The "Non-Libertarian FAQ"

I have taken a long time to examine critically the claims on a statist FAQ. In this entry I want to briefly examine another such FAQ, this time openly anti-libertarian, the "Non-Libertarian FAQ". I will not examine most of the FAQ, since many of these points are corollaries or address specifically American arguments. But I want to look at how Mike Huben defends standard statist lies like the "social contract" or taxation.

(NOTE : if you want to read a longer and more detailed rebuttal of this FAQ, see Some Responses to Mike Huben's A Non-Libertarian FAQ, by anarchist economist David Friedman)

The foremost defenders of our freedoms and rights, which libertarians prefer you overlook, are our governments. National defense, police, courts, registries of deeds, public defenders, (...), etc. all are government efforts that work towards defending freedoms and rights.

Actually, most libertarians would agree with what he's saying here, so I'm not sure what his point is. As the anarchist kind of libertarian, my position is quite otherwise. I see absolutely no reason to accept the ridiculous claim that government has our best interests in mind. True, government does protect our basic rights through the police and the courts, but only because it would lose credibility were it to stop doing so.

Even the police and the courts, like any other government system, still serve a purely utilitarian function : to serve the interests of the ruling class. Only the rich and powerful get "justice".

There are several explicit means by which people make the social contract with government. The commonest is when your parents choose your residency and/or citizenship after your birth. In that case, your parents or guardians are contracting for you, exercising their power of custody. No further explicit action is required on your part to continue the agreement, and you may end it at any time by departing and renouncing your citizenship.

(...)

Take [libertarians] to a restaurant and see if they think it ethical to walk out without paying because they didn't sign anything. (...) The restaurant gets to set the price and the method of contract so that even your presence creates a debt. What is a libertarian going to do about that?

Here we have the standard statist rationalization of trying to associate governments with peaceful enterprises like restaurants. As far as I know, I was not born into a restaurant, and restaurants do not extort half of my income by force !

The fact is that being controlled by one's parents into residing in this or that territory does not a contract make. To recycle Huben's stupid example, if I kidnap someone and force them to eat at a certain restaurant, that person is not under the obligation of paying. He or she did not get there of their own free will.

Renouncing one's citizenship is not the equivalent of the end of a contract. Unless you leave for the high seas or the Arctic circle, you're not going to be able to live without government. So to associate the two is delusional.

The key difference is who owns what. The Mafia doesn't own anything to contract about. The landowner owns the land (in a limited sense.) And the (...) government owns rights to govern its territory.

This is once again a very silly rationalization. The government has no legitimate claim on any territory. It grabs territory by force, just like gangs fight each other over territory. There is no "right" in the "might" of government.

[T]here are no working examples of libertarian cities, states, or nations.

Actually, that is a bald-faced lie. The standard example that libertarians give is Hong Kong pre-Chinese repossession. Examples of orderly and stable anarchies in history include medieval Iceland and medieval Ireland, the Papuans, Labrador pre-1730, and pre-Alfred Anglo-Saxon England.

(...) "Might makes ability to make something", Right or Wrong. You can't even try for Right until you have Might to back it up in the real world. That's the reason that some real governments have survived and all utopian governments that have tried to abolish force have failed.

Even though this primitive FAQ seems to have no philosophy in it, this is a good indication of Huben's moral rationale for supporting coercion and violence. He believes that morality is enforced by the gun. How incongruous is that ? How can any knowledge, which can only be attained by free minds and free individuals, be imposed by the force of arms ? Whoever has such might, will inevitably desire to mold society for his own ends, not in the name of any truth. This is the basic fallacy of statism.

Like most other non-pacifistic belief systems, libertarians want to initiate force for what they identify as their interests and call it righteous retaliation, and use the big lie technique to define everything else as evil "initiation of force". They support the initial force that has already taken place in the formation of the system of property, and wish to continue to use force to perpetuate it and make it more rigid.

