Brainpolice : Competition

Gustave De Molinari and The Production of Security

Brainpolice — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 23:02:00 GMT

Gustave De Molinari was a radical classical liberal associated with Frederic Bastiat and the French liberal school of economics. In his work "The Production of Security", Molinari was the first economist to propose the possibility of free competition for the production of security, which had been an untouched matter by laissez-faire economists up until this point. Frederic Bastiat, who was a fairly radical classical liberal economist for his time, initially was tempted to disagree with Molinari on this point, but when he was on his deathbed not long after the release of "The Production of Security" apparently he aknowledged that Molinari was the continuer of his work.

Molinari did not see any reason why economists should argue for free competition in all sorts of areas or industries, and then suddenly create a gigantic caviat for the production of security and arbitration. If there should be consumer choice and free entry to the provision of all sorts of products and services such as food, clothing, shelter and all sorts of types of industries, then why not security and arbitration? If there should be no legal monopoly on such things, why wouldn't this also apply to security and arbitration? Molinari came to oppose both "monopoly and communism" in any industry. In other words, he opposed both state and absolute communal control of industry, viewing free competition as the alternative.

Many contemporary free market anarchists consider Molinari to at least be a proto-anarchist, since he had technically surpassed the formal concept of "limited government" from an economic perspective. By the very least, what Molinari realized is a necessary component of market anarchism. Laissez-faire economists prior to Molinari simply did not question the state production of security or arbitration itelf. With this being aknowledged, Molinari never formally called himself an anarchist, but he did become associated with the movement known as panarchism, which tends to favor pluralism and legal aterritorialism. The degree to which panarchism is even distinguishable from anarchism without adjectives is debatable.

While he is not the most well-known historical figure, Molinari more or less represents the final conclusion of the French liberal school of economics and the first thinker to formally propose free competition in the production of security. In this regaurd, Molinari does have historical significance as a precursor to free market anarchism. Molinari's work was also circulated in America and partially praised by the individualist anarchist Benjamin Tucker, who favored free competition in the production of security himself. The revival of Molinari as a key figure is partially due to Murray Rothbard highlighting him and writting an editor's preface or foreward to the most recent English edition of "The Production of Security".

To an extent, the significance of Molinari's contribution has alot to do with how early on in time it was that he initially made it. "The Production of Security" was released in 1849, and the idea of free competition for the production of security was largely absent from laissez-faire economists throughout the rest of the century. Even the early leaders of the Austrian school of economics did not really touch the question. In fact, it more or less wasn't until the time of Murray Rothbard that a laissez-faire economist would meaningfully press the issue of free competition in the production of security. With this historical understanding, Molinari was quite radical for his time and he definitely has significance.

Competition and Cooperation

Brainpolice — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 12:34:00 GMT

In the economic sense of the term, competition refers to the incentive to better appease a multiplicity of demands, and cooperation refers to the most efficient and ethical means of meeting such demands. An individual's demands are better met through cooperation and production than through isolation and destruction. Competition does not refer to a war of all against all or atomism, it refers to a process in which decentralized cooperation is employed in the attempt to fulfill a dynamic and variant latticework of demands. Monopoly, on the other hand, refers to the lack of competition, the imposition of a singular or more limited array of options through coercive means. Competition and monopoly are therefore dichotomous in this sense, as competition entails a multiplicity of options pursued freely. Competition is a reflection of there being multiple methods of cooperation and multiple ends that cooperation can be used to pursue, and as such there is no absolute dichotomy between competition and cooperation.

Individualism does not regaurd the individual as if they exist in a vacuum, it merely recognizes the individual's sovereignty as co-existing with interpersonal relations, and that it is a fundamental building block of a society. It is erroneous to present a false dichotomy between uniformity and atomism, when neither of the two reflect the nature of an individual let alone a society. Society qua society is founded on voluntary cooperation, but this does not conflict with individual sovereignty. Voluntary cooperation is merely the net effect of people making use of their individual sovereignty, and competition is merely a reflection of the diversity of wants that people pursue as sovereigns. While interpersonal relations are something to take into account, the individual still retains their independance from the transgressions of others in an equilibrium, which aknowledges the competitive element of society that is responsible for creativity and innovation.

Cooperation and production is not an ethical imperative in and of itself, it is something that one has a greater incentive towards in conditions of equal liberty. However, one ultimately retains their sovereignty to not produce and not participate in a particular organization or interaction that they didn't explicitly consent to. In a voluntary society, the methods in which one cooperates and the extent to which there is a binding obligation to cooperate can only be in a contractual context in which consent is explicitly given prior to the enforcement of the obligation. One does not have an unchosen positive obligation to be a member of a particular organization or to participate in its process of decision-making. The implication of this is not the negation of society as such, but the decentralization of society as a consequence of people entering and exiting from a wide array of contractual agreements.

The coercive imposition of uniformity stifles cooperation. It disincentivizes and erodes at competitive alternatives that otherwise would have been fostered through cooperation, and it violates the individual's sovereignty. Coercion is anti-cooperative by its very nature, as it can only establish a parasitic relationship or a zero sum game, while cooperation is geared towards mutual benefit or reciprical relationships. Centralization and monopoly can only establish the elimination of individual choice in the process of cooperation, and therefore the elimination of competition. Competition is necessary to counteract thea rbitrary imposition of a particular set of preferences, otherwise there is no genuine cooperation to speak of, only subservience. Cooperation is not something that is centrally planned or coercively enforced, it is a process of spontaneous order.

Free Association Resolves Cultural Conflict

Brainpolice — Sat, 17 May 2008 13:09:00 GMT

The very existance of state-provided and/or monopolized services is a boon to cultural conflict over how those services are used and who gets to use them, since the individual must pay for them no matter what and has no real alternative to the singular provider of the service (I.E. the state).

For example, there is endless conflict over the public education system precisely because the individual has little choice but to make use of and pay for it. Everyone battles to pressure the state to enforce their particular preferances for education models, since they don't have a meaningful option to form alternative associations with those who explicitly agree with their preferances. Whatever standards are set by the state apply to everyone involved. If someone objects to a particular standard, they have no choice but to pay for it anyways and quite likely them or their children will end up having to abide by that standard and attend those particular schools.

If people were free to persue such services based on genuine consent, then each individual or group with their own preferances would be able to form into mutual associations and hence a more broad and plural scope of options would exist. Noone would be forced into a model or association that they don't desire or to pay for someone else's preferances. If a given group prefers creationism, they could organize into their own associations that teach creationism. If a given group prefers evolution, they could do likewise. If a given group prefers gay marriages, they can form their own associations to provide them. If a given group does not prefer them, they can form their own associations that don't provide them. Such questions would be reduced in significance to a matter of what flavor of ice cream one prefers.

The incentive for such cultural conflict that we currently see in our politically dominated society is removed when people are free to simply "live and let live". They don't have to fight over how to use a singular organization precisely because they have the option to opt out of them and form alternative organizations. People might still disagree with eachother, but their disagreement would not be manifested in such direct hostility and they would not be able to or find any reasonable need to force their particular preferances onto everyone else. The individual can simply disassociate and freely compete with those whom they disagree with. There would no longer be a singular monopolistic apparatus to fight for control over. One can simply patronize or form alternative associations. It's a win-win situation for all.

This does not necessarily imply absolute cultural separatism, as if each group completely isolates themselves from eachother geographically. Free association does not necessarily imply that, for example, all of the Catholics will band together and form an exclusively Catholic community or all of the Muslim people will form an exclusively Muslim community. Such groups can peacefully co-exist and intermingle within a given geographical area or community. Within a single community there may exist a vast multitude of different associations and organizations for an individual to choose from to best suite their personal and cultural preferances.

There is no reason why a single community cannot contain a variety of different social combinations within it that are in free competition with eachother. While each individual social combination may certainly be exclusive, they cannot be exclusive with respect to other people's property and associations. They cannot exclude someone from the community as a whole unless they were the only social combination in the entire community, which is highly unlikely. The implications of free association is actually an increase in pluralism rather than homogeneity. Extreme homogeniety only occurs when there is a central plan imposed onto an entire society, when each respective group has no choice but to conform to a single standard or participate in a single social combination within a given geographical area. It is only when there is an institution such as the state that cultural and economic standards or models can be forced onto everyone uniformly.

In the absence of the centralized and coercive institutional means by which a single plan can be imposed onto an entire community, the natural result would seem to be more pluralistic than it otherwise would have been. Only a coercive geographical monopoly can uniformly control everyone within the territory or exclude people from the entire territory. Once the draconian geographical apparatus of control is removed, there is much more leeway for people to develope alternatives (and hence more plurality) within a given geographical area.

Resolving Anarchist Conflict

Brainpolice — Tue, 06 May 2008 00:57:00 GMT

Conflict between the socialist oriented and market oriented camps within anarchism can get very tedious. Many anarcho-communists and anarcho-syndicalists appear to emphatically claim that market anarchism isn't truly anarchism, that opposition to private property and capitalism is a requirement for one to be an anarchist, conflate currently existing political and economic systems with a free market and sometimes even defend welfare states as if take the edges off of the alleged evils of capitalism. Some anarcho-capitalists appear to get baited into functioning as vulgar libertarians or they generally associate themselves too closely with contemporary conservatism and therefore end up defending currently existing corporatism as if it is the result of a free market, claim that all forms of socialism are statist political systems, defend paleoconservative positions on issues such as immigration and romantisize feudalism and colonial America.

The bulk of the debate between the two sides consists of a language barrier, semantics and quibbling over property. There is a language barrier over terms such as capitalism, socialism, communism, anarchism and libertarianism to the point where any true meaning is rendered obsolete. Each side suspects that the other side are merely authoritarians in disguise, and sometimes the suspicion is entirely justified (with some social anarchists functioning as state-socialists and some anarcho-capitalists functioning as conservatives). The more that each camp acts foolishly intolerant and monopolostic, the more likely they are to be pushed back into the statist paradime due to reactionary sentiments, leading to the use of political means to dominate against their alleged enemies. Sometimes they spend more time critisizing eachother than they do critisizing contemporary statist ideologies.

Capitalism has different connotations to the various camps. Some consider capitalism to be the current system, some consider it to be separation between labor and ownership, some consider it to be private ownership of the means of production or the extensive use of capital and some consider it to be a spontaneous order resulting from the voluntary and mutually beneficial interpersonal relations between people in the absence of a central planner or state through a process of free trade relations and competition. Socialism has different connotations as well. Some consider socialism to be worker ownership of the means of production, some consider it to be state ownership of the means of production and some consider it to be some sort of egalitarian free market. There are nearly endless semantics over the meanings of the terms which avoids a real discussion and debate about the actual principles that people advocate. These semantic conflicts even exist within each respective camp, as some market anarchists have abandoned the term capitalism.

Etymologically, anarchism simply means "no rulers". Anything that is without rulers is therefore anarchic by definition. Any philosophy that is opposed to rulers is an anarchistic philosophy by definition. Whatever additional features they may have is only a matter of flavor. On a fundamental level, all anarchists of any type oppose the institution of the state. Anything else that they may support or oppose beside the state is comparatively inconsequential, although it is of course true that non-state institutions may sometimes qualify as examples of rulership. So it does make some degree of sense to say that anarchism is more than mere consistant/radical anti-statism, even if one wants to quibble that such institutions would qualify as states anyways. One way to put it is that anarchists are opposed to crime or plunder in general as a matter of principle, and more large-scale manifestations are merely the institutionalization of crime or plunder. In either case, there is no reason to ostracize people who truly do oppose rulers from the anarchist movement just because they have perhaps a somewhat different flavor than one's particular camp.

The issue of property is the main area of conflict. The property debate has been going on forever. Some social anarchists seem to think that private property is either a product of the state or inevitably leads to a state. Private property may be thought of as either a legal construct or a form of exploitation that precedes and leads to the formation of states. Of course, one cannot logically hold both positions at once, since that would be like taking both sides of a chicken/egg debate at once. Market anarchists tend to define private property in terms that should actually appeal to a socialist, which is that legitimate private property is the product of labor - a labor theory of property aquisition. How can a socialist oppose labor when that is supposed to be their forte? If consistant to their principles, the market anarchist does not support all legal private property titles, for they have an independant standard of justice in property aquisition that would delegitimize currently existing conditions. In short, they oppose the currently existing legal construct. The vulgar libertarian, however, does fall into the trap of defending all or some illegitimate portion of currently existing private property titles and buisiness arrangements.

On the other hand, complications arise over the value of labor, as social anarchists tend to cling to some kind of labor theory of value. This is problematic because it doesn't adequately take into account the labor of the enterprenuer, the dynamic nature of prices and the factor of time in general. Contemporary market anarchists usually have discarded the labor theory of value for a subjective theory of value and theories of time preferance. However, if one observes individualist anarchists such as Benjamin Tucker who still held to a labor theory of value, it would seem to be that case that the such people thought that a free economy would naturally reflect a labor theory of value. So in this sense classical individualist anarchists are entirely supportive of laissez-faire and only disagree with more contemporary market anarchism in terms of what they think the outcome of a free market would be. More contemporary individualist anarchists have merely modified the position in light of changes and improvements in economic theory. If one takes a 19th century individualist anarchist and merely substitutes the subjective theory of value in place of the labor theory of value, one essentially has a contemporary market anarchist.

Diehard social anarchists oppose what they consider to be private property. They often make a distinction between personal property and private property or between possessions and property. They tend to have a principle loosely based on "use" of property that is supposed to be more limited than the extent of control and amount available to the individual that private property allows for. It would seem that there is a threshold of requirements for property ownership with perpetual use at one end and perpetual ownership in the absence of use on the other. If they are pushed and in a logical state of mind, the social anarchist will not tend to condone a standard of perpetual use and the market anarchist will not tend to condone a standard that allows one to hold a title to blatantly abandoned or unowned property, for each of those standards leads to endless absurdities and may justify clearly wrong and exploitative scenarios.

Perpetual use is an absurd criteria for ownership, for it would imply that as soon as one parks their car somewhere then it is no longer theirs and therefore someone else may expropriate the car for themselves. In short, it would justify theft. On the other hand, there are problems with titles to ownership of property, particularly land, that has blatantly been abandoned or neglected by the person with the title to ownership and while there simultaneously are actually other people who actually actively labor upon it. Intergenerational or perpetual ownership over property that one makes no use of yet others do leads to fuedalism. Surely future generations of people should not be bound to a nullified claim of ownership by someone else, some rich aristocrat who no longer contributes in any real way to the upkeep of the property or makes any use of it at all. In order to resolve the issue, some process of identifying or clarifying whether or not the property in question is abandoned by its original owner would make sense. It should be noted, however, that this does not necessarily justify the claims of the geolibertarians, who erroneously conclude that private land ownership is illegitimate and/or there should be collective land ownership as a universal standard.

When the absurdities resulting from the idea of perpetual use are pointed out, the social anarchist will often proclaim "general use" to be the standard for ownership. But general use is very vague, leaving open a range of possibilities. It would seem to be the case that what constitutes general use would have to be agreed upon or arbitrated, quite possibly varying from organization to organization and/or community to community. If this is conceded, then the only real difference between the two sides is a matter of what type of voluntary precedent one personal prefers. So long as each side remains at least passively tolerant of the fact that perhaps different communities or organizations of people will have somewhat different standards, then there is no reason for conflict. Free association resolves the problem. If a standard objectively ends up being more sucessful and efficient through voluntary interactions, then it will tend to win out in the dynamic and evolutionary process of trial and error that is inherent in free association and competition.

Social anarchists demand worker ownership of the means of production. If consistant to the principles of voluntary interpersonal relations, the market anarchist has no choice but to support the liberty of individuals to voluntarily form worker's collectives and opt out of or secede from other particular organizations. If the social anarchist is likewise consistant, they have no choice but to support the liberty of individuals to voluntary form into employer-employee relationships and opt out of or secede from their worker's collectives. If one is forced into or out of such associations through force or the threat thereof, then they would effectively become slaves. So long as neither side actually forces anyone into their prefered organizational structures, each side can mutually persue their desires without infringement upon others. In a sense, the key question to ask is: can I opt out of your organization/community/society? If not, then it is no different than a state. If so, then there obviously is not going to be absolute uniformity in terms of what particular organizations and types of organizations people choose to participate in, as everyone is not identifical in their preferances, traits and abilities.

An interesting cunundrum to present a social anarchist with is, "I want to be a wage slave, I want to work for a boss, so what do you do if I truly do choose to enter into a contractual relationship with someone for wages in exchange for my labor? Why can't I rent out the products of my labor if I sincerely want to? What if I want to opt out of the worker's collective and look for an employer?". If an individual is truly autonamous, then noone may legitimately force them out of this personal association or force them to remain in a particular association, whether it is a single individual or "the majority" or "community". Likewise, an individual should have the liberty to opt out of an employer-employee relationship and voluntarily organize with others into worker's collectives or other types of organization. One must recognize the liberty of even a single individual to secede from an organization. So long as one does not have any genuine debt or contractual obligations withstanding, they should be able to exit the association and persue other ones. That's precisely how free competition works, as undesired and inefficient modes of organization become obsolete by people's choices not to associate with or participate in them.

Forms of organization that are considered to be socialistic are theoretically possible options in a free market. This is something that some people from both the anarcho-capitalist and social anarchist camps seem to not want to aknowledge, each for different reasons and from different perspectives. The consistant proponent of voluntary interpersonal relations has a certain kind of tolerance that allows for those who disagree with them to opt out of their prefered organizations and voluntarily form alternatives. It's essentially a live and let live perspective: don't force me into your community or organization and I shall do likewise. Call it whatever one wants, the law of equal liberty, the non-aggression principle, decision-making in proportion to the degree that one is effected, etc., it's all essentially the same thing. Within the confines of the general principle, anything additional is only optional or preferential.

Philosophies and ideas in general evolve over time, and this is just as true about anarchism as it is about anything else. The economics and philosophy behind anarchism have evolved, sometimes into territory that is very market oriented. There is a progression and tree of sorts that can be traced from the most original anarchists to currently existing factions, including market anarchism. Mutualism can be seen as progressing to individualist anarchism and eventually into contemporary market anarchism, so claims that market anarchism has no place within anarchist tradition is false and ignores the variance that has always existed within the general movement. To try to cling absolutely to every single aspect of an obsolete theory from centuries ago starts to make one rather conservative, and in this sense some social anarchists have become blind traditionalists who are unwilling to modify their ideas in the face of new information. On the other hand, contemporary market anarchists should have a lot of appriciation for early anarchist tradition and be willing to see what they may have in common with more socialist oriented anarchists. They should understand themselves in historical context and aknowledge that certain segments of their philosophy wouldn't exist without those who came before them, the Proudhons and Bakunins and Tuckers and Spooners.

There is no rational reason for there to be the degree of conflict that currently exists between the different camps of anarchists.

Organization and Conflict: Free Association vs. Politics

Brainpolice — Thu, 01 May 2008 03:00:00 GMT

Free association and competition resolves conflict while politics, especially democratic politics, enables and ultimately depends on conflict. All disagreements between people about how to organize can theoretically be resolved through free association, as they have the choice to either disassociate/secede or come to a mutual agreement (in short, to voluntarily intregrate). The result is inherently polycentric/pluralist. Free association essentially leads to increased complexity and smaller social units.

In contrast, in a political atmosphere everyone within an arbitrarily and unjustly claimed and controlled territory battles eachother over which particular interest group imposes their preferantial type of organization onto everyone. The result is inherently monocentric or monopolistic. Politics essentially leads to imposed uniformity and very haphazard and blockish social units. It's inherently a "one size fits all" approach to organization that eliminates competition, and hence all meaningful alternatives.

In an atmosphere of free association, noone may legitimately impose their preferential form of organization on anyone else, either directly (through rulership itself) or indirectly (through democracy). Instead, a diverse array of types of organization and an intricate pattern emerges precisely as a consequence of the lack of a singular imposed power monopoly. An atmosphere of free association could be thought of as being more conductive to favorable social evolution than politics because the increased complexity involved allows for more possibilities, while politics limits the possibilities and therefore creates stagnation.

There would be no reason, in an apolitical society, for there to be conflicts over matters such as what should be taught in schools, gay marriage, the ten commandments on the court house steps, who should be allowed in or out of political borders, who will build the roads, who should own the means of production, what goods and services are allowed and not allowed, and so on. For people would be free to associate and disassociate in order to each get what they prefer for themselves without anyone else being forced into it, and therefore they compete on a voluntary basis.

From the perspective of someone who accepts the principle of free association, they cannot rule anyone else and noone else can rule them. There is no need for them to institutionalize their preferances, for they can persue their preferances by associating with likeminded people, persuasion and intregrating their ideas with that of others. But in the democratic political mindset, one's preferances must be binding upon everyone and institutionalized. From the perspective of politics, it is legitimate and necessary for there to be a monopolistic standard, and the only alternative would allegedly be complete chaos and destruction.

So long as someone consistantly accepts the principle of free association, it should become rather clear that everyone's personal and cultural preferences do not necessarily have to lead to conflict and violence, but may instead be rendered rather neutral if not meaningless by merely taking a "live and let live" approach. Socialists, capitalists, primitivists, racists, multiculturalists, feminists, religionists, atheists and any other group among the endless slew of groups out there can all mutually win through free association without any need for coercion.

It is only when politics enters the picture that conflict is institutionalized and enabled on a large scale. Since the alternatives of free association are disincentivized in a political atmosphere, the individual has little choice but to either engage in civil disobedience or asquiesce to the political process and consequentially take a more active role in the conflict. Endless conflict takes place over who will control the reigns of institutional power and what they should impose onto everyone. Political means are inherently opposed to the voluntary or social or economic means of free association.

An Apolitical Approach To Libertarianism

Brainpolice — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 00:05:00 GMT

In the discussion and debate that goes on among libertarians, it is disputed as to wether or not libertarians should vote and participate in party politics. Some see voting as the only practical option, some think that there should be a multi-pronged approach that includes voting, some are die-hard supporters of the Republican politician Ron Paul, some are adamantly opposed to the Libertarian Party, some think that voting is immoral and some think that voting is impractical and strategically counterproductive or suicidal.

In a fundamental sense, however, perhaps in this context libertarians could be broken up into two basic camps: political libertarians and apolitical libertarians or anti-political libertarians. Quite simply, it breaks down to a matter of those who support some kind of active participation in the political process, as well as engage in it themselves, and those who do not support such activity. It is important to realize, however, that this dychotomy does not entirely mirror the divide between libertarian minarchists and anarchists, for there are some anarchists who fall on the political side and there are some minarchists who surprisingly fall more on the apolitical side. Even free market anarchists do not have a particularly unanimous consensus among themselves on the question of voting and participation in the political process. And opinions among libertarians on figures such as Ron Paul may vary from the highly enthusiastic to the downright hostile.

My purpose will be to argue for an apolitical approach to libertarianism. I intend to back up the premise that libertarians, especially anarchists, should not vote or run for office or contribute so much as a penny of their money to a political campaign. This includes the official Liberty Party. My argument will primarily be a practical or strategic one, although I also intend to explore the question in terms of ethics. The arguments will particularly apply to those who hold a stateless society as an ultimate goal. It must be shown precisely why a sensible libertarian institutional analysis of modern representative democracy leads to the conclusion that active participation in the political process is not a reasonable or efficient means at obtaining that goal and that it may even violate some fundamental principles. Furthermore, I intend to demonstrate that the market itself is the proper means to substitute for the political process and that there are a plethora of non-violent alternative strategies for libertarians to persue.

