I think back to the old Soviet days, which to me typify what it means for a society to be entirely under state control. The government put out a magazine called Soviet Life, and it was filled with pictures of happy, healthy people who were living fulfilling and active lives. The contrast with reality couldn’t have been more extreme. Emigrants told stories of a demoralized population turning to alcohol, drugs and suicide — anything to escape the toxic combination of sinking living standards and the absence of choice due to despotism.

Today we know that the propaganda was a lie. What we fail to realize is that this human tragedy is not unique to a fully socialized society. We can get there in small steps by growing the state and expanding its reach year by year until it envelops us in all our life activities. We have to turn to the state ever more. We are blocked by barriers. Everywhere we go, we encounter bureaucrats who demand our papers, riffle through our belongings, forbid what we want to do and mandate what we do not want to.

The sad and tragic story of Andrew Wordes — the chicken farmer who was driven to despair by government harassment and killed himself last month — continues to haunt me. And it turns out to be just one of millions of cases of similar psychological torment caused by government, directly and indirectly. These are wholly unnecessary events, inflicting terrible loss on the world.

Citizens in every country with an interventionist state face a situation similar to the one Andrew Wordes faced. They may have a dream of starting or growing a business, but they are blocked — not because of their own lack of vision, but because of the thicket erected by public policy. The state acts as a dream killer. It becomes all the more maddening when there is nothing that the citizen can do about it. There is no real choice.

Of course, soldiers in war face this reality every day. They are not their own persons. They must obey orders whether they make sense or not. They see things that no one should have to see and they are ordered to do things that no one should have to be forced to do. It is hardly surprising that people who go through such an ordeal have confused perspective on the value of human life.

For every one person who dies fighting in U.S. wars around the world these days, 25 other soldiers kill themselves. Veterans are killing themselves at a rate of one every 80 minutes. There are than 6,500 veteran suicides every year. That’s more than all the American soldiers killed in Afghanistan and Iraq in the last 10 years, according to a New York Times analysis. Being a veteran apparently doubles your risk of suicide.

Economic conditions wrought by government policies around the world have contributed to the suicide death toll. Europe is undergoing an epidemic of suicide in countries seriously hurt by the downturn. In Greece, the suicide rate among men increased more than 24% since the disaster hit. In Ireland, male suicides have shot up more than 16%. In Italy, economic-motivated suicides have increased 52%.

The big aggregates reported here do not convey the level of tragedy experienced in the lives of every single individual here. They leave behind shattered families and wrecked communities. There is an unbearably sad story behind every single statistic.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that the same is happening in the U.S and that the broad trend follows economic prospects. The difference between the rising prosperity of a free market and economic desperation caused by government is really a matter of life and death. The desperation and sadness wrought by war — an extension of domestic policy and carried out with much higher stakes — is a symptom of the same problem.

These represent both direct and indirect ways that government is spreading misery around the world. The direct way involves war and its psychological effects. Being harassed by regulators is another direct way: The person sees no way out and is thereby driven to desperate measures. The indirect way results from the economic stagnation caused by government: Its recession-spawning policies; its policy responses that do not work; its regulations that makes people crazy; its poverty-inducing taxes and inflation; and, most of all, its wars have driven millions to despair.

Why the state in particular? It all comes down to the sense of having control over your life. The essence of statecraft is the absence of choice and the inability to escape. Many operations of the state try to disguise these features.

Once you develop a nose for this, you see it everywhere. The faces of people in line at the DMV, the sauntering mass in line to be screened by the TSA and even the blank stares you see in the post office lines. There is something about state policy that demoralizes us all. That takes a toll on our health and our outlook on life and even leads to tragedy.

Oh, they tell us that in a democratic system, we can vote and that this is our choice. We have nothing to complain about. If we don’t like the system, we can change it. But this is wholly illusory. The government completely owns the democratic system and administers it to generate the types of results that government wants. More and more people are catching on to this, which is why voter participation falls further in every election season.

The great thinkers of the libertarian tradition have always told us that freedom and the good life are absolutely inseparable. I think of Thomas Jefferson, Frederic Bastiat, Herbert Spencer, Albert Jay Nock, Ludwig von Mises, Murray Rothbard, F.A. Hayek and so many others. Even contemporary authors have addressed the theme. They had long warned that every step away from freedom would mean a diminution of the quality of life. We are seeing these prophecies come true.

Too often public policy debates take place on the wrong level. The core point is not to make the “system” work better or otherwise fine-tune the rules within a bureaucracy. We need to start talking about larger issues about the dignity of the human person, the moral status of freedom and the rights and liberties of the individual in society. The expansion of the state is not just wrong as a matter of “public policy”; it is wrong because it is dangerous to the good life and the quality of life.

To kill freedom is to kill the essence of what makes us human.

Regards,

Jeffrey Tucker

Despair and the State was originally featured on Whiskey and Gunpowder. Visit Laissez Faire Books for the best selection of libertarian book titles.

The about sums it up. The plus side of elections is that sometimes the debates, discussions, candidates and parties raise fundamental questions about what kind of society we want to live in. That’s the best we can hope for.

But there is a downside to all this hullabaloo: It gives the impression that the mere existence of the electoral process gives “we the people” a fundamental choice about the kind of state we want. This is not true. The politicians we elect are veneers or facades. They are bandits, but they do not constitute what is called the state. This goes for just about every developed state in the world for the last 200 years.

The whole election process leads people to believe that the state is in embedded in leaders. Not so. In France, this system ended with the execution of Louis XVI; in Germany, with the ascent of Bismarck; and in Russia, with the Bolshevik Revolution. The personal state died in the U.S. pretty early on, as even Thomas Jefferson discovered when he became president in 1801; he felt himself powerless to do anything.

The modern state lives outside the will of a particular leader or administration. Voting and elections only change the temporary managers, but do not touch the core of the problem.

The first book that saw through the facade was by the great German sociologist Franz Oppenheimer. It is called, appropriately, The State. It was written in 1908, just as the state had begun to entrench itself deeply into the social order — more so than at any point in the previous thousand years. He described the state as the one class that dominates all others, obeying a
different law and thriving off violence against person and property. He sums up this violence in a phrase: the “political means.” He contrasts this with the “economic means,” the essence of which is voluntary human association and trade. (His book came to have an amazing influence through Albert Jay Nock’s Our Enemy, the State.)

Violence? That sounds like the opposite of elections, doesn’t it? Surely, we are exercising our free will in deciding who leads us. The truth is that the people who run for office specialize mostly in what they do best: running and getting elected as an end in itself. The real state is beneath the surface of this public theater. It is the vast army of professional bureaucrats and the mandates they carry out. It is the enforcement apparatus that oversees a gargantuan tax code. It is the Federal Register that is too large to print. It is the central bankers, their staffs, their machinery, their mandate to bail out the state no matter what. It is the hundreds and thousands of agencies that purport to control every aspect of life.

No voter ever approved any of this; no election puts any of this at risk. This is because the state itself is not subject to any plebiscite. Imagine if all the elected officials in the entire country and all those who work in their offices decided not to show up to work for an extended period. What would happen? New bills wouldn’t pass. The media wouldn’t have politics to cover. There would be a periodic scramble over superficial issues like the debt limit. But otherwise, the state would go on just as before. Nothing fundamental would change.

Nor is it the case that any of the elected officials have the power to do serious damage to this system. This goes for the president, too. They can often influence the way the state grows, but they can’t actually fundamentally threaten the apparatus itself. The longer they are in office, the less personal power they realize that they have. The reason is simple. The system is not structured to permit them to dismantle it, even if they wanted to. They are temporary managers of a ruling class, and the members of this class mostly scoff at these people, treating them like actors on a stage that the class itself owns.

The best source to gain a full grasp of the realities of the modern state apparatus is Robert Higgs’ amazing work , Against Leviathan. No contemporary author has so fully documented the vast expanse of the modern leviathan in all its permutations. He sees how welfare and warfare are not opposed to each other, but work together to form the main two activities of the modern state. He sees how central banking works to sustain the system. He understands the ways in which the state serves as a cash cow for every form of interest group, and how it works to trick
the population into believing that the state is doing good for people when it is really wrecking their lives.

Most of all, Higgs gets that the political system that so enraptures the public mind is not owned by us. It is owned and managed by the state itself and for a precise purpose: to perpetuate the idea that we have all chosen the regime that rules us. That is why there is so little difference between the political parties. As Higgs puts it, the U.S. has “two revolving factions of a one-party state farcically masquerade as authentic alternatives, the one specializing in crushing economic freedom and the other concentrating on crushing every other form of freedom.”

