Tag: Not So Crazy Libertarian Ideals

National Day of Civic Hacking

The state has decided to declare June 1st and 2nd as National Day of Civic Hacking:

This summer, on June 1-2, 2013, citizens in cities across the Nation will join together to improve their communities and governments as part of the National Day of Civic Hacking.

Civic Hacking Day is an opportunity for software developers, technologists, and entrepreneurs to unleash their can-do American spirit by collaboratively harnessing publicly-released data and code to create innovative solutions for problems that affect Americans. While civic hacking communities have long worked to improve our country and the world, this summer will mark the first time local developers from across the Nation unite around the shared mission of addressing and solving challenges relevant to OUR blocks, OUR neighborhoods, OUR cities, OUR states, and OUR country.

I’m probably going to surprise you but this is actually an idea I can get behind. Hackers have the means of greatly improving our communities by developing new mechanisms to help individuals bypass the state’s watchful eye. Hidden services, such as Silk Road (if you’re on Tor you can access the site via this link), allow individuals to conduct business without having to concern themselves with taxes, regulations, and laws. If somebody needs some electrical work they could use a hidden service to find people in their community with experience in electrical work and hire them (under the table of course). The same could be done for any good or service, you would be surprised to discover the number of skilled individuals living in your community.

In keeping with the spirit of the day such hidden services can also help improve governments by depriving them of resources and therefore making them either scale back operations (wouldn’t it be nice if your local police department didn’t have a Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) team standing by to squash any potential dissidence) or increase their rate of expropriation, which would push more people to use state avoiding hidden services. Overall I think National Day of Civic Hacking could be a boon for everybody.

I encourage hackers to spend National Day of Civic Hacking working on projects that help their local communities avoid the tyranny of the state. Even if you don’t have the knowledge to create hidden services you can help the cause by running a Tor relay on your computer. Donating a portion of your bandwidth to help dissidents in your local community and around the world is certainly a good cause.

Governor Dayton Looking to Increase Taxes in Minnesota

Stop me if you’ve heard this story before. A state spent more money than it expropriated from the people living within its claimed borders. Eventually the state realized it was deeply in debt and had no way to sustain its expenditures at its current rate of expropriation. Faced with a decision, to reduce spending or increase expropriation, the state decided to increase expropriation. Yeah, it’s a story as old as states themselves but like many great stories it continues to be relevant today. Governor Dayton has decided that the best way to get Minnesota out of debt is to increase the state’s rate of expropriation:

He would also increase the cigarette tax by 94 cents a pack, primarily as a way to discourage smoking.

Smokers have been a victim of constantly increasing state expropriation. Through its propaganda machine the state has made smokers into pariahs who receive little or no support from non-smokers. Due to their pariah status smokers make excellent tax victims since nobody is going to come to their defense when the state says the cost of their cigarettes will be increasing.

Dayton, who campaigned in 2010 calling for the state to “tax the rich,” would create a new tax rate of 9.85 percent, to be paid on taxable income above $250,000 for joint filers and above $150,000 for single filers. That would net about $1 billion from 53,000 returns and give the state one of the top five top rates in the country.

Are you a successful entrepreneur? If Dayton gets what he wants, and he most likely will, you will be punished for providing your community with the goods and services they desire. The “rich” (which is an arbitrary term), like smokers, have been a victim of constantly increasing state expropriation. Like it did with smokers, the state has used its propaganda machine to create a rift between the “rich” and everybody else. Few people are willing to stand against increased income taxes so long as it only applies to the “rich” (which is defined by most people as anybody who makes $1 more than they do).

For the first time, Minnesotans would pay sales tax on clothing — items above $100 — and on services like haircuts, auto repairs and legal fees.

Minnesota is an inhospitable wasteland for several months out of the year. During our winters an individual needs to dress in layers. One of those layers, the winter coat, usually costs more than $100. Boots, another article of clothing necessary for withstanding winter temperatures for any length of time, also generally cost more than $100. A sales tax on clothing costing more than $100 is really a tax on survival in this state. I guess it serves us Minnesotans right, living in this climate is rather idiotic and should be punished harshly.

