Tag: Not So Crazy Libertarian Ideals

What’s the Big Deal

I’ve seen quite a few people complaining about the fact that the Senate only had three minutes between receiving the fiscal cliff bill and voting on it:

The U.S. Senate voted 89-8 to approve legislation to avoid the fiscal cliff despite having only 3 minutes to read the 154-page bill and budget score.

Multiple Senate sources have confirmed to CNSNews.com that senators received the bill at approximately 1:36 AM on Jan. 1, 2013 – a mere three minutes before they voted to approve it at 1:39 AM.

I don’t understand the outrage. Since so many people believe senators have the knowledge required to rule the lives of Americans, that is to say they believe senators know every need, want, and desire of every American, I don’t see why it’s outrageous to also believe that senators can also read 154 pages in three minutes. In fact I would go so far as to say the only way a senator could acquire the knowledge necessary to know what is best for every American is if they were capable of gather knowledge in a superhuman manner.

Fiscal Cliff Deal Increases Government Spending

If you’ve been following the latest episode of Politics: The Reality Television Show for Suckers you’ve likely heard that Congress has agreed to a deal to avert this country’s falling off of the so-called fiscal cliff. We’re lead to believe that the deal included tax increases and spending cuts the truth, as usual, is different than the propaganda we’re being fed. While the deal does include tax increases it doesn’t include spending cuts. In fact the deal includes spending increases:

The “fiscal cliff” deal that was designed to save money actually includes $330.3 billion in new spending over the next decade, according to the official estimate the Congressional Budget Office released Tuesday afternoon.

CBO said the bill contains about $25.1 billion in new cuts, but those are swamped by the new spending on extended unemployment benefits for the long-term jobless and other new refundable tax credits that President Obama fought for.

Of those cuts, only $2 billion are scheduled to take effect in 2013.

I doubt anybody expected otherwise. The state is a machine to enact wealth redistribution. It expropriates wealth from the general populace and gives it to those who wield political power. This is why we’ll likely never see any real tax cuts or spending decreases. Tax cuts would really mean a reduction of the rate of expropriation and spending cuts would really mean a decrease in the money transfered from the general populace to those with political power. In other words tax cuts and spending decreases are the antithesis of the state and therefore almost impossible to attain through political means. When this so-called fiscal cliff deal is over you can be assured that more wealth will be stolen from you and me and more money will be give to those with political influence. This entire fiscal cliff nonsense is nothing more than a production put on by the state in order to get the people to agree to having more of their wealth stolen.

Fighting Initiated Violence by Initiating Violence

Calling on the state to prevent violence is oxymoronic because the state exclusively uses violence, specifically the initiation of violence, in everything it does. For this reason, as pointed out by Ron Paul, using government security can’t prevent violence:

Predictably, the political left responded to the tragedy with emotional calls for increased gun control. This is understandable, but misguided. The impulse to have government “do something” to protect us in the wake national tragedies is reflexive and often well intentioned. Many Americans believe that if we simply pass the right laws, future horrors like the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting can be prevented. But this impulse ignores the self evident truth that criminals don’t obey laws.

The political right, unfortunately, has fallen into the same trap in its calls for quick legislative solutions to gun violence. If only we put armed police or armed teachers in schools, we’re told, would-be school shooters will be dissuaded or stopped.

While I certainly agree that more guns equals less crime and that private gun ownership prevents many shootings, I don’t agree that conservatives and libertarians should view government legislation, especially at the federal level, as the solution to violence. Real change can happen only when we commit ourselves to rebuilding civil society in America, meaning a society based on family, religion, civic and social institutions, and peaceful cooperation through markets. We cannot reverse decades of moral and intellectual decline by snapping our fingers and passing laws.

Let’s not forget that our own government policies often undermine civil society, cheapen life, and encourage immorality. The president and other government officials denounce school violence, yet still advocate for endless undeclared wars abroad and easy abortion at home. U.S. drone strikes kill thousands, but nobody in America holds vigils or devotes much news coverage to those victims, many of which are children, albeit, of a different color.

