Net Neutrality = Net Socialism, redux

Ever since I posted my entry yesterday about the socialist concept of "Net Neutrality", whereby stupid statists cry for the state to solve a problem that the state itself created (network territorial monopolies), I have noticed many hits from Technocrati. Looking at their dynamic page for entries about "Net Neutrality", I have noticed a total absence of opposition (apart from mine). It's filled with stupid statists who believe that the issue is about free speech - and not the state's control over communication networks. Behold :

http://bridger987.blogspot.com/2006/05/death-of-internet.html
In common sense terms it's about the government withdrawing our right to Internet Freedom, it's about the Death of The Internet.

What is "Internet Freedom" ? Is that different from normal freedom, with a small F ? And how many times have idiots preached the end of the Internet ? How is charging more for Google traffic going to kill the Internet anyway ? Never mind that, I guess...

http://jgrr.blogspot.com/2006/05/brownback-opposes-free-internet.html
Net neutrality removes the need for a heavy hand of regulation, instead allowing the invisible hand of the market to let businesses succeed or fail. Net neutrality is the principle that allowed the internet to be the tremendous influence it is, a power for democracy on the world stage and a powerful way of building links between unexpected corners of society.

Yes, OBVIOUSLY clamoring for more state regulation removes the need for regulation, attacking the free market more than ever allows the market to operate, and this has magical powers of democracy (all the more reason to oppose Net Socialism) and linkage... did I mention that war is peace ? Really, we're fighting for peace !

http://www.savetheinternet.com/blog/2006/05/22/net-neutrality-something-on-which-we-all-agree/
Net Neutrality: Something on Which We All Agree
If Net Neutrality is gone, the future of the Internet will be dominated by only those large companies that can pay the phone cartel’s broadband fees. This predatory scheme would muscle aside the Internet’s real revolutionaries — the small-guy innovators who historically have made the Internet a beacon for democracy, economic growth and new ideas.

Once again with the democracy bullshit. I'd rather take the Internet down than promote the evils of democracy around the globe (okay, maybe not, but it's a hard tradeoff). But as we all know, anyone who disagrees about Net Socialism is at the pay of big eeevil corporations, and these heroes are the ones who support the innovators. Through state regulation. Yes, I can see how... HUH ?

Of course, none of them point to the real problem - the state. Who's surprised ? Even when they are beaten over and over again, people never learn. They just spew more statist propaganda and hope they can look like freedom fighters, when they are against you and your freedom.

Here is a positive article, from the Daily News in Jacksonville, to counterbalance all this bullshit : Eyes on the ’Net.

Instead ["Net Neutrality"] is a legal and political term for the belief that the Internet should be governed as the old monopoly utilities were, with the “pipes” to the Internet viewed as "common carriers," open to all on terms decided by a government regulatory agency. Ultimately, it means government price controls.

Net Socialism / The rich and powerful pissing on us... again

The so-called "Net Neutrality" initiative is nothing less than outright socialism. It should be called Net Socialism. Apparently anyone who is against "Net Neutrality" - which should really be called Net Socialism - is at the pay of a big corporation. Gee, I wish I was at the pay of a big corporation.

It is the government that gave AT&T and those other companies territorial monopolies over the lines, and now they want the government to intervene even more because of that. The dirty statists want the state to "solve" a problem already caused by the state. Business as usual, then...


Talking about irrational expressions, "price gouging" is another one which should be censored or replaced. People call "price gouging" on other people they don't like - nothing more. When "organic farms" (a scam in and of itself) demand higher prices for their products, it's a premium in the name of the Earth. When oil companies raise prices after they lose a big part of their supply, it's "price gouging". And note that when Wal-Mart offers products at lower prices, they are evil agents of consumeurism. Lower or higher, youi can't win when you're an enemy of the ruling class.

Of course, the real winners here, as usual, are the ruling class and the giant oil corporations who gain at the expense of the smaller ones, and the loser is, as usual, the people :

If [anti-"price-gouging" legislation] passes, of course, it’s just going to hurt consumers. The same consumers that will then scream for more government intervention, further screwing the whole thing up. They don’t understand the implications of voting based on their own economic ignorance, and can’t see that politicians are willing to sell them up the river just to increase their own power.

