Well done for yet again tirelessly defending Rothbardian Libertarianism. After a year or two taking on the trolls at Old Holborn and elsewhere I have given up as a result of learning a bit about the irrationality of most people and the futility of the tribal instinct to build consensus. Plus I’m not very successful.
Your recent spat with Longrider was fairly exemplary of this sort of thing. He was clearly spoiling for a fight and his pugilistic point scoring was a long way from reasoned debate. Some people are incapable of following a rational argument and I no longer waste my time on them.
Your most recent adversary (andcabbagesandkings) was comparatively refreshing in that he was actually aware of libertarian theory and wasnt coming from an emotionally charged irrational opposition as most critics of libertarianism do.
Such 'why im not a libertarian' or 'why I left libertarianism' articles all tend to follow similar feelings (I say feelings quite intentionally as it is their lack of guiding first principles that ultimately undermines their position). Those non-libertarians that believe they have considered and then rejected libertarianism or former libertarians that have 'moved on' all tend to hold the same misconceptions. Such apparently subtle yet fundamental misunderstandings as 'wider' conceptions of coercion, or positive versus negative rights, cloud what is a clear and consistent ideology which is probably why such individuals feel it is not for them. If one doesnt completely understand the perversion of incentives, the cast iron law of special interests/regulatory capture or that there is no safe, controllable level of coercion then one will tend to stray back toward the more intellectually simple and superficially attractive statist 'solutions' based on coercion.
Another significant factor in such intellectual rejections is that of subconcious ego massage or even intentional status posturing. I point to Peter Hitchens the former aetheist. Making financial and intellectual capital from books on aetheism and then following a high profile volte face into Christianity. What keeps a writer more 'interesting' to the unprincipled consumer of 'intelligentsia,' consistent adherence to the same 'tired, boring' principle, or chopping and changing between new and exciting opposites? This is why I think a lot of libertarian bloggers (particularly in the US, where the background understanding is greater and thus the general standard higher, so such 'next level' considerations are possible) make a great deal about being 'left libertarians'. “Oh I used to describe myself as an anarcho-capitalist but now I reject all that 'old-fashioned' stuff in favour of new, trendy, compassionate lefty values.”
we can see such self-contradiction even within this single blog post from cabbagesandkings. Near the start he outlines how he still understands that markets are the best mechanism for the distribution of scarce resources. But then in the latter parts where he outlines his 'issues' with libertarianism he talks of his preference for state directed/planned provision of healthcare resources. This is inconsistent. One cannot pick and choose when and where to apply a principle. Otherwise it is no longer a principle merely a subjective guide of personal aesthetics.
The 'healthcare debate' is a thorn in the side of statist free market advocates. Only the Rothbardian free market anarchists can provide solid an consistent arguments and solutions that explain and solve the problems that are endlessly churned by the statist-quo. The 'debate' as it is usually framed consists of two tribes endlessly banging on about the NHS vs the 'American model'. (there are few who consider the other statist solutions of state payer – private provider models such as malaysia etc etc). The irrational, tribal statists cannot see past their traditional frames of reference. Only us free market anarchists can point to regulatory capture and special interests from the medical and financial worlds as the root cause of the problem.
What causes people to challenge free market solutions is that they cannot see the root cause of the problem. This can be seen in healthcare, housing and education. All the biggies. All 3 are artificially expensive due to state restriction of the market mechanism. There is huge demand so entrepreneurs should be incentivised into increasing supply. Thousands of people should be setting up medical practices in order to grab a bit of the action. But the special interests want their position protected, they dont want this extra competition. The state is only too happy to oblige in exchange for a cash/power grab and steps in to fuck with the market mechanisms.
Cabbagesandkings cannot or will not see this and so starts from the a priori assumption that healthcare is some magical exception to economic principles and because it is so expensive, irrational utopian idealised left wing statist solutions are the answer.
Same with education (as UK public education is considered 'free' and, due to compulsory payment through taxation and the resultant double payment problem, non state alternatives are pushed to the luxury market, noone considers the cost of state education vs private) unionised, uncompetitive suppliers have no incentives and so costs spiral. Those who cannot see into this intentionally obfuscated root cause often leap to externalise the horrendous costs through coercive state solutions.
And the real biggy common to most anti-libertarian stuff like this and that underlies both the arguments of cabbagesandkings and Longrider, is land/work. What I mean is that they both, in slightly different ways, found fault with strict non intervention in the relationship between employer and employee. They found last ditch footholds for statism in their perception that there is some unjust imbalance in such a relationship. That the state must exist and step in to stand up for the little guy (again ignoring the empirical argument that the big guy controls the state). Coercive restriction on the use of land is the criminally overlooked key to such objections. Why most libertarians do not seem to mention free use of land as much as they mention free use of drugs I have no idea. I have seen various estimates that a mere 6-13% of uk landmass is legally permissible for building on. This absolutely colossal market restriction has a corollary in the equally gigantic effect it has on costs of living. When supply is restricted and demand remains the same then prices, quite rightly, go up. In order to afford a place to sleep people have to earn more. (this is a double win for the state that taxes these extra earnings and the businesses) This radically shifts the natural balance in the voluntary agreements between employer and employee. If we ran the numbers of a theoretical anarchist island in which 100% of land was free for the owners to use as they wished, we could calculate the natural cost of housing. OldHolborn once quoted some figures relating to average price of an acre of agricultural land vs an acre of urban land with planning permission (something like 6k vs 90k). with such vastly reduced living costs the economic 'coercion' to work (to allow our opponents' fallacious misconception) would be lower. Employers would naturally have to do more to attract workers. There would be little need for legitimised blackmailing unionism or coercive interventions in the jobs market.
Even the majority of 'libertarians' fail to see the empirical history of coercive political rule. Perhaps it is no accidental failure but an unthinking avoidance? They refuse to accept the findings of public choice / institutional economics that political authority always grows toward totalitarianism. Bryan Caplan, and Patri Friedman have some great presentations regarding this failure of libertarians.
There is no constitution, no candidate that ever has or ever can control coercion. Tolkien knew this. In the LOTR scene in which Frodo attempts to offload the responsibility of bearing the ring of power to Gandalf, the old wizard explains that he would be tempted to use its power for good but essentially that temptation would corrupt him (Tolkien outlined his anarchist tendencies in a letter to his son Christopher, even going so far as to explicitly use that term. LOTR can be read in a very anarchist way. There is much about the corruptibility of men and the danger of power etc. the idyllic shire has no king and is staunchly non interventionist.)
One of the reasons I stopped online debating was when I learned how people rationalise. We think it is a fair competition of ideas among open minded individuals but unfortunately this seems not to be the case. Stefan Molyneux has material explaining that irrational individuals (in molyneux' analysis irrationality is not their natural state – irrationality is a corruption of human nature brought about by authoritarian parenting/authoritarian education/authoritarian religiosity) form their 'arguments' from ex-post-facto justifications for their immediate emotional instinctual response. One 'feels' a certain way and then subconsciously rationalises that position after the fact. So in the case of cabbagesandkings, if I indulge in the risky method of 'reading between the lines', it would seem that he may have a cultural predisposition toward socialised healthcare and welfare for the poor. This has always rankled throughout his time as a libertarian and ditching the consistent application of the non aggression axiom is a way of relieving this cognitive dissonance. His emotive subconscious can now breathe a sigh of relief as the weight of rational principle is lifted from his conditioned preference for familial/tribal 'care' to be extended to the political scale of the nation state.
As a coincidence, in a week when youre debating two bloggers on themes of utlitarianism vs deontological libertarianism, I happened to finally get round to reading some articles I have had on my reading list for a while. I cant remember where I saw them mentioned (possibly David Friedman's site) but they are transcripts of symposia of good libertarian/anarchist thinkers on the question of deontology vs consequentialism or what's right vs what works.
http://www.libertyunbound.com/sites/files/printarchive/Liberty_Magazine_December_2004.pdf page 18
http://www.libertyunbound.com/sites/files/printarchive/Liberty_Magazine_January_2005.pdf page 31
despite coming into libertarianism (right at the deep end of anarchy rather than the more common gradual realisation of normal right wing statism into minarchism into grudging reluctant acceptance of anarchism) by reading David Friedman's consequentialist 'Machinery of Freedom' I am very much a deontolgical anarchist. I am an unashamed follower of Stefan Molyneux and I literally dont think there is a single word he has spoken or written that I disagree with (not particularly intellectually rigorous of me I know but he is always right!).
I sought out these two articles because I have huge respect for David Friedman and I knew that a thinker like him would not have accidentally ignored deontological arguments. I wanted to know why he didnt think what I thought and whether I might be barking up the wrong tree. If you read the two articles you will see that he actually has a much more subtle and ambivalent position than MOF may imply. The panel also dispense with the common obstacle of lifeboat/flagpole situations. This may be of particular interest to you given the two, similar debates youve had this week. Molyneux too has dealt with the lifeboat/flagpole objection which actually turns out to be a bit of a strawman irrelevance. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPJkr7xQxL0
on a separate Molyneux related note, cabbagesandkings (longrider seemed ignorant of such ideas) challenged Rothbard's philosophical basis – the conception of property rights in the self and homesteading. Rothbard is excellent and I am not saying he got anything wrong at all, however I think Molyneux does a slightly better job of establishing/explaining this principle. Just a stylistic/presentational difference – their philosophical point is the same lockean position http://www.fdrurl.com/UPBPDF
then again Hoppe weighs in with Habermasian argumentation ethics and gets even old Rothbard excited as Kinsella writes here in a fascinating piece on deontology http://mises.org/daily/5322/Argumentation-Ethics-and-Liberty-A-Concise-Guide
another good source for deontological explanation is a novel by an objectivist (one who thankfully finds fault with Rand) http://www.oldnicksguidetohappiness.co.uk/ . it lays out a similar list of arguments you will find in the contents of Molyneux' Universally Preferable Ethics. It establishes objectively establishes self ownership with step by step explanations of the logical conclusions we must derive from our senses etc.
Saturday, 17 September 2011
Wednesday, 14 September 2011
Just like Mohamed Bouazizi in Tunisia. When will people wake up and realise that far from helping the poor, the state keeps them poor.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/8235324.stm http://zimbabweonlinepress.com/index.php?news=1195 Yet another individual helpless in the face of coercive oppression takes their life. just another man trying to work to feed his family prevented from doing so by petty bureaucracy. another self-immolation. fucking sick of it. when i bang on about regulatory capture and cartelisation its not just irrelevant economic theorising. it has real world implications. take a good hard look. this is the effect of coercion. you cant control it. you cant limit it. it is cancer. there is no safe or desirable amount.
Thursday, 8 September 2011
Wednesday, 24 August 2011
What is it good for?
Sympathy for soldiers should not entail a concomitant endorsement of war. No matter how brave and selfless they may be, no matter how highly you value their individual sacrifice do not allow such reactions to be manipulated into supporting war.
