fallacies incompatible with freedom

there are a few major concepts that are so ingrained from thousands of years of human history that, for the majority, they pass without examination. individually and cumulatively these falsehoods constitute the control mechanisms that keep you enslaved.

incidentally if you think my use of the term slavery is ridiculously inaccurate, outright tinfoil hat-ery or merely a rhetorical device to draw attention to some trivial issue then think again. if you believe in the advantages of technological, scientific and industrial progress then please explain why you will be working harder, longer and for less than your immediately preceding generation. comparatively you will have a smaller house, full of flimsier shit you dont need and you will have less time with your family. the reason for this is the state. you are feeling the effects of coercion. if you feel so suicidally inclined why not sit down and actually add up your income tax, personal and employer's NIC's, VAT on everything you buy for a year, and other duties, taxes and direct licenses. this ignores the inflated prices that come from cartels protected by coercive 'regulation', artificial scarcities (land/housing!) and other exploitative costs. nevertheless it WILL be more than 50% of your sweat.
ive arbitrarily plucked that random figure because even the most hardened stalinist would find the idea of working for less than half to be deeply wrong. it is this deep sense of injustice that each and every single one of us does feel. as children we struggle to reconcile infant lessons in right and wrong with later discoveries regarding 'the way the world works'. that an 8 year old cant understand the concept of taxation does not indicate the stupidity of 8 year olds. they know right from wrong and they have the fundamental understanding of property rights. what they dont have is the 'sophisticated' doublethink that comes with 'maturity' that allows the compromise of what should be absolute ethics that they have been taught. when im talking to normal people who dont read political blogs for fun and who dont bother with even television news i often find that their common sense view is so much more accurate and truthful than the 'nuanced' bullshit that their supposed betters have swallowed and blinded themselves with. (arrogance alert) these supposed 'naive' individuals have a clearer understanding of the world than anyone who regularly buys a 'newspaper'. their reaction to the arrest of someone who hasnt broken the non aggression axiom (has contravened no natural/common law) is frequently "he wasnt hurting anyone". these people havent read the ethical origins of the non aggression principle in objectivist philosophy and they dont have to because like the socialist-statist baulking at his income tax bill or the confused infant struggling to reconcile the instruction from authority not to snatch even whilst authority snatches her toys right from her grasp, they have a deep, inherent sense of what is right and wrong. the child knows that "finders are keepers." if this isnt a natural expression of the inherrence of property rights and homesteading as instinctive human behaviours i dont know what is. the 'ill-informed' yob can see there isnt any need to invade a country that hasnt invaded us and even the do-gooder socialist can see that little of the money taken from his earnings will reach the poor and needy.

anyways i digress, back to what i wanted to ramble about;
there are a few major concepts that are so ingrained from thousands of years of human history that, for the majority, they pass without examination. individually and cumulatively these falsehoods constitute the control mechanisms that keep you enslaved.

religion
you cannot be free if you accept the legitimacy of religion. irrational belief in supernatural forces is not only illogical but it is down right evil. religion is nothing more than a control mechanism dreamed up by the fathers of 'civilisation'. im sure that in deepest Sumeria this tool of enslavement was consciously designed in a genuine conspiracy. a family/tribal leader conceived a greater consolidation of power and privilege and devised the position of king. such a nakedly evil hierarchy would be obvious and unsustainable without some form of obfuscatory justification. the king would conspire with a chosen individual who would become his priest. the priest would pretend to be the sole guardian of knowledge that would explain all the aspects of their world that mystified these early civilisations - the sky, stars, sun and moon, the seasons, what 'really' happened when old people stopped moving and the weather upon which they were so dependent. with the ultimate power derived from these fears and lack of understanding the priest could justify the irrational position of the king. in exchange im sure the priest was excused labouring in the fields and given a special house from which to further consolidate his master's privilege.
beyond these oppressive origins religion expanded its illiberal control. freedom is based entirely upon self-ownership. i once had a fruitless argument at the libertarian alliance in a blog comment thread. i was responding to some 'libertarian' article about religious freedom and simply pointed out that religion has been the source of almost all oppressions in history. then all the mysticist 'libertarians' came crawling out of the woodwork. their version of the sky pixie was right and what did i know. i was pelted with 'relevant' quotes from ancient books that were apparently 'true'. no argument was needed - they just were. but i do have a point. interestingly one god-botherer responded like an almost open mind to my assertion of the principle of self ownership being the only possible basis for liberty. this chap reaffirmed that he 'hated' the state but conceded that he consciously believed he did not own his body! as a practicing religious-ist he was actually aware of this concept unlike the 'i suppose im a christian' masses. he had the quotes from the magic guide book that told him he was property of another. yes this does not necessarily preclude anti-statism. one could believe in god in a stateless society but one would not be free. if you believe you are owned by god then you have to do what he tells you to. and since it is quite tricky hearing what he is saying you have to rely on interpretation and instruction from his intermediaries. thus empirically you end up being owned and controlled by them. bingo - a new coercion. the coercive state relies upon threats to you in the real world but the religious controllers rely on threats to you in the after-life. do as we say or unprovable things may happen to you in an invisible and possibly non existent world after all this whooooooo.
church and state are symbiotic. they should be considered one and the same. in our blissful and perfect never-rock-the-boat world of 'liberal democratic' 'freedom' religion is supposedly decedent. this is bullshit. explicit ad overt religion has done its job as a control mechanism and now that operation can be wound up. the human slave farm is a business like any other and the managers want to minimise costs. if better control mechanisms become available then the old ones can be left. even some atheists have talk about having a strong work ethic. why? why would anyone work really really hard? is this not a leftover from our days toiling in the fields to fill the Lord's tithe barn? there is no objective justification for working harder than you need to or want to. instead such slave motivation comes from our rulers. they have always creamed off the product of our labour and the more we labour the more they can take. simple as that. even without big pointy stone buildings and big pointy hats religion still has a hold on you and keeps you from freedom.
most of us in britain cannot be unaware of the effects of puritanism. im abusing this term to refer to the general sense that you can have too much fun and life isnt really for enjoyment. ive read about hedonism and epicureanism and it makes way more sense than the prohibitionist crap we receive from our totalitarian state. there is no objective reason why 'healthiness' is 'good' and indulgence of human desires is 'bad'. pleasure and happiness are subjective. the powers that be, no matter how hard they try cannot calculate what is 'best'. likewise not all individuals desire happiness. but this puritanism comes from religion. keep the flock strong healthy and productive.
ages ago i read an article criticising John Lennon's Imagine as being nihilistic. being a contrarian i thought this was a very clever view. 'yeah all the sheep who voted it track of the millennium dont realise that it advocates the destruction of religion and the state that do so much good and charitable works.' i now have a better understanding of human nature and can see that empathy, charity and mutualism are not dependent upon religion or the state. people who claim religion invented charity are falling into the trap of that which is unseen. just because religion has always accompanied human altruism does not mean that altruism could not exist without religion.
more recently i was reminded of this by a striking image.

