Not So Crazy Libertarian Ideals – Page 39

A New Nation is Born

While good patriotic Americans were getting their jingoism on and communists were deluding themselves into believing a world with completely economic equality is possible, a small group of people were declaring their independence. These people occupy a small 2.7 square mile plot of land on the border between Croatian and Serbia:

A group of Czechs and self-styled founding fathers of a “micro-nation” on the bank of the Danube River held their own version of Independence Day Friday, christening “Liberland” as a 2.7-square-mile country where taxes are optional and freedom reigns.

Vít Jedlička, a Czech libertarian politician who claims to have found a plot of land left unclaimed in the 1990s border settlement between Croatia and Serbia, told FoxNews.com dozens of would-be citizens traveled by boat to Liberland to toast its birth.

[…]

Jedlička, who is a member of the Conservative Party of Free Citizens in the Czech Republic, recently appointed himself president of the new free republic of Liberland, on the tiny patch of land that sits on the Croatian-Serbia Border. Jedlička claims international law allows his claim over the terra nullius—or literally “No Man’s Land.”

Libertarians are cheering this declaration while statists are scoffing. To libertarians the declaration of independence is just as legitimate as any other country’s declaration of independence. Meanwhile statists cannot comprehend the idea that a nation can exist unless it has the permission, err, recognition of other states.

I’m glad to see the people of Liberland declaring themselves independent of neighboring states. My only hope is that this trend will continue in the tiny 2.7 square mile nation. Hopefully a group of Liberland’s people will declare Jedlička’s presidency illegitimate and secede. From there I hope the secession continues until each individual living there no longer recognizes themselves as members of a nation but sovereign individuals.

I’ve heard several statists point out that this declaration won’t last because the neighboring states; who, in their opinion, are the rightful owners of that little chunk of land; will reclaim it. Perhaps that will happen. Yet there’s a chance that their declaration will be considered so ludicrous that neither Croatia or Serbia will acknowledge the declaration as something that needs to be dealt with. That is similar to the story of Emperor Norton. Because of his perceived insanity the federal government never challenged his declaration of being emperor yet the money he issued was accepted at local establishments and his declarations were often adhered to, which made him just as much of an emperor as any other.

Liberland, in the same way, could become an independent nation by function if not recognition. If, for instance, taxes remain voluntary due to Croatia and Serbia simply not bothering to enforce tax laws on that chunk of land then it would functionally be an independent land much in the same way Neutral Moresnet was independent of its surrounding powers.

Liberland will be fun to follow. Even if it doesn’t manage to maintain its independence it could be fun watching Croatia and Serbia bicker about who really owns the land.

An Introduction to OpenBazaar

In addition to writing this blog I also give presentations from time to time. A bunch of Libertarians got together on April 25^th and played politics. Hoping to save some wretched souls from the Hell of politics a friend and I ran an agorist hospitality suite. While the Libertarians discussed bylaws and other such shenanigans we were giving presentations on peaceful parenting, agorism, literature recommendations, and OpenBazaar. The last presentation was given by yours truly and for some reason the good folks over at AnarchyinAction.TV recorded it. If you want to hear me babbling on for 22 minutes and 57 sections (I don’t know why you would) about OpenBazaar this is your chance.

Yes, I almost always dress like a casual mall ninja and regret nothing about it.

I don’t know if it made it into the video (and I’m not vane enough to watch myself speak) but I did clarify to the audience that I had not had time to look through all of the technical specifications of OpenBazaar. Some of the information I gave, such as how the notary system works, was inaccurate and for that I apologize. But the presentation seems to have been generally well received by the people over at the Bitcoin subreddit so I don’t think I failed completely.

A Brilliant Use of Freedom of Information Act Requests

There’s little doubt that children tend to be far more creative than adults. For example, while us stuffy adults are using the Freedom of Information Act (FoIA) requests (and their equivalent in foreign countries) to obtained heavily censored reports about the government’s misdeeds one brilliant child decided to use them for something more practical:

A German schoolboy has taken exam preparation to ingenious new levels by making a freedom of information request to see the questions in his forthcoming Abitur tests, the equivalent of A-levels in the UK.

