I never questioned the legitimacy of governments. Their history is rife with examples of some people using them to initiate violence against others, but I just thought they needed reform – and I thought “mine” was better. How misguided I was. Despite the nationalistic propaganda we’re endlessly fed in schools and the media, the US federal government differs only in minor degree from others. It just has a more effective public relations operation.
Reached my Boiling Point, Still didn’t Get it
I reached my boiling point last year. I just could not stay quiet anymore. The wars, the torture, the debasing of the currency, the limitless spending, the oppressive taxes and the unabashed violations of rights enshrined in the constitution became too much. But I still believed in reform.
LP: Last Stop before Anarchism
Ironically it was my involvement in the Libertarian Party – a group of liberty activists who believe in reforming government – that pushed me over the chasm to anarchism. My hopes were high when I joined the LP, but the reality is devastating. The LPers I identify with – the more radical ones – are laboring under a contradiction. They ostensibly pursue an electoral path to liberty, but refuse to do the organizational work necessary to be effective.
Apathetic Participation a Net Plus for Government
The moment I realized this, the doubts I’d formed over the last year crystallized and I knew I was in the wrong place. To participate in the electoral process is to strengthen it, so to simultaneously abandon resistance is to render it a net plus for this illegitimate government, and a net minus for me. I refuse to be a part of that.
Making Libertarian Friends a Net Plus
Socializing online with libertarians is definitely a net plus for me though. I got over my prejudice against anarchism and questioned my beliefs in new ways. I discovered anarcho-capitalism and its various schools of thought, including Autarchism, Voluntaryism and Agorism, all of which I find more agreeable than limited government.
Government is Illegitimate Force
Perhaps I’m just impatient, but I’ve watched “my” government ceaselessly expand during my lifetime. In fact, I’ve read about its ceaseless expansion since it was founded. Politicians who promise reductions end up growing it more than those who promise growth. Limited government fans talk about reducing the government to its constitutional limits but with loopholes like the interstate commerce clause, that’s meaningless. I’ve lost faith in government. It can’t be fixed. If governments derive their powers from the consent of the governed, count me out. I do not consent!
Next Stop: Free Market Anarchism
Since I’m withdrawing my support for governments and state capitalism, I’ll be phasing out my participation in political organizations, in order to consistently align my actions with my values. Here’s my todo list:
- Study the works of authors such as Lysander Spooner, Samuel Edward Konkin III and Murray Rothbard.
- End my membership in the LP and BTP. I’m especially ambivalent about the LP because the founder allegedly claims that the pledge is a renunciation of my right to revolution.
- Cease all donations to political parties, candidates or organizations that participate in the electoral process.
- Hand over de facto control of the LP Transparency Caucus and shadow bylaw and platform committees to someone else (if anyone even wants them). I will also be ending the “My LP” and Libertarian Party Candidates projects.
- Search for ways to work for greater liberty, without supporting governments.
- Evaluate all of my activities with the goal of ending any and all support for governments.
- Actively withdraw my consent from governments.
Photo credit: THINKING IN ƎƧЯƎVƎЯ. Photo license.
Please subscribe so you'll get tomorrow's post!
{ 1 trackback }
{ 82 comments }
← Previous Comments
The Probability Broach is a very interesting book. If you don’t want to read it in book form, it is available at bigheadpress.com as a graphic novel, free. Pretty easy on the eyes, too. You can follow L. Neil’s other writing at his Libertarian Enterprise site, updated about weekly, ncc-1776.org. Not entirely anarchist, but many people who write for him are. I especially like Kent McManigal and Dennis Wilson.
W. Galt, my apologies, your comment was classified as spam. Thanks!
I read the “The Probability Broach” a year ago, so I should probably read it again.
Me neither, but I’m thinking it might be good to eliminate any ambiguity.
I’ve been contemplating that. I think you’re right but I’m moving anyway. Some anarchists are participating in the FSP and it may be good to get a critical mass in place there to jump start things. IOW, my participation is morphing into a subversive role.
Reading “Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal” I think it was, as I followed her reasoning process, I thought, “Gee, this is leading to anarchy!” But when she claimed her reasoning led her to minarchy, I was dumbfounded.
Thanks for commenting.
Thanks for those links John, I read one of his graphic novels online, great stuff. The ncc-1776 site is alright, no RSS feed tho so it’s hard to keep track of when it’s updated.
Skip, thanks for your comments.
Brian, I have been busy but am preparing a response.
It is always interesting how both so called conservatives and the new progressive movement believe that free enterprise works better with most things yet when it comes to controlling law, legislation and enforcement, government does a great and irreplaceable job. Even with the constant reinforcement that politics, government run law enforcement and the justice systems are extremely corrupt and ineffective, people don’t comprehend how people would voluntarily select individuals and groups they trust at providing those services, even though they do it in almost every other aspect of their lives. I generally believe that partly, it is the lack of belief that there is an alternative, and therefore the common man does not know to take the initiative. Government also promotes authoritarianism through the press and education that allows those protected by government to take control of these services. The use of fines and incarceration of those that resist probably doesn’t’ help either. Religion has also contributed for a very long time, as a means of authoritarian indoctrination that assists in castrating the common man into believing that they cannot take control of their own life and judgments and therefore must be ruled by other. Because god says so and is the very reason our founding father separated church and state.
Skip, you’re right on. Great comment. There’s prejudice against anarchy. People think it means mob rule, when that is actually democracy.
George,
So you’ve become an anarchist. Do you feel more excited and motivated to spread liberty now? Do you feel more part of a community? Has it changed your day-to-day life?
