The How and Why of Anarchy, Part 2

While Part One discussed primarily the advantages of a Free Market and stacked them against the “advantages” of Interventionist Economics (Keynesian economics), Part Two shall focus more on the Government itself, and not its economic methods.

Let’s return to our definitions from yesterday:

• The State is the collective governmental body which oversees a given society. The State is a collective whole which, in the United States, consists of the Federal Government, all of its branches, and all pseudo-governmental agencies such as the Federal Reserve.
• The Society is the collective body of People. It shouldn’t be necessary to point out that Societies do not require the existence of a State; the existence of a Society is independent of whether or not the Society has a Government. Any group of people of any size who work together, whether voluntarily or by being forced, is a Society.
• Once a Society has a State over it, the two collectively are the Nation. That is, the Nation is a Society and its Government.

In addition to noting that this creates within a Nation two distinct bodies (the Government and the People), one other fact can be drawn: Societies create Governments, but Governments do not create Societies. To understand this, we must go back a very long time, to the foundations of Society and then the foundations of Government.

Thomas Paine wrote in “Common Sense,” that:

In order to gain a clear and just idea of the design and end of government, let us suppose a small number of persons settled in some sequestered part of the earth, unconnected with the rest, they will then represent the first peopling of any country, or of the world. In this state of natural liberty, society will be their first thought. A thousand motives will excite them thereto, the strength of one man is so unequal to his wants, and his mind so unfitted for perpetual solitude, that he is soon obliged to seek assistance and relief of another, who in his turn requires the same. Four or five united would be able to raise a tolerable dwelling in the midst of a wilderness, but one man might labor out the common period of life without accomplishing any thing; when he had felled his timber he could not remove it, nor erect it after it was removed; hunger in the mean time would urge him from his work, and every different want call him a different way. Disease, nay even misfortune would be death, for though neither might be mortal, yet either would disable him from living, and reduce him to a state in which he might rather be said to perish than to die.

Thus necessity, like a gravitating power, would soon form our newly arrived emigrants into society, the reciprocal blessings of which, would supersede, and render the obligations of law and government unnecessary while they remained perfectly just to each other; but as nothing but heaven is impregnable to vice, it will unavoidably happen, that in proportion as they surmount the first difficulties of emigration, which bound them together in a common cause, they will begin to relax in their duty and attachment to each other; and this remissness, will point out the necessity, of establishing some form of government to supply the defect of moral virtue.

Some convenient tree will afford them a State-House, under the branches of which, the whole colony may assemble to deliberate on public matters. It is more than probable that their first laws will have the title only of Regulations, and be enforced by no other penalty than public disesteem. In this first parliament every man, by natural right will have a seat.

But as the colony increases, the public concerns will increase likewise, and the distance at which the members may be separated, will render it too inconvenient for all of them to meet on every occasion as at first, when their number was small, their habitations near, and the public concerns few and trifling. This will point out the convenience of their consenting to leave the legislative part to be managed by a select number chosen from the whole body, who are supposed to have the same concerns at stake which those have who appointed them, and who will act in the same manner as the whole body would act were they present. If the colony continue increasing, it will become necessary to augment the number of the representatives, and that the interest of every part of the colony may be attended to, it will be found best to divide the whole into convenient parts, each part sending its proper number; and that the elected might never form to themselves an interest separate from the electors, prudence will point out the propriety of having elections often; because as the elected might by that means return and mix again with the general body of the electors in a few months, their fidelity to the public will be secured by the prudent reflection of not making a rod for themselves. And as this frequent interchange will establish a common interest with every part of the community, they will mutually and naturally support each other, and on this (not on the unmeaning name of king) depends the strength of government, and the happiness of the governed.

It would be intellectual dishonesty to say something along the lines of, “Surely you wouldn’t argue with Thomas Paine, would you?” But that’s just as well. We don’t have to use only Thomas Paine’s words to explain the origins and nature of Government. We can also turn to Murray Rothbard, who wrote:

The State, in the words of Oppenheimer, is the “organization of the political means”; it is the systematization of the predatory process over a given territory.[4] For crime, at best, is sporadic and uncertain; the parasitism is ephemeral, and the coercive, parasitic lifeline may be cut off at any time by the resistance of the victims. The State provides a legal, orderly, systematic channel for the predation of private property; it renders certain, secure, and relatively “peaceful” the lifeline of the parasitic caste in society.[5] Since production must always precede predation, the free market is anterior to the State. The State has never been created by a “social contract”; it has always been born in conquest and exploitation. The classic paradigm was a conquering tribe pausing in its time-honored method of looting and murdering a conquered tribe, to realize that the time-span of plunder would be longer and more secure, and the situation more pleasant, if the conquered tribe were allowed to live and produce, with the conquerors settling among them as rulers exacting a steady annual tribute.[6] One method of the birth of a State may be illustrated as follows: in the hills of southern “Ruritania,” a bandit group manages to obtain physical control over the territory, and finally the bandit chieftain proclaims himself “King of the sovereign and independent government of South Ruritania”; and, if he and his men have the force to maintain this rule for a while, lo and behold! a new State has joined the “family of nations,” and the former bandit leaders have been transformed into the lawful nobility of the realm.

It should be demonstrated amply by this point that Societies do, in fact, create Governments and that no Government has ever created a Society. Furthermore, written in the Declaration of Independence itself is:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…

Let us say no more about whether Societies create Governments or Governments create Society. It is abundantly clear, by reason, by evidence, and according to the words of some of the greatest governmental thinkers in the history of mankind, that Societies create Governments and not vice versa.

Therefore, a Government cannot exist without a Society, but a Society can exist without a Government. If Societies create Governments, then it is logically inescapable to recognize that at some point there was a Society which had not yet created a Government; in order for a Society to create a Government, there must first be a Society with no Government.

Okay, You Made Your Point. Now Move On. This is Getting Boring.

Governments, by all reckonings, exist as a method for acting out the Will of its Society. When Society decided that the Government shall act to preserve “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of happiness,” they created a Government with the goal of ensuring these things. The Government was created as a means of achieving the end, and the end was the preservation of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of happiness. This does not mean that Government is the only means of achieving this end, nor does it mean that Government is the best means of achieving this end.

It is important to think back to the founding of the United States. We basically had 13 independent and small nations who agreed on these things: “We need a method to protect our Lives, our Liberties, and our rights to Pursue happiness.” That is the extent of their needs and it is the extent of our needs. We need nothing more than a method of protecting these three things, and, indeed, anything beyond these three things can come only at the expense of these three things. I.e., in order to protect our “right to health care,” the Government must sacrifice our right to pursue happiness, since we cannot “pursue happiness” without the financial backing to do so, and in order to protect our “right to health care,” the State must take a portion of our money to pay for the health care (as opposed to letting us pay for the health care ourselves).

If the Government which governs best is one that governs least, then the Government which doesn’t exist must be even better than “best”. It’s difficult to get into this topic without expounding the principles of the Free Market. 

Let’s consider, then, that it is our goal to establish a means of protecting our Lives, our Liberties, and our right to pursue happiness. Before we can do this, though, we must examine in detail what these three things mean. This is obvious: in order to establish a means of protecting our Lives, we must understand what is meant by “our Lives” and what is meant by “protecting.”

Life

Any being which is living has the unabashed right to continue living. Once something has life, no force on Earth can legitimately take that right away, expressed in killing the person in question. Not even Society has the right to take life. Neither does the Government have the right to take life.

It must be clarified that any action which an Individual could commit that is clearly morally wrong is generally perfectly acceptable when it is done by the State. Murder is an example of this. When an Individual murders another, the punishment is occasionally quite severe*. But when the State does it, either through war, assassination, or the death penalty, it is considered to be perfectly acceptable. This is a Moral Hazard. Let it be clear: if an action would be morally wrong if committed by an Individual, then the action is morally wrong if committed by the State. The fact that the State is doing it does not make morally wrong actions suddenly morally right; it means only that we’re allowing the State to get away with things it should be punished for.

