Your Government Doesn’t Love You – Page 101

An Incompetent Government Is The Best Government

I’m going to quote a comment I came across on Facebook and I want you to guess what it reminds me of:

It is a shame that he isn’t perfect in his support for human rights issues, but the reality is that he is the only major candidate that would work proactively to drastically address climate change, fraudulent corporate financial activity, worker’s rights, education, single payer health care, mitigating the surveillance state, implementing Keynesian economic programs that actually target the middle class and the impoverished, and restoring balance to corporate and individual taxation.

We need an educated society in order to aim for utopia, and Bernie’s policies are the best of the realistic candidates in this election cycle to move towards that goal. Sucks that he isn’t perfect, but then, who is?

If you guessed it reminds me of Rand Paul supporters you are correct! This quote was in response to somebody who pointed out that Bernie Sanders, like Hillary Clinton, wants to put Edward Snowden on trial, which is inexcusable. But this loyal Bernie supporter had to swoop in and explain how Bernie, even if he isn’t perfect, is still the best choice available.

What amuses me about this is that the “left” and “right” think they’re the opposite of each other. If you put them together in a room they’ll heatedly debate one another because they believe they’re on opposite sides. But when you boil it all down both sides are mirror imagines of each other.

Each side focuses on different details but their prescription is the same: absolute control by the “best” people is the only way to “save” this nation. I’m not entirely sure why anybody would want to save this nation, or any nation for that matter. What value is there is continuing a system where a handful of people hold absolute power over everybody else? Even if we pretend this nation is worth saving, how does giving the best people absolute power assume to accomplish that? Rand Paul supporters believe giving Rand Paul absolute power would save this nation because they believe he is the best candidate. Ditto for Bernie Sanders supporters. But the only way one can really save a nation is to have the most incompetent government possible, which requires having the worse people in positions of power.

Because the presidency comes with executive orders the holder of that position actually enjoys some modicum of power. That being the case the best person to appoint would be somebody who is illiterate, uncharismatic, and is entirely without drive. Rand and Bernie, as hard as it may be to believe, are both literate, charismatic enough to have followings, and driven to push their agenda down the throats of Americans. So they’re both capable of writing executive orders, have a big enough following where their executive orders will enjoy at least some praise, and driven to issue executive orders.

Only under an incompetent government will the people of a nation get along well enough to properly call them a nation. This is because having a competent government means everybody will try to use it to force their beliefs on everybody else. So long as the threat exits fear will divide the people. But having an incompetent government means few will see it as an effective means of forcing their beliefs on everybody else and therefore won’t try. The handful of people who still do view it as an effective means will try to utilize it but it will be a futile effort. In other words people will be able to go on with their lives and not live under constant fear of their neighbor’s agenda.

Men In Magic Robes Ruining Lives

I’ve heard people claim that the courts act as a check and balance against law makers. Who, pray tell, acts as a check and balance against courts:

Last year, Utah couple Beckie Peirce and April Hoagland decided to get married. Last summer, in a decision legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide, the Supreme Court confirmed that this was okay. Then, Peirce and Hoagland wanted to take in a foster child. So, because the Supreme Court had signed off on gay marriage, Utah child services officials licensed the couple earlier this year. And, in August, Peirce and Hoagland welcomed a 1-year-old girl into their home, where she joined the couple’s two biological children. Plans for adoption, approved by the baby’s biological mother, were in place — soon, this would be a family of five.

But on Wednesday, a Utah judge decided to end this plan, ordering the girl removed from her foster home because he said she would be better off with heterosexual parents.

[…]

A copy of the court order by Judge Scott Johansen, a juvenile court judge in Utah’s Seventh District, was not immediately available, but the Salt Lake Tribune confirmed its contents. Hoagland told KUTV that Johansen said that “through his research he had found out that kids in homosexual homes don’t do as well as they do in heterosexual homes.”

Some may argue that the law makers can act as a check and balance here by writing and passing a law allowing same-sex couples to adopt children. But such a process could take years if it would pass at all. Others may argue that higher courts can act as a check and balance but there’s no guarantee a higher court would overturn this ruling. In other words a man in a magic robe ruined a family and they have no recourse.

This is the problem with handing people power over others. Even though the couple, who are already raising children, and the biological mother (the child, being only one year-old, is unable to voice her opinion) agreed to the adoption it hasn’t been allowed to take place because it offends the delicate sensibilities of a single man who wouldn’t have a say in the matter if it wasn’t for his position of power.

