Busting Myths about the State and the Libertarian Alternative

II. Myths about the Nature of the State

Myth #1: The State Is Good and Does Good

Statists like to portray the state as a vehicle through which they can channel their compassion, noble intentions, and moral compasses. They believe that the state brings civility to society. However, as this book will illustrate, the reality is that this vehicle is not as noble or moral as statists like to believe, and it would not be an exaggeration to say that there is no more uncivil institution than the state.

The State Is Coercion

Every action that the state takes is coercive; legislation is passed to compel changes in behavior. Tax legislation is passed to confiscate the income of peacefully acting individuals in excess of what they would otherwise voluntarily give to the state. Regulatory legislation is passed to force peacefully acting individuals to take or refrain from taking actions with their bodies or private property contrary to how they would otherwise act. Failure to comply with legislation, and with the armed agents of the state who seek to enforce such legislation, results in being locked up in a brutal cage (known as “prison”) for a number of years as decided by the state. It may also result in the state confiscating some or all of your private property. If you physically resist the state’s agents on the grounds of self-defense, these well-armed agents may physically injure you or, in the worst case, kill you.

It is impossible to deny that legislation is coercive: if it is not coercive, how does one explain the violent penalties for non-compliance; if it only represents what everyone would do anyway, why is it passed at all?

The reality is that the state comprises a group of individuals who create and enforce coercive rules about how other, peacefully acting individuals must act with their bodies and private property. No other individuals in society claim legitimacy, or would be recognized by statists as having legitimacy, in doing these things.

This is indeed an awesome power to have over the lives of others. However, it entirely contradicts the notion—and therefore implies that statists do not believe—that all men are metaphysically equal, and therefore should live by the same behavioral code when they interact. To statists, some men are entitled to forcibly dictate to others what they may do with their bodies and private property. Statists are unable to cogently articulate where this entitlement comes from, because there is no good answer. No man is born with any natural entitlement to rule another; he could only gain such power through the other’s explicit consent, and subject to the terms thereof.

Thus, absent such consent (which I will deal with below), statists necessarily believe that there are two codes of acceptable behavior for human beings: one code applies to regular citizens; the other code applies only to those individuals at the state. The latter code permits individuals at the state to engage in actions that, if performed by regular citizens, would be regarded as wholly illegitimate, if not moral atrocities. This means that statism recognizes no universal standard of acceptable behavior for man, and thus statism cannot be based on any notion of morality.

To illustrate this point, imagine a street with 10 residents. One resident, X, kicks open Y’s door and demands that Y hand over 30 percent of his income, or else he will lock Y in a cage in his basement for five years. Every person would agree that X has no right to do this. What Y earns from his labor or funds is his to keep, transfer, gift, etc., but it is none of X’s business. Y may voluntarily decide to give X 30 percent of his income, but he might also decide not to do so. No one on that street has the right to take this coercive action against anyone else. Now, what if six of the 10 residents get together and tell X that he is allowed to do this? Does that change the legitimacy of X’s action? If no individual had this power to begin with, how could he delegate it to X, even as part of a group?

Yet this is precisely what statists accept when they claim that a majority of voters could empower an individual at the state to levy a 30 percent income tax.1 Statists might respond that the money confiscated from Y would be used to help Z, who is needy (by someone’s arbitrary definition), and that this is therefore a just cause. However, what the statists are really saying is that the other people on the street have the right to decide whether to give Z a priority right to Y’s income!

If these others feel so strongly about helping Z, they are free to do so voluntarily on their own from their own resources.2 Alternatively, they might try to convince Y of the merits of helping Z. However, to simply arrogate to themselves (through X) the power to forcibly take Y’s income has no moral legitimacy.3

Or take a second example. A wants to work for B. B offers to pay A a wage of $6.00 per hour, and A accepts this offer. Yet C comes along and says that A is not allowed to work for B unless B pays A $7.00 per hour, and that if, contrary to C’s edict, A does work for B at $6.00 per hour, then C will lock up B in a cage in his basement for a year. By what principle does C have the right to interfere in the private arrangement between A and B? By what principle could C prohibit A from working where he chooses, and prohibit B from spending his funds as he chooses? Does this situation change if D, E, and F all tell C that he is allowed to do this? If none of D, E, or F had this power to begin with, how could they individually or collectively delegate such power to C?

Yet this is precisely what statists accept when they claim that a majority of voters could empower an individual at the state to legislate a minimum wage rate. Statists might respond that they just want to help A earn more money, and that this is therefore a just cause. Leaving aside whether the policy would actually achieve that objective (B may just rescind his offer to A, or never make it in the first place, if he is compelled to pay more than he wants to pay), what statists are really saying is that D, E, and F have the right to tell A that he cannot work for B, and to tell B that he cannot employ A, unless A earns what they have decided he should earn.

If D, E, and F feel so strongly about helping A, they are free to do several things: offer to employ A at $7.00 per hour themselves; offer to supplement A’s income by $1.00 per hour out of their own pockets; or try to convince B of the merits of paying A more. However, to simply arrogate to themselves (through C) the power to forcibly prohibit the private arrangement between A and B has no moral legitimacy.4

The bottom line is that there are two ways in which a person could interact with his fellow man: peacefully (through voluntary action) or violently (through coercion). The state is the primary channel for violent interaction between humans.

Is Statism (Like) Mass Slavery?

That sounds shocking, I know, but I will explain.

What is the definition of “slavery”? I would submit that “slavery” means a system whereby A claims the right to initiate or threaten force to require B to do with B’s body and the produce of B’s body as A directs.

While many Americans—whose only knowledge of slavery consists of what they learned in school about what happened in the American South before 1865—may instinctively define “slavery” as a black person doing back-breaking work in the fields for a white person, under oppressive conditions, without monetary reward, in reality this is not an accurate definition. Today there are plenty of individuals of varied races who do back-breaking work under the hot sun for employers also of varied races, or for charitable causes, but no one would consider these individuals to be slaves because they can freely quit. In addition, in the U.S. before 1865, (a) there were slaves who performed non-agricultural work (as artisans, in commercial industry, providing domestic services, etc.), many of whom believed that they were well treated by their masters, (b) some slaves were permitted to earn money outside the master’s estate, provided that they paid over to the master whatever he commanded, and (c) there were free blacks who enslaved other blacks. More broadly with respect to this last point, throughout world history there have been examples of whites enslaving whites, non-whites enslaving whites, and non-whites enslaving non-whites.5 Finally, today, regrettably, there are “sex slaves,” who are forced to have sex, rather than work in the fields or around the house.

Accordingly, the defining aspect of “slavery” is not the nature of the work, not the races involved, not the amount of actual violence employed on a day-to-day basis, and not the pay, but the fact that a person is compelled by the threat of force to do as someone else directs.

And, if this is true, then consider the ways in which statism is similar to slavery.

First, the most obvious examples are military conscription, jury service, and prison labor. In these cases, individuals at the state force citizens to physically serve as directed until discharged—to go into battle, appear at a court, or perform manual labor, respectively—under the ultimate threat of imprisonment,6 or death, if one resists.

Second, a less obvious example is taxation. Individuals at the state force citizens to pay over to the state that percentage of the fruits of their labor, or of their other private property, as directed, under the ultimate threat of imprisonment, or death, if one resists.

Third, the most nuanced example is state regulation of non-violent activity (or victimless “crimes”). Individuals at the state force citizens to do or refrain from doing specific things with their bodies and private property—even though the citizens are not physically harming anyone else—under the ultimate threat of imprisonment, or death, if one resists.

While statists may be aghast at my suggestion that statism is like mass slavery, I would challenge any statist to cogently explain why the relationship between the individuals at the state and each dissenting citizen is any different from the relationship between a master and his dissenting slave.

To anticipate a possible statist objection, I would argue that it’s not relevant from the perspective of there being shackles on one’s freedom that the individuals at the state are many, but the master is only one. In fact, it may even be worse; one could perhaps escape the clutches of a single master, but how does one escape the clutches of the entire state apparatus?

Statists might argue that the master claims ownership of the slave, but the state does not claim ownership of the citizen. However, that raises two issues.

First, what is “ownership”? I would submit that “ownership” of an object means the exclusive right to control that object. If the individuals at the state, at their whim (i.e., by passing legislation or through executive action, backed up by force), are exclusively able to control what someone does with their body or private property (including income), then that is “ownership.”

Second, it matters not that one master explicitly claims ownership and another does not; if the latter actually acts in the same manner as the former, then he is implicitly claiming ownership. The act of “claiming” is irrelevant; what counts is the act of using or threatening force to assert control.

Statists might also argue that slavery is all-pervasive, in the sense that, from the minute the slave rises in the morning to the minute he goes to bed in the evening, every single action is subject to his master’s whims. However, I would argue that, given the all-pervasive regulatory and national-security state in which we live today, there is very little, if anything, that a citizen is free to do without permission from or the indulgence of the individuals at the state. Every product and physical activity is state-regulated, all income and assets are liable to be seized by the state, and there are no effective limits on what the individuals at the state may do to disallow a citizen’s actions.

Citizens may perceive that they have more freedom in society than the slave does on his master’s property, perhaps because a nation, state, province, or town is an enormous property, or perhaps because the edicts and enforcement come from so many different parts of the state apparatus, e.g., in the U.S. there is a “coercion matrix,” with the federal, state, county, and local governments on one axis, and the legislature, judiciary, executive, and administrative agencies on the other. In any event, the aforementioned perception is false, because it fails to consider the aggregate of all coercion wielded within the property the state claims to control by all elements in the matrix, which coercion, as noted above, is all-pervasive. Not only that, but, at any time, the individuals at the state may decide to further reduce the citizen’s freedom in any way they choose (which has in fact been happening in the U.S. for many years, as all elements in the matrix have continually expanded their range of activity).

So, is statism like mass slavery? It sure seems like it.7

* * * * *

It is undeniable that, at its core, the state is simply a group of individuals who force others to do things that serve the ends of those at the state (or their supporters). Indeed, this is the most odious aspect of the state; to use the lexicon of German philosopher Immanuel Kant, the moral issue with the state is that it involves using man as a means for the ends of others, instead of regarding each man as an end in himself.

