Tag: Not So Crazy Libertarian Ideals

Yet Another Reason to Hate the United Nations

The collectivists absolutely adore the United Nations (UN), which isn’t surprising since the UN is basically a conglomerate of world governments that believe the world needs more powerful governments. It seems many people buy into the UN propaganda and believe it to be a force for good, which leads people to instantly scoff at the idea of the United States pulling out of the UN. Via episode 392 of the No Agenda podcast I came to this wonderful article that describes this official UN document [PDF]. The linked article goes through numerous items listed in the UN document but Article 33 is easily the most tyrannical:

Parties shall develop or strengthen demographic policies in order to achieve
sustainable development. To this end, the Parties shall:

(a) conduct studies to estimate the size of the human population their
environment is capable of supporting and develop programmes relating
to population growth at corresponding levels;

(b) cooperate to alleviate the stress on natural support systems caused by
major population flows;

(c) cooperate as requested to provide a necessary infrastructure on a
priority basis for areas with rapid population growth;

(d) provide to their populations full information on the options concerning
family planning; and

(e) provide for long-term resettlement of persons displaced by changing
environmental conditions.

Article 33 is intended to give effect to Article 16 (Integrated Policies) of the Draft Covenant, by requiring that Parties adopt demographic policies that are supportive of sustainable development.285 This provision favours action by each Party on an individual basis, with assistance from other Parties only when requested. Sustainable development is to be understood as an individual goal of each Party. It is to this end that “appropriate” demographic policies are to be developed and strengthened (see Article 12 (Common but Differentiated Responsibilities)).

The provision includes four mandatory actions, although the list is not exhaustive. Subparagraph (a) contains a two-fold obligation for each Party: the first is to conduct a regular census of its population and then on the basis of the results to estimate the carrying capacity of its environment; the second is to develop or strengthen appropriate programmes adapting population growth accordingly. The means of so doing are left to the discretion of each Party, consistent with other international obligations.

So signatories to this document are expected to calculate the maximum population sustainable by their environment and take action to ensure their population doesn’t exceed this maximum. The method used by each signatory to control their population is left to their discretion. This leads to an interest question, what happens if the chosen method of population control is genocide? Will the UN oppose the genocide or will they be OK with is so long as it’s being done to control the population?

I’m currently reading Undercurrents by Robert Buettner. In it there is a planet called Yavet that has stringent population control, if you have a child without a license that child is ruled guilty of a capital crime and is summarily executed. Illegally born children who manage to survive and escape the planet are turned over to bounty hunters who get paid for retrieving and/or executing the illegal. This sounds like a plan the UN could get behind.

Either way this becomes far more interesting when you look at the requirements, namely each signatory is supposed to calculate the maximum population that their environment can support. How the fuck is anybody supposed to calculate such an unknowable ever-changing thing? Such a thing is very similar to the economic calculation problem presented by Ludwig von Mises. There is no feedback mechanism available when calculating something like a maximum sustainable population, and ever-improving technologies mean the maximum sustainable population is ever-increasing. Furthermore the market is best suited for determining such things as a reduction in available resources brought on by a higher population will lead to an increase in the price of said resources, an increase that will likely cause parents to have fewer children.

We see population explosions in less technologically developed nations for many reasons including the need for labor on subsistance farms, high infant mortality rate, and high mortality rate of other people due to disease and famine. All of these problems can be greatly alleviated by advancements in technology, which is why the population that is sustainable in more technologically developed nations is higher. The market helps with this process as innovators are motivated to develop replacements for resources that become increasingly more expensive as they diminish due to use. As markets can’t be calculated, maximum populations that can be sustained by an environment also can’t be calculated.

The UN is a despicable organization that attempts to bring socialistic central planning to the entire world. Central planning, like so many other failed ideas, won’t work simply because it’s done again harder. They say a sign of insanity is doing the same thing over and over against while expecting different results. If that’s the case then the UN, and the people who believe in it, are some of the most insane individuals on the planet.

