No Coercion

Well, the usual media suspects have wasted no time in attacking Rand Paul for his opposition to the part of the Civil Rights Act that prohibits private businesses from discriminating on the basis of race (and some other stuff). They’ve implied that such a stance is racist. That’s interesting. So I guess I support the right of skinheads to hold a rally, I must be racist, too. I guess if I support the right of homophobes to write hateful blog posts about gay people, I must be homophobic, too. And if I support the right of pot heads to smoke weed, I must also be a pot head. If you’re the kind of person that equates defending someone’s rights with supporting that person’s personal beliefs, I really don’t know if I can help you. I suggest you go back to chewing on your crayons and stuffing Cheerios in your nose.

But more importantly, those on the left are out in force defending the morality of the state’s using violence to compel certain actions on the part of business owners who have not aggressed against anyone. That’s right: they’re saying that partial slavery is okay. They’re saying that, because they don’t like the way some people choose to peacefully (if unpleasantly) use their property, violence may be employed to force them to use it in a different way. They’re saying you don’t have a right to be a bigot.

Well, you do have that right as a human being. And others have the right to boycott, shun, and ostracize you.

I don’t have much to say that hasn’t already been said in places like these:
Rand Paul and the Civil Rights Act: Was he right?
Defend the Scoundrels, Rand!
Which Institution is More Enlightened?

But let me be very clear about this. If you use violence or the threat thereof to compel someone to provide goods or services to someone else, you are an aggressor and a criminal. If you support such criminal actions, well, let’s just say you’ve got some remedial work to do in the area of ethics.

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Carlos Miller has this post today about the latest with George Donnelly’s ordeal. Organized crime is not somehow made legitimate by calling itself “the government.” This insanity must end.

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Maybe this is optimistic, but we may be witnessing the beginning of the end of the state, the violent death throes of an aggressive criminal organization that senses its own impending collapse. This past Tuesday, libertarian/voluntaryist activist George Donnelly was attacked by federal agents (and subsequently kidnapped by them) while filming a confrontation between an agent and one of his fellow activists (initiated by the agent) during an outreach effort to hand out information about jury nullification and the Fully Informed Jury Association. Summaries can be found here, here, here, here, and here.

He’s out of federal captivity now, but is under house arrest and facing potentially serious charges for his terrible crime of filming a federal goon harassing another innocent person. George is now seeking legal and financial assistance in his fight against this injustice. See here and here.

It would be nice if George is able to not only get these ridiculous charges dropped but also succeed in suing these cretins for their violent actions. Unfortunately, such suits rarely work. One of the ways that a free society could deal with aggressors and other anti-social individuals who refuse to participate in voluntary arbitration and restitution procedures is through ostracism: simply refusing to associate or do business with the offenders, including not selling them groceries, not giving them loans, not providing them with utilities, etc. Given this, and knowing that George is a fan of ostracism, I think it would be great if someone was able to identify the aggressing U.S. Marshalls (some are visible in photos taken at the time) in this instance and launch a campaign to publicly shame and ostracize them. Let’s show the state that its aggression will not be tolerated by civilized society.

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In The Economics and Ethics of Private Property, Hans-Hermann Hoppe has this to say about the nature of the state and how it continues to exist:

While productive enterprises come into or go out of existence because of voluntary support or its absence, a ruling class never comes to power because there is a demand for it, nor does it abdicate when abdication is demonstrably demanded. One cannot say by any stretch of the imagination that homesteaders, producers, savers and contractors have demanded their expropriation. They must be coerced into accepting it, and this proves conclusively that the exploitation firm is not in demand at all. Nor can one say that a ruling class can be brought down by abstaining from transactions with it in the same way as one can bring down a productive enterprise. For the ruling class acquires its income through nonproductive and noncontractual transactions and thus is unaffected by boycotts. Rather, what makes the rise of an exploitation firm possible, and what alone can in turn bring it down is a specific state of public opinion or, in Marxist terminology, a specific state of class consciousness.