Myth #2: The State Acts by Consent

The statist will often respond that the state is not in fact coercive because everyone consents to its activities. What the statist could only mean, however, is that he consents to the state’s activities; he cannot speak for anyone else. The mere fact that I am writing this book indicates that at least one person does not consent to the state’s activities (and there are many more like me).8

If the response is “Well, the majority of people consent,” then what the statist is suggesting is that we live by mob rule. This obviously doesn’t address the moral problems raised above but simply restates them in a different way.9

Some statists will try to argue that, notwithstanding my making explicit that I do not consent to the state, by my actions I am implicitly consenting, which of course makes one wonder what “consent” really means. It’s worth exploring some of the common arguments of statists in this regard.

The Constitution

One argument used in the U.S. is that the Constitution, which established the federal government, binds everyone because it’s the supreme law of the land.10 Sometimes this is embellished by saying that it was passed by super-majorities in each of the ratifying states, so that it’s really binding. This argument has a number of flaws.

First, no one alive today was part of the original consent. In no other part of our lives do we admit to being legally bound by what our predecessors have done, and nor would we assume we could bind our descendants. No court would uphold this as a valid point of contract law.11

Second, if anyone today is deemed to have consented to the Constitution, they would only have agreed to be bound by what was written in the document, and today’s federal government operates well beyond those words. Statists like to say that the Constitution is a “living document” that adjusts over time, but in what other contract is that a valid argument anyone would accept?

For instance, imagine if the Underwriting Department of the bank that holds your fixed rate mortgage contacted you to advise that the mortgage contract is a “living document” and, since times have changed and the bank needs to boost its revenues, your monthly payment is going to increase. Would any person accept this as a valid action? The statist’s next argument, that the Constitution’s “expansion” is valid because it has been effected through U.S. Supreme Court decision, doesn’t hold water either, since the Supreme Court is merely another organ of the state. It would be like your objecting to the mortgage bank’s proposed action, and then taking the dispute to the bank’s Customer Service Center for resolution. Good luck with that.12

Voting

Another argument that statists make is that we consent because we get the opportunity to vote for our representatives in each election. This argument has a number of components that deserve scrutiny.

First, voting is a false choice: you are choosing between being coerced by politician A or politician B. There is no choice not to be coerced.

Second, whether you vote for politician A or against politician A, or you don’t vote at all, if politician A is elected, then he gets to coerce you. In what way is that a valid choice? In every other area of our lives we make real decisions between competing products, and we might choose not to purchase anything in any particular instance, but no vendor could force you to buy his product.

Third, what does it mean to be “represented by” a politician? He does not know you, you do not know him, neither person signs a document agreeing to the specific terms of representation, he cannot be held to account or fired by you if he breaches those terms and, by virtue of representing thousands of very different people in your district, he is bound to act in conflict with the desires of many of the people he represents with everything he does.13 In all other areas of our lives where we hire a representative, e.g. a lawyer, both parties first contact each other and discuss the arrangement and know the specific terms and duties of that arrangement, you can fire your representative at any time if he breaches these terms, and he cannot act against your interests in favor of another client without getting both parties’ explicit consent.

Fourth, to exactly which terms does a voter consent when he casts his vote? The platform that the politician campaigned on two weeks ago, last week, or this week, the new ideas the politician pursues after the election, the ideas he later discards, etc.? The fact is, neither the voter nor the politician could articulate the terms to which the voter is consenting.

Living Here

Yet another argument statists make is that, if you live here, then you must implicitly consent to the system. Let’s explore this one a little further.

First, since this argument is one of implicit consent, surely raising your hand and explicitly saying “I want to secede from the state” should trump the implicit consent? It also implies that the consent is irrevocable, i.e., apparently you could never withdraw consent. Do we accept these propositions for any other major decision in our lives?

Second, when is this consent actually given: at birth? In no other situation are newborns deemed to have sufficient capacity to give such consent. If not at birth, what is the actual indicator later in one’s life that one has consented to the state? For all other major decisions in our lives—such as buying a house or a car—we evidence our consent by signing a contract which lays out the very specific terms of that agreement. Yet for the most important decision—whether we would allow unspecified other men to take from us whatever they choose, and to tell us what we can and cannot do with our bodies and property—we are deemed to have given consent simply by not moving away?

This logic could be easily turned on the statist. When the statist complains about murder in his society, we could ask why the statist doesn’t move to a place without murder and, by the statist’s own logic, if the statist stays, then he must be consenting to murder!

Third, to what are you consenting by living here: everything the state does now or might do in the future? Who gives that blanket consent anywhere else in their lives?

Fourth, claiming legitimacy as a ruler in a territory is not the same thing as actually having legitimacy. If I put up signs in the neighborhood saying that I am in charge, and that anyone who stays is deemed to consent, who would agree that staying indicates agreement to my authority? I could not point to my own declaration of legitimacy as the source of my legitimacy; that would be circular reasoning.

Fifth, to negate this supposed consent, where could you move to within a territory if every square inch is claimed by the state to be under its control? If beyond your home state, how could you move when other states control passage across their artificial national borders, and the only places not controlled by states are (parts of) the oceans and possibly Antarctica? The exit costs are simply too high to make staying a genuine indication of implicit consent.14

A derivative of this statist line of reasoning is that, if you could reasonably move to another state, statists argue “Well, choosing to stay here indicates you have chosen this state over another state.” However, this is a false choice. Imagine if someone credibly threatened you with incarceration but gave you the choice of cage A or cage B; if you choose cage A, that only indicates a preference for cage A over cage B, but it doesn’t indicate consent to incarceration itself.

Sixth, why should you have to move? Why shouldn’t the coercive state move out (either physically, or metaphorically by leaving you alone)?15 Of the two parties—you and the state—it is the state that is forcibly asserting authority. Why should it get to stay? Those around you who explicitly want to live under the state’s rule could continue to do so, but why should their actions bind you?

If you’re born into a neighborhood in which the Mafia requires payments from you to “protect” you, and where the understanding is that, if you don’t make these payments, the Mafia will lock or beat you up, if you continue to live there, are you deemed to be consenting to this protection racket?16 Maybe you just want to live in the place with which you are most familiar.

If a child gets threatened in the lunch cafeteria by the school bully every day, does the child’s continued use of the cafeteria evidence his consent? Maybe he just wants to eat his lunch in peace, and is hoping the bully will cease, or be forced to cease, his bullying.

The statist’s argument that, if you don’t leave, then you are deemed to consent to the state’s actions, is subject to the same refutation of the mugger demanding “Your money or your life”: just as you have the right both to your money and your life, so too you have the right both to enjoy your private property and not be coerced by the individuals at the state.

Using State Services

“Ah,” the statist says, “but if you use the local roads, fire department, and garbage services, then you must be deemed to consent.” There are several problems with this argument.

First, this argument misses the point that you have no choice in the matter. Since the state has arrogated to itself the responsibility of providing roads, fire departments, garbage disposal, etc., and prohibits competing suppliers, you don’t have the option to purchase these services from other suppliers (or not to purchase them at all).

Second, the argument also overlooks the fact these services are supplied using money forcibly confiscated from taxpayers in the first place. How could one party do something wrongful, and then claim that action as the foundation for evidencing implicit consent from the wronged party?

If the Mafia were to build local roads from protection money extorted from local businesses, and then claim that everyone using the roads is thereby deemed to consent to the Mafia’s ongoing operations, even (some) statists would reject that argument. Why is it different because the state does this?17

Third, in every other area of our lives where we consensually enter into an agreement under which we retain someone to provide us with services, if the services are not provided at all, or are substandard, then we can, at a minimum, terminate the arrangement, if not also sue for money damages. Yet we cannot fire the state as a service-provider, we cannot sue the state for damages (as will be explained later), and if we attempt to stop paying the state for these services (i.e., refuse to pay our taxes), we are liable to be forcibly thrown into a cage.

Fourth, if a thief steals your television, it is not wrong to try to take it back. In other words, if the state confiscates your income via taxes, it is not wrong to try to take back some of this stolen loot by using the state-provided services that were funded with your confiscated income. The alternative is to be looted and get no benefit from what was forcibly taken from you!

Fifth, even if one were to concede that, if you use a state-provided benefit, this implies you have “consented,” at most this could only imply consent to the provision of the specific benefit in question. Why should it also imply consent to the whole state infrastructure and every single act performed by the state?

* * * * *

When faced with the above arguments, statists often fall back to the question “Well, how would anything get done if we didn’t have a state?” That is a (somewhat) reasonable question to ask, but it is not a valid argument for the state’s legitimacy or anyone’s implicit consent to the state. Rather, that question is a utilitarian one, and there are significant bodies of intellectual writing and historical evidence that suggest potential answers (which will be discussed later). What the statist is implicitly saying, however, is that if he couldn’t imagine how things would get done in a voluntary society, then the default response must be to use coercion.

But asking about the state’s legitimacy is a moral question, not a utilitarian question. Just because the statist cannot conceive of how things might get done without a state doesn’t lend moral legitimacy to the state. As libertarian attorney Stephan Kinsella has noted, imagine being in the Soviet Union before it collapsed, and debating the morality of communism: if someone were to ask “Well, who would produce the toothpaste if the state didn’t, and how many varieties would there be?” and the answer given was “We don’t yet know,” would that be the end of the argument, thereby providing the moral foundation for communism?

Myth #3: The State Acts for the “Common Good”

Statists believe that individuals at the state act for the “common good of society.”18 This phrase is thrown about loosely without a lot of thought.

Who Can Define the “Common Good”?

In the U.S. there are over 315 million people. A “society” is not a discrete creature whose objectives can be defined; it is nothing more than many individuals living in proximity to one another. Each person has a unique personality and unique skills, life objectives, perceptions, and needs. What he wants out of life is known only to him, and his wants may change continuously. No one other than this person could really understand his perspective.

If this is all true, then the obvious questions to ask are: what is the “common good of society” and who could possibly discern this? Even if we used the most powerful supercomputer in the world, it would be logically impossible for this device to sketch out what is the “common good,” and to keep this current with the changing perspectives of millions of people. Does anyone really believe that there is an algorithm that could find a set of objectives which satisfies everyone’s unique desires at once, and which could update itself continuously as those desires change? And yet we don’t even rely on such a machine; according to statists, the individuals in government are omnisciently able to define the “common good.”