Gunny Mutual Aid Succeeds

Just an update on the request for help received by Erin of Lurking Rhythmically, she not only received enough donations to purchase a carry pistol but had some money left over:

I have been advised by certain knowledgeable people that I should not disclose the exact amount I raised lest I invoke the dread gaze of the IRS, but I do want to say that you folks went far above and beyond what was necessary to help me acquire a carry pistol, a permit, and training. I will be sending out thank-you notes later this week.

I don’t mention this solely because I want to demonstrate the goodwill of the gunny community, but I also want to bring it up as a demonstration of mutual aid succeeding. We’re deluded by the state and its supporters that we individual are unable to help one another, we’re told that the state is necessary to ensure all have what they need. Of course such statements are lies and acts of charity such as the above mentioned prove how well helping one another can work.

Mutual aid happens whenever one person comes to the assistance of another. Donating money to a family who recently lost everything is an act of mutual aid, helping neighbors clean up their property and rebuild after a flood is an act of mutual aid, and helping a person in need obtain the tools necessary for self-defense is mutual aid.

One thing I’ve witnessed as our society moves more towards statism is the reduction of mutual aid. When somebody loses their job but still needs to pay their bills and feed their families they are less likely to be helped by their fellow neighbor, instead they turn to the state and because the state has already stolen money from the populace to fund its welfare system individuals are less inclined to help one another. Its a vicious cycle, individuals refrain from helping one another because they’ve been forcefully stolen from to fund the state’s welfare system, and the state continues to point to the apathy they created as proof that money must be stolen to help those in need. We don’t need to be enslaved to this vicious cycle, we can break free of it, we need only help on another.

Time and time again I witness exceptionally generosity from the gunny community and it makes me absolutely proud to be apart of it.

The State Won’t Protect You but They May Apologize

The rampage in Norway last year that left 77 people dead demonstrated the need for the right to carry a firearm for self-defense. Police took over an hour to respond and during that time people at the Labor Party youth camp were entirely helpless because Norway doesn’t allow its citizens the right to self-defense. 77 people may be dead, and the police may have taken over an hour to actually get off their asses and do their job, but people of Norway can taken solace in the fact that the police are apologized:

Norwegian police have admitted for the first time that they could have responded faster to a massacre at a youth camp last July.

Anders Behring Breivik opened fire on young activists gathered on Utoeya island last summer, killing 69 people.

The police, distracted by a bomb Breivik had set off in Oslo and hampered by technical failures, arrived an hour after his killing spree began.

State Police Director Oystein Maeland apologised on behalf of the police.

“Every minute was one minute too long,” he said.

“It is a burden to know that lives could have been saved if the gunman had been arrested earlier.”

Lives could also have been saved had one or more people at the youth camp been armed. When seconds matter the police are only an hour away.

Social Justice Doesn’t Sound Like Justice to Me

The term ‘social justice’ has been thrown around by collectivists since, probably, forever. Even though I’ve heard the term being thrown around I’ve never been able to understand the definition because, in context, it seems to mean a correction (in their eyes) of anything the speaker is against. Usually I’m quick to pick up a dictionary and look up terms I’m unfamiliar with but the dictionary doesn’t have an entry for ‘social justice’ so I turned to Wikipedia:

Social justice is based on the concepts of human rights and equality and involves a greater degree of economic egalitarianism through progressive taxation, income redistribution, or even property redistribution.

Now I’m even more confused than when I started. How is violent theft justice? Progressive taxation, like any form of taxation, is theft. The same goes for any type of redistribution. Redistribution, by definition, implies the taking of something from one person and giving it to another. Usually those screaming for social justice want to take property from the “rich” and distribute it amongst the “poor.” Their idea seems to be that the “rich” have “too much” and the “poor” “not enough,” so the only way to rectify the situation is to take some from the “rich” and give it to the “poor.” I had to use a lot of quotation marks because the definitions of rich, too much, poor, and not enough are entirely subjective based on the person you’re talking to. In my experience the definition of rich is usually “anybody who has more than the speaker,” too much is “more stuff than the speaker owns,” poor is “the speaker,” and not enough is usually “the amount of stuff the speaker owns.”

