Americans Don't Believe in Democracy

I've come to the conclusion that American's don't really believe in the values of democracy. Especially those who are politically active.

In conversing with friends who are political and in reading some replies to criticisms of democracy, it is clear that people DON'T want the majority's will to be done, the central creedo of democracy. Democracy is a system whereby leaders and laws are determined by the favor or disfavor by the majority, with the premise that a majority indicates significant support for a choice. It seems to follow that one who upholds democracy ought to value the premises of the system they support, right? A Democratist should thus want the system to be a fair representation of what most Americans want.

That is the polar opposite of the mindset I've been running into though. This election was particularly emotional for a lot of people, especially on the Obama side, and many McCain supporters will be pissed off at the results. I am willing to bet that if Obama had lost, his supporters would be griping many times louder still! Yet shouldn't one be complacent in knowing that the majority wants this or that man?

The attitude that really cought me off guard were soem of the nauseating comments at Greg Laden's blog. Among some of the repliers were people who expressly didn't want those who didn't agree with them to vote. I'll cite one of the many examples, this one by Greg Laden:

It is called pragmatic politics. You've never seen a post on this site calling for everyone to vote unless it was had a thinly disguised liberal agenda (such as the video above).

I don't want conservatives, fundies, right wingers, etc. to vote.

I'm thinking that the people that i've met who have the attitude about not voting we are seeing expressed in this comment thread are generally people who would do it wrong and vote for the wrong candidate and the wrong issues. So I'm glad you guys are not voting. This, essentially, give me your vote.

So to these folks, there is a wrong choice and a right choice, and they have the right one and don't want any of the people who would make the wrong choice to vote. Even if a great number of people don't like a "liberal agenda", which a great number don't, they want to do everything they can to make sure their view is the one that wins. If that means being content that people with an opposing view aren't voting, all the better.

It makes the commercial, to which all these comments arose, a complete joke since the message is that you should vote because your opinion matters. To people like this, though, it doesn't - unless you're going to vote with them. I've always enjoyed the South Park voting episode for picking up on this. Kyle wants Stan to vote, but only because he thought Stan would vote for his candidate.

So I think it's pretty obvious that people like this don't even believe in democracy. They believe in using the democratic process in whatever underhanded way they can to achieve hegemony, regardless of what the majority wants. It's the "we know what's best for you all" parental mentality, and to me it makes them look like pricks.

I propose that the people who hold this view cast aside their facade of democratic values and just outright say what they're preaching - we will not be pleased unless we win, despite what the majority of people actually prefer. They only serve to demonstrate that the American government is not built on consent of the people, but on the will of a small subset who have no regard for really representing the will of the majority. It becomes a battle between two dictators: Republicans and Democrats, where both are looking to win and neither is looking for what Americans want.

Argument from Stability

Okay, as often does, this thought came to me in my morning shower. For some reason, this seems to be a hotbed for thinking about Market Anarchy for me.

Anyhow, I was thinking about the frequent argument we here about how anarchy is inherently unstable and will just lead to another government. I'm dubbing this the argument from stability, which posits that government provides stability and thus is the preferred solution.

Now I'm not going to go down the usual route of discussing the ways in which anarchy is a situation unfavorable to the rise of one corporation through pure brute force. It's been discussed many places many times, and while I might delve into it here, I'm not going to do it now. No, instead I want tackle a more fundamental part of the problem.

Now at this point I'm going to admit that I don't, in principle, have any qualm with governments existing, so long as all members have voluntarily decided to participate and abide by this decision making process and are not trying to force it outside the system. Undoubtedly democratic processes will continue into anarchy within smaller bodies, like business executive boards, non-profit charities, etc, and we don't expect these to turn the guns outward. But let's say some people do want to maintain a minarchist government, voluntarily choosing to pay a yearly fee for their system of protection and justice. So long as they don't point the guns inward to collect the funds and people can opt out at any time, there's no problem with this.

