Not So Crazy Libertarian Ideals – Page 31

Police Shouldn’t Receive Special Treatment

Being a victim is all the rage these days. Because there is no real war on cops some officers have been posting sob stories of people acting rude to them in what appears to be a pathetic attempt to generate some sympathy. Not too long ago an office whined because a Dunkin’ Donuts employee wrote “#blacklivesmatter” on his coffee cup (which that was certainly unprofessional it was also so minor that I, were I in the officer’s position, would have entirely ignored it). A few days ago a police officer claimed he was told to leave Olive Garden because he was carrying a gun:

The staff at an Olive Garden in Kansas City asked a police officer to leave during his own birthday lunch on Sunday. According to KMBC, officer Michael Holsworth was waiting for his family to arrive at the restaurant, dressed in full uniform and with his gun because he was on duty. While he was sitting inside of the Olive Garden, a staff member allegedly asked him to leave, telling the officer they do “not allow guns inside the restaurant.”

The supposed actions of the Olive Garden employee aren’t really newsworthy to me. In fact they shouldn’t have been an issue to the officer since the employee was “just following orders.” What is newsworthy to me is the general sentiment amongst a lot of conservatives. To them the real problem isn’t the establishment haven’t a gun prohibition but that the gun prohibition was enforced against a man with a shiny liability shield pinned to his chest.

Police officers aren’t special and there’s no reason they should expect special treatment. If Olive Garden has a prohibition against carrying firearms in the restaurant then there is no reason an officer should expect to be exempt from it. There is also no reason anybody else should expect officers to be exempt from it. Enforcing the prohibition against an officer is no different than enforcing it against anybody else.

A large contributor to the breakdown of trust in police officers is the immense amount special treatment they enjoy. When they unlawfully shoot somebody it’s not uncommon for them to be fired and receive no further punishment whereas an average individual will usually find themselves in prison. Officers can kidnap people without facing charges even if the kidnapping is later found to be unwarranted by a court. Civil forfeiture laws allow officers to confiscate anybody’s property so long as they can explain why they thought it could be involved in some way to a drug crime.

Conservatives have been decrying the public’s dwindling trust in law enforcement officers and their response has basically been to get on their hands and knees and lick the boots of officers. That is not an effective way to address the problem. And every instance of outrage over rules being applied to police officers specifically just further erodes the public’s trust.

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.

Good On Apple For Withholding Taxes

It has once again come to the media’s attention that Apple (and other technology firms the media doesn’t care about) is holding a lot of cash overseas, which means it isn’t required to pay Uncle Sam a cut. Any sane person would celebrate this as it means less money for the United States government to buy bombs to destroy the Middle East with, military equipment for domestic police to murder even more people with, and build out its surveillance capabilities to spy on everybody with. But most media sources, and a lot of American people, are griping because they believe the taxes Apple isn’t paying is hurting everybody here:

One tax law professor told Ars that this untapped revenue source could stand to significantly benefit the United States.

“Losing $90 billion of potential tax revenues every year is a very big deal,” Neil Buchanan, a professor at George Washington University, said by e-mail. “That money could be used to reverse recent cuts in Head Start, and/or assistance to state governments to fund education at all levels, or increase the Earned Income Tax Credit, and on and on. Politicians who respond to proposals to fund these programs by saying that ‘we can’t afford it’ are simply saying, ‘I’d rather cut Apple’s tax bill than educate our children.’”

First of all let’s correct the language being used by these quisling. The United States government isn’t losing potential revenue. Taxes aren’t revenue. Taxes are plunder. What the United States government is losing is the change to plunder wealth from Apple and other technology firms.

Now that we’re dealing with accurate language instead of doublespeak, let’s analyze the situation. The implication, of course, is that the lost plunder means Uncle Sam will either have to cut back on its programs to murder people or plunder more from the people living within its borders. This is the quintessential flaw in statism, the general argument boils down to, “Since I’m getting fucked everybody else should get fucked to.” But does Apple have a moral obligation to get fucked itself just because Uncle Sam is fucking his people? No. That would be like saying a victim who managed to escape an armed thief was morally responsible for that thief robbing other people. Just because you were able to dodge being a victim doesn’t mean you’re in any way morally responsible for other people who are victimized.

Instead of trying to ensure everybody is getting fucked over as hard or harder than you try building a world where nobody is getting fucked over.

