Tag: Not So Crazy Libertarian Ideals

An Armed Society Is A Polite Society

Muslims are a minority in the United States. Anti-Muslim sentiments are also at a high. Those two points create the perfect conditions for anti-Muslim bigots to act brave and mighty. Heinlein wrote, “An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life.” From this one can infer that an unarmed society is an impolite society. Manners are bad when one faces no consequences for their actions.

A group of anti-Muslim bigots planned to hold a protest at a mosque in Dallas. I’m sure the participants had crusader-like visions of appearing brave and powerful compared to the infidels they planned to protest. Especially since they were brining weapons and likely assume their targets were going to be unarmed. But things didn’t turn out quite as they expected:

A few hundred South Dallas residents, mostly black, flooded Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard to oppose a planned demonstration by a mostly white group that routinely protests outside mosques.

Both sides were armed.

Dallas police stood guard on a funeral home’s roof as black counterprotesters swarmed the parking lot of Eva’s House of Bar-B-Q, vowing to defend their streets and chanting “black power.”

“This is what they fear — the black man,” said activist Olinka Green. “This is what America fears.”

The anti-mosque group showed up in camouflage, carrying guns and an American flag, FOX 4 reported. They left soon after and the protests ended without incident.

Instead of protesting an unarmed group of Muslims the protesters found themselves up against armed counterprotesters. As is usual in case when two equally armed but disagreeing groups come into contact, the conflict ended peacefully. The protesters, seeing their perceived advantage vanish, decided to withdraw rather than risk a conflict with a group that could put up an effective resistance. In effect the protesters saw that they might actually have to back up their actions with their lives and decided it would be smarter to take the polite route than to continue their impolite actions.

Time and time again history has shown us what happens when one group enjoys overwhelming force over another: genocide. I advocate that everybody wanting to bear arms do so. But I especially encourage members of oppressed groups to bear arms. The biggest enabler of oppression is force disparity. This is why oppressors always try to disarm their intended victims. After the Civil War the State passed arms control laws specifically aimed at disarmed newly freed blacks. In the aftermath of the 1857 Indian rebellion Britain passed weapon control laws aimed at disarming Indians. When the Third Reich came to power it passed laws expressly forbid Jews from owning firearms. But without force disparity oppression is much more costly to perpetrate. With the risks of oppressing a target group increased most would-be oppressors tend to keep their actions to mere words whispered behind closed doors.

Innocent Until Proven Guilty

The second worst casualty of a major attack is the presumption of innocence. Too often people are demanding heads to role and assume anybody questioned, arrested, or charged because of an attack should be hanged. This leads to a lot of stupidity such as the xenophobia that began running rampant immediately after the attack in Brussels. Investigations take time and a lot of initial judgements based on preliminary evidence are proven wrong as this story illustrates so perfectly:

BRUSSELS — The Belgian authorities on Monday conceded another enormous blunder in their investigation into the attacks last week on Brussels. They freed a man they had charged with terrorism and murder, acknowledging that a witness had mistakenly identified as a bomber in a dark hat and white coat in an airport surveillance photo.

The man, who was arrested on Thursday and charged on Friday, was released after three days in custody, during which some officials publicly vilified him as a terrorist. On Monday, the police said that the real attacker, one of the men who blew up a departure hall at Brussels Airport, remained at large, and they issued a new plea to the public to help identify him.

The release of the man — who has been identified by the Belgian news media and Belgian officials as Fayçal Cheffou, who has called himself a freelance journalist — is a stunning setback for the Belgian authorities, who have struggled for more than a year to get a handle on the growing threat of Islamic State militants.

A lot of people were demanding gallows be built so Cheffou could be immediately executed. Had they gotten their way an innocent man would have been dead and nobody would have been any closer to determining who else was connected to the attack in Brussels. This is why the presumption of innocence is important, especially in high profile event such as this one.

I know everybody hates to hear it but the only appropriate way to respond to the aftermath of an attack is to have patience. Nothing is gained by rash responses. In fact rash responses often cause the same thing as the initial attacks: innocent people being injured or killed.

Property Taxes Encourage Gentrification

Property taxes are often used by municipal governments to raise funds for the services they’ve monopolized. These services include paychecks for municipal employees, which often includes the very people who voted to implement the current property tax rates.