But the existence of voluntary governments in anarchy (ironic, eh?) will certainly highlight the argument from stability in the minds of statists as an obvious death-blow to free market anarchy. I can hear them now, "SEE! You even admit that governments will become prominent again! Surely one of them will decide to opt for power and conquest, and we'll be back to square one". And now comes my profound answer: "So what?"

The argument from stability is based on the premise that a stable system is better than an unstable one, without referring at all to the characteristics of the systems in question. Totalitarianism is very stable - leaders often rule for life, and conditions, while bad, can remain static for long periods of time. Anarchy, on the other hand, might be unstable, but it is also most conducive to freedom. We can also see from the past that minarchy is unstable (how else did America become the sprawling monster it is today?), but that doesn't make it inferior to dictatorship! Would anyone in their right mind argue that it is better to live under a stable despotic regime or a system that has a disposition for breaking apart and needing to start anew, but where people are free? Few, I'm sure.
If we need to fight for our freedom every decade or two in order to maintain it from those that would take it from us, so what? Are you really willing to give up control of your life just so that you can have a status quo that's never in threat? It is here that I will pay the obligatory homage to Jefferson:

God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty.

I don't think we ought to make our decisions based on what is easiest, but on what is right. I don't care if anarchy is somewhat unstable. I'm going to help put in place countermeasures against the rise of a tyrant or rogue, and I'm sure those who love freedom and their independence won't stand for it either. And if some behemoth should arise out of anarchy trying to impose its will, then we'll stand against and fight it off.

Are people smart or stupid?

I got into a bit of an argument last night with a friend about the issue of environmentalism. My friend was of the position that the government needed to enact certain practices in order to maintain healthy ecological practices (the one in question being paying farmers to not farm their land to prevent topsoil erosion). I proceeded to argue that farmers and industrialists and businessmen are not stupid, and won't engage in practices that will destroy their livelihood (by desertification), but essentially, he kept arguing that if somebody is not supervising these people, they'll be short-sighted and not looking out for their long term benefit.

Is this right? Are people really inherently stupid? With the absence of government incentive, will people look to their long-term interests, or remain short-sighted and in need of someone to hold their hand?

This, i think, is one of the big problems in the minds of most people these days - they think people are generally stupid. I've heard this opinion uttered from a number of mouths. But it should be noted that every time this happens, people generally consider themselves to be the exceptions. They know other people are stupid because they themselves are not, they know what's better for everyone else. And to some extent, we all thing we know better for everyone else, but really, that's probably not true at all. This probably sounds a bit funny from someone who advocates that anarchy is a situation better for all. But the reason I think that, is because it allows everyone to pursue their own happiness, and doesn't advocate a solution for all - merely the ability to find your solution. Most people, however, would rather their will be imposed on all.

But back to the question at hand. People are not stupid, especially when their own self-interest is at hand. If something is beneficial, most people, when weighing their values will choose the path of prosperity. If you own a piece of farmland, and someone tells you that due to constant planting of crops on your hill slopes, your farmland will eventually loose its fertility and become valueless as farmland, chances are you're going to try to find solutions to this issue. You're going to seek people knowledgeable on the subject, or research it yourself, to avoid the economic loss. More than probably any other field, you won't find farmers looking only at short-term gains. Farms, especially large ones, are an enormous investment. It's not a trade you pick up and put down, something you decide to try your hand at for a few years. generally, farms are a long-term trade. You don't just get a piece of land and decide you're going to farm the hell out of it this year and make a ton of crops, and next year it'll be worthless. And if your livelihood means you have to maintain the integrity of the means of production, you're going to spend for upkeep, just as you would keep in good condition your machines and robots at a factory or production line.

Especially in this day and age, we can expect that people will not be ignorant of these kinds of issues, especially if they're very strongly involved in their field of work. Since there are obviously people out there that care about ecological issues, and people that study it (evidenced by my friend who was deeply concerned with the issue), I think we can be fairly certain that farmers won't be ignorant of these problems they're facing. If it becomes enough of an issue with the general population, it becomes a marketing incentive to be a farm that has 'eco-friendly' practices, anyhow. People are smart, especially when they're trying to make a profit and attain prosperity.