There are a lot of people demanding the government go something immediately to prevent future school shooting from happening. What these people fail to realize is that any action the government takes will be an initiation of violence against every person living in the United States. Whether the federal government prohibit the ownership of certain firearms or puts armed thugs in every school is irrelevant, the fact of the matter is the state will use violence to achieve its goals. Let us not forget that the state pays for everything it does through expropriation, primarily taxation, which is nothing more than theft.

The Need for Standard Capacity Magazines

Gun control advocates often ask why anybody needs a magazine that holds more than 10 rounds. Deciding legality based on need is a common trap authoritarians fall into. Due to the lack of specialized knowledge one cannot know what another person needs. For example, as Uncle pointed out people being attacked by multiple assailants would benefit from having standard capacity magazines:

Bullets flew during a deadly home invasion robbery as a homeowner traded shots with several suspects.

A suspect was caught and cuffed in connection with the deadly home invasion robbery. Police say the homeowner was rushed to the hospital after trading shots with several suspects and killing one of them.

Advocates of gun control claim that forcing a shooter to reload more often gives somebody else more windows to stop him. That logic works both ways. If a homeowner is being attacked by multiple assailants they leave themselves vulnerable more often if they have 10 round magazines. Once again we see something advocated by gun control supporters working against the lawful.

True Universal Healthcare

One of the debates being waged in the United States revolves around universal healthcare. Unfortunately those who claim to advocate universal healthcare don’t. Instead they advocate universal coverage, which isn’t care:

There is this really stupid tendency among people to confuse “coverage” with “care.” They are not, nor will they ever be the same thing. Coverage means that it will be paid for. Care means you actually receive it. So all this focus on getting everyone insured is a waste of time and is in itself stupid.

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The important thing to understand about insurance is that it doesn’t CREATE medical resources. It’s sole purpose is to finance the treatment for problems that you develop later on. Giving everyone health insurance does NOTHING to fix a lack of healthcare. Reducing scarcity can only come one way: by increasing supply. This is the thing that no one wants to admit. You can’t fix the healthcare problem with more insurance and by forcing people to buy it.

So now that we know that “coverage” is a bullshit goal, what should we try to accomplish?

We need more “care.” And we can only address this problem by considering what is preventing more care from entering the marketplace.

Most people mistakenly believe that progressives support universal healthcare and libertarians oppose the concept. The opposite is true. What most progressives advocate is called single-payer health insurance. In such a system everybody pays their insurance premiums to the state and the state becomes the sole payer for health services. Such a system isn’t universal healthcare though because it doesn’t create more medical resources, it merely give a monopoly on paying for medical resources to the state.

Libertarians on the other hand want universal healthcare. The state has put numerous barriers between developers of medical resources and the market. These barriers prevent a great many medical innovations from ever reaching those in need. Eliminating these barriers is one step towards universal healthcare as it would lead to the creation of new medical resources and encourage competition, which tends to lead to more affordable goods. In fact one of the biggest flaws in single-payer insurance models is the lack of competition. The single-payer dictates what it’s will pay for various medical resources and medical resource providers must either offer their resources at those prices or not offer anything at all. There is no advantage to providing resources for less nor is there any reason to provide a resource that costs more than what the single-payer is offering.

Focusing on coverage instead of care is why state controlled health insurance has continued to fail. Just because everybody is covered doesn’t mean there are the medical resources available to meet everybody’s needs. In most cases ensuring everybody has coverage leads to more severe shortages as everybody is laying claim to the finite number of resources. This is why countries that have state controlled health insurance systems resort to rationing medical resources.

