No Coercion Exploring the idea of a stateless society.

Don Boudreaux lays the smack down on Brad Miller

It's a guilty little pleasure of mine that, even though his blog is named after Hayek (whose theory of libertarian ethics was quite internally consistent), one of the first things I do each morning is scan through Don Boudreaux's (and Russ Roberts') thoughts on the daily Cafe Hayek feed that comes to my inbox. Don and Russ are great defenders of freedom and fierce enemies of the state.

One of Don's entries posted over the weekend was this: Yet Another Reason I Dislike Politicians. In it he describes a seminar he took part in where North Carolina's very own Congressman Brad Miller was also a participant. His thoughts on Miller are insightful, especially as they apply to most politicians.

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Wait…What?

I just watched an interview of a well-known political pundit who has just written a book about how great FDR was. He talked about how the Twenties were a time of rampant free market activity that led to the Depression and about how FDR saved the middle class and saved capitalism.

Huh?

Could this be an alternative history novel in which things play out differently in an alternate universe, Star Trek style? Oh, wait...no, it's just another purportedly 'non-fiction' work in a long line of works that use straw man arguments to impugn free markets and glorify statism and oppression.

Did the Roaring Twenties really happen as a result of free market capitalism? Of course not. The closest thing our country ever had to a free market system was abolished years earlier. The boom of the Twenties was artificial and the direct result of expansion by the Federal Reserve of credit far beyond the amount in which market forces would have resulted. The excess credit led to stock market and real estate speculation and malinvestment (sound familiar?). Also, commodity prices were artificially high due to the demands of WWI. So the Roaring Twenties were the result not of free markets but of government intervention.

Did FDR save capitalism? Well, yes, if by "capitalism" you mean "an economy that was somewhat more free than many others in the world at that time," and if by "save" you mean "abolish it and replace it with an oppressive, near-omnipotent, socialist state."

FDR, upon getting himself dictatorial powers, began a series of government interventions that turned what should have been a brief but painful correction into a decade-long debacle by preventing individuals and businesses from taking the actions necessary to reallocate capital and adjust investment. And on top of that, we ended up with a country far closer to socialism/fascism than we ever would have previously imagined possible. The moral of the story seems to be that when Hitler and Mussolini create totalitarian states it's wrong, but when Roosevelt does so it's a great day in American history.

We're now reliving the nightmare that inevitably must occur every so often when government has a monopoly on the monetary system, uses central banking to artificially expand and contract money and credit, and engages in a multitude of regulatory interventions and taxation.

The moral of my story is: Franklin D. Roosevelt is not someone that should ever---ever---be held up as a hero or a good president or someone who saved capitalism or ended the Depression. The man, by virtue of his freedom-ending and economy-destroying policies, was a monster. The history books must be rewritten to expose him and his New Deal for what they were. Just as the media and intellectuals of today rightly condemn Bush, so should they play fair and condemn FDR and demand that we cease and desist the resurgence of his statist, poverty-inducing policies.

Yeah, I'm not holding my breath.

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Blog Action Day 2008: Two kinds of poverty

Here is my contribution to the world wide Blog Action Day 2008. The topic this year is poverty, and the goal is to initiate global discussion about how to alleviate it (or something like that).

There are basically two kind of poverty in the world: natural and man-made.

The natural variety is the result of things like drought, disease, natural disasters, and just generally a natural lower degree of transformation of natural resources into beneficial goods. As civilizations' technologies advance they have increasing ability to transform resources and thus improve their standards of living. A lot of this we have little control over (i.e. we can't just protest in the street and suddenly have a futuristic civilization where everything is thousands of times cheaper and of better quality and sickness and disease are historic curiosities).

The man-made variety of poverty is much more interesting. This is what results when someone causes, through means that are not mutually voluntary, someone else to be poorer than they would have been otherwise.

So, if I go to Bill and say that he can't operate a taxi service unless he takes some classes that I offer, passes my tests, and pays me a bunch of money for a taxi license (and that I get to take his money and lock him away somewhere if he operates the business without my approval), then I have just made Bill poorer than he otherwise would have been, either because of the time and money I force him to spend or because he opts not to go into business. In addition, I've made Bill's potential customers poorer, as they now have to either spend more in the now less competitive taxi market or spend more by finding a more expensive way to get around. The same applies to anyone I want to prevent from doing business without my official license: real estate agents, doctors, nurses, lawyers, plumbers, electricians, hairdressers, or street performers.