Make Dispute Resolution Part Of Your Agreements

Because of my gift for taking a great deal of bullshit and condensing it into a reasonable size (I also have a gift for the reverse) I’m often asked to help people develop agreements. More often than, if I’m not involved in the initial drafting of the agreement, I find myself looking at pages and pages of very specific points.

These days it seems very common for people to try to spell out every possible way a party involved in an agreement could violate it. This tendency results in pages of text pointing out specific actions that are in violation of the agreement. Everything from how close one individual can be to another (sometimes exact measurements in inches are even listed) to what language they can use often appear as points amongst the seemingly billions of other points.

When I’m asked to review one of these agreements I start with the Bill and Ted principle, which is “Be excellent to each other. Party on, dudes.” Such a basic principle seems to leave an almost infinite amount of wiggle room for people to be assholes. The real trick is to also include dispute resolution as a point in the agreement.

Every business contract you’ll read has a dispute resolution point but a lot of agreements for non-business groups lack them. A dispute resolution point is one that explains how a dispute amongst members will be resolved when they arises (and one will arise). Usually this take the form of a few individuals, either from within or outside of the group, respected by members of the agreement being appointed official dispute resolvers.

The old agreement may have said, “Personal space includes any and all space within one foot of an individual.” Through the magic of a dispute resolution point any disagreement over what constitutes personal space can be brought before the dispute resolvers. Instead of having to imagine every possible way members of an agreement could come into conflict (which is impossible anyways) an agreement can now fit on a notecard.

This method is effective because it’s simple enough for anybody to understand and flexible enough to handle changing dynamics within a group. Considering our society’s love for a practically uncountable number of laws and lawsuits regarding those laws it’s easy to see what even basic non-business agreements have blown up into 10 page documents. But sanity can be restored. All that’s needed is appointed a few trusted individuals to resolve disputes amongst members.

I Wouldn’t Allow A Liability Into My Establishment Either

I have a confession to make. Most of these “patriot” organizations annoy me. It’s not just because I’m not a patriot (in fact I find the entire concept of patriotism perplexing) but also because a lot of members of these groups tend to be knee-jerk reactionaries.

A couple of people I know were sharing a story about a guardsman being kicked out of Waffle House because he was carrying a gun. This upset quite a few self-proclaimed patriots because guardsmen are apparently even better than you so when they’re booted from an establishment for carrying it’s doubleplus ungood. As it turns out, the guardsman wasn’t kicked out for carrying a gun. He was kicked out because he was carrying a gun after being involved in a fight in the establishment:

The Waffle House franchise owner told Eater that Welch, the National Guardsman, had been kicked out of the restaurant for fighting a couple of weeks prior to being asked to leave his gun outside.

A representative of the Oath Keepers, one of those “patriot” organizations that tend to get on my nerves, said the claim was completely fabricated. It could be but I would find it strange for a franchise owner to make such a claim since it could be considered slanderous.

Working on the assumption the franchise owner was telling the truth (mostly to make a point), had I been in his position I would have also supported my employee’s decision to kick the guardsman out. If you’ve been involved in a fight in my establishment you’re not getting back in. Period. And if I had a leave of my sense and decided to let you back in I certainly wouldn’t let you bring a weapon in with you. Once you’ve proven yourself to be a liability I, as a business owner, and going to take whatever steps are necessary to protect myself, my employees, my property, and my customers.

Let us remember the saloons of the Old West. A lot of people carried guns in those days. Saloon owners recognized the combination of alcohol and firearms was really bad. To protect themselves and their patrons from the known hazards of combining alcohol and firearms the bartender often required patrons to surrender their arms if they wanted to drink. The situation the same if you have a patron who is known to be violent.

As a gun owner you should have a right to carry a firearm. Property owners should also have the right to determine who and who cannot be on their property. If they don’t want to allow armed individuals onto their property their desire should be respected (it’s their loss anyways). The key for gun owners is not to be a dick and therefore hopefully be welcome in most establishments.

Reducing Violence

Because no tragedy can be allowed to go to waste, almost immediately after the recent shooting in Oregon Mr. Obama stepped behind is podium and demanded his fellow politicians further restricting legal firearm ownership. He did this under the guise of reducing violence. Not too long afterwards the United States bombed a hospital:

Jason Cone, the executive director of Doctors Without Borders (MSF) U.S., disclosed the updated casualty figures on his Twitter feed, where he also said that the bombing went on for longer than 30 minutes “after American & Afghan military officials in Kabul & Washington first informed of proximity to hospital.”