I am a libertarian (in the general sense that I want less government - zero, to be more precise) and I do not "support the initial force that has already taken place in the formation of the system of property". I also do not wish to "use force to perpetuate it". Rights of property are extensions of one's right of action. So how can such rights entail force ? When is force needed ? Blank.

Slaveholders use force against their slaves in order to keep them from having wealth and become independent. Free people do not need to use force to respect each other's freedom and property (some people, of course, will use force in any context).

As I told creationists who wondered why I bothered, it's interesting to me to study unusual beliefs for the same reason it's interesting for doctors to study pathologies. You don't have to catch a disease to be able to understand it, fight it, or vaccinate against it.

Wow. I didn't know the desire to stop the exploitation of the masses by ruling classes was a disease that needed vaccination. No one told the people who wrote the Magna Carta, I guess.

What do I think of Mike Huben after this ? I'm afraid I have to copy him on that one. I think he is no different than a Creationist. He shares the passion of the irrational fanatic, and he also shares their corruption of rationality and their willful ignorance of the facts. You can post on his blog if you want to tell him exactly what you think of his silly dictatorial belief system.

Max the Reform Dog / Competition and Monopolies

A capitalist cartoon ? You dno't say. Check it out at The Adventures of Max.


Àlso check out this thread from anti-state on "Why would competition eliminate monopolies ?".

The first, the natural monopoly, is like when for geographical reasons you only have one supplier, because the area doesn't need to support more. For example, one sports supply store in a small town. i.e. only one sports supply store can be supported by the area market.

The second, the artificial monopoly, is like when a large company decides to try and control the market, raising prices in an area where a natural monopoly doesn't exist. Sometimes they do it by forming an agreement with other similar suppliers, which is called a cartel.

The third, the state monopoly, occurs when competition is prevented one way or another by government (i.e. people with notions of 'government authority').

The first two can form in a laissez faire free market, but the inherent checks and balances which make the free market so beautiful cannot abide them for long and their attempts to control prices is very short lived. The third monopoly is inflicted upon the market with the deceitful claim that it is meant to keep the first two from happening, but in fact, creates longer lasting and more stable monopolies which are worse than the first two types combined.

Grover Cleveland ? / The state cannot impose morality

I have discussed the worst US presidents on an earlier entry. The Club for Growth nominates Grover Cleveland as one of the BEST presidents :

On the revenue side, he lowered the protective tariff — the main instrument of taxation at the time — after years of Republican abuse. On spending, Cleveland was always frugal, once proclaiming that, “…under our scheme of government the waste of public money is a crime against the citizen.”

(...)

In fact, the guy was unrelenting. He vetoed more than twice as much legislation (584) than all of the previous presidents combined (216).

On monetary policy, he had no equal. Not only did he believe in a stable money supply through his unwavering support for the gold standard, but he arguably lost the White House after his first term because of it.

Honest, forceful, and blunt, Cleveland once said, “What is the use of being elected or re-elected unless you stand for something?”

(...)

Most people today don’t know who Grover Cleveland is. They don’t recognize the name and there’s no monument in Washington D.C. paying tribute to his memory. But I, for one, am deeply gratified that he stood at the helm of the American ship and kept it on course for 8 years. He deserves the recognition.

On Strike the Root, Marcel Votluckai tells us why the state could never offer a "moral economy" :

Yet there are rules in the marketplace. The question is whether a monopolistic State is the most efficient way to enforce them. A society and an economy based on theft, fraud, extortion, coercion, and violence would become totally dysfunctional. People have a natural aversion to chaos and therefore construct order around principles such as human/property rights. It's only with a powerful, wealthy government that people who abuse this system can get away with it with impunity--especially when the regulatory agencies are controlled by politically connected businesspeople and politicians who want political points. The State rewards the wealthy and incompetent while legitimate players suffer. Overall, if the State is like a referee, it's a corrupt one immersed in payola scams. Not to mention it's the only game in town; there are no other alternatives as would develop naturally in a free, open market.

Social justice - who's in the right ?

