Showing posts with label libertarianism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label libertarianism. Show all posts
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
The Great Socialist Misconception
The logical short-comings of socialism have been known for a long time.
Nearly 200 years ago, the great classical liberal thinker Frédéric Bastiat wrote:
His critique still applies today to socialist-leaning individuals.
Bastiat wrote 'The Law', one of the most famous classical liberal works. The Law argues that the only just use of government power is to protect the right of individuals to their person, their liberty, and their property. When governments are used to plunder from one group to give to another, then they because instruments of injustice, rather than providers of it.
'The Law' can be found online here.
Nearly 200 years ago, the great classical liberal thinker Frédéric Bastiat wrote:
Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all.
We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain.
His critique still applies today to socialist-leaning individuals.
Bastiat wrote 'The Law', one of the most famous classical liberal works. The Law argues that the only just use of government power is to protect the right of individuals to their person, their liberty, and their property. When governments are used to plunder from one group to give to another, then they because instruments of injustice, rather than providers of it.
'The Law' can be found online here.
The Unintended Consequences Of The Welfare State
Forbes recently published an excellent article about the immorality of welfare advocacy:
The Unintended Consequences Of The Welfare State
James Otteson,
It is morally wrong to live off of the fruits of others' labor.
The welfare state seems to be corrupting some of our core moral principles.
That wasn't its intention, but if there is one thing we know about government programs, it is that they rarely do what they were intended to do. This moral corruption is eminently on display in the increasingly common, and increasingly loud, protests over cuts in state budgets, and we will soon see it in the looming fight over whether to raise the federal debt ceiling. (continued..) source
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Big Government destroys Real Democracy
There is a common misconception that more government control of the economy leads to more democratic control. Leftists like MIT linguist and lifelong socialist Noam Chomsky often make this claim while criticizing private corporations as "totalitarian", due to their top down control management style where the shareholders have absolute say and the workers none. Both of these are faulty precepts.
Let us break each argument down and evaluate their merits. The idea that bigger government leads to more democratic control springs from the fact that governments are democratically managed, and therefore when they control resources, those resources become democratically managed as well. This is true at a theoretical level, but in practice governments are controlled by a political elite, and the electorate is generally ignorant about the issues being decided on, let alone participating in the decision making.
A large government empowers those closest to the political decision makers, and allows them to circumvent the most democratic of all forums: courts of law. Courts of law are where the people make decisions based on what they believe is just. In courts, the people who make up the jury are armed with all the facts of the case, and are given the time to study them and the complete power to make a decision on it.
With legislation, the politically connect can insulate themselves from the decision of courts. They can change the terms of contracts, re-allocate the wealth of society, and dictate the actions of individuals, all without having to convince any court of law.
As far as the second argument: that corporations are totalitarian, it is simply empty rhetoric as it ignores the defining quality of totalitarianism: government control of all aspects of society. A corporation alone has no governmental powers to impose its will.
There is a fundamental difference in the exercise of government power compared to other forms of power. Government power supersedes the will of courts and as such can ignore the protections granted to people by common law (which is essentially the law as created by the most democratic of institutions, courts).
It is ironic that those who call for big government in the name of increasing democratic control and fighting totalitarianism, are in fact doing the opposite by diminishing the role of courts and increasing the power of the only organization capable of exerting totalitarian controls.
Let us break each argument down and evaluate their merits. The idea that bigger government leads to more democratic control springs from the fact that governments are democratically managed, and therefore when they control resources, those resources become democratically managed as well. This is true at a theoretical level, but in practice governments are controlled by a political elite, and the electorate is generally ignorant about the issues being decided on, let alone participating in the decision making.
A large government empowers those closest to the political decision makers, and allows them to circumvent the most democratic of all forums: courts of law. Courts of law are where the people make decisions based on what they believe is just. In courts, the people who make up the jury are armed with all the facts of the case, and are given the time to study them and the complete power to make a decision on it.
With legislation, the politically connect can insulate themselves from the decision of courts. They can change the terms of contracts, re-allocate the wealth of society, and dictate the actions of individuals, all without having to convince any court of law.
As far as the second argument: that corporations are totalitarian, it is simply empty rhetoric as it ignores the defining quality of totalitarianism: government control of all aspects of society. A corporation alone has no governmental powers to impose its will.
There is a fundamental difference in the exercise of government power compared to other forms of power. Government power supersedes the will of courts and as such can ignore the protections granted to people by common law (which is essentially the law as created by the most democratic of institutions, courts).
It is ironic that those who call for big government in the name of increasing democratic control and fighting totalitarianism, are in fact doing the opposite by diminishing the role of courts and increasing the power of the only organization capable of exerting totalitarian controls.
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Article comparing free markets to social democracy
This is a good article that explains why Europe's strategy of high social welfare stifles economic innovation and is a net detriment. Here is an excerpt:
Keeping America's Edge
Keeping America's Edge
The United States is in a tough spot. As we dig ourselves out from a serious financial crisis and a deep recession, our very efforts to recover are exacerbating much more fundamental problems that our country has let fester for too long. Beyond our short-term worries, and behind many of today's political debates, lurks the deeper challenge of coming to terms with America's place in the global economic order.
Our strategic situation is shaped by three inescapable realities. First is the inherent conflict between the creative destruction involved in free-market capitalism and the innate human propensity to avoid risk and change. Second is ever-increasing international competition. And third is the growing disparity in behavioral norms and social conditions between the upper and lower income strata of American society.
These realities combine to form a daunting problem. And the task of resolving it turns out not, by and large, to be a matter of foreign policy. Rather, it compels us to consider how we balance economic dynamism and growth against the unity and stability of our society. After all, we must have continuous, rapid technological and business-model innovation to grow our economy fast enough to avoid losing power to those who do not share America's values — and this innovation requires increasingly deregulated markets and fewer restrictions on behavior. But such deregulation would cause significant displacement and disruption that could seriously undermine America's social cohesion — which is not only essential to a decent and just society, but also to producing the kind of skilled and responsible citizens that free markets ultimately require. Moreover, preserving the integrity of our social fabric by minimizing the divisions that can rend society often requires government policies — to reduce inequality or ensure access to jobs, education, housing, or health care — that can in turn undercut growth and prosperity. Neither innovation nor cohesion can do without the other, but neither, it seems, can avoid undermining the other.
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
The Ultimate Argument Against Socialism
David Hume gave a good explanation for why socialism is a bad idea 250 years ago:
An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals:
An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals:
But historians, and even common sense, may inform us, that, however specious these ideas of PERFECT equality may seem, they are really, at bottom, IMPRACTICABLE; and were they not so, would be extremely PERNICIOUS to human society. Render possessions ever so equal, men's different degrees of art, care, and industry will immediately break that equality. Or if you check these virtues, you reduce society to the most extreme indigence; and instead of preventing want and beggary in a few, render it unavoidable to the whole community. The most rigorous inquisition too is requisite to watch every inequality on its first appearance; and the most severe jurisdiction, to punish and redress it. But besides, that so much authority must soon degenerate into tyranny, and be exerted with great partialities; who can possibly be possessed of it, in such a situation as is here supposed? Perfect equality of possessions, destroying all subordination, weakens extremely the authority of magistracy, and must reduce all power nearly to a level, as well as property.