Individual soldiers are as much victims as the other human collateral of state aggression. The entirely natural human reaction of empathy for their suffering should never be impressed into support, endorsement or legitimisation of the evil they are sent into.
The only way to support soldiers as individual people is to be completely opposed to sending them to war in the first place. Furthermore reducing funding for the military, one hopes, may reduce the number of individuals that can be tempted.
The current propaganda paradigm is that heart strings be tugged for 'our brave boys' to build support for aggression, militarism and war. 'Feel sorry for the amputees? Then vote for military funding'.
A shark will only eat your friend if you push him into the sea. If you both keep out of the water you'll keep your limbs. In the same way, a soldier can only become a casualty of war if you send him to war.
Monday, 15 August 2011
where does victim disarmament lead?
a whole ton of riot inspired blog posts going round at the mo echoing the same sentiment re ownership of the tools of defence.
this one from mises.org is good but this comment from the facebook posting of the article is downright stunning! thankyou Jan Paulson whoever you are
enjoy...
as the mighty doug stanhope says in a diatribe of his against drug prohibition. start your argument in the right place. start from where you want to be. dont compromise for the benefit of the righteous puritans. we should demand the freedom to put as much of whatever we like into our of fucking bodies because we own those bodies and noone else has the right to control us. start the argument from that point. if thats what floats your boat start off by saying that yes you do want to inject crack into your eyeballs. dont give into the bullshit compromise that the libertarian debate has something to do with medicinal marijuana or access to unregulated prescriptions. likewise, as Jan Paulson (unknown facebook user/commenter as far as i know) says above, do the same with gun ownership. dont plead like a pathetic serf for the right to control vermin or hunt for food!? start from where you want to be. you have the right to protect yourself and whats more, noone has the right to prevent you from doing so.
this one from mises.org is good but this comment from the facebook posting of the article is downright stunning! thankyou Jan Paulson whoever you are
enjoy...
In 1929 the Soviet Union established gun control. From 1929 to 1953 approximately 20,000,000 dissidents, unable to defend themselves were rounded up and exterminated.
In 1911 Turkey established gun control. From 1915 to 1917 approximately 1,500,000 Armenians, unable to defend them selves were rounded up and exterminated.
In 1928 Germany established gun control. From 1939 to 1945 approximately 30,000,000 Jews, Homosexuals, gypsies, mentally ill and political dissidents, unable to defend themselves were rounded up and exterminated.
In 1935 China established gun control. From 1948 to 1952 approximately 20,000,000 political dissidents, unable to defend themselves were rounded up and exterminated
In 1964 Guatemala established gun control. From 1963 to 1981 approximately 100,000 Mayan Indians, unable to defend themselves were rounded up and exterminated
In 1970 Uganda established gun control. From 1971 to 1979 approximately 300,000 Christians, unable to defend themselves were rounded up and exterminated
In 1976 Cambodia established gun control. From 1976 to 1977 approximately 1,000,000 educated people, unable to defend themselves were rounded up and exterminated.
The total number of victims that have lost their lives to Governments because of gun control in the last century is approximately 56,000,000.
Our Forefathers did not write the 2nd Amendment to protect our Right to hunt fuckin’ ducks. They wrote it in the same spirit that the Magna Charta was written. They wrote it to insure that OUR government would ALWAYS be in fear of the People and that’s the way it should be.
as the mighty doug stanhope says in a diatribe of his against drug prohibition. start your argument in the right place. start from where you want to be. dont compromise for the benefit of the righteous puritans. we should demand the freedom to put as much of whatever we like into our of fucking bodies because we own those bodies and noone else has the right to control us. start the argument from that point. if thats what floats your boat start off by saying that yes you do want to inject crack into your eyeballs. dont give into the bullshit compromise that the libertarian debate has something to do with medicinal marijuana or access to unregulated prescriptions. likewise, as Jan Paulson (unknown facebook user/commenter as far as i know) says above, do the same with gun ownership. dont plead like a pathetic serf for the right to control vermin or hunt for food!? start from where you want to be. you have the right to protect yourself and whats more, noone has the right to prevent you from doing so.
Wednesday, 10 August 2011
could anarchy really be any worse?!
the most frequent reaction i get to most of my economic/social/political ideas is 'but there'd be anarchy! rioting on the streets, looting!'
well, well well.
many many people in london have just had the deeply unnerving lesson that the state cannot guarantee their security.
alot of people's faith in the state rests on widely held assumptions about the perfect, total and absolute nature of the state.
what we have seen in the last few days is the truth. actual reality. when i suggest anarchism, total individual freedom, even after i explain that we can have (and have had in history) law, order, security, and police without the state people eventually object 'but without state law and order there would be nothing stopping me from burgling or murdering you in the first place!' to which i answer - there is nothing 'stopping' me doing that to you right now. the state does not act like gravity. it reacts to crime occasionally but it does not 'stop' it. the state is not an absolute force of nature or physics. the mere existence of the state police does not stop crime.
people think it does. they think law and order are perfect absolutes. you may have heard that people's fear of crime is massively over inflated in relation to actual crime levels. i worked in the physical security market encountering the effects and truth of crime on a daily basis for years and i can tell you this is very true. the reason why, on any given day in your entire life, you have not been burgled is not because plod were stood by your front door pushing away the violent hordes. it is simply because there just isnt very much crime. if youre reading this you must realise how woefully ineffectual the police are, surely. do you really believe they have any effect on anything? is the fact that you may never have been burgled purely and directly due to the actions of the police or is it simply because there just is not much burglary going on? is the fact that you may have not been mugged every day because a personal copper precedes you on every stroll you take? no its because there are not very many muggers and there is very little mugging. perception versus reality.
but all the sheep lie asleep in their beds safe in the knowledge that the state keeps them safe. it provides security. not even 'security forces' or 'services' but people truly do believe the state just envelopes them in a cuddly blanket of safeness. we've got a state - nothing bad can happen. this abstract notion of security that just emerges from the equally abstract state like a gas.
what these riots and their rapid and wide spreading shows is that even a tax funded national monopoly police force has near zero effect (not because theyre soft or the wrong person is in number 10 - the french riot police are fucking brutal and they still have immense riots). the state does NOTHING. the reason why we tend to have peaceful stable secure lives is because that just happens. i do not mean that there is no need for security services. on the contrary i imagine that in anarcho-libertopia there will be many more times private security personnel than there are now police - what i mean is that we do not need a state to protect us from a fear that is largely imagined. usually there are not riots. in new york when the police went on strike crime rates dropped. the london riots are almost because of the police. youve got a state and there is still looting!
the state does not exist. it is an abstract concept. i dont walk around knifing people left right and centre because the state is there. i just dont stab people. most people dont. most of the time. not because of the state. they just dont.
the state does nothing.
as we have seen it only takes the slightest little spark to reveal to some people this truth. i mean that it only took a few arabian riots in the news a month ago to create a general background thought. it only took the unopposed looting of a 'contraversial' tesco's in bristol's lefty epicentre a few weeks back to add a uk context to this background feeling. and then it only took a police shooting and the ever present fuel of race relations to kick off whole litany of deeply smouldering problems. the kids in birmingham saw that there just isnt anything stopping criminal behaviour in the events of the first night in london. and so they kicked off on the second night. they saw, in their unthinking miseducated ignorance, a truth that noone else can. blinded by a thousand years of the 'benevolent' state none of the academics, journalists, politicians, intellectuals, chattering classes or even bloggers can see that it is not the state that generates, nurtures or protects peaceful voluntary interaction. these fabian subsidised feral scumbags saw within hours that the state's justification from security is complete bullshit.
in a recent episode of some cop drama that my girlfriend follows there was the story of an evil lunatic who strolled into crowded public places such as railway station concourses and started smashing random people to death with a hammer. the truth is that there is absolutely nothing stopping anyone from doing this at any time.
anyway having laboured that rather abstract notion and probably failed to convey my point ill move on
could anarchy have been any worse than the state in the last few days? imagine...
noone to coercively prevent you from defending yourself and others
noone to coercively prevent you from buying, owning and operating any tool you want....
including tools for the job of defense (gun is a scary word but should be no more scary than hammer, kitchen knife, circular saw, spoon or any other lethal unlicensed tool)
noone to coercively limit where you can live through irrational, unjust and hugely overlooked 'planning' laws. cities are largely creations of the state but i shall leave this for another post. i imagine few people living in hackney really dreamed of ending up there.
noone to coercively extort your property, hard earned by yourself through voluntary transactions, and use it to subsidise socially and individually damaging policies. education, housing etc.
noone to coercively extort your property so that you can no longer provide the basic essentials of life such as physical security (the number of victims ive met that knew they should have spent on gates and fences etc but could not afford it on top of 40-60% taxes) and no im not just a gate installer)
noone with the power to unnaturally mix people up. all the talk about 'these kids must be coming from another area' is bollocks. everyone deceives themselves that they live in a nice part of town when in reality they probably dont and even if they do some socialist fifty years ago probably built a fucking 'estate' bang in the middle of a natural and functioning area (i detest the prevalence of the word 'communities' in the news - the only 'community' i want to be a part of is one that i want to be a part of. not one through accident of geography.) egalitarians may not like it but in a natural human world you would not have sink estates next to peaceful productive homes. every single part of the uk has a fucking council estate. every single village, no matter how fancy the other inhabitants consider themselves to be, has a completely unnatural enclave of alien problem causing, tax-subsidised people bang in the middle. i dont care what colour they are - im extremely egalitarian in my hatred - some of the worst scum i have ever seen are white. why this happened if not by some mad intentional political design of social engineering i have no idea.
so as i have briefly outline above there are several policies inherrent to every social-democratic state, no matter its team colours, that caused or at the very least exacerbated the recent riots. but now let us consider what may have happened in an anarchy in reaction...
remember back at the beginning some black guy was shot by some white guys in fancy outfits? now i am not about to speculate or politically revise what may or may not have happened in that case but my point is that what are the chances that a whole bunch of black people would continue to voluntarily subscribe to the services of a largely white security company with, at best, a history of dubious conduct and laughable public relations?
im not called milliband or livingston so i wont excuse or justify abuse of property rights (everything is based on property rights - from the security of your hubcaps to your arsehole) but i will say that without the possibility of voluntarily changing service providers and given the impossibility of political change (voting, blogging, campaigning, petitions, even revolutions - economic choice theory explains why they never work) these people had no way of changing anything. a pointless, irrational outburst of violence is only really understood from this point of view.
i mean if the trolley attendant at tescos runs over my foot i dont piss around trying to get him sacked - i just go to asda. it never comes to this because the pressure is always there. this pressure is not there with the state which explains why its always so unutterably shit at everything.
if my boyfriend was shot erroneously by my security service or they failed to uphold their contractual obligations regarding the protection of my shop i would immediately take my money elsewhere. if, on the other hand, they were free to force me to pay then they could do whatever the fuck they wanted. its a wonder why they dont really.
as with the egyptian protests (no i am not likening the mindless thuggery in the uk to political protest) the egyptian people realised that absent the state they could provide all the services we are continually told can only be provided by coercively funded uniforms. i posted back then (and ranty kindly reblogged it) that the egyptians were running their own refuse collections, providing their own neighbourhood security and even funding and operating a field hospital and media centre in tahrir square. in london over the last few days some people (notably not the anglo-saxon fuckers with the benefit of hundreds of years of indoctrination against autonomy) have provided their own neighbourhood security in response to the revelation that the state barely exists. what us pathetic statist whities have done is to piss around pretending to clean up ffs. yes, its lots of fun to jump on the trendy bandwagon of flash mob social networking 'happenings' and get in the paper holding a mop/broom but it is no more than childsplay. as with diy in almost any area these big groups of dumb fuckwits would have been better off doing what they are best at for that period of time and then paying the money they earned to people who are best at cleaning up. diy is the most economically insane thing anyone can do (with the only caveat being that if you actually enjoy it then it can be seen as an entertainment expense).