Voting as a Lack of Consumer Choice

David Friedman once made an analogy between voting for politicians and the way that we "vote" for cars as consumers on the market. Imagine if we voted for cars in the same way that we voted for politicians or governments. No matter which car you vote for, or wether or not you vote for one at all, every single person gets the same car. No matter how you vote, or even if you don't vote at all, the results are the same for everyone. This is true even if only a small numerical majority of a given population "wins" in the rat-race. In short, there is no individual consumer choice in political democracy. As a voter, you cannot truly boycott the "product" or sell it off as if it were truly yours. You must bear the costs of and patronize or make use of the "product" or "service" (I.E. the government) regaurdless of wether or not you voted for it. There is no genuine option to opt out as a consumer of the state's "services". The entire thing is a great big package deal that one has no option to refuse. Even many currently existing unfree markets could be seen as at least have some degree of consumer sovereignty in comparison to states.

This is all aside from the fact that for the most part one's voting options are restricted from the get go to the "choice" between one Democrat and one Republican, or Labor and Tory. Throughout the primary process, the options are usually whittled down to two canidates. In most contemporary democracies, there is often only two or three main parties that have any significant influence over the state apparatus. Since these parties make up the same overall institution, they end up "colluding" and compromising with eachother to some degree in order to maintain the status quo. While there may be some degree of disagreement and competition between the parties, combined, they ultimately end up still constituting one ultimate party or group of individuals who are directly in control of the state apparatus. Whatever it is that such state agents end up doing, it still ends up effecting every citezen, regaurdless of their vote or lack thereof.

Representative Democracy: Oligarchy In Disguise

The very idea of representative democracy is a sham in that the control is not direct. It inherently creates a significant gulf between "the people" and the government. An exclusive elite still directly controls the state, only the citezenry is given the illusion of control by being given the option every few years to select among a handful of prepackaged people who already are from this elite to have further or continued or new access to direct control over the state. As an individual, the citezen has no real say in decision-making internal to the institution. Once the politician makes it into power it is they who have that control and they may basically defy your wishes at will. They have no real legal or institutional obligation to live up to their campaign promises. Even if you manage to vote them out of office the damage has already been done and they are legally shielded from owning up to the consequences of their actions. In effect, they are above the law. They do not have to compensate their victims and quite likely will go on to live a fairly comfortable and privileged life.

There is also an application of the calculation problem, or more broadly the information problem, to the political process in a representative democracy in that it is simply impossible for one individual or representative body to accurately or adequately represent the diverse and often conflicting desires of an entire society even if they genuinely tried to. In short, it is impossible for such an exclusive and centralized body to appease the demands of the citezentry. Furthermore, the very nature of the state as an institution cannot be a genuine case of participatory democracy. A state that fits the criteria for truly being controled by "the people" is an impossibility because the only way for the criteria to even remotely be met would be for every single citezen to literally be members of the state apparatus themselves and directly control and vote on all matters. This is a utopian impossibility due to the fundamentally exclusive and oligarchal nature of the state as an institution. But even granting such a possibility, it still would not work out in the absence of unanimous consent because the majoritarianism problem would arise and hence it could not be said that "the people" as a whole have proportional or equal control over matters. "The people" are highly conflicting in their desires and personal preferances to begin with.

The classic definition of democracy, as being "government of the people" or "government by the people", can be seen as anarchistic in that it could easily be interpreted to imply a self-governing society, as if government is literally absorbed by civil society itself. However, the concept of democracy has historically been abused by rulers and the intellectuals who weave apologia for them as to manipulate people into thinking that the current state of affairs truly is consentual and under the control of "the people". The ideal of democracy is invoked by those who truly control the state as a way to try to legitimize their power. Politicians want people to vote for them so that they can trumpet themselves as being freely chosen agents of the people, as to effectively disguise their power. Statist intellectuals try to convince the public to accept outrageous notions such as "we are the government". Democracy has thus ended up being the greatest propaganda tool a state could possibly have in modern times, as it is a convenient way of presenting the illusion that the emperor has clothes. Participation in the political process and the impression that it can lead to significant change is encouraged as a way of allowing the status quo to continue running smooth.

Checks and Balances

The problem at hand could be thought of in terms of institutional analysis and checks and balances. When working within the framework of a single institution, you cannot really have real checks and balances, even if you break that single institution up into different sections while still having these sections within the same institution. This is because real checks and balances requires external competition, that is, the existance of independant or separate institutions. So long as it’s all within one institution, it is just a vein attempt to simulate competition. You can’t break up a monopoly by creating more bereaucracies within it. You break it up through competition from other institutions. The political process in a democracy is fake competition because it is all within the framework of one monopolistic institution. At best, one is only changing which bereaucracy within the monopoly has ultimate control over the monopoly. If one truly wants to outcompete the monopoly, one must exit its framework and work within the framework of other institutions outside of it.

Unless the state actually presented everyone with the option to "vote" to dissolve the state or at least opt out of it as an individual, which seems like an absurdity, how can voting ever be a strategy for eliminating the institution itself? Voting only gives one the option to play a game of musical chairs by switching who heads the bereaucracy or which bereaucracy dominates within the institution. It could concievably lead to moderate changes in the organizational structure of the institution, but it does not present any real option to do away with the institution itself. The purpose of anarchism is not to change the organizational structure of the state but to ultimately eliminate the state. Even a libertarian political party merely presents the prospect of another group, perhaps a more benevolent one, controlling the state. The institutional framework remains. As a consequence of libertarian political participation, the libertarian movement is merely absorbed into the institution itself rather than genuinely being in competition with it.

Quite simply, voting can never lead to a stateless society because it is within the institutional framework of a state. It does not and cannot lead to the destruction of that institutional framework. As Stefan Molyneux has analogized, it’s analogous to joining the KKK with the purpose of anti-racism. The institutional framework of the KKK is for the purposes of racism, so voting for who will be grand wizard doesn’t seem like a very logical thing for an anti-racist to do. Likewise, the institutional framework of the state is for the purposes of statism. Voting for who will control the state doesn’t seem like a very logical thing to do from the standpoint of someone who wants noone to be in control of it and for the institution to cease to exist altogether. The vested interests within the institution want to keep it going and keep recieving their paychecks. Their very livelyhood depends on it. There is internal institutional inertia towards maintaining the system. A single individual or small group infiltrating the institution is not likely to have a significant impact on the overall institution. Even if people in positions of political power attempt to reduce the institution's power, they are met with a resistance from inside of the institution as well as certain segments of the population.

The Empirical Record

For a number of centuries, classical liberals and libertarians have been trying to reduce the power of the state through the political process and use of the state apparatus itself. This attempt, while perhaps noble in its intentions, must be soberly diagnosed as a total failure. Neither constitutions or voting has lead to any net decrease in the state's power, let alone the abolition of the institution itself. Instead, state power has steadily increased over time, moreso than any of the 18th and 19th century radicals could have imagined in their worst nightmares. In playing the game of politics, libertarians have had to compromise their principles and make questionable alliances. Some aquiesce to state-socialism, while others move towards conservatism. Out of desperation, many libertarians started to resort to means that are intrinsically opposed to their ends. And libertarian sentiments were effectively co-opted into the state apparatus itself as rhetorical devices. In America, this is particularly true in the case of the conservative wing of the establishment.

Barry Goldwater attempted to get into the white house using quasi-libertarian sentiments. He never made it into office and was demonized as a nutbag. Ronald Reagan ran for office and made it in using quasi-libertarian rhetoric. Once in office, he actively expanded the state in some cases and was unable to adequately resist institutional inertia against any attempts at reductionism. Ron Paul has been a congressman for decades and has deliberately tried to get reductionist measures through and for the most part he has ended up merely being a reoccuring singular no vote against a nearly unanimous consensus. Almost none of those no votes ultimately made a difference. And by even functioning within the institutional framework of the state he inevitably has to act in certain ways that may defy libertarian principles, even if they are his own cherished principles. As an individual, Ron Paul may be a very kind and ethical fellow, but as an institutional agent he cannot function without aquiescing to some degree to the fundamentally corrupt nature of the system.

The Libertarian Party

As far as the Libertarian Party goes, while it could be argued that it has brought more people towards libertarianism, it could conversely be put forth that it has brought libertarianism as a movement closer to people's already existing notions. In other words, the creed itself has been watered down to appease the ideological climate of the populace. The Libertarian Party's public relations campaign has created a misleading picture of libertarianism in public discourse. On one hand, the use of slogans such as "socially liberal, fiscally conservative" are far too vague and seems to paint libertarians as mere "moderates" on the political spectrum. On the other hand, The Libertarian Party has also engaged in rhetoric that is along the lines of traditional conservative platitudes such as "limited government" and "personal responsibility". This has lead many to view the libertarian movement has just another brand of conservatism, or "conservatives who like to smoke pot".

As a result of all of this, the libertarian movement itself has become partially infiltrated by bad tendencies on both the so-called "left" and "right", although in America it would appear to be the case that there is more of a so-called "right-wing" deviation tendency in the movement. It could be argued that the libertarian movement has experienced both paleoconservative and neoconservative infiltrations, along with various left-liberal infiltrations. Apparently many Objectivists have soaked up neoconservative notions with respect to foreign policy. Other segments of the libertarian movement have soaked up protectionist and nationalistic sentiments from the paleoconservatives. Still yet others have significant caviats in their positions on economic matters which would place them closer to the contemporary left-liberal paradime. The libertarian movement seems very confused about where it stands on the political spectrum relative to others. There clearly has been a process of ideological disorientation. The "open tent" approach has perhaps been too open to be safe.

In either case, if the Libertarian Party is viewed in light of its alleged goals it clearly must be diagnosed as a complete failure even by minarchist standards. It certainly may have made the term libertarian more visible to the public eye but it has not truly made libertarian ideas significantly more acceptable to most people. The primary concern of the party, as is the case for all political parties, is to get elected. In turn, this neglects the actual philosophy of libertarianism, which takes a back seat to institutional and pragmatic considerations. Instead of time and resources being used to educate people about libertarian ideas, it seems that the political approach to libertarianism has squandered it in the name of political acceptance and playing the game. In effect, it has lead to the de-radicalization of the overall libertarian movement. The Libertarian Party in and of itself is part of "beltway libertarianism".

The Oppurtunity Costs of Electoral Politics

Participation in the political process has an oppurtunity cost. In terms of resource allocation, in order for the process to take place, resources must be diverted away from the market. What is not seen is how those same resources would have or could have bee otherwise used on the market. And the time spent organizing for elections, campaining, researching the positions of canidates, voting and setting up poles could have otherwise been used in more productive ways. It could have been used to build private and alternative institutions to the state, private commerence, philothranpic efforts, direct education, acts of civil disobedience and valuable time with family and friends. All of the time spent trying to figure out who should govern us could have been used to make us less governable in the first place. There is no rational reason to assume that the only alternative to voting is either inaction or violent revolution. Characterizing non-voters as lazy or apathetic is nothing but a way to shame or guilt people into voting.

