniquely equipped to handle the current financial crisis. They want you to believe that they are somehow superior to you. They want everyone to believe that without them, we'd all be starving and freezing to death alone in the dark. They keep the lights on.

Think back to the recent “rescue” bill. We were told that without it's passage, our economy would collapse. There would be, “a global financial meltdown,” and, “the consequences of inaction could be catastrophic,” (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26803347/). Administration officials told us, “this is about the American people,” (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26860408/). Even the presidential candidates stepped into the discussion, with Obama calling for legislators to, “do what's right for the country,” and McCain warning that, “the present crisis will turn into a disaster,” (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26981710/).

Yet when first presented with it's passage, congress balked. It wasn't until they received over 130 billion dollars of additional “pork” spending that they agreed to pass it. If this was actually as important and time sensitive as we were told, if we really were going to walk into work next week and not be paid, if it would really lead to the downfall of western civilization, why couldn't they pass it the first time? If they really care as much as they claim, if they really are the only bulwark against financial instability, why did they have to be bribed to pass this bill? Is it possible that people who would claim this problem is, “bigger than the private sector can fix by itself,” (http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/F/FINANCIAL_MELTDOWN?SITE=WJARTV&SECTION=BUSINESS), are actually more interested in using the very understandable fear of the citizenry, fear which they have partially contributed to by referring to disasters and catastrophes, to increase government power and spending?

This is the problem with government “supervision” of the markets. Governments grow. They grow in power, they grow in size, they grow in cost. And since they can't support their activities through their own productivity, they have to seize capital from elsewhere in order to function. And as they grow, they need more capital. And when people seem unwilling to contribute to their growth, they have to create a climate of fear in order to prey on the emotions of the governed for their own gain. If you don't fall for it, it's because you just don't get it. But the supporters of statism are more than happy to help the government correct your misunderstanding. All they need is the right approach. They'll convince you of the need for their “supervision.” After all, our government gets it's power from the consent of the governed.

But what if people realized they don't need to be governed?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism

International Government Control of Finance

2008-10-11T12:31:00.000-07:00

For the 21st time in the last 26 days the President spoke publicly about the current financial crisis. This time, it was following a meeting with finance officials from the G7, Japan, Germany, Italy, France, Britain, Canada, and the United States. The content of their discussions was, “a global response to the credit crisis that will lead toward a "path of stability and long-term growth." (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,436415,00.html).

This has been the theme at many meetings of financial and political leaders around the globe. The European Union's economy and finance ministers had a meeting on October 7th to discuss, “a European response to the international financial crisis, (http://euobserver.com/82/26860). Great Britain has guaranteed over 430 billion dollars worth of bank debt, and would like the rest of the world to follow suit, (http://www.foxbusiness.com/story/markets/futures-dive-markets-brace-trouble/). In the worst case so far, the country of Iceland has nationalized its banking institutions, seized the assets of foreign investors and even foreign governments held therein, and is desperately seeking loans from Sweden, Norway, Russia, and anyone else who can help. At the same time, Great Britain is suing Iceland because some of the frozen assets in its now nationalized banking industry belonged to citizens of Great Britain, and in at least one case, close to 90 million dollars of British taxpayer dollars which had been placed in an Icelandic account has been frozen, (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27104617/).

So now leaders around the world have decided that simply nationalizing the banking and lending industries isn't enough. Calling for the end of “American style capitalism” isn't enough. Freezing their stock markets, covering private debt with public funding, and seizing the private property of foreign investors isn't enough. Now, in order to avoid acting at odds with each other while attempting to rescue us from the current credit crisis, there is increasingly a call for centralized control over the world's finance sectors.

Recently, Ireland insured all the deposits in it's banks in order to, “give a general guarantee that the banks can lend in security and safety,” (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/financialcrisis/3111122/Financial-crisis-Irelands-banks-are-rescued.html). This led to a massive influx of capital from other EU countries into Irish banks, where customers believed their money to be safer. In response, the EU's governing body condemned the move by Ireland saying they, “would like to plead with national governments today not to act unilaterally,” (http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/news/article-1065667/Panicking-savers-shift-money-Britains-high-street-banks-desperate-bid-secure-cash.html). Other EU countries are afraid that their citizens will shift their assets to Irish banks, causing their own banks to collapse from lack of operating capital, but they have yet to state publicly the effect this will have on Irish banks when the government is unable to generate enough revenue to insure these deposits now that the total amount held in Irish banks is skyrocketing.

It is this fear that “individual governments” “acting unilaterally” will “contradict or undermine the actions” of each other which those in power are now using to call for central authority. Imagine not only an economy run entirely by the government, but a worldwide economy run by a central governing authority. One which has the power to decide which countries are allowed to lend or borrow money, and how much. One which can set import and export limitations on countries in the interest of international fairness. One which can decide to punitively refuse countries trade agreements because it disagrees with their foreign policy. Instead of spending, saving, lending, and borrowing money as you see fit, you won't just need the government's permission, you'll need the world's. Remember the golden rule.