In fact, what statists are really saying is that they are willing to let the few munificent beings at the state define the “common good,” and then force a change in behavior among the rest of us to fall into line with that definition. However, what about those of us who don’t agree with this definition, or with this process of creating the definition?19

And one needs to believe in one of the Tooth Fairy Theories to believe that the “common good” would be defined by those at the state as what is good for the population at large, instead of what is good for those at the state.

Do Elections Help?

One statist response might be that voters are not simply letting politicians define the “common good” by themselves, since, through the electoral process, the politicians who are elected reflect their constituents’ views. However, which politician’s campaign platform maps precisely with every unique constituent’s personal definition of the “common good” (this is even harder to answer when one considers those who voted against this politician and those who did not vote at all), and which politician, once elected, acts faithfully to his campaign platform?

Further, each politician is only one member of this group of “common good” definers, and it’s not even clear that this group of beings could agree among themselves. The state comprises individuals from different parts of the political spectrum, from different geographical areas, in different branches of government, all disagreeing with one another all the time.

Even if we fantasize that this group of beings at the state could agree on a definition of the “common good,” they never actually set out what their conclusions are at the finish of each election so we could decide if we agree, and then subsequently track if they are acting in accordance with that definition.

In addition, the composition of this group changes with each election. Does this mean that each newly elected group coincidentally arrives at the exact same definition of the “common good” as the previous group or, if not, does this mean that the definition changes with each election? If the latter, does this map well with each voter’s changing perspectives, meaning that each voter coincidentally changes what he wants out of life only on each election date, and not in the interim? 20

“Majority Good,” Not “Common Good”

If, at the finish of each election, the elected group of politicians did articulate its definition of the “common good,” what happens if one citizen disagrees with this definition? Doesn’t a single person disagreeing with the state’s definition of the “common good” mean that, by definition, it is not the “common good,” since it is not satisfying everyone’s objectives at once?

To the statist, however, this is not a problem, for the statist is willing to accept “majority rule” as the philosophy behind defining the “common good.” However, this is a logical contradiction: what is being defined is not the “common good” but the “majority good” (and, as noted above, really not even that).21

Yet if all men are metaphysically equal, thereby defining how they should conduct themselves vis-à-vis others, then it must be morally wrong for two men to force a third to accept that what is good for them is good for him too, whether he likes it or not.

Myth #4: The State and Its Personnel Deserve Our Support

Double Standard

Before tackling this myth, it’s worth noting that not only do statists hold state personnel in high esteem, they are very tolerant of their errors. Private-sector personnel, on the other hand, are held to a much higher standard.

For instance, national defense is widely acknowledged by statists as one of the core functions of the state. The U.S. federal government confiscates hundreds of billions of taxpayers’ dollars per year to spend on national defense, and maintains military bases, ships, and spy networks both in the U.S. and around the globe. Yet when the U.S. homeland was attacked in September 2001—when the state failed in its core function, despite all of its massive expenditures and manpower—the state and its key leaders soared in popularity, as people rallied behind the federal government in general, and the president in particular. So too when the Japanese navy attacked the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor in 1941.

Imagine, however, if you had hired a private security firm to protect your home and family, and then a criminal invaded the house, killing members of your family. Do you think that if you were asked about this security firm the next day, you would express incredible pride at having contracted with this firm, and pledge to support it going forward, no matter what the cost? I would posit that, after working through your grieving period, the first thing you would do is find another security firm, since this one clearly failed at its core mission.

More generally, the state is legendary for highly documented and deplorable inefficiency, service standards and corruption, yet statists refuse to hold those at the state to the same exacting standards to which they hold those in the private sector. In the private sector, if people buy a product with the slightest defect, then at a minimum they demand a discount, an exchange, or a refund, but they may also decide not to buy from that vendor ever again. Yet with government, even when there are gross defects in service, people just shrug and say “What else could you expect?” and vainly hope that at the next election in a few years time they can vote in someone better.22

Statists argue that the state should regulate every industry, yet whenever a problem arises in a highly regulated industry—such as financial services, healthcare/health insurance, or education—this is seen as a failure of the industry, not of the state; in fact, statists then argue, simplistically, that the problem was that there was insufficient regulation. It never seems to occur to statists to ask whether the problem is inherent in the notion of the state itself as a regulator, and whether there are better alternatives.

If statists believe that the state is the answer to what they perceive as “failure of the market,” then why do they not believe that the market is the answer to the failure of the state?

For a different take on the notion of a double standard, consider that many statists are comfortable with the fact that states tend to prohibit private citizens from owning and carrying firearms, yet the state’s personnel are allowed and, in some cases, required, to carry firearms. This doesn’t strike many statists as a double standard but, by any definition of that phrase, it surely must be. If all men are metaphysically equal, with the same right to provide for their own defense, then how could this double standard be morally justified?23

Now let’s consider some reasons why the state and its personnel do not deserve our support.

Public Service?!

As one steps back and considers what it is that state personnel actually do—force other people to do things they don’t want to do—one wonders why state personnel are accorded so much respect, and why “public service” is so venerated.

The phrase “public service” is itself a misnomer. The politician is not “serving” the public; he is ordering the public around, including ordering them (via taxes) to pay his salary and purchase his products under the threat of involuntary incarceration. Contrast this with those in the private sector, who actually do serve the public by offering up products for purchase and only getting paid if customers see sufficient value in what is offered up to voluntarily part with their money.

It is somewhat surreal that one person would hold in any esteem another person who chooses to forcibly take property from others and tell them what they can and cannot do with their bodies and property, threatening them with punishment if they don’t comply. Such a person in any other context (e.g., the Mafia) would receive our severe opprobrium. Yet statists actually laud state personnel on the basis that they are doing wonderful things for others in society.24

To pick one example, namely, welfare, why is it laudable and compassionate for A (the state worker) to force B to send his money to C? If A wants to help C, he could give of his own resources, or he could try to convince others of the merit of voluntarily giving of theirs. Either of those activities would be worthy of great respect. But threatening B with incarceration if he doesn’t send money to C is worthy only of scorn. This “ends justify the means” approach is not only immoral—in the sense that it admits that some men are entitled to coerce others—it is also very easily abused. Who is to say that A would properly define whether C is in genuine need according to some objective standard, as opposed to a standard that benefits A’s own interests?

The State Is an Imposed Monopoly

Statists will constantly warn about the dangers of monopolies, as they correctly understand that a monopoly leads to higher prices, lower quality and less innovation, because the absence of a competitive threat means the monopolist does not have the incentive to do better.

Yet statists don’t stop to consider that, while all of this is demonstrably true, the only actual monopoly that exists is the state, which they support. The state effectively prohibits any competition for the services it provides, such as regulation, policing, defense, courts, etc.25

In contrast, there could be no monopoly in the free market because (a) new entrants would always be free to enter if they perceived that the incumbent’s pricing, quality, or offerings weren’t properly satisfying consumers, and (b) consumers could simply stop buying from the incumbent, thereby denying it the cash flow it needed to survive.

However, the state can prohibit competition from new entrants through coercive regulatory legislation, and through coercive tax legislation can force taxpayers to pay for its services (or those of its designated supplier) even if taxpayers don’t want to consume these services.

Thus the only sustainable monopolies that have ever existed have been either the state itself, or businesses which receive an exclusive license (and perhaps also subsidies) from the state to operate in a particular territory. Only with the state’s coercive powers to prevent competition and fund an incumbent could there really be a monopoly.

As monopoly theory suggests, over time the pricing for state services (taxation) has always increased, and quality of service has deteriorated (or, at best, remained substandard). The most that generally happens when a state is revealed to be underperforming in provision of a service is that the problem is diagnosed as underfunding, and thus pricing (taxation) is increased, as a perverse remedy for the problem!26 Little serious intellectual inquiry is made into the question of whether monopoly provision of the service is the actual problem. Unlike in the private sector, when the state underperforms, a consumer cannot take his money elsewhere.

One wonders why a statist who is able to understand the problems with monopolies would support the large and only possible monopoly that is the state.

Lack of Proper Incentives and Knowledge

The above discussion explains one of the shortcomings of the state in terms of its institutional monopoly status. However, since institutions cannot act, but only people can act, the real inquiry should be into the incentives and knowledge of the individuals who constitute the state, and whether these factors should cause us to be supportive of these personnel. There are several points to make in this regard.

First, in the private sector, a vendor has to convince each individual customer, each time he wants to sell his product to that customer, that he is providing sufficient value for the price to be charged. However, for a politician to get elected, he does not have to convince every constituent of the value he would provide each time he interacts with that constituent. All the politician has to do is convince a majority of those who turn up to vote, and he only has to do that once every election cycle. Thus, by definition, he is either non-responsive or, at best, only minimally responsive to the needs of many of his constituents.

Second, consider that the principal benefit the individual at the state is able to offer those who support him is the opportunity to rent the state’s coercive powers. In other words, he could offer to a special-interest group that he will fight to pass, reject, preserve, strengthen, weaken, enforce, and/or refuse to enforce legislation that would (a) enhance this group’s position or weaken or prohibit competitors (through regulations), or (b) forcibly transfer resources from others to this group (through taxation and subsidies).

As a result, state personnel are lobbied intensively by special-interest groups, and the highest bidders tend to win the right to rent the state’s coercive powers.27 What do the bidders typically offer? Campaign contributions, “get out the vote” assistance, special favors for friends and family, or the promise of a private-sector career after leaving the state, to name just a few examples.

Third, once in office, and unlike in the private sector, state personnel do not have to convince their “customers” to pay them for their services. Through taxes and other legislation, state personnel can force their “customers” to pay their salaries regardless of how they perform. Thus there is no incentive to continually offer something of value.

In contrast to the strong alignment in the private sector that exists between the interests of vendors and customers—whereby vendors have personal financial upside from satisfying customers’ actual preferences, and risk personal financial loss for failure to deliver—state personnel have neither the upside opportunity nor the risk of loss. Thus, unless one subscribes to one of the Tooth Fairy Theories, state personnel’s incentives are entirely misaligned with the notion of delivering value to the broader population.

Fourth, for private-sector entrepreneurs to discover what customers really want takes trial and error in producing different products, making quick adjustments to competition, and obtaining continuous market feedback through customers voluntarily electing to buy or abstain from buying on a daily basis. On the other hand, at the state, only one product is offered at a time, it takes years to make adjustments, there is no competition, and there is no continuous market feedback as “customers” have no choice but to buy from this monopolist. Thus those at the state, even if they had the best of intentions, are effectively running blind when it comes to satisfying individuals’ preferences.28

* * * * *

The question we need to ask when faced with human imperfection—whether lack of knowledge, incompetence, or corruption—is whether it is better to have this imperfection decentralized or centralized?

