Free Speech or Coercion?

Lately my attention has been turned to free speech and whether it is wrong to express your beliefs, and/or make them freely available to those who wish to know.

I have had both theists and atheists (presumably all statists to some degree) express to me variations of these two related arguments:

1) You can speak your mind, but not if it offends someone. Your beliefs offend me and I wish you didn't express it.

2) It is acceptable to express your beliefs, but if and only if those beliefs are correct. Otherwise it's wrong.

Both of these arguments are, in fact, incorrect. Why? Because both of these arguments use a form of coercion: forced suppression of free communication. In fact, there is no scenario possible where it is permissible to prevent someone from expressing their beliefs, either by posting them on the internet, or telling a curious inquisitor about them, or any other method of belief expression.

In the first argument I provided, the reason why it's wrong is fairly obvious. Nobody has the right to not be offended, especially when they are the ones who are seeking information and come across some offensive variety of it. For example, I have had theists who found my blog Kill The Afterlife and have given me the first argument. I didn't force them to find or even read my blog. I didn't force them to accept by beliefs as true either. I merely made my beliefs available to those who wanted to read about them. If the theist doesn't want to get offended, then he should close his Internet browser the minute he sees "Kill The Afterlife" as the blog title. If he gets offended by a TV show, he should change the channel.

For a somewhat crude example, allow me to invoke homosexual porn. I do not find homosexual porn arousing. In fact, I think its gross to watch. Actually, I think male-to-male porn is gross, but I love girl-to-girl porn. It’s merely my taste or opinion. Does that mean I have a problem with homosexual porn producers? No! Do I think gay porn should be banned? No! But if I did in fact think gay porn should be banned, then who is immoral? The porn producers, or me, the proponent of coercion? Myself, of course! The porn producers didn't force me to watch it, so what justification do I have to force them to stop it? The fact that I don't like gay porn is no justification at all.

Argument #1 also gives us a slippery slope. What if I don't like chocolate ice cream? Should I ban Baskin Robins from producing it? You can apply this argument to any specific scenario and quickly realize its absurdity.

Argument #2 is a little bit more difficult to pin down. At first glace, it appears like a valid argument to the average Joe (although the errors are probably blatantly obvious to many readers of this blog). But when we dissect it, we can eventually find its error. So let's start with the dissection!

Argument #2 has two distinct components:

1) A belief.

2) A desire to express said belief.

And now to elaborate on these two distinct components and how they are properly acted upon:

1) Use your perception to the best of your ability to (hopefully) arrive at the correct belief.

2) Stand up for your beliefs.

Now both a theist and atheist, both a statist and anarchist, believe that their beliefs are correct. How is one to follow the creed in argument #2 that says "It is acceptable to express your beliefs, but if and only if those beliefs are correct," when the person in question does not know if he/she is incorrect? They think they are correct, so they could never knowingly break this rule even if they attempted to abide by it!

In addition, there is still a coercive, anti-free-market element within argument #2. It’s analogous to saying "The inferior product should be banned from store shelves!" In fact, I recently put together a Coke vs. Pepsi example to expose the coercive and unfair nature of the argument:

Lets say Coke is the best tasting and best priced, and that Pepsi tastes like shit and costs more. Should the Pepsi be banned from the market? No! It should still be available for consumption/evaluation, and should only disappear from the market through natural lack of consumer demand. Only then can you say that the Coke survived cause it was better and that Pepsi disappeared because it sucked. If you forcibly remove the Pepsi from the market, you can never honestly say that the Coke was honestly superior based on evaluation of both products.

Whether its a marketplace of soda products, or a marketplace of beliefs, the marketplace needs to be free.
Only through a free market can these products (or beliefs) succeed or fail on their own merits, because only then will these products be subject to natural selection (consumer demand).

We can now see that argument #2 fails on multiple levels. It fails because proponents of given beliefs always think their beliefs are correct (otherwise they wouldn't believe them), and it also fails because it employs coercion and denies the free market principle.

If an incorrect belief is coercively silenced, then it illegitimizes the correct belief. Even if Coke is truly and objectively better than Pepsi, it will not help the Coke company's image/legitimacy if some Government or Church or terrorist blew up the Pepsi factory, would it?

The free market is the only tool with which we can find out which products or beliefs are truly good or right, and which are truly bad or wrong.

Either you support free speech for everyone, or you don't support free speech at all. If you support free speech, then you want beliefs to succeed or fail based on their own merits. But if you don't support free speech, then you want beliefs to be forcibly silenced - or even eliminated - based on your own taste or whim.

Working for Sears Goods / Inflation Before and After

Café Hayek has a little list of calculations on how much consumer goods cost now, as compard to how much they cost in 1975.