He added that the precise location of the hospital had been communicated to all parties to the conflict “multiple times” in the past few months. He said MSF was “urgently seeking clarity,” on how the bombing took place.

In a statement, the organization said that it “condemns in the strongest possible terms the horrific bombing of its hospital in Kunduz full of staff and patients.” Of the 37 wounded, 19 are Doctors Without Borders Staff.

What Mr. Obama purports to be addressing are the approximate 11,000 homicides committed with firearms. Setting aside the absurd belief that disarming the general population will somehow reduce homicides let’s consider the grand scheme of things, namely the number of people murdered by governments.

By far the largest murderers in human history have been governments. This is true today. Only an organization with the means and will to involve itself in outright wars with out such entities can rack up a body country in the thousands or millions. Hell, Operation Enduring Freedom killed somewhere between 1,000 and 1,300 civilians in three months alone. And that’s just one operation in one country out of the known seven the United States is actively bombing.

I’m not condoning the actions of the shooter in Oregon, he was a piece of shit murderer after all, or trying to make his crimes seem less than what they are. What I am pointing out is the hypocrisy of a butcher like Obama talking about reducing violence. We’re talking about a man whose only notable achievement has been maintaining a continuous state of war throughout his entire presidency. He even manages to keep bombing countries he’s said we’re no longer at war with. So you’ll have to excuse me if I don’t take any statements he makes about reducing violence seriously.

You Keep Using That Word: Rights Edition

There are a few pages on Facebook I enjoy reading. Occupy Democrats is one of them. Obviously I don’t agree with the philosophy of the page but the administrators running it are either amazing trolls or incredible idiots.

Case in point, they posted this image after last week’s shooting:

What do firearms and healthcare have in common? Almost nothing, which is why this image is so good! First, it tries to tie two unrelated things together. Why? Probably because the creator thought he was being clever by taking a swipe a gun owners and jerking themselves off about how awesome Obamacare has been. Second, it misses the boat by a wide margin.

Are ascetically offensive firearms (what the image creator calls “assault weapons”) a human right? Is healthcare a human right? The answer to both is yes, but not in the way the image creator was implying. Everybody has a right to acquire any firearm they choose just as they have a right to acquire whatever healthcare they choose. But nobody is entitled to either. We return once again to age old negative rights versus idiocy, err, positive rights.

Negative rights mean individuals should be free from interference from other individuals. Positive rights mean individuals should be given whatever is considered a right. The latter is nonsense because giving individuals goods and services necessarily requires enslaving others to make and provide them. If you have a right to healthcare then somebody has to provide it. On the other hand, if you have a right to acquire healthcare that simply means nobody should be allowed to interfere with you entering an exchange with a healthcare provider.

So, yes, firearms and healthcare are human rights so long as you use a sane definition of rights. Anybody who believes the State, or anybody else, should interfere with individuals acquiring either is an asshole.

Don’t Get Attached To Organizations

Although this post could probably apply to everybody it is primarily aimed at political activists and revolutionaries. This is because political and revolutionary groups tend to have more drama than a Gamergate convention. If you’ve been involved in either type of group you’re probably aware of this firsthand.

For those of you involved in such groups how many times can you recall long, arduous debates over how the group should act? Usually these debates arise when a well-known and influential member of the group attempts to make everything about them. In their eyes the group isn’t an organization of individuals working towards a common goal but a tool to wield for their personal crusade. Because of the person’s influence and the basic desire of others to be nice nobody is usually willing to tell the bad actor to, “Sit your ass down and shut the fuck up.” Instead they patronize the idiot, give them time, and otherwise allow them to waste everybody’s time. More often than not the bad actor manages to get what they want because everybody else is too worried about looking bad amongst their fellows. Because of that, after the group goes along with the bad actor’s scheme, a lot of butthurt feelings arise that usually take the form of passive aggressive words spoken behind closed doors.

This post isn’t about stopping the bad actor, the only way to do that is to have members of your group who have a spine and aren’t worried about offending anybody’s delicate feelings, it’s about what to do afterwards. Let’s say you’re a member of a libertarian group that has been focused exclusively on getting the Federal Reserve shutdown. Things have been going well but then somebody shows up and tries to turn the group into Rand Paul’s personal action squad. Several members are sympathetic to Rand Paul and wouldn’t mind having access to some cash from the campaign. You are an actual libertarian through, you want no part in Rand Paul, and your only desire is to see the group continue doing what it has always been doing. After the dust settles the group has become another organ of the Rand Paul campaign. The question is, what do you do?

