Tag: Not So Crazy Libertarian Ideals

I Love the Free Market

The free market works on competition. Established producers must continue to innovate in some way to keep themselves relevant while new producers must innovate in order to convince consumers to buy their products instead of the products being produced by the established producers. Personal electronics are one of the freer markets in the world, which is why we enjoy every improving cheaper products:

Just look at all those drives under a dollar per gig. The higher-capacity models offer the best value in virtually every family. Although the 40-64GB variants don’t look quite so good on this scale, they have asking prices under 100 bucks.

Solid State Drives (SSD) are becoming cheaper while their capacities are increasing. We can now get more for less than what we had to pay a few short years ago and the trend will continue. This news pleases me because the only reason I haven’t gone to SSDs is the price to capacity ration, I want more capacity and it’s simply too expensive for me to get what I want with an SSD. A year or two from now SSDs will likely have the capacity I’m looking for at a price I’m willing to pay and then I will jump on board.

I just wish all markets were as free as personal electronics.

The Biggest Opponents of Capitalism are Often Capitalists

Ideally capitalism is a system of voluntary transactions. Unfortunately we don’t live in an ideal world and often those who profit the most from capitalism are also its biggest opponents:

In the 1940s, Joseph Schumpeter said that the capitalists would ultimately destroy capitalism by insisting that their existing profitability models perpetuate themselves in the face of change. He said that the capitalist class would eventually lose its taste for innovation and insist on government rules that brought it to an end, in the interest of protecting business elites.

While socialists often talk about profits eventually ending up in the hands of a mere few capitalists the truth is this couldn’t happen without the state’s involvement. Profits are a temporary phenomenon unless a coercive monopoly can be established. The reason for this is simple, when people see somebody making great profits they want a piece of the action and start a competing enterprise in the same market. When Henry Ford started raking in money others wanted a piece of the action and we ended up with competing companies such as Chevrolet. Chevrolet offered options that Ford didn’t, like an engine with more than four cylinders and automobiles that came in colors other than black. People wanting a six cylinder engine in a blue car now had an option and Ford found its profits dwindling as automobile buyers started going elsewhere. In the end this sparked great advancements in the automobile industry as each company tried to outdo the other, consumers won in the end.

Fast forward to today. The digital age have turned formerly scarce goods like music, movies, and literature into infinitely creatable bits. This change has caused problems for record companies, movie producers, and book publishers because their services are becoming obsolete. Instead of looking into new ways to innovate and profit they have turned to the state to protect their decrepit business models. Organizations like the Record Industry Association of American (RIAA) and the Motion Picture Association of American (MPAA) have been lobbying the state for more draconian copyright laws and stricter enforcement. The capitalists have become the ones trying to destroy capitalism.

As the article I linked to explains the Internet wasn’t the first creation to send established producers into a panic. Televisions were supposedly going to destroy live performances, cassette tapes were supposedly going to destroy album sales, and way back in the day the printing press was supposedly going to destroy new literature. None of these things have panned out and future claims of goods being destroyed by new technology won’t pan out either.

Eventually People Tire of Abuse

I belong to a rather small club. While libertarians are rare enough in the United States I’m a member of an even more exclusive club, voluntaryists. Unlike constitutional libertarians or minarchists, voluntaryists oppose the state in its entirety. We don’t want a small state or a minimum state, we don’t want any state at all. This obviously makes me sound a little kooky to a majority of the population (and probably a great deal of my readers) and it would seem I’ve set myself out for failure as ridding civilization of the state appears to be an insurmountable task. As they say, nothing worth doing is easy. I do hold out hope because history has demonstrated that people will only allow themselves to be pushed around for so long before they fight back.

Let’s take a look at some groups that finally had enough and decided to oppose the status quo. One of my favorite examples is this very country I live in. At one point the United States wasn’t the United States, it was a British colony. The British king wasn’t a very smart man. A smart man that ruled over vast territories would have contented himself with mostly leaving people alone. Instead he kept pushing the colonists. Wanting to bleed the colonists for more money the British kind decreed that all published material in the United States carry an official stamp that had to be purchased. From there things just kept getting worse. The powder keg really started smoldering with minor acts of civil disobedience, such as throwing ship loads of tea into the sea. Eventually the colonists got fed up with the king and decided to toss him and his people out.

