Category: Economics

The Decentralized Internet

“Internet provision is a natural monopoly!” How many times have you heard some economic illiterati say that? I’m sure you’ve heard it a few times even though the entire concept of natural monopoly is a myth. To demonstrate this I’m going to provide a couple of examples of decentralized Internet architectures. First we’re going to look at the corporate world where one Internet Service Provider (ISP) has decided centralized infrastructure isn’t fulfilling all of its needs:

Well T-Mobile wants to fix all that… by putting an LTE tower in your house. Yes, the unconventional carrier has announced a 4G LTE CellSpot that it says will offer 3,000 square feet of LTE coverage for your home or business. Plug it into the wall outlet, connect it to the internet, and your LTE connection will get a boost anywhere T-Mobile has spectrum. The CellSpot supports up to 16 calls at a time, and will work with any 3G, 4G, and LTE device on T-Mobile’s network.

T-Mobile’s biggest limitation is coverage. Improving coverage isn’t easy for a cell carrier because building towers is expensive and the bureaucracy between them and their customers is significant (my hometown kept denying AT&T permission to build a new tower simply because the city council didn’t want travelers to see an “ugly” tower when they passed through town). Being able to install a lot of microcells is a lot easier than building a tower simply because the carrier doesn’t have to buy land and get permission from local bureaucracies.

Two mistakes T-Mobile is making, in my opinion, is only allowing its customers to install these CellSpots and not paying people who choose to install them:

And the price is right too — eligible Simple Choice customers can get the LTE CellSpot for free (with a refundable $25 deposit), and keep it as long as they are customers of T-Mobile.

I bet T-Mobile would quickly find itself enjoying spectacular coverage if it paid anybody willing to install one of these in their home or business a little kickback (these microcells, after all, are consuming electricity and using bandwidth). For the right price (which means enough for me to make a little bit of profit) I’d be willing to install one of these in my home and I’m not even a T-Mobile customer.

Admittedly relying on a centralized ISP, even if they’re utilizing a decentralized architecture, isn’t exactly demonstrating that Internet provision isn’t a natural monopoly. Fear not! T-Mobile isn’t the only game in town:

When you live somewhere with slow and unreliable Internet access, it usually seems like there’s nothing to do but complain. And that’s exactly what residents of Orcas Island, one of the San Juan Islands in Washington state, were doing in late 2013. Faced with CenturyLink service that was slow and outage-prone, residents gathered at a community potluck and lamented their current connectivity.

“Everyone was asking, ‘what can we do?’” resident Chris Brems recalls. “Then [Chris] Sutton stands up and says, ‘Well, we can do it ourselves.’”

When somebody says, “Well, we can do it ourselves,” you know they’re on the right track:

Faced with a local ISP that couldn’t provide modern broadband, Orcas Island residents designed their own network and built it themselves. The nonprofit Doe Bay Internet Users Association (DBIUA), founded by Sutton, Brems, and a few friends, now provide Internet service to a portion of the island. It’s a wireless network with radios installed on trees and houses in the Doe Bay portion of Orcas Island. Those radios get signals from radios on top of a water tower, which in turn receive a signal from a microwave tower across the water in Mount Vernon, Washington.

[…]

Back in 2013, CenturyLink service was supposed to provide up to 1.5Mbps downloads speeds, but in reality we “had 700kbps sometimes, and nothing at others,” Brems told Ars. When everyone came home in the evening, “you would get 100kbps down and almost nothing up, and the whole thing would just collapse. It’s totally oversubscribed,” Sutton said.

That 10-day outage in November 2013 wasn’t a fluke. At various times, CenturyLink service would go out for a couple of days until the company sent someone out to fix it, Sutton said. But since equipping the island with DBIUA’s wireless Internet, outages have been less frequent and “there are times we’re doing 30Mbps down and 40Mbps up,” Brems said. “It’s never been below 20 or 25 unless we had a problem.”