He who has the gold makes the rules.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism

The end of American Capitalism

2008-10-10T10:30:00.000-07:00

As the current financial crisis deepens and spreads around the globe, more and more people are beginning to feel its effects. In developed countries businesses are closing their doors (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27085173/), innocent renters who have never missed a bill are being evicted from their homes because of the land owner's failures (http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/10/08/chicago.evictions/index.html), and more and more people are asking which presidential candidate will fix their problems for them (http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/09/wisconsin.battleground/index.html).

At the same time, in the poorest regions of the world food riots have caused both starvation and political upheaval (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/apr/15/amanmadefamine), and price increases have unbalanced the trade differential between developing countries and the west (http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/apr/11/worldbank.fooddrinks1). Some financial leaders, such as World Bank president Robert Zoellick, even think this could reverse the movement of developing countries towards being successful self sustaining economies, (http://www.geelongadvertiser.com.au/article/2008/10/09/22521_opinion.html).

Clearly, this is a time of great civil, political, and financial unrest. It is understandable that people would be afraid. It is understandable that people would feel powerless to affect their own futures. It is understandable that people would turn towards those in power for assurances, leadership, and hope.

And the governments of the world know it. They are more than happy to take charge in this current crisis. You've already seen that more and more they are placing the blame for all of this on the free market. You've already seen that more and more they're nationalize and recapitalizing the finance industries with public capital. Never forget that all public funds are either seized from the people through coercive use of force, or simply printed up new, adding to inflation and devaluation of the currency. Now, as the fear is reaching a fever pitch, with comparisons to one of the darkest periods in American history, the great depression, (http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/09/eichengreen.depression/index.html), some politicians and commentators from around the world are calling for “the end of American style capitalism,” (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27112481/).

In the future, I'll point out how America has never enjoyed a truly free market. I'll show you how, since the very beginning, we've always labored under crony capitalism, and state supported capitalism, and government intervention. I'll point out how the only truly free market we've ever had has only occurred on the black market where it was free of government regulation, taxation, or control. But for now, think about how afraid you are and how willing the government is to take all that responsibility away from you to ease your fears.

Think about the end of American style capitalism.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism

More of the same

2008-10-09T11:16:00.000-07:00

On Tuesday I wrote an article pointing out that AIG was using government loans to go golfing and drink cocktails. Today, we find that AIG is getting another government loan to the tune of more than 37 billion dollars. That's 37 billion more dollars. (full story - http://money.cnn.com/2008/10/08/news/companies/aig/index.htm?postversion=2008100818)

This is all in addition to the 700 billion dollar “rescue” bill which was recently passed by congress. Apparently, they've failed to correct the problems in their business model which have recently brought them to the brink of financial ruin. They've already spent more than 60 billion of the original 85 billion dollar loan. No word yet on whether they have a celebratory outing planned after receiving this loan.

In other news, I reported yesterday that world leaders are nationalizing their banking and lending industries. I'm sorry to report that that trend is not limited to foreign governments. Today, “senior treasury officials,” have been telling the press that the white house is, “considering taking ownership stakes in certain U.S. banks,” in an effort to deal with the current financial crisis. (full story - http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27094961/)

This is called “floating a trial balloon.” The white house is letting the word out that their considering buying up the American banking system. Oh, just some banks, and only partial ownership. So now your government will just 'partially' own the lending and banking institutions in this country. If this goes through, you will be saving, borrowing, and spending only with government permission.

The reason they're floating this trial balloon is because there seems to be some disagreement between the people, and the people who think they know better than you do. Even some of the media outlets which are widely considered, fairly or unfairly, to be administration hacks such as FoxNews are publishing editorials condemning the bailout.

“...the bailout obviously wasn’t a quick fix. As we saw again with Monday’s huge stock-market drop, the markets don’t behave the way politicians tell them to behave. Just like voters don’t behave the way politicians tell us to.” (David Asman - http://www.foxbusiness.com/story/markets/expect-revolt-bailout/)

There is a widespread and growing disgust on the part of the people with the government's out of control spending and taxation, and while the statists in government think they can continue to steamroll over the objectors by telling us we just don't understand economics, the businessmen in the media know what products their customers want to buy, and right now, disgust with government is selling like hot cakes.

That's right. People are tired of it. There's a growing movement of people awakening to the sham that's perpetrated against them every two years. With access to multiple media outlets and sources of information, more and more people are awakening to the dangers of government. Oops, we didn't get the politicians who can change things elected this time, but two years from now it'll all be different. I can understand them getting away with that for the first 200 years or so, but it's starting to wear thin.