A ½-horsepower garbage disposer: 20.52 hours of work required in 1975; 4.59 hours of work required in 2006.

Sears lowest-priced garage-door opener: 20.1 hours of work required in 1975 (to buy a ¼-horsepower opener); 8.57 hours of work required in 2006 (to buy a ½-horsepower opener; Sears no longer sells garage-door openers with less than ½-horsepower.)

Sears highest-priced work boots: 11.49 hours of work required in 1975; 8.26 hours of work required in 2006.

One gallon of Sears Best interior latex paint: 2.4 hours of work required in 1975; 1.84 hours of work required in 2006. (Actually, Sears sells no paint on-line, so the price I got for a premium gallon of interior latex paint is from Restoration Hardware.)

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The excellent blog Tu Ne Cede Malis gives us this wonderful graph. This is your savings without a central bank. These are your savings after a central bank. Any questions ? (click for bigger image)

Debunking statist arguments - "Social contract"

And we continue on our merry debunking of statism with Kangas' arguments about the so-called "social contract". I don't need to mention that he argues in favour of this nonsensical, collectivist concept.

The "social contract" is a made-up philosophical concept used by collectivist to try to provide justification for government injustice. We're all in this together, they say, therefore we should submit to a central authority that guides our actions and makes sure that everyone does what they should. If they can equate society with an organization, corporation or family, then they can make anyone accept anything on the basis of expediency.

This is the monstruous collectivist siren song that people like Kangas dull people's individual desires with - that you, as an individual, are ony worth anything if you are a good cog in their statist machine. This is, of course, utter nonsense. The whole concept of a "social contract" has got to be one of the most absurd concepts ever devised (the first place belonging clearly to the Christian concept of the Trinity).

Let's begin :

Our constitution and laws form our social contract.

And from the main text :

The nation's constitution and laws comprise our social contract. In this contract, voters have agreed to exchange their money for the government's goods and services, and to abide by laws passed by their democratically elected legislators.

Excuse me... ? "Voters have agreed" ? First of all, I am not a voter, so does that mean I don't have to pay taxes ? Nope. Secondly, when did I "agree" to "exchange" my money and abide by the law in "exchange" for the government's "services" ? I have never agreed to any of these things. Did Kangas (government bless his soul) live in an incredible country where they did such things ? This sort of agreement, to my knowledge, has never existed. This is a statist fantasy and delusion.

Let me make this clear : no "social contract" has ever existed anywhere. The monopoly of power wielded by government forcing everyone to follow a set of laws does exist, but this cannot be called a "contract" by any stretch of the imagination.

Furthermore, we are supposed to believe that a contract can have one side (private citizens) bearing all the responsibilities and duties, and another side (government) getting all the benefits. That's not a contract, but rather more properly called "extortion".

These are enforced by the government, on the grounds that it is the ultimate owner of all the nation's territory.

Pretty clear : the government ultimately owns and controls everything. You're a renter on the government's precious land, and the government has the right to use eminent domain to take it from you at any time, paying you an arbitrary "market value" which has nothing to do with actual market value.

This is, of course, nonsense. Individuals have the right of property. Not "government". Only individuals can own things and control them. What this is really saying is that only bureaucrats should be able to control your land, not you. The question then arises : why ? Because bureaucrats are exalted individuals who have wisdom beyond mere mortals ? Or simply because they are the ones backed up by the guns of the state ? This is the "might makes right" morality which ultimately all collectivism reduces itself to.

The decision to live on its territory constitutes the agreement to abide by its social contract, much like boarding a train constitutes an agreement to pay the conductor when he comes around to collect. Those who refuse to abide by the social contract must not reside on its territory; they should avail themselves to the market of nations, which offers nearly 200 selections.

Once again we see another delusion. There is no "market of nations", unless you already want government. No nation out there exists without government except Somalia, and who the Hell would move there with or without government ?

But most importantly, we have here a reformulation of the democratic principle : "if you don't like it, either participate in the game or leave". But staying in a country does not excuse the evil done in its name. Leaving does not solve it either. To the statist, democracy has nothing to do with truth or falsity, and more to do with playing a game. Whoever gets the most votes must be accepted as "right", at least for the next years - with no consideration for what is true, just or moral.

I choose to board a train. I did not choose to be born in the country I was born in. I also do not choose what possibilities I have - in some countries, leaving is just not an option, either because of extreme poverty or because of the law (as used to be the case in Communist Russia), and immigration is a very difficult process in general. So the analogy is total nonsense and assumes that we are like butterflies, free to "avail [our]selves to the market of nations". It is the ideology of a spoiled white teen whose parents give him the money to travel around Europe, and does not reflect the reality of most people around the world, who are government prisoners.