Another form of man-made poverty is full-fledged prohibition of something. For instance, if Jack wants to start a business delivering letters and I tell him that I only want one organization to deliver letters and will forcibly lock him up if he tries it, I have just made him and his potential customers poorer than they would have been. The same forced poverty is involved if Jack wants to start his own passenger train service, crime prevention company, court system, etc.

More man-made poverty is created if I tell Mike that he can only offer insurance plans if they cover certain risks and are priced below a certain maximum level that I've set. The subset of Mike's potential customers who would have bought the now illegal insurance policy but now are forced to go without insurance or pay more for a policy that is beyond what they need are now poorer, and of course Mike is poorer because he is forced to forgo a certain amount of business he would have earned absent the rule. Furthermore, with maximums on what Mike can charge, his customers as a whole are made poorer as he has to raise everyone's rates to make up for the loss incurred on any policies whose natural market price is he not allowed to charge. Many of his customer end up paying more than what they would otherwise, and some are again forced to go without insurance because they can't afford the new cheapest policy.

Now we come to another way for me to create poverty. Jane wants to open a business providing some valuable good or service. She knows that teenagers and other unskilled workers would do really well in her business, and that's perfect because she can only afford to open the business if she can find employees that will work for $4 per hour. She goes around and talks to some teenagers eager to start learning some job skills and homeless and poverty-stricken people that can't find work anywhere else, and they're excited to come work for her and start getting work experience or working their way out of poverty. But then along comes good ol' me, with the threat of force to back me up, and I tell Jane that I'm really sorry but I can't allow her to pay her employees anything less than a minimum wage of $8 per hour because it would just not be right. Not wanting to be imprisoned, Jane cancels her plans to open the business. The teenagers return to whatever they were doing before, now missing out on a great chance to start developing job skills that would put them on the road to success, and the homeless and poverty-stricken are prevented from having the opportunity to starting climbing the economic ladder.

Now we come to a really interesting point in our investigation. Man-made poverty is also created when I force Sally to turn over part of her income or wealth to me so that I can provide things for the 'common good.' If something is really for the common good, it shouldn't require compulsion in order to fund it. On top of that, I need to spend a big chunk of the money I took from Sally to pay for my gang of heavily armed enforcers, my army of administrative and regulatory personnel, my court system that conveniently will decide any cases in which I might be accused of doing something wrong, etc. But the real kicker is that a lot of the money I'm taking from Sally I'm using to provide welfare checks and related benefits to those people whose poverty I'm responsible for. Most of the rest of it goes to pay for the poverty-creating policies mentioned above and many more that there's no time to go into now (i.e. the FDA, NASA, public housing, banking regulation, public schools, drug prohibition, etc.). And not to worry, if I run out of tax money to spend on my programs, I'll just print more money! Yes, it will devalue the currency and make everyone poorer, but hey--at least I can say I'm "doing something" and get enough of you people to fall for it that you'll vote for me again in the next election.

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Forced greening to fix the economy?

I ran across this New Scientist piece about how Al Gore's group thinks a regime of forced greening of the U.S. economy could actually lift us out of our current financial turmoil. It's the same thing Obama (and, to a lesser degree, McCain) has been blabbing about on the campaign trail. The idea is that having the government force us to use 'green' technologies will result in a new economic boom.

Well, let's think about that for half a second.

Say I'm a business owner who makes widgets and employs a certain number of people at a certain wage, while earning a profit that keeps me coming to work every day. Now the government comes along and says that the fossil fuel plant in my area from which I get my electricity must shut down and be replaced by a "green" power plant of some kind. Now, we know this new green facility will be quite a bit more expensive to operate and will charge more for its output (because if it was cheaper, it would already be there due to market forces). So, I must now pay more for my power, which means I have to raise the prices of my widgets or find other places to cut back. If I raise the prices of my widgets, consumers now either pay more for them (meaning they have less money to spend on other things) or they opt not to buy them---either way, they're made worse off. If I don't raise my prices, I need to cut costs somewhere. If we assume for the moment that I'm already operating extremely efficiently due to market competition, my only options are to reduce wages or lay off one or more employees (either way, one or more employees are made worse off) or to reduce my profits (in which case, I'm made worse off). In fact, if my profits are forced down too much (maybe even just a tiny bit below what they currently are), I may find that I can make more money working for someone else. Then I lay off everyone, close the business, and the widget market is less competitive, making society worse off.