This legislation, in fact, is a boon to the major gasoline chains. They’re the ones that know that if they get investigated, their armies of lawyers will keep them clean. It’s the little guys, like Warren, who would rather hang up their spurs than face the risk. Increased regulation helps big corporations improve market share, and will only end up creating higher prices and harder-to-find gas for consumers. I said before that this problem will only improve when individuals start to see government as the problem, not the solution.

What is legitimacy ?

In recent entries, I have discussed exploitation, the model of exploitation that most people hold, and how this gives undue legitimacy to democratic systems. This of course brings up another question : what is legitimacy ? How is it given and maintained ?

This is a vital question for market anarchists, because we see government as exploitation and coercion, while most people see government as a legitimate and noble set of institutions. How does someone get to equate the organized murder of the military, or the organized theft of taxation, as legitimate ?

I think we need to first look at the concept of authority, because authority is what individuals who hold legitimacy claim to have. In the case of politicians and bureaucrats, this is, of course, a vain and hollow claim, much like how politico-scientific or pseudo-scientific hucksters claim to possess the "real truth".

However, there are cases where authority is warranted. I recognize that Stephen Hawking is an authority on the subject of astrophysics, while I obviously am not. Not only does he possess authority but also legitimacy - he is widely recognized as an eminent scientist. So in this case the two aspects co-exist. Despite the debacle of his first election, George W. Bush is widely recognized as a legitimate ruler. However, he has no objective authority to back up this claim, as he is an evil, barely educated, dope-addicted moron.

Now, belonging to a specific segment does not make one automatically an authority. I'm sure some bureaucrats are very competent in what they do and simply do not realize the cause they are serving. Likewise, some scientists can be most corrupt and servile, as the growing class of politico-scientists demonstrates.

Legitimacy, therefore, is a matter of, fundamentally, public opinion. The only reason why we legitimize a soldier and not a serial killer is one of pure public opinion manipulated by the apparatus of government. Authority, on the other hand, is a matter of fact. I'm sure some soldiers are quite the authorities on how to kill people, but all that means is that you are a very good murderer. It does not legitimize them as justified social agents.

Legitimacy and exploitation are closely linked, or to be more precise exploitation links itself to legitimacy, because it is far easier to exploit when the exploited believe that you are acting for their own good.

Scientists have legitimacy without wanting to exploit people. But this is only because science fills an actual need. The exploitative bastard cousins of science - politico-science and sacred science - are a lot more popular than science, because they gain their legitimacy by borrowing the language of science, but have no qualms with adapting their positions to the changing social context.

The legitimacy of the democratic system rests on three main pillars :

1. The illusion of equality presented by the democratic process - that "everyone has a say" and that power ultimately rests in the hands of "the people".

2. The social engineering that public schools, control of the media, the academia, the arts, imprint on the individual from his early childhood on.

3. All the "services" enforced or controlled by government, which lead people to believe that such services couldn't or wouldn't be provided by private individuals.

The main advantage of legitimacy is that the system is never under attack. No one, except us, questions the premises of government. If government is legitimate, then any problem that happens must be the fault of specific people, not of the system itself and its structure of incentives.

This is like a market anarchist saying that a soldier is fully responsible for all the people he killed. Trivially true, but in terms of understanding the situation you are going nowhere. You need to understand the system of incentives, manipulated by government, that led him to accept and follow the path of organized murder. Likewise, it is futile to try to analyze scandals, corruption, fraud, dishonesty in government without looking at its incentives system.

Strike the Root gold

Two articles that strike gold, from Strike the Root :


"A Market Response to the Statists' War on Gun Makers"

No, while the Barrett Model 82A1 rifle is an interesting specimen of a rifle, what caught my attention and, upon further reflection my admiration, was a tiny small-print blurb at the bottom corner of the ad. This inkblot read as follows:

“The California Legislature has banned the .50 BMG from the good citizens of the state of California , violating their rights and the constitution of our republic. Therefore, Barrett will not sell to or service any California government agencies.”

That was indeed refreshing! Barrett was willing to forgo any sort of government business selling or servicing their line of rifles to any of the Golden State ’s police agencies because of the state of California ’s laws making most of them illegal for ordinary people to own.

Now as a matter of principle I cannot help but applaud Barrett.