Simon Schräder, 17, from Münster, used the internet platform fragdenstaat.de (“ask the state”), to ask the education ministry of North Rhine-Westphalia for “the tasks of the centrally-made Abitur examinations in the senior classes of high school in the current school year”. He was specifically invoking his state’s freedom of information law.

Schräder set the ministry the legally allowed one-month deadline – falling on 21 April – to comply, though his first exam is on 16 April.

Since schools are generally part of the state I believe FoIA requests and their foreign equivalents should force the state to hand over test questions. Test questions cannot be claimed to impact national security since they’re made public to every student taking the test during the time of the test. There’s no real way to claim handing over test questions could impact anything a current administration is doing or planning to do. The only excuse the state could come up with for not handing over such information is to admit the truth about freedom of information laws, which is that they exist to give the people the illusion that they can hold the state accountable. As soon as freedom of information laws inconvenience the state they are either ignored entirely or the material is surrendered only after being heavily redacted.

Rap Sheets

I haven’t spent any time discussing the death of Freddie Gray. Sadly the rate at which police officers kill people in this country is so high that it’s difficult to cover these incidents without feeling like you’re just repeating what you’ve said a thousand times before. But those wonderful neocons have given me something to sink my teeth in. Their love of “tough on crime” has, once again, lead them to dig up whatever excuse they can find to justify the officers’ actions. To this end they have latched onto Freddie’s rap sheet (read the comments for maximum face palm):

His arrest record includes at least 18 arrests:

March 20, 2015: Possession of a Controlled Dangerous Substance

March 13, 2015: Malicious destruction of property, second-degree assault

January 20, 2015: Fourth-degree burglary, trespassing

January 14, 2015: Possession of a controlled dangerous substance, possession of a controlled dangerous substance with intent to distribute

December 31, 2014: Possession of narcotics with intent to distribute

December 14, 2014: Possession of a controlled dangerous substance

August 31, 2014: Illegal gambling, trespassing

January 25, 2014: Possession of marijuana

September 28, 2013: Distribution of narcotics, unlawful possession of a controlled dangerous substance, second-degree assault, second-degree escape

April 13, 2012: Possession of a controlled dangerous substance with intent to distribute, unlawful possession of a controlled dangerous substance, violation of probation

July 16, 2008: Possession of a controlled dangerous substance, possession with intent to distribute

March 28, 2008: Unlawful possession of a controlled dangerous substance

March 14, 2008: Possession of a controlled dangerous substance with intent to manufacture and distribute

February 11, 2008: Unlawful possession of a controlled dangerous substance, possession of a controlled dangerous substance

August 29, 2007: Possession of a controlled dangerous substance with intent to distribute, violation of probation

August 28, 2007: Possession of marijuana

August 23, 2007: False statement to a peace officer, unlawful possession of a controlled dangerous substance

July 16, 2007: Possession of a controlled dangerous substance with intent to distribute, unlawful possession of a controlled dangerous substance (2 counts)

How is this information relevant to the case at hand? It’s not. Except to neocons. They tend to believe that once you’ve been found guilty of a crime, whether it be a real crime or a made up victimless “crime”, anything an officer does to you in the future is justified. Due process, you see, is not a thing neocons hold especially dear.

In their zealous attempt to smear Freddie’s character in order to justify what happened to him the neocons have failed to bring up the rap sheet of the officers who interacted with him. From what I’ve found the only thing Freddie did was run away from a gang of armed men with a history of violence. That’s just common sense. But officers, like dogs, tend to chase anything that runs away from them. When some officers caught up with Freddie they assaulted and then kidnapped him. Why? Because he was in possession of a switchblade, which is one of those victimless “crimes”.

Not only did the officers assault and kidnap Freddie but they almost certainly have a long history of kidnappings, extortion, assault, and armed robbery if not more. Their job description might as well be extort money from the populace and beat or murder anybody who fails to pay their protection money to the state. Freddie’s rap sheet is small potatoes compared to the rap sheet of the average officer “just doing their job.”

If you want to condemn rioters for destroying the property of people who had nothing to do with Freddie’s death that’s fine. But dragging out a dead man’s rap sheet while ignoring his kidnappers’ rap sheets in order to criticize people committing an entirely unrelated crime is not the proper way to make a valid argument.

