Not So Crazy Libertarian Ideals – Page 49

Why Voting isn’t For Me

I’ve given up voting. The last presidential election, in which I wrote in Vermin Supreme, was the last election that I plan to vote in. When I say this I’m often met with criticisms from people who believe voting is the way to change things politically. That may be true if your idea of change is to replace a Democratic ruler with a Republican ruler of vice versa but that’s not the type of change I’m trying to accomplish. I came across an essay by one of my leftist anarchist brethren that does a good job of summarizing why I’m done with voting:

To vote is to give up your own power.

To elect a master or many, for a long or short time, is to resign one’s liberty.

Call it an absolute monarch, a constitutional king, or a simple M.P., the candidate that you raise to the throne, to the seat, or to the easy chair, he will always be your master. They are persons that you put “above” the law, since they have the power of making the laws, and because it is their mission to see that they are obeyed.

My goal, politically speaking, is to abolish masters. It’s not a matter of a neoliberal or a neoconservative ruling my life. I’m more than capable of ruling myself thank you very much. The only thing that I ask is that nobody initiate aggression against me and in return I won’t initiate aggression against anybody. We don’t need rulers to dictate this request, common sense and community outcry will do so. There doesn’t need to be men in marble buildings writing decrees against murder because targets of a murderer will defend themselves and members of the target’s family and community will rise to his defense. The same is true of theft, rape, and other acts that involve one individual aggressing against another. Rulers only need exist to write decrees prohibiting behavior that a community won’t itself enforce. In other words rulers only exist to write decrees that a community doesn’t actually want.

Truth be told I don’t care if you choose to vote. That’s your choice. But I’m not going to vote and I don’t give a damn if you think that makes me a bad person.

Why Legalizing Driverless Cars is Likely to Be an Uphill Battle

One of the political battles currently being waged in Minnesota is cannabis legalization. The reason the battle is so heated is because law enforcement agents are opposing legalization because they know it will hurt their funding from civil forfeiture laws. This will likely be the reason why law enforcement agents will also oppose legalizing driverless cars:

Google’s driverless cars have now combined to drive more than 700,000 miles on public roads without receiving one citation, The Atlantic reported this week. While this raises a lot of questions about who is responsible to pay for a ticket issued to a speeding autonomous car – current California law would have the person in the driver’s seat responsible, while Google has said the company that designed the car should pay the fine – it also hints at a future where local and state governments will have to operate without a substantial source of revenue.

Approximately 41 million people receive speeding tickets in the U.S. every year, paying out more than $6.2 billion per year, according to statistics from the U.S. Highway Patrol published at StatisticBrain.com. That translates to an estimate $300,000 in speeding ticket revenue per U.S. police officer every year.

Driverless cars are less likely to violate traffic laws. As driverless cars become more prevalent this will cause the number of traffic citations issued by police to dwindle. Without the kickback from those citations departments will find that their funding will also dwindle. In other words this is why we can’t have nice things.

One of the major problems with modern policing is the fact that it incentivizes the creation of criminals. The more criminals that exist in society the more money law enforcement agencies can rake in. That creates a conflict of interest as law enforcement agencies are incentivized to support any measure that creates more criminals and oppose any measure that reduces the number of criminals. This conflict of interest becomes especially egregious when you consider that technology like driverless cars have the potential to save a lot of lives by reducing traffic accidents.

Technology Companies Defying the State By Reporting Law Enforcement Requests

Rebellion is a beautiful thing. Several major technology companies included Apple, Facebook, and Google have decided to notify their users when law enforcement agents request their data:

Major U.S. technology companies have largely ended the practice of quietly complying with investigators’ demands for e-mail records and other online data, saying that users have a right to know in advance when their information is targeted for government seizure.

This increasingly defiant industry stand is giving some of the tens of thousands of Americans whose Internet data gets swept into criminal investigations each year the opportunity to fight in court to prevent disclosures. Prosecutors, however, warn that tech companies may undermine cases by tipping off criminals, giving them time to destroy vital electronic evidence before it can be gathered.

Fueling the shift is the industry’s eagerness to distance itself from the government after last year’s disclosures about National Security Agency surveillance of online services. Apple, Microsoft, Facebook and Google all are updating their policies to expand routine notification of users about government data seizures, unless specifically gagged by a judge or other legal authority, officials at all four companies said. Yahoo announced similar changes in July.