Fool me once, shame on you, fool me 100 times or more, shame on me.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism

How we got here, and who’s to blame

2008-10-08T12:09:00.000-07:00

With increased pressure on the world financial system, governments all over the world are nationalizing banking and credit, and calling for more regulation and government interference. World leaders are blaming the free market for the economic crisis, with French President Nicolas Sarkozy saying,

"The present crisis must incite us to refound capitalism on the basis of ethics and work … Self- regulation as a way of solving all problems is finished. Laissez-faire is finished. The all- powerful market that always knows best is finished," (full story - http://euobserver.com/843/26814)

and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown blaming, “conventional thinking or outdated dogma,” and calling for, “the fresh and innovative [federal] intervention that gets to the heart of the problem.” (clarification added, full story - http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,434284,00.html)

Of course, none of this gets to the heart of the problem. Blaming free-market capitalism fails to recognize that much of the current financial crisis is the direct result of government intervention in the lending industry. The lending giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, both created by the federal government, (Fannie Mae as part of Delano Roosevelt's 'New Deal,' and Freddie Mac by congress in 1968 as a Government Sponsored Enterprise), are at the heart of the current lending crisis. These agencies were created for the express purposes of fixing what the government saw as a current crisis in the mortgage industry at the time. Fannie Mae was to provide liquidity in the mortgage industry by buying mortgages from banks and then converting them to guaranteed mortgage backed securities and reselling them. That means that whoever buys the mortgage on the secondary market has a guarantee from these firms that if the original borrower fails to repay, Fannie or Freddie will cover the loss.

Sound familiar? Economic crisis, need for liquidity, government interference in credit industry, loans backed by government sponsored enterprises? Any of this sound topical today? Doesn't this sound a lot like what the government is doing right now to “rescue” us from the current crisis?

One of the problems with these companies which has brought us to this collapse, is that they were buying bad loans. That was the entire reason for their creation. The reason they were needed to “inject liquidity” into the markets is because banks were holding a lot of unpaid debt because the economy was struggling and people were failing to repay their loans. By buying this debt off of these banks, they freed up capital within the banking system which could then be used to give more loans. Then, in 1995 the federal government began encouraging them to buy up sub-prime, (read riskiest possible type of secured debt), buy giving them financial incentives. Then in 1999 the Clinton administration encouraged them to increase lending to people of low income or poor credit. For a brief period of time, new regulations discouraged these kinds of loans, but the federal government again encouraged them by changing the regulations back in 2004 in order to increase credit to high risk borrowers, (full story - http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/09/AR2008060902626.html)

Think about it. High risk borrowers. There's a reason they are high risk. There's a reason it's harder for them to get credit. Sarkozy wants to blame the “laissez-faire market” and Brown wants to blame “outdated dogma,” but in reality, the market wouldn't lend money to these people. It was the federal government which encouraged high risk lending. It was the federal government which created the lending giants, during another economic crisis, which are responsible in part for the mess we're in now.

When confronted with tough economic times, companies, like individuals, need to be more careful where they allocate their financial resources, not less. Yet each time, the government steps in and discourages conservative business decisions by removing the bad assets, funneling public funding to these companies, and transferring the burden of these bad decisions from the original actor to the public debt. In each case, this frees up money in the banking system which the government then encourages them to spend on high risk ventures in order to 'jump start' a sluggish economy.

If they simply allowed these businesses to fail, many would suffer. But in the long run, smarter lending practices would lead to more judicious and productive allocation of capital in the market place. Businesses would only get loans if they offered a product or service that could prove financially viable. Home owners would have to work to build savings in order to purchase homes they could invest in. Fewer banks would have fewer unpaid and unsecured debt listed as assets on their books, and there wouldn't be a credit crisis. Instead we are again faced with a huge government bailout. These are occurring closer and closer together, and the cost is increasingly exponentially each time. It is the intervention of governments which is at the heart of the problem, and as history shows us, it is hardly innovative or fresh.

Laissez-faire indeed. If only they would “allow to do.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism

Government bailout exactly as expected

2008-10-07T11:38:00.000-07:00

This should come as a surprise to no one. After being initially extended an 85 billion dollar loan, prior to the even greater 700+ billion dollar "rescue" bill, AIG spent close to half a million in one weekend at a luxurious corporate resort. Now, of course they have every right to spend as much as they want on expensive hotels, golf outings, and cockails, (see link for full story - http://www.foxbusiness.com/story/markets/industries/finance/aig-executives-blow--getting-bailout/), but if the government hadn't loaned them 85 billion, that's billion with a B, they would be doing it on their own dime instead of on yours.

This is of course, just one problem with the government funneling public funds to private corporations or individuals. Now, while in a desperate situation where every dollar must be spent wisely, these corporations can continue to make irresponsible business decisions.

Look at it this way, when your money is tight, and you're facing bankruptcy, you can't afford to take vacations. But in the case of these businesses, the influx of public assests not only alleviates their budgetary concerns, it also allows them to continue doing business as they have. So instead of being forced to confront the bad business decisions they have made which have brought them to this place, they not only perpetuate them, but now they can figure a government bailout into their future risk assessments.

When you don't allow the natural consequences of someone's actions to occur, you divorce cause from effect. By doing so, we have reinforced in the minds of the men and women responsible for the current global financial crisis that they will not be held accountable for bad business decisions.

Unfortunately, there is a limit to the amount of public funds which can be generated through taxation. At some point, even 100 percent taxation can not support a system where the productive sectors of society are forced to subsidize the non-productive sectors.

It's a house of cards, and it's coming down.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism