No Coercion

So as I sit here sipping my Bicardi and cola, I have to wonder at the absurdity and–not to put too fine a point on it–wholesale injustice of the fact that the “great” state of North Carolina controls my natural human right to purchase liquor and does so with an iron fist one would expect to be reserved for the most heinous of inhuman acts. How, in the 21st century, do we stand idly by and allow ourselves to be strong-armed by the state in our enjoyment of our spirituous refreshments?

Under the regime of the state of North Carolina, I could be thrown in jail (or killed, if I resist) just for distilling my own special brand of whiskey and attempting to sell it to my neighbors, who are willing buyers. Why do we permit a group of people lacking natural authority over our actions (but claiming for themselves some arbitrary authority granted by nonsensical democracy and social contract theory) to tell us what beverages we can or cannot buy and sell? And why do we (now speaking for the polity as represented by the organized crime cartel known as the government) insist on initiating force against our neighbors for their choice of livelihood? What right have we to assault and kill our fellow man for creating and selling a particular kind of drink that is in demand by others?

I say enough is enough. It’s time we learned to grow up and behave in a civilized fashion. All state alcohol control authorities, including my own state’s despicable Alcoholic Beverage Control Commission, must be fought and ultimately abolished without delay. Write letters to the editor of your local paper, call and write your state elected officials, be creative! Above all, don’t ever–ever–accept the notion that the state has legitimate authority over you. Your only authority is you. Now, in the spirit of my Irish heritage, let’s drink and fight!

[Update: I have submitted concatenated versions of this post as letters to the editor of both the Herald Sun of Durham and the News & Observer of Raleigh. Both papers are already familiar with my work. He he he. ]

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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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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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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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Don Boudreaux over at Cafe Hayek has a nice little bit about legalizing organ sales, with which I wholeheartedly agree:

Voters no doubt do feel repugnance at commerce in such things. But one question is: how much? When voters are asked to cast a ballot about such things, they do so largely free of charge — that is, they get to express their opinions on the cheap, without any obligation to reflect seriously upon the issue before them. I wonder how likely it is that any randomly chosen voter would let repugnance prevent him from buying a kidney if such commerce were necessary to save the life of his child or his wife or one of his parents?

How insane is it that our supposedly free country, because of voters’ irrational emotions, bans the sale of things that could save so many lives? Besides, what happens when you ban something that the market demands? It simply creates a dangerous black market and greatly increases the price of that particular good.

Just more evidence that democracy, to the extent that a mere 51% of voters can vote away our rights and empower a totalitarian political elite, is a truly flawed and dangerous system. Democracy is just totalitarianism in which the all-powerful dictators are ‘chosen’ by a certain portion of the population.

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Well, the drought here in North Carolina continues, as do the increasing municipal water restrictions and calls by the emotion-driven masses for a halt to new development. Water systems in cities and towns are considered ‘public’ resources and are owned by the local governments. The problem is that, when the government owns and controls a resource, the allocation of that resource is based on politics, power, influence, and bureaucracy–not justice and efficiency. Most people would not disagree with that. However, many people will then go on to assert that there’s something special about water than necessitates its being owned and distributed by the government.

Their reasoning often follows one or both of the following themes (not necessarily in this order):

1) They will say that water is necessary for life, so the government MUST control it and make sure it’s delivered at artificially low prices. There’s usually some appeal to sympathy for the extremely poor thrown in there, too. I see a problem with that line of reasoning right off the bat. Food is also essential for life, but we don’t go around demanding that the government take over all the farm land and distribute food at artificially low prices. Shelter is considered essential, too (especially during inclement weather)–but we don’t demand that the government confiscate all housing and sell it or rent it out in order to make sure everyone has a place to live. A corollary of this “water is necessary for life” argument is the assertion by these people that everyone has a right to water. No, you don’t. Nor do you have a right to health care, a certain wage, certain working conditions, certain living conditions, etc (but those are subjects for future posts). Very simply, it’s not possible to have a right to something that requires forcibly taking from someone else. A positive right to water for you means the use of force to take water from someone else. That is why a system of positive rights is internally inconsistent. You do, of course, have the negative right not to be prevented from using water that you own or acquiring unowned water by homesteading it. But you don’t have the natural right to have water provided to you at the expense of someone else.

2) In the second line of reasoning, they will say that water, because it tends to flow freely across property boundaries, must be kept out of the private property sphere and owned by the government. This is also the reason many people (even economists and others who should know better) believe the government should use coercion to enforce water pollution laws. I don’t buy this argument, either. There’s no inherent reason something that crosses property lines can’t be privately owned. Do we know exactly how water rights would evolve if freely allowed? No, we don’t. But that’s no reason not to do it. Assuming everyone has property rights in their land, wouldn’t it stand to reason that they would come up with ways to assign rights to water running through or adjacent to their land so that the value of their land is maintained? I could envision a system in which those living along a river each have rights to a certain volume, level, and quality of water in the part of the river running through their property. Markets would evolve to effectively and efficiently determine if an upstream neighbor had done something to change any of those characteristics for the worse (as opposed to acts of nature), and a downstream neighbor that was negatively affected could seek damages. Insurance companies would be great at this sort of investigatory and claims process. That’s just one possibility. Similar arrangements might evolve with regard to other bodies of water like lakes and oceans.

