Tag: Not So Crazy Libertarian Ideals

Apparently We’re Helpless without Big Government

According to the New York Times big storms, like the ones that just hammered the east coast, require big government:

Most Americans have never heard of the National Response Coordination Center, but they’re lucky it exists on days of lethal winds and flood tides. The center is the war room of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, where officials gather to decide where rescuers should go, where drinking water should be shipped, and how to assist hospitals that have to evacuate.
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Disaster coordination is one of the most vital functions of “big government,” which is why Mitt Romney wants to eliminate it.

Unsurprisingly this article is a thinly veiled exploitation piece meant to attack Romney while jacking off Obama. What I want to address is the claim that natural disasters require a big government. Consider the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for a moment. Supposedly this single organization has enough knowledge, foresight, and resources to coordinate and supply disaster relief efforts throughout the country. Without them, if the New York Times is to believed, it would be impossible for areas to recover from major disasters.

Let’s consider resources for a moment. As a federal agency FEMA must supply whatever resources are necessary to help with disaster relief throughout the entire country. Being a large country the number of resources necessary is absolutely mind boggling. Furthermore different regions face different potential disasters and therefore need different resources. Damage caused by tidal waves is different than damage caused by tornadoes and therefore the resources required to recover from a tidal wave are different than the resources necessary to recover from a tornado. Yet disasters such as tidal waves will not affect interior states and tornadoes are far less likely to occur in coastal states.

Resources include everything from drinking water to temporary shelter to specialized knowledge. The last resources, specialized knowledge, is the most important because without it there is no way to effectively determine the other resources needed for disaster relief. Who is more likely to know what is needed when a tornado touches down and destroys a vast section of a Midwestern town: a bureaucrat sitting in Washington DC that has likely never experienced a tornado or residents living in the affected Midwestern town that have dealt with tornadoes before? In all likelihood it will be the latter group.

Stocking FEMA with resources necessary takes resources form somewhere else. Scarcity is a fact of life and the government, no matter how badly it wants to, cannot overcome it. The resources sent to FEMA come from other parts of the country meaning each individual state has less resources available to prepare for local disasters than they would if FEMA didn’t exist. Wyoming would have more free resources to invest in preparing for coal mine collapses while Texas would have more free resources to invest in preparing for oil fires if they weren’t sending resources to FEMA.

There is also no guarantee that resources taken by FEMA will be distributed to areas affected by a disaster. FEMA only enters the equation when the federal government declares a disaster. When floods struck Duluth, Minnesota governor Dayton requested FEMA provide assistance, a request that FEMA denied:

On July 19, Governor Dayton requested individual assistance for home and business owners affected by June’s one-in-a-lifetime Duluth-area flood.

Today, FEMA denied Dayton’s request, and the governor is none too happy about it. “The Governor is very disappointed in FEMA’s decision, and is currently working with state agencies to explore next steps,” says a release from spokesman Bob Hume.

Minnesota, like every other state, has sent resources to FEMA. When storms hit and devastated Duluth FEMA refused to release its resources. Individuals working on disaster relief in Duluth found themselves with fewer resources than would have been available if FEMA wasn’t syphoning them. Not only are resources taken from localities and given to FEMA but there is no guarantee those resources will ever be made available.

Individuals are also able to prepare for natural disasters. By stocking nonperishable foods, generators and fuel, blankets, drinking water, and medical supplies an individual can prepare themselves for surviving the disruptions caused by natural disasters. By taking advantage of division of labor one individual in a community can focus on stocking food while another can focus on ensuring available shelter. Working together directly individuals can prepare necessary supplies because they have access to the sole source of specialized knowledge regarding each person’s personal needs. FEMA, sitting off in Washington DC, has no way of knowing what your or I need when a disaster strikes. It’s impossible to know the needs of another individual, especially when you’ve never met them.

Natural disasters don’t require big government. In fact big government can actually be extremely detrimental to disaster relief.