One thing I like about the technology field is that companies and individuals within it tend to have a greater problem with authority than most. Although I would have preferred to see this happen sooner I’m not going to gripe too much. Instead I want to congratulate these companies on doing the right thing.

It’s interesting to see the changes that have rippled through the technology market since Edward Snowden leaked those National Security Agency (NSA) documents. Security and transparency has traditionally been an afterthought for major technology companies but both have gained more prominence since we all learned that the NSA was unlawfully spying on each and every one of us. Google, for example, began encrypting data moving between its data centers. Experts in the security field boycotted the RSA conference because its namesake took $10 million from the NSA to use a knowingly weak random number generator in its BSAFE product. There has also been a race to develop more secure communication devices in an attempt to thwart the NSA surveillance apparatus. Basically the state royally pissed off the technology industry and it is now actively doing what it can to rebel.

I’m proud to work in a field that is actively giving the state a gigantic middle finger. Seeing companies like Apple, Facebook, and Google publicly change their policies to better inform their customers when the state is snooping makes me smile.

Minnesota Legislature and Governor Dayton Strikes a Blow Against the Boys in Blue

The Minnesota legislature just struck a blow against our heroes in blue! With a swipe of his pen Governor Dayton has made it unlawful for police to keep confiscated property without a conviction:

In a big win for property rights and due process, Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton signed a bill yesterday to curb an abusive—and little known—police practice called civil forfeiture. Unlike criminal forfeiture, under civil forfeiture someone does not have to be convicted of a crime, or even charged with one, to permanently lose his or her cash, car or home.

The newly signed legislation, SF 874, corrects that injustice. Now the government can only take property if it obtains a criminal conviction or its equivalent, like if a property owner pleads guilty to a crime or becomes an informant. The bill also shifts the burden of proof onto the government, where it rightfully belongs. Previously, if owners wanted to get their property back, they had to prove their property was not the instrument or proceeds of the charged drug crime. In other words, owners had to prove a negative in civil court. Being acquitted of the drug charge in criminal court did not matter to the forfeiture case in civil court.

Civil forfeiture is one of the best sources of police funding. By simply accusing an individual of wrongdoing the police could confiscate his or her property and sell it to fund their department. Now our boys in blue will be required to actually convict an accused individual in order to sell their property! It’s obvious what this will do to our fine state. Without profits from civil forfeiture the police departments won’t be able to afford as many guns, as much body armor, and an ever growing fleet of cruisers. How can we expect our heroes to keep up their record number of curb stompings, dog slayings, and no-knock raids at incorrect addresses if they can’t afford the equipment those jobs require? This is a travesty!

Sincerely,

Your friendly neighborhood statist.

Find My iPhone Vigilantism, a Demonstration of State Failure in Providing Security

The New York Times ran a story covering a recent phenomenon where victims of iPhone theft use the Find My iPhone feature to find the thief and reclaim their phone:

Using the Find My iPhone app on her computer, she found that someone had taken the phones to a home in this Los Angeles exurb, 30 miles east of her West Hollywood apartment.

So Ms. Maguire, a slight, 26-year-old yoga instructor, did what a growing number of phone theft victims have done: She went to confront the thieves — and, to her surprise, got the phones back.

Ah, the lovely Hollywood outcome where all is well at the end. But the news isn’t Hollywood so you know that a happy ending at the beginning of the story must be followed by a story of horror:

In San Diego, a construction worker who said his iPhone had been stolen at a reggae concert chased the pilferer and wound up in a fistfight on the beach that a police officer had to break up. A New Jersey man ended up in custody himself after he used GPS technology to track his lost iPhone and attacked the wrong man, mistaking him for the thief.

The rest of the article mostly consists of dire warning, primarily form police officers, against people seeking out thieves and attempting to recover their property. By the end of the story you’re supposed to see these so-called vigilantes as well-meaning albeit foolish people. What isn’t discussed are the motivations of these people willing to put themselves at risk to recover their stolen property.