Now that you know what the game is let me tell you how to avoid the game. Start doing all your shopping online. Amazon offers everything you need to survive Minnesota winters and doesn’t collect sales tax. Smokers can buy cigarettes online (I’m not a smoker so I don’t know if that’s a good site, it’s merely an option I came across) and avoid paying individual state sales taxes. These sales tax increases don’t concern them since I do most of my shopping online anyways.

The apparently obvious weakness in shopping online is the threat of a national sales tax. Fortunately that’s a minor problem. Sites like Alibaba allow individuals in other parts of the world to sell to other individuals in other parts of the world. If the United States enacted a national sales tax that would merely mean you would have to buy products from other countries. At one time buying from overseas sources would have been difficult due to shipping but international shipping has becomes so streamlined that it involves, at most, a slight increase in delivery time. My laptop, a MacBook Pro, was shipped directly from Shanghai, China free of charge in four or five (I don’t remember exactly) days.

The Internet is the greatest tool for those wanting to avoid state tyranny. It connects every part of the world with every other part of the world. International borders and, by extension, states have been rendered less and less relevant.

The Slow Death of Intellectual Property

I’ve haven’t had time to write about the recent suicide of Aaron Swartz but his death demonstrated much of what is wrong with business models that rely on intellectual property. Aaron Swartz committed suicide while facing a potential 35 years in prison for the act of “stealing” electronic academic journals for the purpose of making them publicly available, for free, to everybody. I put the term stealing into quotation marks because I don’t believe what Aaron did qualifies as theft. Theft implies that another person was deprived of something. If I steal your car you are deprived of the use of your car. Aaron’s act of “theft” didn’t deprive anybody of those journals as they were still available to subscribers of Journal Storage (JSTOR).

Why does the state enact such harsh punishment for intellectual property violations? Because intellectual property lobbyists have invested a great deal of money in getting strong intellectual property laws enacted and the state takes care of its customers. People seldom stop to consider the fact that the state has customers and most people who consider this fact mistakenly believe that the people, that is to say you and me, are the state’s customers. In reality the state’s customers are those who purchase protection from the state. Lobbyists are in the business of buying such protection. Walt Disney, the Recording Industry Association of American, and the Motion Picture Association of American are examples of the state’s intellectual property customers. They purchase intellectual property laws through campaign contributions, giving former state agents cushy jobs as lobbyists or advisers, and other benefits to those comprising the state. In exchange the state grants those entities mafia-like protection. Anybody caught violating the intellectual property lobbyist’s laws can find themselves the victims of kidnapping, extortion, assault, and even murder. Unfortunately for intellectual property lobbyists their business model, which relies entirely on purchased intellectual property laws, is dying and the Internet is its killer.

In order to succeed a business model must be built around scarce goods. This is why nobody has tried building a business model around selling ice to Eskimos or air. Eskimos are surrounded by ice so they have little incentive to buy it and air is all around us so we have little incentive to buy it. The Internet has made things like music, literature, and movies superabundant, that is to say they are no longer scarce goods. Once a song, book, or movie is posted online it literally becomes infinitely reproducible. Intellectual property lobbyists have tried to create artificial scarcity through the purchase of intellectual property laws but to little avail. Even increasing punishments for violating intellectual properly laws has failed to create the lobbyists’ desired scarcity. The death of intellectual property is inevitable and businesses based on intellectual property will either adapt or die themselves.

Sadly many people fail to see the inevitability of intellectual property’s death so individuals like Aaron Swartz will continue to face the state’s violence for some time. What makes matters more depressing is the fact that intellectual property laws aren’t necessary. Just as the Internet has killed intellectual property it has empowered the producers of art. Bands, authors, and movie producers no longer need the assistance of the record, publishing, and movie industries in order to reach their audiences. With a little additional creativity a band, author, or movie producer can still make money off of their art, they just need to change their business model. Kickstarter is an example of a potential new business model for creative individuals. Once an idea has been made public it becomes superabundant but it remains scarce so long as the originator keeps his or her mouth shut. Consider an author. An author could release a title for free and make any future titles pend on whether or not they receive enough donates from a service such as Kickstarter. The first title would be used to build an audience who would fund future titles. The same business model would work for bands and movie producers. In fact the movie Iron Sky was heavily funded in such a manner.