An exploiter creates victims, and victims are potential enemies. It is possible that this resistance can be lastingly broken down by force in the case of a group of men exploiting another group of roughly the same size. However, more than force is needed to expand exploitation over a population many times its own size. For this to happen, a firm must also have public support. A majority of the population must accept the exploitative actions as legitimate. This acceptance can range from active enthusiasm to passive resignation. But it must be acceptance in the sense that a majority must have given up the idea of actively or passively resisting any attempt to enforce nonproductive and noncontractual property acquisitions. The class consciousness must be low, undeveloped and fuzzy. Only as long as this state of affairs lasts is there still room for an exploitative firm to prosper even if no actual demand for it exists. Only if and insofar as the exploited and expropriated develop a clear idea of their own situation and are united with other members of their class through an ideological movement which gives expression to the idea of a classless society where all exploitation is abolished, can the power of the ruling class be broken. Only if, and insofar as, a majority of the exploited public becomes consciously integrated into such a movement and accordingly displays a common outrage over all nonproductive or noncontractual property acquisitions, shows a contempt for everyone who engages in such acts, and deliberately contributes nothing to help make them successful (not to mention actively trying to obstruct them), can its power be brought to crumble.

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With all the news lately about the Large Hadron Collider and new NASA programs, I think it’s important to ask a fundamental question: Why should the state be involved in funding and conducting science? That is, why should one group of people take up arms and expropriate vast sums of money from other people in order to do science? From a moral standpoint, the answer seems obvious to me: they shouldn’t. Like all endeavors of the state, it’s an exploitative relationship and has no place in civilized society.

But, some will say, what about the Apollo Program? What about all the discoveries that happen at places like the LHC? What about the achievements of the U.S. federal labs? What about all the university science funded by the government? Aren’t these worthwhile advances? Wouldn’t many of these things be impossible without violent exploitation? Well, to these people I would simply ask: What might have been?

What might have been the course of scientific progress in the U.S. if the state had not spent the past century confiscating untold billions of dollars from private individuals and directing it in the way that it did? Well, we know that all that money (all things being equal) would have been directed toward market-demanded production. Some would have gone toward privately-conducted science. In fact, without government crowding, there would have been quite a bit more private science, and private science is responsive to what consumers actually want. State science has only a rough approximation of this in the form of the pressure of public opinion.

For all we know, market-driven scientific progress could well have far exceeded what we’ve ended up with. Maybe some scientific knowledge and technologies we have now wouldn’t exist. But other discoveries–again, more closely-aligned with consumer demand–may have been made that would have resulted in an overall higher standard of living than we currently enjoy. In fact, that’s likely. With only a pale imitation of the cost-control pressures of the market, government science will tend to be far less efficient, solving problems and developing new technologies in much more round-about and resource-intensive ways than market-driven science. So, no, we probably wouldn’t have had an Apollo Program, that expensive and embarrassing instance of international “sword fighting” (if you know what I mean). Rather, the natural pressures of the market may have resulted in private, competing firms developing advanced, low-cost methods of reaching orbit and extracting commercially valuable resources from the moon, Mars, asteroids, etc. And we probably wouldn’t have the LHC. Instead, perhaps companies in fields as diverse as transportation, computing, communications, and medical technology would have developed a variety of cheaper and more effective ways of probing the fundamental particles and forces of reality in search of new technologies for the products demanded by their customers.

And it all would have been done through peaceful interaction among free people seeking to profit by providing one another with value rather than by violence of a parasitic political class exploiting a productive population in order to score political points.

The question is not, “How could we have X,Y, and Z without the state?” The question is, “In the absence of violent, inefficient, and politically driven state science, what might have been?”

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A recent piece at the Mises Institute site by D.W. MacKenzie, Politics Cannot Be Fixed, touches on some important points about the problems with democracy.

I agree with most of what he says up until he advocates a “return” to limited government. I don’t think such a government is possible on logical grounds–even a government that claims to be limited to some piece of paper (which they wrote for themselves) is, in fact, unlimited since it has a monopoly on justice and the legal ‘right’ to initiate force. It would be a simple matter of a constitutional amendment or even an extra broad interpretation of the General Welfare clause for our current government to become a full totalitarian state (or at least try to before they remembered how many of us are packing heat).

MacKenzie also says: “Constitutional government limited to providing internal and external security can be evaluated by objective criteria.”