Once again the goals of progressives and libertarians aren’t mutually exclusive. Progressives want universal healthcare and try to provide it by giving health insurance to everybody. Libertarians want universal healthcare and try to provide it by allowing markets to provide more medical resources. The progressive method fails to address the root of the problem, which is the fact that there is only a finite amount of medical resources. Meanwhile the libertarian method focuses on addressing the finite amount of medical resources by making it easier for medical resource producers to provide more medical resources. If medical resources become more abundant they will also become cheaper and if medical resources become cheaper the need for insurance goes down dramatically.

The State’s Monopoly on Violence

Jerrold Nadler is on his way to becoming one of the most honest statists in existence. Shortly after the shooting in Connecticut Nadler put his foot in his mouth by claiming that mass shootings have become more common. During the same speech he called on Obama to exploit the tragedy in order to advance the cause of gun control. His call for the president to exploit the tragedy was one of the more honest statist quotes made by a politician. While most people are aware that the state exploits tragedies in order to forward its goals it’s rare to hear an agent of the state come out and admit it. They usually try to hide their grabs for power behind a thin veil of public safety and protecting children. It appears that Nadler is on a quest to explain statism to the masses because he had another gem:

Nadler added. “One of the definitions of a nation state is that the state has a monopoly on legitimate violence. And the state ought to have a monopoly on legitimate violence.”

The very definition of a state is an entity that claims a monopoly on the initiation of force within a geographic area. Even though most politicians know this Nadler is one of the very few bold enough to come out and say it. Nadler’s statement raises an interesting question, who gets to define what violence is legitimate? I’m sure Nadler would say the state gets to decide that, as it’s a belief most statists hold. Why somebody would support an entity claiming a monopoly on violence deciding what type of violence it can legitimately wield is beyond me.

I hope Nadler keeps explaining statism. Eventually he’ll admit that taxation is nothing more than theft.

You are Cordially Invited

Apparently Dianne Feinstein is looking into performing a wealth transfer from gun owners to the state:

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said that she and other gun control advocates are considering a law that would create a program to purchase weapons from gun owners, a proposal that could be compulsory.

“We are also looking at a buy-back program,” Feinstein said today in a press conference. “Now, again, this is a work in progress so these are ideas in the development.”

Gov. Andrew Cuomo, D-N.Y., already discussed the possibility of a buy-back law for his state, but he made clear it would be a forced buyback.

“Confiscation could be an option,” Cuomo told The New York Times yesterday when discussing semiautomatic weapons. “Mandatory sale to the state could be an option. Permitting could be an option — keep your gun but permit it.”

The only appropriate response to this proposal is to say “Molon labe,” which means “Come and take them.” This proposal demonstrates the problem with firearm registrations, when the state inevitably decides to confiscate firearms they know who has them and roughly how many they have. Proposals like this are why we need to start setting up decentralized firearm manufacturing capabilities. It’s obvious the state wants to disarm all non-state agents, which isn’t surprising since it exists solely by expropriating from the people, but such a goal is literally impossible if anybody who wants a gun is able to manufacture one in their own home.

Additional Comments Regarding the NRA Press Release

I got through reading a transcript of the National Rifle Association’s (NRA) press release [PDF]. Everything thing I said in my previous post, which was based on a live blog of the event, still stands. I also have a few additional things I’d like to note. First there was this comment:

A dozen more killers? A hundred? More? How can we possibly even guess how many, given our nation’s refusal to create an active national database of the mentally ill?

There is a great deal of irony in the NRA discussing the lack of a federal database in a negative light. A federal database for mentally ill individuals would be a disaster. Consider the stigma mental illness has in this country. Many people will not seek help when they are suffering a mental illness because doing so carries a great deal of social consequences. People who received psychiatric help are often seen as crazy. People in the United States also hold a general attitude that a mental illness is forever. How many people suffered from depression, post traumatic stress syndrom, and other temporary mental illnesses only to make a full recovery and lead normal lives? Do we really want these people to be listed in a federal database? Federal databases are already used by employers to weed out potential employees. Creating a mental illness database would likely lead to people in that database being unable to find meaningful employment. Federal databases aren’t a solution for violence and they aren’t a solution for mental illness.