(i should leave it for another post but anyone who earns more than any given specialist should fucking well leave it to the specialist do do it faster, better and cheaper. from toilet cleaning to dentistry. economies of scale and specialisation of labour apply just as much to your personal life as they do to arguments against socialism.
anyway i ask you would you rather pay your council tax for the 'terrifying' british bobby or pay for an ex squaddy? yeah even if you like that bit of the state that wears camo, you could still do without the police. a pc costs way more than a squaddy but is undoubtedly less able to perform the core function of the provision of security the pc may have been on more fabian courses but the squaddy will be fitter, have better awareness, reactions and presence.
if, like me, you dont think the state is much good at anything and even if it were that would be as imoral as rape then go for the free market option. you can get 4 security guards for the cost of one pc. each and every street in the country could have a full time private security guard dedicated to patrolling just that area 24/7 for less than it costs to have one guy in an antiquated uniform sat in an office 'covering' a whole town.
or if, for some reason you dont like the rational choice of the market then why not go for the communties option - i would rather pay a super local community contribution or even reciprocate in kind in some kind of militia. i would rather have the amateur Turks, Kurds and Sikhs of london protecting me than the dumb fucks that enjoy dressing up like GI joe.
ill post some links to works explaining voluntary legal systems one of these days. the thing to remember is that once you break the rules you want applied in defence of yourself then your protection agency will no longer be commercially able to uphold those rules on your behalf. in short once you loot a shop noone will prevent the shop owner shooting you.
in short without the state this probably would not have happened.
if it had happened it would have been dealt with effectively, efficiently and expediently.
AND you, as an individual, would have been free to do as you fucking well wanted. there would be no need for 'consensus' no need for tedious media 'examination' no need for more money to be TAKEN from you.
if you wanted to change police you could do instantly. if you wanted to move to the country you could do. if you wanted to spend all your money on guns you could do. if you wanted to build a 20ft wall around your family you could do.
Could anarchy really be any worse than this?
well, well well.
many many people in london have just had the deeply unnerving lesson that the state cannot guarantee their security.
alot of people's faith in the state rests on widely held assumptions about the perfect, total and absolute nature of the state.
what we have seen in the last few days is the truth. actual reality. when i suggest anarchism, total individual freedom, even after i explain that we can have (and have had in history) law, order, security, and police without the state people eventually object 'but without state law and order there would be nothing stopping me from burgling or murdering you in the first place!' to which i answer - there is nothing 'stopping' me doing that to you right now. the state does not act like gravity. it reacts to crime occasionally but it does not 'stop' it. the state is not an absolute force of nature or physics. the mere existence of the state police does not stop crime.
people think it does. they think law and order are perfect absolutes. you may have heard that people's fear of crime is massively over inflated in relation to actual crime levels. i worked in the physical security market encountering the effects and truth of crime on a daily basis for years and i can tell you this is very true. the reason why, on any given day in your entire life, you have not been burgled is not because plod were stood by your front door pushing away the violent hordes. it is simply because there just isnt very much crime. if youre reading this you must realise how woefully ineffectual the police are, surely. do you really believe they have any effect on anything? is the fact that you may never have been burgled purely and directly due to the actions of the police or is it simply because there just is not much burglary going on? is the fact that you may have not been mugged every day because a personal copper precedes you on every stroll you take? no its because there are not very many muggers and there is very little mugging. perception versus reality.
but all the sheep lie asleep in their beds safe in the knowledge that the state keeps them safe. it provides security. not even 'security forces' or 'services' but people truly do believe the state just envelopes them in a cuddly blanket of safeness. we've got a state - nothing bad can happen. this abstract notion of security that just emerges from the equally abstract state like a gas.
what these riots and their rapid and wide spreading shows is that even a tax funded national monopoly police force has near zero effect (not because theyre soft or the wrong person is in number 10 - the french riot police are fucking brutal and they still have immense riots). the state does NOTHING. the reason why we tend to have peaceful stable secure lives is because that just happens. i do not mean that there is no need for security services. on the contrary i imagine that in anarcho-libertopia there will be many more times private security personnel than there are now police - what i mean is that we do not need a state to protect us from a fear that is largely imagined. usually there are not riots. in new york when the police went on strike crime rates dropped. the london riots are almost because of the police. youve got a state and there is still looting!
the state does not exist. it is an abstract concept. i dont walk around knifing people left right and centre because the state is there. i just dont stab people. most people dont. most of the time. not because of the state. they just dont.
the state does nothing.
as we have seen it only takes the slightest little spark to reveal to some people this truth. i mean that it only took a few arabian riots in the news a month ago to create a general background thought. it only took the unopposed looting of a 'contraversial' tesco's in bristol's lefty epicentre a few weeks back to add a uk context to this background feeling. and then it only took a police shooting and the ever present fuel of race relations to kick off whole litany of deeply smouldering problems. the kids in birmingham saw that there just isnt anything stopping criminal behaviour in the events of the first night in london. and so they kicked off on the second night. they saw, in their unthinking miseducated ignorance, a truth that noone else can. blinded by a thousand years of the 'benevolent' state none of the academics, journalists, politicians, intellectuals, chattering classes or even bloggers can see that it is not the state that generates, nurtures or protects peaceful voluntary interaction. these fabian subsidised feral scumbags saw within hours that the state's justification from security is complete bullshit.
in a recent episode of some cop drama that my girlfriend follows there was the story of an evil lunatic who strolled into crowded public places such as railway station concourses and started smashing random people to death with a hammer. the truth is that there is absolutely nothing stopping anyone from doing this at any time.
anyway having laboured that rather abstract notion and probably failed to convey my point ill move on
could anarchy have been any worse than the state in the last few days? imagine...
noone to coercively prevent you from defending yourself and others
noone to coercively prevent you from buying, owning and operating any tool you want....
including tools for the job of defense (gun is a scary word but should be no more scary than hammer, kitchen knife, circular saw, spoon or any other lethal unlicensed tool)
noone to coercively limit where you can live through irrational, unjust and hugely overlooked 'planning' laws. cities are largely creations of the state but i shall leave this for another post. i imagine few people living in hackney really dreamed of ending up there.
noone to coercively extort your property, hard earned by yourself through voluntary transactions, and use it to subsidise socially and individually damaging policies. education, housing etc.
noone to coercively extort your property so that you can no longer provide the basic essentials of life such as physical security (the number of victims ive met that knew they should have spent on gates and fences etc but could not afford it on top of 40-60% taxes) and no im not just a gate installer)
noone with the power to unnaturally mix people up. all the talk about 'these kids must be coming from another area' is bollocks. everyone deceives themselves that they live in a nice part of town when in reality they probably dont and even if they do some socialist fifty years ago probably built a fucking 'estate' bang in the middle of a natural and functioning area (i detest the prevalence of the word 'communities' in the news - the only 'community' i want to be a part of is one that i want to be a part of. not one through accident of geography.) egalitarians may not like it but in a natural human world you would not have sink estates next to peaceful productive homes. every single part of the uk has a fucking council estate. every single village, no matter how fancy the other inhabitants consider themselves to be, has a completely unnatural enclave of alien problem causing, tax-subsidised people bang in the middle. i dont care what colour they are - im extremely egalitarian in my hatred - some of the worst scum i have ever seen are white. why this happened if not by some mad intentional political design of social engineering i have no idea.
so as i have briefly outline above there are several policies inherrent to every social-democratic state, no matter its team colours, that caused or at the very least exacerbated the recent riots. but now let us consider what may have happened in an anarchy in reaction...
remember back at the beginning some black guy was shot by some white guys in fancy outfits? now i am not about to speculate or politically revise what may or may not have happened in that case but my point is that what are the chances that a whole bunch of black people would continue to voluntarily subscribe to the services of a largely white security company with, at best, a history of dubious conduct and laughable public relations?
im not called milliband or livingston so i wont excuse or justify abuse of property rights (everything is based on property rights - from the security of your hubcaps to your arsehole) but i will say that without the possibility of voluntarily changing service providers and given the impossibility of political change (voting, blogging, campaigning, petitions, even revolutions - economic choice theory explains why they never work) these people had no way of changing anything. a pointless, irrational outburst of violence is only really understood from this point of view.
i mean if the trolley attendant at tescos runs over my foot i dont piss around trying to get him sacked - i just go to asda. it never comes to this because the pressure is always there. this pressure is not there with the state which explains why its always so unutterably shit at everything.
if my boyfriend was shot erroneously by my security service or they failed to uphold their contractual obligations regarding the protection of my shop i would immediately take my money elsewhere. if, on the other hand, they were free to force me to pay then they could do whatever the fuck they wanted. its a wonder why they dont really.
as with the egyptian protests (no i am not likening the mindless thuggery in the uk to political protest) the egyptian people realised that absent the state they could provide all the services we are continually told can only be provided by coercively funded uniforms. i posted back then (and ranty kindly reblogged it) that the egyptians were running their own refuse collections, providing their own neighbourhood security and even funding and operating a field hospital and media centre in tahrir square. in london over the last few days some people (notably not the anglo-saxon fuckers with the benefit of hundreds of years of indoctrination against autonomy) have provided their own neighbourhood security in response to the revelation that the state barely exists. what us pathetic statist whities have done is to piss around pretending to clean up ffs. yes, its lots of fun to jump on the trendy bandwagon of flash mob social networking 'happenings' and get in the paper holding a mop/broom but it is no more than childsplay. as with diy in almost any area these big groups of dumb fuckwits would have been better off doing what they are best at for that period of time and then paying the money they earned to people who are best at cleaning up. diy is the most economically insane thing anyone can do (with the only caveat being that if you actually enjoy it then it can be seen as an entertainment expense).