You write, “Ironically it was my involvement in the Libertarian Party – a group of liberty activists who believe in reforming government – that pushed me over the chasm to anarchism. My hopes were high when I joined the LP, but the reality is devastating. The LPers I identify with – the more radical ones – are laboring under a contradiction. They ostensibly pursue an electoral path to liberty, but refuse to do the organizational work necessary to be effective.”
I want to applaud you for publishing a “to-do” list on integrating your new ideas into your life. Yet I can’t help noticing that aside from doing more reading on anarchy, only one item on the list is a positive or affirmative action (as opposed to a cessation, withdrawal, etc.), and it is expressed very vaguely:
“Search for ways to work for greater liberty, without supporting governments.”
I will be interested to hear what fruits your search produces. In particular, please let me know if/when you find a group of people working for freedom while eschewing electoral politics who are doing more of the organizational work necessary to be effective than are radical Libertarians in the LP, and doing it in a way that is based more on compassion (helping liberate others from government oppression) than selfishness, doesn’t compromise their principles, and holds the possibility of leading to a mass movement. I’m not just saying this as a rhetorical point — if you find such a group, I’d really like to know about it.
For myself at present, I prefer the real if nascent community to be found in Libertarian Party circles, however flawed and not fully realized it may be, to an alternative that does not seem to have manifested itself at all.
We need a sense of community, solidarity, dare-I-say *spirituality*, of working together for a higher purpose.
I don’t think pure self interest is a strong enough organizing principle on which to build a movement, because (1) it does not foster a spirit of cooperation and working together to achieve goals, (2) it is viewed highly negatively by society at large, and (3) it is not sufficiently inspirational to attract enough of the young, idealistic people needed to build a strong movement. Ayn Rand, through her brilliant writing, probably did as much as could be done to reclaim the concept of selfishness and build a mass movement based on self-interest, but I think objectivism as an organizing principle for (r)evolutionary change is inherently limiting.
Ironically, I think the main advantages of anarchy over limited government are those which libertarian anarchists seem to have barely noticed. Anarchism has a powerful arsenal of symbolism, cultural cachet via “The Matrix,” Emma Goldman, etc., an inherent radical appeal, a historical pedigree of people who fought for freedom in very bottom-up ways, the punk DIY ethic, and a degree of “street cred” that outstrips by light years anything possessed by advocates of limited government.
I would say to any libertarians who declare themselves anarchists: Don the trappings that the legacy of anarchism has afforded you, make them yours, and run with them!
Love & Liberty,
((( starchild )))
“Imagine for a moment marching up a hill, lit only by starlight and a distant bonfire on a hot July night in August, in Andalucia, near the very tip of southern Spain. Looking at the stars you point out the red twinkle of Mars to the comrade whose arm you entwine. She comes from the opposite end of Europe. Behind you lies an agriculture estate, left derelict by its owner but now seized by agricultural workers. Behind you hundreds of comrades queue to try and ford the shallow river in the dark. On either side olive grooves stretch up the hills in neat rows, the red soil now dark and cool.
Someone on the road ahead starts singing ‘A Las Barricadas’ (To the Barricades) in Spanish, slowly this is taken up by others behind and ahead, in Italian, Turkish and other languages, sometimes just hummed or whistled by those who don’t know the words. The Spanish version is familiar to me from a scratchy recording an Italian comrade passed on to me on tape. The original recording is of 500,000 people singing this working class anthem at a rally of the anarchist CNT in Barcelona, July 1936, days after the revolution there.
Those on this road have gathered from all over the world, over 50 countries in all. They have temporarily left the struggles in their own countries to come here to dream of a new reality together. Here the weather beaten features of a male campesino from Brazil, are found beside the sunburned features of an 18 year old female squatter from Berlin. Do you feel you are imagining something impossible, something from a Hollywood blockbuster or the past? Then add one more detail, a gasp goes up from those on the road for overhead a shooting star briefly appears. Were it not for the collective gasp each of us may have imagined this was a vision we alone were seeing. But no, we look around and realise we are marching, seeing and dreaming together.
In our modern world The Power tells us such dreams are no longer possible. History has ended, there is no dream just the reality of alienation, work and obedience. Yet the scene above is not from a film or from a history book, rather it took place on the evening of August the 2nd 1997. This was the ‘Second encounter for Humanity and against Neoliberalism’. I could describe it in cold, political terms alone but this would miss the ‘for humanity’ part and in truth for every day we discussed organising ‘against neoliberalism’ we spent another ‘for humanity’.”
-Andrew Flood (Irish left-anarchist – http://struggle.ws/andrew.html)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
(1) a little (2) no (3) no.
Well, I write fairly frequently and attempt to start a good number of discussions on Twitter and Facebook. But I’m not sure my activities there are worthy of mention.
And I am still moving to New Hampshire and plan to be active with other anarchists in building a counter-economy and escaping FRNs and what not. But I prefer to talk about that only once I’ve actually done it.
And I’m continuing something that is significant but risky, and therefore I’m hesitant to talk about it.
Electoral politics doesn’t strike me as an ethical alternative for an anarchist.
I think when you explore all its ramifications, it has possibilities, such as better lives for kids, voluntary associations to help those in need, better health care, and end to war and borders, etc.
I’m doing a good bit of reading. I had written off anarchism before so I know very little about its history.
Thanks for the quote and for commenting.
One of the areas of activity you might wish to explore is encryption. Public key cryptography uses various open source algorithms. Cryptographers, mostly people really good at math, have learned over time that secret codes are very vulnerable to attacks which don’t get fixed because, well, they were secret. And secretly attacked, very often, by people who weren’t telling. Open source crypto has been much, much more effective.
