Tag: Shut Up Slave

The Violence Economy

Recently I’ve been working on an economic idea of sorts, one on the economy of the state, or as I like to call it the violence economy. It’s an expansion of my previous idea regarding the value of fiat currency.

The base of the idea is the fact that the state is an entity that exists entirely by violence. As explained by Albert J. Nock in his book Our Enemy, the State there are two means of obtaining wants, the political means and the economic means. The political means is voluntary trade amongst individuals whereas the political means it the use of the state’s violence to extract wealth from others.

Because of the state’s method of obtaining wealth it has a keen interest in helping and protecting the wealthy. Likewise the wealthy have a keen interest in protecting the state. The state requires the wealthy to leech off of while the wealthy desire the state’s gun to prevent competition and otherwise increase their wealth through political means. A good demonstration of this is how the state treats the poor.

Many people on the political “left” demand the state help the poor. This isn’t surprising as it is typical of a cooperative species such as our own to help those in need. The “left” believe the state is the best mechanism to assist those in need. Their belief is a mistake though because the state has no interest in the poor since the poor have nothing to take. Of course this doesn’t stop the state from claiming to help the poor, after all they are able to gain popular support for wealth stealing programs if they are disguised as methods of assisting those in need. With such justification the state is able to get public acceptance for new taxes, fees, subsidies, and other wealth stealing mechanisms.

Let’s look at subsidies for a second. During the New Deal the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938 was passed into law. This act established subsidies for various agricultural goods. One of the provisions of the act was to limit the area farmers could dedicate to growing wheat. This restriction created an artificial shortage of wheat, which increased the price. The act was passed under the guise of helping poor farmers eek out a better living but the shortage it created meant many could not afford wheat-based products such as bread. The Supreme Court upheld the law, claiming it was Constitutional under the Commerce Clause in Wickard v. Filburn.

What benefit did the subsidies have? Making the farmers money. Why would the state want to make farmers money? To take a portion of that wealth. Farmers are producers of a needed good so it’s a safe assumption that they will continue to generate wealth. The more wealth they can generate the more wealth they have for the state to take. To ensure the farmers continue to give wealth to the state they are allowed to keep a portion of what they make (usually a greater portion). The state learned its lesson during feudal times when the nobility took almost everything form the peasants causing them to revolt periodically.

Looking at the economy of any developed nation leads one to realize how tightly the state and big producers are tied together. Every industry eventually gets regulated in such a way as to protect established producers. In turn more wealth is given to the protected businesses, a portion of which the state takes as “protection” money.

What we end up with is a vicious cycle, a violence economy. I plan to expand on this idea over time but I think the foundation of this idea is pretty solid at this point.

The Affordable Healthcare Act was Upheld

I’m sure you’ve all heard the news by now that the Supreme Court has upheld the Affordable Healthcare Act:

In a dramatic victory for President Barack Obama, the Supreme Court upheld the 2010 health care law Thursday, preserving Obama’s landmark legislative achievement.

The majority opinion was written by Chief Justice John Roberts, who held that the law was a valid exercise of Congress’s power to tax.

Many of my friends are cheering this ruling while many of my other friends, and much of the liberty sphere, are decrying this ruling. Personally I’m ambivalent. This ruling merely confirms what we’ve known all along, the federal government can put a gun to your head and force you to buy something. The way I see it the federal government is now being more honest about its intentions. In fact this ruling really helps rake in a the new wave of government transparency that Obama has been talking about.

I’ve said that two of the most egregious clauses in the Constitution are the ones granting the federal government a monopoly on interpreting the Constitution through the Supreme Court and the power to tax. It appears both of the clauses I hate so much have conspired to further erode our liberty. I’m not sure if this conspiracy was done to spite me but it proved my point and there is little I love more than having my ego inflated by being proven right. I hereby both thank the Supreme Court for helping inflate my ego and damning them for upholding the statist agenda.

I’m curious about the future, this precedence really sets up the federal government for future cronyism the likes of which we’ve never seen. If the federal government can force me to buy health insurance under the power to tax what else can they force me to buy? Can they claim high speed trains are such a social benefit that I must purchase yearly passes? Can they claim global warming is such an extreme danger that I must purchase carbon credits? Where will the lines be drawn? How far will this go? Will future bailouts come in the form of individual mandates instead of direct transfers of taxpayer money to failing businesses? We certainly live in interesting times.

With all of this said I believe the next question that must be answered by Obama’s supporters is this: Does the karmic value of passing this law and getting it upheld outweigh the karmic loss of murdering people overseas?