Another question to ask might be this: If people are stupid, why should we trust a government composed of these same people? Are politicians smarter than the average person? Does being in the government suddenly make you more capable of determining what is in each person's best interest? Are politicians even disinterested parties? No, of course not. If anything, politicians tend to be far more greasy than businessmen, because beyond seeking betterment through their own actions, they seek betterment and power at the expense of everyone else, often against their will. How does being elected by popular support make you a better determinate of how people should run their farms, give you authority to decree that you can farm but you can't, that you can't seek viable alternatives?

Another point would be the incentive created by this program of paying farmers not to grow crops on certain land. By subsidizing this object, we increase its prevelance, where there may very well be other viable alternatives that are overlooked and don't require being funded out of loot money, using coercion, or using what amounts to agricultural welfare handouts.

What you have a right to - and what you don't

Okay, it's been a while since I've posted anything because I've been more focused on religious topics in the past couple of weeks. I may start doing the occasional post on that stuff too, but to date this has been pretty much exclusively a Market Anarchy blog.

Anyhow, I was drawn into a discussion on universal health care the other day with a friend. I have been, of course, taking a position from self-determination, which got me down the road once again about the nature of rights and what rights we have.

Rights stem from the axiom of self-ownership. The individual is the sole owner of his body, because he controls all of his actions and no other person can force him to, for instance, think a certain thought, or move his pinky muscles (we could argue things like pulses through an electrode, but extraordinary scenarios can usually be discounted easily enough). Nobody else has any right over someone else's body, because that would mean everyone had the same right over his body. Everyone thus controls everyone, which we know not to be the case - individuals own themselves and act as individuals,their muscles respond only to their master, not to any other human.

Following from that, you have a right to your body and the fruits of your labor. I think the argument for property following from self-ownership is probably familiar enough in libertarian circles. Every right you have comes from here - the right not to have any harm done to your body (including death), the right not to have harm done to your belongings (i.e. theft, vandalism), etc.

The problem is that many people in this day and age have assumed other 'rights' too, which are in fact counter to this axiom. I'm going to take the 'right to health care' as my first example. The phrase is common enough among Liberals, and is used to justify the setting up of a universal health care system, so that it is 'protecting the rights of all'. Even some pseudo-libertarians use this argument - government is supposed to protect the rights of an individual, I have a right to health care, government needs to provide it. I once, in my early investigations into libertarianism, believed the same sort of thing about education. I know better now, of course.

But what does it mean to say you have a right to health care? Who's going to provide it? Who's going to pay for it? When do you have a right to it? Well, to say you have a right to health care means that you're demanding the labor of someone else (doctor), that they have an obligation to treat you simply because you need it. But how can this be a right, if each individual has full ownership of himself? No other person can lay claim to another's labor as a right.

If we then say that they're hired, making it a voluntary transaction, then who pays for it, and how much? If you have a right to health care, than you're basically saying you have a right to it for no cost, or at a cost of your determination. However, if the doctor doesn't want to do it for the amount you're offering (or for any reason, really), then it's a violation of his self-ownership to force him to perform the operation.

If you have a right to something, you have a right to it at all times and all places. You always have a right not to not be harmed bodily (precluding self-defense and right-violation, of course, a separate topic), no matter where or what time it is. If you're sick, and all of the doctors are busy with other patients, do you have the right to pull a doctor out of the room and demand he take a look at you now? And if so, doesn't that suddenly violate the right of the patient already being seen? It's pretty easy to bring false 'rights' out using the argument from absurdity, pointing out how the right fails when you apply it as an actual right.

Education falls along the same lines. You have no right over the people teaching, you have no right to their labor for free or for a cost of your choosing. You don't have a right to it at 4 in the morning, or when the teacher is showering, etc. What you have is a right to your own property and body, and you can voluntarily trade for these services - a voluntary trade being one in which both parties agree to a transaction without the use of coercion, and in which both parties benefit from an increase in value from the transaction (not necessarily in monetary worth).

