Tag: Not So Crazy Libertarian Ideals

Decentralized Security

Centralized systems are traditionally fragile. Universal healthcare systems tend to have supply issues that lead to rationing. Highway systems managed by the state tend to be under construction for good portions of the year (at least here in Minnesota) with nothing obvious to show for it. And centralized security systems tend to be easily bypassed. While the world seems doomed to continue down the path to centralization at least some people are noticing the need for decentralization:

In an exclusive interview with ABC News, Noble said there are really only two choices for protecting open societies from attacks like the one on Westgate mall where so-called “soft targets” are hit: either create secure perimeters around the locations or allow civilians to carry their own guns to protect themselves.

“Societies have to think about how they’re going to approach the problem,” Noble said. “One is to say we want an armed citizenry; you can see the reason for that. Another is to say the enclaves are so secure that in order to get into the soft target you’re going to have to pass through extraordinary security.”

Allowing the populace to arm themselves is one of the more effective solutions for decentralizing security. All of the “blood in the streets” and “shootouts at high noon” that were predicted by gun control advocates have never arisen. In fact no area that as loosed its prohibitions against carrying firearms has experienced an increase in violent crime. The logical conclusion is that removing those prohibitions isn’t dangerous for the overall population. It also creates a great deal of uncertainty for violent person because they cannot know for sure who is and isn’t armed.

Bruce Schneier often talks about whether or not plots can be developed around security systems. It’s very difficult for a violent person to build a plot around random bag checks because of their randomness. But it is easy to develop a plot around modern police protection. For starters, police response times aren’t instantaneous. If prohibitions against carrying firearms exist and a violent person’s goal is to kill people he knows that he will have several minutes until the police arrive. Several minutes is a lot of time when we’re talking about mass murder. In addition to having several minutes of free reign a violent person also has a decent idea of the tactics used by the police.

Both of these things go away when prohibitions against carrying firearms are lifted. Since a person with a firearm can be anywhere response times are not guaranteed to be in minutes. Likewise, most people who carry a firearm have no received any standardized training, so the tactics used will be less predictable.

It’s much more difficult to design a plot around an armed population than a centralized armed force. Centralization is one of the key things exploited by practitioners of fourth generation warfare, which is a tactic that relies on decentralized forces to attack centralized forces. The more centralized a system is the more fragile it becomes. In many countries the police have a virtual monopoly on force. Those countries have an extremely fragile security system that can be exploited by decentralized forces. It’s nice to see at least one member of the International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL) acknowledge this fact and I hope others will over time.

Why I Have No Time for Arguments in Favor of Prohibiting Criminals from Obtaining Firearms

One of the gun control community’s rallying cries is preventing criminals from obtaining firearms. I have very little time for this argument. It’s not that I want violent people to have a means of inflicting violence but, as Zero Hedge points out, the fact that we’re all criminals:

As James Duane, a professor at Regent Law School and former defense attorney, notes in his excellent lecture on why it is never a good idea to talk to the police:

Estimates of the current size of the body of federal criminal law vary. It has been reported that the Congressional Research Service cannot even count the current number of federal crimes. These laws are scattered in over 50 titles of the United States Code, encompassing roughly 27,000 pages. Worse yet, the statutory code sections often incorporate, by reference, the provisions and sanctions of administrative regulations promulgated by various regulatory agencies under congressional authorization. Estimates of how many such regulations exist are even less well settled, but the ABA thinks there are ”nearly 10,000.”

If the federal government can’t even count how many laws there are, what chance does an individual have of being certain that they are not acting in violation of one of them?

As Supreme Court Justice Breyer elaborates:

The complexity of modern federal criminal law, codified in several thousand sections of the United States Code and the virtually infinite variety of factual circumstances that might trigger an investigation into a possible violation of the law, make it difficult for anyone to know, in advance, just when a particular set of statements might later appear (to a prosecutor) to be relevant to some such investigation.

For instance, did you know that it is a federal crime to be in possession of a lobster under a certain size? It doesn’t matter if you bought it at a grocery store, if someone else gave it to you, if it’s dead or alive, if you found it after it died of natural causes, or even if you killed it while acting in self defense. You can go to jail because of a lobster.

If the federal government had access to every email you’ve ever written and every phone call you’ve ever made, it’s almost certain that they could find something you’ve done which violates a provision in the 27,000 pages of federal statues or 10,000 administrative regulations. You probably do have something to hide, you just don’t know it yet.

The number of crimes that exist in this country is so absurdly high that the word criminal effectively has no meaning. Felon is another word that has no real meaning. There are so many crimes that qualify as felonies today that most of us unknowingly violate approximately three of them every day. To say that all criminals or felons should be prohibited from owning firearms is the same as saying everybody should be prohibited from owning firearms. Under the current legal system of this country we’re all criminals. That’s something you should be thinking about the next time a gun control advocate starts arguing that we need background checks for all firearm transfers.