After the election is all over — in a grueling 10 months! — and our new managers take their seats, the talking heads will tell us once more: “The system worked.” Yes, it did work in exactly the way they want it to work. Nothing much will change. If you don’t like the results, there is something wrong with you. If you don’t like the rules, taxes, human suffering, wars, inflation, intrusions, confiscations and all the rest of the apparatus, you had better run for office, give to another candidate or otherwise throw yourself into the politics full time!

This is not choice. When we go to the grocery, we face a choice of what to buy. Or we can walk out without buying at all, keeping our money instead. Whatever the result, it is really in our hands. The electoral system is different. The store is the state. The products it offers are produced by the state. There is no real choice, only enough shadings of differences to keep us entertained. And we cannot really walk away. There is “no none of the above” and there is no keeping your own money.

Every once in a while, someone comes along who offers a fundamental challenge to the whole racket and somehow manages to attract public attention and even use the system to urge the dismantling of the system. This is what has happened with the candidacy of Ron Paul, and it is precisely why the media strains so hard to keep from reporting on him or letting others speak out for his views.

The elites are not so concerned that he can be elected. The system is fixed well enough to prevent that outcome. The real threat — and Dr. Paul understands this better than anyone — is the fundamental intellectual challenge that he offers. His book Liberty Defined contains enough radicalism and enough intellectual power to destabilize the entire structure that Oppenheimer and Higgs have so beautifully described.

The ideas in these books are far more powerful than any ballot box. They expose the illusion of choice for what it is and unmask the violence embedded in the state-dominated society, a system that no one chose but has been imposed on the population through propaganda, wars, payoffs and every manner of trickery. If there were a way to re-channel all the human energy that people put into politics into reading and thinking, the state would have finally meet its match.

Regards,

Jeffrey Tucker

Elections and the Illusions of Choice was originally featured on Whiskey and Gunpowder. Visit Laissez Faire Books for the best selection of libertarian book titles.

“The recognition of the insuperable limits to his knowledge ought indeed to teach the student of society a lesson in humility, which should guard him against becoming an accomplice in men’s fatal striving to control society — a striving that makes him not only a tyrant over his fellows, but that may well make him the destroyer of a civilization that no brain has designed, but that has grown from the free efforts of millions of individuals.” ⁽²⁾

Hayek opposed any attempt to engineer — that is, centrally to plan and to coordinate — the structure of society. He believed that such engineering actually destroyed, rather than created, society, which was the result of human action but not of human design. Alongside the Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises, Hayek provided what are arguably the best critiques of the “constructivist” theories and policies that have grown in popularity during the 20th century.

Both Hayek and Mises had witnessed the devastation of classical liberalism, which had been brought on by two world wars, but most particularly by World War I. Wartime governments had clamped a centralized control over the private sector in order to ensure a continuing flow of armaments and the other goods deemed necessary for victory. Governments had inflated their money supplies to pay for massive military buildups. And war had strangled the flow of free trade that classical liberals considered to be a prerequisite to peace, prosperity and freedom. In short, both Hayek and Mises had watched 19th-century classical liberalism being replaced by 20th-century statism.

If war is the health of the state, as the American individualist Randolph Bourne declared it to be, then Hayek and Mises witnessed the impact of an obvious corollary: namely, that war is the death of individual liberty. And social engineering was a key mechanism through which that freedom had been destroyed. Indeed, one of Mises’ earliest works, Nation, State and Economy (1919), analyzed the disastrous consequences of the central planning ushered in by World War I.

But Hayek and Mises did not merely oppose social engineering on utilitarian grounds. Independently, they each evolved complex and sophisticated systems of social theory to explain how the institutions of society naturally evolved. They maintained that the institutions of a healthy society were the collective and unintended results of human action. Even complex social phenomena — such as religion, language or money — were the unintended consequences of individual interactions. For example, no committee or central authority decided to invent human speech, let alone to design a language as specific as English. Acting solely to achieve their own ends, individuals began making sounds in order to facilitate getting what they wanted from other people. Thus, speech was the result of human action but not of human design, and it naturally evolved into language. The evolution may not have proceeded with scientific efficiency, but it was efficient enough to permit the development of civilization. The efficiency of government programs suffer by comparison.

Yet constructivists argued that an unplanned society is wasteful and chaotic. With sufficient knowledge, a perfectly efficient society could be engineered. There would be no more surpluses nor scarcities. Stock markets would not crash, and currencies would not fluctuate. Perhaps society could even be designed so that its members walked in unison toward desirable social goals, just as they had marched together toward victory in wartime.

Hayek bluntly stated that the knowledge constructivists sought was unattainable. It was not possible to plan the dynamics of tomorrow based on how people acted yesterday. It was impossible because people were unpredictable. Human beings were fundamentally different from the physical objects examined by the hard sciences. A scientist could learn everything he needed to know about the behavior of an object, and his knowledge would not necessarily change over time. But human beings acted on psychological factors and motivations that were hidden, often even from themselves. Society did not consist of objects that could be neatly categorized and made to obey the laws of science. Society consisted of erratic and unpredictable individuals.

Mises made a similar point in regard to monetary theory. He demonstrated that even the seemingly objective tool of monetary calculation — the sort of calculation people use informally to assess such personal economic factors as whether to ask for a raise — was ineffective for broader social planning. At best, monetary calculation provided a historical record of what the price of bread, for example, had been in the past. This information could create an anticipation of what the price of bread might be tomorrow, but it could predict nothing. A bread shortage might make the price skyrocket. Moreover, using yesterday to engineer tomorrow went against a fundamental tenet of human action: the principle of inevitable change.

In Human Action: A Treatise on Economics, Mises commented, “Human action originates change. As far as there is human action, there is no stability, but ceaseless alteration…The prices of the market are historical facts expressive of a state of affairs that prevailed at a definite instant of the irreversible historical process….In the imaginary — and of course, unrealizable — state of rigidity and stability, there are no changes to be measured. In the actual world of permanent change, there are no fixed points…”(224)

From Nation, State and Economy through to his magnum opus Human Action (1949), Mises eloquently argues against the possibility of acquiring enough knowledge to engineer society. Equally, in Hayek’s earliest work, The Sensory Order: An Inquiry Into the Foundations of Theoretical Psychology (1952), to his far more popular The Road to Serfdom (1944), he integrates such diverse fields as epistemology and economics to form a social theory that denied any validity to central planning.⁽³⁾

Throughout the work of these theorists, two closely related concepts emerge again and again: 1) methodological individualism and 2) spontaneous order. These concepts are key to understanding why Hayek and Mises so adamantly rejected social engineering.

Methodological Individualism

In Human Action, Mises offers a description of what he called “The Principle of Methodological Individualism”:

“First we must realize that all actions are performed by individuals… If we scrutinize the meaning of the various actions performed by individuals, we must necessarily learn everything about the actions of the collective whole. For a social collective has no existence and reality outside of the individual members’ actions” (42).

Mises claims that collective wholes — such as “the family” or “society” — are nothing more than the sum of the individual members who comprise them. Such wholes are useful abstractions that people use to describe the interactions of a group of people who operate toward each other within a specific context. For example, the individuals who comprise a family interact with each other within a specific context: The context and sum of these individual interactions are what constitute the abstraction “family.”

In reducing group functioning to its most basic element — the acts of individuals — Mises does not deny the importance of collective wholes. Quite the contrary. Mises explains, “Methodological individualism, far from contesting the significance of such collective wholes, considers it as one of its main tasks to describe and to analyze their becoming and their disappearing, their changing structures and their operation. And it chooses the only method fitted to solve this problem satisfactorily” (42).

In other words, methodological individualism was a powerful analytical tool that could be used to discover the principles along which a group of people interacted with each other in specific contexts. It was the best method by which to understand society.

Mises’ stress upon methodological individualism did not arise in a vacuum, but in response to the theory of social holism that had become popular in the early 20th century. Social holists claimed that collective wholes had an existence that was far more than the sum of their individual parts.

These social holists drew parallels between the fields of biology and sociology. They argued that just as higher-level principles of explanation were needed to describe a complex biological organism than were used to explain the molecules that comprise it, so too with human society. New principles and characteristics emerged within a society that were entirely different from those that applied to individuals. In other words, there were rules that applied only to collective wholes, not to individual members. Further, these emergent rules functioned along scientific lines and responded to methods such as monetary calculation.

With the rise of Marxism, those who favored methodological individualism were often accused of “atomism or reductionism. Marxists went so far as to assert that it was the individual, and not society, who was the true abstraction. In its extreme form, these social holists even denied that the individual existed without society. As Mises observed, “The notion of an individual, say the critics, is an empty abstraction. Real man is necessarily always a member of a social whole” (41).

