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.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

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.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

People across the U.S. today are celebrating Constitution Day (including many of my fellow libertarians). Personally, I’m not sure what there is to celebrate. I understand the argument that it was a document that, on its face, set up a somewhat limited government (especially by today’s standards), but that limited government was orders of magnitude more powerful (even on paper) than the previous one set up under the Articles of Confederation. And I understand that Madison and those guys came up with some seemingly very clever checks and balances that probably seemed really cool to people that were used to powerful monarchs, but all those checks and balances were functions of one single government. If the government wants to, there’s nothing to theoretically prevent it from doing whatever it wants. Even allowing voters the occasional choice of rulers is a largely meaningless check since nothing can be done between elections, and the majority of voters almost always vote for the candidate who promises them the biggest chunk of their neighbors’ money or the biggest expansion of government’s ability to make their neighbors behave the way they want.

The U.S. Constitution specifically gives the federal government 18 enumerated powers. To make matters worse, it contains vague language, like the Commerce Clause, the General Welfare Clause, and the Necessary and Proper Clause, which have made it frighteningly easy for the government to continually interpret new powers into existence for itself. In fact, the only way the Federalists were even able to get the Constitution ratified was by including the Bill of Rights, which placed specific limits on government power. But even these, as we have seen over and over in our history, can be ignored with great impunity by Presidents and Congresses with a mind to do so.

Ah, you say, but we have the Supreme Court to check the other branches and make sure they don’t violate the Constitution. That’s a nice theory, but that’s not what usually happens. Who appoints the Supreme Court justices? The Executive, with Senate confirmation. There’s no inherent reason for one branch to fear (as Madison hoped) a growth in power by another branch and thus act to stop it. In fact, each branch has the most to gain if it can help the other branches gain more power. And this is exactly what we have seen in reality as each branch has grown ever more powerful and placed ever more severe limits on the ability of individuals to act and interact freely. And the propaganda that has been built up around the Constitution has most Americans mindlessly repeating quaint platitudes about “a blueprint for limited government” and “the Articles of Confederation just didn’t create a strong enough central government to hold the union together” (as if that should ever have been considered a legitimate end in the first place).

So the reality appears to be that the Constitution has had the perverse effect of advancing and legitimizing a perpetually expanding government while convincing the majority of people that it’s supposed to do the opposite.

No, I don’t believe I’ll be celebrating Constitution Day. But I certainly will tip my hat to the Anti-Federalists and supporters of the Bill of Rights, since they saw the Constitution for what it was.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Blogs and opinion columns across the country and across the political spectrum (that is, the artificial conservative-liberal political spectrum) are no doubt calling for Americans to “remember 9/11″ and similar robotic utterances. But what are we supposed to remember, exactly? Like most people, I was shocked at the 9/11 attacks and had the natural human urge to lash out at whoever committed those atrocities and anyone who might be vaguely related to them. Thus did I support the American invasion of Afghanistan, and thus did I proudly serve in the fourth troop rotation of Operation Enduring Freedom, stationed at Bagram Airfield with my National Guard unit.

But I’ve studied and learned a lot since that time and have since removed myself from the unhealthy nationalistic rage that previously clouded my faculties. The fact is that the United States attacked a country (yes, a country controlled by a primitive, violent, despicable regime…like many others around the world) that was not threatening American citizens. It’s common knowledge that humans have a tendency to sort themselves into tribal divisions. The state has taken full advantage of that unfortunate evolutionary holdover and convinced a great many people from both of the state-sponsored parties that anyone who opposes the U.S. government or its totalitarian and interventionist policies actually opposes the American people and our “freedom.” Yes, some of the Islamic fundamentalists probably oppose our freedom…but so do the Christian fundamentalists who live here among us! The main problem is our government, despite the wishes of most of the people it rules, has taken it upon itself to try to remake the world in its own image (which is especially contradictory and destructive since there are so many different ideas within the state apparatus of what the image actually is).