Once again, we see another case where, despite their insistence of working for the poor and destitute, statists clearly don't give a shit about the poor and the destitute. If you can move, move and go work for the master you choose : but if you can't move, be a good slave and work for the master you didn't choose. That's "human rights", Kangas style.

Libertarians who object that they shouldn't have to move (for a number of reasons) are inconsistent, because their proposed society would recreate the market of nations on a smaller scale. That is, they would create a market of sovereign property owners, and would expect dissatisfied customers, renters and workers to simply go elsewhere on the market.

To a certain extent, this analogy is better than his previous one, but in a certain way, it's still wrong. In the free market, people are not "sovereign" in the sense that they can, like government, kill at their leisure. Unlike government, private citizens are accountable for their actions.

One particular case where the analogy does work, however, is the case of teenagers. If you look at Amish teenagers, for example, you'll see that community living can be extremely damageable to children, who are most vulnerable to brainwashing. But examining this issue rationally demands one to accept individualism as a premise, something which will never happen with statists, and so this is more of an issue to discuss amongst ourselves.

Police Intimidation / Defending Polygamy

CBS 4 delivers us the surprising news that the unionized police monopoly does not like it when you try to place a complaint against one of their guys.

CBS4 News found that, in police departments across Miami-Dade and Broward Counties, large and small, it was virtually impossible to walk in the door, and walk out with a complaint form.
(...)
After hearing our undercover video described, in which representatives of different departments were seen refusing to supply complaint forms, and at times, appearing to belittle or insult the undercover tester for asking (see transcripts below), Timoney said at times the behavior seemed inappropriate for his department’s standards.

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At Marginal Revolution, they had an article about the economics of polygamy. An interesting and unusual topic for sure. Their conclusion is that polygamy is illegal because it entails a reduction in sexual demand for most people, and people simply don't want that. At least this kind of social exploitation (anti-polygamy laws that is) is mildly justifiable, but that doesn't make it right.

Debunking statist arguments - Against rights

In my long and, I hope, enlightening debunking of Steve Kangas' "Liberalism Resurgent FAQ", I now continue on the topic of some of the statist arguments that Kangas presents in his FAQ. In this entry, I want to examine the statist misconceptions about rights, presented in "Rights are natural, inalienable, God-given and self-evident" (a position which he, of course, argues against).

The notion of whether rights are natural or not, or whether they are self-evident or not, is, I grant you, rather theoretical, and seems of little practical interest. Isn't the only important thing that we all fight for our rights ? Yes, of course, but one way for statists to defeat this desire is to argue that rights don't really exist, are only preferences, or are inter-subjective, cultural constructs, or are divine constructs subject to the caveats of a particular religion. Then impositions for the "common good" make perfect logical sense, because after all rights are not agreed upon to be subject to that "common good".

So it must be made clear, when arguing the topic against statists, that rights are not cultural preferences : they are natural facts. They are the product of causality applied to human society, just like values are the product of causality applied to human action, and laws of physics are the product of causality applied to particles or groups of particles. Rights are nothing more, nothing less than principles of individual freedom to be discovered by rationality and science.

Does Kangas have an argument against rights ? In fact, he has many. Let's start with the first :

Liberals believe that rights are social constructs, defended by force and open to change and improvement.

We open right away on the assertion that rights are social constructs. So what we have here is pure inter-subjectivism : somehow "society" can model reality according to its whims and wishes, and create rights out of thin air. This is quite a magical world that statists live in !

Even more astonishing is the revelation that rights must be "defended by force" and "open to change". True, our understanding of rights must be open to change, but rights themselves are no more "open to change" than the law of gravity or the theory of evolution. Natural law cannot be "open to change" - it is what it is, and our role is to discover its intricacies.

And truth certainly does not need to be "defended by force", although statists always love to use force, even to defend the most ethereal of concepts, so this is not completely surprising. Why would one need to use force to defend a truth ? To do this is a contradiction : truth can only be attained by cooperation, not by force. Only lies need to be defended by force, because they do not have the power to persuade, and rely on the power of authority to propagate. Faith and force are corollaries.

Anyway, let's continue :

Rights cannot be natural, like laws of nature, because nature enforces its laws absolutely, whereas rights are frequently broken.

This is an equally preposterous statement. Rights cannot be "broken". A criminal may be able to kill another human being, but he cannot change the fact that all human beings have the right of life. The fact that globalized murder would be extremely hurtful to any society - which is a practical unpacking of the right of life - is not changed by the crime at all.

Rights cannot be inalienable, because governments frequently revoke rights.

Now this is interesting. What Kangas is saying here, is that rights can be taken away by government, and that this is perfectly in accordance with the nature of rights. So, if you accept this premise, there is no reason to complain if you lose an important right. After all, that is how rights work ! By that token, anyone who is recognized in history as "fighting for civil rights" is a sham, because they are going against the very notion of rights, at least as presented by Kangas. This is a rather offensive view, to say the least !

