Month: July 2013

The Problem with Anarchy

Critics of anarchism always claim that anarchy results in lawless chaos where survival of the fittest becomes the law of the land. That isn’t the problem with anarchy. The problem with anarchy is that it sneaks up on your and blindsides your ass:

As Detroit’s call-it-anything-but-bankruptcy budget crisis drags on and the city government is unable to provide the most basic of services, residents have discovered an alternative to lawless anarchy: cooperative anarchy!

[…]

On the wealthier side, the philanthropic Krege Foundation coordinated with automakers and local businesses to purchase 23 new ambulances and 100 new police cars. Okay, perhaps providing equipment to the municipal government doesn’t fall under cooperative anarchy. But at the rate the city’s going, they’ll probably all be driven by volunteers any day now.

The chaos of ever dwindling statism hasn’t stopped at a handful of crazy philanthropic individuals buying ambulances:

Dale Brown and his organization, the Threat Management Center (TMC), have helped fill in the void left by the corrupt and incompetent city government. Brown started TMC in 1995 as a way to help his fellow Detroit citizens in the midst of a rise in home invasions and murders. While attempting to assist law enforcement, he found little but uninterested officers more concerned with extracting revenue through traffic tickets and terrorizing private homes with SWAT raids than protecting person and property.

In an interview with Copblock.org, Brown explains how and why his private, free market policing organization has been so successful. The key to effective protection and security is love, says Brown, not weapons, violence, or law. It sounds a bit corny, yes, but the results speak for themselves.

[…]

The reasons TMC has been so successful is because they take the complete opposite approach that government agencies, in this case law enforcement, do. Brown’s philosophy is that he would rather hire people who see violence as a last resort, and the handful of Detroit police officers who actually worked with Brown in the earlier years and have an interest in genuine protection now work for TMC. While governments threaten their citizens with compulsion, fines, and jail if they don’t hand over their money, TMC’s funding is voluntary and subject to the profit-loss test; if Brown doesn’t provide the services his customers want, he goes out of business.

A security group that’s more concerned about protecting its customers than expropriating wealth through traffic citations? Is there no end to the insanity anarchy is bringing? What’s next, efficient bus services?

Law enforcement isn’t the only “essential government service” that the private sector is taking over and flourishing in. The Detroit Bus Company (DBC) is a private bus service that began last year and truly shows a stark contrast in how the market and government operates. Founded by 25-year-old Andy Didorosi, the company avoids the traditionally stuffy, cagey government buses and uses beautiful vehicles with graffiti-laden exterior designs that match the heart of the Motor City. There are no standard bus routes; a live-tracking app, a call or a text is all you need to get picked up in one of their buses run on soy-based biofuel. All the buses feature wi-fi, music, and you can even drink your own alcohol on board! The payment system is, of course, far cheaper and fairer.

As you can see, anarchy really sneaks up on a society suffering collapsing statism. At one moment people are enjoying the rampant crime and wealth expropriation taking places as the state begins to collapse and its employees strive to expropriate whatever wealth they can manage before the inevitable end then, out of nowhere, people get sick of that shit and begin to bring a cooperative attitude that raises civilization from the ashes.

Johnny Cannabis Seed

Repeat after me, prohibitions never work. The simpler the thing being prohibited is to do or create the more miserably the prohibition will fail. Cannabis, being a weed, is very easy to grow and therefore the prohibition against growing, using, and selling cannabis was doomed to fail. Supporters of cannabis legalization in Gottingen, Germany demonstrated the futility of banning the weed:

Cannabis plants are sprouting up all over a German town after pro-marijuana supporters planted tens of thousands of seeds last month.

Supporters of the group A Few Autonomous Flower Children spread several kilograms of seeds around the university town of Gottingen last month.

[…]

Scores of the plants have sprouted all over the town this week to the fury of the local police and council.

A website shows dozens of photos of the cannabis plants blooming in public parks, allotments, gardens and window boxes all over town – with some even growing outside the local police station.

Police have been ripping out the illegal plants on sight but the sheer number of blossoming plants became noticeable in the past week.

The act of planting cannabis seeds throughout a territory has been a form of civil disobedience discussed by many but executed so effectively by few. Hopefully the success experienced by A Few Autonomous Flower Children will encourage individuals in other cities to perform similar facts. Nothing would demonstrate the futility of cannabis prohibitions so succinctly as millions of plants growing in every major city. If nothing else, such actions sap resources from the state by forcing it to redirect police resources from writing citations and shooting dogs to ripping up cannabis plants. The more time the police waste ripping up weeds the less time they have to cause actual harm to people.

The Numbers Game

Libertarians often point out that the government in unable to do anything efficiently. In most cases that is true but there is one thing governments are very efficient at, killing people:

A secret document obtained by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism reveals for the first time the Pakistan government’s internal assessment of dozens of drone strikes, and shows scores of civilian casualties.

The United States has consistently claimed only a tiny number of non-combatants have been killed in drone attacks in Pakistan – despite research by the Bureau and others suggesting that over 400 civilians may have died in the nine-year campaign.