You Have No Power Here

If you mine asteroids in space do you own what you mine? The answer is obviously yes. But even though the answer is obvious the United States government felt it was appropriate to vote on the matter:

On Tuesday evening Congress took a key step toward encouraging the development of this industry by passing on H.R. 2262, the US Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act, with bipartisan support. The legislation provides a number of pro-business measures, such as establishing legal rights for US citizens to own resources in outer space as well as extending indemnification for commercial launches through 2025.

This vote, more so than most, is irrelevant because the United States government, even if it could justify dominion over space, cannot enforce any of its laws in space. The United States has no spaceships, let alone ones capable of blowing shit up. And while it could theoretically lay claim to any materials returned to Earth it would be foolish to do so because a space-based miner could easily deliver the material directly (when you’re at the bottom of a gravity well it’s not wise to make demands of those at the top of the gravity well).

Space is a wonderful place for those desiring freedom. No government currently has any enforcement capabilities in space and if they did there is no effective stealth in space. Miners operating in the asteroid belt could see any Earth-based warships months ahead of time and move operations or push large rocks into the path of the encroaching ships (and a ship only has so much fuel to use for maneuvering so it’s likely the warships would exhaust their fuel supply before the miners would run out of rocks to push).

This is why I think efforts to colonize space are more productive than seasteading. Treaties may say international waters aren’t under the jurisdiction of any particular government but those treaties won’t stop a government from sending its navy to take a seastead. Physics, however, makes it difficult for a government to get a force into space and even if it does physics makes it nearly impossible to effectively use that force unless the target is at the bottom of a gravity well. When your goal is freedom it’s better if natural laws have your back than human laws.

Statist Logic

Secession continues to be popularly supported in Catalonia much to the chagrin of Spain. The Spanish government, desperate to maintain its dominion, is trying to find a way to justify using force when the Catalonians decide to strike out on their own. Justification for the State usually takes form of very formalized rituals that are somehow supposed to absolve it of sin. One such formalized ritual is the court decision:

Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said he would not allow the secessionists to achieve their aim. “They want an end to democracy,” he said.

He said Monday’s Catalan vote was a “clear violation” of the constitution.

The motion called on the regional parliament to aim for independence within 18 months.

It gives the assembly 30 days to start legislation on a Catalan constitution, treasury and social security system.
Catalan nationalist parties secured a majority of seats in September elections but fell short of winning half the vote. They had said before the vote that they considered it a de facto referendum on independence from Spain.

Spain’s state prosecutor had called on the Constitutional Court on Wednesday to suspend the Catalan resolution immediately, the prime minister said after an emergency cabinet meeting.

This is logic only a statist could accept. First the Prime Minister is claiming that Catalonia wants to end democracy but the Catalonians voted the secessionist into the assembly and the motion to establish a Catalan constitution, treasury, and social security system. How is it democratic if the Spanish government votes on a matter but not democratic when the Catalan government votes on a matter? Rajoy’s claim makes no sense.

The second thing that makes no sense is Spain’s state prosecutor asking the Constitutional Court for a ruling. Since the Catalonians want to secede why does the Spain government think they give two shits about what its Constitutional Court thinks? Its decision also makes no difference. If it rules to suspend the Catalan resolution what happens next? Spain marches troops into Catalonia to terrorize and kill anybody who resists. No sane person would claim the Constitutional Court ruling would absolve those troops of murder. Only a statist could argue that a formalized ritual performed by robed members of a government court can make the act of murder not murder.

I truly hope Catalonia secedes and I hope its secession kicks off a trend of sescession that continues until each individual has seceded from every manner of government in that region.

“Revolution” Versus Revolution

At times when I have little else to do I enjoy skimming some of the seedier subreddits. One of my favorite subreddits is the home of some of the whackiest socialist in the world, /r/socialism. There you will find the dregs of collectivism, “revolutionary” socialists, discussing such important topics as why it was totally justified to murder the sons of Nicholas II even though he had abdicated power to his brother, and not any of his children.

You probably noticed I used quotes around revolutionary. This is because there isn’t anything revolutionary about “revolutionary” socialists. All they want to do is get rid of the current bourgeois so they themselves can become the bourgeois. From a statist perspective this would qualify as a revolution because the idea of real radical change is entirely foreign to them. The only options they see is their state or another state. But to radicals there is nothing revolutionary about toppling one set of masters only to replace them with another set.