(i should leave it for another post but anyone who earns more than any given specialist should fucking well leave it to the specialist do do it faster, better and cheaper. from toilet cleaning to dentistry. economies of scale and specialisation of labour apply just as much to your personal life as they do to arguments against socialism.
anyway i ask you would you rather pay your council tax for the 'terrifying' british bobby or pay for an ex squaddy? yeah even if you like that bit of the state that wears camo, you could still do without the police. a pc costs way more than a squaddy but is undoubtedly less able to perform the core function of the provision of security the pc may have been on more fabian courses but the squaddy will be fitter, have better awareness, reactions and presence.
if, like me, you dont think the state is much good at anything and even if it were that would be as imoral as rape then go for the free market option. you can get 4 security guards for the cost of one pc. each and every street in the country could have a full time private security guard dedicated to patrolling just that area 24/7 for less than it costs to have one guy in an antiquated uniform sat in an office 'covering' a whole town.
or if, for some reason you dont like the rational choice of the market then why not go for the communties option - i would rather pay a super local community contribution or even reciprocate in kind in some kind of militia. i would rather have the amateur Turks, Kurds and Sikhs of london protecting me than the dumb fucks that enjoy dressing up like GI joe.
ill post some links to works explaining voluntary legal systems one of these days. the thing to remember is that once you break the rules you want applied in defence of yourself then your protection agency will no longer be commercially able to uphold those rules on your behalf. in short once you loot a shop noone will prevent the shop owner shooting you.
in short without the state this probably would not have happened.
if it had happened it would have been dealt with effectively, efficiently and expediently.
AND you, as an individual, would have been free to do as you fucking well wanted. there would be no need for 'consensus' no need for tedious media 'examination' no need for more money to be TAKEN from you.
if you wanted to change police you could do instantly. if you wanted to move to the country you could do. if you wanted to spend all your money on guns you could do. if you wanted to build a 20ft wall around your family you could do.
Could anarchy really be any worse than this?
Wednesday, 3 August 2011
oi socialists and other fans of violence, coercion and the state
as ever i am desperately trying to avoid 'the news'. i wouldnt even say that i avoid mainstream media now as even bloggers, largely divorced from costly primary sources of information such as interviews etc, are only really capable of a non mainstream view of a news agenda dictated by the mainstream. theirs is merely a differing take on the same mainstream stories. anyways i am caught in a near impossible struggle, desperately attempting to avoid whatever bullshit our ruling class want to promote.
(as a side note, a man whom i had considered to be pretty aware expressed dismay in reaction to my assertion that it is a legal condition of state broadcasting licenses that tv and radio companies run a certain number of news reports in a given period. thus their thought control is more pervasive than it otherwise would be)
all that said i am aware of the current shrieks of the ignorant unthinking entitlement parasites. http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/aug/02/charities-fight-survival-funds-slashed
for the real truth on these 'charities visit http://fakecharities.org/
it aint charity if it aint voluntary.
i would not join the guardian bashing of the blogosphere on such a subject normally but just minutes ago i noticed a tiny detail inside my fridge that prompted this rant.
Primula Cheese
yes the fate of individual human liberty and economic freedom may truly rest in this stuff
allow me to explain. see down the bottom there, see the little sign held by what i assume to be a cheese loving mouse, see what it says? profits go to charity. not just some profits as you may have seen on the odd box of cereal or healthy margarine spread, but all profits.
a month or so ago we had the socialist/statists shrieking in objection to the largest ever single act of voluntary philanthropy in human history. yes a single man, just one human individual voluntarily gave $1 billion dollars to the most needy people on the planet and these armchair altruists screamed blue murder from their islington villas. http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=25098
the blogosphere was awash with criticism of the bbc (i spit on their extortion backed propaganda) newsnight smear against real charity. tweets from idiot socialists were reblogged with gay abandon and much scronful merriment as was right and proper.
i clashed with a friend of a friend on facebook (i know - the shame of it) over this issue at the time. my friend initially questioned why newsnight seemed to be taking a negative view of one of the most laudable acts of generosity ever witnessed. his friend made an ignorant comment in reply implying that this voluntary charity was not proper charity and that only the extortionate state form of altruism by proxy whereby do gooders can externalise the costs of their angelic selflessness counts as virtuous. so i cut him to ribbons in a thousand word waste of my time. in that diatribe i referred him to the RNLI. it is an amazing institution that provides a better service than the state could ever dream of even though it is a not for profit, truly voluntary charity. yes it benefits from state enabled charity status etc but it is impossible to exist on this planet without being in some way affected by the state so lets not be impossibly purist about this. my point is that the RNLI is one of the most perfect examples for the anarchist. not only is it voluntary. not only is it non state. not only is it amazing. but it provides exactly the kind of service that anti-anarchists claim would be impossible without the state. 'how wou;d the police work... how would fires be extinguished... what about ambulances?' the tired, myopic, indoctrinated sheep bleet. the RNLI is the perfect answer. no lengthy explanations of how the US medical health cartel is a million miles away from an anarchist freed market in insurance, law and health services. the RNLI is the perfect answer to so many objections.
i recently added bill gates to my mental list of evidence against objections from the statist quo. he made his evil disgusting fortune (sarcasm) from exploiting the planet's need for a universally compatible operating system. the socialists hate him like they hate everyone who has voluntarily improved the lives of millions of people. i do not refer to his later philanthropy but to his initial improvement of many people's lives when he developed and then dispensed his software. to a socialist this will come as a shock but commerce is the greatest engine for human betterment. that gates did so well that he was able to afford to totally focus on directly improving the lives of people is gravy.
but back to the cheese. why is this anarchist so excited by a tube of scandanavian squeezy cheese? because it has just joined bill gates and the RNLI on my mental list of pro freedom ammunition. together they exemplify three different models of voluntary problem solving. resorting to the violence of the state (taxation is extortion which cannot operate without the threat of violence no matter how deeply forgotten that core principle may be) is the most basic, primitive and barbaric 'solution' to the supposedly impossible problems of human organisation that i am constantly battered with as objections. who would build the roads, how would the hospitals work etc if the answer involves the state then it rests entirely on violence. if youre not into the deontological/ethics/philosophic source of individual freedom then i would argue that it is still the source of your heartfelt desire for freedom but you may not be aware of it. you may never be aware but we all know that taxation just aint right. any solution to social problems etc that involves taxation is based on violence and as such should be right out the window even if it supposedly works better than free market economic (even tho we know this to be complete socialist fantasy).
so before we blindly reach for yet another violent solution at least consider these three models of voluntary peaceful solutions. they are not the only way but now with squeezy cheese as my weapon we have one more argument in favour of human freedom.[
model 1 - the RNLI - a straight forward charity as everyone understands it. some people voluntarily fund it and the charity helps everyone that needs their services.
model 2 - bill gates - a voluntary commercial transaction generated by market forces brings benefit to both sides of the deal. one get cash the other some software. if either didnt feel they benefitted they would not voluntarily enter into the deal. in addition to this the party getting monetarily rich may choose to voluntarily gift some of this cash to worthy causes. yet more voluntary good.
model 3 - Primula and the Kavli Trust
http://primula.co.uk/our_company.html
http://primula.co.uk/good_causes.html
http://www.kavlifondet.no/english/
a company setup by the kind of evil capitalist scum that the socialists hate. the very essence of Atlas Shrugged. some bastard exploited poor scandanavian's need for cheese and mercilessly profitted. if only the government was in charge of cheese. anyway after two generations the evil cheese making capitalist family died out and voluntarily setup a charitable trust to run their company entirely for charity. 100% of Primula profits go to the Kavli Trust charities.
if every bleeding heart socialist got off their backside and put as much effort into making money as Bill Gates, Olav Kavli or John Galt then they too could actually pay for all the selfless acts they seem to desire. they should aim to be the biggest most money making capitalists in the world - even if they favour taxation of the rich and statism in general they should be aiming to become rich in order to contribute ever more to this virtuous extortion. but they dont so i question what they claim to desire. if the thought of riches disgusts them even if they were taxed 80% then they could voluntarily give even more as Primula does. they could give 100% of their profits voluntarily to support all the extortionate interest groups they bleet on about.
hurrah for voluntary socialism
(as a side note, a man whom i had considered to be pretty aware expressed dismay in reaction to my assertion that it is a legal condition of state broadcasting licenses that tv and radio companies run a certain number of news reports in a given period. thus their thought control is more pervasive than it otherwise would be)
all that said i am aware of the current shrieks of the ignorant unthinking entitlement parasites. http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/aug/02/charities-fight-survival-funds-slashed
for the real truth on these 'charities visit http://fakecharities.org/
it aint charity if it aint voluntary.
i would not join the guardian bashing of the blogosphere on such a subject normally but just minutes ago i noticed a tiny detail inside my fridge that prompted this rant.
Primula Cheese
yes the fate of individual human liberty and economic freedom may truly rest in this stuff
a month or so ago we had the socialist/statists shrieking in objection to the largest ever single act of voluntary philanthropy in human history. yes a single man, just one human individual voluntarily gave $1 billion dollars to the most needy people on the planet and these armchair altruists screamed blue murder from their islington villas. http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=25098
the blogosphere was awash with criticism of the bbc (i spit on their extortion backed propaganda) newsnight smear against real charity. tweets from idiot socialists were reblogged with gay abandon and much scronful merriment as was right and proper.
i clashed with a friend of a friend on facebook (i know - the shame of it) over this issue at the time. my friend initially questioned why newsnight seemed to be taking a negative view of one of the most laudable acts of generosity ever witnessed. his friend made an ignorant comment in reply implying that this voluntary charity was not proper charity and that only the extortionate state form of altruism by proxy whereby do gooders can externalise the costs of their angelic selflessness counts as virtuous. so i cut him to ribbons in a thousand word waste of my time. in that diatribe i referred him to the RNLI. it is an amazing institution that provides a better service than the state could ever dream of even though it is a not for profit, truly voluntary charity. yes it benefits from state enabled charity status etc but it is impossible to exist on this planet without being in some way affected by the state so lets not be impossibly purist about this. my point is that the RNLI is one of the most perfect examples for the anarchist. not only is it voluntary. not only is it non state. not only is it amazing. but it provides exactly the kind of service that anti-anarchists claim would be impossible without the state. 'how wou;d the police work... how would fires be extinguished... what about ambulances?' the tired, myopic, indoctrinated sheep bleet. the RNLI is the perfect answer. no lengthy explanations of how the US medical health cartel is a million miles away from an anarchist freed market in insurance, law and health services. the RNLI is the perfect answer to so many objections.
i recently added bill gates to my mental list of evidence against objections from the statist quo. he made his evil disgusting fortune (sarcasm) from exploiting the planet's need for a universally compatible operating system. the socialists hate him like they hate everyone who has voluntarily improved the lives of millions of people. i do not refer to his later philanthropy but to his initial improvement of many people's lives when he developed and then dispensed his software. to a socialist this will come as a shock but commerce is the greatest engine for human betterment. that gates did so well that he was able to afford to totally focus on directly improving the lives of people is gravy.