Politics is a Sport

A new study has been released that confirms what everybody already knew:

A new study published at Political Research Quarterly indicates that many Americans who identify with one of the major parties make their electoral decisions more like a sports fan than an informed voter.

What motivates partisans to vote is “not high-minded, good-government, issue-based goals,” says Patrick Miller of the University of Kansas, who co-authored the research with the University of North Carolina’s Pamela Johnston Conover. Instead, “It’s, ‘I hate the other party. I’m going to go out, and we’re going to beat them.'”

I’m not exactly sure what “high-minded, good-government” is but I do understand the gist of the study. Voters closely resemble those annoying drunks at sportsball events that paint their preferred team’s colors on their body, wear some stupid hate, and scream loudly every time their preferred team does something. The only difference, and I believe this is a major downside, is that voters tend to be more restrained. I would much prefer it if voters got drunk, painted themselves, and screamed loudly at political events. At least that would be mildly entertaining and treat the subject matter with the seriousness it deserves. But I’ve been to political events and the fans are usually stuffy codgers in suits, or at the very least business casual dress, who merely clap when their preferred politician says something they like.

We should take the treating of elections to the next logical step. All political events should involve keg stands, beer pong, and drinking games. Nothing any politician says will change what team the fans vote for so they might as well turn their boring speeches into fun parities.

It’s also probably worth noting that this is why you will change nothing through voting. Most people don’t give a shit about the issues. All they care about is that their team beats the other team.

A Good Use of Religious Freedom Laws

When you heard the phrase “religious freedom laws” your mind probably jumps to thoughts of business owners discriminating against patrons based on their sexual orientation. That has been the primary motivation of the politicians who passed these laws and the angle being covered by the press. But these laws can also be used for good. Let’s take the state’s war against the homeless as an example. One woman has cited a religious freedom law in response to the state trying to stop her from feeding the homeless:

Joan Cheever of San Antonio has been serving meals to the city’s homeless for 10 years. But last week, police officers handed her a ticket with a potential fine of $2,000. Despite having a food permit for the food truck she cooks out of, which she calls the Chow Train, she was cited for transporting and serving it from a different vehicle.

But that hasn’t stopped her from continuing to hand out three-course meals to the homeless. On Friday, she went back to Maverick Park with 50 supporters to hand out food, and this time she wasn’t ticketed. Cheever has argued that she has a right to feed the homeless under Texas’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act because she considers it exercising her religious beliefs.

Christianity teaches compassion for the poor and afflicted so it’s not extent to claim feeding the homeless is a protected act under religious freedom laws. Now the question becomes whether the state will find and act that goes against its interest a lawful act of religious freedom.

Central Banks aren’t Radical or Revolutionary

Radical, according to Google, means “advocating or based on thorough or complete political or social reform; representing or supporting an extreme section of a political party.” Revolutionary, according to Google again, means “involving or causing a complete or dramatic change.” I theorize that a majority of people who use these words haven’t looked up either in a dictionary.

Iceland made headlines recently by entertaining the idea of a, according to many, radical policy of giving a central bank the authority to print money. Many have even declared the proposal revolutionary:

Who knew that the revolution would start with those radical Icelanders? It does, though. One Frosti Sigurjonsson, a lawmaker from the ruling Progress Party, issued a report today that suggests taking the power to create money away from commercial banks, and hand it to the central bank and, ultimately, Parliament.

What in the gods’ names is revolutionary about giving the power to print money to a government controlled central bank? That’s a page out of the playbook of basically every other major nation on Earth. This is why I’m left to believe people who use the terms radical and revolutionary are entirely ignorant of their meanings.

A radical or revolutionary move would be to take the power of making money away from any central authority and allow markets to handle it. Markets are another concept that people are almost entirely ignorant of today. People often mistakenly believe that granting power to commercial banks to print money is a market solution. But markets are what happens in the absence of any coercive authority. In other words markets are the result of individuals making choices themselves.

If you want an example of a market solution to money you need only look to Emperor Norton:

Norton also issued his own money to pay for his debts, and it became an accepted local currency in San Francisco. These notes came in denominations between fifty cents and ten dollars; the few surviving notes are collector’s items.