Because property taxes are used to fund municipal services they’re also a popular topic for political do-gooders. Whenever a perceived blight on the city arises; whether it be homelessness, crime, or environmental issues; the do-gooders demand the property taxes be raised to fund programs to alleviate the blight. Oftentimes these do-gooders are also the same people who complain about gentrification. As politics tends to do, this creates a vicious cycle that leads people to be at odds with themselves.

The very property taxes that fund municipal services are also an incentive for municipal governments to gentrify entire neighborhoods. Gentrification, after all, leads to an increase in property taxes since older, lower-valued properties are replaced with newer, higher-valued properties. Together a few home built in the 1940s tend to have a much lower property value than a single high-density apartment complex. Since property taxes are almost always tied to the value of a property a municipal government can make more money off of the high-density apartment complex than the old homes.

As the number of municipal services increases the number of city employees also increases. That means a larger and larger block of municipal voters are dependent on the rate of property taxes. Furthermore, municipal employees, like every other kind of employee, want to see their pay increase over time. Since politicians tend to want to stay in office instead of finding meaningful employment they have a vested interest in pandering to the majority of voters. How can members of a city council promise municipal employees that their jobs won’t go away and that they’ll get their desired raises? By raising property taxes, of course. As an added benefit the increase in property taxes allows the members of the city council to increase their pay as well.

I’m sure you can see the vicious cycle that forms from this. Wanting to increase the amount of money brought in by property taxes, the municipal governments continue to implement programs that encourage lower-valued property be replaced by higher-valued properties. As these programs fulfill their intended goal the number of properties affordable by poorer individuals continues to decrease. In effect property taxes, instead of being a form of relief for the poor, create a cycle that incentivizes municipal governments to push the poor out of the city.

TANSTAAFL

Everything should be free is the attitude a lot of people hold towards software. If you charge $9.99 for an application you spent months writing and will spend years maintaining you’ll probably receive at least some backlash for having the audacity to charge for it. But the universal principle of TANSTAAFL, there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch, >applies even to software.

The developers of Caddy, a web server that I’ve admittedly never used, wrote an explaining why they’re asking for money. As it turns out, in spite of what many people who don’t develop software believe, creating and providing open source software involves some notable expenses:

Today you will notice an addition to the Download page: a “Payment” section. Is Caddy no longer free software?

The truth is, it never was. There’s no such thing as free software. The question is, “Who pays the price?”

In the case of Caddy, it has been the developers. The obvious problem with this is that it’s not sustainable in our economy.

[…]

In less than a year, Caddy has well over 20,000 downloads — many of which aren’t counted as the project is cloned and built locally and deployed to both development and production environments. We’ve accrued over 4,500 stars on GitHub, processed hundreds of pull requests, and have dozens of participants in our chat rooms. I can’t speak for other Caddy developers because donations are private, but thanks to very generous donors last year, our web hosting is paid (for now) and I’ve received a little over $150 for my time.

[…]

Keep in mind that commercial offerings for similar web servers cost anywhere from $80 one-time to $1900/yr. (And none of them do what Caddy does.) My text editor costs $70, even just your domain name probably costs ~$12/yr. (If you support us well enough, we’ll send you swag!)

Too many people, typically those who don’t develop software, have the attitude that all software should be free (as in price, but the ambiguity of the term free is why I refer to software with unburdened source code as open source software instead of free software). The app economy is a perfect example of this. It’s why many developers have moved towards nickel and diming customers with in-app purchases or selling a subscription service. When they tried to charge reasonable fees for their software up front people bitched. And now people are bitching because software developers are relying on in-app purchases and subscription services.

Too many people have gotten it into their heads that software should be free (again, as in price). Don’t fall into that trap. Software development incurs a lot of expenses. Time, computers, electricity, and web hosting are just a handful of things needed for software development and none of them are free.

As I said, I haven’t used Caddy. But it does seem to be popular so I’m going to assume it’s a quality product. That being the case, I do hope enough users begin paying for it to keep the developers afloat. It’s always sad to see a good software product fall into obscurity because the developers weren’t being compensated and had to abandon the project for something that actually paid the bills.