A better, more reliable service for less. What more could one ask for? Anybody who lives in a rural area knows the struggle of getting fast, reliable Internet access. Unfortunately many people in rural areas turn their frustrations into political campaigns. By the time they’re done they have higher taxes and promises from the local, state, or federal government that go unfulfilled. Had they taken the money they invested in political shenanigans and instead built a network they would have fast, reliable Internet connectivity. This is why you should listen to the person who says, “Well, we can do it ourselves,” instead of the idiot who tries to start a political campaign.

Internet provision isn’t a natural monopoly. A community can come together and build their own network and attach it to the Internet. This is even easier now that wireless connectivity is no longer slow or outrageously expensive.

Volkswagen Gives Americans What They Want, Americans Buy Volkswagens, Statists Confused By Markets

A lot of electrons have been annoyed by people writing about the Volkswagen scandal. In an effort to give customers the performance they want while still passing the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) unrealistic tests Volkswagen wrote some clever software. It’s no surprisingly Volkswagen sales increased in the month of October. Well, it’s no surprise unless you’re a statist who doesn’t understand how markets work:

There is a world in which consumers swiftly punish Volkswagen where it counts — the coffers — for its massive, systematic deception of the Environmental Protection Agency in which it cheated its way around diesel emissions tests for half a decade.

This isn’t that world.

Volkswagen of America just reported its October sales, the first full month of reporting since the scandal broke, and guess what? Sales are up 0.24 percent year over year, likely thanks in part to enormous discounts being offered to prop up volume. Now, perhaps they would’ve been up more in the absence of the scandal. But if consumers haven’t outright rewarded VW for deceiving them, they certainly haven’t done much to punish the automaker, either.

I don’t really know what to do with this. Governments and law firms around the world are rearing to shake VW’s piggy bank, but it’s a little confusing to me that car buyers wouldn’t be looking elsewhere while this all plays out (and it is very much still playing out). Are these buyers just not following the news? Are they not concerned, because America is generally less excited about diesel engines than Europeans? (Note that Volkswagen has suspended sales of its 2016 diesels, pending approvals, so Americans have made up the sales difference versus October 2014 with additional gasoline and hybrid purchases.)

Consumers only punish manufacturers when they feel they’ve been wronged. Why should I, as a consumer, be angry if I know an automobile manufacturer can’t sell its product in the United States without passing random government tests that demonstrates nothing of value (more on this in a second) and find out the manufacturer cheated the test to give me a better product? On the other hand I, as a consumer, have ever right to be angry when the government attempts to interfere with my acquisition of a desired product. The EPA tests, as I mentioned above, aren’t even testing real-world conditions so there’s no reason for consumers, even those who are dyed in the wool environmentalists, to give two shits about them.

And don’t make the mistake of construing this increase in sales with consumers not caring about environmentalism. Most consumers care greatly about environmentalism, which is why fuel mileage is advertised to heavily these days. Generally consumers want a balance between performance and fuel efficiency (of course the EPA’s fuel efficiency tests, like its emissions tests, aren’t accurate but that’s a different can of worms). If a vehicle’s fuel efficiency is too low consumers face undesirable increases in their fuel bills. But market forces are something statists don’t understand so they become confused by situations like Volkswagen’s sales increase and come to the faulty conclusion that it means consumers don’t care about environmentalism (and use that conclusion to argue the necessity of the EPA).

What we’ve learned from this Volkswagen scandal is that producers, when faced with idiotic regulatory tests, will find creative ways to give consumers what they want and be rightly rewarded. If you want to be angry with somebody be angry with the EPA. It’s been feeding the public bad data for decades and using that data to restrict availability of goods, which has forced manufacturers to cheat in order to fulfill the wants of their customers.