Norton didn’t coerce anybody into accepting his currency. He merely created it and offered it in payment of his debts. His creditors accepted it of their own volition. A market solution to money is simple. Each individual is free to propose their own currency. Success is determined by whether or not people are willing to accept a currency in exchange for goods and services. No coercion is necessary.

Statists will come up with any number of excuses as to why money creation must be monopolized by the state. Most of them will then turn around and bitch that the state doesn’t print enough or prints too much. They demand control and they get pissed when that control isn’t used in the manner they prefer.

There are only two real options when it comes to choices. You can either give power to somebody else to make choices for you or you can make them yourself. In this era of statism the radical or revolutionary option is to make choices for yourself.

Government So Small It Fits In Your Bathroom

This weekend the Minnesota Republican Party had its State Central Committee Meeting. I’ve never attended one of those nor will I ever but I have friends who were there so I got to see some of the shenanigans that went on during the event. At first I didn’t think there was going to be much to write about. The meeting just sounded like another political party circlejerk where elected party politician ‘A’ says some nice things about elected party politician ‘B’ and is reciprocated.

But you can always count on somebody showing up to a political event and ruining it for everybody. In the case of this meeting, being a Republican Party function, that prize went to the Child Protection League (CPL). After looking them up I discovered that the CPL seems to be primarily focused on shaming members of the kink community and getting transgender individuals to commit suicide.

Via Rob Doar’s Twitter feed I was able to see the fly handed out at the meeting by the CPL:

There’s nothing like take a male model; dressing him in a wig, mascara, and unbutton pants; and using him to scare ignorant people into associating him with transgender individuals to get the old bigotry juices flowing. The CPL is trying to confuse people into thinking that transgender individuals are crossdressers and exploiting that confusion to insinuate that transgender individuals, specifically male to female individuals, are trying to gain access to the women’s bathroom for sexual gratification.

Under the guise of protecting the children, a guise favored by every politician, the CPL is showing it has no interest in protecting transgender children. If it did it wouldn’t be pushing state legislation that would further oppress transgender individuals because that oppression comes with an extremely high suicide rate.

In addition to showing the complete ignorance of transgender individuals the CPL holds this flyer also demonstrates the problem with political solutions. What the CPL is advocating is a state law. The estimated population of Minnesota is 5,457,173. That means the CPL wants a law passed that would mandate over 5 million people behave in a certain way. Specifically it would mandate that every public school in the state force transgender students to use the bathroom of the gender they don’t identify as. This would undo local decisions such as the policy enacted in Minneapolis.

Although I was raised Catholic nobody would accuse me of being a good Catholic. But there is one Catholic teaching I do greatly cherish and that is subsidiarity. Subsidiarity teaches that decisions should be handled at the most local level possible. Issues facing individuals should be decided by the individuals, issues facing families should be decided by the families, and so on. As much as I would prefer each school to allow transgender students to use the bathroom of the gender they identify as I would far prefer a piecemeal system where each school can decide its own policy than a blanket statewide mandate. Why? Because that would at least give transgender students an option to change schools instead of having to suffer the same persecution wherever they went. One may then ask why I wouldn’t prefer a state law mandating schools to allow transgender students to use the bathroom of the gender they identify as. My reason for not advocating such a law is because once the power to make such a decision rests at the state level it rest there forever. Since laws are arbitrary a good statewide policy could be replaced by a bad statewide policy after a single election. The more local a decision is the less people it impacts.

Ironically what I’ve just described is what small government advocates always pretend to want. Republicans usually claim to be small government advocates but many of them get excited every time somebody presents them with a state or federal law that would mandate discrimination against a group they dislike. Fortunately my friends at the meeting scoffed at this flyer but I know there are a lot of Republicans that agree with what it says. Widespread support within the party is the reason the CPL came to the meeting to hand out flyers. Until the vast majority of the Republican Party speak out against laws such as HF 1546 nobody is going to take it seriously when its members call themselves the party of small government.