but back to the cheese. why is this anarchist so excited by a tube of scandanavian squeezy cheese? because it has just joined bill gates and the RNLI on my mental list of pro freedom ammunition. together they exemplify three different models of voluntary problem solving. resorting to the violence of the state (taxation is extortion which cannot operate without the threat of violence no matter how deeply forgotten that core principle may be) is the most basic, primitive and barbaric 'solution' to the supposedly impossible problems of human organisation that i am constantly battered with as objections. who would build the roads, how would the hospitals work etc if the answer involves the state then it rests entirely on violence. if youre not into the deontological/ethics/philosophic source of individual freedom then i would argue that it is still the source of your heartfelt desire for freedom but you may not be aware of it. you may never be aware but we all know that taxation just aint right. any solution to social problems etc that involves taxation is based on violence and as such should be right out the window even if it supposedly works better than free market economic (even tho we know this to be complete socialist fantasy).
so before we blindly reach for yet another violent solution at least consider these three models of voluntary peaceful solutions. they are not the only way but now with squeezy cheese as my weapon we have one more argument in favour of human freedom.[
model 1 - the RNLI - a straight forward charity as everyone understands it. some people voluntarily fund it and the charity helps everyone that needs their services.
model 2 - bill gates - a voluntary commercial transaction generated by market forces brings benefit to both sides of the deal. one get cash the other some software. if either didnt feel they benefitted they would not voluntarily enter into the deal. in addition to this the party getting monetarily rich may choose to voluntarily gift some of this cash to worthy causes. yet more voluntary good.
model 3 - Primula and the Kavli Trust
http://primula.co.uk/our_company.html
http://primula.co.uk/good_causes.html
http://www.kavlifondet.no/english/
a company setup by the kind of evil capitalist scum that the socialists hate. the very essence of Atlas Shrugged. some bastard exploited poor scandanavian's need for cheese and mercilessly profitted. if only the government was in charge of cheese. anyway after two generations the evil cheese making capitalist family died out and voluntarily setup a charitable trust to run their company entirely for charity. 100% of Primula profits go to the Kavli Trust charities.
if every bleeding heart socialist got off their backside and put as much effort into making money as Bill Gates, Olav Kavli or John Galt then they too could actually pay for all the selfless acts they seem to desire. they should aim to be the biggest most money making capitalists in the world - even if they favour taxation of the rich and statism in general they should be aiming to become rich in order to contribute ever more to this virtuous extortion. but they dont so i question what they claim to desire. if the thought of riches disgusts them even if they were taxed 80% then they could voluntarily give even more as Primula does. they could give 100% of their profits voluntarily to support all the extortionate interest groups they bleet on about.
hurrah for voluntary socialism
Tuesday, 19 July 2011
socio-mentalism
"It's as if the socialists discovered that their plan creates poverty, so they decided to change their name to environmentalists and make poverty their goal." Lew Rockwell
Monday, 18 July 2011
my previous post was out of sorts for my usual fare. i tend toward the theoretical and the radical. the relatively trivial minutiae of the supposed 'real' world are at best a distraction and at worst an endless source of infuriation. i merely passed on a piece of news from a US blog that i follow (mises.org), to a hardworking blogger that i used to follow. i knew that that kind of news reporting was best left to those who focus upon and excel at such endeavours. i feared this tid bit of information that i would normally pay little notice would pass unheeded in the uk and so i passed it on and hoped it might be of value to some. my own unedited stream of semi literate venting was almost as bad as the rest of the writing i put out but fortunately anna raccoon did exactly what i had hoped and turned out a sterling article. ive long despaired of the uk 'libertarian' blogosphere but i expect too much of people. even youngsters raised in a relatively more liberal social environment are still horrifically statist so it should be no surprise that the uk blogosphere, which i believe probably has a fairly high average age, are not committed individualist anarchists, coming as they do from a different time and place. almost everything in the uk used to have the prefix 'British' or 'National'. you name it we had it nationalised. there are plenty who pay lip service to being anti state but still get watery eyed at the nostalgia of empire and the nationalism of antiquity - bogus history of the elite.
anna raccoons piece was cross posted at ian dale's blog which is getting pretty far from anything that might identify as libertarian as i understand the term. the commenters at anna raccoons seemed to be of the old fashioned autonomous vein and decried the property grab on the basis that they were perfectly able to take direct responsibility and roll their sleeves up when push came to shove. fair play to them - they dont need the state and so they dont want it providing that service to them - they are not the object of my scorn. as a fan of anarcho capitalism i consider the personal responsibility that is concomitant with individual freedom to be something that can be voluntarily delegated. i do not imagine that sans tyrannical fascist sewerage agencies i would necessarily be left with no option but to unblock my own drains. if that be the price for freedom then bring it on - ill shovel as much shit as it takes. but obviously the specialisation of the free market means that it is best for myself and society as a whole if clearing drains is left to the experts. for example the dentist or grocer is at his most productive, useful and contributary when doing what he does best. for him to be unblocking his drains makes no economic/praxeological sense. but as i say most of the uk libertarian blogosphere come from a time when husbands would often plumb in their own gas central heating or service the brakes on their family car. this was a time of relative freedom and responsibility. perhaps this is why some of the uk right have become drawn to this exciting new word from the states - libertarianism. they dont quite get it entirely but that is through no fault of their own.
anyways - to the point of this unintentionally insulting piece - some of the comments at ian dales blog were of a sort i probably should have expected. 'mountain out of a mole hill' 'whats so bad about that' 'id be glad of it' etc. these same people feel the emotive reaction against the state limiting their nicotine or alcohol or earnings but have never been exposed to the illuminating theories of libertarianism. all opposition to oppression of consumption (booze n fags) should be based in property rights. the bar is privately owned. your body is privately owned. the substances are privately owned. so there is no room in the equation for a coercive third party.
sometimes this uninvited bully will offer 'services' which will be gratefully accepted by the commenters as seen above on the basis that this removal of troublesome responsibility is completely free. what harm could possibly come from taking such charitable gifts?
well its coercion that ruins all the fun. without having to serve customers well enough to ensure continued voluntary trade the bully can do as they damn well please. now perhaps you can understand why people throughout modern history and across the western world all scramble madly to sign up for 'socialised healthcare'. its free - whats the worst that could happen?
i dont have the time to educate the ignorant (perhaps entirely due to no direct fault of their own) on the theoretical basis of freedom. anyone who rails against government or who desires freedom should realise that without a sound understanding of the theoretical underpinnings youre just another statist clamouring for a slightly different flavour of oppression.
i focus on principles that can be applied universally and without compromise. if you are happy for the government to take a part of your property you deem inconsequential the you have no basis for objection when they take something you do value - your earnings for example. either you have property rights or you do not. there is no compromise. you cannot have an inviolable right to some property but not to others. you may choose to VOLUNTARILY give away some property - for example charity in place of welfarist-taxation. you may CHOOSE to VOLUNTARILY relinquish responsibility for your sewerage in a commercial trade. if you want to pay thames water to deal with that then fine. however IF IT ISNT VOLUNTARY ITS CRIMINAL. additionally it will probably be horrendously expensive and lousy service too as there will be no competition and no incentive to serve you.
there is a sound consequentialist economic argument against this that some fools fail to see. this is the more 'normal' point of view and so if they cant get their heads around that then we're all doomed. the main argument is the unarguable axiom of self ownership and thusly derived property rights.
i despair that people could feel they have any rights at all without total and uncompromised property rights. at least the downright wrong total communist anti-propertarian has some (totally false) principle he claims - everyone between us self owning individuals and those tyrannical criminals is nothing more than a confused directionless fool.
anna raccoons piece was cross posted at ian dale's blog which is getting pretty far from anything that might identify as libertarian as i understand the term. the commenters at anna raccoons seemed to be of the old fashioned autonomous vein and decried the property grab on the basis that they were perfectly able to take direct responsibility and roll their sleeves up when push came to shove. fair play to them - they dont need the state and so they dont want it providing that service to them - they are not the object of my scorn. as a fan of anarcho capitalism i consider the personal responsibility that is concomitant with individual freedom to be something that can be voluntarily delegated. i do not imagine that sans tyrannical fascist sewerage agencies i would necessarily be left with no option but to unblock my own drains. if that be the price for freedom then bring it on - ill shovel as much shit as it takes. but obviously the specialisation of the free market means that it is best for myself and society as a whole if clearing drains is left to the experts. for example the dentist or grocer is at his most productive, useful and contributary when doing what he does best. for him to be unblocking his drains makes no economic/praxeological sense. but as i say most of the uk libertarian blogosphere come from a time when husbands would often plumb in their own gas central heating or service the brakes on their family car. this was a time of relative freedom and responsibility. perhaps this is why some of the uk right have become drawn to this exciting new word from the states - libertarianism. they dont quite get it entirely but that is through no fault of their own.
anyways - to the point of this unintentionally insulting piece - some of the comments at ian dales blog were of a sort i probably should have expected. 'mountain out of a mole hill' 'whats so bad about that' 'id be glad of it' etc. these same people feel the emotive reaction against the state limiting their nicotine or alcohol or earnings but have never been exposed to the illuminating theories of libertarianism. all opposition to oppression of consumption (booze n fags) should be based in property rights. the bar is privately owned. your body is privately owned. the substances are privately owned. so there is no room in the equation for a coercive third party.
sometimes this uninvited bully will offer 'services' which will be gratefully accepted by the commenters as seen above on the basis that this removal of troublesome responsibility is completely free. what harm could possibly come from taking such charitable gifts?
well its coercion that ruins all the fun. without having to serve customers well enough to ensure continued voluntary trade the bully can do as they damn well please. now perhaps you can understand why people throughout modern history and across the western world all scramble madly to sign up for 'socialised healthcare'. its free - whats the worst that could happen?
i dont have the time to educate the ignorant (perhaps entirely due to no direct fault of their own) on the theoretical basis of freedom. anyone who rails against government or who desires freedom should realise that without a sound understanding of the theoretical underpinnings youre just another statist clamouring for a slightly different flavour of oppression.
i focus on principles that can be applied universally and without compromise. if you are happy for the government to take a part of your property you deem inconsequential the you have no basis for objection when they take something you do value - your earnings for example. either you have property rights or you do not. there is no compromise. you cannot have an inviolable right to some property but not to others. you may choose to VOLUNTARILY give away some property - for example charity in place of welfarist-taxation. you may CHOOSE to VOLUNTARILY relinquish responsibility for your sewerage in a commercial trade. if you want to pay thames water to deal with that then fine. however IF IT ISNT VOLUNTARY ITS CRIMINAL. additionally it will probably be horrendously expensive and lousy service too as there will be no competition and no incentive to serve you.
there is a sound consequentialist economic argument against this that some fools fail to see. this is the more 'normal' point of view and so if they cant get their heads around that then we're all doomed. the main argument is the unarguable axiom of self ownership and thusly derived property rights.
i despair that people could feel they have any rights at all without total and uncompromised property rights. at least the downright wrong total communist anti-propertarian has some (totally false) principle he claims - everyone between us self owning individuals and those tyrannical criminals is nothing more than a confused directionless fool.