Libertarianism: Simultaneously Impotent And The Most Dangerous Force On Earth

The best thing about being a libertarian is that you’re simultaneously accused of being completely impotent and the most dangerous force on Earth. Making the situation even better is the fact libertarianism is often blamed for things it has absolutely no part in. Take this recent article by statist economic stooge Will Hutton:

Yet there is a parallel collapse in the economic order that is less conspicuous: the hundreds of billions of dollars fleeing emerging economies, from Brazil to China, don’t come with images of women and children on capsizing boats. Nor do banks that have lent trillions that will never be repaid post gruesome videos. However, this collapse threatens our liberal universe as much as certain responses to the refugees. Capital flight and bank fragility are profound dysfunctions in the way the global economy is now organised that will surface as real-world economic dislocation.

The IMF is profoundly concerned, warning at last week’s annual meeting in Peru of $3tn (£1.95tn) of excess credit globally and weakening global economic growth. But while it knows there needs to be an international co-ordinated response, no progress is likely. The grip of libertarian, anti-state philosophies on the dominant Anglo-Saxon political right in the US and UK makes such intervention as probable as a Middle East settlement. Order is crumbling all around and the forces that might save it are politically weak and intellectually ineffective.

We’re seeing signs of the very economic turmoil libertarians have been warning about for decades. This turmoil is the result of unsound monetary practices, namely the reliance on debt instead of wealth for economic activity between nations. No matter how much evidence libertarians point to or how loudly libertarians scream the statists seem entirely unwilling to adjust their monetary policies. Instead they continue trying the same thing — only harder.

So who’s to blame for the current turmoil? Libertarians, of course!

There’s so much to laugh at in this article but the insinuation that libertarian, anti-state philosophies have any kind of old on the political right of the United States (US) or United Kingdoms (UK) is a real gut buster. The political right and left can best be defined as anti-libertarianism. Libertarianism is about individual empowerment at the expense of state power. Strong centralized militaries, militarized domestic police forces, national surveillance apparatuses, fortress-like borders, fiat currency, and other such nonsense the political right has a raging hard-on for are anti-libertarian in nature. Likewise the redistribution of wealth, heavy-handed market controls, widespread censorship, restrictions on voluntary association, almost zealous opposition to self-defense, and other politically left ideas are equally anti-libertarian in nature.

The economic philosophies, which Mr. Hutton claims to be libertarian, of both the US and UK are entirely statist in nature. Libertarians advocate for wealth-based currencies, usually in the form of gold or silver backed warehouse receipts, whereas the US and UK both use fiat currencies that are backed by little more than each nation’s respective capacity for violence against anybody who doesn’t recognize their full faith and credit. Debt, the US and UK’s preferred excuse for printing more worthless paper, is the antithesis of libertarianism’s advocacy of spending within one’s means.

The current economic turmoil is the result of authoritarian, pro-state philosophies. If libertarianism actually had a grip on these nations we almost certainly wouldn’t be facing this economic crisis.

But, of course, libertarianism is the boogeyman of statists everywhere so it must be blamed for all things, whether or not those accusations make sense.

If You’re Good At Something Never Do It For Free

I know the Joker is supposed to be the bad guy in The Dark Night and probably serves as some sort of metaphor for the evils of capitalism but he had some goddamn sage advice:

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As I’ve mentioned previously I hate the “giving culture.” Unfortunately most of us have been inflicted with this giving nonsense since our impressionable youths. Teachers harp on students to “share” (usually a euphemism for give away) their toys, pencils, and other earthly possession to any student who asks. In college students are suckered into working for free, often under the guise of an internship, because it will “help them build a resume.” Then when you get into the professional world you might be asked to work longer hours for no additional pay and be accused of not “loving your work” if you decline. Fuck. All. Of. That.

Let’s consider how you get good at something. Although there are a handful of anomalies that seem naturally gifted at whatever they pursue most of us only become good through seemingly endless practice. Successful authors? Almost all of them have written a lot. Skilled programmer? Almost all of them have years of programming under their belts. Bad ass martial artists? Almost all of them have been practicing their art(s) for years. There’s a reason the phrase “Practice makes perfect,” is so popular.