We may conclude, therefore, that, in order to establish laws for the regulation of property, we must be acquainted with the nature and situation of man; must reject appearances, which may be false, though specious; and must search for those rules, which are, on the whole, most USEFUL and BENEFICIAL. Vulgar sense and slight experience are sufficient for this purpose; where men give not way to too selfish avidity, or too extensive enthusiasm.
Who sees not, for instance, that whatever is produced or improved by a man's art or industry ought, for ever, to be secured to him, in order to give encouragement to such USEFUL habits and accomplishments? That the property ought also to descend to children and relations, for the same USEFUL purpose? That it may be alienated by consent, in order to beget that commerce and intercourse, which is so BENEFICIAL to human society? And that all contracts and promises ought carefully to be fulfilled, in order to secure mutual trust and confidence, by which the general INTEREST of mankind is so much promoted?
Examine the writers on the laws of nature; and you will always find, that, whatever principles they set out with, they are sure to terminate here at last, and to assign, as the ultimate reason for every rule which they establish, the convenience and necessities of mankind.
Saturday, July 25, 2009
06/03/2009 Freedom Watch w/ Ron Paul, Daniel Hannan, Lew Rockwell, Tom Woods, et al.
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Thursday, December 4, 2008
Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal
Here is a great article showing the flaw of using coercive collectivism (aka socialism aka big government) to manage society:
source
Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal
JOEL SALATIN / Acres v.33, n.9, Sept 2003 1sep03
Everything I want to do is illegal. As if a highly bureaucratic regulatory system was not already in place, 9/11 fueled renewed acceleration to eliminate freedom from the countryside. Every time a letter arrives in the mail from a federal or state agriculture department my heart jumps like I just got sent to the principal’s office.
And it doesn’t stop with agriculture bureaucrats. It includes all sorts of government agencies, from zoning, to taxing, to food inspectors. These agencies are the ultimate extension of a disconnected, Greco-Roman, Western, egocentric, compartmentalized, reductionist, fragmented, linear thought process.
ON-FARM PROCESSING
I want to dress my beef and pork on the farm where I’ve coddled and raised it. But zoning laws prohibit slaughterhouses on agricultural land. For crying out loud, what makes more holistic sense than to put abattoirs where the animals are? But no, in the wisdom of Western disconnected thinking, abattoirs are massive centralized facilities visited daily by a steady stream of tractor trailers and illegal alien workers.
But what about dressing a couple of animals a year in the backyard? How can that be compared to a ConAgra or Tyson facility? In the eyes of the government, the two are one and the same. Every T-bone steak has to be wrapped in a half-million dollar facility so that it can be sold to your neighbor. The fact that I can do it on my own farm more cleanly, more responsibly, more humanely, more efficiently, and in a more environmentally friendly manner doesn’t matter to the government agents who walk around with big badges on their jackets and wheelbarrow-sized regulations tucked under their arms.
OK, so I take my animals and load them onto a trailer for the first time in their life to send them up the already clogged interstate to the abattoir to await their appointed hour with a shed full of animals of dubious extraction. They are dressed by people wearing long coats with deep pockets with whom I cannot even communicate. The carcasses hang in a cooler alongside others that were not similarly cared for in life. After the animals are processed, I return to the facility hoping to retrieve my meat.
When I return home to sell these delectable packages, the county zoning ordinance says that this is a manufactured product because it exited the farm and was reimported as a value-added product, thereby throwing our farm into the Wal-Mart category, another prohibition in agricultural areas. Just so you understand this, remember that an on-farm abattoir was illegal, so I took the animals to a legal abattoir, but now the selling of said products in an on-farm store is illegal.
Our whole culture suffers from an industrial food system that has made every part disconnected from the rest. Smelly and dirty farms are supposed to be in one place, away from people, who snuggle smugly in their cul-de-sacs and have not a clue about the out-of-sight-out-of-mind atrocities being committed to their dinner before it arrives in microwaveable, four-color-labeled, plastic packaging. Industrial abattoirs need to be located in a not-in-my-backyard place to sequester noxious odors and sights. Finally, the retail store must be located in a commercial district surrounded by lots of pavement, handicapped access, public toilets and whatever else must be required to get food to people.
The notion that animals can be raised, processed, packaged, and sold in a model that offends neither our eyes nor noses cannot even register on the average bureaucrat’s radar screen — or, more importantly, on the radar of the average consumer advocacy organization. Besides, all these single-use megalithic structures are good for the gross domestic product. Anything else is illegal.
ON-FARM SEMINARS & ‘AGRITAINMENT’
In the disconnected mind of modem America, a farm is a production unit for commodities — nothing more and nothing less. Because our land is zoned as agricultural, we cannot charge school kids for a tour of the farm because that puts us in the category of "Theme Park." Anyone paying for infotainment creates "Farmadisney," a strict no-no in agricultural zones.
Farms are not supposed to be places of enjoyment or learning. They are commodity production units dotting the landscape, just as factories are manufacturing units and office complexes are service units. In the government’s mind, integrating farm production with recreation and meaningful education creates a warped sense of agriculture.
The very notion of encouraging people to visit farms is blasphemous to an official credo that views even sparrows, starlings and flies as disease threats to immunocompromised plants and animals. Visitors entering USDA-blessed production unit farms must run through a gauntlet of toxic sanitation dips and don moonsuits in order to keep their germs to themselves. Indeed, people are viewed as hazardous foreign bodies at Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs).
Farmers who actually encourage folks to come to their farms threaten the health and welfare of their fecal concentration camp production unit neighbors, and therefore must be prohibited from bringing these invasive germ-dispensing humans onto their landscape. In the industrial agribusiness paradigm, farms must be protected from people, not to mention free-range poultry.
The notion that animals and plants can be raised in such a way that their enhanced immune system protects them from kindergarteners’ germs, and that the animals actually thrive when marinated in human attention, never enters the minds of government officials dedicated to protecting precarious production units.
COLLABORATIVE MARKETING
I have several neighbors who produce high-quality food or crafts that complement our own meat and poultry. Dried flower arrangements from one artisan, pickles from another, wine from another, and first-class vegetables from another. These are just for starters.
Our community is blessed with all sorts of creative artisans who offer products that we would love to stock in our on-farm retail venue. Doesn’t it make sense to encourage these customers driving out from the city to be able to go to one farm to do their rural browsing/ purchasing rather than drive all over the countryside? Furthermore, many of these artisans have neither the desire nor time to deal with patrons one-on-one. A collaborative venue is the most win-win, reasonable idea imaginable — except to government agents.
As soon as our farm offers a single item — just one — that is not produced here, we have become a Wal-Mart. Period. That means a business license, which isbasically another layer of taxes on our gross sales. The business license requires a commercial entrance, which on our country road is almost impossible to acquire due to sight-distance requirements and width regulations. Of course, zoning prohibits businesses in our agricultural zones. Remember, people are supposed to be kept away from agricultural areas — people bring diseases.
Even if we could comply with all of the above requirements, a retail outlet carries with it a host of additional regulations. We must provide designated handicapped parking, government-approved toilet facilities (our four household bathrooms in the two homes located 50 feet away from the retail building do not count) — and it can’t be a composting toilet. We must offer x-number of parking spaces. Folks, it just goes on and on, ad nauseum, and all for simply trying to help a neighbor sell her potatoes or extra pumpkins at Thanksgiving. I thought this was the home of the free. In most countries of the world, anyone can sell any of this stuff anywhere, and the hungering hordes are glad to get it, but in the great U.S. of A we’re too sophisticated to allow such bioregional commerce.