Karl Marx argued this point by using a sort of Robinson Crusoe example. Marx contended that an individual who had been born and immediately abandoned on a desert island, thus growing up in total isolation, would not be a human being. The crux of his argument was that human beings are social organisms — social constructs, if you will — who cannot be lifted from their defining context and remain human beings. The adult Robinson Crusoe who had been shipwrecked on a desert island was clearly a human being, but his humanity resulted from a prior history of socialization. Language, thought, art…all that made Crusoe human had resulted from his life in community. Reversing Misesian logic, Marx claimed that the collective whole called “society” created its individual members who could be understood only by examining the rules of that overriding society. Marx went an extra step farther and tried to extend the principles and methodology of the hard sciences to society. He tried to apply scientific methods of predictability and control to social institutions.

Classical liberals countered that a person who had been raised in utter isolation would still be a human being with human characteristics. For example, he would have a scale of preferences and he would act to achieve the highest one first. True, without social interaction, major potentialities within the person’s humanity would never develop or be expressed. For example, there would have no reason to develop language skills and no possibility of becoming a parent. Were the isolated individual to be rescued and placed within society, however, his unexpressed potentials might well emerge. But whatever characteristics developed would emerge from his own inherent potential as a human being and they would be the result of the individual interactions he experienced. The characteristics would not emerge because a collective whole called “society” defined them into existence.

This methodological approach worked in analyzing even extremely complex collective wholes, such as ‘the state.’ Everything the state did or was could be reduced to individual actions. As Mises explained, “The hangman, not the state, executes a criminal. It is the meaning of those concerned that discerns in the hangman’s action an action of the state.”(42) Individuals who look at the hangman see the state in action only because they have created an abstraction known as the state to provide a context for his action. Equally, people never truly see or hear a group conversation. All they see or hear are individuals speaking, and we label the sum of their exchange as ‘a group conversation’.

Thus, Mises denied any concrete reality to abstractions such as ‘the state’ or ‘society’. He wrote, “It is illusory to believe that it is possible to visualize collective wholes… We can see a crowd, i.e., a multitude of people. Whether this crowd is a mere gathering…or any other kind of social entity is a question which can only be answered by understanding the meaning which they themselves attach to their presence. And this meaning is always the meaning of individuals…. [A] mental process makes us recognize social entities.”(43)

Methodological individualism had profound implications for social engineering theory. If collective wholes were a “mental process” within individuals rather than concrete entities with independent existence, then it made no sense to claim there were unique rules and characteristics that applied to the collectives and not to individuals. Methodological individualism removed the collective wholes from an objective realm ruled by scientific principles and returned it to the subjective realm of human judgment and preference. Instead of being able to design social institutions, such as banks, to run along scientific principles, social engineers were reduced to regulating individuals. They were engaged in planning how human beings would express their preferences in the future — a knowledge that individuals themselves rarely possessed.

And, yet, a question remains. Without planning, how can society improve? Part of the answer is to be found in the second concept running throughout the work of Hayek and Mises: that is, spontaneous order.

Spontaneous Order

During the eighteenth century, theorists like Adam Smith began to examine the impact that the unintended consequences of human action had upon society. These were the collective consequences that accrued as a result of people pursuing their own individual interests. For example, if twenty people walked the shortest distance across a field, a crude path through the field would be established. But forging the path would be an unintended consequence of each person’s conscious goal — to reach the other side quickly.

Smith came to believe that society and its institutions could be best understood by reference to such unintended consequences. Consider the price of yesterday’s bread. No one legislated what you were willing to pay for bread yesterday. That price point resulted from such unpredictable factors as how highly you prized bread twenty-four hours ago. The social institution of ‘price’, therefore, had been established spontaneously. It was also self-correcting. That is, the price spontaneously and rapidly fluctuated to reflect changing factors such as the availability of bread. And because such changes were unpredictable, only a spontaneous response — not a pre-planned one — could adequately respond.

No contemporary writer has explored the idea of spontaneous and self-correcting social institutions in greater depth than Hayek. In his essay “Principles of a Liberal Social Order”, Hayek tackled an objection he often encountered. He wrote, “Much of the opposition to a system of freedom under general laws arises from the inability to conceive of an effective co-ordination of human activities without deliberate organization by a commanding intelligence.” ⁽⁴⁾

For social holists, ‘order’ and ‘efficiency’ were concepts that seemed to be wedded together. Mises and Hayek agreed, but they used a different definition of ‘order’. For social holists, the word ‘order’ seemed to conjure up quasi-military visions of society marching shoulder-to-shoulder in unison toward a common goal. It was embodied by five-year plans which reduced the functioning of society to mathematical equations. By contrast, the order espoused by Mises and Hayek was a spontaneous one in which individuals pursued their own diverse interests without co-ordination by a central authority.

What does such an order look like? A classic example is the New York Stock Exchange that was created as a location at which stocks could be bought and sold Monday to Friday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. No overriding authority set prices, volume limits, etc. These were established by pockets of people who pursued their own preferences in a manner resembling chaos. In yelling out on the floor that he was willing to buy ABC stock at ‘X’ price, a trader intended to pursue nothing more than the preferences of his client. But an unintended consequence of his action — at least, when considered alongside other isolated pockets of co-ordination — was that an overall price for ABC stock became established.

Spontaneous order can resemble chaos. In Hayek’s words, it is the sort of order “whose justification in the particular instant may not be recognizable, and which will…often appear unintelligible and irrational.” ⁽⁵⁾ Ironically, this resemblance to chaos may be an aspect of why spontaneous order is efficient. After all, the shifting circumstances to which this sort of order responds have no logical or predictable order. Just as the trading floor of a stock exchange cannot be run according to Miss Manners’ rules of etiquette, so too does a dynamic society require institutions with fluidity.

Indeed, the main advantage of a decentralized system of decision making may well be its ability to adjust constantly and quickly to shifting circumstances. Where social engineering demands a stable future and a Godlike knowledge of the present, spontaneous order recognizes and embodies the inevitability of change and the inadequacy of human knowledge.

An individual knows as much as it is possible to know about his own preferences and future acts. The further you move away from the individual, the less reliable the data becomes. The less perfect the consequences.

Conclusion

There is a sense in which both Hayek and Mises based their arguments for individual liberty on human ignorance. Indeed, Hayek himself acknowledges that the need for freedom “rests chiefly on the recognition of the inevitable ignorance of all of us concerning a great many of the factors on which the achievement of our ends and welfare depends.” ⁽⁶⁾ Ironically, constructivists make much the same argument for their position: human beings are not naturally perfect, therefore society must be engineered and designed. From a point of common agreement — namely, the inadequacy of human knowledge — the two sides reach diametricaLly opposed conclusions.

A key difference lies in their methodological approach to the phenomenon of society. Constructivists believed that society has an existence and functions along rules that are independent of the individuals who comprise it: therefore, individuals should be co-ordinated so as to ensure the common social good. Hayek and Mises believed that society is an abstraction that expresses nothing more than the sum of the complex interactions of individuals. Since only individuals act, they insist that individuals remain free to do so.

Regards,

Wendy McElroy

Article Notes:

(1) In 1974, Hayek received the Nobel Prize in Economic Science. He was 75 years old at the time.

(2) as quoted in Literature of Liberty Volume V. No.4, Winter 1982, p.3. This issue includes a brilliant bibliographic essay titled “F.A. Hayek and the Rebirth of Classical Liberalism” by professor John Gray.

(3) Although The Sensory Order was published in 1952, it sprang directly from a paper he had written as a student in 1919-1920.

(4) in Studies in Philosophy, Politics and Society, London: Routledge & Keegan Paul, 1960, p.167.

(5) “Individualism True and False” in Individualism and Economic Order, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1948, p.23.

(6) The Constitution of Liberty, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1960. p.29.

Human Ignorance and Social Engineering was originally featured on Whiskey and Gunpowder. Visit Laissez Faire Books for the best selection of libertarian book titles.

A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude. To make them love it is the task assigned, in present-day totalitarian states, to ministries of propaganda, newspaper editors and schoolteachers…The greatest triumphs of propaganda have been accomplished not by doing something, but by refraining from doing. Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth.

~ Aldous Huxley

Men are born with free will, so why do they behave as slaves? Most in this country believe that the politicians are civil or “public” servants, while the common man is king. Most believe, because they cast a ballot to choose their “leaders,” that they are free, but the politicians among us are really the masters of a population of slaves. To paraphrase Charles de Gaulle, the politician simply poses as a servant in order to become the master.

In America today, the many are ruled by the few. The many allow this tyranny voluntarily, and with open arms. The only men who can be reduced to servitude are those who choose to do so. For men who cling to liberty with passion can never be ruled, and will never allow their freedom to be taken from them. These are men of truth and character, and sadly, they are the extreme minority. These men of integrity are now directly in the cross hairs of this oligarchy called America, and without them, the rest of society is doomed to a life of serfdom.

To obey the restrictive rules crafted by the politicians, and without resistance, is to guarantee the destruction of liberty. It is not only a fatal form of apathy, but it is also the basis for the destruction of our soul. Politicians after all, are the lowest form of man, and do not deserve respect when their aim is to rule over and control the rest of us. For what are we if we simply do as others in power demand, without the courage to stand up for what is right? What are we if we bow our heads in fear when our fellow man is being trampled? What are we when we allow all that we have earned to be taken from us by force and say or do nothing to stop it? What have we become when the worth of a man is judged by his allegiance to the state?

It is time for these questions to be answered honestly, because those who are willing to fight against tyranny are now being targeted for extinction. The nefarious Senate of this land just passed Senate Bill 1867, the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012. If accurately titled, it would be called instead the Sedition Act of 2012. Most of those opposed to this horrible legislation are concentrating on just two sections, those being Sections 1031 and 1032. While Section 1031 allows for any American to be captured, held indefinitely without charge or trial, tortured or worse, the rest is not much better, and the entire bill should be scrapped immediately!

It is instructive to understand that the U.S. government and its military have been for the past 10 years capturing and incarcerating foreigners and Americans, and without benefit of due process. The president now “claims” the power to assassinate any on Earth he chooses to, including American citizens, and without charge or trial. But this new legislation will, in my opinion, not only massively expand these so-called powers, but also bring them under the guise of legality. This is more dangerous than most realize, because it will help keep the sheep at bay when mass roundups of American citizens become the norm. This is due to the nonsensical popular belief that just because the ruling class makes a law, it must be followed, even if it is bad law.

And now Fusion Center documents have labeled any who investigate the Oklahoma City bombing as terrorists. Pair this with the passage of S. 1867, and the terrifying picture becomes clear. The government now holds the position that any who question what goes on in this country, or even any who question the government story line, are practicing terrorism. This cannot be doubted, especially considering the Fusion Center story and the passage by the senate of S. 1867.

What this means in real terms is that all dissenters, all truth tellers, all protesters and all who question “authority” can in the eyes of government be captured and imprisoned indefinitely, and without benefit of trial. All of us who question what this government does and what its motives are, can now be hauled away to concentration camps, and even tortured or murdered, all under the umbrella of the “law”!

As for me, I question every single thing this government says and does, and I investigate most every government action. Because of this despicable legislation, what will become of the truth tellers? What will become of honest libertarians? What will become of those of us who are unafraid to expose lies and corruption? What will become of all of us?

The scope of this legislation is far reaching, and without limit. The literal barbarity of this is obvious to any right-thinking person, and the probable consequences of speaking one’s mind in the future could be deadly.

The most dangerous sound now could be the sound of silence, for if we do not speak out and rebel against this travesty, we will be doomed to a life of servitude. When we finally refuse to serve no more, then we will at once be free. No man should serve another by force, and no man deserves to be free if he does.

It is incredible how as soon as a people become subject, it promptly falls into such complete forgetfulness of its freedom that it can hardly be roused to the point of regaining it, obeying so easily and willingly, that one is led to say that this people has not so much lost its liberty as won its enslavement.

– Etienne de la Boetie

Regards,

Gary D. Barnett

President, Barnett Financial Services Inc.

Blind Obedience to the State was originally featured on Whiskey and Gunpowder. Visit Laissez Faire Books for the best selection of libertarian book titles.

Herman Cain seems to think so. We read today in The Christian Science Monitor:

“Herman Cain on Thursday became the first Republican presidential candidate to receive Secret Service protection.

“Cain asked for the security, and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and congressional leaders approved his request Thursday, Secret Service spokesman Ed Donovan confirmed.

“There have been threats against Cain, who had been experiencing a bounce in the polls, according to an official with knowledge of the situation, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitive nature of the situation. The nature of the threats was unclear.”

The times sure are changin’. Dave Gonigam of The 5 Min. Forecast reminded us this morning that a British ambassador once knocked on the White House door, only to have it opened by President Thomas Jefferson…wearing his “house dress” and slippers.

In Herman Cain’s case, the worry about violence seems to stem from his race…

“On June 1, Cain’s campaign office in Stockbridge, Ga., reported receiving a call from someone who did not identify himself, but who claimed to be a member of the Ku Klux Klan. The man said that Cain, who is black, should not run for the White House.

“‘Tell him not to run’ and ‘there’s no such thing as a black Republican,’ the man said, according to a written statement Cain’s administrative assistant, Lisa Reichert, gave to the police.The caller did not explicitly threaten violence.

“The Associated Press obtained a copy of the police reports using Georgia’s open records law.

“Local police alerted the FBI and the U.S. Secret Service to the incident.”

While Mr. Cain is taking precautions against racists, the Patriotic Millionaires seemed to be inoculating themselves against the anger of the crowds…

As we reported in yesterday’s missive, this handful of the 1% see the writing on the wall. And they are marking their doors with lamb’s blood before the angel of death can make his rounds. The not-so-rich-and-getting-poorer are mobilizing. And the Patriotic Millionaires figure it’s best to make nice now and offer up more of their own money…and that of their neighbors…to let the mobs know which rich folks they should refrain from eating when the time comes.

A reader took exception to our characterization of these Patriots…

“Gary,

“I read and enjoy your writing, your ranting, your missives…for the most part. But you are off-base this morning. As to why you miss the forest for the trees, I will not guess. However, your criticisms of Mr. Fink and his cronies are off-base. Mind you, a few of them may, indeed, enjoy funding foreign wars, they may even be willing to pay up to get the infamous 1% off the hot seat, but more important is their basic belief that the public good is better served by them doing their fair share of the lifting.

“If Mr. Fink so offends you, spend your angst terrorizing the lying lobbyists who are paid huge salaries to produce NOTHING at all, and forever scheme to lower Mr. Fink’s taxes. Tell me why they escape your ire…

“Respectfully,

“–Leonadi”

We don’t mind if people make money “producing nothing.” Heck, we wish our readers would take our advice on how to make more money just by putting their money in the right places.

We do, however, weep because there is money to be made at all in getting the politicians to provide unfair advantage.

And here, we must admit that we fail to see the nobility in supporting “the public good.” One-half of the country would have us believe the government should spend the stolen money on butter. The other half on guns. We humbly suggest that government spending must, by its nature, be less efficient than private-sector spending…and that it is, generally, harmful. Further, that spending is funded by what’s taken by force from the private sector directly…or indirectly, through inflation.

And further still, that spending has a way of producing some spectacularly awful results. Escalating military spending against threats that never seem to diminish…and more and more, social welfare promises that cannot ever be paid for…

We note that war is too expensive for free markets to support, that war is a wasteful undertaking only achievable by the state with its monopoly on legal theft….

But what about the feeding and care of the elderly, the poor, the indigent? Surely, this is the “public good” that the state provides that the market cannot!

Actually, no. We note that markets are all about building wealth. And by that, we don’t mean concentrations of the stuff. Capitalism — the seeking of profit in a competitive environment — tends to prevent the continued concentration of wealth in few hands because of unfettered competitions. Today’s innovators and producers become tomorrow’s bankrupt has-beens, as competitors continually bring down profit margins and bring newer, better products to market…

Meanwhile, all of society benefits from this tussle, this “greed.” Today’s pricey luxuries become tomorrow’s cheap commodities. The “poor” need less and less taking care of, because everything from food to smartphones becomes so damned cheap…

At least they do in the absence of regulation that strangles competition…or fiat funny-money systems that degrade the currency, destroys savings and supplants capital formation with debt as the foundations for economic growth…

As we’ve often tried to illustrate, governments are, primarily, in the business of hampering competition in favor of the already-established and powerful “capitalists” (in quotes because capitalism actually requires competition to work), whose money buys political favors and favorable legislation.

Meanwhile, the state claims that it wants only to help those in need…with other people’s money. But the state’s methods, actually, just breed more need. They demonize deflationary tendencies of the market — arguing that supporting price “stability” promotes a healthy economy — while penalizing success in order to subsidize dependence.

Of course, each is free to give freely as much as he wishes. But if the markets are allowed to work — if the state gets out of the way — there is less need to give.

“Just don’t get it do you, Gary?” another reader asks…

“Can’t stand that there really are a lot of wealthy 1% that are rational, logical and most of all, patriotic. They realize that we are all together in this country on a small global spaceship, and we need to allow everyone a chance to succeed.

“I think it’s mostly the 1% wannabes that have the real greed virus.

“I’m contributing to OWS, what are you doing besides whining? It’s just a matter of time that democracy and human sense of fair play will start winning the elections and the day.

“You cannot fight the math and physics of logic and moral high ground. Whining can be a lot of work, but if you can get paid for it, that’s the free-market system, and you don’t even get calloused hands. It’s the unfair job market and social system that has people riled up.”