The Importance of Economic Education

Ron Paul still remains one of the few politicians that I respect. He was a great recruiter to the liberty movement and got liberty loving individuals motivated to help change this country. Ultimately he encourages individuals to participate in the political process in an attempt to hijack the Republican Party and turn it into a free market anti-war organization. Needless to say it would seem that the political process is his tool of choice for bringing liberty to the United States but during the 30th anniversary celebration of the Ludwig von Mises Institute he went on record saying that economic education is more important than any political action:

If you’ve read any of Paul’s books you’ve likely noticed that he often references the likes of Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard. Paul’s knowledge and philosophy stem from reading and comprehending the great minds of libertarianism, which were also the great minds of, what is now referred to as, Austrian economics. Understanding Austrian economics is understanding libertarianism. Reading material by Ludwig von Mises, Murray Rothbard, Friedrich Hayek, Hans-Hermann Hoppe, and the other big names of Austrian economics will explain why voluntary interactions are more beneficial and coercive force.

Spreading liberty can be done far more effectively through economic education than political action. Economic education teaches why liberty is important and allows individuals to internalize those lessons whereas political action requires participants not already educated in the school of liberty to mindlessly follow orders from figures of authority.

How Can One Hold Political Party Values

How many times have you heard somebody say they hold Republican or Democratic Party values? I hear people claiming their political philosophy is based on party values alarmingly often. Party values make for a poor political philosophy because they are subject to change every four years. Unless your political philosophy is literally obedience to a party there is no way to claim to believe in party values while remaining philosophically consistent.

Consider the 2012 Democratic Party platform, which changed drastically from 2008’s platform. In the time span between 2008 and 2012 somebody claiming they support Democratic Party values would have been claiming to stand in favor of ending indefinite detention, repealing the PATRIOT Act, closing Guantanamo Bay, stopping racial profiling, and ending the use of torture on military prisoners. After the Democratic National Convention in 2012 those same people would no longer be claiming such stances.

The Republican Party fairs no better. Consider the party’s change in stated beliefs regarding global warming climate change global climate disruption climate change and renewable energy. Somebody claiming to support Republican Party values in 2008 would have been stating support for finding a market solution to combat climate change and a commitment to issuing tax credits for the promotion of developing renewable energy. That same person after 2012 would be claiming to oppose the entire concept of climate change and believing in a very vague concept of promoting renewable energy.

Claiming you support Republican or Democratic ideals is as good as saying nothing at all. Party platforms can and do change every four years at national conventions. For four years the Republican Party could stand for repealing all gun control laws only to change four years later to supporting the enforcement of current gun control laws. The Democratic Party could stand for ending all foreign wars American is currently engaged in for four years only to change their stance and support continuing those wars after a national convention. That’s why basing one’s political philosophy on party ideals can only lead to inconsistency and hypocrisy.

How the State Exploits Organic Societal Developments to Sieze Power

I’m continuing to read The Not So Wild, Wild West by Terry L. Anderson and Peter J. Hill. For those unfamiliar with the title it explores the development of property rights on the American Frontier (Old West). Chapter six discusses the development of property rights in California and Nevada during the gold rush.

During the start of the time period no formal government existed in the gold rich areas of California. The federal government laid claim to the territory but had no means of enforcing any laws it enacted leaving the people living in the area to develop their own system of law. Laws were primarily developed on a mining camp by mining camp basis. Each camp had its own system of laws related to claims, water rights, and law enforcement that were development organically. This system of private law worked exceedingly well as the mining camps had notably few instances of violence. What violence did exist was usually between two individuals with some kind of private grudge, not all out fights as often portrayed in Hollywood movies.

What I found most interesting regarding California was how the state gained control over the legal system. In 1851 California passed the Civil Practices Act. The Civil Practices Act basically established a state recognized judicial system over miners, one that recognized each camp’s system of laws. Justices were required to admit as evidence “the customs, usages, or regulations established or enforced at the bar or diggings embracing such claims, and such customs, usages, and regulations, when not in conflict with the Constitution and laws of this States, shall govern the decision of the action.” Effectively the state of California claimed jurisdiction over the camps but ruled based on each camp’s system of laws so long as they didn’t conflict with California’s laws or constitution.

Afterward the federal government got involved in the legal process. In 1865 the United States Supreme Court, in Sparrow v. Strong, ruled that local rules were sanctioned by the federal government. Then in 1866 the federal government passed legislation recognizing an individuals ability to claim public lands for mining through improvement and occupancy (homesteading).