Lately, it is being developed into VOIP phone services (unlike Skype which uses a proprietary encryption scheme – a black box which you might be able to trust, or not) and payment systems. Pecunix.com for example lets you upload a GPG key to their server, and all your payment messages are encrypted to that key. Loom.cc has developed a nifty system for secure information transfer, including encrypted nodes. And a number of developers have implemented successful digital bearer instruments. One of these is eCache.
In combination, these ideas represent the ability to send and receive information and transfer value entirely privately. If the governments of the world cannot detect a transaction, they cannot regulate it, prohibit, or tax it.
Have you read J. Neil Schulman’s book _Alongside Night_? It is 30 years old this year. I recently learned that he’s shopping a screenplay treatment he did of the book to make it into a film. Exciting times.
George,
Thank you for your forthright responses. I can certainly understand why you would feel that electoral politics is not an ethical option for an anarchist. While I disagree, even as I would disagree that visiting a mosque and taking part in an Islamic prayer session is an immoral activity for a Catholic — what matters would be whether one’s action thereby harmed or was disloyal to the Catholic faith, the first depending upon the practical consequences of the action and the second upon one’s state of mind — I’m less interested in persuading you to return to electoral politics than to use the Libertarian Party as a vehicle for other purposes.
Many in the top-down/corporatist/conservative/”reform”/whatever-you-call-it faction of the LP would have you believe that the only purpose of the party — indeed, the only purpose any political party can legitimately have — is to elect candidates.
My response to those who say this is, “Oh ye of little imagination!” Why should we simply accept the blueprint handed to us by statists as to what form *our* organization “must” take? While we are in certain respects constrained by law in the kinds of forms we can take and things we can do as a political party, vast areas of activity remain open to us. This list of 65 different community programs of the Black Panther Party from 1965-1982 pretty much speaks for itself: http://www.stanford.edu/group/blackpanthers/programs.shtml The main limits on the kinds of organizing, activism, and social change the party can engage in are those we foolishly choose to impose on ourselves.
The chief importance of the Libertarian Party to the libertarian movement is *not* that it is involved in electoral politics, except indirectly in that it is this involvement in electoral politics which makes it a highly visible and highly participatory organization. Rather, it is the fact that it *is* a highly visible and highly participatory organization, run at least in part in a democratic, bottom-up fashion, which makes the LP invaluable to us.
I believe that to truly succeed, we need a mass movement for liberty in which large numbers of people are active players in shaping their own destinies and claiming via their own actions the freedom that should rightfully be theirs. This movement may not take the form of a strictly political movement like the Women’s Suffrage movement or the Orange Revolution; it could be more of a cultural movement, like the cafe culture that grew up in the early days of mass newspapers and was instrumental in sparking the Age of Democracy, where people (mostly men) would gather in cafes to meet in various societies of all types, including to debate the issues of the day. Or it could arise out of social networking sites like Facebook or in some new youth phenomenon like the hippies, the ravers, hip-hop, etc.
But I think the kind of radical restructuring we seek cannot simply be imposed from the top down, or it will fail to take hold. We can of course simply wait for a cultural or political movement to come along that looks promising, and attempt to graft libertarian ideas onto it. But how much better if we ourselves *are* the movement! A movement built on a solidly pro-freedom foundation should have a much better chance of changing the world without going badly astray.
So I would urge you to consider using the Libertarian Party, not for whatever non-anarchist or debatably ethical purposes some Libertarians incorrectly insist are its only proper functions, but simply as the best mass-participation vehicle that the libertarian movement has at present.
* * *
I would assert that “voluntary associations to help those in need” are much more likely to arise, and succeed, in the context of people who’ve come together for the purpose of helping others, than in the context of people who’ve come together out of self interest. Unless of course you are talking about for-profit enterprises. Those can certainly be effective, but also face a very tough row to hoe in convincing the public that they are doing something good and noble, and are thus at risk of having their work destroyed by statist political actions and movements that present themselves in more altruistic terms.
For other goals, such as “an end to war and borders,” it’s difficult for me to see how self interest would drive such campaigns, unless in the case of the former there happens to be a military draft or something drastic happens to make a particular war or border a real imposition on peoples’ lives, and then the desire will be to end *that* war or tear down *that* border, rather than against wars and borders in general. I think it will be much more effective to rally people under the idealistic, unselfish banners of world peace and one world without walls and fences.
I applaud your desire to move to New Hampshire, and to work with other anarchists to build a counter-economy. These are the kinds of practical, participatory actions that hold real movement-building and change-creating promise. But to bring this back to my initial questions to you, I’ll think we’ll tend to feel more excited, motivated, and part of a community when we view such actions through the lens of engaging in a sacred struggle for liberty, rather than simply as expedient actions to serve our self-interest. And I believe if we feel excited, motivated, and part of a community, we will feel far happier and be far more effective!
* * *
When I encouraged libertarian anarchists to “Don the trappings that the legacy of anarchism has afforded you, make them yours, and run with them!” I actually was not thinking so much of reading up on anarchism — at least not as a philosophy. That’s all well and good, but what I had in mind was more the status that anarchism holds in the popular culture, and its rich iconography — the black flags, the street punk aesthetic of the “Black Bloc,” the anarchy symbol, etc.
Admittedly much of this territory needs to be claimed from leftists who use it to promote an un-libertarian “anarcho-syndicalist” agenda, and libertarian anarchists will face a real battle in defining anarchy and its cultural iconography in libertarian terms. But as I said, make them yours and run with them! The leftists can hardly object to what is arguably cultural plagiarism on grounds of intellectual property rights. And in the fundamental point that “anarchism simply means no government, everything else is part of another agenda,” I think the libertarian faction has a winning argument, even it may have to expand its notions of what constitutes “government.”