Radicals, being anti-political in nature, tend to find the definition of revolution used by sociologists, “A radical and pervasive change in society and the social structure, especially one made suddenly and often accompanied by violence,” most apt. A true revolution is one where the very shape of society changes.

Let’s consider the socialist revolution in Russia. At the time imperial power in Russia was waning. When a power vacuum opened up the bolsheviks were the only group that was poised to fill it. Under the auspices of brining revolutionary change to Russia, where the workers would enjoy power instead of the imperialists and capitalists, the bolsheviks used a union with other socialist groups, including anarchists, to solidify their power base. Once the bolsheviks eliminated every person they could credibly label a counter revolutionary threat they turned on their fellow socialist allies (after all, what is a revolution without a good purge). In the end the bolsheviks were the last group standing and Russia returned to what it had been previously: a nation of serfs brutally ruled by a handful of masters. All the tropes once assigned to the bourgeois; gulags, secret police, wealth being held by the State instead of the people, etc.; were present. The only “revolution” was in the efficiency of the brutality. And history has shown Russia’s case to be the norm, not the exception. When “revolutionary” socialists throw off the yoke of the bourgeois they merely become bourgeois themselves.

What would a real revolution look like? Since hierarchy and coercion are the norm today a revolution would be the opposite: a non-hierarchical and voluntary society. The challenge in creating revolution is that it requires revolutionary tactics. Relying on the statist tactic of war will only server to perpetuate statism, as “revolutionary” socialists have demonstrated time and again. A non-hierarchical, voluntary society can only be achieve through non-hierarchical, voluntary means. Agorism, for example (it is not the only example, merely the example I am most familiar with and believe will be most likely to succeed), is a truly revolutionary strategy to bring about a truly revolutionary world.

Agorim is itself anti-statist. In fact the entire idea is to separate one’s self from the State as much as possible. That means avoiding taxes by participating in underground commerce, preferring market currencies over government currencies, creating alternative methods for educating children, forming mutual aid organizations, and utilizing secure means of communications to thwart government surveillance.

A major emphasis of agorism is entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship is an attempt to empower the individual and in so doing eliminate, or at least greatly reduce, hierarchies. One area where I believe the labor movement has failed is in its focus on empowering collectives instead of individuals. When a collective has power the individual is at its mercy. Whether we call the collective a government or council is irrelevant. Whether the collective arrives at its decisions dictatorially or democratically is also irrelevant. So long as the collective is in a position to dictate the lives of individuals a hierarchy exists. Entrepreneurs, being in control of their means of attaining the necessities of life, are far less beholden to others then employees.

Agorims also strongly emphasizes voluntary interaction. When the coercive guns of the State are replaced with voluntary market action the ability for any individual or group of individuals to establish a hierarchy is diminished. Coercive powers such as taxation and arbitrary issuance of laws allow the State to get away with any number of horrible actions. But when people are truly free to interact with you or not it becomes in your best interest to be polite and honorable. If the State murders somebody everybody in society is required to continue paying taxes but in a free society nobody is required to continue interacting with a murdered (in fact many prohibitions against self-defense that are created by the State wouldn’t be in the picture so the chances of being a successful murderer would likely diminish as well).

That is a true revolution where the State is replaced entirely by a society that represents everything statism isn’t.

Paid Propaganda, Err, Patriotism

I don’t watch football but I know the National Football League (NFL) has a hard-on for the war effort. Football games are chock-full of American flags, soldiers in uniform, socialist pledges, and people covering their hearts to do a shitty job of singing a shitty anthem. This entire dog and pony show appears to be put on voluntarily by the NFL as an act of piety but it’s actually paid good money to propagandize:

WASHINGTON — The Department of Defense doled out as much as $6.8 million in taxpayer money to professional sports teams to honor the military at games and events over the past four years, an amount it has “downplayed” amid scrutiny, a report unveiled by two Senate Republicans on Wednesday found.

Arizona Sens. John McCain and Jeff Flake began looking into the Defense Department’s spending of taxpayer dollars on military tributes in June after they discovered the New Jersey Army National Guard paid the New York Jets $115,000 to recognize soldiers at home games.