Why should you invest years of your life into developing a skill set and not expect some benefits? And why should you tolerate people belittling your investment by demanding you to give your skills away? The idea of investing is to see a return. That’s why, if you’re good at something, you should never do it for free. You put in the effort where others did not. Likewise, when you want somebody to do something for you then you should recognize their years of effort and not demean them by demanding they do it for free.

Exchange isn’t an evil plot for the haves to steal wealth from the have nots. It’s a mutual respect and acknowledgement of accomplishments. For example, I respect and acknowledge that a automotive engineer has invested years of their life in developing a skill I haven’t so I pay them to build me a vehicle. Likewise, many people seem to respect and acknowledge that I’ve invested years of my life in developing computer science skills and pay me to utilize them.

If you’re good at something you shouldn’t feel ashamed or awkward commanding a price for it. And you should feel free to tell anybody who tells you otherwise to go pound sand because there’s no reason for you to put up with that kind of insulting bullshit.

You Keep Using That Word: Monopoly Edition

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Monopoly is one of those words that gets thrown around too loosely. The word monopoly means, “exclusive control by one group of the means of producing or selling a commodity or service.” So monopoly actually defines a condition that only exists under government interventionism. But the word, like so many other words, has been twisted by the State. Today monopoly implies any company that has become extremely large. Case in point, Google:

BRUSSELS — European Union lawmakers have overwhelmingly backed a motion urging antitrust regulators to break up Google. The non-binding resolution approved Thursday by the European Parliament is the strongest public signal yet of Europe’s concern with the growing power of U.S. tech giants. The resolution is a largely symbolic protest vote without immediate impact. But it was approved with a large majority — 384 votes to 174, with 56 abstentions — showing widespread political backing. Andreas Schwab, German conservative lawmaker and co-sponsor of the bill, said it was a political signal to the European Commission, which is tasked with ensuring a level playing field for business across the 28-country bloc. “Monopolies in whatever market have never been useful, neither for consumers nor for the companies,” he said. Google declined to comment.

Google isn’t a monopoly. In fact it’s not even close to being one. Every single product and service it provides is also provided by others. I’m proof of this since I use very few Google products or services. Most of my searching is done using DuckDuckGo. My e-mail is handled by my server sitting in my dwelling. My phone is manufactured by Apple and runs iOS. None of my laptops are Chromebooks.

The only Google services I really utilize are Google Maps and YouTube. I use Google Maps because I find the alternatives provided by Microsoft and Apple lackluster and choose YouTube because it has more content I’m looking for than Vimeo. But in both cases you’ll notice I mentioned competitors that exist.

If you want an actual example of a monopoly look up Ma Systems. Ma Bell was a company that enjoyed a government granted monopoly over telecommunications. But outside of government intervention in the marketplace you’re going to be hard pressed to find an actual monopoly so you may want to stop throwing that word around so willy nilly.

Work Is Replaceable

Technology has created more jobs than it has destroyed yet I’m still subjected daily to the whining of people worried about the jobs. What will happen to people working checkout aisles at convenience stores if everybody uses kiosks? How will employees at McDonald’s afford housing if they’re replaced by kiosks? Where will people working in manufacturing go if 3D printers make their jobs unnecessary? Then you have the people, usually old folks, bitching about the current generation not working as hard. You would think any 20-something working less than 80 hours a week was some kind of lazy bums. And don’t even get me started on the people worried that there won’t be as much work available in the future because of automation.

You’re reading this so I infer that you both have access to a computer and aren’t currently working (even if you’re at work). Two things about these inferences should amaze you. First, you have access to an incredibly complex piece of machinery that has went from non-existent to pervasive throughout society in roughly half of a century. Second, you don’t have to perform hard labor every minute of the day just to survive.