[Editor's Note: Our hands got plenty dirty and calloused and we both froze and sweated throughout our '20s and early '30s -- as we've already noted -- doing other work. But if a free-market system actually requires less overall sweat, discomfort and calloused hands for all of humanity, we see that as a good thing.]

“A great country cannot survive when its social safety nets are in the scale of SS and MM. Those need to be realistically reduced, and to get there, you have to implement fair taxation that starts us trending back to a middle class that can support itself with families, and in retirement. When 95 %-plus of the population starts dying penniless and on the public dole, everyone loses, even the whiners.

“–Lloyd”

The dangers of greed? Oh, dear (possibly former) reader, greed without politics is merely boorish. It’s politics that make greed dangerous.

There is nothing wrong with “greed.” Most of us are greedy for more love, esteem or material comfort. Often, all three.

We understand the protesters are angry that politics have been used to benefit a few. But we do not believe that politics should be used to benefit the many either.

We don’t like political solutions. They always, always, always amount to theft from from one group for redistribution to the other. Moral arguments are often used to justify it, but it always come down to the group with a monopoly on force (the state) taking from others on pain of imprisonment or death.

We favor a system of voluntary exchange, sound money as chosen by the market and a respect for property starting with the individual’s complete ownership of himself. We look at history and see that the more societies lean toward these things, the wealthier and better off they are.

Forced redistribution in the form of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and welfare breed dependence. Over time, takers overwhelm providers. To paraphrase the famous line, it works great until you start running out of other people’s money.

It’s the free markets that have allowed the growth of the population. It’s the markets that built the systems that provide so much cheap food and all the creature comforts we take for granted today. Interfering with these markets is what’s most likely to cause the kind of privation you get in command economies. More regulation will further wound wealth generation (wealth being a measure of value addition and abundance, not merely printed paper).

If we seem hard on the OWS protesters, it’s because in their understandable anger they are calling for more of what has been ruining economic progress all along. We’re as disgusted with thieving, government-enabled commercial bankers as anyone else, but we understand that the answer to socialism for the well connected is not socialism for the masses.

(They are not calling for less state, like the anti-war protesters did in the past. Jeffrey Tucker will address this point in tomorrow’s weekend edition.)

The masses themselves don’t understand this. And as we feared their mood is turning uglier almost by the day.

Protests are turning into riots even as we scribble these words and send them to you. We see a few possible outcomes, none of which we like…

• The protesters get what they want. Good and hard. More regulation, more redistribution. And the nation winds up poorer for it. Incentive gets penalized even more. Progress halts, even reverses. Public debts increase even as public dependence on government increases.
• The state uses the worsening public conditions to justify more monitoring and control of its citizen-subjects. Random stops in public, invasions of homes and outright violent seizure of private property or persons become the norm in order to combat “domestic unrest”
• The state figures that’s what’s needed to fight domestic unrest is a good war with an opponent who has the means to fight back hard.

We actually expect some unholy combination of all three.

Regards,

Gary Gibson

Politicians and the 1% Preparing for Social Unrest was originally featured on Whiskey and Gunpowder. Visit Laissez Faire Books for the best selection of libertarian book titles.

What we have in common is the need to protect one another’s inviolability from governmental force. When we understand that the woman being groped by a TSA agent stands in the same shoes as our wife, mother, or grandmother; when the man being beaten by a sadist cop is seen, by us, as our father or grandfather, we become less willing to evade the nature of the wrongdoing by invoking the coward’s plea: “better him than me.”

The state owes its very existence to the success it has had in fostering division among us, a topic I explored in my Calculated Chaos book. Divide-and-conquer has long been the mainstay in political strategy. If blacks and whites; or Christians and Muslims; or employees and employers; or “straights” and “gays”; or men and women; or any of seemingly endless abstractions, learn to identify and separate themselves from one another, the state has established its base of power. From such mutually-exclusive categories do we draw the endless “enemies” (e.g., communists, drug-dealers, terrorists, tobacco companies) we are to fear, and against whom the state promises its protection. By becoming fearful, we become existentially disabled, and readily accept whatever safeguards the institutional fear-mongers impose, . . . all for our “benefit,” of course!

Look at the title of this article: do you find any governmental program or practice therein that is not grounded in state-generated fear? Each one – and the numerous others not mentioned – presumes a threat to your well-being against which the state must take restrictive and intrusive action. Terrorists might threaten the flight you are about to take; terrorist nations might have “weapons of mass destruction” and the intention to use them against you; your children might be at risk from drug dealers or from sex perverts using the Internet; driving without a seat-belt, or eating “junk” foods might endanger you: the list goes on and on, changing as the fear-peddlers dream up another dreaded condition in life.

It is not sufficient to the interests of the state that you fear other groups; it is becoming increasingly evident that you must also fear the state itself! Governments are defined as entities that enjoy a monopoly on the use of violence within a given territory. Implicit in such a monopoly is the recognition that there be no limitations on its exercise, other than what serve the power interests of the state. In relatively quiet and stable periods (e.g., 1950s) the state can afford to give respect to notions of individual privacy, free speech, and limitations on the powers of the police. In such ways, the state gives the appearance of reasonableness and respect for people. But when times become more tumultuous – as they are now – the very survival of the state depends upon a continuing assertion of the coercive powers that define its very being.

For a number of reasons – some of it technological – our social world is rapidly becoming decentralized. The highly- structured, centrally-directed institutions through which so much of our lives has been organized (e.g., schools, health-care, government, communications, etc.) no longer meet the expectations of many – perhaps most – men and women. Alternative systems, the control of which has become decentralized into individual hands, challenge the traditional institutional order. Private schools and home-schooling; alternative health practices; the Internet, cell-phones, and what is now known as the “social media,” are in the ascendancy. With the state becoming increasingly expensive, destructive, economically disruptive, oppressive, and blatantly anti-life, secession and nullification movements have become quite popular.

Of course, such transformations are contrary to the established institutional interests that have, for many decades, controlled the state – and, with it, the monopoly on violence that is its principal asset. Having long enjoyed the power to advance their interests not through the peaceful, voluntary methods of the marketplace, but through such coercive means as governmental regulation, taxation, wars, and other violent means, the established order is not about to allow the changing preferences of hundreds of millions of individuals to disrupt its traditional cozy racket.

Because the institutional order has become inseparable from the coercive nature of the state, any popular movement toward non-political systems is, in effect, a movement away from the violent structuring of society. The corporate interests that control the machinery of the state may try to convince people that government does protect their interests vis-à-vis the various fear-objects. Failing in this, the statists must resort to the tactic that sustains the playground bully: to reinforce fear of the bully, who controls his victims through a mixture of violence and degradation.

Neither the TSA nor the alleged “war on terror” have anything to do with terrorism. The idea that the TSA came about as a consequence of 9/11 ignores the fact that the state’s practice of prowling through the personal belongings of airline passengers goes back many decades. I recall how upset a friend of mine was – in the early 1970s – when government officials went through his hand-luggage, and ordered him to unwrap a birthday gift he was carrying home to a relative. The purpose of such a search then, as now, was to remind passengers of the bully’s basic premise: “I can do anything I want to you whenever I choose to do so.” It is for the purpose of keeping us docile – an objective furthered by degrading and dehumanizing us – that underlies such state practices.

The groping of people’s genitals and breasts is but an escalation of this premise, and should the TSA later decide that all passengers must strip naked for inspection, such a practice will go unquestioned not only by the courts, but by the mainstream media who will ask ” . . . but if you don’t have anything to hide . . . “ Those who cannot imagine state power going to such extremes to humiliate people into submission, are invited to revisit the many photographs of German army officers at such places as Auschwitz, who watched – as “full body scanners” – as naked women were forced to run by them.

The extension of wars – against any enemy that any president chooses as a target – serves the same purpose. It is not necessary that there be any plausible rationale for the bombing and invading of other countries: it is sufficient that Americans and foreigners alike be reminded of the violence principle upon which government rests. “I will go to war against you if it serves my interests to do so, and any resistance on your part will only confirm what a threat you are to America!” The state directs its wars not so much against foreign populations, as against its own. War rallies people into the mindset of unquestioning obedience because, by engaging in such deadly conduct, the state reminds us of its capacities to destroy us at its will.

You can apply this logic to any of the aforementioned government programs. The state – and the corporate order that depends upon the exercise of state power – is fighting for its survival. Rather than treating this as a “war against terrorism,” it is more accurate to consider it as a “war to preserve the hierarchically-structured institutional order.” There are too many trillions of dollars and too much arbitrary power at stake for those who benefit from controlling the state’s instruments of violence to await the outcome of ordinary people’s thinking. If the survival of the corporate-state power structure required the extermination oftwo billion people, such a program would be undertaken with little hesitation. Destructive violence becomes an end-in-itself to an organization that is defined in terms of its monopoly on such means.