If someone in the private sector is unknowledgeable, incompetent, or corrupt, then only those few who interact directly with that person would suffer loss, and the market would, relatively quickly, ostracize that person (people would stop dealing with him), so overall losses would be minimized. However, if someone is unknowledgeable, incompetent, or corrupt in the state sector, then millions could suffer, because the imperfection is centralized and coercively enforced against many. Further, citizens cannot simply and quickly cease relying on this supplier, because the state prohibits competition in the services it provides. Thus such imperfection not only impacts millions, but also tends to endure for much longer than in the private sector.

The State Receives Immunity

As if to rub salt into the wound, the state asserts that both it and its agents should have immunity from suit for causing damage to those in the private sector, unless the state waives such immunity. There are different types of formal immunity standards (e.g., “sovereign immunity,” “state immunity,” “qualified immunity,” etc.), as well as informal immunity (where the state “circles the wagons” around one of its personnel when information comes out about his misdeeds). However, the essence of all of these concepts is that, whereas everyone else in society is held to one standard of liability for causing damage to others, the state and its agents live by a different (and lower) standard. And this different standard is forcibly imposed on society by the state.

It is logically indefensible to claim that some men are entitled to live by a different standard. Further, why should we respect or support any man who forcibly asserts that he lives by a different standard?

In addition, this immunity creates a moral hazard: why should we expect the state’s agents to exercise the same degree of care as we expect of others if these agents cannot be held similarly liable? If you know that you can get away with more, then your standards will drop.

This is most dramatically (but not solely) illustrated by the many situations where police personnel use excessive force, causing unnecessary death and injury to private citizens and destruction of their property, and yet private citizens rarely have effective recourse against those personnel.29 Similarly, consider the horrific death, injury, and destruction caused by state personnel initiating war activities around the globe.30

But there are other, more subtle, examples of destructive state actions without liability: the state’s delay in approving new medical drugs, or denial of such approval, causing suffering and death to those who might have benefited from access to the drugs; the state’s refusal to grant an occupational license, or delay in granting such a license, to an individual who wishes to pursue his chosen occupation, causing him to suffer economically; and the state’s setting of a minimum wage above the level that employers would be willing to pay for certain lowly productive workers, thereby leading to employers firing or declining to hire such workers, thus prohibiting these workers from earning an income. No private citizen’s lawsuit against the state for these types of actions would ever succeed.

Even where immunity might not provide complete legal protection for state personnel, there is practical protection afforded by the forum in which these issues are resolved: the only courts to which the state would submit in a dispute with a citizen are the state’s own courts! In other words, the state arrogates to itself the monopoly on deciding if it or its personnel should be liable to private citizens. In what other area of life would we accept that the party with which we are in a dispute can decide if it is liable?

To appreciate the implications of this issue, consider that, in the U.S., courts have held that the police’s “duty to protect” is only owed “to the public at large,” and not to any particular citizen. In these cases, the police were being sued by victims for negligently failing to provide reasonable protection against specific violent crimes, and the state’s courts found the police not liable on the aforementioned basis.

Thus, not only do the police benefit from immunity when acting with excessive force, they also benefit from immunity when negligently not acting at all! And we are supposed to support the confiscation of our incomes to pay for the state’s protection from violent crime?

Finally, even if liability were imposed for destructive action by an individual at the state, who would pay for any damages awarded? Likely not the state agent concerned, but, rather, the state. However, from where would the state get the funds to compensate the aggrieved private citizen? From taxing private citizens, potentially including the aggrieved private citizen himself!

Myth #5: Democracy Is Good, Better, Best

While statists assume that democratic states represent progress relative to the monarchies that existed previously, libertarian philosopher Hans-Hermann Hoppe has advanced the credible thesis that, in terms of how and why rulers make decisions, democracy may actually be a step backward.31

Key Characteristics of a Monarchy

According to Hoppe, under the pre-parliamentary, pre-constitutional, hereditary monarchies that characterized Europe through the end of the 18th century, the monarch regarded his kingdom as a long-term capital asset owned by the royal family, the value of which should be preserved for future generations. As such, when it came to governance, the monarch’s approach could best be described as “privately owned government.” I will discuss the main implications of this below.

A monarch tended to avoid doing things that would profit him in the short term but cause long-term value destruction. Thus the quantity of resources expropriated from the population through taxation would be sufficiently limited to enable his kingdom to remain reasonably productive (and submissive). Similarly, when adjudicating disputes between his subjects in the royal courts, the monarch would recognize and protect the private-property rights of his subjects, since that was most likely to lead to a more productive society. In addition, only those who, in the monarch’s view, could add value to his kingdom would be permitted to enter and settle there, valuable individuals who were already there would be prohibited from leaving, and value-destroying individuals would be expelled.

Wars were “merely” property disputes between individual monarchs. Since the monarch had to personally fund his wars, he would tend to prefer to expand his territory through the more peaceful and less costly means of contractual purchases and/or inter-dynastic marriage. However, if war were deemed “necessary,” then it would be conducted privately and on a limited basis, between a monarch and his hired army and the enemy monarch and his hired army—private citizens were understood not to be involved—with neither monarch wanting to destroy the capital value of his kingdom, nor of the property he might end up winning.

Other than soldiers, those who worked for the monarch were rarely paid by the monarch—they had to be able to support themselves—which meant that the number of people who could work in “government” was quite small.

Since the monarch’s estate was liable for all debts he incurred, the monarch typically was restrained in his borrowings, and debts were incurred mostly just to finance war. These debts tended to be paid down in peacetime.

While the monarch might have claimed a monopoly on dispute resolution for his subjects, it was generally understood that the royal courts would adjudicate disputes based on pre-existing, customary law that had developed organically over time. As such, the monarch did not seek to “make law” himself. This meant that the law was well accepted and easily understood by the population, and was relatively predictable.

Importantly, everyone in society understood that only a very small number of people could participate in and benefit from the monarchy, namely, blood relatives and those whom they married. Thus there were very clear class distinctions, with the ruled accepting that, although they had numerical superiority, absent a revolution they would never be in power. From the monarch’s perspective, he had to be careful about how harshly he ruled, as too harshly might lead to an uprising, which would put at risk the long-term value of his capital asset (if not his life). Thus monarchs tended to be restrained in terms of tax rates, monetary inflation, and regulatory burden, and (as noted above) generally respected traditional law.

Finally, the selection of a monarch was purely a function of the accident of his birth; he needed to display no particular qualifications to attain and hold this position. Thus, as with the potential of any human, while there was some chance that a monarch could be an evil person, there was also some chance that he could be harmless, or even a good person.

Differentiating Characteristics of a Democracy32

According to Hoppe, the advent of democracy changes several aspects of societal governance.

First, politicians do not regard society as “theirs,” and thus do not take a long-term, capital-asset-preservation view. Rather, they act as temporary caretakers, doing whatever they can in the short term to get elected, or to increase the powers they can rent out for personal gain, regardless of the long-term impact on society. A good analogy for the difference between a monarch and a democratic politician is the landlord/tenant distinction: who is apt to take better care of the property? Politicians simply do not bear the real costs of their actions.

Second, in a democracy, citizens believe, falsely, that they are ruling themselves (the supposed democratic principle of “self-government”), that everyone benefits from the state (the supposed democratic principle of the state acting “for the common good”), and that they each have the opportunity to get elected, or influence the elected, to get a piece of the action. Accordingly, relative to a monarchy, there is a blurring of class distinctions and benefits, which leads to a much greater acceptance by citizens of ever-increasing expropriation and control by the state.

Third, rulers in a democracy can only attain their positions through elections, and, to win an election, a politician must make reproachable promises to a sufficiently large portion of the voting population that he will plunder and/or forcibly restrict the actions of some other portion of the population, for his supporters’ benefit. Thus, unlike with a monarchy, it is more or less guaranteed that, in a democracy, those who are attracted to and successfully attain political office will be the worst individuals in society, namely, the most ruthlessly efficient, morally uninhibited demagogues. And, as political competition intensifies, the candidates vying for office must out-compete each other in their immorality.

Accordingly, Hoppe uses his theory to explain that, since the advent of the democratic state—which he labels “publicly owned government”—we have seen much more short-term, reckless thinking by the rulers in society, who willingly and destructively rent out their coercive powers to special-interest groups, in return for immediate personal gain. This has manifested itself in: high taxation, monetary inflation, and public debt; excessive, unpredictable “law-making” through highly complex legislation and judicial activism, most of which overrides traditional private-property rights; an enormous expansion in the number of permanent government employees, paid for by taxpayers; immigration policies more focused on gaining voters than on increasing societal productivity; and ghastly foreign policy, including more horrific wars than previously, well beyond the personal, limited disputes that were a feature of monarchies,33 and conscription initially becoming the rule rather than the exception, which makes war cheaper and soldiers more plentiful than were the case under monarchies (although, in recent years, some democratic states have suspended conscription in favor of paid, volunteer armed forces, but such states have met these higher costs through increased taxation and/or public debt).

To be more succinct, we have witnessed both the disappearance of any real limits on the growth and exercise of the state’s power, and increasingly bad and dangerous individuals being elected as rulers. As such, the state is now larger than it has ever been, and the rulers perceive fewer and fewer limits on their powers, amid the (perceived) acquiescence of the citizenry.34

State Violence, Democracy-Style

Whether or not one accepts all aspects of Hoppe’s thesis, what is incontestable is the development of the large-scale, reckless physical violence initiated by modern, democratically elected governments, both domestically and externally.

Contrary to popular thought, democracy is no bulwark against abuse at the hands of one’s own state; it is not just dictatorships that have waged war on their own subjects.35 Democracy is merely a process for selecting rulers; it does not say anything about how much personal liberty such rulers would permit. And, as noted above, Hoppe’s thesis is that, over time, democracies will produce increasingly worse rulers.