Some libertarians may argue that voting may sometimes have short-term benefits that at least marginally advance the cause of liberty. But when one weighs the long-term vs. short-term benefits, it should become clear that there really are no long-term benefits to voting, particularly if one's goal is to ultimately do away with the entire state apparatus. A proper understanding of the nature of the state as an institution would reveal that the long-term drawbacks outweigh any possible short-term benefits that may come about from participation in the political process. To use a Frederic Bastiat analogy: What is seen is a short-term or marginal gain in liberty for some people. What is not seen is that the productivity of the marginal liberty is then used to take liberty away elsewhere. What is not seen is the inherent negation of liberty necessary for the process to take place to begin with and that the institution of plunder is reinforced in the long-run. The political process forces its participants into a dangerous state of pragmatism that inherently leads one to sacrifice one principle or application thereof in order to protect another one. Since the individual voter does not have an option to entirely be free, they are put into a submissive position in which they beg their masters for a little bit of leeway in this, that or the other respect.

But while a slave may certainly prefer a policy of a few less beatings a day or slightly increased food rations, the implementation of such policies would not negate the fundamental ethical wrong of the situation, nor would it be a path towards the abolition of the institution of slavery itself. A more lenient policy does not mean that the slave should henceforth be content in their servitude. It could easily be argued that the slavery reformists only legitimized the institution by merely trying to soften its effects while still passively accepting its existance. Only the abolitionists had the correct position on the matter. Libertarianism is abolitionist rather than gradualist or reformist. While a more moderate or lenient policy might be preferable to a more harsh one, this does not mean that the libertarian should enthusiastically endorse the lenient policy as if it were the ideal and then go no further. All of the precious time wasted on reformism could have otherwise been used to more directly oppose the institutional problem itself. In short, politics is a high time preferance process. The greater value of the ultimate goal of abolition is sacrificed when one concentrates too much on the comparatively lesser value of moderately alleviating present ills to make them a bit more bearable. Perhaps a certain degree of patience and vigilance is called for.

Voting As Self-Defense?

Some libertarians have tried to defend the act of voting by referencing to Lysander Spooner's notion that it is possible for there to be certain situations where one could vote as an act of self-defense. But even if one grants the premise of voting as self-defense, this merely begs the question: is voting an efficient means of self-defense? When was the last time an individual was able to defend themselves against whatever the government happens to be doing by voting? Quite clearly, we have already established that voting does not gaurantee representation and that the whole representative structure is inherently removed from the decision-making power of the individual citezen. An agent of the state cannot be said to be defending someone against the overall institutional effects of the state, for an agent of the state must use the institutional means that cause such effects in the first place. Even if an agent of the state genuinely attempted to defend the rights of an individual or group who voted for them, it would require some kind of aggression towards or grievance imposed on innocent bystanders or 3rd parties of people, and it may also require new or continued violations of the liberty of the very people who are supposed to be defended. It's analagous to a game of russian roulette that everyone must play, and the gun is loaded in the same pattern for everyone.

The premise itself should be questioned. The effects of the institution of voting does not reflect that of self-defense. Clearly, the individual voter is not directly defending themselves. They still are effectively participating in a process that is meant to delegate such power to a master or bereaucrat. An individual is free to voluntarily choose a leader for themselves, but they do not have the legitimate decision-making power to choose a leader for other people. The individual voter cannot be said to be engaging in a free association for the purpose of self-defense. Voting isn't an act of self-defense, at best it is an act of aquiescance. While a vote for a politician does not imply consent on the part of the voter to whatever that politician goes on to do, it does imply aquiescance to one's own plunder and that of others. There is an important distinction between explicit consent and aquiescance. So while voting might not necessarily be unethical in any strict sense, it could be said to represent a certain lack of virtue or as an act of desperation. The voter cannot entirely escape the charge of complicty at least in a limited and somewhat passive sense, as they are aquiescing to the process by which institutional plunder sustains itself.

Disengagement is the only true means of self-defense against the state. The gun in the room is certainly not in the hands of the voters. It's in the hands of the state apparatus. At best, the voter is only choosing which bullet that both them and innocent 3rd parties of people will be shot with, or wether they are going to get their arm or leg broken. When the smoke clears, everyone is going to be plundered somehow. Nonetheless, the voters continue to participate in the ritualistic charade of the political process anyways. Every few years they are effectively either duped or self-deluded into thinking that this time around or next time around there will be significant changes for the better, while in reality it never seems to actually work out that way.

Apolitical Alternatives

The apolitical libertarian may often be accused of having no suggested alternatives. However, there are many alternatives to political libertarianism.

Agorism is one of the primary alternative theories that has been developed. Agorism fundamentally involves the idea that the means towards reaching a voluntary society should be persued through the market itself, especially those sections of the market that are most shunned by and far removed from the state (I.E. black and grey markets). It would seem to logically follow that if the market competition is the most efficient means towards the provision of goods and services, it is also the most efficient means towards the end of political freedom. And what better way to do that then to compete with the state by disengaging from it as much as possible and forming private and underground alternatives, I.E. economic secession? Agorism is supposed to involve a multiple staged process in which a critical mass is built until eventually the market itself essentially outcompetes or absorbs the government. The risk factor is obviously high in the early stages and perpetually lowers as critical mass is built up. Agorism is not an overnight strategy, it is actually long-term. It places emphasis on use of black and grey markets. Considering that the very existance of such black and grey markets is a product of the failure of the state to stamp out those activies and services in the first place, it isn't really possible for them to truly stamp them out in a complex and dynamic society. The more complex it becomes, the harder it is for a central institution to truly control (think the calculation problem).

Education and the spread of information is also very important. The illusory ideological cloak of the state must be removed, and it cannot be done by directly participating in the political process and as a member of the institution of the state itself. If there are statist intellectuals who attempt to ideologically legitimize political power then there must also be what Hans Herman Hoppe has called "anti-intellectual intellectuals" with the purpose of functioning as deligitimizers of political power. Except the "anti-intellectual intellectuals" should function outside of the political process and as counter-economic and market oriented agents. Organizations such as the Ludwig Von Mises Institute do a decent job at serving this function, although perhaps not necessarily in a counter-economic or agorist sense. Other strictly non-governmental organizations could be erected that serve a similar function.

Mass civil disobedience in general is a very underestimated tactic. This could include secession, which is an act of mass civil disobedience in and of itself. An entire political system could theoretically be grinded to a hault within days if the correct routes of mass civil disobedience are persued. There is much truth to Ettiene La Boetie's observations about the mystery of voluntary servitude, and it could be said that it has implications favorable towards an apolitical and anti-voting approach that substitutes civil disobedience for political means. If the people actively engaged in civil disobedience and bluntly refused to grant any legitimacy to their masters, the power of the rulers would instantly have no real weight anymore. They would be forced to either give up or resort to brute force and consequentially reveal the inherently corrupt and violent nature of their power. The masses at large outnumber the rulers by far. But so long as the people aquiesce to their own enslavement, the power of the rulers is secured despite their rather extreme numerical inferiority.

The Case For Free Immigration, The Case Against Borders

Brainpolice — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 13:47:00 GMT

Immigration is a hot topic these days, particularly for those in the southern and south-western states of America. There has been a rising anti-immigration sentiment, directed specifically at immigrating Mexicans. The public cries out, "Secure the borders!" and "They're taking our jobs!". There is nothing new about this phenomenon. It has occured time and time again throughout American and European history. The same sentiment was directed towards the Irish, Catholics and Chinese in the 19th century and the Jews and Italians in the early 20th century. The three main contributing factors to anti-immigration sentiment are undoubtably (1) economic protectionism (2) nationalism and (3) racism.

There are many different types of arguements that are made against both "illegal immigration" and immigration in general. Some confine their claims to economics, and base their anti-immigration sentiment on the notion that immigrants are effectively stealing jobs, lowering wages and being leeches on public services. Others have a more nationalistic and cultural approach in which their complaint about immigration has more to do with keeping a "unified culture" and "tradition". Others are downright racist, basing their complaints about immigration on attacks on the hispanic race itself. Even some libertarians have gotten caught up in the sentiment. All of it relies on a mixture of fallacy and disinformation.

I intend to cover as much ground as possible and address the bulk of the arguements put foreward by proponents of border enforcement and immigration restriction. Particular emphasis will be placed on the debate over immigration internal to libertarian movement. Hold onto your horses, because this is going to be a long ride.

"I'm not anti-immigration, I only oppose illegal immigration"

This is a common claim made by many anti-immigrationists, including libertarian ones. But the legal/illegal distinction is entirely disingeuous. It's no different then making a distinction between legal and illegal drug use, and saying "I'm not against the right of people to use drugs, I'm against people illegally doing drugs". From what I can tell, an illegal immigrant is engaging in an act of civil disobedience no different then someone who wishes to smoke pot despite it being against the law.

To my knowledge, libertarians are not supposed to support the law just because it so happens to be the law. Opposing illegal immigration is to concede, by default, that you favor illegalizing immigration to some extent. It is to support the notion that you need special permission from the government, under the guise of regulations, in order to be allowed to live within the territory. There is no way around this. If you favor enforcing laws that restrict or illegalize immigration, you are anti-immigration to some degree. And in order to enforce such restrictions, you must support a government bereaucracy.

The Leeches and The Legal/Illegal Double Standard

To some immigration restrictionists, surely these people are all disease-ridden, jobless, job-stealing (gotta love opposing claims), welfare-sucking criminal hoodlums who believe in communism.

It is undeniable that the public welfare system, which is meant to mean public services in general, is akin to a massive network of parasitism, where resources are redistributed to leech-like recipients. Many right-wing anti-immigrationists argue that the "illegal" immigrants are recipients, and this justifies "kicking the bums out". But this claim is dubious. Actually, many of the "illegals" pay taxes in some form or another. Furthermore, this claim could equally apply to domestic recipients of government funding, which implies kicking domestic citezens out of the country as well. That's the problem with "public property" and all that comes with it: everyone is a potential parasite. Noone is able to escape using the government's services to some degree or another, such as driving on the public roads.

Furthermore, public schooling has been compulsory for a long time, so following this twisted logic we should kick all of the public school students out of the country as well. Afterall, "they're not paying for it". It would be absurd to argue that the solution is to kick people off of their own property and deport them. A real solution would be to privatize them. Have a problem with masses of people using public services? Privatize the public services then. Don't propose new interventions that require more funding and therefore in actual fact an increase in government funding to public services.

I don't really buy into the common notion that the Mexican immigrants come here with the express purpose of sucking off of the breasts of the welfare state and to vote for socialism. On the contrary, in large part I see them as fleeing socialism and quite rationally persueing better economic conditions and oppurtunities, where they will be paid more than 50 cents an hour. It is not immigrants that are responsible for the welfare state that we already have, the gullable domestic populace already intellectually supports it in large part and they are the majority of the recipients of its bread and circuses.

Either way, all such charges that are thrown at immigrants apply equally if not more so to domestic citezens, who vote for socialism and beg for welfare all the time. Are we therefore justified in kicking domestic citezens out of the country for driving on the public roads and sending their children to public schools? Or should we strike at the root, the welfare state itself, rather than using the welfare state as a rationale for violating people's rights and implementing new or expanded government interventions?

The Post-Ponement Arguement and Interventionism

Some proponents of immigration restriction, including libertarian ones, have advanced an argument that roughly goes as follows: "since we still have a welfare state, until it is done away with, we should support government intervention in the name of stopping the migration of people into the country". In short, since intervention X exists, intervention Y is okay as a solution to the problems created by intervention X. This is interventionism, plain and simple. The only libertarian solution would be to get rid of intervention X, in this case, the welfare state. Anything else just leads to a cycle of interventionism and a distraction from the root cause of problems. In practise, you will end up with a welfare state + more police powers and a larger immigration bereaucracy. That's just how these things work.

This particular closed border position is interventionism, since the arguement is essentially that in order to solve the problems created by intervention X (the welfare state) we must support intervention Y (a police state, quite frankly). And in order to possibly enforce these "borders" and immigration "laws", more taxes and spending are inherently required, more planning at the federal level is required and quite a bit of force will be required in order to go through with deportations and whatnot. At the end of the day, I do not consider immigration quotas to be any better than affirmative action, nor do I consider immigration controls in general to not be a form of central planning.