The internal document shows Pakistani officials too found that CIA drone strikes were killing a significant number of civilians – and have been aware of those deaths for many years.

Of 746 people listed as killed in the drone strikes outlined in the document, at least 147 of the dead are clearly stated to be civilian victims, 94 of those are said to be children.

I’m guessing these higher numbers are due to the fact that the creators of the document and the Pakistani government aren’t using the new definition of militant. They should get a newer edition of the Newspeak Dictionary.

Things are Looking Up in Spain

Spain has been suffering a great deal of economic distress. Fortunately, there is a silver lining to the country’s storm clouds. While the “legitimate” economy is floundering the “underground” economy is flourishing:

Spain’s illicit economy–all that is unaccounted for because it’s illegal or unreported–is worth an unseemly 20% of the country’s GDP, according to a new report by Spain’s Foundation for Financial Studies (FEF). That’s higher than every other country in the European Union except Italy, with 21%.

Spain only has a little catching up to do before it overtakes the current leader of the European Union, Italy.

While a Keynesian would look at such news in despair, an agorist, such as myself, would point out the fact that a country’s economy isn’t in the toilet simply because the state says it is. In the eyes of the state an economy’s health is measured by the rate rate of expropriation. If the state is able to expropriate a great amount of wealth from the general populace then, in its eyes, the economy is health. On the other hand, if the state is unable to expropriate a great amount of wealth from the general populace then it believes the economy is failing.

Markets don’t cease operating because participants are unable to fulfill the state’s demands. When the state begins to demand more than market participants can or are willing to surrender then those markets move underground. The state sees such “underground” markets as its enemy because they are its death knell; they are the the result of the people finally standing up a saying “Enough! Go bad to Hell from whence you came you evil plunderers!” As we can see by the estimated size of Spain’s “underground” economy, the people there have finally grown so sick of their rulers that they are refusing to surrender any of their hard earned wealth even under the threat of being thrown into a cage or murdered by costume clad thugs with badges.

I only hope that Spain’s overall disgust in rulers will eventually spread here to the United States.

Bow Before the King

Last week the inevitable finally happened, Detroit finally filed for bankruptcy. Because reality is difficult to deal with a judge decided to block Detroit’s filing. That in of itself isn’t much of a news story but the judges justification for opposing the filing is:

Prior to her ruling on Friday, the judge criticized the Snyder administration and Schuette’s office over their hasty move.

“It’s cheating, sir, and it’s cheating good people who work,” the judge told assistant state Attorney General Brian Devlin. “It’s also not honoring the (United States) president, who took (Detroit’s auto companies) out of bankruptcy.”

I think somebody is jockeying for a Supreme Court nomination because that’s the only reason I can understand why a judge would bow down before a president and perform such thorough public fellatio.

Life is difficult for worshipers of the state. At some point economic realities always cause a state to crumble. When that happens the worshipers of the state resort to the only argumentative method they know, argumentum ad auctoritatem. As devout worshipers, these arguments begin to take on a religious quality. They say that the state can’t crumble because, their god or gods, who take form as the state’s rulers, said such a destiny was impossible.

Detroit is insolvent, there is nothing that can be done to change that fact. The judge, unable to come to terms with reality, has resorted to saying that Detroit can’t fall because her god, the president, wouldn’t be honored by such a fact. It’s no different than if she stuck her fingers in her ears and began to yell “LA LA LA I CAN’T HEAR YOU!”

Everything Old is New Again

Edward Snowden’s leak that made the public aware of the fact that the National Security Agency (NSA) was spying on everybody ended up being the straw that broke the camel’s back for many. Those people finally realized that the United States isn’t the freest country on Earth and that our government isn’t any better than the communist regimes they were told to fear throughout the entire Cold War. Of course, many of those people also believe that the state’s act of rampant spying is new and that, historically, such things were unthinkable. As it turns out, a snoopy federal government is nothing new in the United States:

In 1862, after President Abraham Lincoln appointed him secretary of war, Edwin M. Stanton penned a letter to the president requesting sweeping powers, which would include total control of the telegraph lines. By rerouting those lines through his office, Stanton would keep tabs on vast amounts of communication, journalistic, governmental and personal. On the back of Stanton’s letter Lincoln scribbled his approval: “The Secretary of War has my authority to exercise his discretion in the matter within mentioned.”

[…]

Having the telegraph lines running through Stanton’s office made his department the nexus of war information; Lincoln visited regularly to get the latest on the war. Stanton collected news from generals, telegraph operators and reporters. He had a journalist’s love of breaking the story and an autocrat’s obsession with information control. He used his power over the telegraphs to influence what journalists did or didn’t publish. In 1862, the House Judiciary Committee took up the question of “telegraphic censorship” and called for restraint on the part of the administration’s censors.