Theft is yet another example. If you broke into a bank and stole a bunch of money, and then donated all of that money to various charities, your Robin Hood attempt would still land you in prison. But when the State breaks into your wallet and steals a bunch of money, and then donates all of that money to various State-run charities, it is suddenly considered to be morally right. Again, just because the State does it means not that it is somehow morally right; it is still morally wrong.

Theft and Murder? You Create Slippery Slopes, Anarchist Shemale, and I Think You Know It

It is not a slippery slope or exaggeration, though this is often the counter to the statement that Taxation is theft. But, just as religious proselytizing always ultimately comes back to the threat of eternal damnation, so do Government actions always ultimately come back to the threat of force. As much as Christians talk about God’s love and forgiveness, under all of that is Hell and eternal damnation, forming the underpinning of the entire system. After all, if that threat wasn’t there, then they would have no need to preach to anyone and there would be no reason to actually follow the system. A religion which doesn’t involve eliminating a threat generally gets no converts–see Buddhism for a terrific example. But by underpinning the entire framework with the threat of eternal torture, Christians give themselves both a motive and a weapon to instill fear and help convert non-believers. Like it or not, underpinning the whole of Christianity is the threat of eternal damnation, and without that threat Christianity would be irrelevant.

In the same sense, everything that the Government does is ultimately backed by threats. Taxation, for example, involves some pretty severe threats. What happens if you don’t pay your taxes? You go to prison–Federal prison. And, as bad as State Prisons are, Federal Prisons are rumored to be much worse. Not only does the Individual not get a choice when it comes to Taxes, but if the Individual contests the State’s attempt to steal their money, then the Individual is punished with imprisonment and/or severe fines. Underpinning the entire Taxation system is the threat that if you don’t pay, you will be subjected to massive punishments. The State might as well be holding a gun to your head and telling you that they will shoot you if you don’t hand over your money, especially since 10 years in a Federal Prison will leave a person with a shattered mind**.

So Taxation is theft; moreover, Taxation is theft at the point of a gun, wherein refusing to hand over your wallet will result in extreme penalties and punishments. But let’s return to the issue at hand: the protection of Lives.

If the goal is to protect our lives, then there are a few examples we need to think about in regard to our current Government. Firstly, we must consider the Draft. How can we believe that the Government actively protects our Lives when it has the authority to send us off to fight and die? This is a direct contradiction. Nowhere in the Constitution does the Government have the authority to take our Lives from us, and this is so obvious it doesn’t need to be pointed out. The idea that the Government could take our Lives from us runs contrary to the most basic of human rights: that the Individual owns himself. If the Government can, for any reason it desires, conscript us and send us of to die, then we are, in all honesty, the property of the Government. Let it be known that the State does not own us.

We must also consider the numerous wars we have fought in the 20th century, all of which resulted in the deaths of Americans, and most of which would not have caused a single American death if they hadn’t been waged. No American would have died because of the Korean War, for example, if the State hadn’t sent Americans to fight in Korea. The Korean War was never a threat to American security. The War in Iraq is a more recent example: Saddam Hussein was never a threat to the American People. Terrorism was not present in Iraq and the Iraqi Government had no way to threaten the American People; they didn’t have anti-aircraft weapons, they didn’t have long-range missiles, they didn’t have ICBMs, and the record shows they didn’t have “biological and chemical weapons.” If we hadn’t invaded Iraq, no American would have died because we didn’t invade Iraq. But because we did invade Iraq, thousands of Americans did die, and we increased the Muslim world’s hostility toward us. Muslim terrorists all rally around the cause of getting America to withdraw from the Middle East, and the greater our presence in the Middle East, the greater the presence and threat of terrorism. This is a fact which even the CIA has recognized. Our Middle East invasions are pissing off the Middle Eastern People, and we react to their being pissed off by invading more Middle Eastern nations, thereby pissing them off even more. There are only two ways to solve the Middle East problem: withdrawing completely from the area or completely conquering the entire area and oppressing all dissent–and this would be distinctly anti-Liberty and anti-American.

So how is the Government “protecting our Lives” when the State is singlehandedly responsible for both sending Americans to die and taking actions which result in a large portion of the world being very pissed off at us and very hostile toward us? After all, the catalyst of 9/11 was known for a fact to be our presence in the Middle East. It’s not our “freedom” or our “values” or “their religious insanity” that causes them to hate us and want to kill us. These are just pieces of propaganda put out by the State to convince us that the Middle Eastern People are our enemies because they hate us. It is far from the truth.

Take note, America: Muslims in the Middle East do not hate us because we are free, because we have this value or that value, or because we don’t share their religious conviction. They hate us because of what our Government has done and is doing and because we are allowing our Government to do it. They don’t hate us because we’re free, because we have sex on television, or because we listen to Lady Gaga. They hate us because we’re allowing our Government to invade them, to tear down their governments, and to dictate to them what they can and can’t do. We would not tolerate this if someone did it to us. If the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China invaded and conquered the United States, abolished our Government, and told us that we had to put in place a Communist Government, how would we react? We would hate the Russians and Chinese who had allowed their governments to do this to us. And since we couldn’t fight in legitimate battles against the Russian or Chinese militaries, we would have no choice but to resort to terrorist tactics to achieve our goal of self-governance and independence.

The actions the State takes is not protecting the Lives of Americans, and the actions of the State usually threaten, either directly or indirectly, the security of Americans. We are in greater danger now that we have ever been. Americans travelling abroad frequently pretend to be Canadians. It is not very safe for Americans to travel abroad in the first place, and this is even in countries that are officially allies of the United States; there is a reason more American women disappear in European nations than do European women. Our arrogance and self-righteousness causes us to be valued more highly among people who like degrading and humiliating others. I’m sorry–that is a fact. And it is our Government’s fault.

Liberty

No one in their right mind can accuse our Government of protecting our Liberty. Not much needs to be said about this. Our Liberty has been under attack for more than a century, and we have recently been attacked through unconstitutional legislation (the NDAA2013, which abolished our right to a trial, for example) and through bureaucratic regulations (the EPA has the authority, though none of its workers were elected by the People, to act unilaterally and make whatever regulations it wants, regardless of the damge done to the People, in the name of “protecting the environment”).

All of these things are done in the name of one cause or another, and it is here that we went wrong, because somewhere along the line, we concluded that the end justifies the means. And it doesn’t. It never has. It has been known for centuries that sacrificing Liberty to ensure Security destroys both Liberty and Security. And yet the sacrifice of Liberty is frequently justified by the allegation that it must be done to protect us. We need the NDAA2013 to protect us; we need the State to be able to arrest and detain Americans indefinitely and without a trial so that the State can protect us from terrorists. We need the Patriot Act to protect us; we need the State to be able to listen on every conversation, hack into every email account, read every Facebook post, and intercept every text message so that the State can protect us from terrorists. We need the President to be able to make Kill Lists and use UAVs to kill American citizens because we need the State to be able to protect us from terrorists. Somehow, the State convinced us that we need to be protected from ourselves and that, in order to protect us from ourselves, they had to have unquestioned power to control us, to watch us, and to do whatever they want to us. The fallacy of this is obvious: how can they be protecting us by harming us?

The Pursuit of Happiness

To honestly and sincerely pursue happiness, one must have Life, Liberty, and a few other things. One must have the right to own property, for example. But in the United States, our right to own property is non-existent. We don’t have the right to own property; we only have the right to RENT property. Even when you have paid off your 30 year mortgage (which you were a fool for getting), you still don’t OWN your home–you still only rent it. You must pay Property Taxes, and if you don’t pay those Property Taxes, then your home is taken from you and you are evicted. That is renting. If you owned the home, then you couldn’t be evicted from it and the State would be Stealing it from you if they tried. But you’re renting, so if the State evicts you and takes your home, it isn’t considered stealing.