If social justice requires the initiation of force to achieve then it is not justice at all. It’s one thing if the advocates of social justice want stolen property return to rightful owners but in my experience most people demanding social justice want property taken from the “rich” and distributed amongst the “poor.” In my book justice is compensating for harm done by the harm doer. If you’ve stolen $100.00 from somebody it is right that the $100.00, plus any recovery costs, be returned to the original victim. I’d even go so far as to say it would be right if an additional $100.00 was then taken from the thief and given to the victim, since the thief really stole the right to $100.00 of property from the victim and fair compensation would be to have the right of $100.00 of property taken from the thief. The latter part is debatable, the former is not. Stolen property should always be returned to its rightful owner unless that rightful owner has said he doesn’t want his property retrieved (for example, if the owner is a pacifist).

Justice is not taking rightfully earned property from one and giving it to another, that’s theft.

This is Why I Don’t Call it a Justice System

Calling the system of laws in this country a justice system is entirely erroneous. What was have is a punishment system, a system that punishes you whether or not you’re guilty or innocent. Things have only been going down hill and now the state is so brazen that they have flat out stated being proven innocent is no longer valid ground for release:

Witnesses have testified that another man confessed to Deputy Hill’s murder. But in a January ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Keith Ellison lamented that even though he was concerned Will could be innocent, he had to deny his motion for a new trial.

“The questions raised during post-judgment factual development about Will’s actual innocence create disturbing uncertainties,” he wrote. “Federal law does not recognize actual innocence as a mechanism to overturn an otherwise valid conviction.”

Emphasis mine. Actual innocent isn’t recognized by federal law as a mechanism to have a conviction overturned? What? Isn’t that the entire fucking point of the “justice” system, determine whether or not somebody is actually guilty of a crime? I know the motto is “innocent until proven guilty” but if a person who was previous ruled guilty is later found to be innocent doesn’t that indicate they’re no longer proven guilty? Isn’t the “justice” system only supposed to punish the guilty?

Let’s face it, we’re in a police state and justice was given the boot ages ago.

Refutations to Common Objections to Capitalism

It’s not secret that I’m a big fan of capitalism. My reasoning is simple, the only alternative to capitalism is violence. That fact seems to be lost on collectivists who blame capitalism for every problem under the sun even though they don’t actually know what capitalism is (most of them believe it’s the economic system in the United States, which is actually cronyism and closer matches mercantilism than capitalism). Thankfully there are people out there who actually understand economics and one of them gave an excellent speech that refutes common objections to capitalism:

Yes, I’m a nerd who watches presentations like this for fun.

The State is Here to Help

Or not:

Federal Emergency Management Agency officials over the weekend issued a letter denying Gov. Pat Quinn’s request for disaster aid for the five counties hardest hit by the tornado, meaning residents and communities will not be eligible for federal dollars for the costs of repairing the damage.

The news was yet another blow to the region, which had been designated a major disaster area just last year after floods damaged the area. The 170-mph winds of the recent twister damaged or destroyed hundreds of homes and killed seven people, said Harrisburg Mayor Eric Gregg.

According to statists we need agencies like the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to assist people in areas rocked by natural disasters. Yet when an area is actually hit by a natural disaster FEMA effectively says, “LOL, sucks to be you!” I’m sure FEMA has a damned good reason for not helping the region out though:

FEMA officials determined that assistance from state and local agencies, combined with volunteer groups and private insurance, would be enough for the five counties to rebuild on their own, spokesman Mark Peterson said Sunday.

In other words we should turn to mutual aid. Huh. In that case I guess we don’t need FEMA then, do we?

I find it funny that the state demand we pay them a tithe for the use of providing services but then doesn’t provide those services and tells us to rely on one another. If we rely on one another, if we practice mutual aid, then we don’t need the state. Effectively the state is once again doing my job for me by making my argument for me.

