No Coercion

It’s mostly coincidence, really, that I’m getting back to my blog on Independence Day weekend–but somehow appropriate nonetheless. This blog is dedicated to furthering the cause of human freedom, the same cause that so many people associate with America and with the 4th of July. We tell ourselves we’re celebrating our independence from the oppressive rule of the British crown. We say that we’re celebrating freedom. How quaint. Some even make the odd, but increasingly common, mistake of claiming that July 4th is a celebration of democracy–as if it was somehow nobler to be a slave to a master of your choosing rather than to one imposed from outside.

But why do we feel such pride in the founding of our republic when it long ago ceased to be the free land that the Founding Fathers envisioned? My best guess is that most of us came up through the government school system, which was designed from the beginning to engender simple, conforming, unquestioning, nationalistic group-think among all members of the population. The thought of a mass of individuals demanding to know where their freedom went was too much to bear for those in control of things at the beginning of the 20th century. Behind the veneer of patriotic pride, what we’ve really been taught is that the way to solve our problems is to use the faceless leviathan of government to initiate force against our neighbor and call it “the public good.”

Democrats blame Republicans for taking away our freedom. Republicans blame Democrats. As I ponder the current state of our country, I can’t help but think that we’ve got only ourselves to blame.

If you use the government to confiscate your neighbors’ money at gunpoint to give to those who did not earn it, then don’t be surprised when that government, at your neighbors’ behest, uses force to prevent you from marrying your significant other.

If you use the government to prevent your neighbor from possessing or using a particular plant or chemical substance, then don’t be surprised when that government forces you to register or turn in your gun.

If you use the government to prevent your neighbor from hiring a willing worker from another country, don’t be surprised when that government destroys your business through environmental, safety, labor, and wage regulations.

If you ask the government to send your neighbors’ children to die on the beaches of Normandy, then don’t be surprised when it sends your grandchildren to die in the sands of the Middle East.

If you’ve chosen to solve your problems through coercion rather than through the voluntary cooperation and mutually beneficial economic transactions that set us apart from lower life forms, then you need only look in the mirror when you ponder where your freedoms have gone.

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Starting to get pissed off enough again at government coercion to get back to blogging….

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No Coercion readers,

I will be taking a break from my blog for a while. And no smart ass comments about how I don’t post regularly enough to have anything from which to take a break!

I’ll return at an indeterminate point in the future. In the meantime, visit the blogs on my blogroll for similar libertarian thinking.

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 Should be interesting to see what comes of this:

Paul Alleges Boondoggle on the Bayou

Wouldn’t surprise me if a state GOP organization was working against Ron Paul, but hopefully this is just some kind of bizarre mistake.

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Because…um…I am.

Check it out!

Seriously, though…it must use a bad algorithm or something. Still, I’m adding it to my sidebar…’cause that’s awesome. And a great man once told me to never pass up on an opportunity for self-bragging.

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A reader has asked me about the libertarian answer to insider trading. This is indeed a tough one at first glance. How exactly can a society without a monopoly public government prevent the ‘dangers’ people associate with insider trading?

First, it’s necessary to point out that insider trading does not involve the initiation of force against someone, so it shouldn’t be illegal even under a minimal state. Insider trading laws are designed to prevent corporate insiders from profiting from non-public information obtained in the performance of their fiduciary duties to the corporation. At worst, this could result in a civil suit (if the insider violated an agreement with the corporation), but not a criminal charge levied by government prosecutors. If profiting from non-public information should be illegal in one instance, why not in all? Shouldn’t everyone who’s ever gotten a job because they knew the right person be prosecuted? Should someone be thrown in jail because they work in the kitchen of a less than sanitary restaurant and wisely avoid eating the food there?

And even if insider trading in some instance resulted in the loss of stock value for other shareholders, there’s nothing inherently wrong with that. There is no such thing as the right to the value of something. You don’t have the right to a particular value of your home, and you likewise don’t have the right to a particular value of stocks you own. Value is determined by the interaction of a multitude of individuals and their economic decisions. To claim a right to the value of something is to claim the right to control the decisions of all those other people. This simple reductio ad absurdum shows that there is no right to value, only to actual property.