All was not well in the newly formed United States though. Regardless of the claims made by some during the early days of this country, all were not created equal. Slavery was still legal and women didn’t have the right to participate in political matters. Needless to say women eventually became sick of having all political decisions made by men and thus began the women’s suffrage movement. Members of the suffrage movement held massive demonstrations. Although it seems rather absurd today there was actually a very strong anti-suffrage movement during the time and opponents to women’s suffrage went so far as to physically attack demonstrators (it should go without saying that the police did little to prevent such attacks). In the end the nineteenth amendment was passed.

African Americans had a longer fight. Even though slavery ended after the Civil War the newly freed African Americans found themselves treated like shit. Jim Crow laws were passed that dictated public facilities could be separated based on race so long as they were “equal.” In reality facilities for blacks were seldom, if ever, equal to facilities for whites. Other laws dictated that blacks sitting in the front of the bus had to surrender their seat to any white person wanting it. Even interracial marriage was restricted. Like the American population and women before them, eventually the African Americans got fed up with the inhumane way they were treated and began the Civil Rights Movement. Though massive acts of civil disobedience the Civil Rights Movement eventually overcame the obstacles put in their way by the state. The Jim Crow laws were wiped from the slate, blacks were no longer required to surrender preferred seats to whites, and blacks were allowed to marry whites.

Speaking of marriage, we’re currently in the middle of another battle that revolves around the state’s control of the institution. Much like Jim Crow laws in the past attempt to treat blacks like second class citizens, bans on same sex marriages are attempting to do the same for homosexuals. The gay community has come a long ways over the years. Gone are the days when brilliant minds who reshaped the entire world were chemically castrated for being gay and police routinely harassed homosexuals. Things didn’t come this far because the state became benevolent and decided to stop harassing homosexuals, things came this far because the homosexual community decided they had enough. In 1969 the police decided to raid a gay club and the people at the club rebelled. They pelted the police officers with anything at hand and a riot broke out. Thankfully their battle is concluding and I suspect the idea of prohibiting marriage based on gender will become as an absurd a thought as banning marriage based on race.

My point in this post is that every battle, no matter how insurmountable it appears, can be won in the long run. Whether the battle for true liberty will be one by quick destruction of the state or through a slow and deliberate movement is unknown to me (although I’m guessing the latter). History demonstrates that people are only willing to take so much shit until they finally declare that they’ve had enough. Eventually people will tire of having their shit taken and violence brought against them when they violate random state decrees and will fight back. My desire is that when the fight comes it will be peaceful with counter-economics and civil disobedience being the primary tools. In fact part of the reason I write about such tactics is because those are the ones I want to see used. Violent revolutions seem to turn out badly in the long run while revolutions that take place through education seem to turn out well for everybody.

How the State Treats Its Employees

Obama unleashed a shit storm yesterday when he used executive privilege in an attempt to coverup Operation Fast and Furious. Fast and Furious blew up when border patrol agent Brian Terry was killed by one of the guns given to Mexican drug cartels by the United States government. This story demonstrates so much that is wrong with the state, but I want to focus on one party in particular, the way they treat their employees.

Throughout our lives we’re told how public servants and members of the military are the real heroes in America. We are asked to thank every soldier that has served, every fireman that has rushed into a burning building to save the life of another, and every teacher who has taken upon themselves to educate children. Those who take up the task of becoming soldiers or public servants are promised great things including favorable pay, health care, pensions, and even college educations in some cases. Unfortunately, when it comes time to actually deliver on the promises the state does everything it can to duck out.

Brian Terry was a board patrol agent, a member of the group we’re told keeps our boarders safe. We’re told that they’re heroes who courageously put their selfishness aside for the good of the country and that we owe them a great deal of thanks. This sentiment ceases the second it becomes politically inconvenient though. The second Brian Terry was killed by a weapon smuggled into Mexico by the government he worked for, the government that called him a hero, he became an inconvenience and every effort was made to sweep him under the rug. Shouldn’t every effort have been made to find those responsible for his death and hold them accountable? Shouldn’t the state take care of its own? We were told this man was a hero, shouldn’t we be told about his death? Shouldn’t we be outraged?