Immigration Restriction As Pre-Emptive Force

On the topic of war, I recall Walter Block argueing that is not sensible to argue for war that on the grounds of what people might do in the future. His point was that it is not libertarian to advocate initiating aggression against another country on the grounds that the country might initiate force in the future. I see the anti-immigration position as being no different. Initiation of force is being "justified" on the grounds of what immigrants might do (that they might accept welfare or they might vote for social democrats). It's pre-emptive force. Using the forceful power of the state to stop other people from using the forceful power of the state is self-defeating in principle. Increasing the power of the state in the name of preventing future increases in the power of the state will only *drum roll* increase the power of the state.

Furthermore, the position that accepting welfare or voting constitutes an initiation of force against the tax-payer doesn't make much sense. These are rather passive activities. It is the state that is initially stealing from the tax-payers. The state then redistributes the stolen loot to various interest groups, like a robber handing out the booty to gangs or to the peasantry. It is a misplacement of blame to go after the peasantry, the arguably passive recievers of the loot while neglecting the actual robbers. Where is the gun in the room? Most certainly not in the hands of the immigrants. The gun in the room is the state. To blame immigrants is to essentially blame the victim. It misplaces the burden of proof entirely.

The State As Private Property Or A Voluntary Commons?

Some proponents of immigration restriction tend to argue that the state is like a home. Others treat it more as a commons. But treating the nation-state as if it were the legitimate private property of the government, or the people's common property (tragedy of the commons, anyone?), opens up a huge can of worms that could imply some highly questionable things if we consistantly applied it. The private property of the government notion can be used to justify practically anything that the government does, and makes everything (and everyone) within the territory subject to be controlled (in other words, it merely reinforces and falsely justifies the territorial monopoly). The common property notion has communalist implications. The state, in either case, clearly is not private property. The state cannot emulate a free market by its very nature, so it makes no sense to me to use the state's intervention in a particular way on the assumption that this is how private property owners would choose to employ their property. This is an imposition of a personal preferance.

If the state is treated as the private property of the government's members, then it is legitimized. The members of the state itself may henceforth be treated as legitimately controlling the entire territory. All of us who reside in the territory, and all of the individual plots of land and things that we possess, may be treated as the property of the government. You do not own yourself, the state owns you. You do not own your home, the state owns your home. You may not decide how to employ your property; you are not its owner, you are only being allowed to use it by its true owners, the state. It is not your property. The members of the state may freely decide to exclude anyone from the territory as they please, since it is theirs. You may not decide how to employ the individual portion that you are "allowed" to use; the state decides this for you. All hail the total state.

If the state is treated as the common property of the tax-payers, then it is legitimized. We should all henceforth buy into the phrase "we are the government". Of course, a gigantic practical problem arises: the tax-payers cannot act as a single entity with a preference scale of its own. The tax-payers are conflicting over how they wish to use this common property. The tax-payers cannot exercise their quotal ownership in reality. You cannot sell your 1/500000th (or what have you) portion of government land. It is impossible for the "community" as a whole to enforce all of their individual preferences for how to employ such property.

Even granting that it may constitute stolen property, it has been redistributed so many times over and time has passed for so long that it would be impossible to allocate it back to the original just owners. Thus, in practise, we are left enforcing either the members of the state's preferences for how to use it or the preferences of a particular group of people within "the commity" for how to use it in the name of "the community". You may not decide how to employ the individual portion that you think you own; "the community" (I.E. in practise, the state or a special interest group acting through the state) decides this for you. All hail the total state.

The Incentives of Inclusion and Exclusion

While private property owners would indeed be free to exclude Mexicans in a free society, I believe that the incentives in a free market would make racial or cultural separatism suicidal in the long-run for reasons having to do with the economics of discrimination (and what I consider to be the large-scale implications of comparative advantage). At least on the margin, there will be an incentive towards integration; and there will always be willing sellers to some degree. The consequences of free association are a mixed bag and therefore pluralist. This is why I think that free association ultimately pans out in favor of so-called "multiculturalism", moreso as time passes. Separatists would effectively exile and impoverish themselves.

There will always be willing buyers and sellers. Consequentially, in a society in which all property is private, there is nothing that can be done to stop people from immigrating through voluntary exchanges for home and land property and voluntary patronization of transporation services, as well as good and services in general. In short, it is virtually impossible to keep a community completely ethnically "pure" when there are individuals within that community willing to buy and sell things with immigrating people from other ethnicities. In a truly free society, the incentive towards voluntary association would be so strong as to render absolute cultural "isolationism" impossible.

Free Trade and the Law of Association

Ludwig von Mises: "The productivity of social cooperation surpasses in every respect the sum total of the production of isolated individuals." - Epistemological Problems of Economics

For the same reason that blocking trade between people in New Mexico and Arizona would have a hampering effect on production, so too will blocking trade between people in, say, China and America. Economics provides us with the insight that voluntary exchange is mutually beneficial to both parties and has a ripple effect of sorts (I.E. its benefits may extend beyond the two people exchanging down the line). Any kind of protectionism is going to block this mutually beneficial exchange. It always is at the expense of consumer choice and bestows a privilege to one narrow interest at the expense of everyone else, and eventually at the expense of the original "beneficiaries" themselves. And since it stifles competition, it has the obvious effect of artificially keeping prices higher than what the true market level would be.

In essence, it is beneficial even for someone who is productively "superior" to others in multiple areas to exchange with others who are "superior" in none of those areas. Even if country X is superior to country Y in both areas, it is still in its advantage to exchange with country Y. If we accept the principle of the division of labor within a country, we must accept the division of labor within the world.

How does this apply to immigration? Well, there is a labor market for immigrants. It represents competition to non-immigrant labor. The economic law that Mises speaks of applies here as well. The anti-immigration movement wishes to use protectionism against the immigrant labor market. Economically and socially, such separatism is counterproductive even for the people who wish to remain isolated. While people are perfectly within their rights to choose not to associate with people, they undermine their own well-being the more liberally that they isolate themselves.

For example, if a buisiness refuses to sell products to group X, they lose buisiness, indeed, they are restricting their consumer base. It becomes vitally in the best interest of people to associate and engage in social cooperation, otherwise they harm themselves in the long-term by withdrawing from the benefits of society. This applies to immigration as well. To forcably block off immigration is also to aschew the benefits of social cooperation. While there is indeed a right of voluntary disassociation, the person who chooses to freely disassociate often does so at their own risk.

Property Rights and Free Association

Immigration itself is merely the act of moving from place A to place B. This is typically coupled with the act of purchasing a home, and the act itself may involve some form of transportation service. It should be obvious that this is a free trade activity just as much as any other. Yet many anti-immigration advocates, in effect, wish to illegalize selling goods and services to such people, hiring such people or allowing them onto one's own property; charity even. Such measures inevitably violate the property rights of both the immigrant and the citezens that they are associating with. If the government stops me from selling a home to an immigrant, hiring one or associating with them in any way, then my property rights are being violated along with that of the immigrant.

The problem with immigration controls and border enforcement is that it inherently requires dictating what citezens do with their own property: it disallows me from inviting someone onto my property, selling someone my property or hiring a willing worker. A lot of the closed borders advocates accuse open borders of violating free association and allowing people to engage in "tresspass" and "invasion" (and this arguement can only be superficially maintained if we treat political borders or unused land as private property or the common property of the tax-payers, which simply is not the case; there is no discernable just owner of the entire country or borders), but they apparently fail to see how their own position egregiously violates free association (forced disassociation is no better than forced association). It's not just the "illegals" that are effected, it's domestic citezens who wish to associate with them as well.

Libertarians are bound by the non-aggression axoim. This axoim leads one to support free association (and disassociation) between individuals on the basis that no aggression is used to force people to either associate or disassociate. This means that one must oppose both forced integration and forced segregation (forced association and force disassociation). If force is used to stop people from voluntarily associating, then a rights violation has occured. As such, using the law to stop immigrants from associating with citezens (and all that comes with it) is a rights violation on the part of both people in question. But the cultural isolationist essentially is argueing in favor of using the law to enforce forced segregation.

Prohibition Theory

When you prohibit something, in the short-term you might get less of it. But in time it is inevitable that a black market arises despite this limit on supply (example: we have drug and prostitution illegalization, yet we have a black market in these areas). Prohibition theory also applies to employment itself, to jobs. Thus, to overtly prohibit immigration will do nothing to stop people from simply immigrating anyways, just like prohibiting drugs does nothing to stop people from buying, selling and using drugs. If you illegalize the hiring of "illegals", you will simply create a black market for those jobs, and thus those jobs will continue to exist. Simply put, there will always be willing sellers and buyers. The answer to the question, "why do we have an immigration black market?" is "because immigration isn't free enough", "preciously because of the governmental limits on it that already exist".

Therefore, it is absolutely illogical to think that immigration quotas, more cops on the streets, the federalization of the borders, national I.D. cards, or any other such scheme, is going to actually eliminate illegal immigration. It is impossible to eliminate illegal immigration for the same reason that central economic planning fails, is unable to calculate, due to the complexity of information and economic decisions on the market. The fact that we have so many illegal immigrants right now as it is only shows that they can get through despite whatever previous limits existed. Indeed, immigrants are given an incentive to illegally come over by the mere inadequacy of the immigration process, with its red tape and bereaucracy. "Illegal immigration" exists precisely because of the degree to which immigration is prohibited.

Nations and Borders

What is a nation? A nation is nothing but a concept meant to describe a geographic territory. "Nations" do not actually exist other than as a linguistic term. Unfortunately, many people concieve of the nation in an anthropromorphic way, in which it is given a definite character as if it were a single individual, with uniform traits. But obviously, those within the territory that we call a nation all differ widely in their physical and mental traits, in their opinions and in their actions. The concept of nations is inherently collectivist. It presumes uniformity on the part of its atomic parts. And, most dangerously of all, the nation and state are implied as being one and the same. But this is an obfuscation, because the state is made up a minority, an oligarchy, of individuals, while "society" as a whole is an entirely different thing.

What are national or state borders? They are nothing but a line on a map, and do not exist independantly of that line on that map. They do not exist when one actually zooms in on the earth from outerspace. The concept of national borders is a concept of collective property; it presumes that the entire territory of the "nation" is "ours". But this is obviously absurd when one considers the objective criteria for ownership of property. In reality, it is property that the government is claiming ownership of, without necessarily actually using it, homesteading it or exchanging for it. In short, national borders effectively represents a claim of ownership by the government over the entire territory, and as a consequence, everything within it.

The entire concept of national borders depends on government ownership of property, specifically land. If one supports that government do something with respect to that land, including determining who should be allowed in or out of it, then they are accepting the notion that the land is justly the state's. It should be clear from a property rights standpoint that ownership of land requires that the homestead principle be fulfilled, or that a voluntary exchange has taken place for previously owned land. Government does not justly own the land that it claims, because it achieved that land by (1) putting up barriers to entry to unused land for homesteaders (2) confisicating it from its original just owner or (3) buying it with funds that were likewise confiscated from the original just owner.

The homesteading principle implies that it is not legitimate to claim ownership of un-used land, it requires first-use. When government is held up to the homesteading principle, or the principle of voluntary exchange, it becomes apparent that it is impossible to justify government ownership of any property at all, let alone land. Indeed, it becomes apparent that the history of the establishment of governments is the history of invasions and occupations followed by confiscation of land. In short, property precedes government and governments require the confiscation of property, including land property, to form in the first place. But in a purely libertarian world, all land is privatized, and therefore the only "borders" are private property borders. Immigration would be free insofar it would be at the consent of private property owners, and under such a context some kind of voluntary integration would become inevitable, moreso as time passes.