Of course, those involved in building and operating the government-mandated "green" power plant and delivery infrastructure are better off, but because their endeavor was not a market action resulting from myriad voluntary decisions using the price system to efficiently allocate resources, it necessarily costs society more than if it had not been done (otherwise, society would have already done it). In other words, this one government policy destroys a significant amount of society's wealth.

In addition, the government, in order to fund the various bureaucracies that will implement this scheme, will be either directly taking more of my income in taxes or printing more money (which devalues my dollars). I then have even less money to spend on goods and services or with which to pay employees.

Now, apply this to each of Obama's enviro-economic policy proposals, and you end up with severe and widespread destruction of wealth throughout society. Could it make our air cleaner? Sure, I suppose it's a possibility. Will it reduce global warming? That's entirely up for debate. But to suggest that these policies will somehow help the economy and create wealth is bizarre.

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Elizabeth Dole calls her constituents “vile”

Senator Elizabeth Dole has launched an sustained attack against some of her constituents as part of her campaign for re-election. In a press release to her supporters and a mass mailing that's been going out to voters, Dole attacks her Democratic opponent, Kay Hagan, by pointing out that she attended a fundraiser held by a couple of atheists, whom she describes as "vile." Here's the mailer:

Vile? As someone on another blog pointed out, can you imagine her calling some religious group (like Jews or Muslims) "vile?" But those who choose science and reason over superstition are described as vile by a sitting U.S. Senator and no one even blinks.

And in the press release, she describes atheists as people "most North Carolinians would not be comfortable having over for dinner." Again, this is one of my U.S. Senators. I've got news for you, Senator Dole--you had dinner with a future atheist in the fall of 2000. How about them godless apples?

Now, some would argue that this bigoted and primitive behavior by Senator Dole means that anyone who believes in being a decent human being and not spewing hatred at your neighbors should vote for Kay Hagan. I disagree. Both Republicans and Democrats have an appalling record when it comes to their treatment of those who don't believe in the supernatural. Both use the religious, and their susceptibility to manipulation, to advance their own ends. The only party that truly stands for eliminating the irrational hatred of atheists is the party that would end the church-state alliance once and for all - the Libertarian Party. And it just so happens there's an outstanding Libertarian in this race that the media simply chooses not to mention. Chris Cole is running on the Libertarian ticket against Dole and Hagan, and is now polling around 5-7% (when he's actually included on the polls).

Cole and the Libertarian Party seek the dismantlement of the state apparatus, which would leave nothing with which to coercively promote religion or suppress atheists. Hagan, on the other hand, has a platform that is a laundry list of expansions of government scope and power. Also, after perusing her web site, she doesn't seem to have a single press release hitting back at Dole for her anti-atheist vitriol. No, neither Hagan nor the Democratic Party are allies of atheists and the non-religious. Their schemes for promoting government will do nothing but further threaten everyone's individual liberty and natural rights, believers and non-believers alike.

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The Munger-McCory Debate: Part II

Here in North Carolina, the Libertarian Party has succeeded in getting onto the ballot this year after untold numbers of volunteer hours and lots of money. It takes a lot to overcome the state government's concerted efforts to keep the voters from having any choice but Democrat and Republican. Even being on the ballot, it's a struggle to get our candidates included in debates. Mike Munger, our candidate for Governor, has been excluded from several debates so far, including those hosted by WRAL and the Public Forum for North Carolina Education. The hosts of the final gubernatorial debate on October 15 have decided to include Dr. Munger.

WUNC-TV, on the other hand, has included Mike in both of their debates, the second of which was last night. Democratic contender BevPerdue declined both debate invitations, but Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory, the GOP candidate, did participate. I thought the first one was pretty decent, but Munger didn't come out as strongly as I would have liked with libertarian positions on education and a few other issues (although his positions were certainly closer to libertarian than McCrory's).

The second debate, however, saw Munger give strong libertarian positions on nearly everything, which I was grateful to see. You can link to it from Mike's site or, in case it moves off his home page, try this permanent link. The only issue I had was one comment Mike made about tax hikes being okay as long as they're done properly. Tsk! Tsk! No, Mike, tax hikes are never okay. Never. Ever. A Libertarian should never advocate a tax hike or spending increase or claim that they're even theoretically okay "if done properly." The end goal of the Libertarian Party is a totally free society, one without a government that collects taxes and imposes its will. Any move in the other direction is a contradiction of that goal and only fit for one of the pro-government parties. But other than that, Mike Munger hit hard on some big issues and showed the clear differences between himself and McCrory.