Stopping by cuz a buddy pointed out this post and while I’ve not read all the comments (and will be traveling this weekend), I wanted to say congrats to Donnelly!
Also, No state will ever be overthrown through boycott (i.e. personal secession).
You probably need to go read a thinker like de la Boetie. Here’s a linkie thingie to get you started: http://tmh.floonet.net/articles/laboetie.html
And, believe it or not, there were many gay people who gave not a whit about Prop 8. They think the state shouldn’t regulate marriage at all.
I’ll be back on Monday to check in for your responses.
John, yes, I’ve been reading about that stuff more and more lately and pondering how to apportion my assets in the most beneficial way. That you can receive and make payment secretly is spectacular, but what about the other side of the transaction where you receive or deliver some product or service? That seems a little more difficult to hide.
I bought “Alongside Night” in PDF a couple weeks ago and it’s loaded up on my Kindle. I’ve got to finish Gandhi’s autobiography, G. Edward Griffin’s book on the Fed and a book on photography first, though.
Thanks for commenting.
@Starchild
From my point of view, the analogy doesn’t work because electoral politics is about fighting over control of the gun that is government, while your example is like trying out a competing product. I know some Catholics would find taking part in an Islamic prayer session to be repugnant, but it wouldn’t involve any aggression, while electoral politics does.
I’m with you on the mass movement, but I think if the LP can have any effect on that, it will be as a retardant.
I sometimes think about how to kick such a thing off; like Gandhi’s march to the sea and the making of salt. It’s such a huge undertaking. It needs to be broken down into manageable parts. I’m at a loss.
I think you’re right, but I resist this whole “help others” for the sake of helping others thing. Also, I would rather see the people who want the help form their own organization rather than the people who have the help do it.
IOW, a mutual aid society IMO is best formed by those who hope to benefit from it. I like that model, rather the model where someone gifts funds to others.
I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with the latter, I just prefer the former.
War does immense harm to those who prosecute it. Not only the inflation, the debt, the lost production but also the loss of civil liberties and the loss of standing in the world. The feeling of guilt that comes with seeing the recipients of your tax dollars murder innocents is also not in one’s self interest.
Borders keep Americans from working and traveling where they want, for example Europe. A lot of Americans dream of working and living in the UK or France but the border stands in their way. The people from other nations that come here contribute enormously to the nation’s productivity, production and even tax receipts, which more or less floats all the boats a little higher.
I do have a sense of the struggle for liberty being sacred, but I resist that kind of talk as mystical and tending to inflate one’s ego. I mean no offense to you, it’s just that I found that when I thought about it that way, my ego tended to grow and I think it’s best to approach these kinds of things with as much humility as possible (a la Gandhi). Humility is not my strong point but at least I try to rein in my ego now and then.
I can see we approach this from two very different philosophical foundations. Our ends are very similar I expect, we’re just getting there via different paths.
I agree with that sentiment completely. That’s why I’m sticking with the Free State Project, even though I’ve abandoned its ostensible reason for existence: the electoral process. The community they are building up there is exactly what I want to be a part of. I want that for my family as well.
I’m even more lacking there. I had to overcome some of my own prejudices to not see the black flag as something off-putting and counterproductive.
hehe, excellent points.
Thanks for commenting Starchild, I always enjoy my discussions with you and more often than not learn something and/or am provoked into deeper thought on some matter.
@miche
Thanks! And thanks for commenting. Excellent avatar there.
Really off the subject but quite exciting – It will be very interesting to see if the statist social engineers will allow our endeavor to fit into their scheme. A little over two years ago I invented a low tech flipping panel wind and water turbine (see video on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NTbAz9GyHw
I showed it to a group of Ex-Pratt and Whitney engineers about a year ago, one being a PhD in Fluids and the others jet engine turbine guys and they added some brilliant but low tech ideas to the system to increase it cost efficiency. They just finalized the first estimated cost analysis and although we are going to surely tighten these costs up as full engineering of the various component are completed, the number are more extrodianry than I ever thought. Engineers generally are of a conservative nature and the estimates in may opinion reflects that. How does $0.0303 re kW/hr. sound. That’s installed with a DC cable to the shoreline with a life expectancy of 16 years. I’m not an engineer but because of the low tech aspects of the design, everything from a technology standpoint has already been done, so only things such as how to best deploy and remove the system for scheduled maintanence, etc. are still yet to be specifically determined. We had a submarine electronics expert in their last week picking his brain and quite honestly some of the jargone was over my head as they bonced around various ideas to most cost effectively make the system. The system, even “without” tax incentives as are provided to windpower and other alternatives, will be able to compete head to head with fossil and nuclear in those locations that have a relatively fast ocean current like the Florida Gulfstream. How about them apples!!!!
Hey that’s pretty neat! Congrats.
I came to Anarchy almost the same way. It’s heartening to hear that there’s others out there.
Thanks for commenting, Jake. I think there are more of us than we imagine.
As long as legalized force, i.e. power can be gained through some sort of political method(s) there will be those who vie for that power. Couple those who can manipulate those in power through economic means and you have government as we know it today and throughout most of history. The power to tax becomes the means for those who govern to benefit what should be in the best interest of the majority, but what in reallty, is their own best interest. We want to beleive that such as system will provide a means to a peaceful and prosperous society but history has not shown that to be the case. The solution which history has been shown to work at various levels is less govenement, thereby eliminating those with monetary power the ability to gain legal power. Less taxation allows the most fair playing field of competition and allows more individuals the ability to determine their own consumption and investment rather than the political systems constant manipulations, compromise and redistribution of wealth for their special interest. We are surely headed down the wrong path and many will suffer the consequences. Government is an expence and thinking that increasing spending on expences will create prosperity is as Winston Churchhill stated, “trying to stand in a bucket and lift youself up by the handle.” It did not work during the 1st Depression and it surely will not work this time either, as our society is even less prepared for what is going to occur.