Also consider the ramifications of a mental illness database. Who here could be diagnosed with a mental illness? Most Internet denizens could be diagnosed with some form of autism. If an adult version of oppositional defiant disorder is ever created I’ll be diagnosed with it. I suffer a severe case of psychological reactance (Does it show?), which could easily be labeled as a mental illness. Do we want to base the right to keep and bear arms on a mental illness database? Do we want our gun rights in the hand psychologists who determine what qualifies as a mental illness? What the NRA suggested is a dangerous path, one I don’t want to see this country travel down. We need to help those who need help. This means encouraging those who suffering from mental illness to get help. Considering the social stigma that mental illness carries in this country I don’t think creating a mental illness database is going to do anything but discourage those needing help from seeking it.

Is the press and political class here in Washington so consumed by fear and hatred of the NRA and America’s gun owners that you’re willing to accept a world where real resistance to evil monsters is a lone, unarmed school principal left to surrender her life to shield the children in her care? No one — regardless of personal political prejudice — has the right to impose that sacrifice

This was a good point. The primary issue at hand is that violent criminals know the cost of performing violence in schools is relatively low because there are no armed personnel there. With that said, the NRA’s approach to correcting this issue leaves something to be desired:

Now, the National Rifle Association knows that there are millions of qualified active and retired police; active, reserve and retired military; security professionals; certified firefighters and rescue personnel; and an extraordinary corps of patriotic, trained qualified citizens to join with local school officials and police in devising a protection plan for every school. We can deploy them to protect our kids now. We can immediately make America’s schools safer — relying on the brave men and women of America’s police force.

The budget of our local police departments are strained and resources are limited, but their dedication and courage are second to none and they can be deployed right now.

In my opinion expanding the police state into public schools isn’t a good approach. I favor repealing laws that establish gun-free zones so that armed individuals can enter school property without first having to disarm. That solution raises the cost of performing violence in schools by removing the practical guarantee that no armed individuals are within. Having costume-clad guys with badges will further reinforce the police state on children. Furthermore I don’t feel comfortable having children guarded by individuals whose primary job description involves extorting wealth from people. A majority of police time is spent enforcing state decrees against nonviolent individuals who have harmed nobody. Do we want individuals guarding children when their job consists of kicking down doors in the hopes of finding other individuals in possession of a plant?

Putting bureaucracies in charge of protecting children is bound to fail. At the very least repealing laws that establish gun-free zones would allow local communities to develop more appropriate solutions to deal with school shootings. Ultimately though I think Jeffrey Tucker nailed it:

So armed guards it is, at least according to the NRA. Instead of letting school handle their own security and getting out from under the government’s central plan (see my article on this), the NRA is living up to the caricature and proposing that more weapons in anyone’s hands as the solution. The real solution is to deal more broadly with the issue of security itself.

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Contrary to left and right, the solution is not more guns in the hands of the cops and other state officials, much less gun-totting teachers (or disarmed teachers and administrators, for that matter). The solution is to have schools deal with security in the same way that jewelry stores, banks, and private home owners deal with security issues.

One of the biggest problems regarding school security is that public schools don’t have any incentive to provide security. Children are practically mandated to attend schools that are either run or heavily regulated by the state. No consequences befall a school when something bad happens. Will anybody be prosecuted for failing to provide proper security to those children in Connecticut? No, because the state was tasked with that job and the state has a monopoly on determining who can and can’t be sued. Furthermore suing the state accomplishes nothing because it gets its money through extortion. If the state allow you to sue it and it grants you monetary compensation you merely motivated it to extort more money. The primary reason schools fail to provide security to students is because they are state managed institutions, meaning there are no failure conditions.