I see this phenomenon (which likely consists of no more than ten or so people but the media needed a story so it inflated how common this practice is) as an example of the state’s failure to provide adequate security. As you likely know the state maintains a virtual monopoly on security services via its monopoly on law enforcement. While there are a few areas that the state allows private security providers to operate in (namely building security) the personal electronics recovery market isn’t one of them. If somebody steals your mobile phone you’re expected to rely on the police to recover it. This wouldn’t be an issue if the police would actually invest resources into recovering a stolen phone. But in most cases they will fill out a meaningless report and inform you that it’s almost impossible to recover a stolen personal electronic device. Even providing the police with access to your Find My iPhone service will seldom encourage them to get off of their asses and retrieve your phone. In fact you can get more done by contacting Apple and providing it with your stolen phone’s serial number. At least then the phone will be kept by Apple should it ever be brought in for repairs and the person who brought it in will be reported to the police. But that’s a pretty big if.

Since the solution provided by the state is unwilling to retrieve your phone and private solutions are verboten you’re left with only one option: if you want to retrieve your stolen phone you have to do it yourself. Don’t blame the vigilantes, blame the state that monopolized the security market and failed to provide an adequate service.

It’s My Least Favorite Time Again

It’s time again for yet another frivolous waste of everybody’s time. I am, of course, talking about the biennial political season. This year doesn’t involve a presidential election, which has an upside and a downside. The upside is that we aren’t being assaulted with wall-to-wall coverage of meaningless political drivel. The downside is that the people who involve themselves in off years become more annoying. They believe that the off years are the years where one can really make a difference. Since most of the politicos are supposedly sitting at home the people who show up can get politicians elected who will actually changed thing. Except the politicos aren’t sitting at home because politics is their one and only hobby. Political wannabe power players, the people who run local conventions and are well known in local political circles, never take a year off and they have enough influence locally to get their way every year.

But that doesn’t stop my more politically involved friends from calling, e-mailing, and messaging me on Facebook to beg me to show up to a local caucus, speech by their favored politician, or fundraiser. No matter how many times I explain to them that I’m not interested in politics they keep harassing me. They tell me that “This year is the most important year ever!” Yes, they tell me that every year. When I ask what’s in it for me (because I’m a self-interested bloke) they always try to feed me a line of bullshit that they think will convince me to stop doing whatever it is that I’m enjoying so I can go suffer through the mind numbing political process. As you can guess the most common reason given is that politician So-And-So is planning to take my guns so I must get out there and work for So-And-So’s opposition. Of course they usually leave the part out about So-And-So having a abject hatred of brown people in sandy regions, two men getting it on (they’re usually cool with two women getting it on but they would never tell you that), and people who want to keep secrets from the state. But I digress.

The point is I fucking hate this season. I hate the people running for office. I hate how people think they can make a meaningful difference through politics (trust me if you could it would be illegal). I hate how persistent my friends are no matter how clearly I state my hatred of politics. In fact I hate everything about the political season.

What I am about to write will almost certainly fall on deaf ears but I’m going to try anyways. I’m not going to help your pet politician. I don’t even like your pet politician. The fact that your pet politician is running for office already tells me everything I need to know about his or her moral character (which is to say he or she has no notable moral character). There are roughly 100 trillion other things I would rather do including watch paint dry, getting hit by a school bus that is on fire, or being locked in a five square foot cell with ravenous badgers (the number of badgers doesn’t matter).

An Argument for Cryptocurrencies

The financial industry is a quagmire of censorship, morality policing, and market control. How the financial industry restricts markets is pretty easy to ascertain. Numerous laws exist that prohibit the transfer of money for transactions that the state has declared criminal. That makes the use of the financial industry to perform transactions for things like cannabis more difficult. But how does the financial industry perform censorship and police morality? By deciding who can and cannot have a bank account. We’ve seen this before with gun stores mysteriously having their bank accounts closed. But gun store owners aren’t the only target of the financial industry’s morality policing. The adult entertainment industry has also come under the financial industry’s ire:

Just as ISPs and search engines can become weak links for digital speech, too often financial service providers are pressured by the government to shut down speech or punish speakers who would otherwise be protected by the First Amendment. It’s unclear whether this is an example of government pressure, an internal corporate decision, or some combination.

Chase has yet to give an official statement on why the accounts are being closed. At least one of the customers affected by Chase’s decision to shut down adult entertainers’ accounts, Teagan Presley, was told by Chase that her account was being shut down “because she’s considered ‘high risk.'” According to NY Daily News, her husband Joshua Lehman (whose account is also being closed) reports receiving conflicting information from Chase about why the accounts were being shut down:

I’ve heard three different reasons…When I went into our branch, they said it was the nature of our business. When I called, they said they were closing my personal account because my wife is an ‘infamous’ adult star. When I talked to my branch again, they said it wasn’t because we were in the adult industry but because we did business with a convicted felon.