Skip Robinson wrote:
“It did not work during the 1st Depression and it surely will not work this time either, as our society is even less prepared for what is going to occur.”
Your right, but giving up and dreaming of some utopian anarchist society is not going to make things better. The founding fathers created a new society that was better than the European monarchies. Better but not perfect. It is possible for some people today to devote themselves to retarding and reversing the current descent into socialism. It will require political action by people whose primary interest is not holding office but limiting government. If you are not involved, you should not complain about the state of affairs.
One small thing I intend on doing is seeing to it that Arlen Spector is defeated next year. He has demonstrated that his primary concern is holding political office and only pays lip service to any idea of limited government.
John, it’s government that is the utopia. People think it will solve all their problems but it clearly it’s a complete disaster. Abandon your silly utopian ideas before it’s too late! ;D
Minarchists do not claim government will “solve all their problems”, nor is it clear that government is a “complete disaster”. According to the three leading indices of freedom, only 13 nations (out of almost 200) are currently more free than America. America’s constitutional republican framework has been by far the most successful in human history. It has been increasing personal and civil liberties almost monotonically for two centuries, and we are among the most economically free nations in the world, with a per-capita GDP exceeded only by Norway and Luxembourg. Our 300 million people live and work in a continent-wide nation with a $13 trillion economy built on a twenty-first century technological infrastructure. By contrast, anarcholibertarians can merely wave toward a couple of medieval island nations with populations and population densities four orders of magnitude less than those of modern industrialized states. As great as America is, we have detailed, redundant, and current empirical evidence backing up the mainstream findings of modern economic science about how market-oriented reforms within the statist framework can make America even more free and even more prosperous. Anarcholibertarians have nothing of the kind to support their moralizing a priori claim that America would be a better place if we completely dismantled our system of rights protection in favor of a promise by liberty-lovers to set a good example of aggression abstinence.
Skip, private markets in rights enforcement is different from private markets in, say, shoes (to use Rod Long’s example). They are different because of rivalry and excludability lead to market failures in the provision of one but not the other. Yes, there is such a thing as government failure, but merely citing its existence (as you do above) cannot expunge the idea of market failure from all our economics textbooks. I’m still waiting for you to identify a modern instance of a vacuum in State authority where protection markets have operated not like the Sopranos but rather like anarcholibertarian fantasy. Until you do, I rest on my argument that there is insufficient historical evidence for the proposition that American should try anarchism instead of minarchism. However, I have no problem with anarchists migrating to vacuums of State authority such as in Somalia. Good luck with that.
By the way, we minarchist libertarians don’t agree with you that the power to tax should ideally be used to finance whatever is in “the best interest of the majority”. Mandatory taxation should fall only on public bads (i.e., monopolizing, consuming, polluting, or congesting the commons) and should finance only public goods (i.e. non-rivalrous non-excludable services for protecting life/liberty/property). Your “best interest of the majority” sounds like a formula for Leviathan.
Brian,
Of course some believers in limited government do not support coercive taxation for *any* reason. Your taxation of “public bads (i.e., monopolizing, consuming, polluting, or congesting the commons)” sounds like a formula for Leviathan.
Do these minarchists oppose class-action fines on aggression? Or do they just not consider some/any of these four things to be aggression? There is no ethical difference between a fine imposed by a jury in a class action suit and an equivalent “tax” imposed by a legislature.
No Leviathan has ever been maintained on my starvation diet of taxing only these four kinds of aggression. Every Leviathan depends on Skip’s diet of taxation to finance whatever is in “the best interest of the majority”.
There are *significant* differences between jury-awarded fines and taxation. Fines imposed by juries result from specific complaints of aggression. They are imposed at the conclusion of a court process in which defendants are guaranteed to be heard in a carefully proscribed procedure, whereas legislatures may pass taxes in a purely political fashion without ever listening to those who are to be taxed. Jury fines do not set up schemes for collection of payments in perpetuity. Jurors are not members of an entrenched government class, but are chosen randomly from the populace for one-time duty. Jury fines are typically imposed on single defendants, or sometimes a small group of defendants, whereas taxes are typically levied on a large cross-section of industry or the population.
Minarchists (a term I dislike, but we seem to lack a suitable replacement) may consider some, though probably not all, of what falls under your four categories to be aggression (*breathing* is technically consumption of the commons — do you assert that this activity should be taxed?). Some may support the concept of class-action fines, just as some (like yourself) support various types of coercive taxation. Of course there is some point beyond which a person’s support for government would render the label “minarchist” or “supporter of limited government” inaccurate, but I’m not prepared to say exactly where that point is. I do think that the more government a person favors, the less libertarian his or her views.
I don’t mind admitting that the amount of government George Donnelly favors (none) makes his views more libertarian than mine. I believe abolition of government is the libertarian ideal; the only reason I don’t advocate it is because I’m afraid it would not be sustainable. Perhaps after a period of truly limited government, humanity will reach a point where anarchy can be safely allowed without fear that it will soon revert to tyranny.
I’m not sure what you believe is proved by asserting that no Leviathan has ever been maintained by taxing only the monopolizing, consuming, pollution, or congestion of the commons. Has any Leviathan ever been maintained by taxing *only* the consumption of drugs? No. But a government which taxes drug use is likely to exceed its proper scope in lots of other ways as well, and I think this would likewise be true for a government that imposes coercive taxation of any kind. When one embraces legal aggression, an important line is crossed. If involuntarily collected moneys are being taken as penalties for aggression, then their collection is not itself aggression, and they should be called fines rather than taxes to avoid confusion.