Once again, as I said for the previous point, no one can "take away rights". That is a physical impossibility. The closest one could come to that would be to wipe out all of mankind.

They cannot be God-given, because God originally blessed the rights of monarchy, genocide, polygamy, parental killing of disrespectful children, and other rights no one seriously defends today.

This is the only true sentence in his entire summary.

Rights cannot be self-evident, because philosophers have been vigorously arguing over them for thousands of years.

This fallacy is in fact the opposite of the argument from popularity : we can call it an "argument from dissent". While not widely discussed, it is a common anti-materialist argument, by which someone points to popular dissent on a topic - evolution and morality being the typical examples - and conclude that the whole field must be subjective and a question of personal taste. This, of course, is complete nonsense : the fact that there is dissent on an issue does not mean that there is no truth that can be found about it. People have dissented for a long time on the fact that the Earth was round, but this in no way indicates that the shape of the Earth is a matter of opinion. Likewise, the results of this or that kind of society are measurable, and not a matter of opinion.

The only thing that dissent amongst philosophers on the question of rights proves is that most philosophers, behind their veneer of inter-subjective respectability, are immoral or idiotic - like most priests, politicians and pseudo-science salesmen.

Pat Tillman: Killed by Terrorists Regardless

The United States Army is launching a criminal probe into the death of Pat Tillman. There has been talk that Tillman was killed by accidental friendly fire while fighting Taliban forces.

Pat Tillman gained notoriety during a few years ago because he turned down a multi-million dollar deal from the NFL to join the Army. Despite popular belief, Tillman was an atheist. This goes to show that atheists are just as susceptible to statist brainwashing as everyone else.

So now the Army wants to find out what really happened. But whether he was killed by Taliban forces or friendly fire is irrelevant in my eyes. Tillman made a mistake by joining the Army, and he paid the ultimate price: his life. Both the United States Army and the Taliban are religio-state organizations that export terror to further their ideological causes. Tillman, unfortunately, only recognized one of those groups for what it was.

Wikipedia : the power of individualism

Before I continue on my series against statist concepts, I'd like to discuss something that's been brewing for a while about Wikipedia.

People who should know better argue against Wikipedia on the grounds that it is uncontrolled, that it allows any Joe Blow to edit falsities into entries, that it is unreliable. From personal experience as well as understanding the concept of Wikipedia, I find this to be total bullshit. Wikipedia is more controlled and checked than any encyclopedia in the world.

Wikipedia works on the basis of self-correcting progress brought about by the cooperation of individual agents. That is the basis all rational methods work, including capitalism and science. Of course there are errors in Wikipedia : there are errors in all encyclopedia. In fact, a recent study found that Wikipedia has an average of 4 errors per entry, against 3 in Brittanica. Of course, you can see this in a "glass half empty" perspective and say that Wikipedia has 33% more errors. But it's important to remember that Wikipedia is still in full growth, while the Brittanica, like all paperback encyclopedias, is supposed to be a finished product on each edition. It is therefore a stunning defeat of the idea of dictatorial editing that Wikipedia makes such a strong showing.

The whole point of Wikipedia is that it assembles more experts on more topics than any real-world enterprise ever could. It's simply the nature of the Internet. That's how it works. Every single issue, hobby, topic, has its experts on the Internet.

Wikipedia's detractors do not attack it because it is inherently unreliable. Otherwise they would be attacking unreliable paperback encyclopedias as well. Wikipedia's detractors attack it because it is individualistic, and has no central authority. It is this idea of emergent information, of natural law, of the absence of central design, that they cannot stand, that they cannot understand. The notion of order that exists without a transcendent designer is too complicated for their minds to understand. So they demand central editing, and stay agape at the success of Wikipedia. These are the same kinds of people who use Intelligent Design arguments and praise the power of government to solve "social problems".

The same thing applies to the Internet. People attack the Internet, not because of pop-up ads or spyware or idiotic personal pages, but because it gives the individual "too much" information, "too much" freedom of speech, "too much" possibilities to communicate with people without needing face-to-face interactions. They attack the Internet because it's individualistic. As usual, they hate the good for being the good.

Wikipedia's success is the success of individualism and individualistic cooperation. They can't stand that. Let those perpetual regressives simmer. Wikipedia is here to stay !

Harry Browne is dead

Harry Browne, former US presidential candidate, libertarian writer and hero, who worked as a financial advisor, has died of the complications of a neurological disorder.

Amongst his well-known works are "How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World" and "Why Government Doesn’t Work". His web site is still up.

Even though I did not know him personally, I am extremely sad to learn of his death. A giant of man has left us. Sorry to see you go, Harry.