Consider, for instance, President Lincoln’s waging of war against the people of the Confederate states in the mid-19th century; the democratically elected German government36 turning on German Jews in the 1930s; the British Empire’s atrocities committed in the early to mid-20th century against its colonial subjects in Africa (Kenya and South Africa), Asia (India, and what was then Malaya), and the Middle East (Iraq and Yemen); and the modern U.S. government’s violent actions directed against its own citizens and their private property in the so-called “War on Drugs” (following on from a similar form of persecution in the early 20th century during Prohibition).37

There are also plenty of historical instances of democracies initiating war or other aggressive action against nations which have not attacked them.

As just a few examples, consider: the aggressive actions initiated by the governments of Great Britain and the U.S. leading up to and during the War of 1812; the government of Great Britain going to war against Germany in 1914 after the German government had attacked Belgium; the military intervention in the Russian civil war in 1918 by the governments of France, Great Britain, and the U.S.; the governments of France and Great Britain going to war against Germany in 1939 after the German government had attacked Poland; the U.S. government going to war against Germany in World Wars I and II (Germany had not attacked the U.S.); and the U.S. government initiating offensive action in many other states during the 20th and 21st centuries, including (but not limited to) Afghanistan, Bosnia, Cuba, Grenada, Iraq, Korea, Kosovo, Libya, Somalia, Syria, and Vietnam.38 In fact, the list of aggressive activities initiated by the government of the U.S., the world’s largest democracy, is significantly longer when you consider not only the overt military actions carried out by the U.S. government in instances where the U.S. had not been attacked, but also the U.S. government’s aggressive, covert actions in many areas of the world for most of the 20th and 21st centuries. The U.S. government has carried out these actions through its intelligence agencies and other proxies interfering in the domestic activities of other states (including other democracies), including installing or propping up dictators to do the U.S. government’s bidding (e.g., in Chile, Cuba, Egypt, Guatemala, Iran, and Saudi Arabia, as well as in many other states), training and arming local military forces to take aggressive action against their own populations, financing, training, and arming local revolutionaries to rise up against their local governments, and, most recently, through the use of unmanned attack drones.39

In addition, the way in which war is conducted has also changed for the worse in parallel with the rise of the democratic state. Perhaps because democratic states have ingested the (fallacious) concept of “self-rule,” when it comes to conflict and war, democratic states conflate citizens with their respective governments (this is especially incongruous when it comes to conflicts with dictatorships, given that the civilian populations in dictatorships have even less “say” over their rulers than in democracies).40 Accordingly, when democratic states go to war, instead of combat being confined to the rulers and their military forces, as it was under monarchies, all citizens and all property are regarded as fair game, in what has become known as “total war.”41

For instance, President Lincoln’s generals conducted a brutal form of “total war” against the non-combatant residents of some of the Confederate U.S. states (before turning to the native American Indians), which was a tactic repeated some years later under Presidents McKinley and Roosevelt against the Filipinos in the Philippine-American War. During World War I, the British government’s blockade of food deliveries to Germany led to mass starvation among the civilian German population. During World War II, the Allied militaries’ bombing of German cities, and the U.S. military’s bombing of Japanese cities, made no distinction between those who had declared and were fighting the war and the private citizens. When the U.S. military dropped two atomic bombs on Japan in 1945, killing, maiming, and poisoning close to two hundred thousand civilians, it did not distinguish between the citizens of Japan and their rulers and military. During the Korean War, the U.S. military bombed and napalmed cities, towns, and villages in the north over a period of three years, by some estimates killing 20 percent of the local population; after running low on urban targets, U.S. bombers then destroyed hydroelectric and irrigation dams, flooding farmland and destroying crops. During the Gulf War in 1991, the U.S. military intentionally bombed Iraq’s water treatment plants, thereby depriving the Iraqi civilian population of clean drinking water. In addition to these intentional actions, the U.S. military and its allies, many of them democracies, have inflicted substantial “collateral damage”—the modern euphemism for the incidental (but foreseeable) killing or maiming of private citizens and destruction of their property—in many of their aggressive actions in Asia and the Middle East over the past half-century. And so the 20th and 21st centuries go.

To digress slightly, but importantly, it is too easy to overlook the essence of offensive war actions. These actions involve state personnel sending armed forces or unmanned attack drones overseas to kill or maim other men and sometimes also their families (intentionally or negligently), and to destroy their property, very often in the home territory of these other men. The aggressor’s armed forces are specifically instructed to initiate these acts of brutality and destruction against men they have never met, and who have not initiated violence against these armed forces when they were at home (or against the civilian populations these armed forces are alleged to be protecting). And when these other men fight back to defend their families and property from the foreign aggressors, or seek to exact retribution either in their home territory or by traveling to the territory of the aggressing state, the aggressing state labels these other men “enemy combatants,” “violent animals,” or “terrorists” who need to be subdued by force or eliminated!

Yet many statists not only support these aggressive endeavors, they also revere the civilian leaders and members of the military who actively participate in these atrocities. Imagine if these same armed forces carried out these actions against domestic citizens; would statists support that?42 If not, then what is the moral principle that validates engaging in these atrocities against other humans so long as they are outside the state’s artificially drawn borders? It seems as if once the individuals at the state declare “We are at war with [name your enemy],” then the statist’s definition of “moral atrocity” is substantially relaxed, and the brutality of war is legitimized. Alchemy!43

The statist will often retort that, prior to the advent of the modern state, there was widespread violence between individuals, families, clans, and tribes. There’s plenty of historical evidence to the contrary, namely, that these societal units quickly developed peaceful means of dispute resolution, as they recognized how costly violence is. However, even if the claim were true, such violence was on a very different scale from today’s wars. Non-state violence was (and is) limited because it is personal; those engaging in the violence bore the full cost of their actions, and thus there were natural constraints. Contrast this with the massive scale of violence now waged globally by nation-states, including democracies, resulting from the fact that those ordering this violence don’t bear the direct costs of their decisions.

If this is our choice, then give me pre-nation-state clan violence any time!

The private citizen cannot escape the war-mongering decisions of his rulers, yet he pays a heavy price for these decisions: death, injury, and mental anguish when conscripted to fight the state’s wars, or when those attacked by the state engage in or threaten retribution against the state’s citizens (sometimes labeled “blowback”); loss of liberties at home, as the state clamps down on personal freedoms to prevent blowback; deterioration in culture, as society becomes increasingly centered on military and security matters; and economic impoverishment, through direct loss of property from blowback, increased confiscation of income to pay for war, reorientation of societal production away from satisfying consumers’ wants in favor of tools of death and destruction, and consumption of society’s capital base. Whether the private citizen has voted for or against a ruler, or has not voted at all, he incurs the costs of the state’s violence.44

The conflation of the state’s subjects with the state itself is actually an important tool used by state personnel in the context of defending war activities. State personnel (and their supporters) always couch their statements in the first person plural: “We” are at war; “We” have been attacked overseas; “We” need to take action; “We” need to look after “our boys.”

Yet there is no “we”; there is only “they.” The average peaceful citizen does not engage in violent action overseas, or station himself there to try to interfere with another society. It is obnoxious for state personnel to claim “we” are doing these things. They are doing these things, without any direction or consent from the peaceful citizen. They start these wars, they forcibly take our income to finance them, and then they have the temerity to say “We’re all in this together.” And it is only they who benefit from war: the politicians who gain prestige and power from conquering and occupying new lands; the state agencies which maintain or grow their budgets when there is war (or the threat thereof); the banks which finance war; the vendors of military and other equipment (and their supply chains) which profit from supplying the military; and the favored businesses which gain from new or cheaper access to conquered resources, or enhanced protection of their existing or future foreign investments.45

Statists wrap all of this violence in the national flag and collective patriotism, because in this way they can try to convince the average citizen that these violent activities overseas are honorable and necessary—to protect “our national pride,” “our freedoms,” and “the principles we stand for,” whatever those phrases mean—so that there will be less objection to pursuing and funding war and “supporting the military.”

Statists have been remarkably successful in constructing this delusion. The average citizen is highly deferential to and sympathetic toward military personnel: applauding them in public, providing special ways to honor them (particularly at sporting events), weeping at their reunions with their families, going out of his way to find them civilian jobs, and dutifully accepting the state’s claim that he must pay for their physical and mental recovery (in addition to their historical compensation). But these military personnel voluntarily chose to go into the morally suspect killing and destruction business!46

Moreover, 99.9 percent of the time these military personnel are not actually defending the average citizen from any imminent threat to that citizen’s life or property. Before the state’s armed forces kill or maim each individual regarded as “the enemy,” or destroy his property—and most often this target is thousands of miles away from the citizen allegedly being protected—the state doesn’t bother to adduce and present evidence of an actual or a threatened wrongful act by that person, nor subject that evidence to any reasonable standard of proof or scrutiny by an independent arbiter. Statists just assume that this person’s guilt is proven by the fact that he was targeted by the state, and that the state’s violent actions were an appropriate punishment.47 And the state’s honored military personnel eagerly go along with this travesty.

What type of society have we become where we regard proactive killing and destruction as one of the most venerated forms of human endeavor?

To illustrate this delusion further, consider private security guards who are hired to protect people and their property. They don’t go in search of other humans to kill or property to destroy, but only react to real situations that endanger their clients or their clients’ property. They don’t get paid by coercively extracting money from their clients, but have to offer sufficient value for their clients to voluntarily hire them. Do we see a national outpouring of emotion and collective financial support for these private-sector individuals, who are actually protecting life and property against imminent threats?

Apparently, honor and support are reserved only for those state personnel who proactively kill foreigners and destroy their property, and who get paid through confiscation of taxpayers’ income.

* * * * *

Winston Churchill is reputed to have once noted “It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.” For the above reasons, I would challenge Churchill’s conclusion.

Myth #6: The State Dispenses Criminal Justice

The Injustice of It All

The whole area of criminal law is a very odd feature of statist society. Under a just system, the law would recognize that only someone who suffers harm—in the sense of damage to his person or legitimately acquired property (which I’ll define later)—would have the right to take action against the aggressor.48 Yet the statist criminal legal system fails this logic on a number of accounts.

First, the system allows the state to take action against an aggressor even though the state is not the victim. In fact, the state could never be a victim of aggression against person or legitimately acquired property, because (a) “the state” is not a person, and (b) any property the state controls has, by definition, been acquired illegitimately, in that the state has used coercive means to acquire it (i.e., by using either tax or regulatory legislation).

Second, under the statist system, state personnel, and not the victim, decide on whether and how to pursue the aggressor, and what penalties he should suffer.