this could equally be a picture of some long destroyed building in the middle east that was targeted during 'our' religious crusades. im not a moral relativist but i thought it necessary to point out that unlike the subtext of this poster i am not against 'their' religion. 'ours' fucks up just as many things.
under the same search were t-shirts bearing the motto 'religion - the accepted insanity' which i liked. but also what i imagine are religious rebuttals in defence - posters bearing the same caption 'imagine no religion' but with images of hitler, mao and stalin. as i have said if it wasnt for these deluded, dangerous, mystical fuckers who hide their insanity under the legitimsing cloak of 'religion' then there would likely be no coercive state for tyranical dictators to take over. without a history of religious enslavement humanity would not allow itself to be ruled at all let alone by dicks in uniforms. it is the original evil of religion overriding the natural and self evident objective truth of self ownership that has led to this world of no freedom. if god owns you and god 'appoints' a man in a shiny hat to tell you what to do and take all of your money then religion has alot to answer for. this idea is so ingrained that even now most people dont give a flying fuck about god or religion they still believe it entirely natural that we carry on as if we are all god fearing serfs who must fill our master's tithe barn. there's at least two thousand years of human history to overturn but the message must be that you own yourself. not the beardy man in the sky and not the beardy man in the big fancy dress in the big fancy building.

on the subject of contemporary 'religious terrorism' i blame anyone with an acceptance of any religion. by accepting the irrational belief in supernatural forces, each and every religious person in the world is legitimising such idiotic martyrdom. if it is clearly insanity for some brown men to believe that an invisible person in the sky is telling them to kill themselves then surely it is no less mental to make jam and knit scarves to raise funds for the glorification of your own sky fairy? rather than trying to walk the impossible tightrope of cognitive dissonance that is the 'well their religion is wrong' argument we should all point to the insanity of any religion.

if you want to be free you must reject your belief in the legitimacy of coercion (im looking at you minarchists) and you must reject any acceptance of the insanity of 'religion'.

next week on my 'negative' tirade i might lay into dominant attitudes to relationships and how they all just so happen to resemble control mechanisms for a productive populace of slaves.

disclaimer - the following is not intended as a claim of a world first philosophical breakthrough. i am sure i am not the first person to have had this realisation and hopefully i wont be the last. if some of you reading this can make any sense of the following you may well be surprised that it wasnt all immediately obvious to me. therefore i apologise for the preachy and arrogant tone.