Crashing the So-Called Justice System

We live in a police state where every person is actively breaking numerous laws. Between the constant issuance of speeding tickets, verboten substance possession charges, public intoxication charges, parking citations, and numerous other victimless “crimes” being perpetuated by everyday people you would think our court systems would be flooded with so many cases that none of these things would actually get to trail. The dirty little secret of the state is that they’re only able to fine, incarcerate, and otherwise punish people for these petty crimes is because they rarely go to trail. If we want to crash the punishment system (often incorrectly called a justice system in this country) all we need to do is take everything to court:

AFTER years as a civil rights lawyer, I rarely find myself speechless. But some questions a woman I know posed during a phone conversation one recent evening gave me pause: “What would happen if we organized thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of people charged with crimes to refuse to play the game, to refuse to plea out? What if they all insisted on their Sixth Amendment right to trial? Couldn’t we bring the whole system to a halt just like that?”

[…]

“The truth is that government officials have deliberately engineered the system to assure that the jury trial system established by the Constitution is seldom used,” said Timothy Lynch, director of the criminal justice project at the libertarian Cato Institute. In other words: the system is rigged.

In the race to incarcerate, politicians champion stiff sentences for nearly all crimes, including harsh mandatory minimum sentences and three-strikes laws; the result is a dramatic power shift, from judges to prosecutors.

The Supreme Court ruled in 1978 that threatening someone with life imprisonment for a minor crime in an effort to induce him to forfeit a jury trial did not violate his Sixth Amendment right to trial.

[…]

On the phone, Susan said she knew exactly what was involved in asking people who have been charged with crimes to reject plea bargains, and press for trial. “Believe me, I know. I’m asking what we can do. Can we crash the system just by exercising our rights?”

The answer is yes. The system of mass incarceration depends almost entirely on the cooperation of those it seeks to control. If everyone charged with crimes suddenly exercised his constitutional rights, there would not be enough judges, lawyers or prison cells to deal with the ensuing tsunami of litigation. Not everyone would have to join for the revolt to have an impact; as the legal scholar Angela J. Davis noted, “if the number of people exercising their trial rights suddenly doubled or tripled in some jurisdictions, it would create chaos.”

We can grind the police state to a halt by simply exercising the rights that are supposedly guaranteed us by the United States Constitution. In other words we must overcome our fear that the state will toss us in a cage longer unless we surrender our rights. Furthermore we must stop looking at tickets on a purely costs basis. Sure it may cost more to fight a ticket in court than it would to simply pay it off, and the state realizes this, they have engineered the system this way to ensure we simply surrender our money to them.

The current criminalization of everything requires complacency by the people. Were every single citation, ticket, find, and charge taken to trail the court systems would be so flooded with cases that they would be entirely unable to function. In such a scenario they would be forced to make a decision: concentrate on crimes where a victim exists or continue prosecuting victimless crimes and finding it impossible to get through the cases.

Nothing can be changed at the ballot box, but we can change things through other methods. Jury nullification and taking everything to court, in other words exercising your rights, are two great ways to toss monkey wrenches into the state’s works. The state expects us to roll over and pay the money they demand from us because it’s easier than fighting them. In the short run it may be easier to roll over but in the long run it costs us far more as every infraction against our liberty the state wins empowers them, encourages them, and makes them believe they can extract anything they want from us by merely making the cost of fighting seem smaller in the short run. Let us use their own weapon against them, let us gunk up the engine of punishment by exercising our rights.

That Sounds Familiar

We’re going to play a game, it’s call guess what device I’m talking about. This device, at one time and possibly still today, required a buyer to get permission from the police to buy, required a fingerprint of the device be submitted to the police if the purchase was approved, had to be surrendered to the police if the previous permission is revoked, couldn’t be purchased by convicted criminals, and the police were to be notified within 24 hours of the device being lost or stolen. What do you think the device is?