Taxation in general amounts to purchasing the State’s permission to do something or own something. The idea that we now pay for the rights for which our ancestors fought and died is ridiculous. Our ancestors did not fight and die so that we would have the right to buy the State’s permission to live in our homes, and our ancestors did not fight and die so that we would have the right to buy the State’s permission to drive or flush our toilets. We have fallen so far from having the right to pursue happiness that the right to pursue happiness has become “the right to purchase the right to pursue happiness.” If you want to do something, there is almost certainly a Tax involved. If you want to drive, you must purchase a Driver’s License, thereby purchasing the State’s permission to drive. If you want to drive your own car, you must purchase a License Plate, thereby purchasing the State’s permission to drive your own car. If you want to buy a lightbulb, you must pay a Sales Tax, thereby purchasing the State’s permission to buy a lightbulb. All through America, the only way to do anything is to first purchase the State’s permission to do it. And that is not the “right to pursue happiness.” It is the right to purchase the right to pursue happiness.

The Founders would never have consented to such a system–nor should we. The State was not designed to require us to purchase its permission to do things. We must purchase the State’s permission to marry, to own a home, to drive, to buy a car, to have electricity, to have a cellphone… All of these things have Licenses or Taxes attached to them, and if you want to do them you must either buy the License or pay the Tax. If you DON’T, then the wrath of the State will fall on you, punishing you (often) more severely than you would have been punished for murdering someone.

What part of this is supposed to represent the right to pursue happiness? What part of the Government’s actions is protecting our right to pursue happiness? The Government does nothing to protect this right. In fact, the Government works against this right, allowing us to purchase the right to pursue happiness–but if you don’t purchase the permission, then you don’t have the right to pursue happiness.

The Society and the State

A failure to recognize Individual Responsibility has caused many Americans to identify themselves with the State, to share in the State’s successes and to draw pride from the accomplishments of the State. As Murray Rothbard points out in “Anatomy of the State,” most people have an intense love for their homeland. But because we don’t recognize Individual Responsibility and because Americans largely draw their self-esteem from the accomplishments of the State, many Americans have become Nationalists. Often, people identify themselves and borrow pride from the accomplishments of the State because they have no accomplishments of their own and borrowing the accomplishments of the State still allow them to feel superior and prideful without their having to actually do anything.

“We’re the greatest nation in the history of the world!” and other similar exclamations all allow the individual to feel a sense of pride, accomplishment, and greatness without any effort on the part of the individual. The individual gets to be terrific, great, and unrivaled simply because they are a member of the nation in question, and the Individual doesn’t need to do anything in order to feel terrific, great, and unrivaled. The Individual doesn’t have to become educated, successful, or anything else, because the Individual can always borrow from the accomplishments of the State and fill themselves with pride simply because they are underneath that wonderful mechanism. The Individual needs to do nothing in order to be filled with pride, a sense of accomplishment, and success.

This has done great harm to the notion of Individual Responsibility by preventing many Americans from wanting to take responsibility for themselves and their own situations. After all, if we acknowledge Individual Responsibility, then the State gets all the credit for its accomplishments and they cannot, since they did not contribute to the accomplishment, feel any pride or receive any self-esteem from the accomplishments of others. This is the reason most people now loathe the idea of Individual Responsibility.

They need to draw self-esteem and pride from the accomplishments of the State mechanism because they have no accomplishments of their own from which to draw self-esteem and pride. Indeed, the most vocal fighters against Individual Responsibility are generally people who have accomplished nothing and who have nothing for which they can be proud. And, in contrast, the most vocal fighters for Individual Responsibility are generally people who who have accomplished something and who have something for which they can be proud.

As long as people can draw self-esteem from identifying themselves with the State, Individual Responsibility cannot take hold. And, as I demonstrated in part one, a person’s identification with the State is built on contradiction and logical fallacy. We are not the State; we cannot, therefore, share in any of its accomplishments or have any pride whatsoever in anything it does–nor any blame for anything it does. The State is a body external to its Society, and individual members cannot, therefore, take any credit or blame for any of the State’s accomplishments or wrongdoings.

If you work for a corporation, then you can take pride in the accomplishments of that corporation and you must take blame in the wrongdoings of that corporation, weighted proportionately to the role you played in the corporation and the amount of influence you had to prevent or further the actions in question. But being the subject of a State is not the same as being an employee of a corporation. As I demonstrated, we don’t have any real authority over the State and the State is not us. The State is an entity over us, of which we can become members, and which does, from time to time, consist of people who are held by our desires. But this does not serve to adequately justify any identification of “ourselves as the State.” We cannot, then, take any pride in its accomplishments or any punishment for its wrongs.

We need Individual Responsibility, and not just because it will drive the people who suddenly lose the ability to draw pride from the accomplishments of the State to themselves work harder and make accomplishments of their own. We need Individual Responsibility because it is the only way to reaffirm Liberty and to curb our Nationalist tendencies. Liberty and Individual Responsibility are inseparable.

An Individual’s Subordination to Society

It is also often alleged that the Society’s needs outweigh the needs of the Individual. This is only possible because we have taken this abstract, unidentifiable notion that is the Society and we have given it needs, desires, and other characteristics, none of which can be justified or demonstrated. It may or may not be “for the good of Society” for Individuals to sacrifice this right or that right, but what is overlooked is the obvious fact that the Society consists only of the Individuals which comprise it, and, as such, anything that is detrimental to any of those Individuals is, therefore, detrimental to Society.

Society is not some external thing that has needs, desires, and other characteristics. It is just a term we use to label a mass of Individuals working together voluntarily for mutual benefit. The Society does not have needs, desires, and other characteristics; there is no such thing as “the good of society” and there is no such thing as “the needs of society are more important than the needs of individuals.”

This notion that we are selfish if we do not subordinate ourselves to the non-existent body called Society is a logical fallacy and a misidentification in exactly the same vein as those people who identify themselves through the State–it is just in reverse. Individuals do not identify themselves with Society, and this could be because Individuals instead identify themselves with the State. It is also because Individuals consider the State to be the mechanism which protects Society and makes it prosperous, even if it can only do this at the expense of the Individuals who comprise that Society. The very idea is preposterous and easily refutable. It’s as preposterous as the claims made in Vietnam that, “In order to save the village, we had to destroy it,” and George W’s more recent claim that, “In order to save the Free Market, I have abandoned Free Market principles.”

This type of Doublethink is unworthy of any People. We cannot benefit Society by harming, in any way whatsoever, the Individuals of which that Society consists. No, we are not the Government, but we are Society–at least in the sense that anything is Society. But, really, Society as an entity doesn’t even exist. There is no Society to which we are or should be subordinate. There are only Individuals. And no one has the right to make any Individual make sacrifices to benefit other Individuals, even if “more Individuals” would be benefited than harmed. 

It quickly comes back to a matter of Liberty and the notion that the State has the right to force a minority to do what the Majority thinks is right. The Majority, having become convinced that Society exists and that it is the right and duty of the State to harm Individuals, if it must, in order to benefit Society, force this notion on the Minority, and this is morally wrong. Forcing anyone to do this or that because one thinks it would be morally right for others to do this or that is never morally right. It is morally wrong to force someone to do something, and the notion that it is the right of the State to harm Individuals in order to benefit Society is exactly this: the notion that it is the right of the State to harm Individuals in order to benefit other Individuals. It is Taxation and Welfare all over again.

All Related

As it hopefully has been demonstrated, all of these things are related, and they all ultimately stem from the failure of Individuals to take responsibility for themselves, their decisions, and their actions. This failure has resulted in Taxation, State-sanctioned murder, the loss of rights, the loss of Liberty, the loss of our right to own ourselves, the loss of property rights, the tendency of Individuals to identify themselves with the State rather than identifying themselves with themselves, and the notion that the Individual is subordinate to the non-existent Society.