The sooner businesses relying on intellectual property come to terms with the death of their business models the sooner tragedies like what happened to Aaron Swartz will stop. There is no reason state violence is necessary for creative individuals to make money and the fact that violence is still used in order to profit creative individuals demonstrates an ill in our society.

Shootings Seem to be Rampent in Gun-Free Zones

Another shooting happened in another so-called gun-free zone:

Three people were injured as gunfire rang out during an argument at a college in the US state of Texas, say police.

A sheriff’s official said both people involved in the altercation at Lone Star College in the Houston area were wounded and taken to hospital.

A college maintenance man was also injured in the cross-fire.

These events seems to be happening with great frequency as of late. If I were a more paranoid individual I’d swear the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) decided to expand their program to arm dangerous individuals by giving firearms to violent individuals outside of the Mexican drug cartels. In all seriousness though I find it telling that these events continue to occur in state labeled gun-free zones.

Lowering Standards in Public Education

This is unlikely to surprise most of you but fewer and fewer kids leave the state’s K-12 education system with, what I will call, functional literacy. In fact the problem is finally becoming prevalent enough that the state is actually looking to address it:

Fast forward to high school reading today, and you might find that a lot of high school English teachers are identifying with Holden more than their students are identifying with him. Reading scores for American students have dropped dramatically, and the solution could see their world change as well.

“So many kids, often as many as 50 percent, graduate high school … demonstrably not ready for the demands of a first-year college course or job-training program,” says David Coleman, president of the College Board, a nonprofit membership organization that administers standardized tests like the SAT.

When I say the state is moving to address the problem I don’t want to imply that it is trying to determine and address the root cause, that’s not how the state operates. Instead I mean to imply that the state has looked at how it defines functional literacy and is adjusting it, while throwing in a few destructive curriculum changes, so that the numbers appear to be higher without actually fixing the problem:

Coleman is the lead architect of the Common Core Standards Initiative, a sweeping curricula change that integrates nonfiction text into the English program. So where does it leave The Catcher in the Rye and similar literary classics?

That question is one stirring debate over how to integrate nonfiction works into English programs to improve reading scores, while not abandoning the novels that have become the gold standard of high school reading lists.

[…]

Coleman tells weekends on All Things Considered host Jacki Lyden that fiction remains at the heart of English and language arts programs under Common Core, but high-quality literary nonfiction, like the founding documents of the United States, is introduced as well.

In my opinion one of the biggest hurdles to functional literacy is the materials pushed on kids during their K-12 years. Elementary and high schools like to assign kids reading material that is considered classic but that isn’t very useful when kids have no desire to read such works. Instead of encouraging kids to read the state’s education system discourages kids to read by assigning material that most K-12 students find exceptionally boring. I remember the crap we were assigned to read in elementary and high school, none of it appealed to me. Fortunately I had a habit of doing what I wanted instead of what I was told so I read voraciously. For assignments I would, as I assume most kids today are doing, skim just enough material to complete any required test or report or I would forgo reading the material entirely so I could return to reading books I actually cared about (before high school I was reading novels like Jurassic Park and 2001: A Space Odyssey).

Focusing more on nonfiction isn’t going to solve the problem, in fact it may exacerbate it. In order to find things like the founding documents of the United States interesting one must also have enough historical knowledge to put those documents into perspective. Needless to say most state schools fail to teach much in the way of history (and what history they do teach is watered down and entirely boring) so forcing students to read historical material is an exercise in futility. Furthermore the founding documents of the United States are a rather dull read. Most people don’t want to read legal documents such as the United States Constitution. Legal documents lack a story, which requires some kind of conflict. Religions generally teach their laws and doctrines by using parables, which end up being more interesting since they contain story elements such as conflict and character interactions. This was likely done, at least in part, because the writers of religious texts understood that people were usually uninterested in reading and listening to lengthy sterile legal documents. Perhaps it is time we apply that understanding with children today and push them to read fiction instead of nonfiction.