EMPLOYING LOCAL YOUNGSTERS & INTERNS
Any power tool — including a cordless screwdriver — cannot be operated by people under the age of 18. We have lots of requests from folks wanting to come as interns, but what do we call them? The government has no category for interns or neighbor young people who just want to learn and help out.
We’d love to employ all the neighboring young people. To our child-awning and worshiping culture, the only appropriate child activity is recreation, sitting in a desk, or watching TV. That’s it. That’s the extent of what children are good for. Anything else is abusive and risky.
Then we wonder why these kids grow up unmotivated and bored with life. Our local newspaper is full of articles and letters to the editor lamenting the lack of things for young people to do. Let me suggest a few things: digging postholes and building a fence, weeding the garden, planting some tomatoes, splitting some wood, feeding the chickens, washing eggs, pruning grapevines, milking the cow, building a compost pile, growing some earthworms.
These are all things that would be wonderfully meaningful work experience for the youth of our community, but you can’t simply employ people anymore. A host of government regulatory paperwork surrounds every "could you come over and help us . . . ?" By the time an employer complies with every Occupational Safety & Health Administration requirement, posts every government bulletin requirement, with-holds taxes, and shoulders Unemployment Compensation burdens and medical and child safety regulations — he or she can’t hire anybody legally or profitably.
The government has no pigeonhole for this: "I’m a 17-year-old home-schooler, and I want to learn how to farm. Could I come and have you mentor me for a year?"
What is this relationship? A student? An employee? If I pay a stipend, the government says he’s an employee. If I don’t pay, the Fair Labor Standards board says it’s slavery, which is illegal. Doesn’t matter that the young person is here of his own volition and is happy to live in a tee-pee. Housing must be permitted and up to code. Enough already. What happened to the home of the free?
BUILD A HOUSE THE WAY I WANT
You would think that if I cut the trees, mill the logs into lumber, and build the house on my own farm, I could make it however I wanted to. Think again. It’s illegal to build a house less than 900 square feet. Period. Doesn’t matter if I’m a hermit or the father of 20. The government agents have decreed, in their egocentric wisdom, that no human can live in anything less than 900 square feet.
Our son got married last year and wanted to build a small cottage on the farm, which he now oversees for the most part. Our new saying is, "He runs the farm, and I just run around." The plan was to do what Mom and Dad did for Teresa and I — trade houses when children come. That way our empty nest downsizes, and the young people can upsize in the main family farmhouse. Sounds reasonable and environmentally sensitive to me. But no, his little honeymoon cottage — or our retirement shack — had to be a 900-square-foot Taj Mahal. A state-of-the-art accredited composting toilet to avoid the need for a septic system and sewer leach field was denied.
When the hillside leach field would not meet agronomic standards and we had to install it in the floodplain, I asked the health department bureaucrat why. He said that essentially the only approvable leach fields now are alongside creeks and streams, because they are the only sites that offer dark-enough colored soils. Sounds like real environmental steward-ship, doesn’t it?
Look, if I want to build a yurt of rabbit skins and go to the bathroom in a compost pile, why is it any of the government’s business? Bureaucrats bend over back-wards to accredit, tax credit, and offer money to people wanting to build pig city-factories or bigger airports. But let a guy go to his woods, cut down some trees, and build himself a home, and a plethora of regulatory tyrants descend on the project to complicate, obfuscate, irritate, frustrate, and virtually terminate. I think it’s time to eradicate some of these laws and the piranhas who administer them.
OPTING OUT OF THE SYSTEM
I don’t ask for a dime of government money. I don’t ask for government accreditation. I don’t want to register my animals with a global positioning tattoo. I don’t want to tell officials the names of my constituents. And I sure as the dickens don’t intend to hand over my firearms. I can’t even use the "U" word.
On every side, our paternalistic culture is tightening the noose around those of us who just want to opt out of the system — and it is the freedom to opt out that differentiates tyrannical and free societies.
How a culture deals with its misfits reveals its strength. The stronger a culture, the less it fears the radical fringe. The more paranoid and precarious a culture, the less tolerance it offers.
When faith in our freedom gives way to fear of our freedom, then silencing the minority view becomes the operative protocol. The Native Americans silenced after Little Big Horn simply wanted to
worship in their beloved Black Hills, use traditional medicinal herbs to cure diseases, educate their children in the ways of their ancestors, and live in portable homes rather than log cabins. By that time these people represented absolutely no threat to the continued Westernization and domination of the North American continent by people who educated, vocated, medicated, worshiped, and habitated differently.
But coexistence was out of the question. Just like the forces that succeeded in making it illegal for me to use the "O" word, the Western success at Wounded Knee quashed the little guy. What does the Organic Trade Association have to fear from me using the "O" word? If society really wants government certification, my little market share will continue to deteriorate into oblivion. If, however, the certification effort represents a same-old, same-old power grab by the elitists to exterminate the fringe play-ers, it is merely another example of fear replacing faith.
Faith in what? Faith in diversity. Faith in each other. Faith in people’s ability to self-educate, thereby making informed decisions. Faith in seekers to find answers. Faith in marketplace dynamics to reward integrity and not cheating. Faith in Creation to heal. Faith in healthy plants and animals to withstand epizootics. Faith in earthworms to increase fertility. Faith in communities to function efficiently and honorably without centralized beltway interference. Faith in Acres U.S.A. to arrive every month with a cornucopia of insight and information.
Our culture’s current fear of bioterrorism shows the glaring weakness of a centralized, immunodeficient food system. This weakness leads to fear. Demanding from on high that we irradiate all food, register every cow with government agencies, and hire more inspectors does not show strength. It shows fear.
Indeed, official policy views all these minority production and marketing systems that have been shown faithful over the centuries to be instead things that threaten everyone and everything. As a teepee dwelling, herb healing, home educating, people loving, compost building retail farmer, I represent the real answers, but real answers must be eradicated by those who seek to build their power and fortunes on a lie — the lie being that genetic integrity can be maintained when corporate scientists begin splicing DNA. The lie that, as Charles Walters says, toxic rescue chemistry is better than a balanced biological bath. The lie that farms are disease-prone, unfriendly, inhumane places and should be zoned away from people.
Those of us who would aspire to opt out — both consumers and producers — must pray for enough cleverness to circumvent the system until the system cannot sustain itself. Cycles happen. Because things are this way today does not mean they will be this way next year. Hurrah for that.
Often, the greatest escapes occur at the moment the noose becomes tightest. I’m feeling the rope, and it’s not very loose. Society seems bound and determined to hang me for everything I want to do. But there’s power in truth. And for sure, surprises are in store that may make
society shake its collective head and begin to question some seemingly unalterable doctrines. Doctrines like the righteousness of the bureaucrat. The sanctity of government research. The protection of the Food Safety and Inspection Service. The helpfulness of the USDA.
When that day comes, you and I can graciously offer our society honest food, honest ecology, honest stewardship. May the day come quickly.