almost as soon as ive started this blog i seem to have run out of steam. however i dont see this as a negative. i started my education in individual freedom about 8 months ago and have read thousands of words each and every day (you wouldnt believe it based on the drivel i produce here). i have finally come to a form of conclusion beyond which, for me,  further commentary or argument seems redundant. deontological objectivist ethics preclude anything other than an entirely voluntary society. coercion is completely illegitimate. this i have been aware of throughout my exploration of libertarian thought. i have become more and more convinced of the validity of this position but i have very recently experienced a kind of epiphany that has unified and clarified what i had previously thought of as two exclusive ideas.
there are two forms of liberty lovers (im trying to avoid the semantic pitfalls of the term 'libertarian'): the consequentialist and the deontological. they both tend toward the same ideas but arrive at them from different directions. consequentialists derive their libertarianism from a search for organisational forms which provide the most desirable consequences. for example they see the benefits of competitive free markets and therefore advocate the freeing of markets in the provision of everything.
deontological libertarians derive desire for individual freedom from ethics (non aggression axiom) based on objective truth (self ownership). the coercive constraint of voluntary action is illegitimate therefore there can be nothing less than a free market in the provision of everything.
i always favoured the deontological idea over the consequentialist and felt a sense of frustration that most 'libertarians' seemed to be of the consequentialist bent. this led them to consider each and every aspect of the world and argue over how it should be. the endless discussion and commentary on each and every aspect of human organisation was exhausting and seemed counter productive. i came to believe that the subjectivity of this approach was the cause of its lack of success. if the constraint of the state and expansion of individual freedom was only desirable because it gave the 'best' consequences in the view of such and such libertarians then how could they spread this view to others who disagreed based on their own subjective views of what was a desirable consequence? without any guiding principle this case by case approach seemed doomed to fail. this vulnerability to subjective differences of opinion meant that even among 'libertarians' there was very little consensus. the anarchy/minarchy debate for example was perhaps the most extreme example of such disagreement but further up the scale there would be disagreement about the legitimacy of interventionist foreign policy or state provision of safety-net healthcare. if one libertarian didnt think that anarchy was the 'best' form of society then it was fruitless hammering away on comment threads trying to sway their opinion. even attempting to discover their personal principle and appealing to it was nigh on impossible. i used to point to the present day usa and switzerland to illustrate my point that even the most carefully crafted constitution would inevitably fail to safeguard individual liberty. i never succeeded in changing a single viewpoint and often failed to even elicit any response at all. on more mainstream blogs with non-libertarian commenters any advocation of minarchist let alone anarchist solutions to whatever the issue was at hand from a consequentialist position was thwarted by the impossibility of outlining the entire socio-economic consequences of one's suggestion within the limits of that website. questions of human organisation are so fundamentally interconnected that in order to fully explain the total removal of the state from healthcare (provision, funding, and regulation) necessitated a supplementary diversion into an explanation of polycentric legal systems as egalitarian protectors of individual consumers in an environment of competing regulators. as Molyneux calls it 'the argument from effect' was difficult to say the least.
this is not to say that i wasnt a big fan of consequentialist ideas. Friedman's anarcho-capitalist masterpiece The Machinery of Freedom is written from an entirely consequentialist position. he argues the case for anarchy purely because it would provide the best consequences rather than it being ethically right. this along with austrian and classical liberal economic theory used to be my daily fare. arguments for allowing the market mechanism to solve whichever problem had reared its head in that day's blogosphere used to fill my rss reader.
i still simultaneously believed ever more strongly in the ethical case for individual freedom but found it to be no more than a coincidence that liberty happened to result in such desirable 'side effects'. that i could advocate the abolition of coercive taxation for greater personal freedom and rest easy in the knowledge that even without this extortion funding the state provision of healthcare such 'public goods' would be better in a free market was a constant source of amazement. i used to be consciously aware that this coincidence must be the most beautiful accident possible. i began to wonder that because individual freedom derriving from objective ethics could create better consequences in every single situation there must be some link. for months it was at the back of my mind unanswered.
slowly it has dawned on me and finally i realised the link between the consequential benefits of statelessness in any given issue and the ethical imperative for statelessness.
the absolute fundamental of my beliefs is the illegitimacy of coercion. we should live in a free market anarchist society because any initiation of violence is illegitimate. i have finally realised why the removal of this aggression results in better consequences. the free market is the best mechanism for organisation not because it just is empirically but because it is voluntary. there is no coercion. suppliers must answer their customers' demands in order to gain. there can be no individual benefit without mutual exchange. the state, in whatever it does, always has coercion in its pocket. no matter whether the state uses coercion it is always there and its ill-effects always make themselves felt. state services do not have to be responsive to customer demands or react to market forces because they operate in a coercive environment. subconsciously the statist actors behave based on that underlying imbalance. coercion will always result in idiocy and thuggery. in any question regarding the state, the root cause will always be this coercion. i have read arguments from effect on so many issues now that this has become clear. even though individually these arguments may not have concluded that coercion is at fault - perhaps they concluded that economic forces compelled individuals to work in illiberal sweatshop conditions - it is further down the chain of consequences in an issue from a different argument - coercive limitation of land use inflating living costs and artificially tilting the employer/employee balance and pressure to earn - or coercive regulation limiting alternative opportunities such as self employment -  that the coercion can be found.
this enlightenment has made me realise that constant commentary on political events and socio-economic issues is perhaps redundant. as Molyneux said in reference to the 'TSA scandal' - why are you surprised? why should anyone with any awareness of the ill-effects of coercion be surprised by airport state thuggery? when the tools of coercion are so reliable and handy and yet without fail result in unwanted effects why should individualists be surprised that the state relies on their handy tools and generates ill-effects? once you have realised that coercion is the root of all that is wrong with the world and that it is objectively illegitimitate reading a dozen 'libertarian' blogs (certainly the tory-statist british 'libertarian blogosphere') all weaving well worded consequentialist critiques of todays latest invasion of individual freedom becomes tiresome.
beyond that there is as little point in exploring what is the best way to do x. i dont need to read economists arguing the best model for healthcare provision because i  know that without coercion it will be impossible not to serve the desires of the customer. therefore i dont need to guess at what a future free from coercion 'should' look like. without coercion the future will be free and just.
i dont need to read arguments against puritanical prohibitions, expansions and centralisations of state power, the insanity of war, right vs left which is best arguments, look at this politician/state program what an idiot/failure if only they had voted for/done this. none of it is necessary. as long as there is coercion power will corrupt and expand and the individual and liberty will be oppressed and cowed. no-one aware of the objective truth of self ownership should be surprised by this.


i will continue to post here though because i did not create this blog to pursue a quest for who we should vote into power or what the best economic policy is. im not goign to fall into their divide and rule trap of right vs left tribalism. im not going to try and find the answer for each and every bloody problem in the world. im not going to respond to the topic of the day either. the latest violation of freedom and good sense by the state is becoming less and less of a surprise to me no matter how egregious it may be. when one understands the mechanisms of the state - corporatism, regulatory capture and subsequent cartelisation, the industrial-military-political-propaganda complex and the indoctrinating designs of 'education', the design of legal, financial and social systems to keep you enslaved, client groups and the upward/downward redistribution of welath to the favoured and/or useful - and the single root cause - coercion - then one need no longer hold it at the forefront of thought. i am beginning to be able to let it go.
i started this blog as an outlet for my fury at the never ending shittiness of the world that i know to be the effect of social organisation being fundamentally based on coercion. when particular stories fuck me off beyond exhausted acquiescence then i will pour out my half formed thoughts here in a rambling nonsensical tirade against anything and everything. i dont expect anyone to read it and am amazed that anyone does. i think blogger fakes the stats just to keep me coming back.
im not even trying to spread the message of objective truth that each and everyone of us is sovereign. we and no other entity are owners of our being and in sole control of ourselves. the world can and must be voluntary. rather than regurgitate that simple truth time and again i will leave it to the countless others who are far more able. Mr. Molyneux is a fine example.
but rest assured that now and then the odd fuck up will continue to raise a fury in me.