History repeats itself. Today’s states are advantaged by technologies that makes snooping easier than ever. But states have always utilized the most advanced technologies of their time to keep tabs on what the people were up to. Fortunately, technology is a double-edged sword. While it enables states to spy on people it also allows people to fly under the radar of Big Brother. In Lincoln’s time one could prevent Stanton’s office from knowing what was being transmitted on telegraphs by encoding their messages. We have the same capability today. Modern cryptography allows us to keep prying eyes from reading our communications, so long as we use the tools available to us correctly (which isn’t always easy).

Since humanity continues to repeat old mistakes it makes sense to get into the habit of expecting those mistakes and developing plans to mitigate the consequences. The states of today, just like the states of yesterday, are allowed to snoop on the people because the people continue to make the mistake of entrusting monopoly powers to handfuls of individuals. That being the case, one should always assume that those holding power are watching. Making such assumptions the default helps get us into the mindset necessary to develop and utilize techniques to slip by the watchmen. If enough people get into such a mindset it could, finally, give rise to a society where the watchmen are rendered mostly harmless.

The Joe Biden Defense

Let this be a lesson to everybody, Joe Biden is not an expert on self-defense laws:

Barton reportedly admitted to deputies that he fired his weapon while chasing away people who he thought were breaking into his vehicles at 5804 NE 124th St. in the early morning hours Monday.

[…]

“I did what Joe Biden told me to do,” Barton told KOIN. “I went outside and fired my shotgun in the air.”

Barton was referring to a question and answer session the vice president had in February.

“If you want to protect yourself, get a double-barreled shotgun,” Biden said at the time.

“I said ‘Jill, if there’s ever a problem, just walk out on the balcony here … put that double-barreled shotgun and fire two blasts outside the house,’” Biden added.

Joe Biden is able to get away with telling his wife to fire a shotgun into the air to scare of burglars because he is a member of the privileged political class. Since he’s the vice president no cop would dare arrest him or a member of his family. However, rules are for thee, not for me. Most of us aren’t members of the political class and will be arrested if we discharge a firearm into the air to warn off a potential threat.

With that said, I think Mr. Barton has a pretty good excuse. In our society we’re raised to follow the orders of the politicians. If they pass a law we’re expected to obey it, if they tell us to do something we’re expected to comply. Considering that cultural fact, nobody should be surprised when somebody complies with a very stupid recommendation made by a very stupid politician (I know, that’s a redundant term).

Rules are for Thee, Not for Me

Here’s another entry into the rules are for thee, not for me. The governor of Iowa was clocked at 84 miles per hour. If you were I were to exceed the arbitrarily created speed limit in such a fashion we would face a very large fine and possibly have our automobile confiscated. Things turn out a little differently when you’re a high ranking member of the political elite:

Special Agent in Charge Larry Hedlund observed the SUV of Governor Terry Branstad going nearly 90 MPH on the highway. He was in a state owned vehicle, but called for an on-duty officer to pursue. Another officer clocked the SUV at 84 MPH, but didn’t pull them over once he saw that another trooper was driving.

Hedlund complained to superiors about the incident and how it could have endangered public safety. Soon after, Hedlund was put on paid leave for an alleged rules violation, that being the use of a state-owned vehicle while off duty.

Hedlund was just fired after a two and a half month investigation this week. He was part of the Iowa police for 25 years. Hedlund says that the firing definitely had nothing to do with the alleged rules violation and was absolutely about calling for a pursuit of the Governor.

For those of you working for the state’s enforcement arm let this be a lesson; if you even think about crossing your masters you will be put down. It would also be wise for those of us in the serf class to ignore the wrongdoings of our manor lords because reporting their shenanigans will likely result in us being kidnapped and held in a cage.

Remember, all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.

Security is Hard

In the hopes of staving off would-be state assassins, Edward Snowden announced that he has distributed encrypted copies of data that he obtained while working at the National Security Agency (NSA):

Taking another page out of the WikiLeaks playbook, Edward Snowden has apparently distributed an encrypted copy of at least “thousands” of documents that he pilfered from the National Security Agency to “several people,” according to Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian reporter who first published Snowden’s leaks.

In an interview with the Daily Beast on 25 June, Greenwald said that Snowden “has taken extreme precautions to make sure many different people around the world have these archives to insure the stories will inevitably be published.”

Greenwald added: “If anything happens at all to Edward Snowden, he told me he has arranged for them to get access to the full archives.” The Brazil-based journalist said that he himself has thousands of documents that Snowden leaked from the NSA, which may or may not constitute the totality of what he exfiltrated.

On the surface it looks like a clever method to keep himself alive but, as Bruce Schneier pointed out, he may not have thought his clever plan all the way through:

I’m not sure he’s thought this through, though. I would be more worried that someone would kill me in order to get the documents released than I would be that someone would kill me to prevent the documents from being released. Any real-world situation involves multiple adversaries, and it’s important to keep all of them in mind when designing a security system.

Security is hard. People tend to focus on very specific individual threats and design security systems around those threats without taking into consideration other potential threats. Snowden focused so heavily on the threat of a United States assassin taking him out that he forgot to consider the fact that there are many people in the world who really want that NSA data leaked.