I'm looking forward to the October 15 debate in which all three candidates will participate.

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Plunging toward the omnipotent state

Well, the politicians did what all defenders of human liberty were afraid they'd do. They passed the financial bailout, thus sending us further into the current that's quickly carrying us toward an omnipotent state. Not surprisingly, the original 3-page bill was just too small for the liking of our political class. No, they weren't willing to vote for it until it ballooned to almost 450 pages. The bill that passed today was loaded down with so many unrelated government invasions of person and property it would make Karl Marx's head spin. And our Communist-in-Chief signed it so fast he nearly sprained his wrist.

To me, this is proof (yet again) that politics is inherently unable to solve problems or make things better. In fact, it must necessarily make things worse because actions by government---NO MATTER WHAT THEIR REASONS---always destroy wealth and aggress against person and property. There is no redeeming value to politics, politicians, or government at all. It seems to make no difference whether the parasites are elected democratically or otherwise. Our vaunted democracy has not preserved our freedom. In fact, I'm inclined to think that freedom is more precarious under democracy than under other systems of rule.

And still, come November, we're going to elect another president (and hundreds of members of Congress) from one of the two statist parties that have worked tirelessly to extinguish our freedom for well over a century. Are the American people really so afraid of unshackling themselves from the state and living in a free society like adults, even if we have some occasional hard times as a natural result of living in an imperfect world?

Remember, remember, the 5th of November...

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Ron Paul endorses Constitution Party candidate

As many of you know, Ron Paul has reacted to the less-than-diplomatic recent comments and actions by the Libertarian Barr-Root campaign by endorsing Chuck Baldwin of the Constitution Party for president. While I have a great deal of respect for Dr. Paul, this endorsement is unconscionable. It would have been far better for him to continue his policy of non-endorsement than to indicate to his legions of followers that a theocratic political party should be preferable to the party devoted to a free society.

In case, dear readers, you are not familiar with the abomination known (quite farcically it seems to me) as the Constitution Party, here's the preamble to its platform:

The Constitution Party gratefully acknowledges the blessing of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ as Creator, Preserver and Ruler of the Universe and of these United States. We hereby appeal to Him for mercy, aid, comfort, guidance and the protection of His Providence as we work to restore and preserve these United States.

This great nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religions but on the Gospel of Jesus Christ. For this very reason peoples of other faiths have been and are afforded asylum, prosperity, and freedom of worship here.

The goal of the Constitution Party is to restore American jurisprudence to its Biblical foundations and to limit the federal government to its Constitutional boundaries.

Even if you share this party's belief in stories about magic written by Middle Eastern nomads two millenia ago, no defender of true freedom could countenance the Constitution Party's blatant desire to use the force of government to promote their religion.

Further, although there are certainly some libertarianish items in their platform, a great deal of their planks involve government aggression against individuals. Things like opposing trade (and implying Americans have some kind of 'right' to their jobs), supporting state-level restrictions on drugs, prohibition of fractional-reserve banking, taking a hard line on immigration, prohibition of abortion (in all instances), supporting government definition of marriage and prohibition of various sexual activities, and a whole host of other categories in which the party believes the government can legitimately invade the person and property of the individuals in its jurisdiction.

Ron Paul had a chance to point his supporters, most of whom are seeking a free society, to the Libertarian Party (where they could have grown in their understanding of pure liberty and the idea of a stateless society); but he chose, because of Bob Barr's childish behavior, to send them to a party based on aggression, ancient mythology, and a muddled, internally inconsistent political philosophy.

That, to be scientific, really sucks.

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Should you even vote this year?

Our current economic crisis has highlighted the similarities between the two major presidential candidates. Both McCain and Obama are calling for expansion of government aggression in banking and finance, and each is claiming that his opponent's plan will usher in a recession. Both, of course, are somewhat correct--each one's economic policies are going to have negative affects on the economy, as government aggression always does.

We have two parties backed by the government (Democrats and Republicans) who, not surprisingly, both favor government control to a greater or lesser degree. Voting Republican may be the lesser of the two evils with regard to economic matters (though certainly the greater of the two evils in all other matters), but it's still an evil. Faced with these unpleasant choices, I have heard many people despair and resign themselves to not voting at all. I certainly don't blame them, and I find nothing of worth in the arguments that it's our "duty" to vote or that those who don't vote can't complain (those are arguments employed by the hacks of an oppressive regime desperate for an air of legitimacy).