No. That’s now how the state works. It doesn’t take care of its own. It doesn’t actually believe all that talk it gives about soldiers and public employees being heroes. Soldiers and public employees, just like every other person, are seen as mere pawns. We are all useful idiots according to the state.

Brian Terry’s death would have been treated as a national tragedy had the weapon used to murder him not been sourced by the United States government. Had the weapon sourced by a private gun shop there would have been called for stricter gun control. If the weapon had been sourced from one of America’s enemies it would have been exploited to bring more sanctions against that country.

The state needs to rephrase its propaganda. They need a small asterisk next to every statement they make about soldiers and public employees being heroes. That asterisk must note that the terms and conditions of hero status are dependent on whether a person is politically convenient or inconvenient. Those who are politically convenient will receive a hero’s treatment, those who are politically inconvenient will be covered up by the use of executive privilege.

The Task at Hand

We’ve all heard the phrase “The pen is mightier than the sword.” The reason for this is that the pen directs where the sword is pointed. Beyond my own amusement, the primary reason I write this blog is to be another voice of liberty. Today libertarian ideas are generally considered fringe, kooky, and unworkable. This is the reason, as Henry Hazlitt explained, libertarians need to propagate their ideals:

From time to time over the last 30 years, after I have talked or written about some new restriction on human liberty in the economic field, some new attack on private enterprise, I have been asked in person or received a letter asking, “What can I do” — to fight the inflationist or socialist trend? Other writers or lecturers, I find, are often asked the same question.

The answer is seldom an easy one. For it depends on the circumstances and ability of the questioner — who may be a businessman, a housewife, a student, informed or not, intelligent or not, articulate or not. And the answer must vary with these presumed circumstances.

The general answer is easier than the particular answer. So here I want to write about the task now confronting all libertarians considered collectively.

[…]

We libertarians cannot content ourselves merely with repeating pious generalities about liberty, free enterprise, and limited government. To assert and repeat these general principles is absolutely necessary, of course, either as prologue or conclusion. But if we hope to be individually or collectively effective, we must individually master a great deal of detailed knowledge, and make ourselves specialists in one or two lines, so that we can show how our libertarian principles apply in special fields, and so that we can convincingly dispute the proponents of statist schemes for public housing, farm subsidies, increased relief, bigger Social Security benefits, bigger Medicare, guaranteed incomes, bigger government spending, bigger taxation, especially more progressive income taxation, higher tariffs or import quotas, restrictions or penalties on foreign investment and foreign travel, price controls, wage controls, rent controls, interest rate controls, more laws for so-called consumer protection, and still tighter regulations and restrictions on business everywhere.

We must become knowledgeable and use that knowledge to combat the falsities spread by collectivists. As Hazlitt said, there are simply too many areas where specific knowledge is needed and thus we must each choose areas of focus. My focus was first on gun rights and self-defense and is now on the fallacy of the state, economics, and environmentalism. Environmentalism was one I chose because there simply aren’t enough libertarians focusing on the subject. I’ve seen people join the libertarian camp in all aspects besides environmentalism, they still feel the state is necessary to regulate environmental issues. The reason for this is because most libertarians fail to explain how free markets can actually protect the environment better than statism.

I dabble in other areas but do not consider myself anywhere near an expert. What about yourself? Do you feel you have an understanding of libertarianism? Can you articulate practical libertarian solutions and/or libertarian philosophy? Perhaps you could start a blog of your own, write a book, give speeches, or work in some other manner to propagate libertarianism.

We have our work cut out for us.

Unintended Consequences

What to make a progressive environmentalists cringe? Show them this story:

Today, the hottest and thirstiest parts of the United States are best described as over-forested. Vigorous federal protection has stocked semiarid regions of public land with several billion trees too many. And day after day these excess trees deplete a natural resource that has become far more precious than toilet paper or 2-by-4’s: water.

Scientists and water managers report that 39 states face water scarcity. Much of the nation’s freshwater shortfall comes from our population growth, waste, hunger and contaminants. But we must also now implicate the escalating thirst of unnatural forests.