The same goes for many other assumed rights, like the right to not be discriminated against, a right not to be offended, a right to food and water, right to housing, etc. I'm sure you can all come up with a dozen or more examples of right people claim to have that quickly evaporate when you play them out as rights, derivatives of self-ownership.

Fuck you, Giuliani... (a rant)

...fuck you in the fucking neck!

It absolutely frightens me that we have the strong possibility of having Giuliani ruling over us all in the near future. He's apparently leading the GOP polls, and polled higher in matchups with a good number of democratic candidates. Why does everyone hold this guy in high praises? Why is he the 'nation's governor'? What, because he was the fucking mayor of NYC when the World Trade Centers were hit? Big fucking deal - anyone could have been that man. He has also played that card to death, much as Dubya has - all he has to do is mention '9/11' and he's going to get an applause. People, wake up! How many have fallen into that malaise of Statism, that lack of ability to think beyond nationalism and a couple of key trigger words? It makes me sad that so many people are blindly faithful to the government, saying their pledge, worshipping their state-sponsored murderers, holding their hand on heart as they sing the national anthem, worship the flag religiously, defend democracy as freedom and thinking of authoritarianism as freedom?

When someones says something like this"

"What we don't see is that freedom is not a concept in which people can do anything they want, be anything they can be. Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do." - Rudy Giuliani

why do people applaud this person? Why do they buy into the 1984-style rhetoric that is so obviously doublespeak? Why have people become so complacent to go to pasture, awaiting the slaughter? As your freedoms ar being taken away, visibly and rapidly, you're being told that this new order is freedom, and you're to like it. And so many of you out there are just eating it up! Please, open your eyes! Anyone who says they're going to create laws for this or ban that or create a new government program for this etc ad nauseum is holding out freedom towards you. They're telling you they're going to up your dose of cyanide and that this is good for you, and so you should jump onto their bandwagon!

Politics is one of THE MOST EVIL professions on this planet. They make a living off of chaining you tighter and tighter, leaching money from your pockets at gunpoint, babying you as if you can't make a decision and big brother knows best. They give you things you don't want or don't need at your expense, and they don't give you a choice. They claim to represent you, even though you may have not asked for a representative, or that representative, or to participate whatsoever. They claim legitimacy by majority support, but are chosen by a tiny minority and once they're in have no responsibility to you. They cheat you and lie to you and take money from you to further their own agenda, which is usually at the expense of your bank account and your personal liberties, and you think this is not only acceptable, but that it is IN AND OF ITSELF THE ESSENCE OF FREEDOM AND A FREE SOCIETY.

Politics is covered in blood! Every endorsement of government is a support for their murderings, their arrests and jailings, their death sentencings! Please, look at the man behind the curtain! Forget the fairy-tale stories they told you in grade school about government looking out for the people, protecting law - a look at the history of this country will show you the opposite. And this fucker Giuliani is only the latest in a long string of authoritarians posing as defenders of freedom. Mind you, Giuliani is only the trigger for this rant because he is so obvious about it, but he is by no means the bad seed. They're mostly operating on the same principle, but most of them cushion their intentions a little better, with feel good words and fuzzy terms.

Well, I think I'm done. My next entry will likely be more coherent and have a more specific topic. Thank you, and to those of you with your eyes still closed, now's the time to come out of your dream and out of bed.

Who Will Build The Roads

Simple answer - people.

Okay, so I know that this topic is nothing new, and every anarchist has heard it. "Oh, we need the State to build the roads! There's no other way! Hyuck!" Okay, maybe I'm getting a bit mean. But I truly think that anyone who asks this question hasn't taken more than a couple seconds to think about it. Not only is it easy to think of a vast possibility of options, but we also have historical and current examples of private roads!

