No Coercion

As I was working the booth for the Libertarian Party of North Carolina at the Festival for the Eno on Friday, I was approached by a woman who proclaimed, inexplicably, that since she was a biological scientist she knew that a libertarian society could never work. I asked her if she could explain what she meant, and she said that she has “just seen too much bullshit, you know?” She then made a few more vague generalizations (that could just as easily have been applied to her feelings about pizza or gardening) before finally making herself clear by stating her belief that you could only do away with government if everyone in the society was good and never tried to harm or take advantage of anyone else. Ahh, now I see (although what it had to do with being a biological scientist I’ll never know).

So, what we have is a recurring argument against the idea of a free, stateless society: that libertarianism is utopian and can’t work in the real world of flawed, and sometimes evil, human beings.

I believe that argument has things completely backwards. One of the great things about libertarianism is that it accepts that we live in an imperfect world and that it works just fine when you include flawed humans in the mix. It’s self-regulating and at the same time involves no top-down goal for creating a perfect world.

The majority of market participants always want to minimize violence and maximize protection of person and property, so market mechanisms will always tend to arise (as long as there is not a state to get in the way) to accomplish those goals. Even with the government in the way, the market attempts to do that in the form of various private security agencies, private arbitration agreements and businesses, charities that work with at-risk kids, even neighbors who organize to watch out for one another.

In addition, despite oppressive and destructive government regulations on nearly every conceivable consumer good and service and entire agencies designed to restrict things like food and medicine, there are rating companies and organizations that evaluate goods and services and provide the information through the voluntary processes of the market. You could get rid of the FDA and state licensing laws, and such companies would stand ready to obtain and disseminate information to consumers at various levels of detail and prices points, with the added benefit that no one would be using violence (as is currently done) to prevent you from getting a certain medicine or using a real estate agent, plumber, or hairdresser not approved by the state.

It seems the real utopians are those who claim that government can solve problems. Instead of accepting that the world is imperfect and allowing people the freedom to interact voluntarily in an attempt to make the best of it, believers in government want to try to “fix” various problems by force in order to create a more perfect world (or their idea of it). And I think it’s especially utopian to believe that you can set up a “limited” government and expect it to stay that way when you’ve given it a monopoly on the use of force within its territory (I’m talking to you, Founding Fathers). Government supporters seem to think that a group of people who are given the power to legitimately (so to speak) coerce others will somehow not be subject to the same human flaws as the rest of us. For some reason, once someone is a government official he’s supposed to be a selfless servant of “the people,” a concept particularly popular among supporters of democracy since they believe that being nominally answerable to the voters is some kind of special restraint on abuse of power (they seem oddly unaware of over 200 years of history here in America and in other represenative democracies).

So on one side you have libertarianism, which (in its undiluted form) holds that life is not perfect and that the best we can do is live in the most just way possible by abolishing government. And on the other side you have statism, which holds that it’s possible to forcibly correct the imperfections of life.

Maybe I’m wrong, but which one sounds more utopian to you?

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 A recent Gallup poll on political ideology was a great example of how bizarre the analysis of American ideologies is. The poll indicated (according to the pollsters) that conservatives were the largest ideological group in America right now. What it actually shows is that when given the artificial choice of “conservative,” “moderate,” and “liberal,” the greatest number (40%) chose “conservative.”

That doesn’t really tell me much.

First, how does someone like me (a libertarian who rejects the initiation of force in all facets of life) choose a point along a simple one-dimensional continuum that has at one end “conservative” (someone who tends to reject the initiation of force in markets but embraces it in social and foreign affairs) and at the other end “liberal” (someone who tends to reject force initiation in social affairs and certain foreign matters but embraces such coercion in the markets)? In my experience, many people who are much closer to being libertarian end up selecting “conservative” when given such limited options (possibly because they place more weight on the economic side of things).

And what does “moderate” even mean? Maybe that could be a libertarian, but maybe it could be someone who prefers a ‘moderate’ amount of coercion in all aspects of society, thus not fitting ‘conservative’ or ‘liberal’ categories. Or it could be a pure authoritarian or populist who prefers massive coercion in all areas. Or maybe it’s one of those individuals who, lacking any sort of internally consistent moral foundation, likes to “judge each issue independently” to decide how much they want to initiate force against their fellow man. The fact is that all these different people would have some reason to choose “moderate” on the nonsensical “conservative-liberal” continuum.

A pretty accurate way to determine ideology is to think about it as a two-dimensional space with one axis for economic issues and one axis for personal/social issues. The World’s Smallest Political Quiz uses this method. You could also construct a three-dimensional space, with the third axis being for how strongly you support military force to solve problems.

I get the sense that libertarians (again, those who oppose coercing their fellow man in any realm of society) are a growing segment of the ideological space in the U.S. It would be nice to see a major polling organization include that category in these kinds of polls.  Otherwise, they’re really just publishing nonsense.