If you guessed a firearm you’re incorrect. The correct answer is a typewriter:

Romanians now must seek police permission for owning a potentially dangerous weapon — the typewriter.

[…]

Under new procedures:
–Typewriter owners must submit written applications to police for permission to keep or buy a machine, then wait for an answer.
–If the application is approved, the owner must submit a type sample of numbers and letters for registration with authorities.
–If the license is withdrawn, owners must sell their machines within 10 days to a state-run shop. Private sale is forbidden, but the owner is allowed on appeal.
–Typewriters will be denied to people who have a criminal record or pose “a danger to the public order or state security.”
–Police must be notified within 24 hours of the loss or theft of a typewriter, and their rental or use outside the registered owner’s home is forbidden.
–Penalty for failure to comply with the law is $240 and confiscation of offenders’ typewriters.

This was printed in The Telegraph on April 30th, 1983. Reading through it I was able to check every single bullet point off when I replaced the word ‘typewriter’ with ‘firearm’ and applied the list to what gun control advocates have been demanding. It seems obvious to me that the gun control crowd has been pilfering communist regimes for ideas on laws that they should push regarding firearm control.

Just like communist regimes of the past, current advocates of controlling tools desire power. The communists hoped to oppress all criticism by making it illegal to criticize communist and controlling means of producing written material. Gun control advocates hope to cement the state’s power to rule over our lives by disarming the people. Deep down inside gun control advocates fear individual liberty and demand the state be allowed to control the lives of every man, woman, and child. In the state’s absolute control the gun control advocates can absolve themselves of responsibility for their personal defense by gaining a scapegoat, an entity to blame, when they are subjected to crimes of violence. Instead of saying “I fought and lost” they want to say “The police never arrive, I couldn’t do anything, it’s not my fault, the police were supposed to protect me.”

The gun control advocates’ willingness to surrender all of our rights to comfort themselves is the thing I find most disgusting about them.

The Classic Voting Debate

Election season is that special time that comes to us living in American every two years (although the really “important” elections are only every four years). During this time we’re given the choice between evil of one variety and evil of another variety and asked to choose which type of evil we want to rule over us for four years. With election season comes debates regarding the process of voting, a debate that’s going down at Tam’s blog and Linoge’s.

The debate has three sides; those who believe you should vote for the “lesser” or two evils, those who believe you should vote you conscious, and those who don’t believe in the voting process. I’ve written about my opinion regarding the voting process and I fall squarely in the third camp. I don’t believe voting can change a damn thing, the system is rigged too well to ensure the current political power maintains its, well, power. Every challenge to the establishment has been crushed and with each victory won by those in power they’ve learned how to keep people’s input from ruining their chances of ruling the American people. They’re specialists, they spend a large majority of their time scheming, plotting, and planning new ways to fuck over the grassroots movements, the political dissidents, and the radicals. Voting is their system, they know and understand it, they control it, and we can’t win by playing by their rules.

But this post isn’t about the futility of voting, it’s about the debate raging between the first two sides; those who believe you should vote for the “lesser” or two evils and those who believe you should vote your conscious. While I hold no regard for the voting process I also have no desire to prevent those who wish to participate in the voting process from doing so. If you believe the system can be changed at the ballot box then certainly vote; I do believe in a diversity of tactics after all. What I will ask of those who wish to use the ballot box is this: don’t be part of the problem, be part of the solution.

What I mean by this is don’t be in the camp that votes for the “lesser” of two evils. Do you know what I refer to the camp that votes for the “lesser” of two evils as? A bunch of socialists. Let’s assume that Romney gets the nomination and this year’s presidential election winds up being a battle between Obama and Obama, err, Romney. Looking at the situation we have two candidates whose only differentiating feature their skin color. Politically Romney and Obama hold nearly the same beliefs, they both love big government and spit on individual liberty whenever the chance presents itself.