Legislation is only effective if it has the support of popular opinion and is enforceable. If popular opinion opposes the legislation people will ignore it and if the legislation is unenforceable it’s meaningless by default. Considering the strongly independent nature of frontiersmen why would they have accepted either government meddling in their affairs? Simple, neither government was really meddling in the miners’ affairs. Both governments passeds legislation that basically codified each camp’s system of laws. Nothing really changed for the miners.

This is a common way for states to create precedence to obtain further control at a later time. A state will often begin by codifying a currently established custom or private agreement. Such actions are seldom met with protest by the public because nothing is changing, the state is simply saying, “Hey, we recognize the agreements you guys have come up with.” What’s dangerous is that these recognitions set a precedence, they are a legal beachhead. Once one of these legal beachheads is established it’s easy for a state to enact further restrictions by claiming the previous codification of already accepted customs as precedence. Logically the state says it has the authority to create more laws effecting a group of people because those people never objected to the state’s previous interference. What appeared to be a benign action is really a mechanism of establishing future controls.

When the state passes a law that enacts an already generally accepted custom people generally don’t protest. The few who do protest are met with criticism by those who see no problem with the newly enacted law. Supporters of the state will say, “What the big deal? This is how we’ve been doing things. Nothing is changing.” They’re not lying, nothing changes, initially. What they fails to see is what future implications such laws hold. It is important to fight any power grab the state makes, even if that power grab seems benign. Every action taken by the state sets a precedence that the state can later use to justify future grabs for power. Let what happened to the mining industry be a lesson to us all. What started off as mere codification of currently accepted mining camp customs has turned into complete and total state regulation over the mining industry.

Agorism and Scamming State Programs

A user on /r/Agorism posted a question asking whether scamming welfare was, according to agorist theory, acceptable. I thought this was an interesting question, one that could be expanded to include scamming any government program.

Let’s consider agorism for a moment. The foundation of agorism is brining an end to the state through counter-economics. States exist through expropriation in the forms of taxation, confiscation of property, fines, fees, etc. Agorists believe that the most effective way to stop the state’s reign is to keep it from expropriating resources. Without those resources a state cannot continue. Simply ending the state isn’t likely enough to prevent another state from growing out of the previous state’s ashes so there is another aspect I believe agorists need to address, educating people on the fact that the state isn’t necessary. Most people have spent their entire lives living under the state and have a hard time imagining how society could function without one. In order to prevent another state from filling the power vacuum left by the previous one agorists must show how society can function without one.

Scamming government programs, in my opinion, can fulfill one of the above goals but would likely be detrimental to the other. From a counter-economics standpoint scamming government programs is a good idea. Every dollar you’re able to collect from the state through welfare, unemployment, Medicare, Medicaid, etc. programs is a dollar less in the hands of the state. Those who can avoid paying taxes and fines but collect money from various government programs will take more resources from the state than they will give. Furthermore if you’ve been forced to pay into this programs previously one cannot make a good argument against using those benefits (you paid for them after all).

What about the other goal? Scamming government programs, in my opinion, can be detrimental to demonstrating the unnecessary nature of the state. One of the most common criticisms of Ayn Rand by non-libertarians is the fact that she collected welfare. They argue that Rand was inconsistent because she relied on welfare while claiming welfare was immoral. Libertarians will point out that Rand was forced to pay into welfare so she was merely taking back what was rightfully hers but non-libertarians still see Rand’s actions as hypocritical. The same argument could easily be applied to agorists who scam government programs. Statists can point to such scams as proof that the scammer is dependent on the state and from there argue that the state is necessary. People tend to give consistent individuals more weight in debates. What could an agorist do to demonstrate the state is unneeded? Separate themselves from the state as much as possible. It’s difficult for a statist to argue the necessity of the state if you’re not using state provided goods and services. If an agorist with medical issues, instead of relying on state services like Medicare and Medicaid, relied on mutual aid from fellow agorists it would send a powerful message.

It’s not my place to rule on whether scamming government programs is the right or wrong thing for an agorist to do. I personally avoid scamming government programs because I believe the most powerful way to promote a philosophy is to live that philosophy. On the other hand I acknowledge the damage taking money from the state causes and thus believe scamming government programs is entirely acceptable. There are many paths to liberty and we much each choose the one we want to travel. Some will choose to fight the state by demonstrating it’s unnecessary. Others will choose to fight the state directly by actively taking resources from it. Neither camp is wrong.