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Here is my contribution to the world wide Blog Action Day 2008. The topic this year is poverty, and the goal is to initiate global discussion about how to alleviate it (or something like that).

There are basically two kind of poverty in the world: natural and man-made.

The natural variety is the result of things like drought, disease, natural disasters, and just generally a natural lower degree of transformation of natural resources into beneficial goods. As civilizations’ technologies advance they have increasing ability to transform resources and thus improve their standards of living. A lot of this we have little control over (i.e. we can’t just protest in the street and suddenly have a futuristic civilization where everything is thousands of times cheaper and of better quality and sickness and disease are historic curiosities).

The man-made variety of poverty is much more interesting. This is what results when someone causes, through means that are not mutually voluntary, someone else to be poorer than they would have been otherwise.

So, if I go to Bill and say that he can’t operate a taxi service unless he takes some classes that I offer, passes my tests, and pays me a bunch of money for a taxi license (and that I get to take his money and lock him away somewhere if he operates the business without my approval), then I have just made Bill poorer than he otherwise would have been, either because of the time and money I force him to spend or because he opts not to go into business. In addition, I’ve made Bill’s potential customers poorer, as they now have to either spend more in the now less competitive taxi market or spend more by finding a more expensive way to get around. The same applies to anyone I want to prevent from doing business without my official license: real estate agents, doctors, nurses, lawyers, plumbers, electricians, hairdressers, or street performers.

Another form of man-made poverty is full-fledged prohibition of something. For instance, if Jack wants to start a business delivering letters and I tell him that I only want one organization to deliver letters and will forcibly lock him up if he tries it, I have just made him and his potential customers poorer than they would have been. The same forced poverty is involved if Jack wants to start his own passenger train service, crime prevention company, court system, etc.

More man-made poverty is created if I tell Mike that he can only offer insurance plans if they cover certain risks and are priced below a certain maximum level that I’ve set. The subset of Mike’s potential customers who would have bought the now illegal insurance policy but now are forced to go without insurance or pay more for a policy that is beyond what they need are now poorer, and of course Mike is poorer because he is forced to forgo a certain amount of business he would have earned absent the rule. Furthermore, with maximums on what Mike can charge, his customers as a whole are made poorer as he has to raise everyone’s rates to make up for the loss incurred on any policies whose natural market price is he not allowed to charge. Many of his customer end up paying more than what they would otherwise, and some are again forced to go without insurance because they can’t afford the new cheapest policy.

Now we come to another way for me to create poverty. Jane wants to open a business providing some valuable good or service. She knows that teenagers and other unskilled workers would do really well in her business, and that’s perfect because she can only afford to open the business if she can find employees that will work for $4 per hour. She goes around and talks to some teenagers eager to start learning some job skills and homeless and poverty-stricken people that can’t find work anywhere else, and they’re excited to come work for her and start getting work experience or working their way out of poverty. But then along comes good ol’ me, with the threat of force to back me up, and I tell Jane that I’m really sorry but I can’t allow her to pay her employees anything less than a minimum wage of $8 per hour because it would just not be right. Not wanting to be imprisoned, Jane cancels her plans to open the business. The teenagers return to whatever they were doing before, now missing out on a great chance to start developing job skills that would put them on the road to success, and the homeless and poverty-stricken are prevented from having the opportunity to starting climbing the economic ladder.

Now we come to a really interesting point in our investigation. Man-made poverty is also created when I force Sally to turn over part of her income or wealth to me so that I can provide things for the ‘common good.’ If something is really for the common good, it shouldn’t require compulsion in order to fund it. On top of that, I need to spend a big chunk of the money I took from Sally to pay for my gang of heavily armed enforcers, my army of administrative and regulatory personnel, my court system that conveniently will decide any cases in which I might be accused of doing something wrong, etc. But the real kicker is that a lot of the money I’m taking from Sally I’m using to provide welfare checks and related benefits to those people whose poverty I’m responsible for. Most of the rest of it goes to pay for the poverty-creating policies mentioned above and many more that there’s no time to go into now (i.e. the FDA, NASA, public housing, banking regulation, public schools, drug prohibition, etc.). And not to worry, if I run out of tax money to spend on my programs, I’ll just print more money! Yes, it will devalue the currency and make everyone poorer, but hey–at least I can say I’m “doing something” and get enough of you people to fall for it that you’ll vote for me again in the next election.

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Senator Elizabeth Dole has launched an sustained attack against some of her constituents as part of her campaign for re-election. In a press release to her supporters and a mass mailing that’s been going out to voters, Dole attacks her Democratic opponent, Kay Hagan, by pointing out that she attended a fundraiser held by a couple of atheists, whom she describes as “vile.” Here’s the mailer:

Vile? As someone on another blog pointed out, can you imagine her calling some religious group (like Jews or Muslims) “vile?” But those who choose science and reason over superstition are described as vile by a sitting U.S. Senator and no one even blinks.