"They make too much money !"
"People shouldn't be allowed to make 10 million dollars a year."
"How can any person be worth that much ?"

You hear these complaints again and again, against pro athletes, rock stars, CEOs (especially of those big bad pharmaceutical companies - how dare they make medicine !), and other multi-millionaires. The "argument" being that these people are just like you and me, and so they should make as much as we make. That there is somehow something morally outrageous about making more money than most people. That there should be class jealousy, and perhaps more class warfare.

But what does this really mean in economic terms ? Most people do not make their money by stealing it from other people (except politicians, but few people complain about their salaries - they even defend politicians by comparing them to athletes). They make money by selling or helping to sell a product - music albums, tickets, jerseys, whatever. And people pay for these products because they perceive them as being of value. Athletes and singers make their money because they contribute much needed entertainment to people, and these people appreciate it and buy their products.

So then the question arises, how much contribution to people's values is too much ?

Seen from this individualist perspective, the complaints against high salaries are absurd. How can we fault anyone for contributing too much to society ? And more importantly, how can we blame them for consumer choice, something they have no control over ?

At best, an anti-individualist could argue that his values are better than everyone else's and that he wouldn't buy such products, but his values are irrelevant to those of the other people in a given society. People will hold the values they want, and express them in the way they want, and it's the role of the free market to help them do so.

Calls for class warfare, therefore, are misguided. It is not against "the rich" that they are really fighting, but against their "fellow classists" who go to the arena, buy CDs, and watch shows on television. In essence, they are against individual values, because individual values do not promote their classist agenda.

Either way, it is the connection between salary and people's values, which is obvious if you look at the situation in individualist terms, that they are failing to grasp. Salaries are not taken out of thin air. They depend on revenues, which depend on spending, which depend on values. If no one was interested in sports, then no one would go to the stadiums, and no athlete would make money. It is, in fact, a testimony to Western civilization that we have attained such a level of prosperity that we can devote so much money to entertainment !

"Social justice" is not to be found in the greedy power-mongering and kangaroo courts of the statists. Coercion is not just. The only social justice that exists, must be based on cooperation and non-coercion. This is because justice consists of getting what one earns, and not getting the unearned - this applies to trials but to other aspects of life as well. By trading, people deal with each other by value. But when coercion exists, the strong and powerful will always take what the masses earn and use them for themselves, sometimes using them as a tool of manipulation, unearned resources for the taking of this or that interest group.

The free market, therefore, is true social justice, where you receive resources and popularity proportionally to the perceived value of your contributions, and give proportionally to how you perceive other people's work. That is the only just principle. That is the only way society progresses and the only way the masses can work for a better life. It is, in fact, the only principle that has ever yielded progress or equality. The opposite principle - that a ruling class should establish itself by force and redistribute resources to further its aims - has never produced anything but tax slavery, war (financed by tax slavery) and suffering (thanks to war). You shall know them by their fruits !

The Burden of Proof : what it is and is not

The burden of proof argument is perhaps the single most powerful argument in favour of market anarchy. Aaron wrote about the burden of proof in "The Burden of Proof, and Aaron Kinney's Political Deconversion", and I have a future entry on the topic called "Why should we justify anarchy ?". But until then, I want to quickly point out what it is and isn't.

What the burden of proof argument IS :

* It is an excellent tool to structure the debate between anarchism and statism (in the same way than it informs the debate between atheists and believers). It clearly shows how statism is NOT the default position, but rather in need of justification, just like any other claim about reality.

* It is a very easy argument to use and understand. You may not like what it entails, but you can't really argue with it.

What the burden of proof IS NOT :

* It does not automatically prove anarchism. Anarchism is a claim about reality just as much as statism is. However, anarchism is an inherently simpler claim than statism, since it does not claim that government and its associated processes are needed for a society to flourish (indeed, government is inherently parasitic and thus an attack on society). So the anarchist has somewhat less to prove than the statist. And as we have both deductive arguments about the incentive system of government beign inherently destructive, empirical data from anarchies of the past and present which confirms our thesis, and powerful general arguments against the possibility of statist justification (such as the argument from morality, the argument from the state of nature, or the meaninglesness argument, on which I will write later), it is relatively easy to demonstrate that anarchy fulfills its burden of proof, while statism cannot.