I have here demonstrated that Taxation amounts to Theft and the use of force, that State-sanctioned murder is still murder, that we have lost numerous rights, that we have lost substantial amounts of Liberty, that we have lost the right to own ourselves, that we have lost the right to own property, that Individuals have the tendency to identify themselves with the State, and that many Individuals believe that the Individual’s needs and rights aren’t as important as those of the Society’s. I have also explained why all these things happened. The inability of Individuals to take Individual Responsibility has led to all of these things, and taking Individual Responsibility is, at this point, the only way to reverse any of these trends–and all of these trends need to be reversed.

In Part One, I demonstrated the basic principles of the Free Market and how Welfare programs do more harm than good–and how State-run Welfare could easily be replaced by the much more efficient and productive Free Market. I also demonstrated in Part One that we are not the Government, so if you need clarification on why I assert that we have no right to claim the successes of the State as our successes, then refer to Part One for that clarification.

In Part Three, I intend to address Anarchy, what it means, and how it functions. In short, I plan to explain what a Society which has no State looks like and how a State-less Society handles things likes murder, theft, and other things that are considered morally wrong. I will also explain how an Anarchic Society does not mean lawlessness or chaos, nor does it mean that we would have no ground on which to stand in punishing murderers, thieves, and rapists, that these are pieces of propaganda put out by dishonest intellectuals to cause people to reject Anarchy out of ignorance.

 

* Sometimes the death penalty is given. I am not an advocate of “eye for an eye justice” and I don’t think that murdering someone in punishment is any more morally right than the actions of the murderer. Moreover, the evidence shows that the death penalty is used disproportionately to harm minorities and, particularly, black Americans. This is the very reason why Ron Paul recanted his position on the death penalty. It was absurd to hear people accuse Ron Paul of being racist, considering that his position on marijuana (and other drugs) is that outlawing these substances has disproportionately harmed minority communities and resulted in a disproportionate amount of black Americans being imprisoned for decades over trivial offenses that harmed no one; and considering also that Ron Paul ceased his support of the death penalty when he learned that it is used most against black Americans and that white murderers are sentenced to life in prison more often than death and black murderers are more often sentenced to death instead of life in prison. Ron Paul objected both to the death penalty and drug laws because they harm black Americans disproportionately; how can anyone justify calling him a racist?

** The American Prison System is fucked and is a bastion of evil and tyranny. In order to fix it, we must reassert the rights of criminals. Yes, they committed crimes–but they’re still People. However, because of wording in the Thirteenth Amendment, once a person is guilty of a crime, they can and do become Slaves to the State:

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. [emphasis added]

Slavery is never morally acceptable, and you should be able to agree with that. Involuntary servitude and slavery are never acceptable, no matter what a person has done. And this issue is more serious than you’d think, considering that we’ve given the State the sole authority to dictate what is and isn’t a crime and we’ve also allowed the State to run trials. In the modern American Justice system, trials are not by a jury. People instead receive Trials by the State. Let me explain.

We still have jury trials in most cases in the United States and it is up to the jury to deliver a verdict of Guilty or Not Guilty. However, Jurors are now sworn to deliver a verdict “according only to the evidence” and this means that whoever decides what evidence is allowed and what evidence isn’t ultimately is in control of the verdict. By taking this oath, Jurors ultimately become as predictable as computer programs: feed the information to them and they will deliver a result which depends entirely upon the information you feed them. As surely as 2x + 4y = 22 when you feed in the information that x = 3 and y = 4, the jury’s verdict becomes Guilty or Not Guilty when you feed in certain information. Having sworn themselves to consider only the evidence, Jurors will deliver a verdict that can be predicted with precision and certainty, so long as certain evidence is given to them. 

And who controls what information is allowed to the jury and what evidence is not? The State controls what evidence is admitted. Judges are part of the State apparatus, and many judges have agendas, as demonstrated by the FISA Courts and the revelation that many of these judges have an interest in simply approving whatever requests are made. Judges are not members of the People; they are members of the State, of the Judicial Branch. The State includes all branches and all quasi-government agencies. It is an inescapble conclusion that the Judicial Branch is part of the Government, because… well, the Judicial Branch is a part of the Government.

As such, we are allowing the State to dictate what evidence is admitted into trials. Since Jurors are sworn to deliver a verdict that depends entirely on the available evidence, the State ultimately controls what verdict is delivered. If Jurors deliver verdicts based only on the available evidence, then whoever controls what evidence is available controls the verdict. And that is where the American Justice System has gone wrong. Let ALL evidence be admitted, and let the Jury decide what evidence is valid and what evidence is not. We must not allow the State to control verdicts by binding Jurors to oaths and then restricting whatever evidence they desire. That is not a trial by Jury; it is a trial by the State using the Jury as a method of carrying out the State’s wishes. Juries, in effect, unwittingly become Puppets of the State. I urge you, my fellow Americans, to add the addendum to the oath that you will deliver a verdict according to the evidence “only under the condition that all evidence, no matter how tangential, is admitted.” If we do not require this, then we allow the State to dictate the verdict. And, in the long run, this will yield very bad results. This is, after all, how most Chinese trials go: the State doesn’t allow evidence that would go against the verdict the State desires. We already have a mechanism in place which will allow our own Government to do just that. We need to dismantle the mechanism before the Government “starts” doing this (if they haven’t already–we wouldn’t know, after all, if we weren’t being given relevant information because someone had an agenda and wanted to see a specific verdict).

Anarchy’s Benefits, Part 1

I wrote this about two years ago, I think; it’s a five-part series showing, more or less, how I evolved from “Libertarian” to “Anarchist,” as I went into the idea with the plan of tearing the idea of anarchocapitalism to pieces. But I quickly realized that, far from being unstable, it was absolutely brilliant, and by a wide margin the best solution.

In the following blog, a few things need to be clarified and defined.

• The State is the collective governmental body which oversees a given society. The State is a collective whole which, in the United States, consists of the Federal Government, all of its branches, and all pseudo-governmental agencies such as the Federal Reserve.
• The Society is the collective body of People. It shouldn’t be necessary to point out that Societies do not require the existence of a State; the existence of a Society is independent of whether or not the Society has a Government. Any group of people of any size who work together, whether voluntarily or by being forced, is a Society.
• Once a Society has a State over it, the two collectively are the Nation. That is, the Nation is a Society and its Government.

Note that this creates two separate bodies within any nation: the Society and its Government. This seems to contradict the general perception and “common knowledge” that, in a democracy, “we are the government.” Indeed, I’ve said in the past that “we are the government,” usually as a way of allocating blame properly to the People who allow its Government to do something which is morally wrong (such as the imprisonment of Americans of Japanese ancestry during World War 2). It has come to my attention, thanks to the work of Murray Rothbard, that this is nonsense. We are not the government, and this is readily apparent when you consider the use of force by the government to achieve its ends.

If we are the government, then nothing the government can do to me counts as making me do something against my will. If we are the government, then if the government kills me, it is a suicide. “But, Anarchist Shemale, you’re making a logical fallacy! If you are conscripted and sent to fight in Iraq against your will, it still is ‘the government’ forcing you to do it–it’s not you volunteering to go (for obvious reasons). You’re only a small part of the government, as is each of us.”

Yes, you’ve hit the nail on the head, and the counter here demonstrates that we are not the government after all. If we have 100 people in our Nation, and 5 of those people in a democratically elected Government, then if those 5 people force the other 95 to fight in the army, it doesn’t count as the 95 people volunteering, because “we are the government” means, really, that “we elect our leaders.” It doesn’t mean that we actually are the government; it means only that we, in theory, can impact the government substantially through the use of Representatives, or that we can actually ourselves “be” the government by being ourselves elected. It is, of course, now possible (thanks to the Internet) for a true Democracy to actually exist, but this point is irrelevant to the topic at hand. We are not a Democracy; we are a Republic with democratically elected representatives. There is a substantial difference, but I’m not going to explain it.