Third, many “crimes” are defined by legislation simply as behavior which the individuals at the state do not approve of, even though such behavior does not cause any actual damage to any individual or his legitimately acquired property. In other words, the state’s criminal legal system as a just means to redress personal loss is mostly a fiction.

The History

How did we get here? Statists like to fantasize that there is some deep philosophical or efficiency reason that has driven the state to become the alleged guardian of everyone’s interests and to act against criminals “for the common good.” However, that’s not what actually happened.

Hundreds of years ago there were no “crimes,” but only claims brought by victims against aggressors for personal wrongs. These claims were detected, investigated, and resolved locally, and mostly peacefully, according to community customs in locally convened tribunals.

However, at some point when monarchs wanted to raise revenue to help finance their lifestyles and their wars, and to more closely control society and reward different interests who could help in that regard (such as local powerbrokers), they realized that there could be tremendous benefits from running a “justice” system. Accordingly, a wrong committed by A against B or B’s property became defined as a “disturbance of the king’s peace,” and at first such actions were guided, and then later compelled, to be brought before the king’s courts. Subsequently, “the Crown” took over detection and prosecution of these actions. In these cases, “the Crown” was able to do several things for the king’s benefit: charge fees; fine A and seize his property if he were found guilty; and fine B and seize his property for false accusation if A were acquitted.

As monarchs extended their activities to include forcibly taxing their subjects, it became a crime not to pay one’s taxes, and thus the first victimless “crime” was born. In other words, it became a “crime” for one man to try to prevent another man from forcibly seizing part of his income, thereby negating the timeless principle of being entitled to defend one’s property from theft. Other victimless “crimes” were also created, which were based on the principle of failing to obey the king’s orders in other areas. This led to the creation of vast bureaucracies to try to detect and then prosecute such heinous acts by subjects.

Once monarchs gave way to the modern nation-state, the state simply assumed the same role.49

The Growth and Dangers of Victimless “Crimes”

Worse, however, is that the modern state has now created thousands of regulations the violation of which amount to “crimes,” and the vast majority of these infractions have no actual victims in the traditional sense, namely, an individual suffering damage to his person or legitimately acquired property. There is an obvious unfairness here in that no citizen could realistically be aware of all or even most of these regulations, and therefore it is very easy for citizens to commit legislated “crimes” without even knowing it. Before the advent of these victimless “crimes”—when a “wrong” was merely defined as causing damage to someone’s person or property—citizens could easily understand what was expected of them.

And to enforce these thousands of regulations, the state has established vast, armed bureaucracies.50

Each year many thousands of lives are ruined, many permanently, when the state arrests and tries individuals, fines them, seizes their property, and/or incarcerates them based on these regulatory but victimless “crimes.” Examples include violations of tax regulations, insider trading and other securities regulations, health & safety regulations, campaign finance regulations, traffic regulations, environmental regulations, prostitution regulations, occupational licensing regulations, narcotics regulations, firearm possession regulations, and immigration regulations.51

Marginalizing the Victim’s Interests

There are some other disturbing features of modern criminal “justice” systems. Even where a real wrong occurs, in the sense that there is a victim who has suffered personal injury or property damage, the victim’s interests are marginalized by the state’s system. This happens in several ways.

First, in many modern states, citizens have been disarmed by the state’s gun-control regulations, and are vigorously prosecuted should they violate these possession regulations. The theory is that the state’s police will protect citizens, so citizens don’t need to possess firearms to protect themselves. Yet in the vast majority of violent crimes, only the victim is present when the crime is committed, not the state’s police, and thus the victim has been deprived of the most effective method of self-defense.52

Gun-control regulations are also immoral. By what right could A forcibly prohibit B from possessing a firearm? B is entitled (as is A) to spend his income as he sees fit, and to possess the means to defend himself from attack. Obviously B is not entitled to use his firearm to initiate aggression against others (nor is A), just as he’s not entitled to use any other object, or his body, to commit aggression. The only justifiable exception is that A could tell B that he cannot bring a firearm onto A’s private property (if B doesn’t like this rule, then his choice is not to enter A’s property). However, the state’s gun-control regulations often apply everywhere (and the state cannot legitimately own any property and thus cannot legitimately set possession rules), and these regulations prohibit possession, not violent use. With respect to the latter, there are already laws against murder, robbery, rape, etc., so gun-control regulations are redundant (as well as immoral).

Second, the police report to and therefore serve the political class, and thus the police’s priorities mostly reflect the political class’s priorities. Once the political class sets a priority, that centralized order is what counts, instead of taking into account each individual citizen’s desired preferences. Since policing is a scarce resource, every hour spent by the police on task X means an hour less available for task Y.

So, for instance, if the political class wants to raise more revenues, then the police would prioritize enforcement of tax regulations, moving traffic and parking regulations, etc. If the political class wants to moralize and crack down on personal but non-violent vices, then the police would prioritize enforcement of regulations against prostitution, narcotics, etc. If the political class is feeling the pressure from the environmental lobby, then the police would prioritize enforcement of environmental regulations. If the political class is feeling pressure from the anti-gun lobby, then the police would prioritize disarming citizens who possess unregulated firearms (but have committed no violence with them). The time, personnel, and money spent on prosecuting these victimless “crimes” come at the expense of resources that could be devoted to prosecuting crimes with victims.

Alternatively, when it comes to actual violent crimes, if the political class is feeling pressure from a particular racial, ethnic, or religious group, then the police may reduce their presence in that group’s neighborhoods and may reduce arrests of that group’s members, even if those neighborhoods and members are responsible for significant violent crime.

These priorities might be quite at odds with what individual citizens want from their police, and what they would choose to purchase if they could individually purchase private security services. However, because the state produces a “one-size-fits-all,” politically directed security system, citizens have little individual choice.

Third, the criminal prosecutorial system is designed around the state, not the victim. The prosecutor has no alignment with or responsibility to the victim.

In a private law case, the victim voluntarily chooses his attorney, the attorney contractually must act in accordance with the victim’s instructions, and the attorney has the motivation to do the best he can for the victim. This motivation arises because (a) the attorney’s compensation may be linked to how well he does for the victim, and (b) how well the attorney performs will impact his reputation, and thus his ability to attract future clients, who will also voluntarily choose their attorney.

On the other hand, under the state’s system, the victim is required to accept whichever prosecutor the state assigns, the prosecutor has no contractual relationship with the victim, and the prosecutor is not motivated financially to act in the victim’s interests. Instead, the prosecutor is motivated by whatever statistics the state decides it wants to use to measure performance. For instance, if “wins” is important, then the prosecutor may drop the hard cases and only pursue the easy ones; if “case closure” is important, then the prosecutor may drop the long cases and only pursue those that could be resolved quickly; if battling a particular type of “crime” is high on the state’s agenda, then the prosecutor would prioritize those cases and ignore others.

The victim also has no ability to direct the prosecutor’s actions. If the prosecutor drops the case, against the victim’s wishes, then the victim cannot “retain” another prosecutor, as the prosecutor only serves the state, not the victim. If the prosecutor enters into a plea bargain53 with the aggressor (because he wants the aggressor to help him in a different case, or the case is going to take too long, etc.), then the victim cannot prevent that. If the prosecutor seeks a punishment that is not in accordance with the victim’s wishes, then the victim has no ability to veto that. If the prosecutor does a poor job, then the victim has no claim against him for breach of contract, since the victim is not his client.54

In short, the connection between the victim and the aggressor is completely severed, and the state is actually treated as the victim vis-à-vis the aggressor.55

Fourth, the victim could end up paying multiple times, without his consent. He suffers the loss from the aggressor’s crime, and then, if he is a taxpayer, via taxes he is also forced to pay for the cost of prosecuting the aggressor and, if the aggressor is convicted, for the cost of incarcerating him in a state prison!

Intimidation by the State

Another questionable aspect of the state’s criminal legal system is that the state uses its victimless-“crime” legislation as a “stick,” to force citizens (and others) to act in accordance with the whims of those at the state.

For instance, in the U.S., in circumstances where those in the federal government are not able to implement their preferred policies directly, they can use their control of the banking system—since it is a (victimless) “crime” to operate a bank without a state-provided license—to indirectly get to the same result. Thus the federal government has been known to insinuate to banks that, if they want to keep their license, then they should not provide financial services to businesses which engage in activities (also victimless) of which those at the federal government do not approve, such as selling narcotics or firearms, engaging in payday lending, and operating escort services or Internet gambling. The inability for these businesses to use the banking system is a huge impediment, and is akin to preventing them from operating. A similar level of intimidation has also occurred at the state-government level with respect to insurance companies, whereby state insurance regulators who do not approve of firearm ownership have “suggested” that insurance companies cease providing coverage to firearm-owners associations, which provide liability coverage for their members.

Or, if the U.S. government wants to levy economic sanctions against another state for failure to do what the U.S. government has commanded it to do, then the U.S. government has been known to advise all banks worldwide that they should not do business with this other state, or with individuals or businesses in that state, or else these banks will be denied permission to operate in the U.S. Since the U.S. is such an important financial services market, this warning is generally heeded closely by most banks globally.

Similarly, the state makes it a (victimless) “crime” for certain companies to merge without the state’s approval. The state has been known to refuse to consent to mergers unless one or both companies do something else the state wants them to do.

The state also makes it a (victimless) “crime” for a citizen to donate more than a specified amount of his own money to other citizens running for political office. These campaign finance regulations are a wonderful weapon for incumbents to use against challengers. The incumbents can use their office and the state’s other resources to get their message out, but, for challengers, their main avenue is to purchase media time, which requires funds. When the state limits the amount of money challengers can raise and spend, it favors those already holding office.

To make a somewhat obvious point (by now), all of these victimless-“crime” regulations are immoral, in that they amount to one man forcibly telling another what he may and may not do with his body or private property when he is not initiating aggression against anyone. Thus those at the state are using the threat of enforcing immoral regulations to achieve their desired ends. This is a criminal “justice” system?

There is one other aspect of state intimidation in the criminal “justice” system that is worth noting, namely, prosecutorial intimidation of defendants. At least in the U.S., prosecutors employ three strategies that are manifestly unfair to defendants.