On the other hand, I continue to remain optimistic that these institutional wars against life will come to an end. I believe that the United States of America is in a terminal condition; its fate already determined. But America – whose existence predates the United States – may very well survive in a fundamentally changed form. What is helping this transformation process are innovative technological tools for the decentralized exchange of information; mankind is rapidly becoming capable of communicating with one another in the most direct ways, methods that make traditional top-down forms less and less relevant. The Internet is one system that is the tip of an iceberg whose deeper challenges have thus far not captured the attention of crew members of the ship-of-state.Wikileaks is another step in the evolution of decentralized information systems that will bring greater transparency to the activities of the ruling classes. In the process, men and women will discover just how liberating the free flow of information can be. When the rest of the world has access to the same information that political systems try to keep secret, the games played at the expense of people begin to fall apart.

An awareness of the dynamics of change being brought about through decentralizing forces has not, however, managed to inform members of the established order. For all of their pretended knowledge and expertise about the world, they just don’t get it. They seem to imagine that their decline-and-fall can be prevented by keeping the Bradley Mannings and Julian Assanges locked up; and that the political ramifications can be deterred by distracting attention away from a Ron Paul – who does understand the nature and direction of these changes – and toward a comic-opera Sarah Palin.

In the meantime, in an effort to keep Boobus Americanus and other members of the herd within their assigned stalls, the ever-present threat of force and its consequent degradation of the individual will be invoked as the state works feverishly – and futilely – to shore up its collapsing foundations.

Regards,

Butler Shaffer

Butler Shaffer  teaches at the Southwestern University School of Law. He is the author of the newly-released In Restraint of Trade: The Business Campaign Against Competition, 1918–1938 and of Calculated Chaos: Institutional Threats to Peace and Human Survival. His latest book is Boundaries of Order.

Why TSA, Wars, State Defined Diets, Seat-Belt Laws, the War On Drugs, Police Brutality, and Efforts to Control the Internet, Are Essential to the State was originally featured on Whiskey and Gunpowder. Visit Laissez Faire Books for the best selection of libertarian book titles.

The Economic Collapse Blog concludes,

We are entering a time of extreme financial stress in America.  The federal government is broke.  Most of our state and local governments are broke.  Record numbers of Americans are going bankrupt.  Record numbers of Americans are being kicked out of their homes.  Record numbers of Americans are now living in poverty.

The debt-fueled prosperity of the last several decades came at a cost.  We literally mortgaged the future.  Now nothing will ever be the same again.

To say that “nothing will ever be the same again” is just pessimistic and unnecessary. We actually can return to the prosperity of the past, by replacing debt and austerity with freedom and independence.

There is no need for Americans to suffer through what European countries are suffering, because nearly all the problems we face are caused by governmental intrusions into many aspects of our personal and economic lives — intrusions by federal, state and local governments. Regardless of the good intentions that the welfare and military socialism statists have in justifying their use of compulsory government powers, what America needs is to cut the shackles of State-imposed dependence, restrictions, regulations, taxation, all those policies of moral relativism that involve violations of the Rule of Law: theft, trespass, denial of Due Process, and other acts of State-initiated criminal aggression.

Freeing Americans includes repealing all forms of intrusive presumption-of-guilt regulations and restrictions that are in place having nothing to do with whether any individual is suspected of any crimes against others. Regulations are before-the-fact demands by the government that presume the individual and one’s business guilty, in which one must submit one’s private personal or financial information to the government to prove one’s innocence. Government regulations and arbitrary restrictions are literally searches and seizures by the government of information that is none of anyone else’s business, and effect in the stifling of everyday citizens’ growth and prosperity.

Ending all personal income taxes, corporate taxes, estate taxes, and capital gains taxes frees people who own or share in the ownership of businesses — i.e. employers and prospective employers — to invest in their own research and development and in the expansion of their businesses, which is the genuine force behind jobs creation, in both blue collar and white collar sectors. Ending all personal income taxes frees people to explore their own ideas and inventions, and to start their own businesses that will employ more people and advance society further. Also, ending all personal and corporate income taxes allows individuals and businesses to donate more of their own money to worthy charitable organizations, like it used to be before the intrusiveness of the government entered the scene and discouraged such charity giving.

Some may respond to such suggestions, “Well, if we do all that, then how will government functions be funded?” My response is: do you mean, how do we fund public employees’ 6-figure pensions, how do we fund all the extravagant public employee salaries that are now on average higher than private sector salaries? Or, for example, do you mean to ask how we fund the federal Department of Education that has done nothing but create bureaucracies and turn American education into a Soviet-style indoctrination camp for State-worship? As far as the federal government is concerned, just about every agency and department in Washington can be eliminated, because they are unnecessary and have been nothing but parasitic and slowing America’s growth and progress almost to a halt.

We also need to be honest about the “War on Terror” and the War on Drugs, which are not wars on terror or drugs, but wars on freedom. The war on drugs has been extremely hypocritical, by going after only “street drugs,” but not alcohol and not prescription drugs, all of which have been just as dangerous and lethal. The war on drugs criminalizes victimless behavior, discourages personal responsibility, and has been a boondoggle for law enforcement agencies through confiscation of private property and through bribery, and has caused a black market in drugs which incentivizes the formation of drug gangs and cartels that leads to increased violence, as well as the corruption of otherwise “good” cops and other government officials. What would happen if we immediately ended the War on Drugs and required individuals to be responsible for their actions and decisions? Do we really need to have costly government “anti-drug” enforcement agencies?

And regarding this “War on Terror,” many of the terrorists themselves have expressed explicitly that their primary motivations for their terrorist acts have been political, and not religious, responding to the U.S. government’s many decades of intrusions on those foreign lands as well as the U.S. government’s intrusive interventionist foreign policy. Even a top U.S. general has recently stated that for every one innocent civilian the U.S. military and CIA murders, ten new terrorists are created.

So, what would happen if we simply just closed all the U.S. military bases on foreign lands and brought all U.S. troops, contractors, and bureaucrats back to the U.S.? Does anyone in his right mind actually believe that there would be more terrorism against the U.S.?

If we closed all those foreign bases and brought everyone home and ended the violence that the U.S. military has been committing against foreigners, why, that would mean that the military socialism and welfare redistribution of wealth from middle-class workers over to defense contractors would have to stop. And, I’d like to ask, just how selfish are those defense contractors, knowing how counter-productive U.S. government aggression in the Middle East has been, knowing that they are playing a major role in making America less safe and much less productive, less prosperous and less free?

And how selfish are these big corporate-statist financial institutions, such as Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Bank of America, etc., in insisting that their billions of dollars in bonuses that result from bailouts and quantitative easing continue, at the expense of poor, middle-class workers and producers? How selfish will the parasites continue to be, as America continues to decline economically and morally? How much longer do we need to suffer at the hands of the most destructive of political institutions, that Federal Reserve? Because Americans’ inherent, inalienable rights to trade, commerce and contracts with free, competing currencies have been unconstitutionally squashed by this voracious federal Leviathan, we are all becoming poorer, and America is literally turning into a Third World economy. Which isn’t even an “economy” anymore because of the intrusive crimes of the State — America is a State-owned political prison.

In other words, just how helpful has the federal government been to America’s progress? What would happen if we just eliminated the federal government, and restored to the states their constitutionally-recognized inalienable rights to independence and sovereignty that political criminals have stolen from them in these 235 years of America? Is it possible to have an organized country consisting of independent states, but without a central-planning compulsory federal government? Of course it’s possible — and, for us to survive, it is necessary to make such a change, in addition to the elimination of the theft of taxation, the search and seizure of regulations, and the counter-productive wars on drugs and terrorism, and the sooner the better.

In honestly considering such solutions, one would have to conclude that, without a central federal government and all of government’s intrusions, no one would be able to monopolize territorial jurisdictions, monetary functions or the defense of others. There would be freedom, prosperity, and yes, much more security, and with a further assurance of stability for future generations.

Regards,
Scott Lazarowitz
Whiskey & Gunpowder

January 28, 2011

How to Replace Austerity with Freedom, Independence and Prosperity was originally featured on Whiskey and Gunpowder. Visit Laissez Faire Books for the best selection of libertarian book titles.

Nowhere was this sentiment better expressed during the past few weeks than in the flood-stricken state of Queensland, Australia (and, more lately, in the state of Victoria, to Queensland’s south).

The rains that inundated an area the size of France and Germany (combined!) across the Sunshine State wrought havoc and destruction upon its people. Lives were lost, property damaged and industry crippled.

When the worst of Mother Nature’s wrath had subsided, Queensland residents were left with a monumental clean up.