Unintended Consequences of Prohibitions Against Texting While Driving

Individual states across the country are passing laws that prohibit texting while driving. How have these laws fair? Not well, in fact these bans have been followed by an increase in accidents:

It’s perplexing for both police and lawmakers throughout the U.S.: They want to do something about the danger of texting while driving, a major road hazard, but banning the practice seems to make it even more dangerous.

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety says that 3 of every 4 states that have enacted a ban on texting while driving have seen crashes actually go up rather than down.

It’s hard to pin down exactly why this is the case, but experts believe it is a result of people trying to avoid getting caught in states with stiff penalties. Folks trying to keep their phones out of view will often hold the phone much lower, below the wheel perhaps, in order to keep it out of view. That means the driver’s eyes are looking down and away from the road.

One thing statists and other authoritarians never seem to learn is that making a law against something doesn’t stop people from doing it. Theft, murder, smoking marijuana, and tax fraud are all illegal yet people still steal, murder, smoke weed, and commit tax fraud. What happens when a law is passed that prohibits an action is that people keep performing that action but they try to do it in secret. Thieves move to robbing homes during average working hours when the owners are unlikely to be there, murders come up with complex and sometime absurd plots to avoid being caught, producers and consumers of marijuana have created a very successful black market, and people develop ways to shuffle money around in order to confuse the state’s tax collection goons. In the case of texting while driving people are more apt to hold their cell phone lower, which will entirely remove their eyes from the road and thus increase the chances they’ll get into an accident.

How Jill Stein’s Green New Deal isn’t Green

The Green Party runs on a platform of environmentalism that is often mixed with socialist ideas. Hearing Jill Stein, the Green Party’s 2012 presidential candidate, talk about a “Green New Deal” wasn’t surprising but her plan opposes both environmentalism and the socialist idea that capitalism promotes waste:

Like the first New Deal, Stein’s Green New Deal is essentially Hamiltonian, aimed at preventing deflation. Not only does she propose solving the problem of underutilized mass-production facilities with Michael Moore’s expedient of retooling underutilized GM factories to produce high-speed trains, but she calls for an official “full employment” policy based on direct government creation of jobs on a counter-cyclical basis. At present that would mean government creating 25 million public sector jobs, with hiring administered through local employment centers, to guarantee full employment at a living wage.

This Hamiltonian approach is just the kind of thing genuine greens used to object to. It works on exactly the same principles as planned obsolescence and the permanent war economy — that is, it generates enough waste production to guarantee the existing stock of labor and capital will be fully utilized at a target price.

Such proposals are just a greenwashed version of mid-20th century, mass-production capitalism.

Stein wants to promote environmentalism and guarantee full employment. Unfortunately, because of her reliance on the state to accomplish her goals, her ideas are necessarily oppositional to one another. The only way the state could guarantee full employment is to either pay people for not working, draft unemployed individuals into the military, or pay people to produce goods that may or may not be purchased.

Paying people to not work will promote unemployment. Why would somebody seek employment if they knew the state would pay them to not do anything? Most people probably wouldn’t and thus everybody would seek state payment to do nothing and the entire economy of the country would collapse (which would make it impossible for the state to continue paying people to do nothing and thus such a scheme is self-defeating).

That leaves us with military drafts or paying people to produce goods. I think the downside to a military draft is fairly obvious. In order to continue paying individuals in the military the state would have to find some way to expropriate wealth from elsewhere. What better way to expropriate wealth than to invade a foreign country using the giant military you have on hand thanks to the draft? Drafting everybody into the military would, in all likelihood, lead to more wars as the state found itself needing to take more wealth from other countries to pay for it’s drafted military members.

So we’re left with paying people to produce goods. This option seems to directly clash with Stein’s other goal of environmentalism. Most environmentalists view the consumption of resources at being environmentally unfriendly and therefore advocate for reducing what they view as waste. Reducing waste involves consuming less natural resources, which requires producing less goods, using less fuel, reducing the amount of consumed electricity, and many other things that oppose increasing the production of goods. On top of that no guarantee exists that people would purchase the goods being produced as the state doesn’t have the market feedback mechanism to know what is and isn’t in demand.