First, when the federal government’s prosecutors question a potential defendant who appears voluntarily and is not under oath, the questioners can, without any sanction, lie to the person being interviewed, to trick him into giving up valuable information, but if this person lies to the prosecutors, then he risks being indicted for that victimless “crime” alone.56

Second, for a single alleged wrong, prosecutors often charge defendants with many different “crimes” at once, without necessarily expecting all (or any) of the charges to be successfully proved in front of a jury. Since a prosecutor is funded by the state, he has little personal downside in increasing the complexity of a potential trial, but by creating a more complex web of charges to defend against, which also increases the defense’s costs, this can be a powerful way for the prosecutor to intimidate a defendant into accepting a plea bargain.

Third, prosecutors are allowed to offer a plea bargain, immunity, or other benefits to a co-defendant in return for that co-defendant testifying against the defendant, which can be a powerful inducement for the co-defendant to give false testimony. Yet a defendant is prohibited from offering any benefit to a witness (other than an expert witness) to testify on his behalf.

Where is the justice in this treatment of defendants?

Prioritizing Crimes against the State

The final point to make about the perversity of the state criminal legal system is to note how the state takes much more seriously “crimes against the state” than wrongs committed against its citizens.

For instance, the murder of a key figure at the state is even given a special term—“assassination”—and it’s hard to describe how many resources the state devotes to preventing assassinations, and the lengths to which it will go to find perpetrators. Compare this with the resources the state devotes to preventing and solving murders of ordinary citizens. Those at the state unilaterally elevate the importance of their own lives over the lives of those who both fund the state and are supposed to be protected by it.

Accordingly, through taxes, the ordinary citizen is forcibly required to fund the special protection of individuals at the state, and is not permitted to retain this income for his own protection, or for the protection of individuals of his choosing. Moreover, although the state taxes the ordinary citizen with the promise of protecting him from violence, the state makes this a secondary priority for the use of this citizen’s income, behind protection of individuals at the state.57

Related to the above point, assaulting a police officer is treated very differently from assaulting an average citizen. For instance, in the U.S., most state legislation elevates the crime from “assault” to “aggravated assault” if the victim is a police officer. Fines and sentences are often greater for this type of assault as compared with assaulting a regular citizen. Further, some of the normal defenses to an allegation of assault are often not available if the assault was directed at a police officer.58

Yet, if all men are metaphysically equal, then how could one defend the concept that the penalty for initiating aggression against A should be different from the exact same action directed at B?

Or consider how the state considers the failure to pay taxes, compared with how the state views the failure to pay a private debt that is due.59 Non-payment of taxes is a “crime,” whereas failure to pay a private debt is generally not. Further, the state has a veritable army of tax inspectors and armed tax enforcers to go after tax avoiders.60

In addition, to try to prevent non-payment of taxes, the state also establishes many ancillary reporting and disclosure regulations, violations of which are also “crimes.” These include requiring use of a tracking identification number by taxpayers, requiring self-reporting of taxable income and of assets held overseas, and forcing banks to monitor and report on customers’ cash movements and sources. Sometimes the state even enlists foreigners to become its tax collectors, by requiring foreign banks to report on the overseas holdings of citizens, and by bringing economic pressure to bear on “tax havens.”61

All of this is a far cry from how the state protects private creditors from non-payment by debtors.

Finally, consider how vigorously the state pursues those who disclose state information, compared with how the state protects disclosure of private information. Again, the former is a “crime” (with its own word: “espionage”), whereas this is not generally true of the latter. The U.S. federal government has often used the threat of indictment under the Espionage Act to try to silence “whistleblowers” who want to publicly disclose information on what they regard as problematic state activities. Also, note how worldwide, state-organized dragnets are established to try to snare those who have the audacity to disclose things the state would rather keep secret, e.g., the U.S. government’s pursuit of Julian Assange and Edward Snowden.

Private citizens just cannot expect the same resources to be devoted to protecting their information.62

