Tag: Not So Crazy Libertarian Ideals

People Living in Greece are Doing it Right

The Greek economy is in the toilet and things aren’t looking to improve anytime soon. Fortunately the people living there are doing the right thing:

Bankers said up to 800 million euros ($1 billion) were leaving major banks daily and retailers said some of the money was being used to buy pasta and canned goods, as fears of returning to the drachma were fanned by rumors that a radical leftist leader may win the election.

This is the most proper response. Get your fiat currency away from those thieving bankers and convert it into tangible goods. A fiat note has no actual value because it has no actual use. Commodities on the other hand are useful and thus have actual value. As people living in the Weimar Republic learned, times of hyperinflation require one to resort to barter. Nobody wants to accept a wheelbarrow full of fiat currency because that currency is constantly becoming less valuable. Sure, they may be able to buy a loaf of bread with it today, but by tomorrow they won’t be able to buy a slice of bread with it. Instead they will ask for the thing they actually want, bread.

On the other hand canned goods will give you purchasing power. Even if you don’t want to eat canned beans somebody else will, and you can ask for something in exchange. The beans will last for ages and, if nothing else, you can eat them. In economic terms the can of beans is said to have intrinsic value, that is to say the value of an item is contained within itself. This is why gold backed currencies have worked, gold has actual uses and therefore is has intrinsic value.

It’s good to see the people of Greece waking up to the reality that’s been inflicted upon them. I hope the people of my country are as smart when the dollar starts to topple down.

How the Regulation Game Works

It seems you need a license to do anything in this country. So many career paths require a stamp of approval from the state that starting a personal business is becoming harder and harder. In fact this licensing craze has reached such an absurd level that it’s actually illegal to braid hair in Utah without a license:

Then, one day, she got an email from a stranger. “It is illegal in the state of Utah to do any form of extensions without a valid cosmetology license,” the e-mail read. “Please delete your ad, or you will be reported.”

It takes nearly two years of school and about $16,000 in tuition to get a cosmetology license in Utah. And schools teach little or nothing about African hair braiding.

This article is a good read because it explains how the licensing game works:

But it’s also been driven by a push from professions themselves. Licensing rules make it harder for new people to enter a field. That’s good for people who are already in the profession, because it limits competition and allows them to raise prices. So professions go to lawmakers and say: You need to regulate us.

“Everyone assumes that private interests fight like crazy not to be regulated,” Charles Wheelan, who teaches public policy at the University of Chicago, told me. “But often, for businesses, regulation is your friend.”

Whenever you hear a business owner demanding the state regulation his industry don’t cheer him for being “socially responsible” because he’s merely trying to push competitors out of his market. The biggest threat to an established business are new startups entering the market. This is why taxicab companies demanded cities put a cap on the number of taxicabs that can operate within city limits. Such limits allow taxicab operators to charge absurd amounts of money knowing that there is a permanently fixed supply and a demand that increases with population.

Let’s face it, braiding hair isn’t rocket science and you don’t need a college degree to do it. The worst outcome of braiding hair incorrectly is a tangled mess of hair. The only reason the state of Utah requires a cosmetology license to braid hair is because cosmetologists wanted to prevent new competitors from entering the market, and $16,000 in tuition is a pretty big barrier to entry.

The next time you heard some business owner telling the state, “Regulated me!” give him a one finger salute. He’s trying to use the state’s gun to prevent competitors from entering his market so he can charge more for his services. There is no altruism going on, he’s merely trying to enrich himself at your expense.

Statism and Self-Projection

Read the following excerpt from this article and tell me what you see:

Age is just a number… except when it comes to marriage.

Let’s look at my stats:
Current age – 29
Divorced for – 8 months
Separated for – 1 year, 9 months
Age when I met my ex – 19
Age when I married – 24

Which brings me to my point: couples should not be allowed to get married before age 25.

While I know that this statement is going to make me very unpopular with readers, I do believe that it would be for the best — better both for the institution of marriage and the individuals getting married — if we could change the law to prevent couples from getting married before the age of 25.

OK, you can’t really tell me what you see so I’ll tell you what I see. I see a woman who is projection herself onto all other people and this projection is leading her to demand legislation. Statists seem to think because something happened to them it will happen to everybody. Gun control zealots sometime talk about what a situation would have been like if they had had a gun. Instead of ending peacefully the gun control zealot will talk about the death that would have occurred, and because they projection their violent tendencies onto everybody else they demand everybody be disarmed.