Saturday, October 18, 2008
If I Had the Power to Transform America
I originally posted this in a forum thread in politicsforum.org.
I am reproducing it here because I thought it was an interesting exercise.
--
If I had the power, this is how I would go about changing the political structure of the US.
I am a strong supporter of State economic autonomy, but there is a need for a governmental mechanism to coordinate cross-state infrastructure projects.
In fact, James Madison wanted to allow canals and roads to be built across America, but he could not find the authority in the Constitution:
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In his last act before leaving office, Madison vetoed on states' rights grounds a bill for "internal improvements", including roads, bridges, and canals:
Having considered the bill ... I am constrained by the insuperable difficulty I feel in reconciling this bill with the Constitution of the United States.... The legislative powers vested in Congress are specified ... in the ... Constitution, and it does not appear that the power proposed to be exercised by the bill is among the enumerated powers.
------
He urged Congress to amend the Constitution to permit the federal government to build national infrastructure:
Federal Infrastructure Board
So what I propose is a Constitutional amendment creating strict, focused provisions allowing the federal government to involve itself in national infrastructure.
I think a distributed collaborative approach is always better than one where a single individual decides on matters.
For this reason, I would have a "federal infrastructure board", which would administer projects voted on by property owners across the US. The projects would be funded by a land tax, and, as mentioned, would be voted on by property owners. Each person's vote would be proportional to how much land they have. So if one individual owns 0.5% of the land in the US, he would have a 0.5% vote.
Some of the provisions would be:
1. The Federal Infrastructure Board (from here on referred to as the Board) would be given the power to build and maintain infrastructure for the continental US (excludes Alaska and Hawaii)
2. The projects the Board undertakes would have to be of vital importance to AT LEAST two states.
3. All efforts to create the proposed project through the coordination of state governments would need to have been exhausted for the Board to have authority to undertake it.
4. The Board's annual spending could not exceed 30% of annual federal budget
5. Property owners with combined ownership holdings that would pay at least a 1% share of the tax revenues towards a given project should it pass need to nominate the project for it to be brought up for a general vote.
6. All property owners would need to participate in the general vote. They can delegate their voting rights to another party.
7. In the first 6 months of the year, projects can be nominated. In the 9th month, all nominated projects would be brought up for a vote
8. Each property owner's vote towards a particular project is proportional to how much of the total revenues needed to be raised for the project would come from taxes levied on property owned by that property owner should the project pass.
9. There is a maximum limit of 30% of the annual federal budget that the cost of the projects that a property owner votes 'Yes' on can be.
10. There are two tax structures that a project can use, a gradient tax structure, or a uniform tax structure.
A gradient tax is higher at a point, or a line, and gradually decreases at a set rate towards the outer rim of the taxed area.
A uniform tax is a uniform fee levied on each acre of the taxed area.
Each project can only use a single tax structure.
11. The share of the fees levied from each property owner for a project have to be proportional to the benefits that property owner derives from the project.
Case Example
In the case of the high-speed maglev rail network that Dave proposed, here is how it could be funded through this governing framework:
1. This infrastructure project would require two official projects to pass for it to be launched. There would be a project that levies a gradient tax along each side of the maglev line up to 150 km from the line and 300 km from its major stations that allow freight loading, and another project that would levy a uniform tax on the rest of the continental US.
2. Property owners with at least a 1% share of the land area that would be taxed under each respective project would need to nominate the two projects.
3. In the general vote, if both projects get over 50% of the vote, then the maglev rail construction project would be launched.
There are 1,995,874,608 acres in the continental US. If the area under the gradient tax structure is 204,177,610 acres, and an average of $200 is levied on each acre within this area (with the fee increasing in proportion to how close an area is to the maglev line or major station), that would raise $40.835 billion.
If $61.80 is levied on each of the 1,791,696,998 acres under the uniform tax structure, that would raise another $110.727 billion.
This would be a total of $151.562 billion for the high speed maglev line.
If the fees are collected over a 5 year period, that would be an average of $40 per acre per year in the area under the gradient tax structure, and $12.36 per acre per year in the area under the uniform tax structure.
Here's a visual of the concept:
Reducing the size of the federal government
That's for infrastructure, now as far as getting federal government spending down to 3% of GDP (from 20% now) and removing the vast unconstitutional regulatory framework (e.g. the federal reserve system) in place now, I would propose following a 15 year plan.
A Constitution board would be setup that would be in power for 15 years, and would have as its task to return the federal government to its Constitutional scope over a 15 year period.
The task of reducing spending and eliminating regulations would be broken down into 15 bite sized portions, and one portion would be tackled each year.
Spending would need to decrease by about $110 billion a year, and exactly how regulations would be phased out could be worked out in consultation with industries to cause the least amount of shock to the economy.
Currency
I would allow gold and silver to compete with fiat dollars as legal tender. With a decreased tax burden, there would be a decreased compulsion to hold dollars for government payment purposes, and the economy could for the most part choose its own currency.
Civil Effort
This political effort can only succeed with massive public support. What we need is a coordinated effort by a good portion of the 297 billionaires in the US to make this happen. We need a council, a round table, where the wealthiest Americans congregate and coordinate to spend considerable amounts of money on educating the public of the importance of this kind of effort, and funding candidates that support it.
I am reproducing it here because I thought it was an interesting exercise.
--
If I had the power, this is how I would go about changing the political structure of the US.
I am a strong supporter of State economic autonomy, but there is a need for a governmental mechanism to coordinate cross-state infrastructure projects.
In fact, James Madison wanted to allow canals and roads to be built across America, but he could not find the authority in the Constitution:
-----
In his last act before leaving office, Madison vetoed on states' rights grounds a bill for "internal improvements", including roads, bridges, and canals:
Having considered the bill ... I am constrained by the insuperable difficulty I feel in reconciling this bill with the Constitution of the United States.... The legislative powers vested in Congress are specified ... in the ... Constitution, and it does not appear that the power proposed to be exercised by the bill is among the enumerated powers.
------
He urged Congress to amend the Constitution to permit the federal government to build national infrastructure:
Among the means of advancing the public interest, the occasion is a proper one for recalling the attention of Congress to the great importance of establishing throughout our country the roads and canals which can best be executed under the national authority. No objects within the circle of political economy so richly repay the expense bestowed on them; there are none the utility of which is more universally ascertained and acknowledged; none that do more honor to the government, whose wise and enlarged patriotism duly appreciates them. Nor is there any country which presents a field where Nature invites more the art of man to complete her own work for their accommodation and benefit. These considerations are strengthened, moreover, by the political effect of these facilities for intercommunication, in bringing and binding more closely together the various parts of our extended confederacy.
Whilst the states, individually, with a laudable enterprise and emulation, avail themselves of their local advantages, by new roads, by navigable canals, and by improving the streams susceptible of navigation, the general government is the more urged to similar undertakings, requiring a national jurisdiction, and national means, by the prospect of thus systematically completing so inestimable a work. And it is a happy reflection, that any defect of constitutional authority which may be encountered, can be supplied in a mode which the Constitution itself has providently pointed out.
Federal Infrastructure Board
So what I propose is a Constitutional amendment creating strict, focused provisions allowing the federal government to involve itself in national infrastructure.
I think a distributed collaborative approach is always better than one where a single individual decides on matters.