biggest bestest shot of Tahrir Square

this is one of those massive zoom-able, pan-able panoramic images. you can look around and zoom right in to see individual faces etc.
i know this lot are as much statists as voters in a rotherham by-election but at least they were willing to put everything on the line for a bit more liberty. most of us dont have the balls to resist the TV tax. anyways click through and have a look
http://www.gigapan.org/gigapans/fullscreen/71965/

so from the freedom loving people gathered to overthrow an oppressive ruler to a different crowd of people gathered to welcome and celebrate a new, more oppressive ruler
http://www.gigapan.org/gigapans/fullscreen/71965/
just to ruin the suprise ill tell you its another gigapan shot of obama's innauguration. not something an anarchist should really give two shits about but its a pretty amazing image. i suppose i could dive into how all the pageantry and magic symbols and colourful outfits/uniforms are antiquated control mechanisms designed to awe and control an uneducated peasantry and that its a fucking humiliation that this kind of song and dance still convinces the masses that they should bend over for a coercive butt fucking by our illegitimate overlords in the 21st century. but i wont.
http://www.gigapan.org/gigapans/most_popular/
there's a whole load of non political just beautiful ones on there too - a view from sugar loaf mountain over rio etc. or check out some others http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=panoramic+photos&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a#sclient=psy&hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=yk0&rls=org.mozilla:en-US%3Aofficial&q=gigapixel+photos&aq=0c&aqi=g-c3&aql=&oq=&pbx=1&fp=3557c01c15dbc1a4

hypocritical fuckwit commits gross hypocrisy on televised charity campaign

weapons dealer meets autocratic tyrant

both socialists
both statists
by which of course i mean that this indictment from fellow violent statists at the whitehouse can be leveled at both brown and gadaffi:

"When a leader's only means of staying in power is to use mass violence against his own people, he has lost the legitimacy to rule and needs to do what is right for his country by leaving now,"

this post is pretty redundant from an anarchist point of view but i simply had to get this off my chest.

last night in the uk was the annual televised charity telethon Comic Relief which does come in for some criticism. now i dont want to bash comic relief too much. they are more of a genuine voluntary charity than this little lot who are in truth merely clients/arms of the state. true, comic relief does depend almost entirely on the bbc for extensive and cost free airtime in addition to its cast of coercively funded bbc celebrities. and true, the main man, richard curtis, was behind this much fisked 'humourously' coercive climate scam propaganda video.

but... it is still as near voluntary charity as there is aside from individual direct action and this is an aspect of humanity that libertarian and anarchist thought relies fairly heavily on to defend itself from 'what about the poor?' statists. so i will leave an examination of the dubious benefits of pissing money away treating the symptoms through corrupt NGO's in the third world to other bloggers.

what really shocked the fuck out of me was the horrific appearance of the above pictured saggy faced fuckwit - gordon brown. i know the charity was trying to get 'big names' but isnt it a bit dodgy treading into the political sphere. i have recently realised that the old adage 'dont discuss politics or religion' is true-ish because both rely so heavily on indoctrinated doublethink to hide their coercive control that discussion invariably upsets people as their gigantic cognitive dissonance struggles to cope. involving a former prime minister is sure to piss off a whole load of potential donators so why not just get a non political celebrity?
brown in particular will piss off almost everyone including the vast majority of people that have never considered the ethical inconsistency of coercive government.
he has shackled millions into permanent poverty and dependency upon a crumbling state welfare system. he has price millions out of work through ill advised minimum wage laws and fundamentally mismanaged the state economy. he has continued to embroil the people of the state in foreign conflicts with gigantic costs and above all he famously cannot smile. his comic relief appearance was awkward, unnatural and artificial.

but the insanity of involving this man in a campaign to raise money for Africa is monumental. he, like all statists, actively supports the root causes of the problems whilst charity events like this only treat the visible symptoms.
international trade agreements, the 3rd world financial debt held by quasi-state banks, silence on irrational religious opposition to contraception and other healthcare measures. all these contribute to the problems that comic relief shows us. how the man that channeled funds and weapons to an african dictator can pretend to smile along with such hypocritical worthiness is unbelievable.