Insider trading prohibitions have to do with information and its use. Information is not inherently owed to anyone. Information has value. It takes effort to acquire information. Some people and firms specialize in acquiring information. They can charge others for access to that information, either on a case by case basis, or by monthly subscription, or some other arrangement. Some information requires more effort to acquire and would thus command a higher price in an open market. In a completely free society, it’s likely that businesses and organizations would emerge to collect and disseminate information about insider trading. Today we already have things like Consumer Reports–people pay money to get the scoop on various goods and services. The Wall Street Journal already publishes insider trading information on a weekly basis.

More to the point, as Milton Friedman and other economists have argued, insider trading is actually a good thing. Corporate executives unloading the stock of their own company sends a signal to anyone paying attention that all is not well with that company, and it does so much faster and more completely than any process resulting from government mandates and restrictions.

There is no rational basis for the prohibition of insider trading. It stems, as many have observed, from envy–from a deep socialistic impulse in many people to prevent others from being wealthier than themselves. I give great strategic credit to the socialists that they’ve succeeded over the past century in their propaganda efforts to convince so many Americans that there’s actually something bad and ‘un-American’ about insider trading. If only the defenders of freedom and prosperity were so strategically adept in this ‘battle for the hearts and minds’ of America!

As always, I welcome any reader comments or suggestions for future blog posts. I want to write about the issues you’re interested in–so send me your thoughts!

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If I see one more vapid fluff piece about how Barack Obama is the candidate best suited to “unify America,” I’m honestly going to start looking around to see if Rod Serling is standing off to the side addressing the audience.

Why on Earth should unifying America even be a minor goal of a presidential candidate, let alone a primary goal? Unity, in and of itself, is neither good nor bad–and it certainly has the potential to be extremely bad. After all, Hitler unified Germany. Mao unified mainland China. Lenin and later Stalin unified the Soviet Union. (The only kind of unity that could possibly be good would be a completely voluntary spontaneous unity in which everyone was unified in the belief that it is unacceptable to initiate force against someone else–a sort of anarchic unity. But of course such a spontaneous unity would be one that didn’t involve any politicians, whose jobs are premised on initiation of force.)

One of the redeeming qualities of America is that we tend to have a healthy debate on most issues, resulting in a constantly evolving marketplace of ideas and perpetual shifting of ’sides.’ Hell, I used to be an authoritarian, jingoistic, socially intolerant, right-wing conservative. Wanna get all ‘unified’ under the former me?

What about Obama? He may be pro-liberty on some social issues and have half decent foreign policy instincts (but only half decent), but he’s an absolute authoritarian on economic issues. He advocates violence and coercion in the form of redistributive taxation, telling people who they can and can’t hire and how to set employee wages, business regulations (which, by definition, are unwanted obstacles government places between willing buyers and sellers attempting to engage in a voluntary transaction), government control of education, restrictions on voluntary international trade, and myriad other government actions that coerce people, reduce competition, destroy wealth (or prevent it from being created), eliminate potential choices available to consumers, prevent people from earning a living, and generally violate individual rights and reduce our overall standard of living. Do you really want this guy to “unite” America?

Personally, I really like the divided and contentious nature of our society. It keeps us sharp and keeps things interesting. It would be horrible if we all thought the same way and just mindlessly followed someone who was designated the ‘leader’ of the nation. Even if everyone in America suddenly became an anarchist or radical libertarian and succeeded in completely eliminating government, there still would be (and should be) huge disagreements about all sorts of things–it’s just that in a voluntary society free from government, a true, honest debate could take place. You could debate someone all day long about the merits of using technology to radically extend the human life span, but at the end of the day both sides would know that there’s no group of people with a legal monopoly on initiation of force standing outside with guns waiting to force either one to abide by the choice of the other.

And even though I enjoy when people e-mail me or comment on my blog in agreement with something I’ve said, I like it even more when someone disagrees with me. It challenges me to think more deeply about my position and formulate clearer arguments–or, as has happened in the past, actually realize that my argument was invalid or that I was entirely wrong.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but the last thing I want to see is a “unified America.”