Walls and Fences

Among the more absurd propositions of anti-immigrationists is the idea of building a huge wall on the southern border. These people don't realize that they are playing out the exact same problem that existed in Germany before the Berlin Wall fell. They are supporting the pretext for a police state and for locking the people into their own country. Afterall, what can keep people out can also keep people in. Furthermore, has any such scheme historically worked in the long-run? Did the great wall of China hold out? No. Did the Berlin Wall? No. Some claim that immigration itself is balkanizing the country. On the contrary, fences, walls, increased police powers, and anti-immigration sentiment in general is balkanizing it. The state, and therefore national borders, breeds social conflict.

Artificial barriers do not ease hostility, they create hostility and intensify already existing hostility. In the same way that trade sanctions are a boon to international war, anti-immigration sanctions, artificial walls and the enforcement of imaginary divisions, leads to cultural war. But as Randolf Bourne once stated, "war is the health of the state". It is not just foreign wars that the state thrives on. It thrives on all kinds of domestic wars between interest groups, and wars on inimate objects and ideas such as the war on drugs, war on poverty, war on terrorism, the so-called war on christmas, and now the war on immigration. Anti-immigration sentiment provides a perfect atmosphere for politicians to exploit as to increase their power. And that's what it's leading to: increases in economic and police intervention.

"Isolationism" vs. Non-interventionism Revisited

There are some very compeling reasons for distinguishing between a non-interventionist and isolationist foreign policy. The key differances are over international trade and immigration. In sofar as isolationism applies to economics and the association of individuals, it is a bad thing and constitutes a form of interventionism, not non-interventionism. Economic protectionism is a key tenet of traditional isolationist foreign policy, as is what could be considered cultural protectionism. While the paleo-conservative movement can be considered better than the neo-conservative movement in various ways, unfortunately many paleoconservatives have a tendency to support protectionism.

What does the isolationist foreign policy imply? Painfully high tariffs, import quotas, export bans, immigration quotas, martial law at the borders, walls at the borders, prohibition of lower-end jobs, prohibition of various goods and services. Taken to it's furthest extremes, it implies a ban on all trade and immigration between America and other nations. In either case, it implies a plethora of potential government interventions. This sentiment represents a sub-culture of "buy American products only" and "the immigrants are taking our jobs" people. It has culminated in a "anti-globalization" movement, constituted by people ranging from the far left to the paleo right. This sentiment is riddled with economic fallacy.

The non-interventionist foreign (and domestic) policy, in contrast, would inevitably have to be opposed to such measures. They are, afterall, government interventions in the market. The non-interventionist foreign policy with respect to economic exchange can only lead to one possible conclusion: the unhampered division of labor, voluntary exchange, is the correct policy for both inner-national trade and inter-national trade. This inevitably means that protectionist devices such as tariffs, quotas (which includes immigration quotas, which is nothing but a peculiar form of affirmative action) and prohibitions have to be eliminated. Anti-immigration legislation is nothing but protectionism with respect to the migration, employment arrangements and housing arrangements of people, driven by nationalist emotionalism. Protectionism, nationalism and neo-mercantalism are the bane of a free society.

Conclusion

Immigration in itself is a free market activity and within the realm of free association. The problems associated with immigration are really problems created by the state, wether it be the welfare state or the nature of national borders in general. The solution to the issue does not lie in the state, it does not lie in federal troops at the state's borders, it does not lie in illegalizing jobs, it does not lie in public-funded walls, it does not lie in immigration quotas. It lies in private property. It lies in the privatization of land. State borders don't need to be protected or enforced, they need to be torn down. Governmental borders do not represent legitimate property titles, and possess all of the problems associated with "public property". Immigration should be left to the free market, which resolves such muddled collective/state property disputes by establishing a clear definition of property rights and a clear method of determining who the just owner is of a given property title.

"Vulgar" Libertarianism and Voluntary Socialism

Brainpolice — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 07:37:00 GMT

From what I've been able to gather, "vulgar" libertarianism is a label applied to the tendency of some libertarians, particularly with right-wing sympathies, to defend currently existing property arrangements and corporations as if they came about as a result of a free market process or as if there currently is a free market. That is, vulgar libertarians defend big buisiness in itself regaurdless of any genuine criteria for justice. A vulgar libertarian tends to conflate the difference between property rights and property classes or property titles. In "The Ethics of Liberty", Murray Rothbard made a criticism of utilitarian economists in that they have a tendency to treat currently existing property titles as legitimate without any ethical criteria for justice in property aquisition. Thus, they end up functioning as apologists for the status quo.

Most certainly, the contemporary left makes a conflation of its own between a "free market" and currently existing capitalism. The contemporary left tends to argue that we currently have a "free market", point to bad consequences, and then argue that we need more government intervention. The contemporary right, on the other hand, makes the exact same conflation but uses it for different purposes. The contemporary right tends to argue that we currently have a "free market", deny bad consequences, and defend the status quo on these grounds; at best, justifying current levels of intervention. "Vulgar" libertarians are falling into this same fallacy that the contemporary right ends up engaging in. They are using the theory of a free market to defend the consequences of a non-free market. "Capitalism", as it currently exists, is not a free market. Not a single market anarchist (or "anarcho-capitalist"), insofar as they are consistant, supports "capitalism" as it currently exists.

Libertarians should try to avoid being blind defenders of "the rich" and "the corporations" at all costs. This only feeds the left's mischaracterizations of us as heartless apologists for robber barons. The rich and corporations most certainly do not always achieve their wealth and status as a result of free market means. There is a political apparatus in place that externalizes the costs of corporations, protects them from competition, limits liability and provides a plethora of special privileges. There is a difference between being pro-buisiness as an end in itself and being pro-market. The free market, as a process, may very well be detrimental to some buisinesses, since those who cannot compete lose out. The currently existing corporate structure has skewed incentives and partially restricted competition.

When talking about "the rich" and "the poor", a question behooves us: which rich people and which poor people are we talking about? True, some people get rich by productivity. Others do not. Some get rich by using the state to restrict their competition and give them special privileges at the expense of the tax-payer. True, some people end up poor because of their own bad decisions, such as a lack of saving, excessive consumption, bad spending priorities, and so on. Other people end up poor due to bad circumstances caused by state intervention in the economy. To paint a picture in which all poor people got that way because they are uneducated, unskilled and lazy is unfair. And to paint a picture in which all rich people got that way because they are educated, talented and productive is not accurate by any stretch of the imagination.

As any libertarian who has done the slightest bit of reading on economics surely knows, there are many ways in which state intervention in the economy causes and increases poverty. Inflation devalues our money. Taxation in itself reduces our paychecks and makes us pay higher prices. Protectionism makes us pay higher prices and limits our options as consumers. Welfare, while it might artificially keep some people on their feet, ends up effectively creating stagnation and disincentivizing employment. Corporate welfare does steal from the poor to give to the rich. Minimum wage laws cause unemployment, particularly for teenagers, young adults and entry-level jobs in general. Pointing out how the state's intervention is detrimental to the cause of the poor and average worker can help clear up a lot of confusion and possibly win over some people of left-wing persuasions to libertarian causes.

Another important point to keep in mind is that, in a free market, there is nothing to stop people from voluntarily forming into types of association or organization that could be considered "socialistic". The idea of "libertarian socialism" or "voluntary socialism" initially struck me as nonsensical. While I still do not personally favor it in terms of my preferences for what I'd like to persue in a free market, it has become clear that I cannot oppose it in principle, that I must support the liberty of people to voluntarily organize into unions, co-ops and communes so long as they do not force me into it. Free association and free competition has pluralist implications in that different preferences can be persued voluntarily while peacefully co-existing. No single economic system or mode of organization can be unilaterally and monocentrically imposed.

Socialism can theoretically be compatible with libertarianism to the extent that it is voluntary. Unfortunately, the vast majority of socialists are not voluntarists. They wish to force socialism onto everyone else. Unlike anarchists, who are primarily opposed to the initiation of force and the institution of rulership, socialists are primarily opposed to capital and private ownership. But an anarchist can be a socialist if their socialism is in the context of free association and their socialist system is left to free competition. Indeed, all of the earliest anarchists were socialist types. The socialist movement arguably grew out of the anarchist movement, but went on to merge with the conservatism of the day and become an ideology that supports the state as a means to its ends. But there still are some socialists who are voluntarists.

In reality, it is impossible to actually completely abolish private property. Even in the Soviet Union, private property was still allowed to remain in place to some extent, and it also existed in the arena of black markets. All socialist systems so far have maintained some degree of private property in order to survive at all. Even the system of the socialist anarchists, if put into practise, would maintain private property, even if that private property is commonly held or stolen from its original just owners. While many socialists openly advocate the abolition of private property, the actual substance of what they advocate is no such thing. At best, it is the transferance of private property into different hands. And to the extent that it is transfered from unjust owners to just owners, this is actually perfectly fine. To the extent that it is transfered from just owners to unjust owners, to the extent that it constitutes outright expropriation from legitimate owners, it is a nightmare.

Us anarcho-capitalists (and market anarchists, a term I prefer more) are constantly being cajolled by social anarchists and accused of not really being anarchists. So we have to constantly justify that our philosophy is completely compatible with anarchism and grew out of its tradition. I personally do not like the term anarcho-capitalist because the word capitalist is like a red flag to a bull, especially to traditional anarchists who consider opposition to capitalism to be a core tenet of anarchism. We have to constantly explain that by the term "capitalist" we do not mean "capitalism" as it currently exists or any kind of system of government-buisiness patronage. We are always having to distinguish the difference between a free market and the current system, which people on the left always confuse. We should not err in justifying their claims by actually functioning as apologists for the current system and being shills for currently existing property arrangements and the corporate structure.

How The State Thrives, How The State Falls

Brainpolice — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 02:08:00 GMT

Foreward note: inspired in part by "The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse on Voluntary Servitude" by Eteinne De La Boetie.

How the State Thrives

How does the state maintain itself? It is true that to some extent all states initially derive from conquest through devices such as war and land theft. However, once a state has been established, and once many generations have passed, it need not rely on such overt violence in order to maintain its rule. Instead, it relies on the mechanisms of propaganda, of buying out intellectuals and aristocrats within the public, and by providing bread and circuses. Ultimately, the most powerful factor keeping a state in place, once one has been established, is the compliance of the populace, driven fundamentally by ideology. For ideology is a far more dangerous weapon then any guns or bombs. The only thing truly keeping the state in place is the people's ideological support for it and the state's exploitation of any ideologies that they may adhere to.

This does not mean that everyone consents to the government. Indeed, people may have gripes with much of the various things that the government does. However, what keeps the state in place is ultimately people's passive resignation to its existance and their ideological acceptance of the notion that there is a need for one in the first place. They may strongly disagree with many policies of the government, but they have simply been born into the system and have been given the impression since birth that the government is good, necessary and inevitable, and that the only alternative to its rule would be absolute chaos and destruction. For ideological support for the state is fundamentally based on the hobbesian notion that human beings are inherently evil and conflicting when left to their own devices, and therefore they need to be ruled in order for their allegedly inherently chaotic natures to be kept in check.

In short, the state essentially dupes the bulk of the populace into believeing that, despite whatever gripes they may have with it, they benefit from its rule. The state may bolster this impression by providing various public services, ranging from the essential to the trivial and things of mere entertainment-value. In anchient Rome, this took the form of gladiator's arenas and aquaducts and booty for soldiers. Today it may take the form of anything from national healthcare to farm subsidies to federal funding for the arts. This gives the people the illusion that the state is benevolent and giving. Little do the people realize that they are only being given back a small portion of what was initially stolen from them and their ancestors.