Anyhow, I'd like to expand upon some recent thoughts I've had on the issue. We all know that toll roads are a perfectly good and viable solution to building and replacing currently State-run highways. But let's start without the framework of already existing roads. A lot of statists will probably suggest that beyond maintenance, the State is needed to initially build roads. Well, to start, the State doesn't build the roads as it is. The State contracts construction teams to build the roads - they act as a middle man, taking the money from you and paying these people to do the work. In this process, they lose a bit of money to beaurocrats and in paying extra time for the inefficiencies caused as a result of State contracts. What, then, is the benefit of having the State pay for the construction of roads? Not only are you spending more money, but you have no say in the way it's spent!

Secondly, there are plenty of other mechanisms that could fund the building of roads. My pet idea now is the use of 'incorporating' the road. Rather than up-front paying for the building of a road out of private capital, then spending years to repay the cost of the road by tolls (which may take quite a while, pending on the project and its traffic), a company could easily sell stock in the road in order to raise the capital to build the road, and avoid the initially high barrier of entry that would be created by paying out of pocket. This kind of practice would easily see to it that road construction was not a difficult task. This would probably also see a greater improvement in roads in more high traffic areas, which are those that ought to receive the most attention, since they would be more lucrative investments. One might even see all or part of a city or suburban area's roads build in this fashion in an integrated network, with tolls being collected traveling into the road network system.

These are, of course, not the only options available. We don't even know exactly how competitive other means of private transportation would be if not for the subsidized roads. Perhaps gyrocopters would be more economically feasible? In that case, we may see a completely new infrastructure being created. One thing is for certain, though. Roads are by no means the unsolvable problem of anarchists.

Blog Carnival

Hello Market Anarchists and lovers of freedom! It's that time again, for the Market Anarchy Blog Carnival! As usual, we've got some great entries by some of our regulars and some contributions from new writers to this carnival.

Warren Wong of INTJ Personal Development submitted an excellent entry entitled The Gap Concept. In it, he discusses how the barrier of entry for a second business entering a market is higher than for the first business.

"This is because it takes extra incentive for the customer to switch to your company’s product. If the two products are exactly the same, there would be no reason for them to take the effort to switch to yours. In fact, oftentimes, your product will need to be much better than the other company’s in order for them to switch."

Wong provides an excellent analysis of why market competition results in improved products and innovation, apparently without reliance on patents and copyrights. His argumentation also seems to nicely corroborate the contention that the right to first sale is enough to gain a strong foothold, and other businesses cannot easily step in and take control of the market from you.

Next we have an entry entitled Just Don't Pay Your Taxes by Francois Tremblay of Check Your Premises. In it, he provides a scathing attack on "war tax" protestors' methods, namely the fact that any tax money can be used for any purpose by the State.

The State doesn’t give a shit about what you believe: it will take a proportional percentage of your money and fund the military anyway. There are no dollar bills marked “for the military” : any money can be used to finance anything, whether you object to it or not.

At the end of his post, he provides an excellent link showing how to avoid paying federal (and even State, in most cases) income taxes by completely legal means, in the case you're worried about the consequences of other methods of tax protesting.

Wenchypoo of Wisdom from Wenchypoo's Mental Wastebasket has submitted two entries this time around. The first is a criticism of Michael Moore's pressing for socialized health care in his new documentary Sicko entitled Who Needs Universal Healthcare?

In the words of Ted Nugent: "to have health care, you have to first care about your health." People should be lining up in the produce section rather than the drive-thru lane!

The second entry is Invasion of the Pod People, round 2. In it, she gives a lengthy criticism of the "Pod People", or the "Greenies" as Tremblay would call them, pointing out a great number bullshit policies and ideas they have been peddling to gain politcal strength. While I disagree to an extent on a couple of the listed items, it seems to pretty comprehensively demonstrate:

What’s different about this new batch of pod people issues is the amount of money they insist we spend to avoid certain doom, and how rabidly radical some people have gotten over their issues.