I think he’s right that such things could be evaluated objectively (i.e. we can see clearly whether someone is invading the territory claimed by the state or whether criminals are assaulting people and stealing property), but you still face the problem that everyone from Molinari to Rothbard have pointed out–that the government has no rational way to actually determine how to allocate resources in pursuit of such security. Do you spend more on police cars and less on judges? How much do you spend on prisons, security systems, and district attorneys? Every question government is faced with can only be answered by arbitrary political means rather than by response to consumer demand. Also, it glosses over the fundamental moral question of why one group of people (the state) has the right to impose a legal system on everyone rather than allowing voluntary legal systems to spontaneously evolve on the free market (as they already do to the limited extent allowed by the state).

But I do agree his “limited government” is a far sight better than the imperial-welfare-police-state by which we are currently ruled.

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I live in Durham County (NC), right next door to Wake County, which is in the midst of a heated debate over its notorious forced busing program that the new school board just declared its intention to end (they’ve been assigning children still trapped in the government school system to schools very far from their homes in order to achieve a “diversity” goal of no school having more than 40% of the children in the free or reduced lunch program–the result is lots of parents who otherwise would have had their kids in the local neighborhood school and who now have a much greater difficulty staying involved in their children’s education while the kids spend hours each day on the bus, sometimes force to go out to the bus stop before sunrise). I’ve been having a tough time, in a particular discussion forum, trying to explain the injustice of such a program to some statists, who already don’t understand the injustice of the government education system in the first place. My latest attempt is to compare the State to the Mafia, along the lines of thinkers like Spooner and Rothbard. After I typed it up I decided it would make a good blog post, so here’s what I posted in the forum (for clarification, my use of the phrase “propaganda language” is a reference to the use of that phrase by one of the statists in response to another libertarian’s referring to taxation as theft):

Here’s maybe a different way of looking at this busing issue (and really any issue involving compulsory government). Imagine it’s not the government that comes around to take some of your money to fund schools, but rather a Mafia enforcer. Imagine it’s not the government that threatens to lock you up if you don’t send your kids to school, but rather the Mafia enforcer. Imagine it’s not the government that then makes it harder for you to be involved in your children’s education by sending them to a school across town that you otherwise wouldn’t have chosen, but rather your friendly Mafia enforcer. Now, what we call theft (or armed robbery if you refuse to send in the money on your own), kidnapping, and general aggression when the Mafia does it, we call ‘democracy at work for the public good’ or some other such *ahem* propaganda language when the state does it.

Ah, you say, but it’s okay when the state engages in this kind of violence because “we’re a democracy” and “we can vote for our leaders.” Okay, then–let’s say the Mafia comes along and says, “You can vote for which Mafiosi you want to do the hiring of the enforcers! Woohoo! We won’t let you out of the violence we’re initiating, but YOU get to tell us who you want holding the gun! Aren’t we nice?”

Ah, you say, but it’s not really like that with the state because we’re all part of the “social contract” that allows the state its monopoly on justice and the legal initiation of violence. Well, alrighty–so the Mafia comes back and says, “Hey, whatcha fussin’ for, guy? Don’t you know what we’re doing is okay because of this special “social contract” we just came up with that we say you’re agreeing to?”

So here’s the deal. The difference–the SOLE difference–between the Mafia and the state is that the state has managed, through nonsense logic and “propaganda language,” to convince enough of you terrified children of its legitimacy that you allow it to go about its business of aggression without too much resistance.

Ending the busing program is a reduction in the level of aggression involved in education, a smaller reduction for some and a greater reduction for others.

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As a follow up to yesterday’s post, I want to say a few words about the old “complaining vs. solutions” thing. After reading my description of how government exists and acts by means of aggressing against people, a friend of mine said that I was pointing out problems but wasn’t discussing any solutions. I think it’s important to recognize the fact that having any sort of solution to a problem is in no way a prerequisite to pointing the problem out to people. Sure, we constantly hear things like, “stop complaining if you don’t have any solutions,” but that’s said by Democrats and Republicans to each other as a lazy way of attacking the other side. It’s been said so often and for so long that many of us have come to feel it’s a legitimate argument; but it’s not. If someone has no clue how to go about preventing rape and murder, should he refrain from pointing out that they’re wrong? Of course not. It’s the same for any other situation. Whether I have any solutions for the problem of the state has zero bearing on the importance of continually bringing the problem to my readers’ attention. Getting a critical mass of people to agree on the existence of a problem is a big step toward solving it.