It’s true, automation has replaced a lot of jobs. It’s also true that automation has allowed us to work less than the previous generation and still enjoy a better standard of living. That’s the beauty of automation. Not only does it replace hard labor with easier jobs but it also allows us to generate the same wealth in less time.

I, like you, am not spending every moment of daylight hunting animals or gathering berries. Usually I put in around eight hours five days a week. For those 40 hours a week most of it is spent sitting on my ass in front of a computer. The most strenuous effort I have to put forth most working periods is moving my fingers thousands of times to different keyboard positions so I can properly enter in the correct sequence of characters to convince a computer to do what I would rather not do myself. Programming is much easier than automotive repair, which is what my father does. I also work fewer hours than he does.

In most cases when a job is replaced with automation it reduces the amount of physical effort needed overall. You know the socialist dream of abolishing work? It becomes a little more feasible everyday as we make better use of advancing technology. Human history is actually a lengthy demonstration of this point. This generation is lazier than the previous, the previous generation is lazier than its predecessors, and so on.

This is why I scoff at neophobes and why I roll my eyes when some union leader is bitching about the machines replacing jobs. I don’t want to struggle every waking hour to obtain enough food to eek out a substance living. Fuck everything about that! What I want to do is go home after doing what little work I need and enjoy myself. Machines can create more wealth than I can so let them do it. I’ll enjoy the product of their labor.

Advances In Technology Creates New Markets Which Creates New Jobs Which Creates New Wealth

One of the most idiotic claims I hear, usually from members of the labor movement, is that automation is taking American jobs. They get made when I use self-checkout kiosks at the grocery store because they think that mindless machine is eliminating a human worker permanently. Ironically they rant at me as they’re demanding the minimum wage be increased. If anything encourages a business owner to seek a way to automate labor it’s forcing them to pay a laborer more than they make for the company. Another irony is they often post their rants online using a machine that has done more to wipe out manual labor than anything else.

Here’s the thing, when automation obsoletes human labor the people who are displaced aren’t eliminated from the workforce forever. Us humans are adaptable. In fact we wouldn’t be the dominant species on this planet if we weren’t. When our set of skills is obsoleted by automation we can learn new skills. In fact the replacement of human labor by automation has lead to the increase in the number of skills needed and therefore the number of laborers needed. That’s right, technology has actually created more jobs than it has destroyed:

In the 1800s it was the Luddites smashing weaving machines. These days retail staff worry about automatic checkouts. Sooner or later taxi drivers will be fretting over self-driving cars.

The battle between man and machines goes back centuries. Are they taking our jobs? Or are they merely easing our workload?

A study by economists at the consultancy Deloitte seeks to shed new light on the relationship between jobs and the rise of technology by trawling through census data for England and Wales going back to 1871.

Their conclusion is unremittingly cheerful: rather than destroying jobs, technology has been a “great job-creating machine”. Findings by Deloitte such as a fourfold rise in bar staff since the 1950s or a surge in the number of hairdressers this century suggest to the authors that technology has increased spending power, therefore creating new demand and new jobs.

Their study, shortlisted for the Society of Business Economists’ Rybczynski prize, argues that the debate has been skewed towards the job-destroying effects of technological change, which are more easily observed than than its creative aspects.

Computers may have eliminated the need for most secretarial labor but it created the need for hardware developers, programmers, technical support specialists, network engineers, and a ton of other jobs that exist only because computers are now pervasive throughout our society.

Automation is a wonderful thing. It creates more wealth that can be invested in more ventures that employs more people. Librarians well-versed in the Dewey Decimal Classification system may not be in high demand anymore but Google, Microsoft, and DuckDuckGo have employed a lot of people to build, improve, and maintain their search engines. In addition to creating those jobs automation also lead to entirely new markets. Data mining, for example, wouldn’t exist if massive amounts of searchable data didn’t.

3D printing is an emerging technology that stands to replace a lot of human labor in manufacturing. But it also stands to open up markets for improving 3D printer technology, material engineering for 3D printers, engineering goods so they can be more easily manufactured with 3D printers, designing 3D models to print, etc.