This is the flaw in most progressive environmental systems. One cannot uphold a great number of socialist ideals, such as guaranteed full employment, and environmentalism.

Support the Troops, Bring Them Home

When I express my opposition to the United State’s wars I’m sometimes met with accusations that I don’t support the troops. This attitude baffles me. How can you better support troops then to remove them from a dangerous place where they regularly run the risk of being stabbed, shot, or blown up? War is Hell. Soldiers from different sides try to kill one another in the name of an ideology or flag. Furthermore the consequences of war don’t stop after the shooting ceases. For many soldiers the aftermath of fighting in a war is so great that they find themselves unable to cope with what they’ve experienced and decide to take their own lives. In fact the number of military suicides in 2012 exceeded the number of military fatalities:

The number of suicides among U.S. Army active duty and reserve personnel in 2012 is higher than the total combined military fatalities from Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan over the same timeframe.

While many people will say that this proves the need for more counseling they aren’t addressing the root of the problem. People end up having to do heinous things in war, things humans have a natural tendency against. A soldier may find himself having to shoot an armed child, call down artillery strikes on areas populated with both enemies and civilians, or even torture suspected enemy combatants. These things take a psychological toll on most people and no amount of counseling can repair such mental scars.

Removing soldiers from the battlefield is the only way to effectively put an end to the ever increasing number of military suicides. If you really want to support the troops advocate an end to these needless wars.

Russell Means has Passed

I’ll be honest, I wasn’t terribly familiar with Russell Means until after his death was announced but it turns out it was much more bad ass than I realized. During his life Means participated in several high profile American Indian actions against the United States federal government:

He rose to national attention as a leader of the American Indian Movement in 1970 by directing a band of Indian protesters who seized the Mayflower II ship replica at Plymouth, Mass., on Thanksgiving Day. The boisterous confrontation between Indians and costumed “Pilgrims” attracted network television coverage and made Mr. Means an overnight hero to dissident Indians and sympathetic whites.

Later, he orchestrated an Indian prayer vigil atop the federal monument of sculptured presidential heads at Mount Rushmore, S.D., to dramatize Lakota claims to Black Hills land. In 1972, he organized cross-country caravans converging on Washington to protest a century of broken treaties, and led an occupation of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. He also attacked the “Chief Wahoo” mascot of the Cleveland Indians baseball team, a toothy Indian caricature that he called racist and demeaning. It is still used.

And in a 1973 protest covered by the national news media for months, he led hundreds of Indians and white sympathizers in an occupation of Wounded Knee, S.D., site of the 1890 massacre of some 350 Lakota men, women and children in the last major conflict of the American Indian wars. The protesters demanded strict federal adherence to old Indian treaties, and an end to what they called corrupt tribal governments.

What made Russell unique in regards to the American Indian’s fight against the federal government is that he held libertarian beliefs, even going so far as to run for the Libertarian Party’s presidential candidate (he lost to Ron Paul). The more I read about the man the more I find to like about him. He was willing to make major stands against the government that all but wiped his people out and believed in individual freedom. That’s often a very rare combination of traits.

Something I Often Wonder

There’s something I’ve wondered for some time now. If you were given the ability to have all of your political goals granted at the expensive of the lives of a group of people you’ve never met and would likely never meet would you do it? For example, if you could have all gun control measures repealed instantly but in doing so 1,000 Middle Easterners would be killed would you do it? Or if you could have universal healthcare for all that was guaranteed to work but in doing so 1,000 South American natives would be killed would you do it?

When I see people arguing over Romney and Obama I see people willing to sacrifice the lives of people they’ve never met in exchange for their political goals. Both candidates are in almost complete agreement when it comes to foreign policy and their agreement involves the murder of an untold number of people. Those advocating for Romney are often doing so because they believe Romney will somehow protect gun rights and prevent the economy from further sliding down the hill. Obama’s advocates, on the other hand, want the Affordable Care Act to continue and gay marriage legalized throughout the country. Both sides have been willing to either ignore their candidate’s foreign relations policies or somehow justify them.

So, for those of you supporting Romney or Obama, we’re left with the question: are you willing to exchange the lives of people you’ve never met for your political gains? Ultimately that is the price that will be paid if either candidate wins.