The 145-page report released Wednesday dives deeper, revealing that 72 of the 122 professional sports contracts analyzed contained items deemed “paid patriotism” — the payment of taxpayer or Defense funds to teams in exchange for tributes like NFL’s “Salute to Service.” Honors paid for by the DOD were found not only in the NFL, but also the NBA, NHL, MLB and MLS. They included on-field color guard ceremonies, performances of the national anthem, and ceremonial first pitches and puck drops.

The NFL has to be one of the largest welfare recipients in this country. Not only does it receive government funding to build stadiums and receive sweetheart tax breaks (it is, after all, a “nonprofit”) but it’s also getting money to promote the war effort.

In all fairness the NFL’s other sportsball siblings are on the dole as well, which is why it’s almost impossible to go to a sporting event without having to first sit through an hour of vomit inducing propaganda. And it makes sense when you think about it. How else could you get people to surrender their wealth so it can be used to bomb people all around the world? Unless you brainwash them into worshipping everything the military does few would be terribly happy about it.

Art So Bad Only Government Would Fund It

I’ve often wondered who funded modern abstract art. When I look at a bunch of random colors splashed on a canvas I ask myself, “Who the fuck would buy this? I could do this and I suck at art!” As it turns out modern abstract art, like so many other terrible ideas, was secretly funded by the United States government:

For decades in art circles it was either a rumour or a joke, but now it is confirmed as a fact. The Central Intelligence Agency used American modern art – including the works of such artists as Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko – as a weapon in the Cold War. In the manner of a Renaissance prince – except that it acted secretly – the CIA fostered and promoted American Abstract Expressionist painting around the world for more than 20 years.

[…]

Why did the CIA support them? Because in the propaganda war with the Soviet Union, this new artistic movement could be held up as proof of the creativity, the intellectual freedom, and the cultural power of the US. Russian art, strapped into the communist ideological straitjacket, could not compete.

The existence of this policy, rumoured and disputed for many years, has now been confirmed for the first time by former CIA officials. Unknown to the artists, the new American art was secretly promoted under a policy known as the “long leash” – arrangements similar in some ways to the indirect CIA backing of the journal Encounter, edited by Stephen Spender.

This is why the history of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was titled Legacy of Ashes. Only an agency as stupid at the CIA would promote something like modern abstract art and call it a viable strategy against the Soviet Union (which must have been laughing its ass off when we used modern abstract art as proof of American creativity).

Not only did this strategy accomplish nothing of value but it also inflicted us with, well, modern art. I feel as though we’ve all suffered greatly because of this CIA idiocy.

We Should Just Start Referring To London As Airstrip One

I bitch about the surveillance state here in the United States but even it has nothing on mum. The United Kingdom (UK) has pretty much become a real life panopticon. This week alone the UK has proposed two major expansions to Big Brother’s gaze. The first proposal is to ban companies from using effective encryption:

Internet and social media companies will be banned from putting customer communications beyond their own reach under new laws to be unveiled on Wednesday.

Companies such as Apple, Google and others will no longer be able to offer encryption so advanced that even they cannot decipher it when asked to, the Daily Telegraph can disclose.

Measures in the Investigatory Powers Bill will place in law a requirement on tech firms and service providers to be able to provide unencrypted communications to the police or spy agencies if requested through a warrant.

The only way to comply with such a restriction is to put their users’ data at risk. If one unauthorized party can access encrypted data then any unauthorized party potentially can. Weaknesses in cryptographic systems aren’t selective. If, for example, you have a special law enforcement key that all user data is encrypted with anybody who obtains that key will be able to gain access to every user’s data. You turn the system form one where a very limited amount of data can be nabbed if any single key is compromised to one where all data can be nabbed if one of the keys is compromised.

But that’s not all. The UK is also proposing to require all Internet Service Providers (ISP) to keep records on their customer’s Internet usage for one year:

On Wednesday, the UK’s Home Secretary Theresa May announced the Draft Investigatory Powers Bill, which, if made into law, will force internet service providers to retain the web browsing history of every customer for up to one year. Those records can then be requested by law enforcement.

These two proposals would complement each other well. The first one gives law enforcement unfettered access to user data and the second one ensures data continues to exist for one year. Of course the second proposal pushes notable costs onto ISPs because storing that much data for so long isn’t free. But I very much doubt the UK government cares about such things.

More and more it’s obviously why 1984 took place in London. I won’t be surprised if (I should probably say when) a law is proposed in the UK that makes it a criminal offense to utilize strong cryptographic tools like Tor, PGP, OTR, etc.