* It is not a one-shot argument. Anyone who is not honest (i.e. committed to reason and logic, following the truth wherever it leads) will not see any validity in it. In most cases the argument from morality should be used.

Religion and politics : collectivist blood brothers

This is an abridged version of my three-part article "Religion and politics : collectivist blood brothers" on Goosing the Antithesis.

Religious belief systems and political belief systems are both collectivist in nature. And no, I'm not just talking about conservatives - left and right-wing alike are equally collectivist. They both believe that the individual interest must be opposed by the collective will of "the people", simply in different ways. The liberal pretension of "rebellion against power" is nothing more then marketing positioning designed to attract certain segments of the population (like atheists who don't know better).

All politicians have the same values - lust for unearned power, unbridled greed, getting votes, getting acclaim - and they pass the same evil laws, equally pander to the powerful, the rich, the popular, and spout the same rhetoric in order to achieve their corrupt values. I think most people are aware of that fact, but still vote for politicians and support government because they believe, absurdly, that the existence of government is morally right.

This being said, the point I want to raise is how similar religion and politics are as collectivist systems - based on a transcendent, authoritarian entity as director of action (God for one, government for the other).


1. Monotheistic religions and political groups both exist at the lowest level of morality, the authoritarian stage (order-based). Government enforces morality by punishment (fines, jail, capital punishment) and by giving its agents (police) the privileges it needs to root out criminals (a term it can expand at its leisure). The laws are not principles of living or an attempt to rationally discuss social problems, but rather orders to be obeyed. Rational discussion of social problems is, in fact, counter-productive to government, because it is easier to control a population that kow-tows to political force to solve their problems instead of seeking peaceful and individualist solutions.

2. Monotheistic religions and political groups both see morality as a top-down (outside-in) process, instead of a bottom-up (inside-out) process. To the religious believer, epistemology and morality are not discovered by the individual and then applied to the spiritual context, but rather imposed to the individual by a transcendent entity. The same thing applies to government, which is transcendent to the individual. We know this because the "common good" that government seeks has no relation to individual benefit, and therefore is transcendent to any single individual, and because government is not supposed to have any of the foibles of individual humans. Both of these fallacies derive from the collectivist justification of government. Government imposes morality through, as I said before, laws and regulations.

3. If we look at the facts of reality, we see that, while irrationality is widespread (in no small part due to religion and politics), people by and large behave towards each other peacefully and are always ready to help each other. Religion and politics, on the other hand, are predicated on the premise that man is fundamentally corrupt/depraved and must be controlled by force. The premise of government force is that people's values are corrupted by "selfishness", which is really a code-word for "individualism" (they certainly don't mind collectives acting selfishly). Because of this "selfishness", man must be controlled by force for the "common good".

4. Man's corrupt nature can be redeemed by the transcendent authority. Only the widespread imposition of government and its made-up laws (which only benefit government) can save society from the imaginary evils of individualism.

5. This creates a vicious circle of failure and belief reinforcement. As the belief system inevitably fails - because it is based on evil and lies that run counter to human nature, the nature of societies, and the nature of reality - all failures are interpreted as a need for stronger belief and stronger expression of that belief in society (i.e. jam it even more in everyone's throats). This, in turn, accentuates the problems.

6. Both suffer from Special Pleading. Because the authority is assumed to be transcendent, it is not bound to the same moral rules as we are. Any action, even war and genocide, committed by this authority is justified by higher ideals (or unknown ideals, in the case of a hidden god). We strongly condemn murder by private citizens, and yet murder by government or because of government (capital punishment, police shootings, medication withholding by the FDA, gun control, etc), organized murder (war), or slavery for organized murder (draft) are seen as "business as usual" and as something that can be rationally defended.