Bitcoin as a Commodity Backed Money

One of the more heated debates going on in Austrian economics circles is whether or not Bitcoin is a currency backed by a commodity. Proponents of Bitcoin claim it is while opponents claim it is not. I fall into the former camp. I also believe that latter camp suffers from a misunderstanding of what Bitcoin is.

Bitcoin, above all else, is a network. The network is maintained by computing power. Disagreements within the Bitcoin network are resolved by going with whatever 50% + 1 of the computing power says. Who gets the Bitcoin when the same Bitcoin is sent to two addresses at the same time (something that could happen if the blockchain gets split)? Whoever 50% + 1 of the Bitcoin network’s computing power says it goes to. Furthermore, new Bitcoin can only be mined through the efforts of a great amount of computing power.

A commodity is nothing more than a raw material that can be bought and sold. Computing power is a commodity as it is a raw material needed to produce many of the goods we enjoy today and it can be bought and sold. One example of a good that is created using computing power is an encrypted communique. In order to encrypt a communique you need pass the plain text through algorithms that tend to be computationally complex. Computing power is also a resource that is bought and sold. When you sign up for an Amazon EC2 instance you’re buying computing power from Amazon. Just as a jeweler buys gold and turns it into jewelry that is later bought, Amazon buys computers from manufacturers that is later rented by people who don’t want to sink that much money into hardware they may only need temporarily.

The computing power put towards maintaining the Bitcoin network could be put to other tasks. Instead of participating in the Bitcoin network somebody could throw their computing power at Folding@Home or SETI@Home. But a lot of people have thrown their limited computing power behind Bitcoin. In fact, the processing power used to maintain the Bitcoin network outperforms the top 500 supercomputers combined. On top of personal hardware, many people are willing to rent your their mining hardware in the form of shares. You can buy into Bitcoin mining pools. The money you use to buy in is generally put towards more mining hardware and you are paid dividends based on the amount of Bitcoin mined.

Bitcoin, through the computing power necessary to maintain the network, is backed by a commodity. The raw materials necessary to maintain the Bitcoin network, including computing power and network bandwidth, could be put towards other uses but cannot be put towards simultaneous uses (even with multi-tasking, a computer can only work on one computation per unit of time per processor or core).

Annihilating Third Parties

Following in the footsteps of Arizona, the government of Ohio is taking measure to eliminate the threat of third parties:

It’s in this environment that the Ohio State Senate has passed this bill which would essentially eliminate all third party candidates from ballots. In the bill, only candidates from parties which earned 3% or more of the vote in a presidential election would be placed on the ballot; all other candidates would be write-in options. Newly qualifying parties must also submit petitions with at least 55,809 valid signatures.

The bill would, in many ways, solidify the placement of the Democrat and Republican parties at the center of American politics. Voters must look up and remember the names – something which should be simple but many people simply vote party line, and this will create a discrepancy amongst parties – and write-in candidates must apply to be counted. Write-in votes are also counted much more slowly than others, if at all, meaning they will not be discussed in the initial analysis of election results.

Welcome to the reason third parties will never be allowed to gain prominence in American politics. The two ruling parties (which, for all intents and purposes, are one ruling party) already hold power. Because they already hold power they get to make the rules. When you get to make the rules you get to eliminate potential competition by erecting barriers to entry into your marketplace. If a third party in Ohio ever gets close to 3% of a presidential vote the required percentage will be raised to 5% or 10%. The percentage goal post will continue to be moved to ensure third parties remain in their place.

You can’t fix the political system through the political system.

My Adventures in Open Carrying

As you probably know whenever I go for bike rides I open carry a firearm. I don’t do this for political activism, I just have no practical method of concealing a firearm when I’m riding a bike. Through all of my rides I haven’t had a single negative encounter. Yesterday afternoon I decided to take a ride into Minneapolis. As I approached Minneapolis I saw two bike cops ahead of me. Since they were pedaling slowly I decided to pass them. What did they do? Nodded to me. Then, on my way back, I passed them again underneath the Twins Stadium. Again, they nodded and otherwise ignored me.

How have I managed to openly carry a firearm in, what is probably, hippy infested bike trails in Minneapolis? How did I managed to encounter the same two cops twice without them hassling me? The answer to both of these questions is easy: I’m not a dick. If you read Gun Nuts Media’s post about how to properly open carry you’ll notice that bullet point one and ten are both don’t be a dick. Not being a dick is probably one of the most effective methods of living a good hassle-free life.