I don’t believe what you suggest qualifies as a “starvation diet.” Over time, a “starvation diet” starves the dieter. Your use of this term in the context of government use of resources implies that your intended result is the starvation and death of government, i.e. anarchy.
If I could only get leaching blood sucking bureaucrats to do something constructive instead of stealing from thsoe who are productive, I will have reached my uptopian dream. People are allowed to pollute only due to the corruptive nature of the governments judicial system that take the erronious opinion that only bureacrates, appointed by political means could be able to achieve justice. History again has shown them to be wronggggg. Quit your jobs and do something productive if you are competient of doing such work. It appears that there are those that are best at stealing others productivity and giving them permission to do so is unconsionable. Let increase our exspensives (government) to achieve prosperity. That sounds like a good idea!!!!!
If you harm another person you should pay retribution to your victim and that is surely different than paying some arbitray tax to achieve some arbitray benefits to the public good. Brian you need to study economics above 101 if you intend to make any real contribution to society.
John if you believe as a caring person that you can defeat people that are sociopaths, you will find that their is another sociopath waiting in his shadows, that will cut your throat to gain his position. Only by not giving them your money can you achieve a civil society as Ghandi once stated.
Starchild, class action settlements most assuredly set up permanent policies. I stipulated that my “taxes” are equivalent to class action fines in terms of who they reach and how much they charge. I further stipulate that my “taxes” would be court-contestable (with loser paying court costs), just as class action settlements are. The only distinction I leave you is in the process by which the fine/tax is imposed, and not in its effects. If it’s not aggression when a jury does it, then it’s not aggression when a legislature does it.
I don’t think default contestable fines (i.e. “taxes”) on prima facie aggression are themselves aggression. If you’re going to rule out all use of force in any situation in which the target might eventually be able to prove his innocence, then you’re ruling out way more than just taxes. You’re also ruling out most judicial processes, and indeed almost anything that isn’t immediate bodily self-defense.
Breathing is not aggression. The exact language in my Free Earth Manifesto is: “Production of property via extraction of natural resources from a community commons should require a fee to the community proportional to the decrease in ability of that commons to sustainably support such extraction.”
My point about Leviathan was to distinguish Skip’s taxation formula from my own. Skip’s formula is used by every government; mine is used by none. George’s attempted point was that geominarchism is on a slippery slope to Leviathan. His point was so ahistorical that it may not have even registered on you.
“Starvation diet” was a metaphorical name for a diet that makes you lose more than 80% of your weight. Such a diet nearly always kills a human, but an 80% cut doesn’t have to kill a government.
I don’t agree that anarchists are the most libertarian of us, for reasons I enumerate at http://libertarianintelligence.com/2008/11/none-of-many-zaps-define-libertarianism.html.
Skip, if you think I don’t know enough economics, then check out my blog postings on that subject: http://knowinghumans.net/search/label/Economics. Or visit LPplatform-discuss and do searches like
Kuznets curves
free rider problem
club goods
Tiebout sorting
Pigovian taxes
Nash-Cournot equilibrium
Kaldor-Hicks efficiency
moral hazard
negative externalities
natural monopoly
public choice theory
Pareto optimality
Prisoner’s Dilemma
Allais paradox
Coase theorem
asymmetric information
Arrow’s theorem
I said, “If involuntarily collected moneys are being taken as penalties for aggression, then their collection is not itself aggression, and they should be called fines rather than taxes to avoid confusion.”
Of course I am supposing here a fair and equitable process of levying such fines, and that the moneys collected are going to victims, not to government. In many cases, governments ostensibly impose penalties for congestion, pollution, monopolization, etc., of the commons, such as parking tickets, which are in reality just a way for them to take more money out of our pockets. The penalties are not proportionate to the offenses, and the takings are not tailored to benefit the victims of the alleged aggression.
Brian, them how can you argue statist positions? Force is statism, not self defense. How are you going to pay for the legislature? If they work for free them it could be more like a court, where the loser could pay. But would you trust any legislature unless it was a very high level of plurality like say 75% and above. I cannot trust a simple majority because I have seen too many injustices come from that system. A majority of the legislative bodies are made up of attorneys whom appear to be sociopaths, caring about winning rather than truth, justice and the rule of law. It takes money to have legislative bodies and that must come from coerced taxation and then they historically use their power and money to usurp individual rights. If they were protecting our rights it would be great, but that is obviously not the results. You don’t really need a legislative body to protect individual rights; you need a good court system, and not one that is full of graft, extortion, cronyism and protectionism under a monopolistic statist authority. Government judicial systems have proven to be poor final arbiters leaving the only alternative of the competitive markets to choose the best arbiters. People if knowledgeable will choose arbitration/mediation or something like the law merchant over a poorly administered government justice system. They still use, for instance “In propria persona” instead of “In proper person” to achieve their cartelist BAR status. Half the briefs are full of the dead language of Latin when there are plenty of modern English terms and phrases that say the same thing. If people voted their conscience instead of their pocketbook, a majority rule might be effective, assuming and that is a big assumption, that they are knowledgeable in the various sciences necessary to make a rational and reasonable decisions that would be in the best interest of the majority. It is too easy to vote for the monies of the treasury to be spent in the capacity that benefits the representative voters instead of the majority. How may school teachers would vote for a decrease in education spending or how many military contractors do you think vote for candidates would want to reduce military spending? People sadly do not vote for what is in the best interest of the majority and instead look at government as a means to a personal benefit. How many companies are lining up for the $800 +/- Billion stimulus package and of cause the various state and Federal bureaucracies will get their cut leaving Main Street to ride the unemployment train to nowhere. It is truly a sad day for the heart and soul of the American private sector worker bludgeons by over taxation, regulation and a ruling elite redistributing the wealth to themselves.