I think the best way to improve functional literacy rates in this country is to introduce a little anarchy into the state’s schools (it’ll never happen unfortunately). Allow students to read material they’re interested in. This doesn’t mean assigning everybody in the class to read Twilight, it means allowing each student to select books they’re personally interested in. If a kid wants to read Harry Potter or The Lord of the Rings let him read it an receive due credit instead of forcing To Kill a Mockingbird down their throats.

Dissent Wasn’t Allowed at the King’s Inauguration

Apparently not every celebrity is enamored with Obama’s policy of bombing people overseas:

Rapper Lupe Fiasco was thrown offstage and escorted off the premises of a Washington, D.C. concert hall during a pre-inauguration concert Sunday night, after going on an anti-war, anti-Obama rant, according to concertgoers.

At least the United States hasn’t become as bad as Thailand… yet.

EDIT: 2012-01-22: 10:20: I accidentally a word. Thanks goes to Bob S. for pointing it out.

A Different Way of Doing Business

As an agorist I’m always interesting in learning how other cultures do business. I came across a very interesting article that discusses how Somali immigrants in Minneapolis have overcome many of the issues that traditional American entrepreneurs suffer. It’s pretty insightful and I think agorists and those looking to start “legitimate” businesses could learn a thing or two:

One marked difference between Somali immigrants and other Minnesota business owners is their devout adherence to the beliefs and practices of Islam. A recent survey, conducted out of the University of Minnesota, titled Achieving Success in Business: A Comparison of Somali and American-Born Entrepreneurs in Minneapolis, found that 98.9% of Somalis described their religious beliefs as ‘extremely important’ whereas only 48.9% of non-migrants surveyed expressed this level of commitment to their faith and 15.6% reported their religious beliefs to be ‘not important at all’.

Many Muslims, Somalis included, believe that Islam strongly discourages or even strictly prohibits the use of credit or accepting loans that include the payment of interest. Obviously, this belief has a significant impact on how Somalis must go about funding their businesses.

Luckily for Somalis, Minnesota has the highest number of immigrants as a result of second-migration than any other state and is home to several organizations and nonprofits that work to provide loans and ways of financing that are sensitive to those of varying cultural backgrounds. Thus, Somalis have the opportunity to start businesses without having to worry about large loan and interest payments haunting them years into the future.

One of the biggest hurdles prospective business owners face is acquiring the capital needed to get a business idea off of the ground. Traditional banks generally charge a great deal of interest but such practices are not allowed under the teachings of Islam so many of the Somali immigrants in this country have found an alternative, which is very reminiscent of mutual banking systems often advocated by mutualists. A mutual bank works differently from traditional banks in the United States. The idea is to lend money to prospective business owners and charge just enough interest to cover overhead. In effect it grants potential business owners a method of acquiring capital without suffering years of crushing debt.

Somalis aren’t the only ones who can benefit from mutual banking, prospective agorists could stand to benefit greatly from agorist mutual banks. Most agorists that I’ve talked to have plans to start small businesses but even small businesses require investment capital. Investment capital, especially for those looking to establish businesses seen as illegitimate by much of society, is difficult to come by this day and age of high unemployment Agorists also, unlike “legitimate” prospective entrepreneurs, don’t have the option of seeking a small business loan from traditional banks. This is where agorists could practice a form of mutual aid by pooling their available resources for the purpose of assisting fellow agorists wanting to start new businesses. Consider how well such a system has worked for Somali immigrants who often come to this country with no money or credit.

Living your entire life in one country and under one culture has negative side-effects, the biggest of which may be a lack of creativity. People who grow up living a certain way often get trapped into thinking that that way is the only way that works. When you look at other cultures you learn that isn’t the fact though. Every culture has managed to get by using various different methods. Because of this it’s valuable to look at how other cultures do things and consider adopting ideas that work well.

It’s Because He’s the King

The New York Times surprised me today by asking a relevant question, “Who Says You Can Kill Americans, Mr. President?” The article opens by explaining:

PRESIDENT OBAMA has refused to tell Congress or the American people why he believes the Constitution gives, or fails to deny, him the authority to secretly target and kill American citizens who he suspects are involved in terrorist activities overseas. So far he has killed three that we know of.