Praxis

Agora I/O Etienne “Cultivating the Counter Evolution” | Agora I/O

angry waffle

via http://dailybayonet.com/

now obviously this is originally from an energy industry source so make of it what you will but if this is veritable then this illustrates the same control mechanism at play in the energy 'markets' as we suffer under in the housing 'market'.
first off - why does the state own the seabed? why is it only for lease and not freehold? the answer is quite simply power, control and money. simple supply/demand economics shows that this kind of manipulation is a big winner for the state. imagine the kickbacks to the guy who dishes out permits to drill in that tiny green section. none of the sheeple will believe that anything like kickbacks or bribery could possibly be going on among our betters, the angels that regulate our imperfect human nature. well it fucking well does - from mandelson and a yachtload of oligarchs and rothschild bankers right down to the guy i know who works for a tiny housing maintenance contractor that has to hand over a brown envelope of fifties every christmas to keep its contract. without the handy machinery of coercion to externalise their costs these cunts wouldnt be able to indulge in such corruption. how much do you have to bribe a civil servant to give you a multi-million contract? not much - it aint his money so he's always going to be getting something for nothing. now how much would you have to bribe a totally private business man operating in a totally free and cut-throat competitive market to give you that contract? its his money, his business and his future so its going to have to be pretty much the full value of the contract.
anyways back to the state's 'homeownerism' of the oceans. by homeownerism i mean the illogical, illegitimate and fucking disgusting control of land use by the state. why do you slave every hour? to pay for a roof over your head ill bet. why does it cost so damn much? supply and demand. permanent and ever increasing demand and an artificially limited supply. how many building plots are available right now in a hundred mile radius of where you live? fuck all. as a result housing is insanely expensive. someone who isnt a ranting internet idiot has worked out that in britain your residence should cost less than your car! the actual materials and even labour involved in construction are a tiny fraction of the cost of your property. even with ridiculous building codes (yknow that old pub down the road - the one thats three hundred years old, has had hundreds of people through its doors every day of those three hundred years and is still standing? you wouldnt be allowed to build that now let alone allow people inside. but its still standing. now really ask yourself why the construction industry is so regulated)
imagine how radically different your lifestyle would be if land use were a voluntary matter. if an individual who wanted to sell some land were freely able to offer that land to an individual who wanted to buy it and the only limits on the use of that land were voluntary agreements.
land would be cheaper and the population less densely concentrated. without the artificially inflate costs of housing your living expenses would be significantly lower even after taking into account that most salaries are loosely based on living costs. with less pressure to slave away in the rat race the whole balance of the employer/employee balance would shift.
so we can see how the state's coercive limitation and control of land use enslaves us all to the daily grind of tax slavery (the more you gotta earn to pay that mortgage the more tax you generate for the politicians and the more interest for their mates in the banking cartel).
well they do the same with energy. in the case of the above graphic - oil. there loads of it out there so why do they restrict us getting at it? it cant be safety because as we've seen in the mexican gulf the agencies of the state are only too happy to permit dangerous sites. sites, incidentally, that would have been economically unviable if other, easier oil reserves weren't outlawed. by limiting oil exploration to a proportionately tiny area the state forces companies pay for hugely expensive and risky ventures.
its just more power control and money. keep the price of energy artificially high and we're all forced to strive to afford it. in doing so we generate more tax income for them. they also cream profits at the other end in the form of artificially extortionate permits and licenses.

now theyre at the same game with electrical power distribution under the guise of environmentalism.

Electricity consumers in the UK will need to get used to flicking the switch and finding the power unavailable, according to Steve Holliday, CEO of National Grid, the country’s grid operator. 

Holliday has for several years been predicting that blackouts could become a feature of power systems that replace reliable coal plants with wind turbines in order to meet greenhouse gas targets. Wind-based power systems are necessary to meet the government’s targets, he has explained, but they will require lifestyle changes.

Under the so-called “smart grid” that the UK is developing, the government-regulated utility will be able to decide when and where power should be delivered, to ensure that it meets the highest social purpose. Governments may, for example, decide that the needs of key industries take precedence over others, or that the needs of industry trump that of residential consumers. Governments would also be able to price power prohibitively if it is used for non-essential purposes.

Smart grids are being developed by utilities worldwide to allow the government to control electricity use in the home, down to the individual appliance. Smart grids would monitor the consumption of each appliance and be capable of turning them off if the power is needed elsewhere.

Holliday’s startling comments on BBC Radio 4 were reported by The Daily Telegraph.

from http://opinion.financialpost.com/2011/03/05/lawrence-solomon-don%E2%80%99t-count-on-constant-electricity-under-renewable-energy-says-uk-electricity-ceo/

doesnt this bit send a chill down your spine?

the government... will be able to decide when and where power should be delivered, to ensure that it meets the highest social purpose.

 when will the interfering fuckwits realise that they cannot possibly ever gather, assimilate, analyse enough information to make such decisions? central planning is ethically disgusting and empirically flawed. it is simply impossible to plan an economy. a 'mixed' economy is nothing more than a sham whereby they can pick and chose which parts to take credit for and profit from and which bits to blame on 'free markets'. the ONLY way to distribute resources is through the market mechanism. i dont mean state corporatist capitalism which should be correctly labelled fascism. i mean natural, self regulating market anarchy. i dont mean the big business templates of anarcho-capitalism whereby proponents imagine massive energy companies little different from the utilities we recognise today, efficiently distributing power in a free market. what i mean is a completely unlimited market for energy. there's nothing wrong with wind power per se merely the coercion behind statist environmentalism. if your isolated homestead would be too expensive to hook up to a private power company's grid then whack up a wind mill. or run a generator on synthetic diesel from an algae pond.
the statists simply cannot conceive that INDIVIDUALS are best placed to decide what is best for them. this highest social purpose is non-existent and impossible to calculate. utilitarians a billion times greater than todays westminster gravy train troughers failed to conceive a felicific calculus so i doubt our 'democratic' overlords will fare any different.
i am sure that the highest social purpose will turn out to be whichever industrialist has paid the highest party donations. once again the bribe is a pittance because the coercive state is dishing out someone elses money. ours. 
in a free market normal people would easily compete with the demands of business. the natural beauty of the market mechanism would distribute power as near perfectly as is possible. if people really wanted widgets then they would be willing to pay for the widgets, then the widget factory would have enough money to demand more power from the electricity company. if this drove up the price of domestic energy then the people would possibly have less money to spend on fancy widgets and it would all balance out to the most effective distribution of resources. the infinite feedback of information through the price mechanism comes as close to Marx' utopian dream of "from each according to his ability to each according to his need".
the coercive 'smartgrid' will never be as smart as the market mechanism. remove the perverse effects of coercion and allow humanity to organise voluntarily.
no to coercive limits on free use of land
no to coercive limits on free provision of energy
and no to coercive limits on free distribution of power.

friday funny

this guy is my manifesto. thanks to theuklibertarian for introducing me to him in just such a link as this. trawl his other stuff and if there's anything you disagree with - fuck off! now enjoy the weekend - its all youre allowed.

updated 16:00 fri

this is a more political one and it kicks fuckin arse. i particularly love how the chap thats posted it to youtube has included the copyright shit at the beginning of the disc

The Anarcho-bahn?