Tuesday, 12 July 2011
Do you think you'll see it coming?
im quite often amazed that the sheeple consider people like us to be crazy crack-pot conspiracist loons, wildly overreacting and imagining the worst possible case scenario of a far off future. they seem to think that all is rosy and if anything remotely approaching tyranny, slavery, despotism or fascism began to rear its ugly head theyd be immediately aware and stamp that shit out. fact is whether through design or accident we're pretty much already there and they are not only ignorant but shout down any of us that try to illuminate their view.
gradualism has crept up on us. if you were to suggest policies that are considered absolutely normal and beyond question in todays world to an individual from 1970, 1940, 1920 or 1800 they would all baulk at the ideas and quite rightly deride the ridiculous evil. but if one highlights these same policies among a group of contemporaries you will, yourself, become the object of ridicule.
for example when the Bow Street Runners were instituted as the londons first professional state police force there was wide ranging public outcry that even these 6 men would constitute a 'police state'. today I am made to feel the social equivalent of an advocate for paedophilia if i question even the most extreme of injustices committed by todays arbitrary, paramilitary police force let alone their very raison d'etre.
Anyways today i have learned of one such stepping stone on the road to Fabian shitsville of which it seems almost noone is aware!
http://www.thameswater.co.uk/cps/rde/xchg/corp/hs.xsl/8654.htm
ill bet you havent heard a peep of this in the msm. tv news hasnt mentioned it. i cant find any mention of it in a quick search of any other news outlet. I, a (involuntary) uk subject (slave), only discovered this state siezure of my private property through a US based blog! these corporate fascists will clog your letter box to update you of the tiniest bullshit they want to crow about but when it comes to the most significant news of this nature there is not a word. why has there been not even written notification? not that any amount of forewarning would justify such a crime.
basically it seems the water companies (who if this is ever reported in the msm will be described as private companies and part of the non existent free market) have been gifted ownership of your private property! they now. as of right now! own your private sewer. most of the sheeple will be reduced to childish fits of giggles that anyone could become so enraged by something so supposedly hilarious as an underground pipe of shit. but the point is that this is private property and it has just been seized, stolen, taken just. like. that.
and you thought youd notice when the red army came over the hill and took your property. well you missed it. there were no jackboots, no tanks, no visible signs marching through your town centre. but its happened. i mean they already take the money you earn - which is your private property - they take it BEFORE it even reaches your bank account. you NEVER hold that property. the sheeple who have never even once considered this for one fucking second will, without pause for consideration, deem themselves so high and fucking mighty as to instantaneously spew forth some ad-libbed drivel in order to justify, obfuscate and excuse this crime. it never ceases to amaze me that people who have literally never ever thought about farm subsidies for example will automatically react against ANY criticism i make of the wonderous state. i mean what makes them think that i am automatically wrong on an issue they have absolutely ZERO knowledge of?!
and so we will experience the same on this. i will be told that i should be thankful that, without even being asked, the paternal state has decided to do me the favour of taking my private property off me because they know fucking best. i could not possibly take care of even my own fucking drains. i cant be trusted with the maintenance of my car, the education of my thankfully non existent children, choosing my own level of healthcare and now even the tubes, the simplest technology known to man, the fucking tube, even the tubes that take away my shit are too fucking complicated to be left under my responsibility.
the water companies, in an environment so bound by regulation, licensing and monopoly that they should be considered part of the state (the definition of fascism by the way) will of course charge everyone extra for this privilege whether they have a private sewer or not. so if you dont have sewerage under your private land then you will be subsidising those who do. if you rent a property and pay the water bill then you will be paying for the maintenance of your landlords asset. also remember that the water companies are directly subsidised by the state so youll be paying at both ends through taxation too.
now perhaps you may begin to understand why the state has enacted such a mystifyingly 'altruistic' offer. the water companies are paid for the work they do. they want more money so they need more work. the state has given them more work by simply stealing your pipes and handing them over to the water companies in order that you can be squeezed even more and the cronies of the state elite can benefit.
remember that your sewerage will be covered by your buildings insurance (compulsory in the uk i believe) so this is not a case of the state wading in and solving a problem for you. as usual there was no problem that required solving in the first place. you will find little to no mention of this fact in any of the propaganda coming your way. it will be presented as something you should be grateful for. perhaps theyll do you another favour and size your car, computer and house. something to look forward to eh.
if you read some of the material at the above link you will realise that even according to their own figures there is far more private sewerage in the uk than there is public sewerage currently available to them. so this is no small grab. do not, as the sheeple no doubt will, consider that this is just a few feet of pipe here and there, or that ti applies only to landed gentry and their vast country estates. i would wager that near enough every domestic building in the uk has some amount of private sewerage and that you can expect a truckload of contractors not answerable to you, the supposed customer, to disgorge their machinery onto your lawn and tear up a trench like the somme in the near future. they will ineffectually poke around looking for a non existent problem all the while racking up the clock that might even be charged to you directly and entirely if it surpasses some arbitrary and changing boundary. then they will leave a hideous and expensive mess. this WILL happen and is not overreaction. we know this from previous experience with other utilities. the material already says that whatever bits of sewerage they decide to be too tricky to bother with wont be taken. so if your have such problematic drains that you may have actually benefited form this travesty - you wont.
As a Rothbardian i know that any and all rights are property rights. property = freedom. all tyrannies and injustices are abrogations of property rights. this is massive and it boggles the mind that the state can seize any part of your residential property - you fucking home for christ sake! this is not simply an extension of abstract control into your home as in the case of any future smoking ban in domestic residences - a move that i have seen many online commenters proclaim would see them leave the country - it is an actual seizure of ownership. those pipes WERE yours. now theyre not. they belong to the water company. which as i have explained is part of the state. they are not your pipes to permit access to at a time of your choosing - they belong to the state who will do as they wish with what is now their property when the fucking well want to.
gradualism has crept up on us. if you were to suggest policies that are considered absolutely normal and beyond question in todays world to an individual from 1970, 1940, 1920 or 1800 they would all baulk at the ideas and quite rightly deride the ridiculous evil. but if one highlights these same policies among a group of contemporaries you will, yourself, become the object of ridicule.
for example when the Bow Street Runners were instituted as the londons first professional state police force there was wide ranging public outcry that even these 6 men would constitute a 'police state'. today I am made to feel the social equivalent of an advocate for paedophilia if i question even the most extreme of injustices committed by todays arbitrary, paramilitary police force let alone their very raison d'etre.
Anyways today i have learned of one such stepping stone on the road to Fabian shitsville of which it seems almost noone is aware!
http://www.thameswater.co.uk/cps/rde/xchg/corp/hs.xsl/8654.htm
ill bet you havent heard a peep of this in the msm. tv news hasnt mentioned it. i cant find any mention of it in a quick search of any other news outlet. I, a (involuntary) uk subject (slave), only discovered this state siezure of my private property through a US based blog! these corporate fascists will clog your letter box to update you of the tiniest bullshit they want to crow about but when it comes to the most significant news of this nature there is not a word. why has there been not even written notification? not that any amount of forewarning would justify such a crime.
basically it seems the water companies (who if this is ever reported in the msm will be described as private companies and part of the non existent free market) have been gifted ownership of your private property! they now. as of right now! own your private sewer. most of the sheeple will be reduced to childish fits of giggles that anyone could become so enraged by something so supposedly hilarious as an underground pipe of shit. but the point is that this is private property and it has just been seized, stolen, taken just. like. that.
and you thought youd notice when the red army came over the hill and took your property. well you missed it. there were no jackboots, no tanks, no visible signs marching through your town centre. but its happened. i mean they already take the money you earn - which is your private property - they take it BEFORE it even reaches your bank account. you NEVER hold that property. the sheeple who have never even once considered this for one fucking second will, without pause for consideration, deem themselves so high and fucking mighty as to instantaneously spew forth some ad-libbed drivel in order to justify, obfuscate and excuse this crime. it never ceases to amaze me that people who have literally never ever thought about farm subsidies for example will automatically react against ANY criticism i make of the wonderous state. i mean what makes them think that i am automatically wrong on an issue they have absolutely ZERO knowledge of?!
and so we will experience the same on this. i will be told that i should be thankful that, without even being asked, the paternal state has decided to do me the favour of taking my private property off me because they know fucking best. i could not possibly take care of even my own fucking drains. i cant be trusted with the maintenance of my car, the education of my thankfully non existent children, choosing my own level of healthcare and now even the tubes, the simplest technology known to man, the fucking tube, even the tubes that take away my shit are too fucking complicated to be left under my responsibility.
the water companies, in an environment so bound by regulation, licensing and monopoly that they should be considered part of the state (the definition of fascism by the way) will of course charge everyone extra for this privilege whether they have a private sewer or not. so if you dont have sewerage under your private land then you will be subsidising those who do. if you rent a property and pay the water bill then you will be paying for the maintenance of your landlords asset. also remember that the water companies are directly subsidised by the state so youll be paying at both ends through taxation too.
now perhaps you may begin to understand why the state has enacted such a mystifyingly 'altruistic' offer. the water companies are paid for the work they do. they want more money so they need more work. the state has given them more work by simply stealing your pipes and handing them over to the water companies in order that you can be squeezed even more and the cronies of the state elite can benefit.
remember that your sewerage will be covered by your buildings insurance (compulsory in the uk i believe) so this is not a case of the state wading in and solving a problem for you. as usual there was no problem that required solving in the first place. you will find little to no mention of this fact in any of the propaganda coming your way. it will be presented as something you should be grateful for. perhaps theyll do you another favour and size your car, computer and house. something to look forward to eh.
if you read some of the material at the above link you will realise that even according to their own figures there is far more private sewerage in the uk than there is public sewerage currently available to them. so this is no small grab. do not, as the sheeple no doubt will, consider that this is just a few feet of pipe here and there, or that ti applies only to landed gentry and their vast country estates. i would wager that near enough every domestic building in the uk has some amount of private sewerage and that you can expect a truckload of contractors not answerable to you, the supposed customer, to disgorge their machinery onto your lawn and tear up a trench like the somme in the near future. they will ineffectually poke around looking for a non existent problem all the while racking up the clock that might even be charged to you directly and entirely if it surpasses some arbitrary and changing boundary. then they will leave a hideous and expensive mess. this WILL happen and is not overreaction. we know this from previous experience with other utilities. the material already says that whatever bits of sewerage they decide to be too tricky to bother with wont be taken. so if your have such problematic drains that you may have actually benefited form this travesty - you wont.