What To Be Treated Like A Criminal? Work For The Government!

Are you working for an employer who doesn’t require you to submit to loyalty tests, lie detector tests, drug tests, and any number of other tests that are performed under the assumption you are a criminal? Is that constant lack of being treated like a criminal making you miserable? If so I have some good news. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will soon begin treating its employees even more like criminals:

The House passed legislation on Monday to mandate the Department of Homeland Security to establish a program to identify and mitigate insider threats from rogue employees.

Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), the bill’s author, gave examples of Edward Snowden releasing classified information about national surveillance programs, U.S. Army P.F.C. Bradley Manning providing classified documents to WikiLeaks, and contractor Aaron Alexis killing 12 people during a shooting at the Washington Navy Yard in 2013 while holding a security clearance. He suggested each case could have ended differently had they been under more scrutiny.

You know what this means, right? Loyalty tests for everybody!

The DHS is facing the same problem every criminal organization faces: members ratting them out for their illegal activities. Snowden and Manning, despite the State’s already numerous controls, ratted out their employer’s criminal activities. As with most criminal organizations the State is focusing on how to ensure more members don’t rat it out instead of focusing on not committing criminal acts.

As an anarchist I take great joy in seeing actions like this from the State. The more miserable it makes the working environment of its employees the more difficulty it will have with recruiting talented employees.

Volkswagen Gives Americans What They Want, Americans Buy Volkswagens, Statists Confused By Markets

A lot of electrons have been annoyed by people writing about the Volkswagen scandal. In an effort to give customers the performance they want while still passing the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) unrealistic tests Volkswagen wrote some clever software. It’s no surprisingly Volkswagen sales increased in the month of October. Well, it’s no surprise unless you’re a statist who doesn’t understand how markets work:

There is a world in which consumers swiftly punish Volkswagen where it counts — the coffers — for its massive, systematic deception of the Environmental Protection Agency in which it cheated its way around diesel emissions tests for half a decade.

This isn’t that world.

Volkswagen of America just reported its October sales, the first full month of reporting since the scandal broke, and guess what? Sales are up 0.24 percent year over year, likely thanks in part to enormous discounts being offered to prop up volume. Now, perhaps they would’ve been up more in the absence of the scandal. But if consumers haven’t outright rewarded VW for deceiving them, they certainly haven’t done much to punish the automaker, either.

I don’t really know what to do with this. Governments and law firms around the world are rearing to shake VW’s piggy bank, but it’s a little confusing to me that car buyers wouldn’t be looking elsewhere while this all plays out (and it is very much still playing out). Are these buyers just not following the news? Are they not concerned, because America is generally less excited about diesel engines than Europeans? (Note that Volkswagen has suspended sales of its 2016 diesels, pending approvals, so Americans have made up the sales difference versus October 2014 with additional gasoline and hybrid purchases.)

Consumers only punish manufacturers when they feel they’ve been wronged. Why should I, as a consumer, be angry if I know an automobile manufacturer can’t sell its product in the United States without passing random government tests that demonstrates nothing of value (more on this in a second) and find out the manufacturer cheated the test to give me a better product? On the other hand I, as a consumer, have ever right to be angry when the government attempts to interfere with my acquisition of a desired product. The EPA tests, as I mentioned above, aren’t even testing real-world conditions so there’s no reason for consumers, even those who are dyed in the wool environmentalists, to give two shits about them.

And don’t make the mistake of construing this increase in sales with consumers not caring about environmentalism. Most consumers care greatly about environmentalism, which is why fuel mileage is advertised to heavily these days. Generally consumers want a balance between performance and fuel efficiency (of course the EPA’s fuel efficiency tests, like its emissions tests, aren’t accurate but that’s a different can of worms). If a vehicle’s fuel efficiency is too low consumers face undesirable increases in their fuel bills. But market forces are something statists don’t understand so they become confused by situations like Volkswagen’s sales increase and come to the faulty conclusion that it means consumers don’t care about environmentalism (and use that conclusion to argue the necessity of the EPA).

What we’ve learned from this Volkswagen scandal is that producers, when faced with idiotic regulatory tests, will find creative ways to give consumers what they want and be rightly rewarded. If you want to be angry with somebody be angry with the EPA. It’s been feeding the public bad data for decades and using that data to restrict availability of goods, which has forced manufacturers to cheat in order to fulfill the wants of their customers.