Progressive environmentalists are often referred to as tree huggers because of their obsession with saving tress. This obsession has lead to massive afforestation in areas where trees were never meant to grow as densely as they currently are. Now too many trees are competing for ever scarcer resources such as soil nutrients and water.

The state has passed numerous pieces of legislation to protect forests. What they didn’t stop to consider when passing said legislation is that nature requires some amount of destruction. Normally forests are controlled by nature disasters such as forest fires but as the federal government has declared a war on forest fires nature’s control mechanism has fallen out of whack. Now we’re seeing the consequences of our arrogance, we have arid regions where water is naturally scarce to begin with suffering from water being used to suppress fires to save trees that require water. A vicious cycle has been created, one that could have potentially been solved by the free market.

Yes, I’m going to about free market environmentalism again. In a free market resources have a tendency to increase in price as they become more scarce. Water will be more expensive in areas where it’s more scarce and that price will only go up as the scarcity increase. As the price of a resource goes up so do peoples’ tendency to conserve that resource, which requires decisions be made on how to best utilize said resource. Let’s look at our current situation through the lens of a hypothetical free market.

People, especially environmentalists, love trees. Because of their love for trees they try to preserve them. Part of this preservation is preventing the trees from being burned to the ground, an action that requires the use of water (both to suppress fires and to keep forests from becoming messes of dried kindling). This action will likely have little consequence in areas where water is plentiful (these are also areas where forests are usually plentiful). In arid regions the constant use of water to prevent forest fires will cause the price of water to increase, which in turn causes the environmentalists to make decisions on how to best utilize the water. At some point their love of trees is going to be superseded by their need for food, water, clothing, and shelter. This is when they will cease using water to prevent forest fires and nature will be allowed to do what it does best, burn some trees to clean out the over-forested area and allow things to return to a more natural state.

The other avenue for the free market to work is through the fact trees are a valuable resource in of themselves and thus many companies would be more than happy to go into the forest and thin it out. Obviously, being an article in the LA Times, such a solution is frowned upon by the author:

So how do we unlock the nexus to replenish the Earth? A century’s accumulation of dry fuel in public lands makes it too expensive and risky — for people, property, habitats or carbon emissions — to unleash prescribed fires throughout our 16-million-acre ponderosa tinderbox. Mechanical thinning generates popular distrust as long as timber industry chain saws try to cut “high grade” valuable mature growth to compensate for less profitable small-diameter “trash trees.”

Happily, a lumber mill’s trash has now become a water user’s treasure. Thirsty downstream interests could organize to restrict thinning to scrawny excess trees simply for the purpose of releasing the liquid assets they consume. Western water rights markets value an acre-foot at $450 to $650 and rising. So rather than compete with forests for rain and snow, private and public institutions could invest $1,000 per acre (average U.S. Forest Service price) to cut down fire-prone trash trees, yielding at least $1,100 to $1,500 worth of vital water. To reduce fuel loads and increase runoff, the water-fire nexus pays for itself.

One of the biggest issues facing progressive environmentalists is the idea that profits are evil and thus must be avoided at all costs. In their mission to save the environment and squash profits they have created self-perpetuating problem. They don’t want to allow private entities to manage the environment because those private entities will make money so they turn to the state, which is corrupt to the core and has no regard for the environment. Private entities, because they can make money, have a genuine interest in preserving the environment. As I’ve explained, a lumber company has an interest in ensuring forests under their care remain healthy so they continue to produce trees. Not only do they have an interest in preserving the forests, they also have an interest in allowing nature to run its course because that is the cheapest way to manage said forests.

Progressive environmentalists have a choice to make, trees or water? Do note that choosing trees will eventually lead to the complete collapse of the ecosystem you’re trying to protect as water becomes too scarce to support your trees. They must also decide if they will continue to rely on the state, which has continuously mismanaged the environment, or finally throw away the idiotic idea that profits are bad and turn to private solutions.

The Failure of Centralizing Power

I live in a country where power is becoming increasingly centralized. More and more decisions are being made on the federal level while fewer and allowed to be made at the state, county, city, and individual level. The banning of gay marriage in North Carolina demonstrates the flaw with centralized power quite effectively:

Earlier this month, Amendment 1 — an amendment to the North Carolina state constitution that precludes the state from recognizing gay marriage, among various other kinds of domestic partnership — was passed by voters. Much has already been made of the bill’s discriminatory content, the former need to “vote against,” and the current need for repeal, but much of this looks more like an exercise in missing the point than anything else.