The Power Of Juries

People often talk about the supposed system of checks and balances that exists within the various levels of government in the United States. Their claim is that the judiciary keeps the legislature in check and vice versa. In reality the system of checks and balances more accurate mimics a circlejerk. If a check and balance system exists in this country it is the jury. Unfortunately too many people have fallen for the bullshit that juries must rule on the letter of the law but sometimes a jury will still recognize its power, which stems from the fact jurors cannot be punished regardless of what their ruling is, and rule against a government goon on a power trip:

Last week a West Virginia woman who stood between her dog and a state trooper intent on killing him was acquitted of obstructing an officer by a jury in Wood County. It took jurors just half an hour to acquit 23-year-old Tiffanie Hupp after they watched the video of the incident that Hupp’s husband, Ryan, shot with his cellphone.

Trooper Seth Cook came to the Hupps’ house on May 9, 2015, in response to a dispute between a neighbor and Ryan’s stepfather. There Cook encountered Buddy, a Labrador-husky mix who was chained outside the house. The dog, whom Hupp describes as “a big baby,” ran toward Cook, barking, and Cook backed up. Even though the dog had reached the end of his chain and Cook was not in any danger, he drew his pistol. “I immediately thought, ‘I don’t want him to get shot,'” Hupp, who was in the yard with her 3-year-old son, told the Charleston Gazette-Mail. The video shows her stepping in front of Cook, at which point he grabs her, throws her to the ground, picks her up, leans her against his cruiser, and handcuffs her.

Stepping in front of a homicidal cop when he’s about to get his murder fix by blasting a dog was a brave move on Tiffanie’s part. Part of me is actually surprised she got through the encounter without being shot herself.

I’m glad to see the jury acquitted her since she did nothing wrong and, in fact, saved an innocent dog’s life. It’s too bad that this officer will likely face no repercussions though. Officer Cook is obviously a dangerous man and should not be trusted with any amount of authority. He should be fired immediately less he kills a dog or kidnaps another person who was only guilty of saving an innocent life.

Because Punishing The Victim Makes Sense

Hypothetically let’s say a student stole a cell phone from their teacher. The teacher, being an average person and almost entirely ignorant on security, didn’t set a lock code. Because there was no lock code the student was able to log in. After logging in the student found embarrassing pictures of the teacher and sent them to friends.

In this situation would you punish the teacher or the student? Although not setting a lock code on your phone isn’t a wise decision there is no victim involved when somebody is ignorant. There is, however, a victim when a theft occurs. That being the case, I would argue the student should be punished but the teacher should not. Of course, that’s not how things work in our society:

A South Carolina high-school teacher may be charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor after a student stole her cellphone and distributed partially nude photos from it around the school. Administrators say she should have password-protected the phone.

[…]

One might think that the student would at least face disciplinary action from the school, if not criminal charges of some sort. But thus far, the school has not moved to hold the 16-year-old student accountable at all. Arthur, however, is another story. After teaching in Union County for 13 years, she resigned when district officials gave her the choice to do so immediately or start the firing process.

Interim superintendent David Eubanks told The State that Arthur might also be charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor. “I think we have a right to privacy, but when we take inappropriate information or pictures, we had best make sure it remains private,” he said.

I would argue that this is the inevitable result of combining zero tolerance policies, a total lack of critical thinking when “it’s for the children”, and having a legal system instead of a justice system.

The only victim here was the teacher because her phone was stolen. But since children saw her nude photos the fact that she was the victim of theft and didn’t send the photos is ignored. To make matters worse, the thief is left unpunished because, well, reasons.

So here we are, continuing to wallow in a society that punishes victims and lets criminals go unscathed.

Private Surveillance

Although public surveillance is more frightening to me because the consequences are generally more dire, I also don’t shy away from criticizing private surveillance. This is where I often part company with other libertarians because they often instinctively say private surveillance, because it’s voluntary, is entirely acceptable. Of course this attitude is overly simplistic. First, private surveillance often turns into public surveillance. Second, the market manipulations performed by the State have raised the consequences of private surveillance even when it doesn’t turn into public surveillance.

Consider health insurance. For most people their health insurance is tied to their employment. This practice is a holdover from World War II, where the State manipulated the market in such a way that employers had to find forms of compensation besides pay to attract employees:

There is no good reason for any of this, aside from historical accident. During World War II, federal wage controls prevented employers from wooing workers with higher pay, so companies started offering health insurance as a way around the law. Of course, this form of nonmonetary compensation is still pay. When the war ended, the practice stuck.

I doubt the long term consequences of this marriage were realized by the employers who first used health insurance as a means to attract employees. Fast forward many decades later and we have a relationship so tight that employers are surveilling their employees’ health data:

Employee wellness firms and insurers are working with companies to mine data about the prescription drugs workers use, how they shop, and even whether they vote, to predict their individual health needs and recommend treatments.