Advances in technology creates new markets which creates new jobs which creates new wealth which leads to advances in technology. It’s a beautiful cycle of creation. The people who claim automation eliminates jobs are bloody idiots. Automation creates new jobs.

Ladies and Gentlemen, This is Your Newspaper of Record

The New York Times is considered a newspaper of record. That is to say it’s editorial staff is considered professional and authoritative. Consider that point when you read this story:

Avian flu, which first appeared in the United States in December, has devastated the nation’s turkey and laying hen flocks, though it seems to be abating with the arrival of higher temperatures, as specialists had predicted. But barns still stand idle, as egg and turkey producers weigh the risks that the outbreak will pick up again in the fall.

The U.S.D.A. predicts that egg production this year will be down by roughly 341 million dozen, or about 4 percent from last year, Mr. Shagam said. “We do expect to see prices come down from this high but still be at record highs for the year,” he said.

What does that mean? An average wholesale price of $1.60 to $1.66 for a dozen New York large eggs, which would break the record high of $1.42 a dozen set in 2014.

No run on the grocery store has been apparent, at least not by consumers.

To summarize the article, avian flu has knocked back egg production so prices have increased and since prices have increased consumer demand has gone down. What really gets me about this article isn’t the fact that it’s pointing out the bloody obvious or that it took so many words to do so. No, what really gets me is that the author treats this like some kind of goddamn revelation. Who would have ever though that increasing prices decreases demand? This will change everything!

Considering the New York Times gives Paul Krugman space to write his seemingly unending flow of economic bullshit I’m not surprised its other staff members are equally ignorant of economics. I also understand that we’ve been told by the state that the only way to deal with shortages are price controls coupled with rationing. Allowing markets to shake themselves out has been labeled a pipe dream that evil anarchists say to scare the statists into disobeying their masters. But when staff members at your newspaper of record believe this very basic economic principle is even newsworthy then you really have to shake your head at the sorry state of economic knowledge in this country.

OpenBazaar Will Kill Us All

Mainstream economists are obsessed with control. Unlike the Austrian tradition, which correctly states that there is no way to control economies, mainstream economists believe that an ideal economy, whatever that is, can be had if a strong enough centralized power forces people to obey the correct plan. This obsession leads them to see doom and gloom in the strangest of places. Consider OpenBazaar. OpenBazaar is a decentralized commerce platform that allows anybody to buy and sell goods online without going through a middleman such as Amazon or eBay. Sounds empowering, doesn’t it? Not according to mainstream economists. To them the idea of OpenBazaar undermines the control they worship and is therefore a threat to humanity:

While Hoffman could be right that OpenBazaar will revolutionize online commerce, its business model could also potentially threaten America’s tech industry. The wild and uncontrollable nature of OpenBazaar’s technology, especially if it winds up being used to facilitate terrorism, could push authorities to launch a broad crackdown on other technologies as well that law enforcement considers an impediment to its work.

And if the potential harm from a marketplace seems limited to you, consider what could happen from the combination of this type of technology with Artificial Intelligence. As AI evolves, even tech visionaries like Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Tesla chief Elon Musk have expressed concern over the ability of humans to control the outcome, especially if machines are eventually able to ‘think’ autonomously. Now apply OpenBazaar’s decentralized and police-resistant model to this and you have a recipe for disaster: machines with free will and the ability to communicate with each other under the human radar. Maybe an Isaac Asimov-inspired fantasy at one time, this is hardly an impossible scenario anymore given the rapid pace of technological development.

You have to admire how he states OpenBazaar could hurt the technology industry and immediately turn around and explain how it could greatly enhance the technology industry by helping artificial intelligence (AI) advance (although, again due to an obsession with power, he sees the advancement of AI as extremely dangerous).