But there is no justification for equating “having a representative” with yourself being a “part of the government”; it is a false equivalency. Having x amount of influence over Representatives doesn’t guarantee or imply that our desires will be catered to, and no one expects it to mean that. There are too many People with too many different opinions for this idea that “we are our representatives” to hold any weight. Even if a given representative always had 99% of their people in agreement with the representative, then there is still a 1% minority that is clearly not the government, and any disagreement with the majority is going to be unaddressed in a democratic republic.

Representatives, furthermore, want to get re-elected. For one reason or another, Representatives almost always want to be re-elected, and, as their constituents are much more localized and concentrated than a Presidential candidate’s, there is considerably more accountability for Senators and Representatives to abide the will of their constituents. Presidents very rarely have to worry about what the majority of Americans want: they can only be re-elected once in the first place, and a 51% majority of Americans means nothing in the American System–see the 2000 Presidential Election, wherein the Electoral College thwarted the will of Americans and hardly a ripple went through our nation. It is for this reason–the desire for re-election–that Representatives and Senators always listen to the 51% and the 99% and never the 49% or the 1%.

Anyway, Representatives generally obey the will of their constituents, and the only reliable way they can do this is by frequently polling their constituents, holding town halls and other meetings, and just generally knowing their area and what the majority of their constituents want. There’s no need for Roger Wicker to poll Mississippians to learn what the majority thinks about gun control, but he (and other representatives) will gladly send out probing emails and hold town-hall-style meetings to learn the desires of their constituents and act in accordance.

The problem is obviously that, even if it was the case that Representatives consistently polled their constituents to learn what the majority wanted (something they obviously don’t do), and acted as true Representatives by always making their decisions in accordance with the results of their polls, then what we have is what Plato recognized as Democracy’s greatest failing: a dictatorship over the few by the many.

Representation is, then, fundamentally flawed. Even if we did have a true Representative System (which we do not) and even if our representatives did constantly learn our desires (which they do not) and act in accordance with our desires (which they do not), then the system is still one that is not to be desired by any lover of freedom and liberty (and it is not); it is an unjust tyranny over the few by the many (which it is). In such a system, whatever 51% of the People tell their Representative to do is what their Representative does, and the other 49% have to go along with whatever is decided.

Any system which has the inherent capacity to alienate and violate the rights of almost half of any Society is fundamentally flawed and undesirable. The only difference between the Representative System and the despotic system of kings, nobilities, and fiefs, is that the Ruling Caste is made up of a larger portion of the People. Their power over others, however, is equal; in a Representative System, any Majority has the same amount of power over the Minority as King Henry VIII did over England. And that is a flawed system.

In order to address these flaws and to safeguard the American People against the Tyranny of the Majority (which the Founders understood as a problem, as this fundamental problem of Democracy had been recognized since Plato) they chose a Democratic Constitutional Republic. The Majority would choose the Representatives, and the Representatives would then act in accordance with the Majority, so long as they did not violate the constraints placed on them by the Constitution. After all, if the Constitution did not restrain the power of the Majority over the Minority, then nothing would stop Congress from declaring that all Red Headed woman (or any minority) (or all women who think that women should be allowed to vote–this is said only to point out that minorities also exist because of ideological and philosophical differences, not just because of racial and other physical properties) would forced to work as concubines for the President and Supreme Court Justices. The Majority (which can be an ideological majority, such as those who think women should not be allowed to vote) simply cannot dictate the Minority, because if they do, then the Democracy is no different from the Monarchy.

The Constitution has clearly failed. Not only has the Constitution’s value been lost to the complacency induced by time, thereby allowing the state to take for itself far more power than was ever intended, but the failure also allowed the Majority to take for itself far more power than was ever intended. If the Majority of Americans support Welfare and Taxation, then there is no chance of Welfare and Taxation to ever be repealed or undone, even though this means the Minority who is against Welfare and Taxation will have the right to private property grossly violated in the process and will, in effect, become slaves of the State.

If the Majority of Americans support the President’s claim that he can send the military to police the world without a declaration of war by Congress, then the President effectively has that power. In modern America, small disputes and trivial issues often have it pointed out that the Majority doesn’t have the right to enforce its beliefs onto the Minority, but when it comes to fundamental questions of policy, there is no debate and the Minority’s opinions are thrown out the window (under one misunderstood or deliberately misapplied label or another), and the Minority is told that it simply has to put up with whatever the Majority wants to do, often because “we put these people into office.”

Again, Welfare is a terrific example. It is automatically presumed by the Majority that Welfare for the Elderly (in the form of Medicare and Social Security) is a positive and desirable thing and that, at most, we just aren’t currently doing it right. The Majority has no intention of discarding either of these systems unless it is to replace them with better [government]*^* systems. The idea that it is the duty of the State to steal some portion of the productivity of the Working Class and redistribute the confiscated wealth among a non-Working Class is assumed, and no questions which would dispute this assumption are tolerated with any amount of honest consideration. Moreover, in regard to Social Security and Medicare, it is automatically assumed that if we did not have these systems, then the Elderly would starve, become homeless, and go without medical treatment. The past 10,000 years of Society are completely disregarded by these beliefs. 

In no Society in the history of homo sapien have we allowed our Elderly to be stripped of their homes, their possessions, their health, and to starve to death [It should also be noted that the United States is the only country in the world which worries about this happening, because we are the only country in the world which is so out of touch with reality, decency, and common sense that it’s even a possibility]. Our species has always cared for its elderly and its sick. The idea that we should abolish Social Security and Medicare is not the idea that we should allow the Elderly to go untreated or starve to death; it’s the idea that the current Social system we have in place to take care of them is not working (and is morally wrong) and that we have, in the past, used better systems–and we can use better systems today.

Libertarians do not dispute that we have a duty to take care of the Elderly. In fact, no one disputes this. What we dispute is the idea that it is productive to allow the State to force people to do this when history has shown, for thousands of years, that Societies voluntarily take much better care of the Elderly than any State ever could. If you feel that it is your responsibility to contribute to the well-being of Elderly People who you don’t even know, then private Elderly Welfare charities exist for you to do just that. However, the vast majority of Americans would not labor under the hopelessly utopian fantasy that it’s their moral duty to take care of random strangers; most Americans instead would consider it their duty to take care of their own Elderly relatives (and perhaps any neighbors who may need it). And having the 15%+ of their income back in their hands–instead of the State’s–to be used for any purpose they want, including caring for their Elderly Relatives, would certainly make that a lot easier.

Moreover, the Free Market handles these things in ways that we can demonstrate now without theorizing about what Americans would do without Medicare and Social Security to act as Moral Hazards. The next time you are shopping, ask the clerk whether they offer a Senior Citizen’s Discount. You will almost always receive a, “Yes.” What is this phenomenon, if it is not the Free Market taking steps to care for the Elderly? 

Indeed, it is so common for a place to offer a Senior’s Discount that I’ve seen the Elderly become outraged when they visit a place that does not offer such a Discount. We will only see more of this if we dial back our taxes by eliminating Medicare and Social Security. If corporations are willing now to give 10% discounts to the Elderly and that is with the State taking huge portions of everybody’s money, then when you make the State stop stealing that huge portion of their money, their profit margin increases; with an increased profit margin, they can give Seniors greater discounts. To that end, every business would have its profit margin increased–giving them funds to bring more employees up to full-time, to use the latest technologies, to hire consultants to improve efficiency, to hire more workers, and to, if they so choose, provide their employees with extra perks (thereby allowing them to attract better workers), and this includes those companies not offering a 10% discount to Senior Citizens.

What sounds better to you? Forcefully stealing 10% of everyone’s money in order to give money to the Seniors or letting everyone keep their money and spend it how they wish? Before you answer, you should keep in mind a few things.