Natural law Freemen, Radical libertarians/ minarchists/ anarchists - all us freedom lovers are to a greater or lesser extent guilty of trying to template freedom. People ignorant or unaware of the possibility and indeed preferability of non coercive solutions frequently pelt us with 'but how would...' questions. Whether they truly can't imagine the simplicity and consistency of voluntary solutions or the statist mindset holds such sway over their natural minds that some cognitive dissonance causes this defensive reaction to the suggestion of freedom - still they demand answers. They want an anarchist society to provide the same statist solutions to the same problems the state itself created. 'what about the poor?' (1) They cry 'what about the railways?' They want reassurance that everything will be the same.
The crime we are often guilty of in answering these questions is rushing to positively answer these challenges in the hope of converting another believer for the cause. First off unfortunately the way the world is designed to maintain the privilege of legitimised coercive control, additional support won't make much difference right now. Yes the idea needs to spread but we are too early. By a longshot.
Secondly by trying to reassure the statist that there won't be any scary differences in libertopia we are trying to predict the future. We are also templating and compromising total freedom. The voluntary society cannot be planned. There cannot be an anarchist position on motorways or anything else come to that. We don't have views or policies.
The fact is some things that we have come to appreciate may well only be possible through coercion.
In statist healthcare debates socialists often attack free marketeers with claims that no insurer would pay for intensive cancer care or other serious diseases. If the only way to fund these extra few days of miserable excruitiating terminal decline is through violent extortion then perhaps it just isn't ethically justifiable.
Likewise without compulsory Purchase orders or as the yanks call it emminent domain it might be impossibly expensive to drive a road across a continent of private homesteads. Without corpratist protectionism the scale and rate of technological and industrial innovation might be very different. Why would voluntary customers subscribe to a legal system that granted privileged exceptions to safeguard risky investments?
Some of us go to extraordinary lengths to assuage these concerns.
I often mention Walter block. He defends the most extreme aspects of total freedom. See his 'in defense of' book for radical views of slum lords, wealth hoarders and pimps. He is radical and uncompromising in his application of anarchist principles. He alone has outlined in detail a complete examination of coercive roads and a full illustration of possible voluntary alternatives. (Google Walter block roads for the free pdf) In order to make this work he has had to argue some extremely problematic ideas.
These are not problematic because the principles are faulty but because he is trying to provide an anarchist provision of what is possibly a uniquely statist concept. There may be some things such as motorways that will not be consistent with freedom based on voluntary principles. Just because the state used violence to give us things we have grown to love does not mean we should attempt the impossible to preserve the few coercive treats we're addicted to. If coercive rule had never existed we may never have imagined or grown used to such provisions. There would have been no question of rolling back corpratism/globalism/consumerism or maintaining them under anarchy.
Block's world of competing flag poles a la the north/south Korean border in order to homestead airspace to defend against bridges over landowners who refuse to sell to the road builders might be as impossible as it sounds.
One of the amazing things about discovering and adhering to the non aggression axiom in the pursuit of whatever freedom we crave is that it forces us to rexamine assumptions we have been brought up not to question. Many of us have found our views and attitudes changed. We realise that we cannot have our freedom without extending that same equal boundless freedom to others.
The possibility that libertopia might be radically different in unexpected and even unwelcome ways is one such revelation.
The only thing of which we can be certain is freedom from coercion. The M25 might not be on the cards.

(1) as if social welfare is why we have rulers. This is merely the latest historical excuse from the coercive class who used to ride on such shams as divine right, the greater good and hypocriticaly the defense of freedom.
Even the justification of collective defence is a fallacy. It might fit. It might appear to make sense. But it can never be more than a fabrication. Whether created out of wishful misguided idealism or from intentionally deceptive design this justification cannot be the truth. The objective truth is that there is no social contract. The mythical collective does not and never has voluntarily subjected to coercive authority for any reason whether that be social welfare, collective defense or the provision of choo choo trains.
Hobbes was a cunt. And so was Plato. He really was a cunt.

climate scam

ill try not to ramble. the video speaks for itself.

i am perhaps a tad younger than some bloggers. i have been raised in the era where schools, kids tv and every source of information was dedicated to the propaganda of the scam that goes by many names. the fact that the name changes every few years to avoid critical analysis should be one of hundreds of nails in the coffin of this con. global warming, a new ice age, climate change, cfc's, the greenhouse effect (remember that? im surprising myself as the memories come flooding back), the hole in the ozone layer (not heard much about that this last 12 years! the whole of australia should have died of exposure by now and the seas boiled), the rainforests, the icecaps, recycling, peak oil, yadda yadda et cetera et cetera ad infinitum.
i was a product of this. i was one of the kids Ball worries about. i felt guilty about driving 75 miles to work. i 'understood' that my fuel bill SHOULD be crippling to discourage myself and others from igniting armageddon. it wasnt until discovering a more critical view of such tripe from freedom loving news analysts that the scales fell from my eyes. as with anything and everything that doesnt make sense or feels unjust - if you want the truth follow the money. we all know that this crap is about cash and control. within 50 years 'carbon trading' will probably be dominate the global economy and will have 'evolved' into fabian eugenics. its an unarguable fact that the eco-warrior's child will be responsible for more evil CO2 than a fleet of cars offering cheap affordable personal transport. (eco cars are damn expensive arent they? the yank tanks of the 50s were the cheapest cars in history and every poor schmuck could power around in effortless individual freedom in his 6 litre pride and joy.) thankfully for the eco warrior and its dirty little spawn im not advocating their castration or abortion. its all bollocks. they can belch as much of whatever gas they please and wont make the blindest bit of difference to a 6 trillion trillion (and the rest) ton lump of rock hurtling through the infinite vastness of space at 30kms.
its all an excuse for new upward cash flows and extra power and control. human advancement and market forces should be making transport and just about everything else cheaper, faster, more plentiful. yet mysteriously we are living in increasing 'austerity'. all due to this variously named con. follow the money. if there weren't a few bankers down at that jolly in cancun id be amazed.