At all times I attempt to conduct myself in a professional manner. Sometimes I fail at this, but most of the time I’m pretty calm and collected. As an anarchist I’m not a big fan of police. They’re the state’s enforcers and, in our society especially, do far more to harm people than good. But I don’t scream “Fuck you, pig!” every time I see a police officer. Why? Because there is nothing to be gained from being a dick. It harms my advocacy of anarchism as a peaceful philosophy, it harms my advocacy of gun owners being peaceful people, and it may harm me physically. If you’re a dick to somebody they’re probably going to return the favor.

As the Gun Nuts Media article systems, don’t be a dick when you’re openly carrying a gun. It makes us gun owners look bad. I will also add in that you shouldn’t be a dick even when you’re not carrying a gun. It makes everybody you associate with look bad and it makes everybody’s life miserable.

Risk Assessment

I’m beginning to think that the downfall of our society won’t be caused by economic hardship but by our society’s ever growing unwillingness to accept any risk. Consider this story:

That’s what parents are asking after hearing about a Long Island middle school’s decision to ban most balls during recess and also require supervision of tag, even cartwheels, due to safety concerns.

No longer allowed at the Weber Middle School in Port Washington, New York: footballs, baseballs, soccer balls, lacrosse balls and any other hardballs that could injure a child. Also off limits: rough games of tag and cartwheels unless an adult supervisor is on hand.

“We want to make sure our children have fun but are also protected,” Dr. Kathleen Maloney, superintendent of Port Washington Schools, said in a local television interview, noting how playground injuries can “unintentionally” become very serious.

Even at a very young age children are being taught that risk is unacceptable. While playground injuries are never favorable they are also notably rare when you consider how many students play on playgrounds versus how many students are injured on playgrounds. Combine that ratio with the fact that a vast majority of playground injuries are likely minor scrapes and cuts. How often has a kid been killed playing football. I’m sure somebody can point out one or two stories but such an occurrence is statistically rare.

But banning games involving balls and unsupervised tag reinforced a zero tolerance policy of risk. When you think about it, much of the ills our society faces may be attributed to an unwillingness to accept risk. Economic polices are an example of this. The Federal Reserve, and with it ills such as fractional reserve banking and continuous inflation, was put in place to supposedly mitigate the risk of booms and busts (it failed obviously). Whenever a single company manages to commit an act of fraud the state moves in with sweeping legislation that causes hardship for every other company. These laws are usually met with widespread support form the general public who believes our society must do something to ensure the risk of fraud is wiped from the face of the Earth. Outside of economics, the Affordable Car Act (ACA) is another example of our society being unwilling to accept risk. In the hopes of eliminating the risk of uninsured people there was a law supported by some very loud individuals for a law that mandates everybody buy insurance.

Risk can never be abolished. It is ever present in everything we do. Since it cannot be eliminated we must learn how to live with it. Risk assessment is an important skill, one that cannot be learned in a sterile world where we’re taught only to consider risk unacceptable. The harder we work to eliminate all risk the more risky our society it likely to become.

Cause and Effect of Anti-Bullying Laws

One of the current crusades of the social justice movement is to bully bullies. By passing anti-bullying policies, which tend to work by prohibiting free speech and expression, school administrators believe they can bully kids into not bullying kids. It’s a rather strange theory; one that doesn’t seem to be panning out:

It started as a simple look at bullying. University of Texas at Arlington criminologist Seokjin Jeong analyzed data collected from 7,000 students from all 50 states.

He thought the results would be predictable and would show that anti-bullying programs curb bullying. Instead — he found the opposite.

Jeong said it was, “A very disappointing and a very surprising thing. Our anti-bullying programs, either intervention or prevention does not work.”

The study concluded that students at schools with anti-bullying programs might actually be more likely to become a victim of bullying. It also found that students at schools with no bullying programs were less likely to become victims.

Once again we see the Law of Erisian Escalation coming into play. By imposing order in the form of anti-bullying policies school administrators have cause chaotic bullying to escalate. This stems from the fact that bullying is a societal matter, no a legal matter. Trying to solve societal matters through legal means is a recipe for failure. By definition the lawless don’t comply with the law. Passing laws to curtail the lawless is like dumping kerosene on a fire to put it out; you only make the lawless person more lawless and the problem persists (or gets worse).

What Anarchy Looks Like

People often mistaken anarchy with roaming gangs of Molotov cocktail throwing angst-filled teens. It’s a cute vision that statists can tell their children during bedtime stories to scare them into compliance but the reality of anarchy is quite different. Anarchy, when you boil everything down, is the opposition of hierarchy. We anarchists don’t like rulers. So what happens when people finally begin to ignore those who claim a right to rule? Acts of civil disobedience:

Park authorities have issued citations for 21 tourists and visitors who entered Grand Canyon National Park after the government shutdown started. And in response — and in the face of the furlough of other workers — the park has bolstered its security team to monitor the land around the clock.