The Paradoxical Philosophy of Obedience

As a general rule if your philosophy involves paradoxes then it’s not a good philosophy. Supporters of authoritarian philosophies have this problem, they preach that we must followed a strong leader in order to be free. What these people don’t see is that one cannot be free if they are following mindlessly, which is why this New York Times column is nothing but dribble:

These days many Americans seem incapable of thinking about these paradoxes. Those “Question Authority” bumper stickers no longer symbolize an attempt to distinguish just and unjust authority. They symbolize an attitude of opposing authority.

The old adversary culture of the intellectuals has turned into a mass adversarial cynicism. The common assumption is that elites are always hiding something. Public servants are in it for themselves. Those people at the top are nowhere near as smart or as wonderful as pure and all-knowing Me.

There is a reason the common assumption is that elites are always hiding something, because they are. Public “servants” are in it for themselves. All actions are based on self-interest and politics is the art of force. Politicians are people who have decided to use the means of force to achieve their end of self-interest. Since people generally respond poorly to being forced into action the politicians must hide their intentions, they must wrap their political interests in a layer of “greater good” and “public service.”

You end up with movements like Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Parties that try to dispense with authority altogether. They reject hierarchies and leaders because they don’t believe in the concepts. The whole world should be like the Internet — a disbursed semianarchy in which authority is suspect and each individual is king.

What? Both groups believe in authority. Occupy Wall Street generally believes in authority of the masses, commonly referred to as democracy. The Tea Party generally believes in the authority of the republic and representatives (otherwise they wouldn’t move to get desired representatives elected). Of course, according to the author’s beliefs, I can see why he would think both movements oppose authority altogether:

Maybe before we can build great monuments to leaders we have to relearn the art of following. Democratic followership is also built on a series of paradoxes: that we are all created equal but that we also elevate those who are extraordinary; that we choose our leaders but also have to defer to them and trust their discretion; that we’re proud individuals but only really thrive as a group, organized and led by just authority.

I don’t know if America has a leadership problem; it certainly has a followership problem.

In other words we should all learn to be good little slaves and shut the hell up. I’m curious what this man would have been writing before the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War. It’s obvious that he would have supported the “just authority” of the British king but I’m curious how he would justify it. Now that I think about it, I’m curious how he justifies supporting “just authority” now. For all the talk the author makes about “just authority” he never actually says what kind of authority is just. Is devine authority just? Is a person elected by popular vote granted just authority? Is the most heavily armed individual a holder of just authority? The author never says, he only says that we must obey just authority.

Just authority can only be voluntarily granted on an individual basis. You can choose to delegate authority over aspects of your life to another. I cannot choose somebody to rule over your life though, just as you cannot choose somebody to rule over my life. This automatically means democracies are not just, just because the majority of people agree on something doesn’t mean it’s right (a majority of people once believed the Earth was flat after all). Likewise, just because a larger group voted to grant a man authority over a geographic region doesn’t make it right. The people of Iceland had the right idea during their 300 years of statelessness. Individuals could voluntarily agree to recognize the authority of a godi and if that godi was no longer to an individual’s liking they could seek another (and his choices weren’t restricted by geographic regions). That form of authority could be considered just as it was voluntarily granted and could be reclaimed at the granter’s choosing.

I will give the author credit on one thing, he’s one of the few authoritarians who actually admits that paradoxes exist in his philosophy. He doesn’t properly identify them or realizes that the existence of paradoxes should indicate one reexamine their beliefs, but he at least acknowledges they are there.

They Have to Keep the Voters Happy

At the beginning of this year I discussed the state of North Carolina’s plan to pay the victims of its forced sterilization program $50,000 each. Although I found the story disgusting before it has managed to get worse:

Victims of forced sterilisation in the US state of North Carolina will not get compensation, after a payout plan failed in the state Senate.

A plan to give $50,000 (£31,800) to each victim passed the House but was rejected in the Senate. Republicans said the state did not have the funds.

[…]

“The state has no money anyway and the teachers would like to have a pay raise, and state employees would like to have a pay raise and you’re dealing with a $250 million shortfall in Medicaid,” Senator Austin Allran said.

It must be nice being the state. First you get to forcefully sterilize those you don’t approve of, then you get to control the court that determines how evil your actions were, and then you get to throw that court decision out the window because you need to buy votes in the upcoming election.

How are they buying votes with this action? Easy, they openly mentioned that there are state employees who would like to have raises. In any private business if a court decision lead to a payout that hampered employee raises it would me the employees would simply have to go without raises that year. The state doesn’t have to worry about such minor details because they can choose to ignore court rulings and give their employees pay raises so those same employees don’t vote the current crooks out of office.

This is how the system works, what’s politically convenient is allowed to happen and what’s politically inconvenient is stopped from happening.