Presidents had never before, to our knowledge, targeted specific Americans for military strikes. There are no court decisions that tell us if he is acting lawfully. Mr. Obama tells us not to worry, though, because his lawyers say it is fine, because experts guide the decisions and because his advisers have set up a careful process to help him decide whom he should kill.

He must think we should be relieved.

The three Americans known to have been killed, in two drone strikes in Yemen in the fall of 2011, are Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical Muslim cleric who was born in New Mexico; Samir Khan, a naturalized American citizen who had lived in New York and North Carolina, and was killed alongside Mr. Awlaki; and, in a strike two weeks later, Mr. Awlaki’s 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, who was born in Colorado.

Mr. Obama, regardless of the fairy tales he told everybody about opposing war, has been one of the most dangerous warmongers of our time. He continued the war in Iraq (which is still ongoing), ramped up the war in Pakistan, got American involved in a war in Libya (even though Gaddafi was previously awarded for advancing human rights in the region), has failed to wrap up the war in Afghanistan (he claims we’re leaving earlier than expected, but he’ll probably pull another Iraq and replace our forces with mercenaries), has ordered several bombings in Yemen, and involved this country in other scattered conflicts around the world. On top of engaging this country in numerous wars Mr. Obama has also ordered the assassination of American citizens, making him the first president to publicly do so.

What gives him such powers? We haven’t a clue because he refuses to even provide his justification. At the very least it would be nice to know why he thinks he can do these things. In all likelihood his justification would be something along the lines of “I’m the king so I get to kill whoever I want. Now get out of my sight before I have you executed, serf.”

What About the Nature Preserves

The life of a free market environmentalist can be interesting. One of the most important tasks of a free market environmentalist is to overcome political environmentalism. People who have lived their entire lives under political environmentalism are often unable to think of alternative systems. I do not mean to insult those who advocate political environmentalism. As an advocate of a different system it is my duty to convince others that it is better, which is what I hope to do with my posts on environmentalism.

One of the questions often asked to libertarians is how would national parks exist under free market environmentalism. In fact a recent thread in /r/Libertarian lead to this very question, to which I provided an answer. In this post I plan to clean up and expand upon what I said in that thread.

A common misconception people hold regarding national parks is that they were established after the state foresaw the need to preserve exceptionally beautiful areas of nature. This isn’t the case. The value Yellowstone, the first national park, held was actually first realized by Norther Pacific Railroad. The Not So Wild, Wild West discussed this starting on page 207. On that page there is a quote from an unnamed Northern Pacific Railroad official that demonstrates what I’m claiming:

We do not want to see the Falls of the Yellowstone driving the looms of a cotton factory, or the great geysers boiling pork for some gigantic packing house, but in all the native majesty the grandeur in which they appear today, without as yet a single trace of that adornment which is desecration, that improvement which is equivalent to ruin, of that utilization which means utter destruction.

Northern Pacific Railroad saw Yellowstone, in its natural state, as a source of profit. Namely they could make a great deal of money by transporting tourists to the area. One must wonder why then did Northern Pacific Railroad lobby the state to establish Yellowstone as a national park instead of simply claiming the land for themselves. This has much to do with the Homestead Act. The Homestead Act was a bill passed by the federal government meant to encourage development of western territories. In exchange for living on granted land for five years the state would grant an individual or family a deed for no additional cost. As you can imagine the Homestead Act encouraged many individuals to claim great tracts of land and do everything possible, whether it be destructive to the land or not, to survive on the land for five years. What homesteader wouldn’t jump at the opportunity to own a piece of Yellowstone? Obviously Northern Pacific Railroad needed the area protected from homesteaders and the only way to do that was to beg the state to make some kind of exemption for the area we now call Yellowstone National Park (in addition to that Northern Pacific Railroad asked the state to grant it a monopoly on transportation to the park, no surprise). Effectively the state was lobbied to protect against a problem of its own creation (in other words business as usual).