For this reason, I would have a "federal infrastructure board", which would administer projects voted on by property owners across the US. The projects would be funded by a land tax, and, as mentioned, would be voted on by property owners. Each person's vote would be proportional to how much land they have. So if one individual owns 0.5% of the land in the US, he would have a 0.5% vote.
Some of the provisions would be:
1. The Federal Infrastructure Board (from here on referred to as the Board) would be given the power to build and maintain infrastructure for the continental US (excludes Alaska and Hawaii)
2. The projects the Board undertakes would have to be of vital importance to AT LEAST two states.
3. All efforts to create the proposed project through the coordination of state governments would need to have been exhausted for the Board to have authority to undertake it.
4. The Board's annual spending could not exceed 30% of annual federal budget
5. Property owners with combined ownership holdings that would pay at least a 1% share of the tax revenues towards a given project should it pass need to nominate the project for it to be brought up for a general vote.
6. All property owners would need to participate in the general vote. They can delegate their voting rights to another party.
7. In the first 6 months of the year, projects can be nominated. In the 9th month, all nominated projects would be brought up for a vote
8. Each property owner's vote towards a particular project is proportional to how much of the total revenues needed to be raised for the project would come from taxes levied on property owned by that property owner should the project pass.
9. There is a maximum limit of 30% of the annual federal budget that the cost of the projects that a property owner votes 'Yes' on can be.
10. There are two tax structures that a project can use, a gradient tax structure, or a uniform tax structure.
A gradient tax is higher at a point, or a line, and gradually decreases at a set rate towards the outer rim of the taxed area.
A uniform tax is a uniform fee levied on each acre of the taxed area.
Each project can only use a single tax structure.
11. The share of the fees levied from each property owner for a project have to be proportional to the benefits that property owner derives from the project.
Case Example
In the case of the high-speed maglev rail network that Dave proposed, here is how it could be funded through this governing framework:
1. This infrastructure project would require two official projects to pass for it to be launched. There would be a project that levies a gradient tax along each side of the maglev line up to 150 km from the line and 300 km from its major stations that allow freight loading, and another project that would levy a uniform tax on the rest of the continental US.
2. Property owners with at least a 1% share of the land area that would be taxed under each respective project would need to nominate the two projects.
3. In the general vote, if both projects get over 50% of the vote, then the maglev rail construction project would be launched.
There are 1,995,874,608 acres in the continental US. If the area under the gradient tax structure is 204,177,610 acres, and an average of $200 is levied on each acre within this area (with the fee increasing in proportion to how close an area is to the maglev line or major station), that would raise $40.835 billion.
If $61.80 is levied on each of the 1,791,696,998 acres under the uniform tax structure, that would raise another $110.727 billion.
This would be a total of $151.562 billion for the high speed maglev line.
If the fees are collected over a 5 year period, that would be an average of $40 per acre per year in the area under the gradient tax structure, and $12.36 per acre per year in the area under the uniform tax structure.
Here's a visual of the concept:
Reducing the size of the federal government
That's for infrastructure, now as far as getting federal government spending down to 3% of GDP (from 20% now) and removing the vast unconstitutional regulatory framework (e.g. the federal reserve system) in place now, I would propose following a 15 year plan.
A Constitution board would be setup that would be in power for 15 years, and would have as its task to return the federal government to its Constitutional scope over a 15 year period.
The task of reducing spending and eliminating regulations would be broken down into 15 bite sized portions, and one portion would be tackled each year.
Spending would need to decrease by about $110 billion a year, and exactly how regulations would be phased out could be worked out in consultation with industries to cause the least amount of shock to the economy.
Currency
I would allow gold and silver to compete with fiat dollars as legal tender. With a decreased tax burden, there would be a decreased compulsion to hold dollars for government payment purposes, and the economy could for the most part choose its own currency.
Civil Effort
This political effort can only succeed with massive public support. What we need is a coordinated effort by a good portion of the 297 billionaires in the US to make this happen. We need a council, a round table, where the wealthiest Americans congregate and coordinate to spend considerable amounts of money on educating the public of the importance of this kind of effort, and funding candidates that support it.
Saturday, January 12, 2008
Michael Kinsley shows lack of intelligence in Mass Media
Michael Kinsley wrote an article in the Washington Post today titled The Church Doctrines of Pope Ron Paul What's wrong with libertarianism? where he tries to explain why libertarianism is a flawed political ideology. The lack of reasoning displayed in his article shows that writers for the big media companies that reach millions of people each day are not necessarily very intelligent or have a good understanding of the world, and this bodes poorly for the world who largely depend on these writers to form their collective opinions and guide nations' policies.
Here I'll break down Kinsley's arguments and try to demonstrate why they're duplicitous and totally irrational:
First he discusses national defense:
Almost all libertarians believe that one of the few proper functions of government is national defense. What Kinsley is doing here is misrepresenting libertarian views in a manner that makes it seem like an impractical political ideology while giving himself an easy but illusionary position to attack.
Next he discusses externalities and pollution:
Wow, where to start off. Kinsley just infuses his own pre-conceptions into his intrepretation of the facts without challenging himself to see if his conceptions bear the scrutiny of objective analysis.
First off, Kinsley is wrong to contrast 'liberals' with libertarians by suggesting that liberals view every thing in terms of 'equal protection' while libertarians view every thing in terms of 'property rights'. For libertarians, equal protection and property rights are inter-related: they are all part of our basic natural rights to our life and liberty, which by extension includes a right to our property. Kinsley is playing fast and loose with the facts to simplify and pigeon-hole libertarianism and present it as a narrow-sighted political ideology.
Kinsley then makes the argument that litigation is not a good solution for stopping pollution because "inexpert judges, lawyers and juries ... make inconsistent decisions in different cases". First off, politicians are just as 'inexpert' as judges, the difference being that when a judge asks for expert testimony, he/she is guided by only one thing: the desire to achieve justice, while a politician, conscious of campaign donors and electibility, inevitably lets political considerations cloud his/her judgement on which experts to consult and which expert testimeny to accept when making a judgement.
Second off, litigation is NOT inconsistent, as common law, which is the dominant form of law in the anglo world, dictates that all judgements use prior rulings as a precedent.
Through 500 years of litigative history, the court system in existance today has been refined and developed to become the most objective and impartial source for creating judgements we have. What is wrong with this?
Kinsley then criticizes litigation on democratic grounds: i.e. decisions on pollution should be decided democratically and not by a court. In reality, juries are far more democratic a forum than elections, as they focus a random sampling of citizens on one subject, and give them the opportunity to view the facts in an impartial manner. The democratic election process on the other hand has millions of people vote in one representative every few years, and then that representative decides on thousands of different issues on behalf of his/her constituents. That representative is guided not just by a desire to have justice, but also to get re-elected, to attract rich individuals as campaign donors, etc. Juries seem far more democratic and direct than this.
Kinsley next goes on to criticize the most extreme fringe libertarian positions, such as privatizing and removing all regulations on roads and highways, something that most libertarians don't believe in, rather than deal with the mainstream libertarian positions that are much stronger and more compelling.
The next argument Kinsley makes is that the government banning unpasteurized milk is a positive for society:
He claims that "all that is lost by letting the government" ban things like unpasteurized milk is "the right of a few idiots to be idiots". Wrong. Government can be very very wrong at times. There are times when government creates a ban that prevents people from accessing or doing something that is vital for their survival and well-being.