Trying to stem rising health-care costs, some companies, including retailer Wal-Mart Stores Inc., are paying firms like Castlight Healthcare Inc. to collect and crunch employee data to identify, for example, which workers are at risk for diabetes, and target them with personalized messages nudging them toward a doctor or services such as weight-loss programs.

One of the downsides of employers providing health insurance is that they front a lot of the costs. Employers, like everybody else, have an interest in keeping their costs down. Now, instead of minding their own business, employers are trying to snoop on their employees’ health care information.

Health care information is something most people see as confidential. It can reveal a lot of potentially embarrassing things about a person such as having a sexually transmitted disease or mental illness. Unless your health is preventing you from working it shouldn’t be the business of your employer and most likely wouldn’t be if your health insurance wasn’t tied to your employment status.

This is why I respect Samuel Edward Konkin III more than most libertarian philosophers. His philosophy, agorism, argue for the death of wage labor. Instead it encourages everybody to be an entrepreneur that contracts directly with others. This is a stark contrast to many libertarian philosophers who seem to encourage wage labor.

The more independent you are the more free you are. By moving away from wage labor an individual becomes more independent and therefore more free. If you’re your own employer then you are free from worries of being surveilled and possibly fired for simply being too expensive to insure.

Sovereign Immunity Means Never Having To Take Responsibility For Your Actions

If a private company poisoned your water supply you’d have grounds for a lawsuit. The reason for this is obvious, poisoning your water causes damage to both your person and property. Because of this the only way to make things as right as possible is for the poisoner to pay reparations. But the rules are different when the State poisons your water supply because it enjoys a legal fiction called sovereign immunity:

Michigan’s state and local officials poisoned Flint’s water with lead but innocent federal taxpayers are the ones having to foot the cleanup bill. President Obama has pledged to hand Flint $85 million in aid money. This sounds like a lot, but the fact of the matter is that it is far less than what Flint’s victims would have gotten if a corporation — rather than government — had been the culprit. That’s because, unlike private companies, the government is shielded from liability lawsuits.

[…]

The main reason that they don’t have a prayer of collecting much more is something called the doctrine of sovereign immunity. Under this doctrine, citizens are barred from suing their government for screw-ups that it has caused in the course of discharging a core function unless the government itself consents. Some very narrow exceptions exist but it is very difficult to make them stick.

We’re often told that governing bodies within the United States contain a series of checks and balances. The federal government has legislative, executive, and judicial branches that are supposed to keep each other in check. Municipal governments are supposed to be kept in check by country governments which are supposed to be kept in check by state governments which are supposed to be kept in check by the federal government. Reality is much different though.

Instead of acting as a checks and balances the various pieces of the government more accurately reflect a circlejerk. Each part works to absolve the other of responsibility.

People have sued parts of the government before but only after it consented to being sued. Herein lies the major difference between private entities and the State. When a private entity causes you damage you can sue them whether they agree to allow you to do so or not. Suing the State requires getting its permission to do so. Since the State enjoys a monopoly on legal services within its borders you have no recourse if the State tells you to go pound sand when you come asking for permission to sue it.

There The Market Goes Again, Solving Problems Without Threats Of Force

Humans aren’t very good drivers. We’re unable to watch everything that’s going on around us at all times, we’re easily distracted, and many of us seem utterly incapable of putting the cell phone down even when we’re driving. Not surprisingly, especially when you consider the number of vehicles on the road, a lot of collisions happen every day. The State benefits from this because it has create numerous laws that allow it to rake in cash when people crash into one another but do fuck all for safety. Fortunately the market is here to help and it doesn’t even need a gang of armed agents to shoot our pets:

In what may not come as a surprise, vehicles with automatic braking systems are involved in rear-end crashes (that is, accidents in which a vehicle hits a car directly in front of them) at lower rates than vehicles not equipped with the systems, says the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, or IIHS.

The research focused on Forward Collision Warning (FCW) and Automatic Emergency Braking (AEB), as well as the suite of systems made by Volvo called City Safety, which includes advanced versions of those two technologies. The research examined vehicles from a number of different automakers including Acura, Honda, Mercedes-Benz, Subaru and Volvo, which were equipped with FCW and AEB, as well as vehicles that included just FCW or no crash prevention tech at all.