If only more of our corporate elite realized the wisdom of this course of action ! Of course, in the long run, that would only make more regulation or more state companies, so even then you can't really win...


"Anarchist Revisions for Civilization the PC Game"

Every state is a religion. Generally we call this worship of state civic religion, with its flags, anthems, pledges of allegiance, rituals, and holidays. (Notice the etymological origin from holy day.) States often allow freedom of religion, but by propaganda, forced schooling/brainwashing, and threats to dissenters, it instills the civic religion into the core of every approved religion. You no longer have to believe that the state or king is God, only the instrument of God to be obeyed and the legitimate maker of laws of right and wrong.

The evolution of politics

Even if we have a notion of exploitation, a natural question is : what use is it ? Well, for one thing it helps us to understand how the system works and perpetuates itself. Another area where it is helpful is in exposing the false premises of historical change.

1. Human history starts with tribalism - as an extension of the structures already existing for other primates, who need to band together to defend themselves from predators. This need for social organization led, in turn, to the development of language and higher intelligence.

Tribalism is therefore not primarily a political construct but rather an organization borne out of necessity. And if you have a tribe, you need the alpha male to regulate the tribe's activities. But at this point there is no parasitic ruling class because parasites need pre-existing excess resources to exploit. Subsistence societies have no such excess resources.

2. As food production and metal working slowly progresses, you start to get excess resources. This permits the rise of a parasitic ruling class, which uses its brute strength to enforce its domination over groups of tribes, with the strongest at the top. This is your basic monarchy. In a monarchy, exploitation is privately owned (by the king or a very small corresponding ruling class).

Another thing that happens is the rise of knowledge and education. With this rise in education also comes a growing awareness of the concept of unfairness and exploitation. So you get the intuitive model, which I think can be easily described as : any concentration of power - be it political, economic, social - is exploitative.

So once this primitive understanding is arrived at, legitimacy is very difficult to achieve for a monarchy, because after all a monarchy is the most concentrated form of exploitation. You get a lot of rebellions, civil wars, coups, assassinations, and so on. This is how the symbiosis between the state and the church is formed. The church provides the justification for monarchic power (i.e. the king was chosen by the gods themselves, is a demi-god, etc), and the state provides the general control needed for religion to impose itself on an entire society.

So the desire arises for everyone to hold political power in some form, in order to counter the perceived exploitation. This leads to the downfall of monarchic beliefs and the rise of democracy - which had existed before - as a viable and more just alternative. Even though this is nonsense, it appears irrefutable to the person on the street, and therefore it wins out.

3. After WW1, you get the stronghold of democracy on the world. The democratic system is one where exploitation is not privately controlled, but rather socialized. While it is established with the naive intention of countering exploitation, it leads instead to its spreading. You end up not only with a bigger ruling class, but with the extension of toxic government intervention into social institutions.

... with the transition from personal (monarchical) to democratic (public) rule in particular, contrary to conventional wisdom, the decivilizing forces inherent in any form of government are systematically strengthened.
Hans-Hermann Hoppe, "Democracy : The God that Failed", p17

And the worst part is that democracy now makes this toxic ruling class look like a legitimate expression of the "will of the people", when in fact this extended ruling class has a whole set of new incentives which go completely against the interest of "the people", eventually completely taking over its "will". If you look at my list of exploiters, these are the segments of society that (apart from CEOs) are the most admired and revered. This is the perversion of the will of the people - making evil become good, force become peace, injustice become justice.

The ultimate goal is to create total equality of power, but this can only be achieved by a strong ruling class. Communism and fascism are, in this perspective, not freakish abnormalities but rather only extensions of the democratic assumptions. To quote Nock :

Many now believe that with the rise of the totalitarian State the world has entered upon a new era of barbarism. It has not. The totalitarian State is only the State; the kind of thing it does is only what the State has always done with unfailing regularity, if it had the power to do it, wherever and whenever its own aggrandizement made that kind of thing expedient. Give any State like power hereafter, and put it in like circumstances, and it will do precisely the same kind of thing.
Albert Jay Nock

People in democracies distrust capitalism. This can once again be explained by the implicit model of exploitation. Capitalism is based on voluntary trade, and in such a system the individuals who produce the most value will see the most trade of value with other people. Those who contribute the most to society rise to the top and gain a lot of power. This creates a concentration of power, which in the inherent model is exploitative. This means that no one who believes in democracy or its outgrowths can possibly understand capitalism. They live in a fantasy world where good is evil, production is degeneration, volutary trade is coercion, and poverty is virtue.