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Raise your hand if you’re sick of these politicians and their juvenile tirades against “business.” I know it’s the campaign season and all, but come on! And while I especially cringe when I hear the parasitic rants that the Democrats are so fond of, the formerly pro-economic-freedom Republicans are (with the exception of Ron Paul and sometimes Giuliani) getting in on the action, too. Of course, all these officials are constantly egged on and encouraged in this nonsense by a disturbingly large fraction of the American people, who whine incessantly about all the terrible profits being made by the evil corporations and how there should be minimum and maximum wages, and trade restrictions, and consumer “safety” rules, and progressive taxation, and all manner of other measures that should be taken by the “noble” politicians in an effort to curb the “excesses” of businesses and stand up for the “common good.”

I think what the American people need is a healthy reminder of the actual nature of both business and politics. Following are a couple of appropriate quotes that can help put things in perspective.

From Ayn Rand’s Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal:

What is economic power? It is the power to produce and to trade what one has produced. In a free economy, where no man or group of men can use physical coercion against anyone, economic power can be achieved only by voluntary means: by the voluntary choice and agreement of all those who participate in the process of production and trade. In a free market, all prices, wages, and profits are determined—not by the arbitrary whim of the rich or of the poor, not by anyone’s “greed” or by anyone’s need—but by the law of supply and demand. The mechanism of a free market reflects and sums up all the economic choices and decisions made by all the participants. Men trade their goods or services by mutual consent to mutual advantage, according to their own independent, uncoerced judgment. A man can grow rich only if he is able to offer better values—better products or services, at a lower price—than others are able to offer.

Wealth, in a free market, is achieved by a free, general, “democratic” vote—by the sales and the purchases of every individual who takes part in the economic life of the country. Whenever you buy one product rather than another, you are voting for the success of some manufacturer. And, in this type of voting, every man votes only on those matters which he is qualified to judge: on his own preferences, interests, and needs. No one has the power to decide for others or to substitute his judgment for theirs; no one has the power to appoint himself “the voice of the public” and to leave the public voiceless and disfranchised.

Now let me define the difference between economic power and political power: economic power is exercised by means of a positive, by offering men a reward, an incentive, a payment, a value; political power is exercised by means of a negative, by the threat of punishment, injury, imprisonment, destruction. The businessman’s tool is values; the bureaucrat’s tool is fear.

And here’s a great letter that Don Boudreaux at Cafe Hayek sent to USA Today back during the Christmas season:

Even more predictable than the post-Thanksgiving appearance of shopping-mall Santas is the inability of pundits at this time of year to say or to write “commercialism” without prefixing to it the word “crass” - as we encounter in your pages today in Tom Krattenmaker’s “The real meaning of Christmas.”

I challenge this notion.  Commerce is peaceful. It involves sellers working hard and taking risks to bring to market goods and services that consumers want to buy.  No one forces anyone to do anything; all is voluntary.

What truly is crass is politics - that sorry spectacle of power-seeking ego-maniacs who, when not pronouncing platitudes, are promising to help group A by picking the pockets of group B.  While commerce is honest, politics is duplicitous.  While commerce is peaceful, politics inevitably pits citizen against citizen.  Far more enlightened and ethical behavior is on display during any one day in a shopping mall than the most intrepid observer will find in a century on Pennsylvania Avenue.

And yes, I do realize there are businesses out there doing some really sketchy things that violate the voluntary and value-based nature of commerce. But every single one of those instances is a result of the government getting involved and lending some of its power to those offending businesses. Isn’t it ironic that the people complaining about abuses by businesses are always calling for giving the government more power over business, thus resulting in ever-increasing instances of businesses choosing what seems the most rational course of action and using that government power to their advantage?

What say you, fair readers?

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 I just stumbled across this great piece (15 years old but more relevant than ever) by Hans-Hermann Hoppe (a senior fellow at the Mises Institute) on how the problems with American health care can be solved not by increasing government involvement in health care but by getting government out of health care entirely:

A Four-Step Health-Care Solution 

Here’s the meat of the piece:

1. Eliminate all licensing requirements for medical schools, hospitals, pharmacies, and medical doctors and other health care personnel. Their supply would almost instantly increase, prices would fall, and a greater variety of health care services would appear on the market.