The best example of this medical licensure. The government bans people from providing certain medical services unless the individual providing the service has a medical license. Medical licensure prevents people who are facing life-threatening illnesses and have no health insurance from getting much cheaper medical care from someone who may have four years, rather than eight years of medical schooling.
Some Americans end up flying to India to receive much cheaper medical care from medical practitioners who are not qualified enough to receive a medical license in the United States yet are able to save their lives. Without medical licensure, the plane ticket to India would not be necessary and many more people would be able to access cheaper medical care in the United States when their financial situation does not give them any other options.
This kind of big brother government regulation drives prices up and results in hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people dying unnecessarily each year.
Finally, Kinsley attacks the very foundation of a free society with the most commonly used arguments used by proponents of socialism:
What Kinsley totally ignores, while focusing on equality and such trivialities as the role of luck in determining our material station, is morality. By what moral right does one person have to use coercion: the threat of prison sentences/fines, to force a rich individual to give his/her resources to a poor individual. Coercion against an innocent individual --and yes, even the richest greediest son of a bitch is still innocent as long as he has not violated the rights of any one else-- is never justified, no matter what.
If we make the argument that a little evil against an innocent person is justified for the greater good, then we are no better than the ancients who sacrificed children to the Gods in exchange for a bountiful harvest.
Of particular note is Kinsley's suggestion that since some people are rich due to luck, coercion against them to redistribute their wealth somehow becomes more justified. This highlights the striking immaturity and inconsideration inherent in Kinsley's thinking and the total absence of moral foundations underlying his political positions.
Kinsley's other suggestion -that coercive wealth redistribution is needed due to his axiom, "material equality as a necessary basis for political equality"- again fails under a cursory review of its underlying premises.
That resources are necessary for an individual to exercise their political or legal rights, and that wealth disparity between the rich and the poor poses potential problems for equal exercise of political/legal rights is obvious, but one need only look again to the court process to see that this reality in no way necessitates such a drastic employment of coercion as proponents of socialism so recklessly advocate. The court process deals with the potential effects of wealth disparity on equal justice through a multitude of ways; public defendants, paid juries to socialize the cost of deliberation, class action lawsuits, etc.
The court process takes a measured, surgical approach in minimizing the role wealth plays in the impartiality of the judgments that individuals receive, because it is honest in its goal of seeking to provide impartial justice. Proponents of socialism meanwhile operate in an intellectual and moral desert and use problems such as inequality of political/legal rights merely as a superficial cover under which to try to dispel the importance of protecting individuals' right to be free from coercion, in order to create leeway for their grand socialist schemes.
Those like Kinsley see the world as a dark place, where dark measures are often the lesser of two evils and therefore justifiable. They are wrong. The world has the potential to be a great and prosperous place, with ever increasing wealth and happiness. The rejection of coercion and injustice is a prerequisite for achieving this potential and eliminating the lesser, and the greater of the evils.
It is very unfortunate that many of those who have been given the reigns to public opinion by the mass media, as in the example Michael Kinsley, do not understand that the foundation for a free and prosperous society is providing equal protection under the law, for every individual.
Here I'll break down Kinsley's arguments and try to demonstrate why they're duplicitous and totally irrational:
First he discusses national defense:
So what is wrong with the libertarian case for extremely limited government? Economics 101 teaches some of the basic justifications for government interference in the economy. Some things, such as the cost of national defense, are "public goods." We can't each decide for ourselves how much defense we want. We have to decide that together.
Almost all libertarians believe that one of the few proper functions of government is national defense. What Kinsley is doing here is misrepresenting libertarian views in a manner that makes it seem like an impractical political ideology while giving himself an easy but illusionary position to attack.
Next he discusses externalities and pollution:
Libertarians also have a tendency to see too many issues in terms of property rights (just as liberals, they would counter, tend to see everything in terms of discrimination and equal protection). Pollution, libertarians say, is simply theft: you are stealing my clean air. Settle it in court. This is a really terrible idea: inexpert judges, lawyers and juries using the most elaborate and expensive decision-making process known to humankind -- litigation -- to make inconsistent decisions in different cases. And usually there is no one "right" answer: There is a spectrum of acceptable answers, involving tradeoffs (dirty air versus fewer jobs, etc.) that ought to be made democratically -- that is, through government.
Wow, where to start off. Kinsley just infuses his own pre-conceptions into his intrepretation of the facts without challenging himself to see if his conceptions bear the scrutiny of objective analysis.
First off, Kinsley is wrong to contrast 'liberals' with libertarians by suggesting that liberals view every thing in terms of 'equal protection' while libertarians view every thing in terms of 'property rights'. For libertarians, equal protection and property rights are inter-related: they are all part of our basic natural rights to our life and liberty, which by extension includes a right to our property. Kinsley is playing fast and loose with the facts to simplify and pigeon-hole libertarianism and present it as a narrow-sighted political ideology.
Kinsley then makes the argument that litigation is not a good solution for stopping pollution because "inexpert judges, lawyers and juries ... make inconsistent decisions in different cases". First off, politicians are just as 'inexpert' as judges, the difference being that when a judge asks for expert testimony, he/she is guided by only one thing: the desire to achieve justice, while a politician, conscious of campaign donors and electibility, inevitably lets political considerations cloud his/her judgement on which experts to consult and which expert testimeny to accept when making a judgement.
Second off, litigation is NOT inconsistent, as common law, which is the dominant form of law in the anglo world, dictates that all judgements use prior rulings as a precedent.
Through 500 years of litigative history, the court system in existance today has been refined and developed to become the most objective and impartial source for creating judgements we have. What is wrong with this?
Kinsley then criticizes litigation on democratic grounds: i.e. decisions on pollution should be decided democratically and not by a court. In reality, juries are far more democratic a forum than elections, as they focus a random sampling of citizens on one subject, and give them the opportunity to view the facts in an impartial manner. The democratic election process on the other hand has millions of people vote in one representative every few years, and then that representative decides on thousands of different issues on behalf of his/her constituents. That representative is guided not just by a desire to have justice, but also to get re-elected, to attract rich individuals as campaign donors, etc. Juries seem far more democratic and direct than this.
Kinsley next goes on to criticize the most extreme fringe libertarian positions, such as privatizing and removing all regulations on roads and highways, something that most libertarians don't believe in, rather than deal with the mainstream libertarian positions that are much stronger and more compelling.
The next argument Kinsley makes is that the government banning unpasteurized milk is a positive for society:
Libertarians would say that if most people want pasteurized milk, the market will supply it. Firms will emerge to certify that milk has been pasteurized. These firms will compete, keeping them honest.
So yes, a Rube Goldberg contraption of capitalism could replace a straightforward government regulation. But what if you aren't interested in turning your grocery shopping into an ideological adventure? All that is lost by letting the government take care of it is the right of a few idiots to be idiots. That right deserves respect. But not much.
He claims that "all that is lost by letting the government" ban things like unpasteurized milk is "the right of a few idiots to be idiots". Wrong. Government can be very very wrong at times. There are times when government creates a ban that prevents people from accessing or doing something that is vital for their survival and well-being.