The “lesser” of two evils camp will claim numerous reasons why you should vote for Romney instead of Obama. These reasons range from the danger of Obama being allowed to pick new Supreme Court justices to the economic devastation wrought by Obama’s policies. What these individuals have failed to state is how Romney will be any different. Who would Romney appoint to the Supreme Court? What economic policies would Romney implement? Nobody in the “lesser” of two evils camp ever provides solid answers to such questions. They often say that Romney is a socialist but not as much of a socialist as Obama. What does that get us? A socialist judge nominated to the Supreme Court, perhaps not as socialist of a judge, but a socialist judge nonetheless. Romney’s knowledge on economics is almost zero, a fact made apparent by his statements that the president is in any position to fix the economy. The only fix to the economy is through an entirely free market and that necessarily requires a complete abolition of government involvement, something Romney doesn’t support.

At least those voting their conscious have a leg to stand on because they’re trying to be part of the solution. If people would abandon the idea of supporting the “lesser” or two evils and began voting on their principles we’d likely have a far better situation than that currently faced. Gary Johnson isn’t likely to fix everything, he’s not even likely to fix some things, but he’s likely to cause little damage.

What this entire argument boils down to is the following: those voting for the “lesser” or two evils will accomplish nothing while those who vote their conscious will likely solve nothing but at least stand a chance. Putting Cthulhu into office will only result in evil being brought against the people of this country. No matter how you shake it voting for the “lesser” of two evils accomplishes nothing. At most, at the very most, it staves off total economic collapse by a few minutes, but the faster we get the collapse over with the fast we can recover. The longer we allow the government to work the longer the pain of recovery will last as demonstrated by the Great Depression. Therefore voting for the “greater” of two evils will serve us better in the long wrong as it’ll get the pain over with more quickly.

Those voting for the “lesser” of two evils are part of the problem, they’re prolonging the pain. A vote for a third party may very well be a vote thrown away but it’s not helping perpetuate the problem and, therefore, is far better than a vote cast for the “lesser” evil.

Another way to look at things is that we’re probably better off, in the long run, with a completely authoritarian president who can get this police state ramped up to 11 because the faster the average individual is inconvenienced the faster they’ll get pissed off and work on changing things instead of just bitching about them. Really, in the grand scheme of things, those voting for the “lesser” or two evils are the biggest problem causes of them all. Those who vote for the “greater” or two evils are getting us to collapse and recovery faster, those who vote their conscious are attempting to get people into office that have a chance of rolling this country back before the collapse happens, and those of us who have given up on the idea of voting are a null sum in the equation.

If you’re going to scream at me and claim I’m part of the problem because I won’t vote for the “lesser” evil all I can say is kindly bugger off. As much as you’re convinced that I’m part of the problem I’m convinced that you’re part of the problem. You think I’m a terrible person because I won’t play your game and I think you’re an equally terrible person because you’re playing the game. Bitch and moan about Obama all you want but Romney isn’t one iota better. Your belief that Romney is the “lesser” evil is delusional. The only way one could possible come to such a conclusion in my opinion is if they lied to themselves so much that they started believing their lies, in other words they are practicing cognitive dissonance. I don’t believe there is any way to stave off the collapse and the longer we prolong our agony the more severe the recover will be.

To those of you voting for the “lesser” of two evils, your doing nothing more than prolonging agony so don’t claim any moral high ground over me. Shove off. Go tell yourself bedtime stories about how great you are and use me as the villan, frankly I don’t give a damn. Your plan sucks, it’s the worst of the worst, and you will get no support from me. Unlike you, those voting their conscious are at least trying to fix things, they’re doing something different because they have the ability to use reason and through that ability have realized the current plan, your plan of voting for the “lesser” evil, hasn’t accomplished anything. What did voting for Bush accomplish? Further economic failure, bailouts, a more prominent police state, and war. What will Romney give us over Obama? Nothing but more of the same; more economic failures, more bailouts, a more prominent police state, and more wars. If that’s your idea of better then I will have no part in your scheme. Like children you ignore what you don’t like and simply scream “NOT UH!” whenever somebody points out the failure of your plan. Go play in your sandbox and let us adults get to work.