To their credit, these individuals, in the face of near-immeasurable disaster, performed admirably. They did what came naturally. Contrary to the patriotic rally cries of politicians, they didn’t do what Queenslanders do; they did what good people do. And it was beautiful.

The general feeling was perhaps best summed up by Wally “The King” Lewis, a retired national football hero, who spent the last week of his holidays helping his fellow Brisbane residents prepare sandbags and to bail rising flood waters out of their homes. (It is worth pointing out here that, for many Australians, there is no higher office to be attained in the land than that of venerated sporting legend.)

Speaking to National Nine News from the waterlogged front yard of a neighbor – whom he had never met – Wally said, “If someone’s doing it tough, I think it’s the right thing to do to put the hand up and ask them if they want any help.”

The interviewer then turned his microphone to another volunteer. “What was your reaction when Wally Lewis turned up?”

Typifying the laid back disposition of the crowd, the young man casually replied, “[Laughs] Yeah, I was a little surprised but…you know…people help out. It’s all good.”

The Australian people appeared to be perilously close to discovering something very important about themselves; something, perhaps, they’ve always known; an instinctual tendency toward human solidarity, the natural urge to help a neighbor in distress, to lend a hand; in short, to volunteer.

Alas, barely had the first piece of debris been cleared away when the media, as it typically does, lost sight of the bigger picture. Alongside inspirational stories of non-violent, voluntary cooperation, the local papers turned their attention to the state’s role in the cleanup. Should the state and federal governments remain focused on returning “their” budgets to surplus, or should they deploy funds to assist those in need of help? In other words, how “best” should the state spend its citizens’ money…as if the only just, honest option had not already expired on point of expropriation in the first place? [The answer, in other words, is not to steal it.]

While sifting through the news reports and reading comments about what the state “should” do, we wondered how people who are so ready to do what is natural, to cooperate freely with neighbors and “mates down the street,” could so miss the overarching lesson in all this tragedy. Why do hostages of the state turn to their captor when it comes to arbitrating issues of freedom, issues they are, individually and through voluntary cooperation, demonstrably capable of resolving for themselves?

Perhaps it has to do, at least in part, with the misrepresentation of the concept of anarchy itself; a misrepresentation that serves not the interests of individuals, but of the state itself. We are taught that “anarchy” means violence, looting and the aggressive form of chaos that all-too-often flourishes in the wake of natural disasters. We are told that this is what happens given the absence of state control. Nothing could be further from the truth. The state IS control. It is the very incarnation of force and violence from which it purports to protect us.

As Murray Rothbard, the man credited with having coined the term anarcho-capitalism, expressed in Society and the State:

“I define anarchist society as one where there is no legal possibility for coercive aggression against the person or property of any individual. Anarchists oppose the State because it has its very being in such aggression, namely, the expropriation of private property through taxation, the coercive exclusion of other providers of defense service from its territory, and all of the other depredations and coercions that are built upon these twin foci of invasions of individual rights.”

We can expect nothing more from an agent of force than that which is its primary, defining characteristic; namely, more force. A mule is no more capable of giving birth to a unicorn than the state is capable of “granting” freedom.

Last night, with all this in mind, your editor telephoned his father. Dad lives about an hour south of Brisbane, where the post disaster clean up continues. In the aftermath of the flood, volunteer posts were set up around the city where groups of concerned individuals could assemble to donate their time and/or resources to help get the place back on its feet.

“Sixteen thousand people turned up to help on the first day,” Dad told us. “They came with their own equipment and made their own way there. In the end, they had to turn people away.

“I put my name down to lend a hand,” he continued, before adding, with sincere disappointment in his voice, “but I haven’t been called up yet.”

Then, as a man who has spent his life helping people, he added, enthusiastically, “but I’ve still got two more days of holiday left, Sunday and Monday. Hopefully I’ll have the chance to get up there and help out then.”

To those who would argue that coercion is necessary to foster freedom, that force is a prerequisite for peace and that the expropriation of individuals’ property on threat of violence is compulsory to fund an agency that, alone, is capable of guaranteeing safety and prosperity, we say: you don’t know the real meaning of anarchy, you don’t know what voluntarism is and, until you do, you will never know what it means to be truly free.

Thank you to all the people in Queensland – and around the world – who do understand these concepts and, through their fine example, prove statists everywhere and always wrong on a daily basis.

Regards,
Joel Bowman
Whiskey & Gunpowder

January 24, 2011

In Praise of Anarchy was originally featured on Whiskey and Gunpowder. Visit Laissez Faire Books for the best selection of libertarian book titles.

“Alright, George Bailey, you’ve got your wish. The public schools were never invented. Now stay calm, and don’t fret about the many strange but freedom-affirming phenomena you’ll encounter as you stroll through a re-invigorated Bedford Falls. Ready?”

Freedom for Taxpayers. Property taxpayers would no longer support a system which even its supporters readily admit must be “structurally improved” [Statist-ese for, “Give us more money”]. Anything in constant need of major improvements, not just routine adjustment, which produces uneducated “graduates” year after year (JayWalking anyone?), for decades on end, is irredeemable, netting very poor investment returns for taxpayers despite huge outlays. Since a sizable percentage of local municipal budgets (usually well over 50%, typically with supplemental “help” from state capitols) is dedicated to school funding, the elimination of this line item will give meaningful property tax relief.

Freedom for Municipalities. In the view of some – though at this point in time not nearly enough – all education is intrinsically coupled with morality, religion, and the reason of life itself. Necessarily it cannot then lawfully be a proper function of government if we’re to be serious about individual liberty and separating church and state. Governmental involvement in matters with religious overtones and nuances including differing worldviews conflicts with the Establishment Clause and state constitutional counterparts. Freed of school budgets, cities and towns will confine themselves to matters within their appropriate purview, generally subjects associated with public safety.

Freedom for Parents. Parents, relieved of a portion of their property tax burden, will have greater disposable income with which they may choose a private school appropriate for their child. Including a home school. Today, families wanting alternative schooling for their child/ren pay two tuitions, one to the chosen school directly, another to the municipality to support the public schools.

Freedom for Students. Relief to students who simply do not want to spend time in school for whatever reason (e.g., attitude, disinterest, safety concerns). Relief from One-Size-Fits-All-ism. How these now-emancipated students will choose to spend their newly-acquired time and freedom will be left to them and their parents. For the student willing to learn there will be choices galore as a thousand points of light evolve following the demise of the public schools. Throughout their history Americans have shown themselves to be both generous and ingenious. From scholarships and tuition assistance (remember, property tax relief will enable all citizens to spend their property tax relief as they see fit, not as government sees fit) to an array of different school types, all manner of ideas will come forth on “what to do with all those children.” To believe otherwise is to concede that we have lost our way as well as our senses of freedom and personal responsibility, and that only overseeing superintendent-esque nannies can save us.

Repealing the truancy and compulsory attendance laws frees students enabling but also requiring them to become personally responsible for usefully filling their time, simultaneously serving as a sobering means of correcting immature attitudes via a dose of reality. Students and parents will of necessity become discerning consumers of those educational services which they desire. Consider this example. A parent/s believes that comprehensive sex education, including awareness of all different perspectives of human sexuality, is an important educational value and that such information should be taught, at all grade levels, to his/her/their child. These parents will choose, through free association and without compulsion, schools accommodating their expressed wishes. While acknowledging the rights of those parents to choose as they may, other parents might avoid those choices, preferring instead other educational values which for them may include emphasis on math & science, fine arts, building trades, mechanics, religious instruction, and so forth. They too will decide through free association and without compulsion. Open choice aka freedom aka liberty will enable each educational consumer to receive the specific educational values which he/she/they seek/s without the application of governmental force upon others who do not share or want those educational choices.

Freedom for Teachers. To those who tsk-tsk the viable idea of doing away with the public schools, they should know that eliminating the public schools will not be the end of education. To the contrary it will encourage genuine learning. In an atmosphere of non-compulsion students who want to learn a chosen curriculum will present themselves before teachers who want to teach. The discipline problems of which teachers complain, including bullying, will largely disappear. Teaching to willing students is a joy unto itself. Having been a teacher in several venues – as seminar instructor on tax law matters to other accounting, tax & legal professionals; as host of numerous client seminars; as a homeschooling parent – I am keenly aware of how fulfilling it is to teach receptive students.