This isn’t the first time Chase has been under fire for morality-based account closures. In 2013, Chase faced a lawsuit from the founder of MRG Entertainment for denying loans to people within the adult entertainment industry. And just a few months ago, Chase refused to process payments for Lovability, an online condom store. After bad press and public pressure, Chase reversed its decision, but it’s unclear whether Chase ever changed the policies that led to the decision in the first place.

Bank accounts are an Achilles heel for most “legitimate” businesses. Without one it’s difficult, if not impossible, to accept credit and debit card payments and many banks will only cash checks for account holders (or charge non-account holders a nasty cashing fee). Imagine if every bank refused to allow MidwayUSA or Brownells to have a bank account. Those stores would likely be finished.

Centrally controlled financial services, like most centrally controlled industries, are dangerous things to rely on. At any point those services can be used to enforce selected ideals. This is why I see decentralized financial systems, namely cryptocurrencies, as an important development.

I will use Bitcoin as an example because it is the most well known, but there are many cryptocurrencies out there with similar advantages. Bitcoin is a decentralized system. It doesn’t attempt to judge whether or not a transaction is legal, moral, or otherwise acceptable. The only thing the Bitcoin network attempts to do is ensure transactions are recorded and the appropriate amount of Bitcoin is transferred between accounts. Adult entertainers can bypass the financial industry’s censorship by accepting Bitcoin and may have to resort to doing so if things continue as they have been.

Cryptocurrencies really shine, at least in my opinion, because they enable the transfer of wealth without the risk of third-party judgements. As governments and industries (but I repeat myself) continue their efforts to control markets it will become more important to develop tools that allow people to bypass their controls. Obviously cryptocurrencies aren’t the be-all and end-all. Controls can still be inflicted by delivery services, manufacturers, and many other middlemen that are commonly involved in a transaction.

Increasing Minimum Wage

One of the political battles currently being waged here in Minnesota is an increase of the state mandated minimum wage:

Minnesota’s legislative Democrats have struck a deal to raise the wages of the state’s lowest-paid workers.

Details of the agreement are expected to be released by House and Senate leaders Monday morning, but two sources with knowledge of the deal said Sunday that the minimum wage would rise to $9.50 an hour and future increases would be linked to increases in inflation.

The first question I have to ask about this deal is which inflation metric would minimum wage be pegged to? There are several different measures of inflation. Inflation numbers reported by the state are heavily doctored to make things appear better than they are. If this deal uses any state-approved inflation metrics pegging minimum wage to inflation will be meaningless.

As an individual who subscribes to the Austrian tradition of economics (also known as the only tradition that actually knows what it’s talking about) I will point out that increasing the state mandated minimum wage will also lead to an increase in unemployment. And as an agorist I believe an increase in unemployment will lead to an increase in the minimum wage.

How can I make such lofty claims? Because there exists an “underground” economy. Being unemployed doesn’t mean a person isn’t making money. Most people faced with the prospects of starvation or breaking the law will choose the latter. That means people who are officially unemployed will seek employment in the “underground” economy. The biggest advantage of working in the “underground” economy is that any income received is off of the books. Income acquire off of the books cannot be tracked by the state and therefore cannot be taxed. By working in the “underground” economy individuals need not spend half of the year working for Uncle Sam.

Without having to pay taxes the average person would enjoy an sizable increase in their wage. Increasing the state mandated minimum wage also increases unemployment. Increasing unemployment causes individuals to seek “unofficial” employment. Income from “unofficial” employment is untaxed. Therefore laws that increase state mandated minimum wage can increase the actual minimum wage but not through the mechanism that statists believe.

Minnesota: The State Where Government Protects You from Bad Decisions… Even if Its Not Sure if Your Decisions are Bad

You have to love the legislators here in Minnesota. Even though the transportation infrastructure is in a severe state of disrepair, the electronic pull tabs that were supposed to fund the tax victim’s part of the new Vikings stadium didn’t, and local legislative campaigns are going way up in costs our legislators manage to find the time to deal with the really important issues.

On the table today is the issue of teens using tanning booths. Minnesota’s dear leaders are looking to pass a bill that would make it illegal for people under 18 to use tanning beds:

At a time when melanoma cases are rising sharply in Minnesota, lawmakers appear poised to pass legislation that would ban anyone under 18 from using tanning equipment.