In the end, the problem with Amendment 1 is not so much that this election was decided in one direction and not the other, but rather that we live in a society content to employ statewide voting as a means of collective decision making in the first place.

One of the problems with a statewide referendum on the issue of gay marriage, or any domestic matter, is that it implicitly assumes that the state — as opposed to the county, city, neighborhood, place of business, or any other pool of people — is the appropriate unit for collective decision making. It suggests that state residency is a common denominator fundamental enough to bind 9.7 million people to one another’s opinions, interests, and backgrounds — complex, diverse, and contradictory though they may be. It contends that it is morally acceptable for 93 counties to decide an issue not only for themselves but for the remaining seven as well. And it denies a man — or two, or several — the opportunity to lead his life as he, and not as his distant neighbors, sees fit.

The larger the collective decision making group is the worse things get. Most countries define decision making groups on arbitrary borders. In the United States decisions made on a federal level affect over 300 million individuals. Decisions made on a state level in Minnesota affect 5 million people. Any decision made by the city of Minneapolis affects almost 400,000 people. To many this doesn’t seem like a bad thing, after all they wish to push their morals onto as many people as possible. There are many religious individuals who would love to pass a law that established their religion as the state religion on a federal level. They don’t care about the, likely, hundreds of millions of individuals who don’t share their religious beliefs.

Collective decision making fails due to the fact human beings are not insects, as much as the collectivists wish we were. There is no human hive, individuals do not mindlessly follow the orders of a queen be. We are each rational beings capable of making decisions independent of one another. As a group of individuals becomes larger the chances of successful collective decision making decreases.

It is the epitome of arrogance to believe you know what is best for another individual. That arrogance doesn’t go away simply because an arbitrary number of people agree with one another. Every person who voted on Amendment 1 in North Carolina was saying, “I know what’s best for everybody in this state.” When somebody advocates for collectivist philosophies they are saying the previously mentioned arrogance goes away when decisions are made by groups. If the group decides to ban gay marriage then it must obviously be the correct decision, right? No, in fact making an argument on such grounds is a logical fallacy known as argumentum ad populum.

The United States needs to wrestle power from the federal government and return it to the hands of the individual states. Once the individual states have the ability to make decisions that power must be wrestled away from them and returned to the counties. This process needs to continue until decision making power is put into the hands of individuals.

It’s Like Watching Children Argue

What do you get when you get to individuals who are entirely oblivious to economics arguing about economics? A presidential debate:

Taking the stage near Cleveland in Cuyahoga County, Mr Obama pitted his economic plan against Mr Romney’s “top-down” vision, saying Mr Romney would lead the economy down the path it had taken for the last 10 years.

Mr Obama said his vision of the economy saw growth coming from the middle class and that voters had “two very different visions to choose from”.

You know how you can tell when a presidential candidate is clueless about economics? When they talk about how the president can fix the economy. The president has as much ability to fix the economy as I do… scratch that, I actually have enough knowledge to advise people on economic issues with some competency (not much mind you, but more than either Obama or Romney).

Raising taxes isn’t going to fix the economy. Giving tax incentives isn’t going to fix the economy. Increasing regulations isn’t going to fix the economy. Reducing regulations isn’t going to fix the economy. There are only two ways to fix our economic woes, either the state must remove itself entirely from economic issues (I’ll see a leprechaun riding a unicorn before that happens) of the economy removes itself entirely from the state (this would be known as agorism).

The United States and most of Europe are learning the same lesson the Soviet Union did no so long ago, centrally planned economies fail. A centrally planned economy cannot work because it’s impossible to plan for the wants of other individuals. I cannot know what you want and you cannot know what I want, we must be allowed to employ our own means to obtain our own ends. This is what neither Romney or Obama understand, they both think the economy must be “helped” by the state.