7. They are both the opiates of the masses, and the parasites of the masses. Both religion and government are parasites on the intelligence, creativity and productivity of individuals - and they themselves produce nothing of substance unless such production can lead to more popularity or support for the belief system.

8. They both seek to stratify society between the ruling class (those who have authority) and the masses (those who don't).

There is one last resemblance : the necessity of government is a fiction, just like the necessity of God is a fiction. Both are extremely harmful to the individualist thirst for progress that has brought mankind up from its natural state and into our modern values and our modern world, and still oppress billions of unfortunate today. To these problems, the only fundamental answer is : individualism.

Protest / Complex Solutions for a Complex World

You all have to watch this video from the show "Boston Legal" linked at onegoodmove. It is a great piece of work. Too bad it's fictional.

Cafe Hayek discusses the complaints from statists that the free market is a "simplistic solution". His point is that it is government which is a simplistic solution, not the free market :

I admit that my proposed solution for many public-policy problems is to say "Let the market handle it." But this response is neither naive nor lazy. It's realistic. It reflects my understanding that almost any problem you name -- rebuilding the Katrina-ravaged Gulf Coast, providing excellent education for children, reducing traffic congestion on highways -- is most likely to be dealt with efficiently, fairly and effectively by the market rather than by government.

Saying "Let the market handle it" is to reject a one-size-fits-all, centralized rule of experts. It is to endorse an unfathomably complex arrangement for dealing with the issue at hand. Recommending the market over government intervention is to recognize that neither he who recommends the market nor anyone else possesses sufficient information and knowledge to determine, or even to foresee, what particular methods are best for dealing with the problem.

To this I would add that if statists had to describe their government solution in any detail at all, they would completely sink themselves. It is their own shorthand "government does this... government helps that" which completely ignores moral issues, such as who steals the resources from whom. Just like saying "God did it", it is a statement which actually says nothing at all.

France: Give Us Economic Ruin, or Give Us Death!

Protests broke out across all of France today, thanks to some new legislation that will make it easier for unions to fire younger workers. Some of the protests turned violent. Cars were burned, streets were barricaded, and somewhere around 500,000 people took part in the protests.

From CNN.com:

Saturday's mass protests were among the largest of this week's demonstrations -- including Thursday's marches by tens of thousands -- which have partially closed or shut down two-thirds of the nation's universities. There was also violence at Thursday's protests, and police retaliated with tear gas and rubber pellets, AP said.

Saturday's protests reached every corner of France, AP reported, with organizers citing 160 marches from the small provincial town of Rochefort in the southwest to the major city of Lyon in the southeast.

One quarter of France's youth is unemployed. This is because of their heavily legislated, unionized, and collectivist economy. Their job market is a joke. More legislation will not help the situation. What the people of France needs to do, and what they will surely not do, is remove all the collectivist legislation, remove all the unions, and remove all the unemployment benefits.

The citizens of France are totally addicted to their gift economy. Another CNN article said:

In Marseille, extreme leftist youths climbed the facade of City Hall, replacing a French flag with a banner reading "anticapitalism." Police used tear gas to disperse them, making several arrests.

Oh the sweet, sweet irony. Students who hate capitalism protest with banners on the top of City Hall, and are quickly assaulted and arrested by the same government that they are demanding take more "big brother" measures to protect them!

The irony continues:

"Villepin is trying to destroy France for his own political gain," said David Caruso, 42, an employee of the state-run electric company, festooned with union stickers. "The (plan) may create jobs but it will destroy them again by 2007."

More delectable irony. An employee of a state-run electric company, loaded with union stickers, is accusing Villepin, a lawmaker, of trying to destroy France. While he may be right, it is for the wrong reasons. He is the pot calling the kettle black.

Clearly it is government that leads to social and economic instability, and it is unions that cause unemployment. If the citizens of France continue to demand more government handouts and protections, they will eventually suck their own economy dry. The evidence is all around them. What will it take for them to see cause and effect? Or are they simply too addicted to their socialist system?