The best example of this medical licensure. The government bans people from providing certain medical services unless the individual providing the service has a medical license. Medical licensure prevents people who are facing life-threatening illnesses and have no health insurance from getting much cheaper medical care from someone who may have four years, rather than eight years of medical schooling.
Some Americans end up flying to India to receive much cheaper medical care from medical practitioners who are not qualified enough to receive a medical license in the United States yet are able to save their lives. Without medical licensure, the plane ticket to India would not be necessary and many more people would be able to access cheaper medical care in the United States when their financial situation does not give them any other options.
This kind of big brother government regulation drives prices up and results in hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people dying unnecessarily each year.
Finally, Kinsley attacks the very foundation of a free society with the most commonly used arguments used by proponents of socialism:
Libertarians ask: By what justification does the government concern itself with inequality -- financial or otherwise -- in the first place? They are nearly alone in asking this question. Even conservatives claim a great concern for equality of opportunity, while opposing opportunity of result. And the reasons seem obvious: some degree of material equality as a necessary basis for political equality; the huge role of luck in getting each of us to our relative stations in life; etc.
What Kinsley totally ignores, while focusing on equality and such trivialities as the role of luck in determining our material station, is morality. By what moral right does one person have to use coercion: the threat of prison sentences/fines, to force a rich individual to give his/her resources to a poor individual. Coercion against an innocent individual --and yes, even the richest greediest son of a bitch is still innocent as long as he has not violated the rights of any one else-- is never justified, no matter what.
If we make the argument that a little evil against an innocent person is justified for the greater good, then we are no better than the ancients who sacrificed children to the Gods in exchange for a bountiful harvest.
Of particular note is Kinsley's suggestion that since some people are rich due to luck, coercion against them to redistribute their wealth somehow becomes more justified. This highlights the striking immaturity and inconsideration inherent in Kinsley's thinking and the total absence of moral foundations underlying his political positions.
Kinsley's other suggestion -that coercive wealth redistribution is needed due to his axiom, "material equality as a necessary basis for political equality"- again fails under a cursory review of its underlying premises.
That resources are necessary for an individual to exercise their political or legal rights, and that wealth disparity between the rich and the poor poses potential problems for equal exercise of political/legal rights is obvious, but one need only look again to the court process to see that this reality in no way necessitates such a drastic employment of coercion as proponents of socialism so recklessly advocate. The court process deals with the potential effects of wealth disparity on equal justice through a multitude of ways; public defendants, paid juries to socialize the cost of deliberation, class action lawsuits, etc.
The court process takes a measured, surgical approach in minimizing the role wealth plays in the impartiality of the judgments that individuals receive, because it is honest in its goal of seeking to provide impartial justice. Proponents of socialism meanwhile operate in an intellectual and moral desert and use problems such as inequality of political/legal rights merely as a superficial cover under which to try to dispel the importance of protecting individuals' right to be free from coercion, in order to create leeway for their grand socialist schemes.
Those like Kinsley see the world as a dark place, where dark measures are often the lesser of two evils and therefore justifiable. They are wrong. The world has the potential to be a great and prosperous place, with ever increasing wealth and happiness. The rejection of coercion and injustice is a prerequisite for achieving this potential and eliminating the lesser, and the greater of the evils.
It is very unfortunate that many of those who have been given the reigns to public opinion by the mass media, as in the example Michael Kinsley, do not understand that the foundation for a free and prosperous society is providing equal protection under the law, for every individual.
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
Why Libertarianism is a Superior Political System
I believe libertarianism, of all political systems, allows for the highest level of efficiency in a society. I define a libertarian government as one that outlaws acts of fraud and initiated coercion against individuals and their property and taxes people to fund a police force and courts to enforce the law, a military force for self-defense against foreign aggression, and little else.
A good example of a libertarian government is the United States government circa the 19th century, when it strongly adhered to the principle of Laissez Faire, and when the United States saw itself become the world's industrial super-power. Instead of wading into more historical examples to try to prove my case about libertarianism and efficiency, I want to explain my theoretical reasoning.
The underlying reason why a libertarian econo-political system is the most efficient one is that conflict is expensive. Conflict drains and diverts resources from productive uses and disrupts productive systems through acts of destruction. We humans seek to attain and accumulate resources in the most efficient possible manner for our individual self. When the most efficient manner available is attaining the resources from other individuals through coercion or theft (including fraud), it tends to reduce the overall efficiency of society because those individuals who lost their resources to the coercion and/or theft will divert their resources to attempting to prevent future losses of resources by such means.
One example of this dynamic in effect is taxes. Tax receipts are coerced from the population at the threat of imprisonment/fines. People spend considerable amounts of time and resources trying to find ways to minimize the taxes they are forced pay. For example, they may hire an accountant to file their taxes in a way that minimizes their taxable income, or they may look for ways to move their money offshore outside the reach and sight of government agents.
None of these activities aimed at reducing how much they are taxed increases the overall efficiency of society. This type of mis-allocation of resources manifests itself whenever there is conflict amongst the participants of a society (in this case between state and citizen), so obviously, as this line of reasoning goes, the less conflict a society has, the better it is for its level of efficiency.
So the next question we face is how to reduce conflict. One option is simply putting everyone into bondage, deny them their right to privacy, and ensure that they have no choice but to obey the government. This could conceivably reduce the incentive of the citizen to resist the state's dictums to the point that conflict is reduced, but this would also give awesome powers to the government over the people, and therefore make the potential rewards of attaining the position of political leader of such a state enormous, which itself could create conditions that increase the likelihood of conflict.
It therefore seems likely that an all powerful state would create a cold war like environment where each political faction is focused on increasing their political/military strength in order to increase the probability of seizing power.
All of this political jockeying uses up resources of course, diverting them from productive purposes, and therefore mitigating whatever efficiency advantage that an all powerful state would confer from reducing citizen vs state conflict.
Furthermore, the resources required to maintain a bureaucracy that keeps the population under absolute control and surveillance would be enormous. For these reasons, I conclude that a society with an all powerful government that pervades every facet of that society cannot be economically efficient.
So the question now is, if we go to the opposite extreme, and have a society that has a small libertarian government in place rather than an all powerful pervasive one, will coercion from other, non-state, facets of society replace government coercion? Wouldn't mafias and other non-state actors simply take the place of the government?
I argue no, because there's a distinct advantage that a government has when trying to prosecute and outlaw acts of initiated coercion and fraud, over trying to prosecute other types of crime (e.g. narcotics consumption, tax evasion, etc), and that is that they have the victim on their side.
It is not just Government vs Law-breaker, in the case of a libertarian government, it is always Government + Victim vs Law Breaker. A libertarian government need only be more powerful than the next most powerful center of power in the country, in order to guarantee that no citizen is above the law. The citizens will do the bulk of the job of surveilling and reporting crime, as a natural consequence of the fact that the only crime in a libertarian society is one where a citizen is a victim and therefore has a strong incentive to report it, requiring of the government only to administer justice.
I believe this advantage of libertarianism in efficiently reducing conflict in society makes it the best form of government for maximizing efficiency in a society.
A good example of a libertarian government is the United States government circa the 19th century, when it strongly adhered to the principle of Laissez Faire, and when the United States saw itself become the world's industrial super-power. Instead of wading into more historical examples to try to prove my case about libertarianism and efficiency, I want to explain my theoretical reasoning.