Could Yellowstone have been preserved in a stateless society? I believe so. In fact I believe it would be better preserved in a stateless society (Yellowstone is periodically used by drug gangs since it’s an optimal place to hide from the state’s drug prohibition). First, of all the absence of a state would have eliminated the threat created by the Homestead Act. Second, there was obviously recognized value in Yellowstone as it existed in its natural state. The second point brings the important aspect of self-interest, which is the basis of all human action, into the equation. As a tourist destination I believe people would have acted to preserve Yellowstone.

This is where I’m going to diverge from most libertarian philosophies. Under most libertarian philosophies land can only become owned if one mixes their labor with the land, an act of appropriation, or obtains it from appropriator. Libertarianism makes no allowance for claiming ownership of land in its natural state. With that said there is a method of declaring ownership that I’ll call de facto ownership. Property rights are only applicable if other individuals recognize them. I could claim myself to be the owner of the Egyptian pyramids but that claim would be entirely pointless since nobody would respect it. The same applies to any claim of property, if nobody else in society respects the claim then the claim is meaningless. I’ll be taking a concept from my post describing alternatives to prisons. If enough individuals wanted to prevent the development of Yellowstone, or any other nature preserve, they could accomplish their goal by simply refusing to cooperate with anybody who attempted to develop it. Effectively an individual attempting to develop Yellowstone would find themselves banished from society insomuch as others would be unwilling to interact with him or her. Life is miserable when nobody is willing to cooperate with you. Imagine how your quality of life would diminish if nobody was willing to serve you at a restaurant, sell you food at a grocery store, or fix broken water pipes in your home. In effect the land would become useless because no value could be derived from it. Sure one could build a factory in Yellowstone but if nobody is willing to buy the goods that came from that factory then the self-interest wouldn’t exist to build it. The land would essentially become toxic to development and create a de facto deed to nobody (or the community, depending on how you look at it).

Nature preserves can exist without a state so long as enough people demand it. In essence the creation of nature preserves in the absence of a state falls unto society instead of a handful of bureaucrats sitting in some marble capitol building. It also means that there isn’t a state that can later sell or allow privileged access to the preserve (for example, the state wouldn’t exist to sell drilling rights to an oil company).

Laws Only Apply to Little People

The wonderful thing about living under a state is that there are two legal systems to choose from. If you are a serf you get one set of laws but if you are a ruler or allied with a ruler you get another set of laws. For example, if a police officer kidnaps somebody it’s called an arrest, if you kidnap somebody it’s considered a criminal act. David Gregory, the man who held a 30-round AR-15 magazines in Washington DC in front of a national audience, will not be prosecuted for violating Washington DC’s standard capacity magazine ban:

Looks like NBC’s David Gregory won’t have to turn to the life of a fugitive, after all. Despite waving around a 30-round magazine that’s illegal under District law on a Dec. 23 Meet the Press broadcast, Gregory won’t be prosecuted, D.C. attorney general Irv Nathan announced in a letter this afternoon.

Having carefully reviewed all of the facts and circumstances of this matter, as it does in every case involving firearms-related offenses or any other potential violation of D.C. law within our criminal jurisdiction, OAG has determined to exercise its prosecutorial discretion to decline to bring criminal charges against Mr. Gregory, who has no criminal record, or any other NBC employee based on the events associated with the December 23, 2012 broadcast.

So Gregory gets away scot-free, despite having committed a crime. In the letter, Nathan describes not pressing charges as a “very close” decision.

David Gregory, being a proponent of gun control, is an ally of the state and therefore is granted special privileges by the state. People often claim, mistakenly, that the United States is a nation of laws. The United States isn’t a nation of laws, it is a nation where one set of individuals, those either composing or allying with the state, are allowed to disobey the very laws they are tasked with creating and enforcing while the remainder of the population, those who are not members or allies of the state, suffer brutal prosecution.

In the gun rights community a lot of emphasis is placed on lawful gun owners. I no longer put emphasis on the lawful criteria because what is or isn’t lawful in this country is arbitrary. Lawful is defined entirely by dictates of the state. What is lawful one day, say possessing standard capacity magazines, can be unlawful the next day with little more than a stroke of a pen. Under such circumstances being considered lawful means little more than being willing to submit to the state’s already numerous and every increases number of decrees. Why do people place value on a willingness to submit to such conditions?