(i should credit http://dickpuddlecote.blogspot.com/ where i first saw this vid)

stunning photos that sparked Bahraini protest

We've heard about the role played by Facebook and Twitter in the middle-easter/north-african uprisings but i for one was unaware of the role played by Google Earth/Maps in igniting opposition in Bahrain. These Are The Controversial Satellite Photos That Set Off Protests In Bahrain.

here we see the mansion/compound/estate of the prime-minister dwarfing not only the national stadium but whole city districts.

scroll through em. the captions are a little bit confused but the general gist seems to be that the Bahraini powers that be had taken all the land by force (everything the state does is based on coercion) which created an entirely artificial and false over crowding 'problem'. in the time worn 'problem-reaction-solution' power and money grabbing tactic of violent statists everywhere the Bahraini rulers were then able to swoop in and 'solve' this over crowding 'problem' which they themselves had created with ludicrous coastal land reclamation projects. the fact that there were was literally miles and miles of land laying empty and wasted was seemingly ignored or, from the tone of these 'revelatory' photos' captions, actively suppressed. the real beneficiaries of these houses built on sand in the sea were banks and construction companies, no doubt owned by or paying the Bahraini rulers.
another issue this highlights is a favourite bugbear i hold against the state which is home-ownerism. i will write a tediously indepth ramble on this tool of slavery later (something to look forward to eh?) but until then a brief overview:
the state controls land use which directly affects prices. he who controls and limits supply of something which is always in demand has his hands on the reins of a lucrative monopoly.more often than not the ultimate land owners are the statists themselves or their chums within the elite power groups. in the case of the 'traditional' uk our randomly german royal family still own vast swathes of land on this tiny island most of which is held by a tiny percentage of families. by limiting the use of this land it artificially inflates rents on the land they own. a less direct benefit of this control which is often missed is that because land to live on is ridiculously over priced one must strive to earn huge amounts to pay for the space required for a bed, bathroom and kitchen. the higher your mortgage/rent the more you must earn and what happens when you earn more? you generate more tax for the state to take.
if this sounds far fetched just imagine the amount of people that want to build a home in or around your house. then imagine how many permissible plots are available. now apply the iron law of supply and demand and bingo - massive land prices. this doesnt bear objective analysis. why cant we voluntarily trade land? i want to give the farmer cash for his field and he wants to give me the field for cash. why not? because if land use was dictated purely by economic supply and demand of the market and voluntary agreements (which would probably include voluntary covenants etc to preserve particular areas) then the cost of land would plummet. rulers have always had most of their wealth in the form of land. even in the age of ipads this still holds true. crown estates would be worth fuck all and elite 'portfolios' would similarly tumble. thus the coercive power of the state is directed at limiting and controlling this market. other forces from within and dependent upon the state serve to propagate myths of homes as investments, nimbyism, green belts (featureless fields are not natural wildernesses) and cramped living as normal.
i hate home-ownerism. it is the essence and life blood of the rat race and affects so many aspects of life. it is an insidious form of coercion that almost all of us have been blinded to.
why do we work our entire lives? people hundreds of years ago without the benefits of our time saving technology and productive industry worked less hours than we do today. why? by being forced into mortgage/rent slavery we become desperate for work. the employment market is tilted toward the employer who has the pick of hundreds of desperate wage slaves. conditions if you are lucky enough to hop on the rat race are shit. really think about it - yes there may be air con, water coolers and spinning chairs in your office but its hardly the natural way to spend your waking hours is it? every hour you spend in your shitty job is one hour closer to death, one hour less that you could spend doing what you want. one hour less to be disposed of voluntarily. you are forced to work. you are a slave and the main engine of this slavery is coercive control of land use.
back to Bahrain.

this perfectly illustrates how the powers that e use the tool of land use control. there is nothing in the area owned by the ruling family member. they are not doing anything with it. it simply serves to inflate prices elsewhere and, as i have explained, tax receipts and rents.

now it is important to repeat that i am not a statist socialist. i do not endorse the coercive redistribution of justly earned land and wealth. i am opposed to this kind of shenanigans not because it is an unfair distribution of wealth - there will be people with more than others - its only natural. but these photos from Bahrain are not an example of justly earned land. ownership of this land is derived from coercion. im not going to research the history of property titles in Bahrain but you can bet your arse that the rulers did not earn whole island through voluntary means.
if anyone on our soggy island understood the impact on their life of coercive control of land use they too might feel moved to stamp their feet a little. one can only hope...