The rate of melanoma cases is increasing and it is due to teens are making more frequent uses of tanning beds. I know this because the government wouldn’t be so stupid as to jump to such a major conclusion without acquiring such facts. Legislators would never introduce such a prohibition based on speculation.

To substantiate whether tanning beds might be behind the increase in melanoma cases, the health department added some tanning questions to the Minnesota Student Survey conducted last year.

The survey showed that one in three 11th grade girls reported that they tanned indoors in the last year. Among those tanning bed users, Korn said more than half reporting tanning indoors more than 10 times that year.

Or they could be doing exactly that. A single survey given to teens about tanning, which has no historical data to go on, is the justification being used to prohibit teens from using tanning beds. Does the increasing rate of melanoma cases correlate to an increase rate of teens using tanning beds? Who fucking knows. That’s not what is important. What is important is that there is an increased rate in melanoma cases and that means we have to do something!

People sometimes ask me, “Chris, how can you be an anarchist?” So here it is, Christopher Burg’s three step program to becoming an anarchist:

Identify the actions of the people tasked with running you life.
Determine whether or not those actions make sense for your life.
If they don’t then logic would dictate that those people shouldn’t be running your life.

Let’s apply this three step program to the melanoma problem:

The Minnesota legislature, in an attempt to address the increased rate of melanoma, is planning to prohibit teenagers from using tanning beds.
No evidence exists trying an increased use of tanning beds with the increased rate of melanoma.
Since there is a lack of evidence showing an increased rate of tanning bed use by teenagers exists the solution of prohibiting teenagers from using tanning beds cannot be said to address the problem.

If you can understand the three step process above then you can apply it to other laws that have been or are being passed by legislators. You will likely find that almost all of the laws being passed don’t make sense for your life and therefore the people passing those laws shouldn’t be running your life. After that you can freely consider yourself an anarchist.

The Dark Side of Taxes

It’s tax season. With the circle of friends I have that means it’s the season to bitch about the government taking a huge chunk of our personal wealth. I’m assuming that most of my readers at least lean towards libertarianism so there is probably a strong sentiment that taxes should at least be greatly reduced if not entirely eliminated. That means I’m also assuming that you’ve heard a variation of this debate before.

A libertarian comments about taxes being too damn high. In response a government advocate claims that we need taxes because taxes enable civilization. What that individual means is that he or she believes that infrastructure, welfare, and other pet government programs are only made possible through taxes. Putting aside the fact that anything made possible through taxes can be, and has been, made possible through voluntary methods we still have the fact that such an attitude ignores a lot of terrible things made possible by taxes. Taxes, like anything else humanity conceives, has the nice cheery side that makes people feel good and the dark depressing side that most people tend to ignore.

Let me take a moment to talk about the dark side of taxes. A small percentage of taxes are used to build roads, schools, and civic centers. But a large percentage of taxes are used to directly hurt of kill people. For example, taxes allow the United States government to bomb wedding parties in the Middle East, allowed the Soviet Union to build gulags that were used to murder millions, and enable police forces throughout the world to imprison people for nonviolent crimes.

Here in the United States we get to see the dark side of taxes more obviously than most other parts of the world. We have the highest incarceration rate in the entire world. Most of the kidnapped souls inside of the government’s great cages harmed nobody. They were victims of the war on unpatentable drugs. Their only crime was smoking, snorting, or injecting something that the government said they couldn’t. To fuel this war a great deal of tax money is sent to law enforcement agencies so they can put together Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) teams, buy armored personnel carriers, and fight court cases when their victims decided to sue.

Speaking of war, taxes also enable the numerous illegal wars that the United States is embroiled in. Drones and Hellfire missiles don’t build themselves. In order to butcher Middle Eastern children the United States government needs to collect taxes to pay for its military. Aircraft carriers, fighter jets, bombers, tanks, and nuclear bombs cost a lot of money. Since I brought up nuclear weapons I will point out that taxes it possible for the United States to drop nuclear weapons on two major Japaneses cities (after making it possible for it to firebomb Japan’s most densely populated city). Going back in time a bit further we can see another thing taxes made possible: the genocide of this continent’s indigenous populations.

Taxes may have been used to build the roads you drive on and the schools you send your children to but they were also used to destroy the roads and schools people in other countries depend on. The next time you hear somebody talk about all the great things that taxes make possible be sure to remind them about all of the horrible things that are also made possible.