Now We See What the Megaupload Case was About

Early this year the United States government moved to shutdown Megaupload. As I mentioned, the move basically rendered the whole Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) debate irrelevant since the state was acting as if the legislation passed anyways. The state went so far as to confiscate all of Megaupload’s servers, which meant anybody with data on Megaupload were unable to access it even if it wasn’t data that violated copyright. The Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a suit to allow users to retrieve their data and that suit has shown what the Megaupload case was about all along:

U.S. federal prosecutors are fine with Megaupload users recovering their data — as long as they pay for it.

The government’s position was explained in a court filing on Friday concerning one of the many interesting side issues that has emerged from the shutdown of Megaupload, formerly one of the most highly trafficked file-sharing sites.

[…]

U.S. law allows for third parties who have an interest in forfeited property to make a claim. But the government argues that it only copied part of the Megaupload data and the physical servers were never seized.

Megaupload’s 1,103 servers — which hold upwards of 28 petabytes of data — are still held by Carpathia Hosting, the government said.

This case, like all government cases, was about taking your shit. The state moved in, confiscated data from Carpathia, then demanded they preserve the servers while receiving nothing in compensation for having legally untouchable servers that aren’t being paid for. Now the state has told users they can get their data from the Megaupload servers so long as they pay.

In other words the state moved in, took peoples’ data, refused to compensate those it stole from for any losses, and then turned around and said the burden of paying for recovery costs falls on the shoulders of the users the state stole from. This is how the state operates, they take your shit then demand you pay to get it back.

Loyalty to the Party

Anybody familiar with communist regimes knows that loyalty to “the party” is imperative to one’s survival. Members of “the party” usually have access to food, alcohol, and other amenities not offered to outsides. Unfortunately party members run a risk; their loyalty may be called into question by another party member. At this point a vetting process is likely to follow where the accused will be tested to determine whether or not they are truly loyal to “the party” (more often than not the inquisition ends with a verdict of disloyal).

This behavior is often shown in American media. You know who the bad guys are because they play sinister party politics. The frightening truth is party politics in the United States mirror those of communist nations. Anybody who has attended a Republican or Democrat Party event has seen some of this. People are called out and cheered for their service to “the party.” The more one volunteers and advocates for “the party” the more likely they are to be noticed and rewarded by the higher ups. Anybody who displays disloyalty to “the party” is shunned and attempts are made to run them out.

What’s scary about this behavior is that is revolved around loyalty to “the party” and not to any ideals. For instance, the Republican Party platform talks a great deal about free markets and deregulation. If a candidate is nominated who doesn’t support these ideas you’re still expected to support him or her. No questions are supposed to be asked and no dissidence is tolerated.

This behavior isn’t isolated to the Republican Party. Take a look at the Democrat Party and their support for Barack Obama. While the Democrats talked about peace during the Bush regime they are not silent when their candidate is waging war. Remember how much the Democrats decry the banker bailouts? We heard nothing by crickets from them when Obama did the same thing, in fact man Democrats are cheering Obama’s latest bank bailout.

Whenever I participated in party political events I was sickened by what I saw. People openly stated that they would support any Republican candidate, in fact it was expected that everybody at the event would fully support the Republican candidate regardless of that candidate’s views or values.

Now I’m seeing this with the Ron Paul supporters. Every candidate that Ron Paul endorsed is supposed to have the undying support of the Ron Paul supporters. I’m constantly bombarded with requests to support Kurt Bills here in Minnesota and when I say I’m not interested I’m treated like a heretic. Answers are demanded of me, “How can I not support him?” When I say I don’t know anything about him, he hasn’t officially stated his position on a great number of issues, and he’s demonstrated nothing that warrants my support. The response I get are always various of, “Well Ron Paul endorses him, that’s all you need to know.” No, that’s not all I need to know. I need to know where Kurt Bills stands on numerous issues including gun rights, foreign relations, economics (merely using one of Ron Paul’s books in an economics class doesn’t cut it, I want to know if he actually believes in free markets and divorcing the state from economics), jury nullification, and other libertarian issues.

Party politics scares the living shit out of me. It appears to exist solely to separate people form critical thinking. We’re told to support any nominee of “the party.” If you disapprove of the candidate you will be called out as a bad party member. Once you’ve been denounced any influence you had within “the party” is likely to vanish.