The state is more maintainable when its subjects are dependant on it rather then self-reliant. A self-reliant citezen simply has no need to depend on the state for their well-being, and therefore the state has an incentive to create an institutional framework in which self-reliance is discouraged. Consequentially, the state has an interest in maintaining and expanding a class of people who are dependant on it for their very survival. This may be called the welfare class. The state may very well, both purposesfully and by unintended consequences, bring about circumstances that lower people's well being, therefore creating a reason for it to step in and provide relief and security.

In a sense the state thrives and grows based on a cycle of interventionism. That is, the state itself creates a problem, and then uses the problem as a reason to intervene to cure the problem and expand its powers, which then leads to more problems and the cycle keeps repeating itself. It may exploit the oppurtunity in order to blame the problem that it created on some inherent flaw in society so that the rulers can claim that the state's power is all the more necessary in order to fix the problems of the people. Intervention breeds more intervention.

An important aspect of the maintenance of political rule is the collusion between private interests and the state. A small band of individuals from within the public recieve special privileges from the state beyond what the average person can access in exchange for their services and loyalty to the state apparatus. This group forms an intellectual class of apologists for the state's rule, who gain control over the flow of ideas within the society. It creates a symbiotic relationship by which private interests such as religious organizations, the media, buisinesses and unions gain patronage and protection in exchange for their political support. In medieval times this took the form of the union of church and state and the economic system of fuedalism. Today it takes the form of the union of buisiness and state, central banking and union cartels.

In order to thrive, it is important for the state to buy out the intellectuals within a society. For the most intellectual people possess the most potential to challenge its authority, so they must be brought to be on the side of its authority. As Thomas Jefferson very well was aware of, a well educated populace is the most dangerous thing to the state's power. Therefore, the state tried to incorporate as many of the most educated people in a society as possible into its apparatus. Economists, scientists, inventors and technologists are all made as dependant on the state as possible and are employed by it to serve its purposes.

Critical to the state's reliance on ideology for its support in modern times is the provision of public education. For public education provides the state with an indispensible means by which to control the ideas of the people. What better way to create a passively obedient populace then to control their education from birth? Indeed, in public schools children are essentially instilled with a sense of nationalism and are spoon-fed what amounts to fairy tales about their government and leaders from times past. The history and social studies books are predictably written to portray the government in a positive light, and any blunders the government may be responsible for are blamed on the people in some way. And this control even extends to college, where vocational priorities and oppurtunities are predetermined and professors are disproportionately biased.

The state's control of the flow of ideas in a society of course does not stop once one graduates from school or finishes college. In our modern age it extends to the mass media. The state regulates the airwaves. In order to make it into the mainstream media buisiness, one must be licensed, and with the licensing comes a load of requirements for fitting state-determined criteria for content and ettiquiette. While many countries may not have state control of the media to extent that a communist country in which the state literally runs the media itself does, the patronage between the private media buisiness and the state, and the amount of regulation involved, produces a close enough effect.

There is a profound sense in which the state thrives on conflict. There are two ways in which this is true. On one hand, the state thrives by pitting the people against eachother. On the other hand, the state thrives by uniting the people against a common and external enemy. In both cases, the main emotions to be exploited are fear and distrust. Rich are pitted against poor, labor is pitted against capital, religious is pitted against secular, nation is pitted against nation and ethnicities are pitted against eachother. Pick any two opposing personal preferances and there is a potential conflict to be created by the state in exploiting them. Some of the conflict is over patronage with the state, while in other cases it is simply in the name of dominance. This encouragment of conflict functions as a distractionary device as well as a means to get people to support state power in the persuit of such conflicts.

The state is constituted by self-interested individuals just like any other institution. These individuals have every reason in the world to try to maximize their own revenues. However, if a parasite sucks too much from its host, it eventually kills its host, and dies itself in turn. Therefore, some members of the state may try to maintain a balance by which they extract as much as possible from the people while still leaving them with enough to ensure that the plunder can continue. This is of course not to say that these individuals may be particularly good at calculating exactly where the cut-off point is, nor is it to say that there are not individuals who will wrecklessly try to extract as much as possible without any such considerations for sustainance.

Nonetheless, the master politician is he or she who is best able to determine where this point of balance lies. For plunder cannot be efficiently institutionalized unless it is made sustainable, and the state is the very incarnation of institutionalized plunder. It is a protection racket. The art of rule consists of finding ways to keep the plunder repetitive and sustainable. The common criminal pales in comparison to the common ruler. For while the common criminal may manage to plunder their victim once, it is doubtful that they will return to the same victim twice, let alone convince their victim that they are actually helping them and that they are a necessary part of the social order. But the sucessful ruler gets away with this, and much more.

How the State Falls

Based on our understanding of how the state thrives, it behoovs us to understand how the state falls. Afterall, there is no such thing as a permanent institution, and the state is not exempted from this fact. We live in a world of scarce resources with mortal beings and limited abilities. No matter how sucessful a state is at maintaining its rule, one day it eventually falls. One could very well think of it in terms of entropy in that all systems are ultimately reduced to their component parts. One way in which the state falls is merely by following its natural course, which is to say that it drains and damages the source of its supply to the point where it cannot thrive any longer. In a sense, all states seal their own fates by setting up economic conditions that eventually render them helpless. For there are many unintended consequences to the economic meddling that is required to maintain the existance of a state.

Viewed another way, there is a certain social evolutionary inertia at work that makes state control harder and harder to maintain over time. As technology improves and as information spreads and complexifies, it becomes harder and harder for the state to adequately plan anything and the market itself starts to provide functions more efficiently and more cheaply then the state can manage to. The state's provision of services starts to become progressively obsolete over time. No matter what a state may do to try to control a market, the market has its own inertia and a dynamically self-correcting nature that defies all attempts to control it. And as the amount of information in a society intensifies, the ability of a state to control public opinion and the prospects for power remaining centralized decreases.

There comes a certain point where the exploitive nature of the state becomes blatantly obvious to the public at large and the possibility of revolution enters the horizon. The instinct of people to be free can only be bottled up for so long. And information cannot be suppressed completely or eternally. Violent revolution is of course not the only possibility for the fall of states, and it is probably the most risky route that can be taken. But wether violent or not, some sort of rebellion becomes inevitable after a point. Iron curtains cannot be kept in place infinitely. Artificial divisions cannot be indefinitely maintained. Prohibitions can be defied almost as if they didn't exist at all. With enough effort, taxes can be resisted and avoided.

If we accept the premise that the state is fundamentally kept in place by ideology and passive resignation, another way by which the state may fall is by the mass withdrawl of consent by the populace. Mass civil disobedience has proven to be a surpisingly effective strategy for change in many instances. For as soon as people stop believing in the state, it essentially dissapears unless its members wish to resort to overt violence. And if it tries to resort to overt violence in order to maintain its rule, it risks delegitimizing itself even more in the eyes of the populace and facing what amounts to a domestic insurgency of the people, which can be a very tough thing to beat in battle. Civil war and domestic insurgency is hardly a desirable state of affairs for the members of the state.

The withdrawl of consent can also be manifested in terms of competition, even on black and grey markets. If people want to avoid the state schools, they may try resorting to home schooling or private and alternate methods of schooling. If people want to avoid the mainstream media, they may try opening up alternative media organizations and using the internet. If people are displeased with the government's courts, they may start resorting to private arbitration. If people are displeased with the police, they may start relying more on self-defense, engaging in limited forms of vigalantaism or even opening and patronizing alternative institutions for defensive purposes. If people resent ridiculous and archiac laws enough, they may simply start defying them in mass.

Never underestimate the power of a massive withdrawl of consent. It can potentially grind a political system to a hault within days, much in the same way that a massive enough boycott can eventually drive a company out of buisiness. A buisiness cannot survive without customers. And a state cannot survive without participants and dependants. It would be an interesting scenario indeed if on one election day noone showed up at the ballot box, or if large numbers of people decided to simply stop filling out their tax forms, or if soldiers and policemen and bereaucrats simply quit in mass. What a quagmire that would be for the top dogs!

For rulers are reduced to nothing but feeble individuals as soon as obedience is simply denied to them outright and in mass. They only constitute a tiny portion of society. They most borrow the eyes, ears and labor of their subjects to maintain their power. The lone ruler is truly powerless without the complicity of people willing to enforce their will for them. They do not directly enforce anything themselves or pay for anything out of their own pocketbooks. They are quite cowardly individuals. They do not fight their wars themselves. They do not do the paperwork themselves. They do not patrol the streets themselves. They have no more power over you then that which you lend to them by joining their ranks and directly participating in their institutional framework.

And therefore the key to dismantling their power is to simply stop participating in it.

Checks and Balances: Two Kinds

Brainpolice — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 22:37:00 GMT

Checks and balances should be a fairly familiar concept to Americans. The standard definition of checks and balances is that the state must be broken up into multiple segments that function as checks against eachother's power and perform different functions, while these segments still remain within one central institution. Traditionally, the idea is that there must be three separate branches (executive, legislative and judicial) within one central government in order to prevent the accumulation of power into one group. At least superficially, this view slightly recognizes the principle of decentralization. Another somewhat more powerful conception of checks and balances is the idea that there must be multiple and separate levels of government, each with their own branches and jurisdictions, and that in order to combat the accumulation of power, individual states or parishes and cities should remain "independant" from the central state.

This is the doctrine of internal checks and balances. Both separation between branches and levels of government are internal theories of checks and balances. But how well do these theories stand up in the face of logic and empirical evidence? Not very well. The fundamental flaw in the idea that separation between branches within one institution will stop power from being concentrated should be fairly obvious: it is still within one institution. There is theoretically no "third party" outside of that institution functioning on a check on it, which is to say that the overall institution is a judge in its own case. The supreme court is still part of the federal government. All historical evidence shows a great deal of collusion between branches, and when there is collusion between branches, there is centralization of powers into one expanding group. Clearly, merely having three branches under one institution will not stop power from accumulating in that institution. Much heftier criterion must be met.

While the doctrine of state's rights is a step up from this, since it maintains at a minimum that there should be a multitude of jurisdictions within the overall territory bestowed to the central government, it nonetheless contains a similar flaw. The states are still ultimately subject to the territorial dominion of the federal government and there is once again collusion between the levels of government. If a central government still exists, it doesn't matter how many territorial jurisdictions that one tries to split the central state's control into, political power is still concentrated at a central point. Surely expanding the amount of people in the government or the number of sub-governments within a government's territorial monopoly is not necessarily a way to restrict political power. In order to at least be a "pure" advocate of "state's rights", one must support a more radical approach, with no federal government.

Once one has made it to this point, the same problem keeps repeating itself at each level of government. The states in themselves would now be the central governments, only over smaller territories. The size of the dominion of power may have been reduced, but the essential feature of territorial monopoly is still maintained. Counties, parishes and cities would synergize with and the states. If the states were gotten rid of, the counties would be the territorial monopolies and the cities and towns would synergize with them. And even down to the city-state level, the problem of territorial monopoly would persist. The advantages of so-called "state's rights" or "city's rights" mostly only have to do with the size of the territorial monopoly, but they do almost nothing to address the problem of territorial monopoly itself. All such mechanisms are ultimately within the structure of the institution of the state itself. A monopoly cannot be broken up without competition from other institutions external to it.

This is why external checks and balances are much stronger and more meaningful than internal ones. Checks and balances in which governmental institutions are held in check by non-governmental ones, which requires a separation between buisiness and state, constitutes an example of external checks and balances. An honest private institution that opens up a buisiness in competition with the state in a particular area, which inherently requires that the given buisiness not engage in any kind of patronage and protectionism with the state, is functioning as a check on state power by providing an alternative option for people and lowering dependance on the state. The improvement of technology and the availability of private alternatives to the state in a given field, and the long-term decrease in prices it often leads to, can function as an external "check and balance" on the state much better than any internal "check and balance" ever can.