• At least thirty cents of every dollar spent by the Federal Government is eaten by waste, inefficiency, fraud,and bureaucracy. For some departments and systems, this percentage lost to waste is higher (Medicaid being a prime example–up to 50% of money allocated for Medicaid is lost to waste). http://www.smpresource.org/docs/The_Sentinel_May2012_HBABCs_Fraud_Estimates.pdf lists that Eighty BILLION dollars of Medicare money is lost to fraud each year. It is extraordinarily difficult–if not altogether impossible–to be defrauded of your money when you are personally spending it on your grandmother’s doctor visits and prescriptions [or giving it to her to do it herself; it doesn’t matter].
• It follows that, by median estimates, a family would really need to spend only 70 cents for each dollar spent by the Federal Government to take care of these things.
• Moreover, because of the reproductive nature of humans and family structures in American Society, there are typically two to three working adults available to split the financial burden of an Elderly Relative. This is because the average American has 2.5 kids (in the past, this was actually much higher). These kids will get married, which doubles the amount of people from whom the financial resources can be drawn. A typical woman of 75 will have five working children, and zero to ten working grandchildren, all of whom can voluntarily chip in to help take care of Gran-Gran^^*.
  
• Because the State will not be sucking away 10% to 35% of the income of these family members, if we assume an average salary of $25,000 (accounting for working teens and young adults), then between five adults, that is $12,500 that can be used to take care of Grandma. And since they can get with that $12,500 the same amount of care which it would have taken the State $17,857 to accomplish the same thing*, ol’ “Gran-Gran” might not be doing too badly after all.*^^
• The above $12,500 is acquired simply by allowing adults to keep their own money and to spend it on whatever they choose. No American Family would allow their Grandmothers and Grandparents to go without medical care. Nor would any American Family allow their Grandmothers and Grandparents to starve, go homeless, or anything else. However, this figure ($12,500) does not include the incredible jump in wealth and prosperity which the entire country would experience if we accepted Free Market Principles (including a commodity currency). Competition creates wealth. 

It’s important to remember that when we talk about getting rid of Social Security and Medicare, all we’re saying is that the responsibility to care for your grandparents… should be on YOU, not us. I have my own grandparents I would take care of. So do you. There’s no reason you should be taking care of my grandparents–who you’ve never met–and there’s no reason I should be taking care of your grandparents.

We’re simply saying: GET RID OF THE MIDDLE MAN. Because the middle man is incompetent, wasteful, bureaucratic, inefficient, naive, and can only accomplish his tasks through theft and the use of force. We aren’t telling you to let your grandparents starve or be untreated for illness. We’re saying: TAKE CARE OF YOUR OWN DAMNED GRANDPARENTS. 

Social Security and Medicare amount to this: The State steals money from you and then uses that money they stole from you to take care of your grandparents. Does that seem right to you? Does that seem efficient to you? Does that seem like a good idea to you? No, no, and no. It makes thousands of times more sense for you to take care of your own grandparents. If the State stops stealing from you, then you’ll have the free money to do just that.

Counter 1: What About Old People Who Have No Family?

In the rare event that we come across an Old Person who has no family who can take care of them, then we must rely on the benevolence of Society to care for that Old Person. What is the issue with this? If there was a private (“private” in the sense of “not related to Government”) charity to which you could donate some of your money, wouldn’t you do it? Even if you are a complete dick and wouldn’t donate $5 a month to such a charity, there are still churches and secular institutions that collect voluntary contributions and would do it anyway. No Church would allow its elderly members to go without health care or starve or go homeless. And there are many secular institutions that would be just as appalled by the idea. And that’s only necessary if you yourself wouldn’t contribute–plenty of people would. And it would be entirely voluntary.

When you stop stealing from people, you find out that people don’t need motivation to do the right thing. People don’t need a reward to entice them into giving $5 a month to a charity that provides health care to the elderly. And when you stop stealing from them, and you’ve stopped forcing them to do things that you believe would be morally right for them to do, then they have more money they can use to make these contributions. And if your concern is being morally right…

Then you have no justification for supporting Welfare systems like Social Security and Medicare in the first place. It may be morally right to contribute to the care of the elderly. But you must remember that you believing it to be morally right doesn’t give you any authority to force other people to do what you think is morally right. And that’s precisely what the Taxation/Welfare system are. “If it’s morally right for me to contribute a portion of my money to the care of the elderly, then it must be morally right for me to FORCE everyone else to contribute a portion of their money!”

See? That logic doesn’t hold up, does it? Forcing people to do what you think is the right thing… is never itself the morally right thing to do. Forcing someone to do anything is always morally wrong, and it doesn’t matter what exactly you’re forcing them to do. Forcing someone to do anything is morally wrong. And if you can’t agree with that, then you are the reason that Liberty has died. It’s a simple statement.

If you support Medicare, Social Security, or any other form of Government Welfare (including Obamacare), then don’t bother to comment this post unless you begin your comment with, “It’s morally right to sometimes force other people to do something.” If you comment to dispute any part of the Welfare discussion and you do not begin your comment with that sentence, then whatever else your comment says, it will not be approved. You have been warned**. 

It is a false equivalence that “doing the right thing” is morally right, so “forcing someone else to do the right thing” is also morally right. In a Free Society, the use of force is loathed, detested, and contrary to the principles of Freedom. This is where the Non-Aggression Pact enters the picture. In a Free Society, the Non-Aggression Pact is critical to the continuance of Liberty and Prosperity; it is, simply, an acknowledgement by Society and all its Members that it is morally wrong and unacceptable to initiate any form of violence. It doesn’t mean you can’t fight back. It means only that you can’t start fights. 

I can’t speak for everyone, but even with the State taking about 45% of all my money (being a small business owner, I am hit really hard… You wouldn’t believe it. Quite often, by the time the money reaches me personally, it has been taxed three or more times), I still make contributions to charities: The Mises Institute, the Foundation for Rational Economic Education, the United Way, the Animal Liberation Front, The Pirate Bay^*, and the Campaign For Liberty. The key thing to note is that I and I alone dictate and decide to which charities, organizations, and causes I give my money. The State doesn’t get to decide I should give x amount of money to the Mises Institute, and you don’t get to decide that I should give x amount of money to whatever cause you support–even if that cause is caring for Senior Citizens who you don’t personally know.

Voluntary Yields Greater Success Than Force

In fact, Force yields almost no success. We see this all over the world. When the World Bank steps in to a third world country with the intention of “ending poverty,” two things always happen. This has been documented and demonstrated over and over and over. Any time the World Bank steps into a country with the intention of “ending poverty,” poverty ALWAYS increases and the wealth gap between the rich and the poor ALWAYS increases. Well, not “always.” But the success rate is like 3%. I don’t remember. You can watch the documentary “Zeitgeist: Addendum”*^ if you’re curious about the World Bank and its ineffectiveness.

Knowledge of this general failure is also causing many people to speak out against Obamacare. If the State intends to lower the costs of health care or health insurance, then the only way it can accomplish this… is by getting the health out of the fields. Ooh… That was really bad. I’m sorry about that.

The best way to lower the costs of health care and health insurance is not to pass laws but to repeal laws; the way is not to intervene more in the health care field, but to intervene less. Ron Paul has noted on many occasions that in American Government, Failure is Success. While I’m not going to devote the time today in explaining what has caused the costs of health care to skyrocket, the blame lies almost entirely on Government intervention in the health care field in the first place. And when the Government’s failure to do any good was obvious and resulted in insanely high health care costs, what happened? The People demanded more intervention by the Government! “Hey, you fucked this up by messing with it! Now mess with it more and try to fix it!” Have no doubt, America. The Affordable Care Act will NOT help average Americans get health care. It will do the EXACT opposite of everything we want it to do. And when it fails, the Government will tell us that they need to intervene MORE in order to fix the even MORE broken system that THEY broke. If Obamacare is meant to bring health insurance to more Americans who currently don’t have it, then you know with certainty that in a few years, people who NOW have health care will NOT have it or the health care’s value will be so low that they might as well not have it.