As a Rothbardian i know that any and all rights are property rights. property = freedom. all tyrannies and injustices are abrogations of property rights. this is massive and it boggles the mind that the state can seize any part of your residential property - you fucking home for christ sake! this is not simply an extension of abstract control into your home as in the case of any future smoking ban in domestic residences - a move that i have seen many online commenters proclaim would see them leave the country - it is an actual seizure of ownership. those pipes WERE yours. now theyre not. they belong to the water company. which as i have explained is part of the state. they are not your pipes to permit access to at a time of your choosing - they belong to the state who will do as they wish with what is now their property when the fucking well want to.
Mainstream academic economics
Lazy blogging - just reposting a comment I posted elsewhere in response to the following quote from the anti state true freed market economists at mises.org
"Most academics don't have much idea about how markets work, since they have so little experience with them, living as they do in their subsidised ivory towers and protected by academic tenure."
Peter G Klein
http://mises.org/store/The-Capitalist-The-Entrepreneur-P10373.aspx
Which prompted me to write in agreement...
The establishment of cushy, subsidised, tenure-protected ivory towers by the state is no accident. The political class nurture and protect their propagandists and apologists in the priest class of mainstream academia and media. There is a simbiotic relationship between those who benefit from coercive rule and those that excuse and justify it on their behalf. This is a relationship as old as 'civilisation'/coercive rule itself. Is it any surprise that in an academic world dominated by and entirely dependent upon the state that the overriding economic consensus is one that justifies state intervention? The elite are not incentivised to maximise economic performance but rather they look to ideologies that maximise their economic plunder. Thus one can understand the popularity of socialism and keynesianism. The statist elite will only ever look to laissez faire policies when their kleptocracy becomes evidently unsustainable. They will always prefer ideas that legitimise massive theft even if those ideas shrink the pocket that is plundered. Only when keynesianism threatens to completely destroy their socialist economy will they reluctantly accede to opening their eyes to alternative models of slavery. And that will not be a good thing. A statist 'free market' will be unavoidably crony corporatist.
Friday, 8 July 2011
Ever signed their contract?
Consent of the Governed? - Robert Higgs - Mises Daily
"very few of us in this country at present are actively engaged in armed rebellion against our rulers. And it is precisely this absence of outright violent revolt that, strange to say, some commentators take as evidence of our consent to the outrageous manner in which the government treats us. Grudging, prudential acquiescence, however, is not the same thing as consent, especially when the people acquiesce, as I do, only in simmering, indignant resignation."
Click the link and drink in a stunning Proudhon quote. Guaranteed the best link you'll click today.
Thursday, 7 July 2011
An Alternative Jurisdiction Within The Venezuelan State
If you're an anarchist, interested in polycentric legal systems, competitive jurisdictions, and voluntary social organisation then you'll find plenty of food for thought in this video and accompanying article.
It does need to be said that I am not advocating this as a text book example of libertopia but, like Somalia and other examples of human society under reduced statism, these rare glimpses can prove tantalising insights.
Perhaps this prison is more akin to the oft cited criticism of anarchy that instead of one Nation-State sized state, we would all live in mini-states and there would be no true anarchy. I don't think this would be the supposed prohibitively negative vision anarchists' critics believe. the fiefdoms of rival city states/gated communities/gang lands/warlords or whatever they refer to sound terrible but it would be more akin to choosing between Butlins, Centre Parcs or Disney world (competing commercial holiday resorts).
Thursday, 30 June 2011
Flying cars
http://tinyurl.com/3ruqoro Expect this to be regulated into impossibility. For your own good of course. Heaven forbid you make your own decision on the subjective balance of risk and benefit. As James may once said - if someone invented the car today it would be banned. Well its powered by thousands of tiny explosions that can be loud and smelly. The fuel for these explosions is itself explosive and gallons of the stuff will be carried round in each and every vehicle. There will be retail outlets where members of the public will themselves operates machinery that squirts this explosive liquid. These same members of the public it is hoped will be able to pilot up to two tons of metal at speeds of up to 60mph along narrow corridors with no physical barrier between them and a stream of vehicles hurtling in the opposing direction. Application denied
Tuesday, 28 June 2011
Nhs data privacy insanity
'London's E-Health Cloud program will send patient records to the stratosphere next month'
Whether this sort of thing is a good idea should be left to voluntary choice. In a free market fuckups equate to losses - losses of reputation, profits and the jobs of individuals responsible. The public sector is insulated from such natural incentives so how do you think this is likely to turn out?
Monday, 27 June 2011
They're squealing now
The propaganda is accelerating. The sheep fodder is getting downright Orwellian.
Tonight's output from fascist (look it up - the ethos he pushes is the definition of corporate socialism) little shit Dominic littlewood (tv consumer investigator) was unbelievable in its levels of doublethink. He revealed some fraudulent/fake vet. (Disclaimer - Libertarians are against coercive compulsory regulations and licensing but in this case the corollary is that libertarians are also against fraud. I would argue that fraudulently benefitting from coercive market restrictions as this scumbag did by claiming to be a state licensed vet is a double no.) So although the subject of the piece was no hero of libertarianism Littlewood's film was more about how wonderful the regulatory body that supposedly prevents this sort of thing was. We were treated to shots of their tax funded architectural wonder of a college which dishes out 5 year over the top degrees to limit entry to the veterinary market. But the right at the very end, as a mumbled addendum it was revealed that this super human regulatory body staffed by ubermensch so angelic they don't require anything more than sheer altruism to motivate their oversight, actually granted him his license in the first place thus causing the problem!
So anyone with their head screwed on right can see past the propaganda to the essential truth of the matter. Littlewood, as witless mouthpiece of the statist-quo, is trotting out the standard praise in justification of regulation. The sheeple automatically and subconsciously absorb this message on the necessity of regulation as implicitly reinforcing the necessity of the state because obviously without a coercive state there couldn't possibly be any voluntary forms of accreditation or qualification could there. We would all be horse abusing, money grabbing fraudsters and there would be no 'final arbiter' to deal with such fraud. Except even with the loving caring state as mother and protector and the regulatory angels providing oversight this still happens. So we can see the doublethink behind the pro-state regulation story. It was the failure of the regulatory state that led to the problems here. Perhaps if they were motivated by having to maintain a competitive reputation they might actually look at the applications before rubber stamping them.
Then in his next report littlewood moved on to awaken us to the existence of worthless fake currency! I almost pissed myself laughing at the irony. Apparently there are some coin presses operated by unlicensed counterfeiters! It doesn't count as real money if it isn't the state conjuring it from thin air. But again the baddy of the piece wasn't the failure of the state regulator oh no - its the banks. The fact that the royal mint has an exclusive monopoly on the supply of money was completely ignored. It is the manufacturer and distributor and as such is supposed to weed out the fakes, defects and worn coins. But the state has failed even in the supply of fiat currency! As the good little statist, Littlewood blames the banks. He thinks they should be checking the shit they receive even more than they already are. And I am sure that he expects them to do it for free. And I am sure that as an irrational idiot of a 'champion for consumer rights' if the banks were to do so he would complain that their charges had increased.
Beyond these two examples of unquestioning pro state doublethink there is a never ending supply. I say doublethink because the message is pro state fear mongering that constantly obfuscates the fact that the state causes the problems.
The BBC recently broadcast a Panorama program entitled 'somalia: land of anarchy'. This was the usual parade of pro state fear mongering and I am currently preparing a post in direct response to this piece. Funnily enough immediately after this program panorama apologised for a program last year in which they falsified 'evidence' in their smear against bargain clothing chain primark - our unbiased state broadcaster 'erroneously' inserted footage of a child sweatshop. Then there was an advert for a dramatisation of huge government proto nwo mafia clan the kennedys. The beeb lurves big government.
Away from the BBC channel 4 are trailing a Dispatches program about how evil gold is because there are some kids down mines somewhere. I'm sure western statism in no small part exacerbates the factors that push 3rd world kids into mining but ill try not to get side tracked. This as yet unbroadcast program may or may not mention the professional mines in America or Canada but that wouldn't be very sensationalist would it. Even if this program focuses on gold for jewellery you just know that the 'wont someone think of the children' arguments it augments will be rolled out for any libertarian gold as currency arguments.
Literally every single thing on television makes my blood boil. Perhaps I'm paranoid but if you're at all open to the possibility that a cosy establishment media might have an agenda you can see the pro state anti individual message everywhere.
Sunday, 26 June 2011
Freedom through Technology - A Peer to Peer Revolution
The links between freedom and technology go back to the dawn of time. Some of us are wary of technology for a variety of reasons. Perhaps the same autonomous streak in your personality that drove you toward the ideas of individual freedom engenders a preference for hands-on physical diy approaches rather than trusting some external device or service. Or perhaps the ease with which technology delivers good things is all too alarming as this same power can deliver bad things. Perhaps you would gladly trade the positive effects of technology in favour of eliminating the ill effects when technology is used for coercive purposes - tracking, monitoring, and logging for example.
An example of this justifiable wariness some freedom lovers exhibit toward technology can be summed up in these four letters - CCTV. When used by the state little cameras are evil little tools of oppression but when used by everyone else they are useful devices. for example the same spy cameras the state use for no end of oppressive purposes can also enable your grandmother to live a more independent life by seeing who's at the door without getting up. Or even enable me to explore the world from the comfort of my own fat arse.
Often this dichotomy in the application of technology between the pursuit of coercion or freedom is a competitive race. take speed cameras for example. We know from the GATSO story that they were developed by private individuals in the free market for entirely peaceful uses (a dutch rally driver wanted to measure his speed so he could go faster. the technology was later used to time swimming races). But the state realised the profit possible from applying this technology to coercively restricting free travel both in terms of direct profit from highway robbery with fines and also electoral profit in the form of appealing to puritanical emotive pressure groups. The backlash against this form of perversion was evident. But technology itself was also used in response to this state abuse of technology. speed camera warning systems, detectors and mapping systems became available and have descended in cost and improved in reliability ever since - to the point that some cars come as standard with speed camera warning sat nav systems.
However you feel about the relationship between technology and freedom I would like to argue that we are reaching a point where the balance between technology for freedom is beginning to outweigh the effects of technology for coercion.
Need i point out that right now we are able to spread awareness and share ideas almost entirely due to the technology that i am typing into. Sure the Libertarian Alliance used to have a postal mailing list or you could subscribe to a physical 'dead-tree' delivery of The Freeman or, going even further back, pamphleteers such as Thomas Paine, the Diggers, the Levellers and Cato's Letters printed and distributed ideas. Even these, less effective methods for communicating ideas and individual freedom were enabled by and dependent upon, what were then new technologies. Pamphleteers – the printing press, The Freeman and Libertarian Alliance – the photocopier and telephone. The immediacy and universality of the internet significantly lowers the opportunity costs for individuals to seek out and find information and now even accidentally stumble upon ideas that make sense to them. The difference between an individual seeing or hearing a reference to Rothbard and being able to instantaneously follow it up compared to pre internet times are as considerable as they were prohibitive. The opportunity costs of going to a library or finding an encylopedia to discover who this Rothbard was were too high. and thats before the additional costs of further pursuit such as finding a source of Rothbard's writings, phoning them and ordering a copy etc. In todays world a curious individual can satisfy their curiosity after seeing a 'Read Rothbard' T-shirt by hitting Wikipedia on their mobile device where they can follow links to the Mises Institute and download free materials in a variety of media that even further increase the accessibility and spread of these ideas.