To sum up, I don’t think we’d have nearly the water shortage we’re experiencing right now if water was all privately owned and traded. Market prices for water would rise as supply declined and fall as supply rose. Higher prices would result in people using water much more efficiently and thus conserving it in times of drought. And the People’s Republic of Durham wouldn’t be threatening me with violence should I decide to water my lawn beyond what their restrictions allow.

Well, those are my thoughts on water, dear readers. I’d be interested in hearing yours!

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Okay, I’ve been away from the blog for a couple weeks, so let me get back to it with a Top 10 list. Many of my readers probably do not consider themselves libertarian. Maybe you think of yourself as a conservative, liberal, moderate (whatever that means), or some other political philosophy. I’m willing to bet you’re actually libertarian and just don’t realize it! So here’s my…

Top 10 Reasons You’re Actually Libertarian

10. You believe it’s inherently wrong to initiate force directly or ask someone (the government) to initiate it on your behalf; but you do believe you have the inherent right to defend yourself from aggression.

9. You can’t help but notice that gangs don’t form and start shooting each other over legal substances like alcohol and cigarettes.

8. You really hate sitting in the traffic that results from government ownership and management of roads.

7. Somewhere in the back of your mind you remember that immigration helped this country become rich.

6. You don’t believe violence is a legitimate way to achieve your goals (no matter how noble the goals or whether you’ve gotten the government to act on your behalf).

5. You believe that if you legitimately buy something (or create it from unowned resources), it’s your rightful property.

4. You believe that it’s not logically possible to have a right to something (health care, education, water, a certain wage, etc) that requires taking from someone else by force (taxes and regulations).

3. You believe that a group (government) acting on your behalf has no more rights than you do.

2. You believe that people are more productive, happy, innovative, and cooperative when subjected to fewer acts of government aggression (taxes, regulations, etc).

1. And the number 1 reason you’re actually libertarian…
You have a sneaking suspicion that everything the government touches turns to pure crap!

So, now that you know you’re libertarian, you might look into the Libertarian Party. Of course, if you’re one of my North Carolina readers, you can’t register Libertarian even if you want to since the Republicans and Democrats have gotten together and essentially banned third parties through ballot access restrictions. But you can help get the party back on the ballot by collecting signatures for the ballot access petition.

With our government expanding quickly in all areas of life and choking off our freedom and prosperity, there has never been a better time to inject libertarian principles into the debate. The Republicans and Democrats live and operate through power and the use of coercion and force. They won’t stop willingly–they must be stopped from outside the monopolistic two-party system.

Seek out your state or county Libertarian groups (many local groups are organized through Meetup.com), and get involved in some small way.

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So the drama with Falcons QB Michael Vick continues. I’d guess that about 97% of the American public that’s aware of this story is itching to see the government really stick it to Vick and prosecute him to the fullest extent of the law.

The remaining 3% are those of us with the highest possible degree of respect for liberty and voluntary social interactions.

Let’s get a few things out of the way. I do not condone animal cruelty. I think people that do the kinds of things Vick is accused of are sick and are probably more likely than others to harm actual human beings. I also believe animals are not equivalent to humans. They are not moral agents. They do not have rights. They are resources and can be owned. I grew up with wonderful dogs and cats. They brought me plenty of joy and certainly enhanced my life. Nevertheless, they were still property–not people, not moral agents with natural rights.

Now of course Vick should not be prosecuted on the gambling charge. That’s flat out a victimless crime, and most of us realize there’s nothing inherently wrong with it (it does of course pose ethical issues in some cases and can legitimately be banned by private organizations as in the case of the NFL, but that’s not a legitimate matter for law enforcement).

The real question is whether it’s right for Vick to be prosecuted for cruelty to animals. Of course I realize current law allows such prosecution, but that’s not the point. My argument is that that is a failure on our society’s part to properly understand liberty and natural rights.

A free society is measured by how well it relies on voluntary actions of free individuals rather than the coercion of the state. Government is coercion. Law is coercion. A free society strives to minimize and eliminate those vestiges of primitive aggression. If a monopoly government with law enforcement powers exists, those powers should only be used with regard to invasions of person or property. You should be able to do whatever you want to yourself or your property. The law should not interfere. You may not invade (engage in aggression against) other people or their property.

So animal abusers just get to run loose with no punishment? Not at all. The majority of people in society are decent, caring human beings. They would not look kindly on someone engaging in cruelty to animals. Indeed, we see that Michael Vick is already being subjected to intense personal and professional ostracism. He is looked at with disgust by virtually the entire country. His football career may well be over. Unless miraculously vindicated, he’ll carry this with him like a “scarlet letter” for the rest of his life. And all this without a single conviction through the coercive instruments of the state. That is how things are handled by free people.

Share your thoughts on this–don’t hold back!

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It occurs to me that if I’m starting a blog trumpeting the virtues of liberty and of ending coercion, I should probably lay a little philosophical foundation. I’ve had some questions from friends and acquaintances that indicate to me that some people have very little understanding of the underlying philosophical basis for liberty.

If you haven’t seen this Flash animation, take a couple minutes and just watch it. I’ve never seen libertarian philosophy expressed so clearly and simply.

The Philosophy of Liberty

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