This is why I believe statism is synonymous with arrogance. When you say there ought to be a law because of an experience you had in life you’re making the arrogant statement that everybody else is just like you. Because the author of the above excerpt ended up divorced after marrying a man when she was 24 she believes everybody who marries before or at the age of 24 will end up getting divorced. This belief also requires her to believe that the cause of her divorce was the fact she was still “developing” as a person and such “development” completes at exactly 25 years of age, for everybody. This is incredibly arrogant. I know people who were fully “developed” much earlier than their 25th birthday and I know people who are much older than 25 and still “developing.” Humans don’t conform to specific cutoffs. Some children hit puberty at an early age while others hit is later. Some adults are capable of living independently when they turn 18 while others aren’t capable of such feats at any point in their lives. There are 16 year-olds I trust implicitly with firearms while there are 30 year-olds I won’t go to the range with. Everybody is different.

Differences in individuals is what individualists recognize. If I were married at age 24 and got divorced at age 26 I wouldn’t assume everybody else who married at age 25 would experience the same outcome. Projection ourselves onto others is a basic human action, one that I try to avoid (although I’m not always successful). Every time somebody argues for a law based on their personal experience they’re projecting. We need to divorce ourselves from demanding laws based on personal experience. Just because you did something doesn’t mean everybody else will do it.

Come Back with a Warrant

Indiana is the first state that has finally taken away one of the special privileges its state agents enjoy:

Indiana is the first U.S. state to specifically allow force against officers, according to the Association of Prosecuting Attorneys in Washington, which represents and supports prosecutors. The National Rifle Association pushed for the law, saying an unfavorable court decision made the need clear and that it would allow homeowners to defend themselves during a violent, unjustified attack. Police lobbied against it.

[…]

“Public servant” was added to clarify the law after a state Supreme Court ruling last year that “there is no right to reasonably resist unlawful entry by police officers,” he said. The case was based on a man charged with assaulting an officer during a domestic-violence call.

Young cited a hypothetical situation of a homeowner returning to see an officer raping his daughter or wife. Under the court’s ruling, the homeowner could not touch the officer and only file a lawsuit later, he said. Young said he devised the idea for the law after the court ruling.

The Supreme Court, the sole entity granted permission to interpret what Constitutional protections we serfs enjoy, ruled that us serfs had no right to defend ourselves against unlawful state agent activity. This ruling shouldn’t come as any surprise, the Supreme Court has a long history of upholding the statists’ agenda, but it’s nice to see Indiana basically gave the ruling a huge middle finger.

It’s also not surprising to see that the police lobbied against this law as it does put a barrier between their act of performing an unlawful entry and killing any dogs in the home. I’m glad to see this law passed. I believe all should be equal under the law. Whether the person unlawfully breaking into my home at two in the morning is wearing a state-issued costume or not should be irrelevant.

Now that we know the real story let’s take a look at a heavily editorialized version of this story:

Indiana legalizes shooting cops

We’re off to a good start.

Hold onto your holsters, folks: shooting a cop dead is now legal in the state of Indiana.

Oh you adorable little gun control zealots and you’re purposeful omission of details in an attempt to make the story sound evil and scary when it’s not. “Shooting a cop dead” isn’t legal in Indiana unless that cop is unlawfully entering your property. There is a vast difference between the two statements.

The rest of the article mostly reads like the one I first linked to but the openings were just too good to go without comment.

The Most One-Sided Contract Every Conceived

Butler Shaffer wrote an article discussing social contract theory. Needless to say he absolutely nailed it:

Imagine that you have agreed with an auto dealer to purchase the luxurious Belchfire X-1 automobile, for which you agree to pay $45,000, with monthly payments to extend over a period of three years. You sign the sales agreement, and are then told to return the following day to sign the formal contract, which you do. When you arrive two days later to pick up the car, the dealer presents you with the title and keys to a much lesser model, the Klunkermobile J. When you ask the dealer to explain the switch, he points to a provision in the contract that reads: “Dealer shall be entitled to make ‘reasonable’ adjustments it considers to be ‘necessary and proper’ to further the ‘general welfare’ of the parties hereto.” He also tells you that the amount of the payments will remain the same as for the Belchfire X-1; that to provide otherwise would be to impair the obligations of the contract. You strongly object, arguing that the dealer is making a fundamental alteration of the contract. The dealer then informs you that this dispute will be reviewed by a third party – his brother-in-law – who will render a decision in the matter.