And in the press release, she describes atheists as people “most North Carolinians would not be comfortable having over for dinner.” Again, this is one of my U.S. Senators. I’ve got news for you, Senator Dole–you had dinner with a future atheist in the fall of 2000. How about them godless apples?

Now, some would argue that this bigoted and primitive behavior by Senator Dole means that anyone who believes in being a decent human being and not spewing hatred at your neighbors should vote for Kay Hagan. I disagree. Both Republicans and Democrats have an appalling record when it comes to their treatment of those who don’t believe in the supernatural. Both use the religious, and their susceptibility to manipulation, to advance their own ends. The only party that truly stands for eliminating the irrational hatred of atheists is the party that would end the church-state alliance once and for all - the Libertarian Party. And it just so happens there’s an outstanding Libertarian in this race that the media simply chooses not to mention. Chris Cole is running on the Libertarian ticket against Dole and Hagan, and is now polling around 5-7% (when he’s actually included on the polls).

Cole and the Libertarian Party seek the dismantlement of the state apparatus, which would leave nothing with which to coercively promote religion or suppress atheists. Hagan, on the other hand, has a platform that is a laundry list of expansions of government scope and power. Also, after perusing her web site, she doesn’t seem to have a single press release hitting back at Dole for her anti-atheist vitriol. No, neither Hagan nor the Democratic Party are allies of atheists and the non-religious. Their schemes for promoting government will do nothing but further threaten everyone’s individual liberty and natural rights, believers and non-believers alike.

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I was excited to see that the bailout plan (at least the first incarnation of it) was voted down yesterday. I was disappointed, however, to see the market plunge so dramatically in response. This points to the socialist/fascist/statist connection between the government and the market.

How is it that we have permitted such a degeneration into the uncivilized state of affairs in which a primitive, parasitic, political class can affect business transactions through the actions they take (or fail to take) in the halls of Congress? We should be ashamed of ourselves for voting for these despicable creatures and for allowing them to remain in power. From the writing of the Constitution on, we have steadily given the organized criminals we call politicians more and more power over us and our economy. This, as I’ve mentioned before, has led to a class of large businesses proficient at using the laws to crush their competitors.

But it’s really our fault for asking politicians to fix various things we have perceived as problems through the years. What a primitive mindset. We don’t like something, so we team up with others to use violence (government) to make them bend to our will, whether it’s child labor, low wages, pollution, drugs, prostitution, or the way a bank is doing business. Rather than take the civilized route and work through voluntary efforts to persuade people to change their actions, we throw the very concept of human dignity and natural rights out the window and point a gun at our perceived “enemies.” We’ve created an inhuman and wealth-destroying entanglement of government and markets, which has led directly to the crisis in which we now find ourselves.

We’re now at a point where we can grow up and decide to stop our use of force to get what we want, or we can plunge so far into statism that we can’t climb back out. We can say “no” not only to this bailout but to any bailouts, ever. We can say “no” not only to any proposed new regulations but to any regulations, ever. We can demand the dissolution of the IRS and Federal Reserve and an end to the use of violence to restrict banking or any other industry. We can call the entire spectrum of government regulation exactly what it is–a violation of the natural rights of every one of us and a sentence for our children and grandchildren to never achieve the prosperity and happiness that could be theirs under a true free market.

We can sever the destructive link between government and the economy, but our window of opportunity may be closing quickly.

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All the recent news about so-called anarchists getting violent at the Republican National Convention is really bugging me. Despite popular opinion, anarchy and anarchism have nothing to do with chaos and violence, and these nut jobs are not anarchists. True anarchists (like us hardcore libertarians) support the abolition of government (i.e. a group of people with a monopoly on the use of force in a geographic area). True anarchists look for the day when individuals are free to interact voluntarily and prosper without having force initiated against them by an organization claiming to have a legitimate sovereign power to make and enforce laws. Now these punks breaking things and lighting fires in the streets are not true anarchists because their goal is the destruction of capitalism and the free market. But since the free market (to the extent that it still exists in this country) is simply the natural way that individuals spontaneously interact and produce and exchange goods and services in the absence of government force, the destruction of such an arrangement necessarily entails the initiation of force against others and the establishment of some sort of unimaginably powerful government to prevent people from continuing in their natural, free interactions. So, these ‘anarchists’ protesting at both the GOP conventions and some Democratic events (and nearly every free trade meeting) are about as far from supporting actual anarchy as possible. They are, in fact, totalitarians. What’s funny is they don’t realize how similar they are to the political parties they’re protesting. It’s the Libertarian Party convention at which they should have been protesting back in April (but of course no one but C-SPAN even covered that).

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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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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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…of the Post of the Day Award from The Rising Blogger on July 24. My post on immigration was given this award the other day. I haven’t yet figured out how to add my ‘winner’ graphic to my sidebar, so I’ll just include it here:

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