On the other hand, a private institution that colludes with the state is participating in the centralization and expansion of power. Indeed, the leaders of such institutions become part of the ruling class. When such synergy between industry and government takes place, various buisinesses start to become more centralized, modeled more similarly to the structure of the state than would otherwise have been possible. When buisiness starts to merge at the hip with the state, this presents an oppurtunity to obtain and expand political power for both select private interests and members of the government itself. The union of church and state is a perfect historical example of territorial monopolies further centralizing and expanding as a consequence of collusion between the state and external organizations. The ultimate end of such collusion is the merging of a more multi-centered order into one large central organization.

In a sense, everyone who is outside of the ruling class of a given society is a potential check on political power, by the mere virtue of not being within or in control of it. There are many external methods of checking and resisting political power, which includes various types of civil disobedience and economic decisions. From the perspective of an individual as a consumer, withdrawing consumption from the state's "services" and merely patronizing a private alternative at a lower price and participating in peaceful black markets is an important haven from state power. On the other hand, actively and enthusiastically participating in the state's "services" transforms one into either a state of dependance on the state, or worse, part of the ruling class. Here too, collusion has a negative effect because it is internal to the institution. It's working within the system, which is precisely why it does not work.

Economic incentives is a very important check and balance on state power. A defining feature of the state as an organization is that it is an externalizer of costs, which is to say that those who hold the political power in a society do not actually bear the costs of the laws and policies that they work with. Therefore, mechanisms that internalize costs provide a disincentive towards political power. Political power cannot be obtained or maintained without externalizing costs through mechanisms such as taxation and eminent domain. If the state is denied access to external resources then it will eventually crumble, as the state as an organization depends entirely on the production of those who are not in it. If it is either cut off from recieving that production then political power obviously cannot be maintained for very long.

The ultimate check on political power is philosophy. In short, it is impossible to maintain or expand political power without the propagation of ideological ideas in favor of political power or encouraging resignation to it. What ideas people adhere to ultimately effects the course of history. All that is required to combat political power is the action of withdrawl of support to the best that one can manage. And in order for this to be done, it must be philosophically accepted that the only possible checks against the state that can possibly exist are external to the institution because the institution of the state is a compulsory territorial monopoly regaurdless of what one tries to do with it internally. It is logically inconsistant to maintain that one can reduce, restrict or abolish political power by using political power, and it is nonsensical to claim that one can provide checks and balances on an institution through mechanisms that are entirely within the framework of that very institution and when that institution has a territorial monopoly.

What about so-called "competition" between nation-states? If there can be said to be anything resembling checks and balances between goverments, it would be the total lack of both collusion and offensive intervention between governments. When states engage in economic hegemony with eachother they begin a gradual trend towards international or global government, taking the centralization process to the extreme of there being virtually no territory immune from being within the jurisdiction of the government monopoly. International government possesses all of the problems previously mentioned about federal and state government. It just conglomerates power even more than nation-states and has a larger monopolistic jurisdiction.

Modern state warfare essentially cannot be done without collusion and contracting with particular banking and buisiness interests through contracting. War is the most costly endeavor a government can possibly engage in and it can only be waged by externalizing the costs, particularly through the mechanism of monetary inflation and borrowing from from foreign governments and banking interests. War has historically been a means of maintaining and expanding political power. As such, it would be disingenous to use it as an example of free competition. It is, by definition, a flexing of state power, of monopoly. Even if a state is overthrown by another, the victor state usually has increased power when the smoke clears. War has been the main mechanism of expanding state power throughout history.

In conclusion, it should be clear that true checks and balances lies within the domain of private and decentralized mechanisms that are external to and not in any kind of collusion with any political power. That is, market competition is true checks and balances, while the state can only attempt to simulate competition in vein. The more standard concept of checks and balances, while a well intended attempt to form a structural means for restricting political power, is incredibly mistaken in its premises as to how the state functions as an institution. It is rather niave about the nature of political power. In order to truly have checks and balances, the state as an organization must be questioned altogether and participitation in the activities of and consumption of the loot of such an organization must begin to be abandoned in favor of a multitude of alternatives.

Minarchism: Ethically Self-contradictary

Brainpolice — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 23:20:00 GMT

The basic idea of minarchism is that the government should be expressly small and limited to the defense of person and property of those within the territorial dominion of the government. This generally implies that the government's services be limited to the provision of police, courts and defense. Most minarchists accept, or at least claim to accept, the principle of the non-initiation of aggression. They seek to attain a government that functions only for defensive purposes, while completely abstaining from initiating aggression. But if the minarchist sincerely does favor the principle of the non-initiation of aggression, they are contradicting their own ethical premise in supporting the existance of a government in the first place. For how are even these limited defensive services to be payed for? Most minarchists favor some limited form of taxation.

The statement that taxation is theft may be shocking to many people, even libertarian minarchists. But it is undeniable. Would the act of me giving my wallet to a robber be a voluntary act of charity? Clearly not. The only reason the robber's victim hands them the wallet is because they are threatened with force in some way. The robber may have a gun to your head or a knife to your throat. It is an action done under the threat of force, and is therefore coerced. An important point that this brings out is that, while the initiation of force is wrong, the threat of the initiation of force is equally a problem. Taxation works no differently than our robbery scenario. While it is true that members of the government do not initially come to one's home to directly take their money, the money is given under the threat that this will happen if they do not pay up. And if one does not pay up, eventually this very scenario will play out. You will be tracked down and the legal authorities will eventually come to your home expecting payment. And if you continues to resist, down the line you will be shot. So let's not be fooled by the idea that the state merely theatens you with force without actually using it. Force will be used against you at some point down the line if you do not comply.

Therefore, taxation inherently violates the non-aggression principle. It would be nonsensical to claim that a high degree of taxation is bad, but a low degree of taxation is good or necessary. If the initiation of aggression and the threat thereof is ethically unjustifiable, then no level of taxation can be rationally defended. A common objection is that one could simply move. But if I truly have property rights, then I should be able to keep my property and still not pay and not recieve the services. Otherwise, you must initiate force against me, or at least threaten to do so, in order to make me pay the taxes. If I wish to stop patronizing McDonalds, I am not forced to move. I can just stop going there and still keep my home. The fact that my only alternative to paying my taxes is to move merely underscores that the state is claiming control over my home or land property. This shows the state to be a coercive territorial monopoly, which we will address later. In either case, this line of arguement, what may be called the "love it or leave it" arguement in favor of the state, assumes precisely what it is trying to prove: namely, that the state legitimately controls the territory.

Some minarchists may try to get around the ethical problems inherent in taxation by advocating a government funded entirely through tarrifs, but a tarrif is really a form of taxation in itself, only it shifts the tax burden onto foreign people. Yet the non-aggression principle must apply to all people. It has no "American only" caviat. It is not a nationalist principle. If it is wrong to tax people within the territory, it is also wrong to tax people outside of the territory. The initiation of force against people in general is the problem, not what specific group of people that are being aggressed against. Any attempt to forcibly externalize the costs of the state onto people outside of the territorial dominion still presents us with a problem.

Another arguement that some minarchists may make is that the real problem is income taxation and that a sales tax is truly voluntary because you can always abstain from buying those products. But this is fallicious and is similar to the "love it or leave it" arguement. For as soon as you do decide to buy the product, you are made to pay a surplus on top of the actual price that the product is being sold for. In short, a 3rd party, the state, is claiming a chunk of transactions that one takes part in. One should be able to buy the product at the actual market price - which is the price without the tax. In either case, if one wants to survive at all in the world, one is going to have to buy some products at some point. Sales taxation presents a false choice between not buying things and paying a tax on top of the price that those things initially are being sold for. You are still ultimately bound by law under the threat of force to pay the sales tax, lest you be hauled off to jail. One most certainly cannot haggle with the store owner to deduct the tax from the price. The store owners in themselves are likewise coerced under the threat of force to add the tax on top of their initial price.

Objectivists advocate something a bit different than what most libertarian minarchists support. They oppose taxation and advocate what may be called "subscribed government" or voluntary donations to the government. But if this is the case it ceases to be a state can may as well be called a "private protection agency". For if it is truly patronized just like a buisiness, then it has market prices, and instead of saying "donations" we may as well call it "investment". However, if this institution still maintains a coercive monopoly by initiating force or threatening to do so in order to stop people from forming or patronizing any other protection agency within the territory, then it is not truly voluntary either and it still is a state. So even if taxation were abolished, states would still be involuntary if they still tried to maintain a coercive territorial monopoly. This is the underlying problem in the ideal of the Objectivist state (despite the fact that they eliminate taxation from the picture).

Another more pragmatic point is that in the abscence of competition, there is no genuine market prices due to the calculation problem. There really would be no rational indicators as to wether the service is efficient or not. In short, the economic problems involved in a monopoly apply to states in general. A further point is that if they were logically consistant in their opposition to competition in these fields, Objectivists would have to advocate a one world government, for if their ideals apply to all human beings, then all human beings must be subjected to the same territorial dominion. The mere existance of multiple jurisdictions with laws that vary in their content, wether that be multiple county governments or multiple national governments, defies the Objectivist's desire for legal uniformity. Of course, no Objectivist to my knowledge has ever advocated a single unified global government. But this is indeed the logical implication of their own political doctrine.

In a sense, all Objectivists have to do is remove the territorial monopoly aspect of their ideal form of government and they would be free market anarchists. But they refuse to do this. Yet they are contradicting their own ethical principles in supporting a state in the first place. No Objectivist to my knowledge has ever been able to explain how their Objectivist government obtains its territorial monopoly in the first place without initiating force against competition within the given territory, and further continually initiating force in order to maintain that monopoly. Supposing that an Objectivist government already is in place, what if I wish to start up my own private protection agency or dispute resolution organization within the territory? Or what if I wish to patronize such an agency instead of the Objectivist government? The Objectivist government has only two options: initiate force against me or cease to be a government in any rational sense of the word.

It would be wise for minarchists to take heed of the methods by which states have historically gained and maintained their territorial dominions. For the state ultimately hinges on its exercise of control over land, both directly and indirectly. In the most obvious and direct sense, the government buildings rely on control over the land that it resides on by the state. But the state inherently also claims and indirectly excersises control over the entire territory that makes up its so-called "borders". How do these dominions come about? The most obvious answer is plain old land theft, which has been watered down in legal terms to be known as "imminent domain". The most cursory glance at history shows land theft to be at the heart of the formation and expansion of states. But even in cases where the state "bought" land from willing sellers, the funds that they bought it with initially came from some form of taxation. Surely a robber is not justified in their theft because they went on to buy things from willing sellers with the stolen money. The state would still be peddling stolen funds in order to achieve land in this way. No good can follow from an initially evil act.

In summary, it should be quite obvious that advocating a minimal state of any kind while simultaneously claiming that the initiation of force and the threat thereof is wrong is self-contradictary. The minarchist's own logic works against them. If it is wrong for the government to steal people's money to provide for healthcare or retirement money or scools, then why would it be any better for these very same means to be used towards any other ends such as the provision of police, courts and a military? And even in the abscence of mechanisms such as taxation, if it is wrong to initiate force, then how can the state legitimately stop people who have not initiated force themselves from forming and patronizing alternative defensive and dispute resolving organizations? The minarchist, in order to remain consistant with their own stated ethical axoims, should become a market anarchist. Anarchy is the logical result of their own principles. They should not be scared to ditch their cognitive dissonance and embrace anarchy.