While I don't condone voting (as it can be considered consenting to an unjust system), I also don't condemn it. After all, as Lysander Spooner pointed out over a century ago, we are coerced into voting in self defense, like a man forced to kill or be killed:

"In truth, in the case of individuals, their actual voting is not to be taken as proof of consent, even for the time being. On the contrary, it is to be considered that, without his consent having even been asked a man finds himself environed by a government that he cannot resist; a government that forces him to pay money, render service, and forego the exercise of many of his natural rights, under peril of weighty punishments. He sees, too, that other men practice this tyranny over him by the use of the ballot. He sees further, that, if he will but use the ballot himself, he has some chance of relieving himself from this tyranny of others, by subjecting them to his own. In short, he finds himself, without his consent, so situated that, if he use the ballot, he may become a master; if he does not use it, he must become a slave. And he has no other alternative than these two. In self- defence, he attempts the former. His case is analogous to that of a man who has been forced into battle, where he must either kill others, or be killed himself. Because, to save his own life in battle, a man takes the lives of his opponents, it is not to be inferred that the battle is one of his own choosing. Neither in contests with the ballot — which is a mere substitute for a bullet — because, as his only chance of self- preservation, a man uses a ballot, is it to be inferred that the contest is one into which he voluntarily entered; that he voluntarily set up all his own natural rights, as a stake against those of others, to be lost or won by the mere power of numbers. On the contrary, it is to be considered that, in an exigency into which he had been forced by others, and in which no other means of self-defence offered, he, as a matter of necessity, used the only one that was left to him.

"Doubtless the most miserable of men, under the most oppressive government in the world, if allowed the ballot, would use it, if they could see any chance of thereby meliorating their condition. But it would not, therefore, be a legitimate inference that the government itself, that crushes them, was one which they had voluntarily set up, or even consented to."

So, voting for who you'd like to run the oppressive apparatus of the state is certainly justifiable on purely prudential grounds, and I will probably do so. But again, for someone who values human freedom, I can imagine no conceivable defense for voting for either one of the major parties who, not only in historical fact but also in their actual published principles, seek to perpetuate the state and a wide range of its aggressions against person and property.

The Libertarian Party, on the other hand, at least stands for the value of working always to reduce the size and scope of government in all areas of life.

Here is the preamble to the LP's official platform:

As Libertarians, we seek a world of liberty; a world in which all individuals are sovereign over their own lives and no one is forced to sacrifice his or her values for the benefit of others.

We believe that respect for individual rights is the essential precondition for a free and prosperous world, that force and fraud must be banished from human relationships, and that only through freedom can peace and prosperity be realized.

Consequently, we defend each person's right to engage in any activity that is peaceful and honest, and welcome the diversity that freedom brings. The world we seek to build is one where individuals are free to follow their own dreams in their own ways, without interference from government or any authoritarian power.

In the following pages we have set forth our basic principles and enumerated various policy stands derived from those principles.

These specific policies are not our goal, however. Our goal is nothing more nor less than a world set free in our lifetime, and it is to this end that we take these stands.

Yes, our Presidential candidate, Bob Barr, is far from the best representative of libertarianism, having been a staunch conservative Republican just a few short years ago. But I'm inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt that his conversion to liberty (still ongoing) is genuine, since I went through the same conversion over the course of perhaps 3-4 years during and immediately after college. Regardless, the party itself is the vehicle for freedom that I'll be voting for. I'll use my lonely vote to help send a message, not to the parasitic creatures currently in power, but to other people---a message that there is another way to live, a way that doesn't involve initiating force against each other, a way supported by a sizable number of their fellow men. There is strength in numbers, and my hope is that over time those who long for a free society (but consistently vote for the lesser of the two evils out of fear of what the greater evil could do in the near term) will take a longer term view and join the increasing numbers willing to "waste" their vote by choosing a third party that agitates for liberty.

If you're going to take part in the superficially civilized (but fundamentally barbaric) system known as democratic government, at least consider voting for a party whose ultimate goal is a peaceful, prosperous, voluntary society in which no group is given a legal monopoly on the use of force. The only wasted vote is one given to the lesser of the two evils.

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