4. What will the future of political organization look like ? I think it's obvious that market anarchy is very unlikely to be the next step in this evolution. I am also rather realistic in that I think the ruling class and its exploitation will continue to expand. Even collapsed democratic systems in our time do not revert to something substantially different.

So we'd have to look at how democracies would lose their legitimacy, and the new beliefs that would emerge from that. My hypothesis would be that, as democratic structures become more and more global, there would be more and more complaints about the distance of power and the lack of accountability.

This may give rise to a community-based form of government. Such a system would be even worse than democracy, because the closer your oppressor lives from you, the more control he can yield over you. So I think there would be a tremendous opportunity for control, if the apparatus of government was concentrated at a very local level.

But once again, this is just a hypothesis. I actually have no idea on how democracy will actually lose its legitimacy. But the amount of propaganda being put out to prop up democracy tells me that such a day is not actually that far away.

United 93 Review / Vaccine Industry Signs Own Law

Douglas Herman posted a market anarchist review of that propaganda movie, United 93, on Strike the Root.

Instead, in the movie, we watch outright bumbling and criminal negligence that would have justified long penitentiary sentences, if America possessed a justice system.

News from Think Progress : "Frist and Hastert Let Vaccine Industry Write Its Own Multi-Billion Dollar Giveaway".

Last December, Senate Majority Leader Bill First (R-TN) and House Speaker Dennis Hastert inserted a provision in the Defense Appropriations bill that granted vaccine manufactures near-total immunity for injuries or deaths (even in cases of “gross negligence”) caused by their drugs during a viral pandemic, such as an outbreak of the avian flu. The legislation was “worth billions of dollars” to a small group of drug makers.

(...)

A new report from Public Citizen reveals that vaccine-industry lobbyists essentially wrote the provision themselves.

Corporatism ? Nope, doesn't exist... Do you see it ? I don't see it...

Immigration Bullshit vs Reality

So I posted a little rant about "immigration" and some people who read it freaked out. What I pointed out in my rant was :

1. There is no such thing as an "illegal immigrant", and borders are not legitimate.
2. There is no such thing as "stealing a job".
3. People who argue for "immigration" are just as racist as those who argue against it, and everyone should just shut the hell up.

If you think these three basic premises make me an extremist, then you have a very sad perspective on the world.

To go through these again...

1. The construct of "illegal immigrant" is predicated on the constructs of "immigration" and "country", which are predicated on the construct of "borders". These constructs are not legitimate, as a border is simply a tool for one state to delimitate its monopoly of force against all other states, and "the law" is simply a tool used by the state to enforce its singular value system against all others. Therefore, we should not recognize the idea that there are people who are here "illegally" any more than we should recognize the idea that people who cross the street without a "street-crossing permit" are in illegality. Both are equally ludicrous.

It makes no sense to say that I am an "immigrant" when I cross the border to Vermont, only a couple hours from here, and that I am not an "immigrant" when I go to say, Calgary. I am no less part of a society with people from Vermont than I am with people from Calgary.

2. It's impossible to "steal a job", and anyone who utters this expression is insane. Anyone who has a job obtained it from someone else, who wanted to trade with that person. Theft, on the other hand, demands coercion, which cannot exist here. It doesn't matter whether a person who has a job follows the false construct of "illegal" or not.

3. Pretty much everyone who argues against, or even for, "immigration" uses racist arguments to demonstrate that "immigrants" "deserve" or do not "deserve" to live in a country. Freedom of movement is not a privilege, it is a right that is owed to any human being regardless of the colour of their skin, their religion, their political affiliation or their desire to work. To treat "immigrants" as "good hard-working slaves" is just as racist and insulting as treating them as lazy. The construct of "immigrant" itself is racist.

Same goes for the argument that immigration is "cheap labour" and thus promotes the evils of capitalism (or at least, what statist retards think are the evils of capitalism). It assumes that "immigrants" are automatically unskilled and uneducated.