Competing voluntary accreditation agencies would take the place of compulsory government licensing–if health care providers believe that such accreditation would enhance their own reputation, and that their consumers care about reputation, and are willing to pay for it.

Because consumers would no longer be duped into believing that there is such a thing as a “national standard” of health care, they will increase their search costs and make more discriminating health care choices.

2. Eliminate all government restrictions on the production and sale of pharmaceutical products and medical devices. This means no more Food and Drug Administration, which presently hinders innovation and increases costs.

Costs and prices would fall, and a wider variety of better products would reach the market sooner. The market would force consumers to act in accordance with their own–rather than the government’s–risk assessment. And competing drug and device manufacturers and sellers, to safeguard against product liability suits as much as to attract customers, would provide increasingly better product descriptions and guarantees.

3. Deregulate the health insurance industry. Private enterprise can offer insurance against events over whose outcome the insured possesses no control. One cannot insure oneself against suicide or bankruptcy, for example, because it is in one’s own hands to bring these events about.

Because a person’s health, or lack of it, lies increasingly within his own control, many, if not most health risks, are actually uninsurable. “Insurance” against risks whose likelihood an individual can systematically influence falls within that person’s own responsibility.

All insurance, moreover, involves the pooling of individual risks. It implies that insurers pay more to some and less to others. But no one knows in advance, and with certainty, who the “winners” and “losers” will be. “Winners” and “losers” are distributed randomly, and the resulting income redistribution is unsystematic. If “winners” or “losers” could be systematically predicted, “losers” would not want to pool their risk with “winners,” but with other “losers,” because this would lower their insurance costs. I would not want to pool my personal accident risks with those of professional football players, for instance, but exclusively with those of people in circumstances similar to my own, at lower costs.

Because of legal restrictions on the health insurers’ right of refusal–to exclude any individual risk as uninsurable–the present health-insurance system is only partly concerned with insurance. The industry cannot discriminate freely among different groups’ risks.

As a result, health insurers cover a multitude of uninnsurable risks, alongside, and pooled with, genuine insurance risks. They do not discriminate among various groups of people which pose significantly different insurance risks. The industry thus runs a system of income redistribution–benefiting irresponsible actors and high-risk groups at the expense of responsible individuals and low risk groups. Accordingly the industry’s prices are high and ballooning.

To deregulate the industry means to restore it to unrestricted freedom of contract: to allow a health insurer to offer any contract whatsoever, to include or exclude any risk, and to discriminate among any groups of individuals. Uninsurable risks would lose coverage, the variety of insurance policies for the remaining coverage would increase, and price differentials would reflect genuine insurance risks. On average, prices would drastically fall. And the reform would restore individual responsibility in health care.

4. Eliminate all subsidies to the sick or unhealthy. Subsidies create more of whatever is being subsidized. Subsidies for the ill and diseased breed illness and disease, and promote carelessness, indigence, and dependency. If we eliminate them, we would strengthen the will to live healthy lives and to work for a living. In the first instance, that means abolishing Medicare and Medicaid.

Only these four steps, although drastic, will restore a fully free market in medical provision. Until they are adopted, the industry will have serious problems, and so will we, its consumers.

Couldn’t have said it better myself (although I made an attempt with Legalize Health Care).

Hoppe for President of the Galaxy! (Hey, Zaphod had his chance.)

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Not fully on board with my non-coercive, libertarian, anarchist point of view? Interested in seeing if my idea of coercive meshes with yours? Just feel like killing a few minutes?

Then step right up and take my coerciveness quiz:
How Coercive Are You?

A great eye-opener to forward to those not-so-libertarian friends and relatives!

Enjoy!

Update: I have discovered (too late) that gotoquiz.com cuts off answer options after a certain number of characters, so some of the longer answer options are cut off mid-sentence. But hopefully it’s clear where each option is going.

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