Brian, I went to you website. This is your quote.
“The primary market failure I see in K-12 education is that poor minors
needing tuition money are not allowed to enter into long-term contracts
that surrender a fraction of the alleged increase in earnings that a
tuition investment would buy them. If education investments are as wise
as we liberals claim, then such contracts should be able to make
education for the poor self-financing. In the absence of such contracts,
I don’t mind the geolibertarian citizen’s dividend financing tuition
vouchers (or land value tax credits for tuition donations to) for poor
families. There is no more need for the government to own and operate
schools than to own and operate grocery stores.”
Brian you are very difficult to follow. Would the parents, or the child enter into the contract? Why should money or tax credits for education be given to pay for the children of a parent(s) who have more children than then can afford. Why not pay for all their expenses and let all parents just procreate as many children as possible while they are young enough to do so, and let society take care of the expenses. That is quit fair for the individuals who cannot have children or do not have children because they feel that they cannot afford to have them. People whom are good at having children like me, should not pay any taxes, that is the responsibility of the village as Hillary once noted. Isn’t it interesting how liberals always forget to mention the negative ramification and unentended conscequences of their altruistic social engineering.
Skip, I’ll turn your question around: if you know all the economics I cite at e.g. http://knowinghumans.net/2008/11/samuelsons-theory-of-public-goods.html, then how can you argue for anarchist positions?
Seriously, I suspect that I know the arguments for libertarian anarchism better than you know the arguments for libertarian minarchism.
Answering your questions on education: 1) Both/either. 2) Apart from a geolibertarian citizen’s dividend, I don’t think it should.
It appears that determining when freedom ends and when force starts is the difference between anarcho-capitaltists, mini-archaists’ and mix economy advocates. One cannot contest that “Force” surely appears to promote more force. Once one tax is levied the same excuse is used to levy another tax and so on. Once some sort of governing body, however elected starts redistributing wealth in the best interest of the majorities common good, by means other than voluntary agreement, the governing body than has the means to benefit themselves to the contrary of the common good. Surely they instinctually have this desire to benefit from their toils, and now we give them the method that they have always, always abused.
To me the most important question that we must ask ourselves in this debate is, it appears we must give up some rights to property or happiness if we are to establish any sort of ruling body to pay for its operations. What than are the “very specific” distinctions between when I should give up/acquiesce my property and happiness for the common good and when I should not. And knowing that there is a great probability that once I would have acquiesced one right to property and happiness, that very group is going to at least attempt to coerce or steal more properties and happiness, does not make the heart feel good about given to a system of that nature. There is so much taking now that it becomes practical to pay them off rather than spends one’s life fighting the multitude of abuses. In my life time the losses far outweigh the wins by the libertarians as force appears to always win out over voluntarism. Mini-archaists’ believe that we can keep that governing group in check by some means. Obviously none of us are doing well against fighting the tyranny and corruption that the force of socialism procreates and I have been saying for some time that we must pick the most offensive of the communist’s enactments and join all our advocates together and legally and passively fight them on that front. To me that enactment is the income tax. It is the most egregious of all takings and it appears to be the one that frightens them a great deal based on how they are willing to risk their sovereign immunities by corrupt and treasonists practices to thwart the anti-income tax movement. There are many ways to skin a cat and to me wasting the time and money through a political party is both ineffective and counter philosophic to our goals.
If (as Skip seems to claim) even taxes on aggression (e.g. pollution) lead to fascism, then singling out one tax to fight makes very little sense. Saying you want to fight one kind of tax, but announcing unilateral political disarmament while doing so, makes even less sense.
You need not give up any rights to “property or happiness” to advocate a geominarchist state — unless, of course, you think that the commons is your property, or that your happiness consists in polluting it. Geominarchism solves two problems that no other school of libertarianism even claims to solve: http://knowinghumans.net/2008/04/geolibertarianism-squares-two-circles.html
Brian, this is your quote.
“If (as Skip seems to claim) even taxes on aggression (e.g. pollution) lead to fascism, then singling out one tax to fight makes very little sense. Saying you want to fight one kind of tax, but announcing unilateral political disarmament while doing so, makes even less sense.”
One, you’re obviously assuming that the only way to fight pollution is through some sort of government action. That is incorrect and the Law Merchant is an example. A private judicial system would have a much greater chance at curtailing pollution than what we have in our existing fascist system where polluting industries are protected in many instances by the politically appointed courts and law. You then assume wrongly that you “can’t” dismantle one tax at a time until they are all eliminated but that politically you will be able to solve such problems, if likeminded people of your ethical and intellectual level, only were able to obtain political power”. That Brian is a fantasy my friend. You will never beat them at their own game and I wish you could convince G. Edward Griffin of that as well. He is a great guy but he like you believe that you can beat them at a game, a game that necessitates political power to win in the first place and that is a contradiction to liberty.
Added Note: We, those who believe in liberty and free markets over force, understand that we may choose to sometimes allow pollution, as we allow people to drive cars that are currently polluting because it is a necessary reality that we must deal with until alternative(s) are found. If we had to all park and stop driving our combustion engine vehicles, the U.S. economy would literally shut down over night.
If libertarians want to achieve something, other than political power that has surely been shown to be a very ineffective method, then would it not be best to focus our attentions on the worse of the aggressions being perpetrated on American Citizens. We are so fragmented with at least 50 different groups, fighting against 50 different socialistic policies, that it takes always from the power of our people to achieve anything.