This article shows just how insane of an obsession with power mainstream economists possess. Anything that could be potentially disruptive, which all technology can be, is seen as a threat. Computers were originally feared by many mainstream economists because they stood to replace a lot of human labor. In fact this attitude is still alive. Light bulbs probably had numerous mainstream economists shitting their pants because they would replace the candle.

Here we have a platform that enabled individuals to buy and sell goods without having to go through a middleman or front the expense of running their own commerce front end. It could allow some little old lady in the backwoods of Alabama to sell the excellent arts and crafts she’s known locally for. A manufacturer or parts for old automobiles who only sold locally could setup an online presence and sell to anybody in the world. There is so much potential for this kind of platform but mainstream economists don’t see it because the potential derives from an ability to bypass controls.

Let us also not forget the cost of control. Silk Road was revolutionary not because it allowed people to buy and sell illicit drugs but because it protected people participating in voluntary trade from violent law enforcers. It made the illicit drug trade much safer for everybody involved because the biggest threat to somebody buying or selling illicit drugs is a group of heavily armed trigger happy cops kicking down their door at oh dark thirty in the hopes of finding a little baggy of pot and a dog to shoot (not necessarily in that order). The control mainstream economists worship requires violence and tools that protect people from that violence stand to make the world a safer place. That’s why I don’t believe tools like OpenBazaar are a danger to society. If anything they stand to save a lot of peaceful people from the truncheon of the state.

They’re Finally Getting the Right Idea

The economically ignorant have been demanding the minimum wage be set at $15.00 per hour. If you understand basic economics you know that minimum wage laws don’t guarantee a living wage but merely make it illegal to hire entire swaths of people. Nobody is going to hire a teenager with no skills if they have to pay them $15.00 per hour. And a minimum wage of $15.00 per hour makes no sense for a teenager because they usually live at home, are fed by their parents, and have few bills. They live for a lot less money than an adult raising three kids. And if a business owner does decide to hire them for less then $15.00 per hour they will get a visit from the gang in blue who will either issue a fine or kidnap the owner.

But my biggest criticisms of people advocating for the minimum wage to be raised is their lack of belief. Why only $15.00 per hour? Why not jack it up to $20.00 per hour or even $100.00 per hour? Thankfully the Freedom Socialist Party (an oxymoron if there ever was one) has stepped up to the plate and is demanding minimum wage be raised to $20.00 per hour:

But Doug Barnes, the party’s national secretary, told The Huffington Post on Saturday that the group relies heavily on donations from low-wage workers and could not afford to pay much to an inexperienced designer.

“We’re practicing what we’re preaching in terms of continuing to fight for the minimum wage,” Barnes said, making his first public comment on the controversy. “But we can’t pay a lot more than $13.”

He said the party’s revenues would increase if the minimum wage were raised to $20 — and he’d even prefer $22, at least in Seattle. The city will begin phasing in a $15 minimum wage in April.

“Our donor base would all be affected, and the low-wage workers who support us with $5 to $6 a month would be able to give more,” he said. “That would affect our ability to pay higher wages as well.”

I love his reasoning. Raising the minimum wage will result in more money for the Freedom Socialist Party. How capitalistic of him!

But I do give him credit for at least believing in what he preaches to the extent of demanding an even more absurd minimum wage. Maybe he could kick start the minimum wage inflation movement where minimum wage will be set to inflate by at least two percent every year! That way we could render almost everybody unemployable and the underground economy would flourish.

As an agorist the best feature of minimum wage laws is that they push people into the underground economy. People aren’t going to stand by and starve simply because it’s illegal for anybody to hire them. They’re going to offer their services illegally. That means they won’t pay taxes on their income and will starve the state of some resources. Anybody partaking in illegal services isn’t going to pay sales tax, obtain permits, or do anything else that might tip the authorities off. Part of the reason I want to see minimum wage jacked up is because it will cause the underground economy to expand at a rapid pace. Socialists may have funny economic ideas but that doesn’t mean their ideas are without merit.