According to the IIHS research, equipping vehicles with both warning and autobraking systems reduced the rate of rear-end crashes by 39 percent and rear end crashes with injuries by 42 percent. That’s an overall reduction in crashes by 12 percent and a reduction in injury crashes by 15 percent.

Machines can be far better drivers than humans. With the right sensors they can watch everything that’s going on around them, they don’t get distracted, and they can multitask so sending information over a cellular connection doesn’t hinder their ability to drive. Adding automation to automobiles has been improving safety since, at least, power brakes became a thing. As the amount of tasks an automobile can do itself increases we will likely continue to see a correlating increase in safety.

What’s beautiful about these safety systems is that they don’t require the threat of violence to create. I’m sure the State will take credit for these automated breaking systems by making them mandatory but the State didn’t invent them, the market did. Automobile manufacturers have voluntarily developed these systems to make their vehicles safer and therefore, they hope, more appealing to customers.

Meanwhile the State will continue passing laws to needlessly change the roadways and highways, make more things a finable offense, and other such nonsense under the false claims of increasing safety while really increasing its revenue.

You Can’t Change The System From Within

Gods help me, we’re in an election year. That means every uneducated wanker in the country is spewing endless streams of bullshit and calling them facts. Worse yet, they want to use their bullshit to inflict their will upon everybody else through the political process. Even libertarians get caught up in this frenzy. And to make matters even worse (and it’s rather impressive that we can make it worse) libertarians involving themselves in the political process have a delusion even greater than most politicos because they believe they can actually destroy the State by becoming the State. The problem with that idea is that the State has contingencies built in to guard against such lofty people of principle:

Getting yourself into one of the branches of government is a process that you don’t just wake up one day and decide to do. Actually, you could wake up one day and decide to do it, but it has the same effect as deciding to be a banana. The process that you go through to get elected will destroy your anarchist/libertarian credibility (*cough*Rand*cough*). Even more if you are going to get appointed to your position. You will have to make promises (lie), fight politically (cheat) and get funded (steal) to get into that that office.

And once there?

Now you have promises to fulfill.

Now you have enemies to ward off.

Now you have debts to repay.

“But wait!” you say. “I am a principled anarchist/libertarian! I won’t play those political games! I won’t fulfill those promises (that would make government bigger). I won’t repay those debts (with government contracts) Now I’ve achieved my goal of bringing down the state from within! Now I’m going to launch my state-ending policy agenda! Muahahahaha!”

At least I have no cape1Good for you, Super Anarchist Politician (SAP). How are you planning to get your government limiting bills to the Floor for a vote? Might be that you need a co-sponsor or some other champion to help you out. Who have you got? The senior members from your State want nothing to do with you. In fact, nobody does after they found out you lied, cheated and stole your way to get in. And you didn’t even have the common courtesy to pay back your campaign contributors (tsk! tsk!). Do you really think anyone is going to jump on your bandwagon?

Getting into office requires mortgaging your soul. Once your in office getting anything done requires refinancing your soul. Ron Paul is living proof of this. He held office for quite some time and during that time the State didn’t shrink one iota. That’s because he mostly kept to his principles, which meant he was unable to broker deals with his fellow politicians. They wanted more power so they weren’t going to cooperate with a man who wanted less.

The article goes on to make other important points. If you believe the system can be changed, or even slowed down, from within then I recommend you read the entire article. But the conclusion explains the actual root of the problem:

The State exists and has power because people believe it does. People believe that the government should rule over them and society. People believe we need a group of rulers to keep us safe. People believe that voting grants special rights, powers and privileges to the elected that don’t exist for everyone else. People believe lies.

Democracies favor the majority and the majority believe in the State. The people themselves will push back against your attempts to free them because they want to be serfs. They believe their lord is the only thing that protects them from the barbarian hordes. By extent they believe anybody attempting to slay their lord is a barbarian trying to kill them.

What you can do is get together with other anarchists and try to create a community of likeminded (but not too likeminded) individuals. Much like the Christians under Roman persecution, anarchists need to keep as much of their business amongst each other as possible. By bolstering one another we can at least create a community of people we can rely on when the State inevitably collapses under the weight of everybody’s good intentions.

Those wanting to change the world for the better should focus on education. If the people you’re talking to decided what you’re selling sounds pretty good they’ll come into the community and help it thrive. Everybody else can continue living as they have been. It’s about as close to a win-win situation as we’ll likely get.