Don’t get me wrong, in that running a libertarian candidate for President does allows our advocates to be “educators” and that is a very good thing but you surely don’t need as the Ron Paul Revolution showed, the Libertarian Party” to do that. Ron Paul achieved many times more popularity and votes when running as a Republican than running as a Libertarian. If we can find another spokesman like Ron, I’d like to see him run as a Democrat next time. I’d rather see the libertarians join in some form of a libertarian association with the non-aggression axiom as a basis for membership and then start tackling single issues one at a time.
Until such time as the majority of people become aware of the fallacies of socialism and are organized and focused, we will continue to be ineffective. Even with knowledge we must have a focus and that focus must not be just curtailing of socialism, but on specifics and one at a time if necessary and I vote for one at a time being necessary.
Skip, I most certainly do not “assume that the only way to fight pollution is through some sort of government action”. My actual position differs from your straw man, and is set forth at http://libertarianmajority.net/can-torts-police-all-negative-externalities.
I never said we can’t dismantle one tax at a time. Instead, I just pointed out that this (untenable) assertion is a corollary of your apparent belief that restricting taxation to just aggression (e.g. pollution) would inevitably lead back to Leviathan/fascism. If instead you now say that it’s possible within the political framework to make significant and enduring inroads against taxation, then I welcome your agreement with me.
I never said that the optimal level of pollution is zero. That is yet another straw man.
Ron Paul’s “Revolution” was effectively one man running in one race in one year. The existence of the LP did not hinder Paul’s candidacy, and in many ways made that candidacy possible. Meanwhile, the idea of freedom is offered to millions of voters by hundreds of Libertarian candidates in every election year — even the years when no Ron Paul is running. As long as the State allows us to organize a freedom party that advocates against its own injustices, the freedom movement would be foolish not to take that opportunity. I wish all the best for Ron Paul and his Campaign For Liberty, but I’m not willing to bet that candidates running under the C4L (or any other non-LP freedom-oriented) banner will get more votes and media exposure than the LP in 2012 and 2016. Are you? Most kinds of political activism aren’t fungible zero-sum kinds of effort, and the ones that are point to the wisdom of having precisely one freedom party: http://libertarianintelligence.com/2008/09/why-multiple-freedom-parties-is-dumb.html
Brian,
I disagree that class action settlements set up permanent policies. They are handled on a case by case basis. Just because everybody in a fixed group of people who bought a “Lemon” model car between 2005 and 2009 gets awarded X amount of dollars in a class action suit, for instance, does not establish any sort of guarantee whatsoever for anyone buying a Lemon in the future, or for anyone who bought a different model between 2005 and 2009 that had the exact same problems as the Lemon.
If you’re talking about class action fines, then let’s call them that, rather than muddying the waters by calling them taxes. Otherwise it just looks like your agenda is to undermine the libertarian opposition to coercive taxation.
You write that “Breathing is not aggression,” and then follow that statement with, The exact language in my Free Earth Manifesto is: ‘Production of property via extraction of natural resources from a community commons should require a fee to the community proportional to the decrease in ability of that commons to sustainably support such extraction.’”
But the statement from your Manifesto does not explain why breathing is not aggression. If you are saying the impact of a person breathing is so minimal as to have no measurable impact on the ability of the commons to sustainably support such extraction (of oxygen), that is *not* the same as saying that no aggression has occurred. Other examples of aggression illustrate this — for instance if I trespass on your property in a manner which does not interfere with your ability to use the property, trespass has still occurred.
Of course I’m not arguing here that breathing *should* be treated as aggression. What I’m getting at is that you have not provided a solid standard on which public policy can be predictably based. Where do you draw the line on when use of the commons has enough of an effect to warrant a fee, and why?
You defend your taxation formula on the grounds that in contrast with Skip’s formula which “is used by every government,” the formula you propose “is used by none.” But in a previous post on this board you criticized anarchists for lacking evidence that anarchism could work in the modern world:
“…anarcholibertarians can merely wave toward a couple of medieval island nations with populations and population densities four orders of magnitude less than those of modern industrialized states. As great as America is, we have detailed, redundant, and current empirical evidence backing up the mainstream findings of modern economic science about how market-oriented reforms within the statist framework can make America even more free and even more prosperous. Anarcholibertarians have nothing of the kind to support their moralizing a priori claim that America would be a better place if we completely dismantled our system of rights protection in favor of a promise by liberty-lovers to set a good example of aggression abstinence.”
Now you’re telling us that the *virtue* of your taxation proposal is that it is nowhere currently in use?
In denying that anarchism is the purest form of libertarianism, you provide a link to a web page where you’ve written about the Non-Aggression Principle (which you call ZAP and claim is only one of many). But on that page, I find you’ve written the following:
“The dictionary tells us that, to competent speakers of English, ‘libertarian’ means ‘one who advocates maximizing individual rights and minimizing the role of the state’. I accept that definition of libertarianism…”
Well, the minimal role of the state is zero. So whether or not you believe it is practical or desirable to attempt to implement anarchy, it seems to me that based on what you’ve written above, we are in agreement that anarchists are more libertarian than other Libertarians. This is not saying that anarchism is the *best* political philosophy, only that it is the most *libertarian* political philosophy.
As the hypothetical of the person falling off the 10th floor balcony and saving himself from death by grabbing a flagpole protruding from the 9th floor and trespassing by climbing onto that balcony illustrates, the *most libertarian* solution — in this case avoiding trespass by falling to one’s death — is not always the *best* solution, although I would contend that it *usually* is, especially in public policy.
← Previous Comments
Comments on this entry are closed.