What it comes down to is:

1) The people who attacked us were murderous religious maniacs who happened to be using a particular country as a base of operations.

2) We had no right to invade either Afghanistan or (most certainly) Iraq (though the people who lost family members in the 9/11 attacks would, I think, be justified in hiring private security forces to seek out and capture or kill bin Laden and his co-conspirators).

3) Continuing the support of our presence in either country is not much different than supporting a mugger who has begun to beat and rob an innocent person based on the argument that this person, now confused and disoriented, is ripe for further mugging by others until we “stabilize” his situation.

In memory of the terrible events of 9/11/01, I suggest we call for the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of American troops and other personnel and money from Iraq and Afghanistan.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Don Boudreaux is never accused of mincing his words, and there’s no trace of equivocation here when he quite properly skewers Ted Kennedy and his hunger for power: Ted Kennedy’s Appetites.

Don nicely illustrates the thoughts that go through my head when I hear someone hold up a statist politician as an example of someone doing great and noble and selfless things for their fellow man.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

It should come as no surprise that I do not mourn the loss of any statist politician, except to the extent of any concern I have that they might be replaced by someone even worse. In that vein, the death of Teddy Kennedy is no cause of sorrow for me, and Don Boudreaux points out one of Kennedy’s final acts of despicable political maneuvering here: Lion of the Senate.

So Kennedy first pushes to restrict the power of the governor while that position is occupied by Mitt Romney (a statist of a different stripe) and then pushes for more power for the governor when his own brand of statist holds the office. Just one last abuse of power in a long career of such abuse.

Kennedy was a consummate politician in the truest sense of the word. Politics relates to the use of government power to coerce others, and a politician is one who practices such actions. Kennedy used his position in the political world to escape what would almost certainly have been a prison sentence for someone less well-connected in the death of Mary Jo Kopechne, as well as to get away with things like drunkenly harassing college girls in D.C. bars (as witnessed first hand by a friend of mine a few years back). He also pushed some of the most atrocious abuses of government power, including minimum wage laws, confiscation of wealth from those who earned it to transfer it to those who did not (with the government taking its cut, of course), violations of the 2nd Amendment, and increased government control and regulation of business, education, and the health care process.

That’s not to say he didn’t take non-statist positions on some things (women’s rights, immigration, gay rights, etc), but his overall effect was massively destructive of human freedom and prosperity. Just ask John McCain, who said Kennedy was “the single most effective member of the Senate if you want to get results.” When the Senate ‘gets results,’ that usually involves expanding the size and scope of government (that is, increasing the overall level of coercion in society).

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

The recent USA Today opinion column by Steny Hoyer and Nancy Pelosi reeks of double standards.

So people who are opposed to any kind of socialist health coverage reforms who attend town hall meetings to express their opposition to their Congressthings are “un-American.” But when people who were disgusted with Bush and GOP policies (like starting wars) protested quite loudly for a good 8 years, it was deemed (correctly, for the most part) by Democratic politicians to be an exercise in the right to free speech.

The charge that these health care protesters are being ‘put up to it’ by the Republican and Libertarian parties is both hypocritical and inaccurate.

First, the anti-Bush protesters were just as much put up to it as these anti-Obama protesters are; that is, they were already strongly opposed to the Bush policies and the Democratic (and sometimes Libertarian) Party helped organize and focus their opposition in the form of protests and speaking out at events held by Republican politicians. What’s the difference?

Second, there is nothing at all wrong with an organization such as a political party organizing its members to ‘ambush’ politicians by showing up in force and demanding they answer tough questions. That’s one of the things for which political parties exist. As economies progress, the division of labor results in increasing specialization in order to use resources ever more efficiently, thus creating wealth. Some people (political party staff) specialize in identifying opportunities to protest a policy they disagree with and organizing people who agree with them to get out there and raise hell. So people who genuinely disagree with a policy strongly enough to protest against it but don’t have time to identify opportunities and organize their friends simply join political parties or interest groups that e-mail them the latest plans for grassroots protests and then head on over after work.