George Ought to Help

a while back i followed a few links through the liberty loving blogosphere and stumbled upon this stunningly excellent video

im sure alot of you will have already seen it and even posted it yourself.

there are many reasons i think this is the such an amazing and powerful video not least of which is its simplicity. the concepts of objective ethics such as self ownership and the non aggression axiom and their consistent and uncompromisable application to socio-economic organisation can, as im sure we are all too painfully familiar with, be difficult to impart to others. we're fighting an uphill battle against the tar-like inertia of mindsets forged in unavoidable statist upbringing. the compromised, inconsistent and basically non-existent 'ethics' of coercive human organisation are so ingrained that it can be nigh on impossible to penetrate the double think to reach the natural human you know is in there somewhere. that is why the power of such a perfectly simple video like this should be praised from the rooftops. some insanely circuitous, disingenuous and machiavellian manipulation of ethics would be required to argue against the objective truth of the video's message. the video poses such a simple question to the accepted paradigm of coercive extortion that a child can understand it. even the most hardened statist will turn to a gibbering wreck of non-sequiturs if they argue the point.

i havent posted the above video before because i first saw it months before i began blogging  and i assume most people reading this will already have seen it. i am posting it now because the person/people behind this outstanding effort to promote the importance of individual liberty are planning another.



http://www.indiegogo.com/Edgar-the-exploiter

having made the first video from the ethical position, the argument of the second video (as i understand it) will be made from what molyneux calls 'the argument from effect'. the first video highlighted the ethical inconsistency of the coercive state and this one will turn the spotlight on the empirical evidence of government's unintended consequences. even if coercion weren't ethically abhorrent it is economically ineffectual and counter productive. the libertarian blogosphere that havent yet realised the path to individual liberty leads to anarchism are exponents of this 'argument from effect'.

we all wonder what is to be done and what can we do. awareness is the answer to the first question. the powers that be, our owners, our oppressors are a minority. there are more of us than them, true, but unfortunately they have co-opted the support of our fellow slaves. the state is not top-down hierarchical enslavement. coercion has been honed and developed into the 'horizontal state'. there are no bars on the cage but our fellow slaves will screach if we attempt to leave our confines and seek individual liberty. we've all experienced this and the depressing news is that it wont change in our life times. spreading awareness of individual liberty is the only path to realising natural human freedom. the more slaves that can be awoken to this objective truth the fewer bars there will be on our collective cage. minority revolution to whip the state out from under its dependents wont work because there are more of them than us. they will suppress us and rush to rebuild the apparatus of coercion that they have come to love. spreading awareness is the answer to the question what is to be done.
the answer to the second question, what can we do, is to take part in spreading that awareness. do all that you can with you talents. most of you blog or comment on blogs. excellent as these efforts are, few of us are able to produce such an impact as this video. if we cant do that then whats wrong with supporting the ones who can? the contribution options are many and varied and start at a pittance. for less than the cost of the msm sunday supplement you can assist in spreading the message of freedom. http://www.indiegogo.com/Edgar-the-exploiter

handshakes of hypocrisy

Libya 2011 is the most blatant example of the audacity of our overlords. They are so secure behind the power of their priest class that they are now able to openly insult their slaves with overt displays of transparent hypocrisy barely disguised by an unstoppable and pervasive double-think.

i could delve into the corruption of oil deals and weapons deals and negotiable legitimacy for a price but its already been done. googling western links to gaddafi through arms deals, oil deals and financial corruptions is like shooting fish in a barrel.  instead i will merely re-churn the mountain of evidence of our rulers' hypocrisy. 

My real concern here is not particularly events the other side of the continent but rather the 2+2=5 power of the msm priest class. throughout human history those in the position of coercive power have relied upon a priest class to legitimise their rules. these days the priest class are the msm. this includes the policy makers and agenda setting intellectuals and academics. when you read the mail article about the lse taking cash from gaddafi family in return for conferring legitimacy on their gangsterism it is difficult to not be dismayed by the interconnectedness of the individuals involved. politicians, civil servants, intelligence agents, oil companies, intellectuals, and party oligarchies are all so interwoven as to become indistinct. i cant even begin to explain the horrors revealed in that article without simply reproducing it so i urge you to take a look. this isnt tin-foil hat wearing conspiracy theory. this is the real, actual, here and now evidence of the powers that be and their functionaries in the priest class. the article should open people's eyes to the fact that state is so much more than just the government. but, as i say, the power of the priest class is such that 'the people' can be shown chummy handshakes one moment and next see those same western faces decrying gaddafi's history of repression without realising let alone reacting to such blatant hypocrisy.

Gaddafi's libya was apparently all alright just a few months ago when most of these smiling handshakes took place. but now the pronouncements have declared it to be the cess pit of evil. so turn on your distraction box and think as youre told!

obama himself has been very careful to only talk in terms of 'Libya'  and has delegated direct commentary on Gaddafi himself to the secretary of state and white house spokes people. this is why.

the same gallery of hypocrisy could be done with any of the recently 'revealed' oppressors in the middle east/northern africa. for example here's one such collection of mubarak and 50 of his chums.

as an unrelated postscript i couldnt help laughing at this nugget that turned up whilst googling gaddafi hypocisy.

"When a leader's only means of staying in power is to use mass violence against his own people, he has lost the legitimacy to rule and needs to do what is right for his country by leaving now,"

the whitehouse quoted in the guardian. 

from the anarchist position this, coming from the top dog of all statists, is absolutely priceless. 

obama relies on the highly developed threat of violence to retain coercive power. in the west the use of coercion has been developed to such an extent that the masses will shout you down for even suggesting that the state is fundamentally built on and by violence. gaddafi and all the other recently 'revealed' oppressors in the middle east/northern africa have, as i have said before, only lost hold of this power because they were crap at it. they were overtly violent which is expensive, unstable and unsustainable. 'our' model of slavery is much more efficient and safe.