One aspect that I did not rant about is the aspect of culture. Some people argue against immigration on the basis that it represents an attack against their favoured culture. First of all, I hope I don't need to explain why this in itself is culturally supremacist. All cultures are nothing but collectivist detritus. Secondly, the fact that we are the pawns of social and cultural struggles is a consequence of the democratic process, which cultivates warfare between people who support different cultures in order to get their values enforced on society against everyone else's.

So in essence, people who use cultural arguments to fight against immigration, are clamoring for more state in order to solve a problem caused by the state in the first place. This is a common syndrome amongst idiot statists who can't reason worth a damn - which means all of them. Sadly, it also exists amongst some libertarians. Trying to get the state to limit itself is ultimately a futile endeavour and only serves to further legitimize the democratic process.

Show me the border, bitch.

Spittle and Ink Spits Some Venom

I got Mark from Spittle and Ink all pissed off over my jury duty service post. The amount of anger and condescension in his writing reminds me of Paul Manata.

Let's see what he has to say:

So, as if following some right wing script, he starts his argument with an inference to being persecuted for his unique stand on things. Giggle.

Mark wastes no time in setting up strawmen. Getting kicked out of Jury Duty is not persecution of any kind, nor did I infer that it was. Mark quoted me saying, "Before I even first reported to the courtroom, I already suspected that my individualist and market anarchist views would get me kicked out, and today they did," and obviously it has no inference to any kind of persecution.

Mark sets up another strawman, claiming that I am inferring that my "intellect" got me out of Jury Duty:

Then, natch, he switched gears. Now it wasn't persecution that would get him out of serving, but his advanced intellect.

Mark then quotes me at length. I don't want to repost it here for the sake of brevity, but feel free to read my jury duty post and see for yourself that I never infer or claim that my "intellect" had anything to do with it. I was fully consistent with my original claim (that Mark even quoted and misrepresented): "Before I even first reported to the courtroom, I already suspected that my individualist and market anarchist views would get me kicked out, and today they did." That's it. No more, no less. I have views that are not compatible with the jury requirements set forth by the judge and the attorneys, and I got kicked off the jury box because of it.

Mark continues:

Wow, so controversial! (And yet, his views on minimum wage are so stunningly in rigid lockstep with every other bland, mainstream Republican in recent memory.)

What a coincidence! My views on one issue, minimum wage, are the same as some Republicans. Strange that my views on the mere existence of government are not. So a few Republicans want to abolish some of the same "laws" that I do. Good for them. Mark's attempt to paint me as being in some way aligned with a statist Republican falls flat on the most fundamental level.

The insulting tone is literally dripping off this guy's keyboard. I'm not the one claiming that my views are controversial. It is the judge and the attorneys (well, mostly the attorneys) who claim that my views are controversial. The attorneys judged me not able to serve impartially as a juror; I told them that I thought I could.

Mark then proceeds to tell us about his Jury experience. His experience, and his description of it, is quite different than mine:

I went in on Monday for jury selection. Because I wasn't predisposed to not serving, as Kinney admitted he was, I didn't waste time throwing up obstacles.

The strawmen never quit. Mark is either delusional, or dishonest. I did not throw up any obstacles whatsoever. I followed the oath that they made me take. I gave the honest truth to every question asked of me. I did nothing to escape jury duty. What I did do, is make a bet that I would naturally and legitimately get kicked off the case, and I won.

It is true that I did not want to serve, but I did nothing to cheat my way out of service. I'm not even against serving on a jury per se, but the only reason I didn't want to serve this time was because it was a three-week-plus case. I got real work to do at my job, and I don't want to be behind three weeks or more when I come back to it. It took three days of jury selection just for them to get to me. Mark's case, lucky for him, was over in two days. Not too much of a time commitment for him to worry about:

The trial I was considered for was a burglary. So long as the death penalty wasn't involved (it wasn't) I didn't see any reason to make excuses and "get out of it." Within two hours of my arrival, I had been assigned to a jury and told to report the next day. By noon I was sipping coffee at home.