Sounds like Steny and Nancy are just a little too thin-skinned for a taste of what their own people have been doing to the GOP for the past 8 years.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

After my post yesterday about Harry Reid’s comments, I received some interesting feedback in one particular forum where I linked the post. A couple of people appeared to be amused that I considered the New Deal and the government aggression leading up to it to be destructive. The following was basically my response to them (and it seemed like it would make a good stand-alone blog post):

The Great Depression was the result of the bursting of a government-created inflationary bubble (sound familiar?) combined with government policies pushed first by Republican Herbert Hoover and then by Democrat FDR that prevented prices and wages from falling to their natural market level and prevented unsound investments from being liquidated, which, while being temporarily painful, would have initiated a rapid readjustment of supply and demand and a return to productivity and employment–all without the government programs that plunged the country into permanent (seemingly) socialism and monetary manipulation.

Note that when the same basic initial conditions occurred in the early 1840s, the government did nothing to prevent the necessary price adjustments, and the period 1839-43 experienced a decrease in investment but an INCREASE in real consumption of 21% and in real GNP by 16%, whereas the period 1929-33 (with government controls interfering with the operation of the market) saw a DECREASE in real consumption of 19% and of real GNP by 30% (as discussed by Murray Rothbard in A History of Money and Banking in the United States).

So, the earlier depression came to a swift end when the government did not attempt to ’soften the blow’ or prop up the house of cards, but the Great Depression dragged on for years and caused incredible ruin when the government tried to work its Keynesian voodoo on the economy. Sadly, we appear today to be following the path of oppression and ruin rather than freedom and rebuilding.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Wow. I did a double-take on this one. Senator Harry Reid is claiming that this Congress has “passed more serious, substantive laws than any Congress since President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s first term.” Harry, Harry, Harry…

FDR’s first term (notwithstanding the incredible damage done by the preceding Hoover administration) did immense damage to our country, both deepening and prolonging what should have been a short-lived depression and laying the groundwork for the quasi-socialist authoritarian state the United States has become.

Harry Reid has just admitted (and is apparently proud of) the fact that our current Congress, in conjunction with the FDR-like authoritarian socialist Barack Obama, is on its way to repeat the catastrophic mistakes of that group of irrational miscreants from the 1930s.

Harry, thank you for doing my job for me by making clear the need to abolish the government before it can destroy any more lives.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Matt Drew, a resident of Durham and a local Libertarian Party activist, is running for Durham City Council. He’s looking to shake up the way things are done:

The inevitable question that gets asked is, why should I vote for you?  And my answer is: Chickens.  The debate over urban chickens in Durham stretched over months, three public hearings, and finally ended in February 2009 with a 7-0 vote in favor of allowing them.  Now, I support people having chickens on their property – as a Libertarian, how could I do otherwise?  The problem is not with the issue.  The problem is the default.

The Durham City Council is set to “default deny”: that which is not expressly permitted is forbidden.  In computer security this is a good thing; in a government, it’s a bad thing.  It took incredible effort to convince the Council to permit people to do something, as if it is the Council’s place to decide what peaceful people do in their homes and on their land without disturbing their neighbors.  And it took months to make what should have been a simple decision.  Are these people hurting anyone?  Are they stealing from anyone?  Are they causing anyone suffering?  Then why are we even talking about this?  It should have been a done deal weeks before.  Citizens shouldn’t have to prove why it’s a good idea to have chickens; the Council should have to prove why they should be banned.  The debate occurred in entirely the wrong direction, and as a result took far too long and wasted an enormous amount of time and energy.

I had the pleasure of spending an afternoon working the LP booth with Matt at the Eno River Festival a few weeks ago. He may not be a radical market anarchist like me (I would probably run on a platform calling for the city council to abolish itself or something), but he’s a great guy and a genuine libertarian. If you’re one of my local Durhamite readers, check him out, and consider voting for him and mentioning him to your friends.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!