It’s not that the Government can’t do anything right. It’s that if they want to do something right, they have to try to do something wrong. And if the Government wanted to do something wrong in the health care field, what would they do? What’s the most wrong thing they could do about the insanely high health care costs? That’s right: they could back completely the hell out of the health care field. Doing nothing is the most “wrong” thing they could attempt to do. And, interestingly, when it comes to any matter dealing with economics, having the Government do nothing will always lead to the right thing. Having the Government do nothing (“do nothing” includes ceasing all interventions in that market) will lower health care costs, because it was only ever regulations and restrictions that drove them up in the first place. Get rid of those regulations and restrictions, and what happens?

That’s right: Health Insurance becomes a matter of INSURANCE again. No one in the United States considers health insurance to be insurance. And that’s what caused the problem. We became convinced–mostly by lobbyists of huge insurance companies who benefited from the regulations–that we could use our health insurance for every trivial thing. Got to do a routine checkup? Good–you’ve got insurance. Got to get some penicillin? Good–you’ve got insurance. Got to get a physical? Good–you’ve got insurance. And yet… we all know that this attitude would break every other insurance market out there. Moreover, attempting to apply this attitude to any other type of insurance would quickly put us back in our place.

If you attempted to use your auto insurance over every trivial thing that happened, your insurance company would deny most of your claims. And if they didn’t deny your claim, they would raise your monthly premium. And if they didn’t raise your monthly premium, they would drop you entirely and no longer cover you. That’s why people don’t try to use their auto insurance when they run over a nail or when they have a fender bender. People tend to use Insurance only for emergencies. And that is what Insurance is for.

But, no, when we turn to health insurance, suddenly it’s okay to use the insurance for stupid stuff. And do you know why it’s okay to use your health insurance for trivial, non-emergency things? It’s because Government Regulations prevent health insurance companies from denying your claims; it’s because Government Regulations prevent health insurance companies from raising your monthly premium; and it’s because Government Regulations prevent health insurance companies from dropping you. Government Regulations have tied the hands of health insurance companies and have prevented them from using the methods of Insurance. Because insurance companies had to be so careful to avoid looking like they raised your prices or dropped you out of discrimination or because you developed a chronic illness, they could only offset the losses they suddenly incurred from everyone using their insurance for trivial matters by raising everyone’s prices. And doctors and hospitals returned by raising their prices; we’ve known for more than a decade that when you tell the doctors you have insurance, they are far more likely to run expensive diagnostic tests on you. All of this combined together to raise the costs of Health Insurance, and all of it happened because of Government Regulations and Government intervention in the Free Market.

And you expect me to believe that more Government Regulations and more Government intervention in the Free Market is going to help the problem? No, America: the problem is only going to get worse. The more the Government intervenes, the worse the problem will get; the worse the problem gets, the more the Government intervenes. At some point, the system will become so broken that there are only two choices: Socialized Medicine or a return to Free Market Principles.

And we will choose Socialized Medicine. Because we are terrified of the repercussions of the Free Market; we’ve been brainwashed into believing that Free Markets are dangerous and that we need Government Regulation to protect us from the corrupt corporations. And they point to places like Monsanto to evidence this.

Let’s Use Monsanto As an Example

Monsanto does a lot of really fucked up things, but let’s focus on its soy beans. Monsanto makes the poison Round-Up and they also own the copyright (see below–I’m vocally anti-copyright) on a special type of soybean that has been genetically modified to be resistant to Round-Up. Monstanto has a 97% market share in the soybean supply market; 97% of farmers who grow soy get their soybeans from Monsanto. Monstanto also requires that all farmers return their beans at the end of the season and unleash hell onto any farmer who doesn’t. Monstanto has people cruising through Iowa and other states every single day to find anyone who is violating any of their copyrights. They are ruthless and farmers simply cannot fight against them.

What is the root problem here, though? Is it Monsanto? Or is it the copyright law and the inability of farmers to purchase other soybeans of equal quality from other corporations that wouldn’t be so evil? Exactly. What Monsanto is doing is clearly wrong, but the farmers have no one else to whom they can turn. Monsanto has no competition, and Monsanto has no competition because of Government intervention in the free market. In a Free Market, not only could the farmers keep the beans that they purchased (actually, they’d be able to keep the offspring of the beans they purchased, but they should be able to do that, too), but any enterprising individual could buy some of the beans from Monsanto and become a supplier himself. Rest assured that if Monsanto had competition, they would not be Evil. And the only thing preventing Monsanto from having competition… is Government Intervention in the Free Market. The Soybean market is begging for competition. There is a huge gap for a non-evil corporation, and those 97% of farmers, all of whom hate Monsanto and consider it the most evil corporation in the world, would immediately switch to the new competitor and would tell Monsanto to get fucked.

The Free Market would solve the Monsanto problem almost instantly. It wouldn’t take more than a year. Within a year from the end of Government Intervention, Monsanto would simply be a bad memory.

“But What About All the Employees? What About Their Copyrights?”

In answer to the question about copyrights, look at what Monsanto’s copyright has caused! If you’re ignorant on the subject, watch the documentary “Food, Inc.” It addresses the evils of both Monsanto and Tyson, both of which are steeped in absolute Evil. If you have no idea what I’m talking about when I say that Monsanto and Tyson are steeped in Absolute Evil, then you really need to watch the documentary, because Tyson provides almost all of the poultry you consume and some of their practices are unforgivable–even to non-vegans and non-vegetarians, Tyson’s actions are simply Evil. And Monsanto… They’re the single most evil corporation on the planet.

What is keeping these evil corporations in power? Surely none of us would choose to work with or for an evil corporation if there was a non-evil competitor. No matter how much money we save by working with Monsanto, if there was competition, everyone familiar with Monsanto would abandon the corporation instantly. The only thing keeping these evil corporations in business is the fact that they don’t have any competition. The Free Market DEPENDS on competition and the idea that everyone is free to compete on a level playing field with everyone else. This competition creates Abundance, Productivity, and Prosperity in ways that we cannot imagine. They also destroy Evil. Monsanto couldn’t be evil if there was competition, because no one would work with them and their evil ways if they could avoid it.

So what about those employees? Yes, what about the people who are actively taking part in the absolutely EVIL practices of Monsanto? What about these people who are knowingly and willingly committing acts that any sane person recognizes as evil or, at the very least, despicable? 

In case you missed the subtlety, FUCK THEM. I can’t be nice about this. If a corporation routinely does Evil and competition rises and, by not being evil, threatens to put the Evil corporation out of business, then let the fate fall upon them which they set for themselves. Let them reap what they have sown. Let them sleep in the beds they have made. Let them lie in the graves they have diggen.***

You’re not really arguing for the continued existence of an evil corporation, are you? 

“No, Anarchist Shemale, But Not All of Monsanto’s Employees Are Evil”

Then they shouldn’t be working there. It’s that simple. If you’re taking any part in evil actions, then you are committing evil actions. It’s that simple. If your corporation is doing things of which you do not approve, then you leave that corporation. And in a Free Market, where Competition, Liberty, and the Right to Property are the reigning principles, then you will have other corporations for which you can work. If you choose not to leave, then you’re choosing to commit actions of evil–in which case you deserve the unemployment that will fall on you when the non-evil corporation takes all your clients.

“But… That’s… That’s…”

That’s what? That’s making people take responsibility for their own decisions and actions? How inexcusable and barbaric of me! Yes, I believe that an individual bears the responsibility for their own decisions and actions and that they should, therefore, receive whatever consequences result from those actions and decisions. I don’t believe that people who comply with evil should be able to avoid the consequences of that, no. I believe people should be accountable for the things they do. And, like it or not, if a person chooses to stay and take part in the evil actions of a corporation, then they are choosing to take part in evil. There’s no way around this logical connection. And, having chosen to take part in evil, they should face whatever Free Market consequences fall on them for that.