If you want to protect your children remove them from state managed schools. Homeschooling, unschooling, and agorist education solutions will allow you to regain control over your children’s education and safety. Why rely on the state? It has a proven track record of failing in the task of providing education and safety.

An Offer to Peacefully Secede

A politician from Texas has asked gun owners to punish themselves for something they didn’t do:

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) on Wednesday afternoon urged people to turn in their guns, arguing it would be an appropriate response to last week’s mass shooting in Newtown, Conn.

“I would personally just say to those who are listening, maybe you want to turn in your guns,” Jackson Lee said on the House floor. “Oh no, I’m not going to take your guns. But look at what Dick’s Sporting Goods did … they wanted to be part of the solution and part of America.”

Let me get this straight… if I don’t turn in my guns then I’m not part of the solution and therefore not part of America? Deal! If I can secede from this country by the simple act of keeping my firearms then I’m entirely on board. Of course I have some demands that must be met before I sign the contract. First, I must be guaranteed that I won’t be subjected to state violence. I don’t expect the state to “protect” me but I also demand that my secession be allowed to happen peacefully. Second, I will no longer be expected to pay taxes. This is part of what secession means, I won’t partake in state services and the state won’t steal wealth from me. Third, the state must make no attempt to take my property. This agreement is based on my act of keeping property and I demand that the state not attempt to take it by force after the fact.

I’m sure you will find these terms agreeable Mrs. Lee. Please mail the necessary forms to my address so that we can get this underway.

EDIT: 2012-12-27: 11:01: I originally referred to Sheila Jackson as a senator, which was incorrect. Thanks goes to Mike for pointing it out.

The Problem with Determining Need

Gun control advocates like to claim nobody needs a semi-automatic rifle. Their statement implies that the legality of property should be determined by need. A major failure exists in this implication though. Policies based on need ultimately require that somebody decide what is and isn’t needed. If we are to travel down the path of determining legality based on need we have to establish who gets to decide what is needed.

My question is simple, who gets to decide what is needed? I already know that advocates of gun control would like themselves to be elevated to the position of Grand Determiner but under what justification could they claim such authority? They would likely claim such authority by stating they hold a great deal of concern for the safety of others. That justification also works for gun rights advocates. Gun rights advocates want to liberalize (using the classic definition of the word) gun laws because they hold a great deal of concern for the safety of others. By legalizing the act of carrying a firearm gun rights activists want to give every individual the ability to defend themselves against a violent attacker. Obviously there is a conflict here because two ideologically oppose groups can justly claim the same authority for the same reason.

The fact of the matter is that an individual is the only person able to determine what he or she needs. Each of us is in sole possession of our lifetime experiences. Because of this we each hold specialized knowledge regarding our own lives that nobody else holds. Who better to determine what a battered wife needs to defend herself against her abusive husband than her? An uninvolved third party cannot know whether her husband possesses body armor or a posse willing to help him retrieve his wife should she run away. In either case access to a semi-automatic rifle would greatly enhance her odds in a defensive situation against her abusive husband. What about the owner of a store that is located in a place of civil unrest? How can an uninvolved third party know the circumstances under which the store owner lives? Perhaps the store owner’s existence is dependent on that store and without it he could not afford to feed himself or his family. Maybe the store owner can’t afford to operate in a nicer area. Should the store owner be put at a disadvantage, putting his store and livelihood at risk, if a rioting gang decides to target his store?

Saying something shouldn’t be legal because nobody needs it is an arrogant statement at best. Somebody making such a statement is saying two things. First they are saying that they know what a third party needs. Second they are saying they know who should be granted the authority to prohibit that third party from possessing unneeded things.

Furthermore polices based on needs are self-defeating. If somebody claims the authority to determine the legality of things based on need I can claim that person doesn’t need that authority. From there another person can claim I don’t need to authority to determine whether or not another person has the authority to determine legality. It’s an infinite recursion problem for which no solution exists.