Social contract theory is nothing more than a statist’s wet dream. If people buy into it then, suddenly, all of the statist’s actions are morally justified. Even strict constitutionalists will use the social contract argument, claiming that the United States Constitution is a contract between the state and the people and if it is violated then the people have a moral justification to overthrow the state.

Unfortunately for those of us who believe in individual liberty social contract theory has caught on. It’s entirely one-sided though. The state not only gets the privilege of writing the contract but they also get a monopoly on interpreting the contract. You, by merely existing, are said to be a signatory to the contract. When you believe the state has violated a term in the social contract the matter is taken up with a court, which is controlled by the state. No third-party arbitration is allowed, the deck is rigged, or as my friend often says, vilescit origine tali (the dice were loaded from the start).

Even accepting the fantasy of a “social contract” theory of the state creates more fundamental problems. The legitimacy of a contract depends upon the existence of “consideration.” This means that the party seeking enforcement must demonstrate a changing of one’s legal position to their detriment (e.g., giving up something of value, making a binding promise, foregoing a right, etc.) Statists may argue that their system satisfies this requirement – by supposedly agreeing to protect the lives and property of the citizenry, and agreeing to respect those rights of people that are spelled out in the “Bill of Rights.” The problem is that – thanks to the opinions of numerous brothers-in-law who comprise the Supreme Court – the powers given to the state have been given expansive definitions, and the rights protected by the “Bill of Rights” are given an increasingly narrow interpretation.

People often point to the clear language of the Bill or Rights to demonstrate the acts the state isn’t allowed to do. While the language may be clear to you or me, we are not the ones who get the privilege of interpreting it. It has never been about the language, it’s been about the interpretation. I can take the most seemingly straightforward statement and twist it to mean anything I want. As Cardinal Richelieu once said, “If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.”

Who in their right mind would sign this social contract? What third-party would agree such a contract was valid? This is the flaw in social contract theory, the contract they allude to isn’t valid under contract law. One of the biggest flaws in the United States Constitution, besides granting the federal government power to tax, is allowing the courts that interpret the Constitution to be controlled by the same state the Constitution is supposedly binding. It is impossible to legally bind somebody if you give them the power to determine what is legal.

When you look at the goal of statists, to have a large gun to wield against those who disagree with them, social contract theory makes nothing but sense. It’s just like something a mafioso would come up with.

North Dakota Looking to End Property Taxes

I’m rather torn when it comes to deciding which is more evil between property taxes and income taxes. While income taxes are a direct theft of your labor, property taxes make it impossible for one to actually own property. When a locality implements a property tax they are turning you from a property owner to a property renter, and failing to pay the rent will lead you to losing your property. This is incredibly insidious when you apply it to a homeowner who falls on hard times. Being unemployed sucks but owning a home would at least ensure you have someplace to sleep. That is unless you fail to pay your property tax and your kicked out onto the street with no job.

Thankfully North Dakota is looking at ending property taxes in its state:

Since Californians shrank their property taxes more than three decades ago by passing Proposition 13, people around the nation have echoed their dismay over such levies, putting forth plans to even them, simplify them, cap them, slash them. In an election here on Tuesday, residents of North Dakota will consider a measure that reaches far beyond any of that — one that abolishes the property tax entirely.

I hope this goes through because it would be a step towards absolute property rights. The state shouldn’t be able to take your property because you are unable, or merely unwilling, to pay an extortion fee.

Rovio Looking to Abandon Finland over High Taxes

Rovio is the latest successful company that is looking to flee the country it started in over high taxation:

THE FINNISH company that created the hugely successful Angry Birds mobile phone game is considering moving its headquarters to Ireland, chief executive Mikael Hed has said.

[…]

The corporation tax rate in Finland is 24.5 per cent, while Ireland’s rate is 12.5 per cent. Most of the world’s fast-growing technology companies, such as Google and Facebook, have set up European headquarter operations in Dublin so as to benefit from Ireland’s low corporation tax rate.

When victims of theft get sick of being stolen from they have a habit of leaving. Why suffer the loss of 24.5% of your wealth when you can simply move to Ireland and only suffer the loss of 12.5% of your wealth? This is why a state can’t tax itself out of debt or into prosperity. Eventually the state runs out of stuff to steal and that ends the party.