Yesterday I appeared at court for the trial. We were told it would take one or two days, and in fact we finished on the first day, albeit late into the evening. The case was absolutely insane. The alleged victim claimed he came home and saw someone robbing his house. He chased the guy in his truck and the two cars collided a few times. Cops arrived, arrested the alleged thief, and thus the trial. Unfortunately, the evidence showed quite an opposite story. There was no evidence of a robbery. In fact, the guy wasn't a thief but a door to door salesman. The two cars hadn't collided in a chase, but happened when the homeowner -- who just assumed his house had been robbed -- intentionally rammed the other guy, trying to kill him. It also came out that the homeowner had lied about there being stolen property -- there wasn't anything stolen, although that hadn't stopped him from getting insurance money for the missing goods. In the end the evidence was overwhelming that the defendant not only hadn't committed a crime, but was himself the victim of attempted murder... all for just knocking on the guy's door. What sucks, of course, is that the homeowner not only got off without a single charge, but made money from his insurance company in the process.

So when we, the jury, left at the end of the day we knew without any hesitation that we had helped an innocent man stay out of jail. We protected this man's individual rights and personal freedom. And it only took me a day and a half of jury service.

So Mark boasts about protecting someone's rights in only a day and a half's time. Mark also implies that I didn't protect someone's rights due to his imagined attempts by me to escape jury duty. But even worse, Mark gives us no information on the things that my post focused on: the juror selection process, the questions the attorneys asked, the principles involved, etc. Mark simply gives us a rundown of the case, and then vaguely suggests that they reached a verdict, although it isn't exactly clear. Mark's jury experience, and his write-up of it, is totally unrelated to mine, especially considering his misrepresentations and strawman attacks.

Immediately after boasting about his day and a half jury service, Mark rails against individualism. Oh, the irony:

I think it's important to remember that when you hear the word "individualism" it really just means "sociopathological selfishness." All that matters is what's important to yourself, and everyone else can go fuck themselves. Anything involving a room with more than two other people in it is to be avoided. If that means other people's rights are trampled on, so what? Your "individualism" isn't affected.

Mark is full of empty assertions. Indeed, they are required in order for him to prop up and hack down his strawmen. Individualism quite specifically does not say "so what?" to the trampling of rights (click here for a cool animated clip about self-ownership). The trampling of an individual's rights comes from opponents of individualism: collectivism and statism, with their coercion and their monopoly of power. That is the philosophy that Mark subscribes to.

Honestly, for Mark to claim that "individualism" means that another individual's rights can be "trampled on," means that he obviously doesn't even understand the what it's title means, let alone the meat of it's arguments.

Mark then throws a punch for those who are oppressed under the collective boot of "Boards of Directors":

(Notice, however, how "market anarchists" can never quite explain how they feel about corporate Boards of Directors or other power-wielding, freedom-limiting groups that comprise their pro-capitalist enterprises.)

Boy is that statement loaded! Not only that, but it's self-defeating. If the compromising of capitalism is bad as he says it is, then the monopolistic, coercive, anti-competitive entity that is "government" is a very bad thing, isn't it? If anti-competition is "freedom-limiting" as Mark implies, then he doesn't have much justification for a monopolistic, taxing government that forces you to follow it's rules and buy it's products and services, does he?

Maybe market anarchists don't tell Mark how they feel about Boards of Directors because his own argument is much more of an argument against the state?

Now comes some ad hominem fun!

Well, that's okay. While libertarian, individualist, freethinking, market anarchists like Kinney are avoiding things like jury service,

I served twice as long as he did.

voting,

I don't like providing support to an entity that dissatisfies me. I won't patronize a store that provides a crappy product or service.

running for office,

That's like an atheist Pope. Next, Mark will explain how baldness is a hair color.

active participation in society, bathing, etc.

This is getting pathetic. This guy has no idea! I wonder if Mark would like to back up anything he says? Maybe he would like to compare which of us more actively participates in society? I'll bet $5 on myself!

-- and restricting their activities to typing up snarky little blog entries...

Mark totally sucks at research. Every single one of his assumptions is wrong. All of his strawmen are easy to point out. All of his arguments fail.

Why does Mark feel such a need to respond so with such a personal and insulting tone to what was a political and governmental-themed (not to mention positive and cheery) post? Is he projecting? Does he have something to prove?

Oh wait, now I get it! Mark has a parody statement! Silly me. I should have realized that Mark meant everything he wrote to be total bullshit. No person could logically be that good at truly being that dumb, unless of course they were only doing a parody (or they were a Republican, giggle).