Even this is considered too much effort by some people and so the ever ready market supplies this demand in the form of vocal and image based searches from mobile phones. You simply vocally ask your phone to search for "Rothbard" or point the phone's camera at some text or the cover of a Rothbard book and it searches out the details for you including the best price and directions to the shop if necessary.
All this sure beats trying to spread the ideas of freedom by running round shouting at people or handing out bits of paper.
Sounds wonderful doesnt it but obviously if the free market of voluntary exchange is doing good with technology then inevitably the coercive forces of the state are going to be bending it toward their own warped incentives.
So after stating the obvious that you already know - what news do i have to offer? Well technology is now reaching a point where anonymity, privacy and security are cheaper, easier and more attainable than ever before. If this doesn't sound significant then consider that as of right this very second, even if you are unaware of the possibility, you are able to communicate, trade and bank completely anonymously in complete privacy and security. Also consider that by private trade and banking i mean completely private – free from state manipulation of the money supply – NO inflation - a stateless currency. Also consider that by private trade i mean as completely private as to permit the free trade of any substance. Whether that be some material completely outlawed or merely something that attracts levies and taxes on the open market. You are able to trade TAX FREE with complete security.
This privacy also includes free speech. Totally free speech. Not restricted by the state in any way. Not directly nor even indirectly. No DNS URLs that can be shut down, no central storage server that can be shut down and now even no ISP that can be shutdown or forced to record and convey logs of your activities.
If this all sounds too good to be true then read on and i shall do my best to explain that this is not pie in the sky fantasy but something you should be able to achieve in a number of hours FOR FREE.
If this all sounds over the top and distinctly unnecessary, like some paranoid fantasy for people who think they are in some way subversive and special then look at what is actually happening in the real world around you today. Not a looming spectre on the horizon of tomorrow but actually now. wikileaks chased from server to server and indicted in criminal proceedings, Peaceful protesters pre-emptively arrested for thought-crimes as a result of public blogging, and self-defending british nationals seized for extradition to a foreign power without question. notice that these are not chinese dissidents, or egyptian bloggers but normal people like you or I getting arrested for victimless 'crimes'.
The Malum Prohibitum laws (yknow all the false 'statues' that go beyond laws against aggressive acts toward an actual victim) we suffer under are so numerous that you cannot possibly know if you are breaking them with your online activities. do you know each and every word of British libel laws? do you know the libel laws of each and every country with which our overlords have agreed extradition arrangements? could you be whisked away under a European arrest warrant to spend a few years in a foreign jail awaiting trial? in all likelihood there are probably laws prohibiting advocating the end of the state, laws against openly criticising the EU or for endorsing rival non state currencies.
In short do not rely on their law to protect you. With individual freedom comes individual responsibility in equal measure. if you want the freedom to say what you want then it is your responsibility to ensure that you can do so safely. as an aside this kind of victimisation is what makes me an angry anarchist. we all know that free speech is not a crime, that libel is not a crime, that death threats are just that - threats, mere words - that until an aggressive act has been committed there has been no crime. But we dont live in a world of objective ethics and rational law. We are forced to protect ourselves from their unnecessary coercion. you should not have to waste hours of your life investigating and self educating on topics of anonymity and encryption but because of their aggression and threats of aggression we must. it isnt right that the onus is on us to protect ourselves from them when we know that they have no right to even exist let alone threaten us for non-crimes but such is the way of the world at this stage.
so if you want to be free to rhetorically suggest that whichever Kommissar such and such of the EU or Komrade fotherington-smythe of the guardian would be best off swinging from a lamp post then dont sit there on an open web connection using Windows, Internet Explorer and broadcasting your IP address and real world location for all to see.
Ive written too much already and as I am not a technical expert nor a teacher it is best that you self educate. the links to similar mechanisms you will find beyond these will open your eyes to how the spread of freedom can and will continue and spread even when 'they' are trying to shut us down. Peer to peer is the answer.
Anonymous decentralised unstoppable non-inflationary encrypted currency with banking - Bitcoin
Anonymous decentralised unstoppable encrypted DNS - Namecoin
Anonymous decentralised unstoppable encrypted Network - Tor
Anonymous Encrypted Tor-based encrypted operating system - Tails
Anonymous decentralised unstoppable encrypted Network - I2P
Anonymous web proxy - Annonymizer
Anonymous email - Mixminion
Anonymous decentralised unstoppable market place - Silk Road
Unstoppable decentralised internet - no centralised, isps, severs or dns - mesh networks
Thursday, 23 June 2011
Back in the USSR
Yes I've come crawling back to the Blogosphere. I thought I could escape the gnawing sense of frustration and fury felt by anyone who has become awoken to the nature of the world and the realisation that it simply does not have to be this way. I thought that by turning off my RSS feed of what can be unavoidably and necessarily negative discourse I could live in that comfy blissful ignorance that the sheeple here in the USSR seem to so enjoy. I have never experienced such thoughtless contentment in my entire life. Even before I self educated myself into awareness I had nagging doubts and questions that nothing in the mainstream could answer. Almost one year ago I accidentally stumbled upon libertarianism and I would not now take The Blue Pill if given the chance despite the frustration and fury that The Red Pill has caused as the side effect of enlightenment by objective truth.
So once again I wade into the breach to badly regurgitate the most powerful liberating truth that I thrive upon from others far more able than myself. My return to this perhaps fruitless addiction has been part pushed by an escalating rage toward burgeoning oppression and part pulled by the need to highlight the fast escalating shit that is coming our way. But fear not - there are some rays of hope, some possibilities for freedom. I take inspiration in my online resurgence from the reappearance of The Greek Riot Dog. If you wanna see the spirit of freedom and liberty go youtube the riot dog.
Thats the look of a noble, self-owning, sovereign being that knows no coercion and aint gonna take that shit
Friday, 8 April 2011
i go weeks without posting then one right after another. qualitatively and quantitatively my work could be compared to constipation and diarrhea but nevermind.
i was perusing wiki as i do. i find it a really good way of getting a wide overview of ideas you are unfamiliar with and then using the sources as a stepping off point.
so id surfed my way through a few links in various political-philosophy articles on there and arrived at wage slavery. an idea that motivates quite alot of my views. unfortunately alot of the references to anarchism in the article seem to refer to the hard socialist form of anarchism. the one that supports statist coercion in favor of a their own subjectively and arbitrarily defined group (little different to right-libertarians). i dont think there is any such thing as right or left anarchism. and i dont think there is a need for such discrimination either. certainly in an effort to rebuke accusations of being apologists for crony corporatism many anarcho-capitalist theorists have devoted great efforts to explaining how it is the coercion of the state that generates and perpetuates most of the injustices and inequalities that concern these anarcho-socialists. so we can see that absent the state voluntary legal systems are unlikely to uphold anything resembling the current favourable environment the state offers certain clients. limited liability is a pure externalisation of risk. polycentric market law necessarily has to be reciprocal. why would anyone volunteer to carry the risk of a corporation? there probably will be no such entity under anarchy.
that had been my understanding of the argument against 'evil' corporatism under anarchy. however on reading the wiki article about wage slavery another argument caught my eye.
im interested in the Freeman movement. in my days of engaging with statist 'libertarian' bloggers i would frequently defend the Freeman movement because i thought they were on to the same ideas as voluntarist anarchists. the Freemen challenged the concept of the social contract motivated by a desire for freedom from unjust coercion. this philosophical validity of contracts has always been a central issue whether it concerns capital, land or labour.
thus the following excerpt from the wiki article on wage slavery that focuses on some contractual criticisms of the current employer/employee labour/capital relationship is extremely interesting in the context of whether voluntary law would be able to uphold a continued universal application of this relationship.
Employment contracts
Some criticize wage slavery on strictly contractual grounds, e.g. David Ellerman and Carole Pateman, arguing that the employment contract is a legal fiction in that it treats human beings juridically as mere tools or inputs by abdicating responsibility and self-determination, which the critics argue are inalienable. As Ellerman points out, "[t]he employee is legally transformed from being a co-responsible partner to being only an input supplier sharing no legal responsibility for either the input liabilities [costs] or the produced outputs [revenue, profits] of the employer’s business."[104] Such contracts are inherently invalid "since the person remain[s] a de facto fully capacitated adult person with only the contractual role of a non-person . . ." as it is impossible to physically transfer self-determination.[105] As Pateman argues:"The contractarian argument is unassailable all the time it is accepted that abilities can ‘acquire’ an external relation to an individual, and can be treated as if they were property. To treat abilities in this manner is also implicitly to accept that the ‘exchange’ between employer and worker is like any other exchange of material property . . . The answer to the question of how property in the person can be contracted out is that no such procedure is possible. Labour power, capacities or services, cannot be separated from the person of the worker like pieces of property."[106]Critics of the employment contract advocate consistently applying "the principle behind every trial," i.e., "legal responsibility should be imputed in accordance with de facto responsibility," implying a workplace run jointly by the people who actually work in the firm.[107] The people who actually work in a firm are de facto responsible for the actions of said firm and thus have a legal claim to its outputs, as the contractarian critics argue. "Responsible human action, net value-adding or net value-subtracting, is not de facto transferable."[108] Suppliers (including shareholders), on the other hand, having no de facto responsibility, have no legal claim to the outputs.
While a person may still voluntarily decide to contractually rent himself, just as today he may voluntarily decide to contractually sell himself, in a society where "the principle behind every trial" is consistently applied, neither contract would be legally enforceable, and the rented/sold individual would maintain at all times de jure responsibility for her/his actions, including legal claim to the fruits of their labor. In a modern liberal-capitalist society, the employment contract is enforced while the enslavement contract is not; the former being considered valid because of its consensual/non-coercive nature, and the later being considered inherently invalid, consensual or not. The noted economist Paul Samuelson described this discrepancy.
"Since slavery was abolished, human earning power is forbidden by law to be capitalized. A man is not even free to sell himself; he must rent himself at a wage."[109]Some advocates of laissez-faire capitalism, among them philosopher Robert Nozick, address this inconsistency in modern societies, arguing that a consistently libertarian society would allow and regard as valid consensual/non-coercive enslavement contracts, rejecting the notion of inalienable rights.
"The comparable question about an individual is whether a free system will allow him to sell himself into slavery. I believe that it would."[110]Others like Murray Rothbard allow for the possibility of debt slavery, asserting that a lifetime labour contract can be broken so long as the slave pays appropriate damages:
"[I]f A has agreed to work for life for B in exchange for 10,000 grams of gold, he will have to return the proportionate amount of property if he terminates the arrangement and ceases to work."[111]
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