Obama Moves to Coverup Fast and Furious

It’s official, Obama has moved to help coverup Fast and Furious:

President Obama has granted an 11th-hour request by Attorney General Eric Holder to exert executive privilege over Fast and Furious documents, a last-minute maneuver that appears unlikely to head off a contempt vote against Holder by Republicans in the House.

I’m not surprised that a man who orders the assassination of others would try to help coverup an operation run by one of his goons that has lead to the death of a border guard and an unknown number of Mexican citizens. On top of that the documents in question probably show Obama knew about Operation Fast and Furious much earlier than he admitted to, which could make for an undesirable situation this close to the elections. On the upside Issa isn’t playing ball:

Rep. Darrell Issa said Wednesday that he is pressing ahead with a committee vote to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress, despite an 11th-hour move by President Obama to exert executive privilege over the Fast and Furious documents at the heart of the dispute.

It will be interesting to see what’s in these documents if they’re ever unveiled to the public. My primary interest is learning who knew what and for how long although I suspect these documents may hold far more incriminating evidence considering the amount of effort going into keeping them a secret.

What Kings Do

I’ll be honest, I don’t care about illegal immigration. As far as I’m concerned illegal immigration in this country started when the Europeans floated over the Atlantic Ocean and took this land from the Native Americans by force. To concern ourselves over illegal immigration today is a bit hypocritical.

Judging from the reactions I’ve been reading elsewhere I’m in the minority, at least on sites I read normally. There’s nothing unusual about that but I do find it rather funny how many people are suddenly up in arms over the fact Obama just changed immigration police using an executive order:

Appearing in the Rose Garden at the White House, Obama announced Friday that, effective immediately, young immigrants who arrived in the U.S. illegally before age 16 and spent at least five continuous years here would be allowed to stay and apply for work permits if they had no criminal history and met other criteria, such as graduating from high school or serving honorably in the military.

By acting unilaterally, through an executive order, Obama underscored one of the great strengths of presidential incumbency: the ability to change the campaign conversation in an instant. In the time it took for word to leak in Washington, Obama’s move shunted aside a not-terribly-well-reviewed speech on the economy he had delivered in Ohio a day earlier.

How anybody can be surprised or shocked by the king’s latest move is beyond me. Obama has been using executive orders to bypass Congress for a while and has actually been the first president to blatently brag about having such power:

Each time, Mr. Obama has emphasized the fact that he is bypassing lawmakers. When he announced a cut in refinancing fees for federally insured mortgages last month, for example, he said: “If Congress refuses to act, I’ve said that I’ll continue to do everything in my power to act without them.”

Earlier this year Obama went so far as to, basically, collectivize this country’s resources through an executive order and granted state officials the power to invoke sanctions against countries that use technological means to violate human rights (with no apparent acknowledgement of the irony involved in such an order).

Some people are pointed to this most recent executive order as proof that Obama believes himself to be a king and are calling on Congress to push back. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news but Congress isn’t going to push back. In fact Mitt Romney isn’t even will to say he’ll repeal the order. Moving against Obama’s latest executive order would be political suicide this close to the election. Once again we see that the only difference between the monarchy in many European countries and the presidency in this country is that one claims their position by divine right while the other claims their position through the peoples’ vote.

Even though I don’t care much about the illegal immigration debate I will say this maneuver by Obama has apparently woken a few up about the powers a president actually enjoys in this country. That’s good, people need to pull their heads out of the sand and stop pretended there is any separation of power in the United States government. All three branches are in collusion to bring the statist agenda upon us.

The Violence Inherent in the System

Via Twitter, reader and commenter Zerg539, linked me to a story that demonstrates how violent the statist system is:

The North Carolina man visited by armed EPA agents after sending an email to a controversial agency official says he’s not satisfied with the explanations about what he considers an excessive response and that he wants changes to agency policies and procedures.

“This isn’t over,” Keller said.

He told Fox News.com that Environmental Protection Agency officials have said the agency followed procedures and that the agents acted appropriately during their visit last month. However, Keller is still invited to come to EPA headquarters to discuss the situation.

Keller said he’s not willing to come to Washington without knowing what will be discussed.

The incident unfolded after Keller sent an email April 27 to the EPA to try to reach Al Armendariz — a regional administrator who was under fire for a YouTube video post days earlier in which he said his enforcement strategy was to “crucify” executives from big oil and gas companies.

The letter to an EPA external affairs director read “Do you have Mr. Armendariz’s contact information so we can say hello? – Regards- Larry Keller.”

An agent of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) made a comment about crucifying oil company executives and the guy asking for his contact information is the one that warrants armed thuggery? I understand the comment about crucifying oil company executive was figurative but it’s certainly worse then asking for contact information.