Traditionally the answer seems to involve a lot of passive aggressive comments, whining, and continued participation even if it’s slightly less enthusiastic participation. Let me be clear about one thing: that’s a really fucking stupid reaction.

Why do you want to participate in a group that isn’t pursuing your goals? Most people make the mistake of allowing a group to become part of their identity. They describe themselves as a Republican or a Democrat or a Libertarian. When they do that they set aside their interests whenever it’s necessary to remain in good standing with the group(s) they identify with. Humans are social creatures by nature so it’s not too surprise to see why this often becomes the case.

There is a better option though. If you’re a member of a group that no longer pursues your goals you can leave and either join a group more aligned with your interests or start your own group. I’ve done this numerous times and if I can do it, you can do it. I’ll use my participation in the Ron Paul campaign as an example. Back in my statist libertarian days I wanted to help Ron Paul spread his message. As a means to my ends I involved myself with the Republican Party by caucusing. I knew the party itself was the antithesis of individual freedom but that’s where Ron Paul was working so that’s where I worked. Not surprisingly the party shutdown Ron Paul harder than the Mongol Empire shutdown Baghdad. While a bunch of my fellow Ron Paul supporters continued to work with the Republican Party I, along with many others, left. We saw no reason to invest our precious time into a group that didn’t support our interests. After leaving the Republicans in our dust we gathered with other fellow travelers and became anarchists.

Who do you think came out ahead? I can confidently say it was us because those who remained in the Republican Party, for the most part, are still there and still seeing no fruits for their labors. Meanwhile those of us who left helped found an agorism festival that has been going on for three years. But the festival is merely a means that has helped our ends by instilling some entrepreneurial interest amongst agorists. I’m not saying our goals have been or will be realized but we’re certainly moving in a direction, which is more than I can say for those still involving themselves in a group that doesn’t share their interests.

So if you find yourself stuck in a group that no longer supports your values don’t be a passive aggressive bitch about it, leave. You only have a finite amount of time on this spinning rock that’s orbiting a giant fusion reactor so make the best of it.

Sometimes I Wonder About All Of You

I’m sure a lot of you have seen that video of the bear busting up a kayak and getting pepper sprayed in the face. If you haven’t, watch it before continuing on:

This video came to my attention because several gunnies were posting it and saying variations of, “This is why I carry a gun, not pepper spray.” After watching the video though I can’t help but side with the bear.

When the video starts the bear has ceased its initial assault on the lady’s kayak. We can only assume the lady was yelling at the bear to stop and it complied. Anyways the bear is obviously coming over to say, “Hey, ma’am, sorry about that. I didn’t know it was your kayak,” only to get pepper sprayed in the face. Of course the bear backs away and is all like, “Whoa, crazy lady! What the fuck?” Then little miss hysterical tells the bear to, “Come here!” The bear, not being an idiot like the lady, keeps its distance. After thinking things over for a bit it seems to say, “You know what? Fuck you and fuck your kayak.” The bear then goes back to beating on the kayak. When the lady screams, “Why are you breaking my kayak,” I can only imagine the bear is responding with, “Because you pepper sprayed me in the goddamn face!”

I’m sorry, but the bear is totally in the right on this one. Admittedly it was doing something wrong but it stopped when told to only to be pepper sprayed for it. If anybody was the aggressor here it’s the lady.

The Illusion Of Choice

Like Christmas, presidential elections seem to assault our world earlier every cycle. The 2016 presidential election is still more than a year away but is already clogging our news feeds with coverage. At the rate things are going the 2020 presidential election will begin ramping up before the 2016 election has even concluded!

What’s especially frustrating is how irrelevant elections are. I know, people will tell you this election is the most important election in our nation’s history. Republicans will argue that any of their candidates, no matter how sickening they may be, are a better alternative to Hillary or Bernie. Democrats will claim the country is doomed if any of the Republican candidates wins. The Green and Libertarian parties are apparently suing in the hopes of getting their candidates the same national coverage the Republican and Democratic candidates enjoy. And throughout all of this you will have to suffer friends, family members, and pretty much everybody else telling you how you need to vote.

Herein lies the problem, there is no choice. There are multiple candidates but that’s different than a choice. A choice would be a ballot box for abolishing offices or the entire government. But no ballot in the United States, as far as I know, has an option for abolishing an office. Your “choices” are to either be ruled or be ruled.

This is why I can’t bring myself to give a damn about any election. I have no interest in being ruled. The only interest I have is to advance individual freedom, which cannot be realized through elections.