Of course, I talk about my solution all the time, either directly or indirectly: abolition of the state. But what my friend wanted to know was exactly how I propose getting from state to stateless. The answer, I believe, is agorism.

From the web site,

Agorism is revolutionary market anarchism.

In a market anarchist society, law and security would be provided by market actors instead of political institutions. Agorists recognize that situation can not develop through political reform. Instead, it will arise as a result of market processes.

As the state is banditry, revolution culminates in the suppression of the criminal state by market providers of security and law. Market demand for such service providers is what will lead to their emergence. Development of that demand will come from economic growth in the sector of the economy that explicitly shuns state involvement (and thus can not turn to the state in its role as monopoly provider of security and law). That sector of the economy is the counter-economy – black and grey markets.

The state will never willingly cease to exist unless it becomes so small and weak compared to the free market that its case is hopeless (and even then it may resist violently at the end). The prospect for abolishing the state by “electing the right people” is beyond nil. Therefore, agorism proposes to steadily expand the domain of voluntary market forces and shrink the domain of the coercive, compulsory state. Crucial to this progression is helping more and more people to “take the red pill” and understand that the state is inherently unjust and that supporting it means that one is supporting the unjust initiation of force against his fellow man.

I’m doing my bit to create a culture of freedom and nonaggression.

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Government is aggression, plain and simple. It is force, it is violence. I’ve recently had discussions with several different people who take issue with this assertion. They claim it’s absurd to suggest the wonderfully benevolent and representative government of the U.S. is based on violence. They often compare it to some place like Iran or North Korea. Sure, those states are more repressive and totalitarian than ours, but it’s only a difference in degree. There’s literally nothing to stop the U.S. government from becoming another North Korea (well, except maybe the as yet not totally disarmed American people, but that obstacle is getting more tenuous by the day). A totalitarian regime imposed by a “representative” or “democratic” government is no better than one imposed by a military dictator.

The fact is that even the smallest and most limited state is still an institution predicated on the initiation of force. Everything the state does, from taxation and forced monopolies to truancy laws and mandatory food labels, is made possible by the very real threat of violence. It’s odd that anyone would deny this because it’s wholly indisputable. If you do not pay your taxes, the government can steal the money right out of your paycheck. If that is not possible, they can come to your home and violently abduct you (usually called arresting). Should you resist the abduction, they will physically assault you. Should you resist strongly enough, they may kill you.

Or suppose you want to start a business providing the full spectrum of protective services that government police currently provide (with an important difference being that you would be paid by voluntary payments from customers instead of by forcibly taking others’ property). Well, the government would inform you that you were breaking the law and tell you to close up shop. If you instead chose to continue operation, engaging in voluntary, mutually beneficial interactions with your customers, the government would move against you with heavily armed enforcers (cops, troops, etc.).

What if you decided not to send your child to school (or jump through the state’s rules for homeschooling)? As soon as the state found out, its ’social workers’ would show up to give you your ultimatum. If you refuse to bow to their threats, you would be visited by the state’s enforcers and probably abducted (or your children would be abducted). Again, resist and more violence ensues.

Want to start a business making drugs to provide to sick people in consensual transactions? Boom, state violence.

Want to start an insurance company without adhering to state licensing and regulations? Boom, state violence.

The list of perfectly consensual, productive, and non-violent interactions you can engage in with others only to find yourself on the receiving end of state violence or threats of violence is virtually endless.

Rational, civilized people do not coerce people into doing what they want; they vote with their purchasing decisions or use peaceful, voluntary persuasion. The state is a primitive, violent institution that has become all the more dangerous in the modern world. It is not the facilitator of civilization as so many argue–it is the antithesis of civilization. And, with the vast array of weapons of mass destruction that only states have a motivation to develop, the state may yet spell the end of civilization altogether.

So, however you rationalize your defense of the state, even in its most limited form, please don’t try to insist that its actions and very existence are somehow not based on aggression.

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A nice take on the true nature of the State by J. Craig Green:

Grateful Slave

I am a grateful slave.
My master is a good man.
He gives me food, shelter, work and other things.
All he requires in return is that I obey him.
I am told he has the power to control my life.
I look up to him,
and wish that I were so powerful.