• 1All references to the “state” in this book include all arms of the state: the legislature, executive, judiciary, bureaucracy, agencies, etc. While they each have different functions, substantively they are all funded in the same manner, they all have the same inherent characteristics, and they are all responsible for appointing one another and/or working together. The differences between these different arms of the state are trivial compared with the differences between how the state acts and how private citizens act, which is one of the key points of this book.
• 2In this book, when I talk about “moral acts” and “morality,” I am referring only to an evaluation of inter-personal behavior, and not to the evaluation of any actions only involving oneself, which might be better described as “virtues” and “vices.”
• 3I still believe that there is a role for utilitarian analysis, but not the one that is usually cited. If economists believe that a particular outcome would lead to greater benefits (however defined) than the outcome that would result from individuals acting based on their own preferences, then these economists should publicize their analysis and use it to try to persuade individuals to change their decision-making processes. The real problem with utilitarian analysis is that it is used by statists to justify forcing individuals to make different decisions, instead of merely trying to persuade them.
• 4The last term refers to Murray Rothbard, who was the libertarian historian, economist, and philosopher who really ignited modern libertarianism in the 20th century.
• 5Just checking that you were paying attention.
• 6In the case of resisting prison labor, the punishment would be a longer sentence than would otherwise be the case.
• 7If you want a pithier and more articulate version of this idea, read libertarian philosopher Robert Nozick’s piece, “The Tale of a Slave” in his book, Anarchy, State, and Utopia.
• 8Lest there be any confusion, for the remainder of this book I will use “coercive” to mean using or threatening force against those who don’t agree with the state’s existence or actions. Obviously the state is not seen as coercive by those who accept the state’s legitimacy in any particular instance under discussion.
• 9As the saying goes, under this way of thinking it would be reasonable for two wolves and a sheep to vote on what’s for lunch.
• 10The argument would be similar within a U.S. state with respect to that state’s constitution.
• 11As libertarian attorney Stephan Kinsella has put it, it’s as if statists are saying that only the first generation had the freedom to make a choice, but no subsequent generation had or will have this freedom.
• 12This is not an entirely fair analogy, since it is conceivable that Customer Service representatives might be paid to retain customers, and thus they might try to be helpful when you call. On the other hand, Supreme Court justices are appointed for life, regardless of how helpful or destructive their decisions might be to the cause of liberty.
• 13In the U.S. (although this is likely true elsewhere too), as populations have grown substantially, the increase in the number of elected representatives has not kept pace, thereby increasing the number of people “represented” by each elected official well beyond what might have been considered reasonable originally. For instance, the Constitution specifies a minimum House of Representatives district size of 30,000; today, the average is over 730,000 (put another way, were the House of Representatives to operate at that original ratio, there would need to be over 10,000 members). This severely further diminishes any notion of “representation” of any individual voter’s interests by his elected member of Congress.
• 14To renounce U.S. citizenship is not easy, fast, or cheap. One must fill out a number of forms, participate in several interviews with the state, pay a fee of over $2,000, obtain a certificate of renunciation, and pay an “expatriation tax” on one’s entire wealth. The relevant legislation also requires publication of one’s name in the Federal Register, meant to “shame” those who expatriate, and expatriates can be barred from re-entering the U.S. if the state determines that they expatriated to avoid U.S. tax legislation (generally the main reason for most!). Moreover, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has the power to direct the U.S. State Department to revoke or not renew a citizen’s U.S. passport if the IRS claims that the citizen owes more than $50,000 in back taxes (note, the IRS does not have to prove this, just allege it).
• 15One way to effect this governance separation would be through secession, which I discuss in more detail later.
• 16The astute reader will note that the state is no different from the Mafia in this respect.
• 17It would be a circular response for a statist to retort “Because the Mafia is criminal but the state is legitimate.” We are here asking why the state is legitimate when it does exactly what the Mafia does.
• 18Other renditions include for the “general welfare” or the “public good.”
• 19Note that it is possible for a group of people to contractually agree to a common objective, such as in a homeowner’s association. But that is a voluntary arrangement in which each member explicitly consents to the definition of the objective, in contrast to the state, which forces a definition upon everyone, whether they agree to it or not.
• 20To the statist who responds that it is impractical to have continuously changing definitions of the “common good,” and that once an election cycle is the best we could hope for, I would respond that this is precisely an argument for the stateless society. In that society, each individual could continuously change and acquire his preferences at his own pace, regardless of what others want, without coercing others into his regime nor being coerced by others into theirs. Just because the statist cannot imagine a better system doesn’t mean such a system cannot exist.
• 21In addition, as explained by the public choice theory branch of economics, it’s not even clear that the majority view prevails in political deliberations. The sequence in which proposals are put up for debate and vote, and the framing of those proposals, impact the actual outcome, which does not necessarily match the alleged preferences of the majority. The individuals who control the proposal process have a huge degree of influence.
• 22As libertarian economist and philosopher Walter Block has noted, there are over 30,000 deaths each year on state-managed roads. Imagine if there were this many deaths on private properties, such as in malls, parking lots, or department stores. There would be public outrage, a loss of confidence in the managers of these properties, and calls to do something about it. Yet there is virtual silence from the public about the state’s appalling road management.
• 23Perhaps by one of the Tooth Fairy Theories?
• 24Not to mention (but I will) the fact that since those at the state can prohibit peaceful individuals from doing relatively mundane things with their person and property, such as opening a business, renovating a house, etc., state personnel can and do extort favors from private individuals in return for not enforcing these prohibitions.
• 25Strictly speaking, there are private-sector security firms and arbitration tribunals operating in parallel with the state’s police and courts, respectively. However, taxpayers have to pay for the state’s provision of these services even if they choose to use private-sector alternatives. Thus the total cost to a taxpayer of using these alternatives is significantly higher, making for an uneven playing field (and only the well-off can afford to use the generally better private-sector alternatives). The state also coercively limits the activities of private-sector security firms.
• 26Imagine how much success an underperforming private vendor would have if he tried to increase his pricing!
• 27Of course those statists who subscribe to one of the Tooth Fairy Theories would object to this characterization, but that rejection practically indicts itself.
• 28Statists may respond that state personnel sometimes do get regular feedback from polls. However, polls group individuals into artificial categories rather than treating them as individuals, so they don’t reveal individual preferences. Also, polls suffer from sample size and bias issues. Most importantly, however, individual preferences are only revealed through purchase decisions, not answering surveys; the former has a real financial cost, whereas the latter is costless to the respondent.
• 29Another contributing factor to the police using excessive force in the U.S. is the fact that the police are increasingly recruiting or being trained by former soldiers who previously prosecuted the state’s brutal “War on Terror,” and are also using surplus military equipment from that conflict. Treating civilians like enemy combatants and the streets like battlefields, with the aid of military equipment and tactics, can only lead to bringing the brutality of war to our towns and villages.
• 30Note that these war activities mostly cause death, injury, and destruction to foreigners, for which state personnel are rarely held liable. Yet there is no cogent, logical principle which argues that death, injury, or destruction is excusable if the victim of a state’s violence is not currently under that state’s territorial control; that victim is still another human being.
• 31This thesis is laid out methodically in Hoppe’s book, Democracy—The God That Failed. Note that Hoppe is not suggesting that a monarchical state is acceptable, only that it exhibits characteristics that make it preferable to a democratic state. Hoppe’s thesis has been challenged in at least one academic article: see Jacek Sierpinski’s work, “A Critique of Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s Thesis on Lesser Harmfulness of Monarchy than Democracy,” Res Publica Revista de Historia de las Ideas Politicas, Vol. 19 Num. 2 (2016): 521–559.
• 32In using the term “democracy” here, I am using it loosely to describe any political system without hereditary rule in which the broad population elects government officials in periodic elections, where such officials are drawn from the general populace and serve for limited terms. Technically, however, “democracy” refers to a specific political system in which, among other things, there is unlimited majority rule and direct self-governance. Contrast this, for instance, with the U.S., which is not technically a democracy but, rather, a constitutional federative republic, because (a) there are elected representatives, and (b) in order to protect the minority, the majority is theoretically limited by a fundamental written law (the Constitution) and the system’s structure (different horizontal and vertical branches of government). However, for all purposes going forward I will treat the U.S. as a democracy, since the key point is to distinguish it from monarchies.
• 33Whereas war between monarchs was not ideologically motivated, but, rather, a limited dispute over specific property, democratic states make war on broad, nationalistic lines, and seek cultural, linguistic, and/or religious domination of the vanquished population. In addition, democratic states make “total war,” as will be discussed later.
• 34These trends in democracies are empirical, and, as with all historical events, it is difficult to use these observations alone to definitively conclude that this shows causation, as opposed to mere correlation. Thus one needs a plausible theory to explain the different types of decision-making and officeholders in democracies compared with monarchies, which is what Hoppe has attempted to do in his work.
• 35Although it should not be overlooked that dictatorships are states too, and in fact dictators sometimes come to power through elections or, once in office, hold elections as a means to justify remaining in power. While one may be skeptical about elections in dictatorships—due to claims of voter fraud, intimidation, and suppression, and limitations on opposing candidates—those issues are regularly cited as issues in democracies too! In any event, when we include dictatorships, the number of citizens or other subjects killed by their own state totals over one hundred million in just the 20th century alone (this excludes the millions of people killed in wars, which are also initiated by states of all types).
• 36While Germany was a totalitarian state by the time the German government invaded Poland in 1939 at the beginning of World War II, Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party colleagues were duly elected into office in 1933 as in any other democracy. While the Nazi Party did not initially hold a majority of seats in the Reichstag (parliament), Hitler was appointed by President Hindenburg as Chancellor to head a ruling coalition. Subsequently, Hitler was given emergency powers by Hindenburg according to the Weimar Constitution, and the Nazi Party then won a majority in a general election (in which the Socialist and Communist Parties were banned and their voters intimidated). Hitler’s Enabling Law, which gave him vast power, was passed through a vote by the Reichstag, although members of the Reichstag who would presumably have voted against this legislation were not allowed into the Reichstag building at the time of the vote. This is when Hitler began his totalitarian takeover of Germany, and the vestiges of democracy began to disappear.
• 37The “War on Drugs,” like Prohibition, should really be called the “War on People Who Believe That They Own Their Own Bodies.”
• 38Note that, in many of these conflicts, the U.S. government was joined by the governments of other democracies (such as Australia, Canada, France, and Great Britain).
• 39For a chilling and thought-provoking discussion of drone aggression waged by the U.S. government in recent times, see Laurie Calhoun’s book, We Kill Because We Can.
• 40Note that there is also some “self-conflation.” That is, the rulers in a democracy promote, and many statists accept, the false notion that a threat to the government’s image, power, or continuity is a threat to civil society or individual citizens.
• 41Note that it’s not only in violent war that civilians are targeted by democratic states; when such states levy “economic war” against another state, such as through trade sanctions, the explicit purpose is to economically hurt the other state’s civilian population as a means of pressuring its government. (Of course the democratic state also hurts its own civilian population by levying such sanctions, since these sanctions prohibit its own civilians from freely trading with the civilians of the other state.)
• 42For an example in a democracy suggesting that this issue might not trouble statists, consider that, in the U.S., between 1861 and 1865, President Lincoln’s generals waged war on the citizens of the Confederate states, which actions many statists still support to this day. Of course one could also argue that, since this war followed the Confederate states’ secession from the U.S., this war was actually waged against a foreign nation’s citizens. In which case the statist could rest easy, morally speaking!
• 43For a very insightful articulation of the delusions that accompany modern warfare, see Laurie Calhoun’s book, War and Delusion.
• 44For an excellent discussion of what war does to a population, see the book edited by John Denson, The Costs of War.
• 45Note that not only do the rulers (and their cronies) benefit from war while not bearing its costs, but the most senior members of the state also receive significant personal protection against any blowback—paid for by the confiscated income of private citizens—in the form of massive amounts of armed protection wherever they go (while denying private citizens the right to be armed for their own protection), as well as underground bunkers to which to flee if there is an actual or threatened attack.
• 46One might have more sympathy for those in the armed forces who are conscripted by the state to fight its wars. Even then, the real honor should be reserved for those who flee conscription to avoid carrying out the state’s violence.
• 47Probably the most startling example of this in recent times is the fact that, as disclosed in 2012, during his presidency President Obama regularly presided over a “kill list,” whereby he ordered the murder by drone strike of designated individuals overseas, including Americans, none of whom had been tried and found guilty of any violent crime. While many of these strikes also murdered individuals not on the list, according to one report in The New York Times, the president had a formula for minimizing the official count of mistaken casualties that “in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants . . . unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.” This is quite a perverse reversal of the usual burden of proof required in capital crimes. Yet this shocking activity quickly ceased being a central discussion point in the U.S.; it appeared that the vast majority of the population didn’t know about, didn’t care about or, in the case of foreign policy hawks, actively supported, this horrific exercise of state power.
• 48Such person could assign or abandon this right, but that would be his voluntary decision.
• 49In today’s state “justice” system, to bolster the aura around the supposed infallibility of, and the supreme “justice” imposed by, the state’s court system, note how intimidating the setup is, almost as if there are some divine aspects to it. The judge wears a fearsome black robe, is seated higher than everyone else, may be supported by armed guards, and must be addressed using honorific terms (otherwise contempt charges might be brought against the miscreant). This is of a piece with other ridiculously childish aspects of the state, such as the aura created around, and forced respect given to, the presidency, the legislature, and the military. Respect and honor should be earned, not imposed, but the pomp and ceremony is important for the state’s illusion of superiority.
• 50For instance, according to a U.S. Department of Justice report from June 2012, just at the federal government alone in 2008 there were 40 federal agencies with over 120,000 officers authorized to carry firearms and make arrests. Unusual examples include the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Education, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Federal Reserve, the Fish and Wildlife Service, the General Services Administration, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the IRS, the Bureau of Land Management, the Library of Congress, the National Institute of Health, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Park Service, and the Veterans Health Administration.
• 51According to the latest data from the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, approximately one-third of the federal and state prison population in the U.S. (that is, approximately 520,000 prisoners) had been incarcerated for these types of non-violent, victimless “crimes.” Note that these numbers exclude another 700,000+ prisoners held in local jails and over 4.7 million individuals on probation and parole, for which “category of offense” data is not available, although undoubtedly a large number of these individuals were also incarcerated for non-violent, victimless “crimes.”
• 52To bolster its argument, the state typically claims that reducing private gun ownership would itself reduce violent crime, but that claim is demonstrably false: see John Lott’s book, More Guns, Less Crime. The aggressor rarely pays attention to gun-control regulations, or uses other means to conduct his violence, such as vehicles, knives, clubs, superior strength, explosives, etc. So the only effect of gun-control regulations is to disarm the law-abiding victims.
• 53A “plea bargain” is an agreement by a defendant with a prosecutor to plead guilty to certain charges without a trial, in return for other charges being dropped and/or the prosecutor recommending to the judge a potentially lighter sentence.
• 54If the victim tried to sue the prosecutor for negligence, then the prosecutor would likely benefit from the immunity principle discussed earlier, and of course the victim would have to sue the state prosecutor in the state’s own courts!
• 55Moreover, in some areas the state may actually prohibit a parallel, private civil action by the victim against the aggressor. Even where both actions might be run in parallel, findings in the criminal case could impact the outcome of the civil case, but the victim has no real input into or control over the criminal case.
• 56The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that federal prosecutors and Federal Bureau of Investigation agents can use trickery, deceptions, and outright lies (including such things as disguises, verbal traps, and fraud) to help them extract information from a witness or person they are investigating.
• 57And note that the state uses the ordinary citizen’s income to fund possession of large amounts of firearms and ammunition to protect individuals at the state, while at the same time, through gun-control regulations, substantially limiting the ordinary citizen’s ability to use the same firearms and ammunition to protect himself.
• 58This concept is even more egregious when paired with the immunity concept described earlier: the police get the benefit of immunity when they do something wrong, and when they are wronged, their aggressors suffer greater penalties.
• 59Obviously I’m not suggesting that taxes are a “debt due” to the state, since taxes are forcibly mandated, as opposed to arising from a voluntary payment contract.
• 60In the U.S., quite apart from the IRS’s enforcement arm, there are other examples of armed tax collectors, such as the New York state government’s “strike force” to combat the heinous crime of trying to avoid payment of state taxes on cigarettes.
• 61“Tax havens” are simply states that have the temerity to charge lower tax rates than states like the U.S. might prefer. They represent tax-rate competition for higher taxing states, as they attract taxpayers (individuals and firms) who relocate to reduce the theft engaged in by their current state. And if there is one thing a state dislikes, it is competition.
• 62There is some irony to this entire point anyway. In the U.S., the largest danger to the ordinary citizen’s privacy is actually the federal government, which spends billions of citizens’ confiscated tax dollars each year intercepting citizens’ telephone calls and emails, and monitoring their web browsing and physical movement.