Murdered Over a Broken Taillight

The murder of Walter Scott is receiving a lot of much needed media coverage. Thanks to the fact the murdered, Officer Michael Slager, was filmed this case didn’t get swept underneath the rug like so many others. It should serve as a reminder that people should always film any police encounter they’re involved in or are witnessing. But there’s one fact about this case that’s not receiving enough media attention, the event that lead to Scott’s murder:

The confrontation occurred around 9:30 a.m. ET on Saturday after Slager pulled over Scott’s car because of a broken taillight.

A man is dead because our rulers have deemed it acceptable to send armed thugs after people with broken equipment. Broken taillights are a simple matter to solve without pulling people over. Each vehicle has a unique license plate number that identifies it. If an officer sees a car with a broken taillight they could just look up who the vehicle is registered to, something they routinely do when they pull somebody over, and send them a letter informing them that their taillight is broken. Instead officers are allowed to turn on their loud sirens and flashy attention whore lights, force drivers to pull over to the side of the road, and waddle their heavily armed and often aggressive asses over to the driver to terrify them for a bit before issuing them a citation.

Walter Scott would almost certainly still be alive today if broken taillights weren’t grounds for officers to initiate force against motorists. In addition to being a remind of police brutality this story is also a reminder than any police encounter, regardless of how minor the offense that preceded the encounter was, can escalate to deadly force.

It Prints Money

It’s not very often that a politician who supports gun control proposes a gun related bill that I support. The planets must have aligned though because Rosa DeLauro, some politicians from Connecticut, is putting forth a bill that is meant to eliminating semi-automatic rifles with aesthetically offensive features. Instead of banning them outright though DeLauro’s bill would give gun owners who turned in their aesthetically offensive rifles a sizable tax credit:

The Support Assault Firearm Elimination and Education of our (SAFER) Streets Act expected to be reintroduced next week by Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) would provide gun owners with an incentive to turn in their firearms to local police departments.

“Assault weapons are not about hunting, or even self-defense,” DeLauro said. “There is no reason on earth, other than to kill as many people as possible in as short a time as possible, that anyone needs a gun designed for a battlefield.”

Though DeLauro is in favor of stronger guns laws that would completely ban assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition, she emphasized this bill would not force gun owners to turn in their firearms.

The legislation would provide up to $2,000 in tax credits for gun owners who voluntarily hand over assault weapons to their local police departments.

I wonder how long it took her staffers to come up with that title. Setting aside her absolutely idiotic view about aesthetically offensive rifles this bill is actually a good idea. Why? Because it allows anybody who can legally possess a firearm to print money:

Wilson’s latest radically libertarian project is a PC-connected milling machine he calls the Ghost Gunner. Like any computer-numerically-controlled (or CNC) mill, the one-foot-cubed black box uses a drill bit mounted on a head that moves in three dimensions to automatically carve digitally-modeled shapes into polymer, wood or aluminum. But this CNC mill, sold by Wilson’s organization known as Defense Distributed for $1,200, is designed to create one object in particular: the component of an AR-15 rifle known as its lower receiver.

For the initial investment of $1,200 plus some additional money for blocks of aluminum you can net yourself a potential $2,000 tax credit every year! Or you could invest in a 3D printer and manufacture plastic lowers for even greater profit! The possibilities are limitless. You could then use the money you saved on your taxes to buy yourself a nice AR-15, SCAR, Tavor, or other modern rifle.

Sounds too good to be true? If you read the legislation there are no exceptions for home manufactured firearms. It merely says the weapon must be legally possessed and it is legal for anybody who can possess a firearm to manufacture one so long as they don’t transfer it to another person. The bill then lists what it considers an “assault weapon” to be and AR-15s are prominently on the list. Furthermore the lower is the piece legally considered a firearm on an AR-15 so you don’t need to surrender a fully assembled rifle. Unless I missed something, which is always a possibility, there is nothing in this bill that would bar somebody from manufacturing a cheap AR-15 lower and turning it in for a tax credit every year (sadly the bill does limit a person to only one tax credit per year).

Imagine if every person who could legally possess an aesthetically offensive rifle turned in a cheap chunk of plastic every year to enjoy a $2,000 tax credit. It would really help bleed the state dry. For that reason alone I support this bill and hope others will join me in my quest to utilize it to its maximum potential.