My master must understand the world better than I,
because he was chosen by many others
for his respected position.
I sometimes complain,
but fear I cannot live without his help.
He is a good man.

My master protects my money from theft,
before and after he takes half of it.
Before taking his half,
he says only he can protect my money.
After taking it, he says it is still mine.
When he spends my money,
he says I own the things he has bought.
I don’t understand this, but I believe him.
He is a good man.

I need my master for protection,
because others would hurt me.
Or they would take my money
and use it for themselves.
My master is better than them:
When he takes my money, I still own it.
The things he buys are mine.
I cannot sell them,
or decide how they are used,
but they are mine.
My master tells me so,
and I believe him.
He is a good man.

My master provides free education for my children.
He teaches them to respect and obey him
and all future masters they will have.
He says they are being taught well;
learning things they will need to know in the future.
I believe him.
He is a good man.

My master cares about other masters,
who don’t have good slaves.
He makes me contribute to their support.
I don’t understand why slaves must work
for more than one master,
but my master says it is necessary.
I believe him.
He is a good man.

Other slaves ask my master for some of my money.
Since he is good to them as he is to me, he agrees.
This means he must take more of my money;
but he says this is good for me.
I ask my master why it would not be better
to let each of us keep our own money.
He says it is because he knows
what is best for each of us.
We believe him.
He is a good man.

My master tells me:
Evil masters in other places are not as good as he;
they threaten our comfortable lifestyle and peace.
So, he sends my children
to fight the slaves of evil masters.
I mourn their deaths,
but my master says it is necessary.
He gives me medals for their sacrifice,
and I believe him.
He is a good man.

Good masters sometimes have to kill evil masters,
and their slaves.
This is necessary to preserve our way of life;
to show others that our version of slavery is best.
I asked my master:
“Why do the evil masters’ slaves have to be killed;
along with their evil master?”
He said: “Because they carry out his evil deeds.”
“Besides, they could never learn our system;
they have been indoctrinated to believe
that only their master is good.”
My master knows what is best.
He protects me and my children.
He is a good man.

My master lets me vote for a new master,
every few years.
I cannot vote to have no master,
but he generously lets me choose
between two candidates he has selected.
I eagerly wait until election day,
since voting allows me to forget that I am a slave.
Until then, my current master tells me what to do.
I accept this.
It has always been so,
and I would not change tradition.
My master is a good man.

At the last election,
about half the slaves were allowed to vote.
The other half either broke rules set by the master,
or were not thought by him to be fit.
Those who break the rules
should know better than to disobey!
Those not considered fit should gratefully accept
the master chosen for them by others.
It is right, because we have always done it this way.
My master is a good man.

There were two candidates.
One received a majority of the vote -
about one-fourth of the slave population.
I asked why the new master
can rule over all the slaves,
if he only received votes from one-fourth of them?
My master said:
“Because some wise masters long ago
did it that way.”
“Besides, you are the slaves;
and we are the masters.”
I did not understand his answer, but I believed him.
My master knows what is best for me.
He is a good man.

Some slaves have evil masters.
They take more than half of their slaves’ money
and are chosen by only one-tenth,
rather than one-fourth, of their slaves.
My master says they are different from him.
I believe him.
He is a good man.

I asked if I could ever become a master,
instead of a slave.
My master said, “Yes, anything is possible.”
“But first you must pledge allegiance
to your present master,
and promise not to abandon the system
that made you a slave.”
I am encouraged by this possibility.
My master is a good man.

He tells me slaves are the real masters,
because they can vote for their masters.
I do not understand this, but I believe him.
He is a good man;
who lives for no other purpose
than to make his slaves happy.

I asked if I could be neither a master nor a slave.
My master said, “No, you must be one or the other.”
“There are no other choices.”
I believe him.
He knows best.
He is a good man.

I asked my master how our system is different,
from those with evil masters.
He said:
“In our system, masters work for the slaves.”
No longer confused, I am beginning to accept his logic.
Now I see it!
Slaves are in control of their masters,
because they can choose new masters every few years.
When the masters appear to control the slaves
in between elections,
it is all a grand delusion!
In reality, they are carrying out the slaves’ desires.
For if this were not so,
they would not have been chosen in the last election.
How clear it is to me now!
I shall never doubt the system again.
My master is a good man.

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