[…]

Despite the shutdown and the closure of the park, Mr. Wright said law enforcement will patrol the site 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Meanwhile, most park workers outside of the security and law enforcement section have been furloughed.

Isn’t it funny how the state has the money to pay thugs to issue citations during this “shutdown”? More to the point, these are the kinds of acts you can expect during a time when people finally begin opposing their rulers. Violence isn’t the inevitable outcome. Most people, after becoming dissatisfied with their rulers, simply go about their business as always. Usually the rulers bring armed thuggery into the equation because violence is all they know but, in general, most people act just as peaceful when they no longer acknowledge their rulers as when they do.

Dey turk err jurbs!

There are fewer things more idiotic than claiming advances in technology will cause unemployment. But, alas, many people are stupid enough to parrot that talking point of the economic ignorance:

In the industrial revolution — and revolutions since — there was an invigoration of jobs. For instance, assembly lines for cars led to a vast infrastructure that could support mass production giving rise to everything from car dealers to road building and utility expansion into new suburban areas.

But the digital revolution is not following the same path, said Daryl Plummer, a Gartner analyst at the research firm’s Symposium ITxpo here. “What we’re seeing is a decline in the overall number of people required to do a job,” he said.

Plummer points to a company like Kodak, which once employed 130,000, versus Instagram’s 13. Gartner sees social unrest movements, similar to Occupy Wall Street, emerging again by 2014.

Through the miracle of technological advancement we now require fewer people to do most jobs. Many stages of automobile manufacturing are performed by robots. Infinite copies of documents can no be created with the click of a mouse. Letters can be transmitted instantly from one computer to the next. Auto workers, print shop employees, and postal workers are losing their jobs!

I’m sorry, I forgot to mention the number of people not employed as web developers, chip designers, chip manufacturers, infrastructure designers, infrastructure builders, flash memory designers, flash memory manufacturers, network designers, online marketers, database administrators, database programmers, system administrators, cloud infrastructure designers, cloud infrastructure implementers, data center constructors, etc., etc.

Technological advancements don’t eliminate jobs, they shift the playing field. Some skills become unnecessary while others become necessary. Sure, the invention of the light bulb put many candle makers out of work but it also created a need for light bulb manufacturers, electrical infrastructure builders, and a whole slew of other skills. Did I mention that the invention of the light bulb is what allowed our society to effectively remain active after the sun went down? As a resident of Minnesota I greatly appreciate that during the winter months when there isn’t enough sunlight to get anything of importance done.

Any one of us may be rendered irrelevant by technological advances. That doesn’t mean we’re no longer employable, it means we need to learn new skills. Just because you’re too lazy to learn a new skill doesn’t mean the entire species should be held back. If you’re bitching about technology taking your job then it’s time for you to get off of your lazy ass and learn something new. The rest of us aren’t going to stop improving peoples’ lives just because you’re too lazy to pick up a new skill. And, who knows, some day we may reach a point where everything is automated, and therefore super cheap. If that happens we can all enjoy a carefree life where we are free to follow whatever pursuits we want. Wouldn’t it be terrible if nobody had to work because everything we need became so cheap to manufacture that it could be given away for free?

An Interesting Healthcare Paradox

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) has been sold to the American public as everything from free healthcare to universal coverage. As the law starts getting coming into affect we’re learning some very interesting tidbits about the bill that we had to pass in order to find out what’s in it. For example, your credit score gets checked so insurance companies can decided whether or not they want to take you on as a customer:

ORLANDO, Fla. – Many people signing up for health care in Florida through the Affordable Care Act have been shocked when they have to give proof of their credit score before they finish the process.

Anne Packham, one of many people licensed by the state to help people navigate the government’s website, said on Tuesday that the credit check occurs so providers can make an educated decision about who to insure.

“If someone is defaulting on all of their bills they may not want to have them as part of their health plan,” said Packham, the lead Navigator in Florida.

You can’t be denied for a preexisting condition but you can be denied for having a poor credit score. In all fairness, everything in our society seems to be tied to your credit score. If you have a poor credit score you’re effectively labeled subhuman.

But this story raises an interesting question. If you’re legally required to purchase health insurance and every health insurance provider denies you (either outright or charging premiums that they know you can’t afford) what happens? Will you be fined, err, taxed, err, fined for failing to carry health insurance even if you have no control over that failure? Could insurance companies deny you coverage for a preexisting condition if they claim their reason for rejection was your credit score?

Welcome to the mandatory healthcare system. It will only get worse from here.