Jdavidb of Christian Anarcho-Capitalism writes about why "we" don't have the right to set immigration laws for "our" country, pointing out the weasel words of collectivist thinking used to sidestep the fact that my property is mine, and yours is yours, and we don't own everyone else's. He also includes in his post numerous Biblical arguments for his position, for any Christian Anarchist readers. Upon reading the following excerpt, I got a taste of Atlas Shrugged:

The gigantic power continually repeats the collectivist mantra: that we are all in this together, that it all belongs to all of us, that we all have the right (really those who happened to get the turn at power this term) to tell individuals what they may and may not do with what is theirs, or even to take away all or some of it, to make completely blameless actions into illegal acts.

From Jimmy Atkinson of Dedicated Hosting Guide we have his first post - 11 Web Hosts That Won't Dump You at the First Sign of Controversy, ones that won't cut your site for posting something on it they don't like (aside from illegal content - kiddie porn and 'copyright infringement', which can have negative consequences for the hosting company and kill their business). This is especially important to libertarians and anarchists in a time when many web hosts want to just sidestep any controversy and are willing to kill your free expression by censoring their hosted sites. So if you've had problems with your anti-State site coming into conflict with your provider, you may want to take a look at some of them.

There is a large online movement to keep the Internet free of censorship and unfair sanctions. While no reputable Web host would knowingly support illegal content, most mainstream hosting companies also shy away from any controversy. Luckily, the few dedicated hosting services that do support free speech are going strong.

However, he loses several points for use of the phrase 'exercising our first amendment rights'. Surely, without the first amendment the rights still pertain. Also, the phrase 'civil liberties' mean freedoms protected from government control, a la a constitution. Nevertheless, there isn't anything inherently pro-state in the post, and the content is pro-liberty and useful, so I have decided to let it remain.

Aaron Kinney of the Radical Libertarians blog has submitted a thorough examination of illegal immigration: who's at fault, the economic reasons for immigration, and why it wouldn't be a bad thing. He does such a thorough job trashing the argument for constrained immigration so well, I think I'll just let his post speak for himself. Here's a snippet from Illegal Immigration Explained:

The fact of the matter is that there is a worker shortage in the US, both for high-skilled and low-skilled workers. If there wasn't, then there wouldn't be so many immigrants flocking here! The main reason that there are so many immigrants coming to the US year after year, decade after decade, is because there are still so many human resource shortages in the US.

Next, we have our first video entry from YouTube! It is entitled Objectivism and Anarchism, and XOmnivese counters a floundering Objectivist argument against anarchy. He does a very good job at pointing out Rand's contradiction and misunderstanding in arguing against anarchy.

Her argument against the system without a State is surprisingly utilitarian - she pretty much says 'because it won't work'. She never addresses the argument I just pointed out, she never even mentions the fact that a government has to initiate force in order to maintain itself as a monopoly, so she completely doesn't even address the main argument against government from an Objectivist position.

Finally, we have my post called Send a Letter to Your Representative, in which I point out the extensive use of weaselly collectivist language that is used to maintain the notion that you, the individual, have any real say in what the government does to you.

I have no representative, I have appointed nobody to speak on behalf of me. Nor will I. It's this kind of language that has corrupted reality and led so many people to think that they actually run or regulate that body called government that controls them.

In our oddities section, we have two posts this time around. The first endorsed a multi-level marketing scheme that I'm not even going to link to, for fear that someone reading this might actually fall into its trap and lose money. For anyone who doesn't know what a multi-level marketing scheme is, wiki it. Think Amway.

The second is a short post and comic about money from wttf.org. In the post, he criticizes credit cards as not real money, and its knack for helping people get into debt, but he doesn't explain his positions and shifts the blame away from those that should be taking it - the people misusing their credit cards. I just couldn't see any relation to anti-state, pro-market, market anarchy, or libertarianism, so it's going in the oddities. I did crack a smile at the comic though.

Thanks to everyone for submitting their entries, I hope you all submit again next month and we expand our number of entries and readership. Remember - if you don't want to make the oddities section next time, make sure your content matches the criteria of the carnival!
Carpe Libertatem!