Freedom from Incompetence or Indifference. Every large public school system has its “rubber rooms” (search, “rubber rooms Stossel”) to which incompetent, insubordinate, or dangerous teachers are assigned, at full pay, while their cases for dismissal wend their way through a labyrinth of union contract provisions. Why such rooms? Because in the perverse world of public schools it is next to impossible to get rid of bad teachers. Despite the overriding concern, stated endlessly by politicians, bureaucrats and unions, of how much they all want to “educate the children,” the game is really about protecting government and its employees. Big government types, invariably “led” by Democrats and lapdog teachers’ unions, are the biggest offenders. Bureaucrats and union members have little concern whether children learn or not; their principal worry is their own paycheck. And please, let’s not hear about the many fine, dedicated teachers, blah, blah, blah. Even if true, these teachers are like students and parents: trapped in the grip of the union–big government vise. The fine intentions of these teachers will never loosen this grip; only an adherence to limited government and a commitment to personal responsibility will do that.

Freedom for the Uninvolved. Elimination corrects an inequity visited upon those who have no current direct stake in the educational system. Why should those who have no school-aged children be burdened with the schooling costs of those who do? If you choose to raise children, your obligations include clothing, sustenance, housing, and education. Before setting out, the cost is to be counted. The decision to start a family was yours, not that of your elderly, childless, or empty-nest neighbors. It doesn’t take a village to raise a family: it takes a responsible mom and a responsible dad. As matters now stand your neighbors, not exercising any influence in your family-raising decision, are sent the bill for educating your children. All sorts of rationales are given for continuing this unfairness. They reduce to one: We benefit when all citizens are educated, or in bumper sticker language, If you think public education is expensive, try ignorance. This slogan’s encapsulated arrogance assumes that people are incapable of acting in their own best interests and would forever remain inert until the Nanny State intercedes and affects a rescue, all for their own good you must understand. Who else but leftists sell people for such short money? If those who are inadequately prepared understand that the principal difference between themselves and others who have better prospects, employment, or social standing, is education, common sense says that the former will know what to do.

Freedom to Choose. Each of us has different driving wants and needs; we choose cars accordingly, based on factors which include cost, safety, options, color, type (sedans, wagons, SUVs, minivans, pickups, light & heavy duty trucks, et alia). Yet the choice of schooling, also subject to a variety of factors, is far more determinative of an individual’s life direction than the choice of a car whose life span is a matter of mere years. Freedom prevails when parents and students, acting as consumers, make thoughtful choices for their purposes among competing alternatives with funds that would otherwise have been taken from them and wasted on a scheme that has failed for decades. Even leftists endorse educational choice, but only for themselves. When given the chance, leftists never choose the public option. Obama’s daughters go to private schools, as did Chelsea Clinton, as did Ted Kennedy’s kids. If this is leadership by example, then the people too should be able to choose. “Do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do.”

What is more, genuine educational choice (without a public option) will defuse, at least in the school setting, many of society’s divisive issues, issues brought into the public schools through raw political power imposed on students, a captive, generally powerless audience. Without forced public schooling there would be no more of the seemingly endless battles on church-state separation and courses on human sexuality. Gone and unmissed will be battles over religious songs and symbols, whether religious days special to a particular faith should be recognized as school holidays, refusals to recite the Pledge of Allegiance, prayers at games or graduations. Mandatory sex education and associated hot-button topics such as abortion counseling, creationism, evolution, environ-ism, and countless other subjects which at best are only marginally tangential to core academic subjects, will be dealt with in a manner agreeable to students and parents since they as consumers will be freely choosing schools compatible with their wishes and expectations in these areas.

Tuition will be reasonable as schools will no longer be forced by law to deal with the selfish demands of public employee unions. Rather than serving the interests of their employees and administrators, schools will compete as every other successful consumer service competes, by placing the customer, here parents and students, not employees, as Priority #1. Sometime in the 1980s I heard Lane Kirkland, a then important union leader, speak at an American Federation of Teachers function. After his prepared remarks he took some questions one of which touched on the declining academic achievements of students. His blunt and forceful answer remains with me to this day. Paraphrased, “When children become union members paying union dues, then I’ll care about children’s education.”

Ending educational compulsion will bring freedom and freedom will bring responsibility and accountability. Schools in the post–public school era will be burdened to please their customers, parents and students, if they wish to succeed. Today, failing public schools are neither punished nor eliminated; rather, in the eccentric world that defines the “public domain,” they’re rewarded by being allowed to continue, often with increased funding, in order to “self-correct.” Bailouts may be new to Wall Street & Detroit carmakers, but bailouts have long been a part of failed public school systems.

Tomorrow, we’ll discuss the beneficial effects accruing to the American system of federalism, which will naturally flow from the elimination of public schooling.

Regards,
Paul Galvin
LewRockwell.com
Whiskey & Gunpowder

May 3, 2010

Eliminate Public Schools was originally featured on Whiskey and Gunpowder. Visit Laissez Faire Books for the best selection of libertarian book titles.

The credits ratings analysts at Standard and Poor’s have been busy. A day after downgrading Greek and Portuguese debt, the analysts downgraded Spanish debt too. And now words like “viral” and “contagion” are…uh…spreading like…a disease.

“The contagion from a Greek default could also spread to much larger economies where the public finances are also fragile, including the U.K. and, perhaps the biggest risk of all, Japan,”said Julian Jessop, chief international economist at Capital Economics. Jessop somehow left out the U.S, which is astonishing given that the U.S. Treasury Department will auction US$129 billion in new debt this week. Yields on 2-year, 10-year and 30-year U.S. debt all rose (and prices fell).

But now the metaphors get complicated. You’re going to start hearing a lot of commentators say that this is a crisis of confidence. But when is the last time you stopped a cold with a strong sense of self belief?

To say the sovereign debt crisis is just a crisis of confidence is to ignore Europe’s (and Japan’s, and the U.K.’s, and America’s) failing fiscal welfare state model. This model is not surviving its first contact with the inevitable math of demography, where you have more pensioners and rising health care costs and fewer tax receipts.

That’s why it’s not a question of confidence. It’s a question of debt default. Who’s going to go first?

The alternative being contemplated is a kind of firebreak engineered by the IMF and the European Central Bank. These organisations would draw “a line in the sand” and provide a large line of credit or loan guarantees to all the troubled nations of Europe. And how much would THAT cost?

According to the good people at Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan, about €600 billion. That seems like a lot of money. And that seems like a big gamble. You try and restore confidence by putting a trillion dollars on the table and saying, “Look at THAT!”

But that looks more like bravado than real self-confidence. So it looks like we’ll see how durable the common currency project is. And in the meantime, that ought to mean more U.S. dollar and gold strength. In fact, with so many governments in so many places printing so much money, it shouldn’t surprise you to see a whole basket of commodities benefit…for now.

However this just pushes out into time and amplifies in size the next phase of the crisis. It’s all, at heart, a debt crisis. And before it’s over we reckon there will be both collapsing asset values AND hyperinflation.

And here’s a bonus thought for the day: what if the inevitable collapse of the social welfare state funding model leads people to change their primary loyalty from the State to something more local? For starters, it would mean, we reckon, that the centralising principle of the last 200 years of Western history (in commerce, politics, and living arrangements) may have reached its natural limits.

The centralising principle would reach those limits for various reasons. One is the inherent fragility of complex systems and their increasing vulnerability to systemic collapse. Globalisation and the division of labour on a global level creates tremendous complexity AND vulnerability.

Politically, the centralising principle, as emotionally successful as it has been in winning market share/votes (let us live at one another’s expense) is being exposed as economically fraudulent (as well as morally wrong to coerce other people to your way of thinking through taxation). It’s a nice idea, but it may be unaffordable without literally mortgaging the future or destroying our standard of living in the pursuit of a social welfare utopia.

Robb defines a primary loyalty as “a connection to a non-state group that is greater than loyalty to a state. These loyalties include those to clan, religion, tribe, neighbourhood gang, etc. These loyalties are reciprocated through the delivery of political goods (by the group that the state cannot or will not deliver).”

In a prosperous liberal democratic state where people see justice as fair and view the burden of civilisation (taxes) as equitably shared, where corruption is not rife and opportunities exist for social and economic mobility, having your primary loyalty to an abstraction (the rule of law or the State) is no problem. It is the norm.

But when the State expands the promises it makes and then fails to deliver on more basic ones, people begin to question their primary loyalty. This doesn’t mean they revolt. No one really wants to do that. You only do that when you have no recourse economically and no better prospects.

We reckon a retreat to a more local way of life is in the works. The rising cost of energy and capital will be one factor. And frankly, to use a Marxist term, people might feel less alienated from their labour and life if they felt more connected to their neighbours and their work. And that’s more possible in a small, more sustainable resilient community than it is in an artificial mega-city of millions. But now we’re just prattling on!

Regards,
Dan Denning
The Daily Reckoning Australia
Whiskey & Gunpowder

April 30, 2010

The Welfare State Meets Mathematics was originally featured on Whiskey and Gunpowder. Visit Laissez Faire Books for the best selection of libertarian book titles.