The underlying reason why a libertarian econo-political system is the most efficient one is that conflict is expensive. Conflict drains and diverts resources from productive uses and disrupts productive systems through acts of destruction. We humans seek to attain and accumulate resources in the most efficient possible manner for our individual self. When the most efficient manner available is attaining the resources from other individuals through coercion or theft (including fraud), it tends to reduce the overall efficiency of society because those individuals who lost their resources to the coercion and/or theft will divert their resources to attempting to prevent future losses of resources by such means.
One example of this dynamic in effect is taxes. Tax receipts are coerced from the population at the threat of imprisonment/fines. People spend considerable amounts of time and resources trying to find ways to minimize the taxes they are forced pay. For example, they may hire an accountant to file their taxes in a way that minimizes their taxable income, or they may look for ways to move their money offshore outside the reach and sight of government agents.
None of these activities aimed at reducing how much they are taxed increases the overall efficiency of society. This type of mis-allocation of resources manifests itself whenever there is conflict amongst the participants of a society (in this case between state and citizen), so obviously, as this line of reasoning goes, the less conflict a society has, the better it is for its level of efficiency.
So the next question we face is how to reduce conflict. One option is simply putting everyone into bondage, deny them their right to privacy, and ensure that they have no choice but to obey the government. This could conceivably reduce the incentive of the citizen to resist the state's dictums to the point that conflict is reduced, but this would also give awesome powers to the government over the people, and therefore make the potential rewards of attaining the position of political leader of such a state enormous, which itself could create conditions that increase the likelihood of conflict.
It therefore seems likely that an all powerful state would create a cold war like environment where each political faction is focused on increasing their political/military strength in order to increase the probability of seizing power.
All of this political jockeying uses up resources of course, diverting them from productive purposes, and therefore mitigating whatever efficiency advantage that an all powerful state would confer from reducing citizen vs state conflict.
Furthermore, the resources required to maintain a bureaucracy that keeps the population under absolute control and surveillance would be enormous. For these reasons, I conclude that a society with an all powerful government that pervades every facet of that society cannot be economically efficient.
So the question now is, if we go to the opposite extreme, and have a society that has a small libertarian government in place rather than an all powerful pervasive one, will coercion from other, non-state, facets of society replace government coercion? Wouldn't mafias and other non-state actors simply take the place of the government?
I argue no, because there's a distinct advantage that a government has when trying to prosecute and outlaw acts of initiated coercion and fraud, over trying to prosecute other types of crime (e.g. narcotics consumption, tax evasion, etc), and that is that they have the victim on their side.
It is not just Government vs Law-breaker, in the case of a libertarian government, it is always Government + Victim vs Law Breaker. A libertarian government need only be more powerful than the next most powerful center of power in the country, in order to guarantee that no citizen is above the law. The citizens will do the bulk of the job of surveilling and reporting crime, as a natural consequence of the fact that the only crime in a libertarian society is one where a citizen is a victim and therefore has a strong incentive to report it, requiring of the government only to administer justice.
I believe this advantage of libertarianism in efficiently reducing conflict in society makes it the best form of government for maximizing efficiency in a society.
Monday, June 11, 2007
No one should have this much power
G8 leaders pledge $60 billion for Aid to AfricaLooking at these pictures, of the G8 leaders after they pledged to give $60 BILLION in aid to Africa, it struck me how ridiculous it is for a group of ordinary people -and they are ordinary, just like you and me- to be given so much power over so many people. What gives them the right to decide for hundreds of millions of people how their money is to be spent? Is it necessary for philanthropy to be delegated to a small group of individuals to decide for everyone else how to donate to various charitable causes? It makes absolutely no sense to me and I hope other people wake up and realize it as well.
Let's take the example of the United States. George Bush was elected by maybe 50 million people. The other 250 million didn't vote for him. Now George Bush is given power to tax all 300 million American citizens, then spend that money in whichever way he thinks seems fit for 4 years. Why is this in any way acceptable?
Government and political leaders are necessary, I agree. We need some sort of administrator to handle issues where government is necessary, namely national defence, and criminal justice. But philanthropy? Say for example that the 50 million people who voted for Bush were completely OK with the president giving hundreds of their tax dollars to African nations for their aid, what about the other 250 million people? Are we supposed to accept unnecessary coersion if the cause is good? That is a slippery slope to socialism, i.e. the erosion of individual liberty and dignity. Each person, I believe, needs to maintain as much control over their own life and wealth as possible. If the 50 million people who voted for Bush wanted to give hundreds of their tax dollars to Bush to give to Africa, they could just donate it themselves directly. There is no need for a government leader to decide for everyone how much of their money should go to foreign aid.
Reading about this, I am reminded of Ron Paul's piece on the glorification of political power. I think the $60 billion G8 pledge brings the truth of his words to light:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul366.html
Political Power and the Rule of Law
by Ron Paul
With the elections over and the 110th Congress settling in, the media have been reporting ad nauseam about who has assumed new political power in Washington. We're subjected to breathless reports about emerging power brokers in Congress; how so-and-so is now the powerful chair of an important committee; how certain candidates are amassing power for the 2008 elections, and so on. Nobody questions this use of the word "power," or considers its connotations. It's simply assumed, in Washington and the mainstream media, that political power is proper and inevitable.
The problem is that politicians are not supposed to have power over us – we're supposed to be free. We seem to have forgotten that freedom means the absence of government coercion. So when politicians and the media celebrate political power, they really are celebrating the power of certain individuals to use coercive state force.
Remember that one's relationship with the state is never voluntary. Every government edict, policy, regulation, court decision, and law ultimately is backed up by force, in the form of police, guns, and jails. That is why political power must be fiercely constrained by the American people.
The desire for power over other human beings is not something to celebrate, but something to condemn! The 20th century's worst tyrants were political figures, men who fanatically sought power over others through the apparatus of the state. They wielded that power absolutely, without regard for the rule of law.
Our constitutional system, by contrast, was designed to restrain political power and place limits on the size and scope of government. It is this system, the rule of law, which we should celebrate – not political victories.
Political power is not like the power possessed by those who otherwise obtain fame and fortune. After all, even the wealthiest individual cannot force anyone to buy a particular good or service; even the most famous celebrities cannot force anyone to pay attention to them. It is only when elites become politically connected that they begin to impose their views on all of us.
In a free society, government is restrained – and therefore political power is less important. I believe the proper role for government in America is to provide national defense, a court system for civil disputes, a criminal justice system for acts of force and fraud, and little else. In other words, the state as referee rather than an active participant in our society.
Those who hold political power, however, would lose their status in a society with truly limited government. It simply would not matter much who occupied various political posts, since their ability to tax, spend, and regulate would be severely curtailed. This is why champions of political power promote an activist government that involves itself in every area of our lives from cradle to grave. They gain popular support by promising voters that government will take care of everyone, while the media shower them with praise for their bold vision.
February 6, 2007
Dr. Ron Paul is a Republican member of Congress from Texas.
The U.S. constitution states that before a president takes office he must make the following oath:
"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."
That is the sole purpose of the office of president.
Here is a video of Ron Paul's speech condemning the Glorification of Political Power:
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