Sending armed agents to the home of somebody asking for your contact information is nothing but pure intimidation. Nobody should be surprised though, intimidation is what the state does. The costumes, riot gear, weapons, armored personnel carriers provided by the Department of Homeland Security, and domestic use of surveillance drones are all about intimidation. It’s meant to make you kowtow to the state. In fact it’s no different than the Russian military parades that were put on to intimidate both the people in Russian and foreign countries.

Soon to be Blacklisted in Europe

Several European governments are coming together and pondering the development of an Internet blacklist:

Internet users could contribute to an official blacklist of suspected terrorist content under the European Commission’s budding ‘Clean IT’ project.

The project aims to create a text that commits the internet industry (web hosts, search engines and ISPs, among others) to helping governments weed out content that incites acts of terror.

As I often discuss counter-economics I’m sure my site would certainly qualify as “inciting acts of terror” as the “black market” has already been tied to terrorism. Needless to say this site will likely be blacklisted in Europe if this censorship project moves forward. What’s interesting is the claim that such a blacklist would be used to block sites that “incite acts of terror” in one paragraph and is claimed to be used to report “illegal sites” in the next:

Among those 13 courses of action is a proposal for a system that will allow users to ‘flag’ content they believe to be illegal when surfing the web. These alarms would be sent for review to the service provider and in turn, a government agency.

Which is it? Will the reporting mechanism be used solely for sites “inciting acts of terror” or will it be used to report all illegal content? I guarantee it will be the latter.

If this goes through I’ll feel a bit bad for the people tasked with sifting through all of the reported sites because I intent on reporting every site I go to. That should keep the thought police busy.

Benefits by Force

A little chart produced by Think Progress has been making a second set of rounds on my social media feeds so I thought I’d address it. The charge describes the number of weeks of paid maternity leave several countries mandate by state decree (click to embiggen):

To many of my friends this chart demonstrates the horrible working conditions modern women in the United States are subjected to. Why, Canada gives women 50 weeks of paid maternity leave! They don’t seem to consider the fact that this paid maternity leave is only provided at the point of a gun. In order to provide such a benefit either the state must pay the women on maternity leave or the employer. If the state does it then it can only be done through theft, and if a business is forced to do it then it can only be done through the threat of violence.

People who are demanding the United States provide paid maternity leave should stop asking for it and start taking it. Do you want paid maternity leave? Is your employer unwilling to take it? Are you petitioning the state to provide it? Why not cut ou the middle man? Walk over to your neighbors’ homes, put a gun to their heads, and take what money you feel you’re owed. That’s what you’re demanding the state do for you after all.

This is the thing that irks me about the progressive movement. They aren’t trying to get social changes through voluntary cooperation, they’re trying to get it through force. Instead of advocating companies provide paid maternity leave or setting up mutual aid societies to help women on maternity leave they’re asking the state to use its gun to force the issue.

People want fre shit. If getting that free shit means forcefully taking it from others so be it, so long as somebody else performs the theft. It’s no different than the gun control advocates who demand the police rush to their house and kill the intruder; they’re against violence unless it’s done by proxy.

Before some member of the progressive movement accuses me of being misogynistic, waging a war on women, or simply being an asshole let me clarify this: I’m not against people voluntarily creating a mechanism to help people with newborn children. I would love to see a mutual aid society that focuses on helping families with newborns, in fact I would love to be a member of such a society because I know those services will likely be important to me when I decide to have children. You will get no argument from me if an employer decides to voluntarily offer paid maternity leave. If neighbors want to band together to help new mothers I’m all for it. I encourage helping one another but I can’t, in good conscious, support the initiation of violence.

Why People No Longer Help One Another

I’ve said it before, the reason less people are willing to help one another is because doing so is illegal:

What would you do if you came across someone on the street that had not had anything to eat for several days? Would you give that person some food? Well, the next time you get that impulse you might want to check if it is still legal to feed the homeless where you live. Sadly, feeding the homeless has been banned in major cities all over America. Other cities that have not banned it outright have put so many requirements on those that want to feed the homeless (acquiring expensive permits, taking food preparation courses, etc.) that feeding the homeless has become “out of reach” for most average people.

The article lists examples in Philadelphia, Orlando, Houston, Dallas, Las Vegas, and New York City (which I’ve covered before) of the state interfering with individuals helping those in need.

When the state decides to get itself involved in a service they quickly move to establish a monopoly. One of the first things the state did when it decided to move into the welfare market was to legislate mutual aid societies out of existence . Without a means for groups of people to come together in mutual aid individuals moved to help those in need by themselves. Needless to say the state is now working to make such actions illegal and thus ensure monopoly status on welfare.

The next time you hear somebody trying to blame capitalism, materialism, or the lack of religion for today’s apathy for mutual aid kindly inform them that the state is the real culprit.