And, since it’s a Free Market, anyone who doesn’t want to take part in evil actions can leave and go to a different corporation–to one that isn’t evil. And, since it’s a Free Market, anyone who doesn’t want to make an evil corporation richer is free to do business with a competitor (so long as they don’t violate any contracts into which they entered voluntarily and without coercion). And, since it’s a Free Market, Monsanto would no longer be able to corner the market, maintain a horrendously unfair advantage, and would no longer be able to stifle all competition with lawsuits and the theft of property.

To Be Continued…

This blog simply lays the framework of the Free Market and clarifies what the Free Market can do and how it does it. Understanding the role and power of the Free Market is critical if we ever want to prosper or be free again. There are four principles here that must be inviolate and that must be understood before we continue, so if any of these four principles are still unclear to you by the time you’ve finishes this blog, please leave a comment (this supersedes the requirements noted above) so that I can clarify. These four principles are:

• Liberty / Individual Responsibility (they go hand-in-hand)
• Right to Private Property
• Right to Contract
• The Free Market and Competition

If these four principles are clearly understood, then go on to “Anarchocapitalism Part 2″ to continue my analysis. Note that I have not written “Part the Second” yet and will post a link as soon as I do. Probably tomorrow. Maybe not. In a few days, for sure. Part the Second will focus more on the “anarcho” part, whereas this Part focused mostly on the “capitalism” part. Part Three will likely explain the concept as a whole, putting parts one and two together. 

* I think I did that wrong… Well, if the math was done incorrectly, you still get my point.

** I despise euphemisms and dishonest intellectualism. If you stand in support of any Welfare system, then you think it’s morally right to steal from someone so that the money can be spent on what you think is the right place for it to be spent. This is why this blog has this requirement: to force you out of your dishonest intellectualism and euphemisms and make any would-be-commenters face what it is they really believe. Yes, Taxation is force. It is, therefore, theft. Yes, Morality is subjective (and one of the tenets of our nation is that no one’s morality may be forced on another person), and as such, it is not an Objective Truth that it’s “morally good” to care for the elderly. That means it’s your system of morality that dictates it’s morally good to do so, and someone may have a system of morality which does not agree with you. There is no difference between Taxation to pay for Medicare and taxation to pay for abortions or taxation to pay for gay marriage. They are all stealing from others to pay for the actions that someone else thinks is morally right–and anyone who disagrees has their opinion completely discarded and is forced to go along with the system anyway, despite their beliefs. This is the very definition of tyranny. 

^* I read a book last night called, “Against Intellectual Property” by N. Stephan Kinsella that, I am pleased to say, presented a cogent, economical, and Libertarian argument against the entire concept of Intellectual Property. As an artist (and musician… and fiction writer… and poet… and non-fiction writer… and game designer… and world designer [D&D3.5/Pathfinder]…), I’ve argued against Intellectual Property and asinine copyright laws frequently in the past, but I never had anything other than Reason to stand with me on the subject. Now I have Economics, Liberty, and the Right to Private Property on my side in standing against the entire idea of Intellectual Property. As I’ve said numerous times in the past, I don’t download music/games/movies/whatever because I’m against rewarding artists for their effort and creativity. Once I experience a piece of art in question, I, like almost every other downloader, will not hesitate to pay the artist for the work. When I downloaded Orcs Must Die! 2 and found it to be one of the funnest games I’ve ever played, I immediately purchased the game, even though I “technically” already had it.

I believe that the asinine idea that we can copyright sound waves, patterns of light frequencies displayed in a specific manner, and strings of words and prevent others from accessing them fully (even if they purchased them) is related to our asinine belief that we can make Nature illegal. When we made shrooms (psilocybin cubensis), marijuana, and peyote illegal, that is exactly what we did: we made Nature illegal. What arrogance! Nowhere in America is our arrogance displayed more clearly than in our attempt to make NATURE illegal. And the idea that a pattern of sound waves can similarly be owned by an Individual is equally arrogant–or a string of words or an assortment of particles that reflect and absorb different frequencies of light arranged in a specific way. It’s asinine and arrogant.

*^ Zeitgeist: Addendum is the last of the documentary series that I would recommend, and I really don’t recommend it fully. Zeitgeist was a terrific, powerful, and eye-opening documentary (despite its flaws and exaggerations), and it has a Companion Guide which can be downloaded if you want to fact-check it (you should want to). However, Zeitgeist: Moving Forward just went completely off the rails and the series went from attempting to spread information to attempting to spread Communism. Don’t get me wrong: I actually don’t object to Communism out of ignorance (and I don’t object to it entirely; I object only to our attempts to mix Capitalism with Communism and Socialism). But the Zeitgeist Series has become a launchpad for Communist tendencies and Communist goals. It is no longer worth watching. Peter Joseph’s agenda is no longer to spread truth or information; his agenda is now to spread the idea that Communism would solve the world’s problems. And it is THAT to which I object.

*^* It should be noted that Libertarians and Free Market advocates do, in fact, propose an alternative system which would replace Social Security and Medicare. It is, though, a voluntary system, and not a system that achieves its ends through the use of force, violence, coercion, and dishonest intellectualism. People who advocate the Government providing Welfare are, in fact, asserting that they’d rather force people to do what they think is right than they would allow people to choose to do what they think is right. We propose a Free Market System that relies on volunteers contributing in goodwill, instead of relying on Government Guns to force helpless subjects to do things, often in spite. The notion that only force can effectively provide the needy with care is absurd and proven wrong by the whole of human history; force has always been inferior as a means of achieving goals which could also be achieved through strictly voluntary means. The great success of our military has much more to do with the fact that it is all volunteer (for the moment) than it does anything else. Career soldiers who entered the military of their own volition are much more effective warriors than are those who were forcefully conscripted.

*** That is meant as a joke, but for some reason… “diggen” seems like it should be a word. So does “embiggen” (to make bigger), for that matter–“embiggen” was (created?) popularized by The Simpsons. And judging from Google Chrome’s spellcheck feature, “embiggen” is now recognized as a legitimate word. I propose “diggen” should receive the same treatment. “I dug a hole” and “I have diggen there before.”

^^* No, I don’t and have never called any of my grandparents “Gran-Gran”.

*^^ Especially since in a society where Individual Responsibility is recognized as a thing critically important, Gran-Gran would have used her 401k effectively and combined it with an IRA or two to save up plenty of money through her 45 years of working and would, as long as inflation didn’t steal all her money (which it is, in the U.S. economy), be quite capable of taking care of herself. But if not–hey, what are friends and family for?

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In closing, I’d like to ask a few questions. Do you really believe…

• that allowing competition would be a bad thing in any market or sector?
• that changing the length of a foot or yard could somehow make a piece of wood longer? That’s what our money system effectively is and does. A Dollar is simply a foot; it’s just a measurement of labor and resources. That’s it. It has no purpose or value beyond that. Those who believe that creating more money (the Fed, Congress, and others who support Quantitative Easing and other inflationary schemes) will create more wealth believe that changing the length of what we know as a foot or yard will somehow give us more wood when we measure it. The fallacy of this is so obvious that it doesn’t need to be pointed out. No matter the size of a foot or yard, the amount of wood we have will not change. No matter the value of a dollar, the amount of resources and productivity we have will not change. Dollars cannot create wealth any more than inches can create wood.
• that we can trust our Government to do anything?
• that it’s better to let the State steal x% of your money to spend on something than it would be for you to keep x% of your money to spend it yourself on that same something, eliminating the middle man?
• that the State has any purpose other than acquiring more power and securing its continued existence?
• that you are the Government? …or even that the Government cares about you?
• that Democracy is a good thing?
• that Regulations serve as a better safeguard against evil corporations than Competition?