Stop the State

Response to a Lame Attack on Non-Interventionism

2012-02-29T15:03:00.000-05:00

I was recently presented with the following question in regard to the mess developing between the U.S., Israeli, and Iranian governments:

Is standing by and refusing to act while harm befalls a neighbor a virtue?

Restated in the specific context with the countries’ names included and it reads something like:

Is it right for America to stand by and refuse to act while Iran attacks Israel?

I won’t elaborate too much on the facts that:

-Iran has yet to initiate any kind of aggressive act against America or Israel despite enduring provocations to do so for years.

-Iran completely lacks the means to pose any kind of real threat to any other country even if it desired to.

-Iran is outgunned by the U.S. and Israel by about a million to one and knows full well that any kind of aggressive act against the U.S. or Israel would be sure suicide.

-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is on record in the past six weeks saying Iran is not even trying to develop a nuclear weapon.

-The U.N. and its International Atomic Energy Agency “found nothing to worry about” at Iran’s uranium enrichment site.

-Iran’s borders are surrounded by forty-five U.S. military bases.

-Iran is actually the victim of aggression in this developing scenario ever since the U.S. began imposing coercive sanctions on Iran, i.e., preventing goods and services from getting to regular Iranian people – people who have far more in common with us Americans than our own government does.

- Benjamin Netanyahu gave an address to Congress last year saying Israel can defend itself and doesn’t need American military aid.

-The American State is the only government in the history of the world to use nuclear weapons against another country, instantly vaporizing hundreds of thousands of innocent people, and possesses absolutely no moral authority to go around judging other governments over their weaponry.

-Ron Paul, perhaps the most anti-war presidential candidate in the entire history of America and the most outspoken opponent of war against Iran, receives more donations from active-duty soldiers than Obama, Romney, Santorum, and Gingrich combined.

No, I will judge this case assuming that every bit of the lies and war propaganda spewing from those who desire to see innocents slaughtered in another evil war is completely true and factual –because even then a war against Iran is not justified.

Let us pretend for a moment that Iran does possess a nuke. So what? Is Iran not a sovereign country? America has nukes. Israel has nukes. Why can’t Iran have nukes? Why is one country allowed to have nukes, but not another country? Why is it that the American government is the sole decider of who can and can’t have nuclear weapons?

Americans who believe it is the role of the U.S. government to go abroad in search of monsters to destroy are subscribers to an evil nationalist philosophy of American Exceptionalism, which holds that America is a superior country composed of a superior class of people and for that reason America may go around hypocritically condemning and attacking other countries for doing things the American government itself does. Americans are the best, our government is the best, and foreigners are just a subhuman, homogeneous blob that we may impose “our” political opinions on. America is allowed to boss other countries around, but not the other way around, of course, and if they resist America’s control and instead seek independence from the U.S. government’s dominion, “we” are somehow morally permitted to obliterate them.

It’s ironic that America imposes coercive sanctions on Iran when it was Britain’s interfering with the American colonies’ trading that contributed to the initiation of the Revolutionary War. Was the American founding generation wrong to throw off Britain’s control? Should they have just shut up and obeyed King George the way Iranians are supposed to obey King Bush or King Obama?

Why in the world would Iran not acquire a nuke? A quick examination of America’s foreign policy over the last half century clearly reveals that the U.S. government almost exclusively picks fights with defenseless third-world countries and leaves alone countries that actually do have nukes and can put up a fight. You only have to look one country west of Iran to see shattered, destroyed Iraq and understand that Iran acquiring a nuke is completely understandable.

Now let us ponder the scenario where Iran is on the literal verge of attacking Israel.

This brings us back to the initial question “is standing by and refusing to act while harm befalls a neighbor a virtue?”

For starters it is worth mentioning that this suggestion of Israel being an ally is contrary to the founding principles of America.

Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, stated in his first inaugural address that American foreign policy should consist of "peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations — entangling alliances with none." (Emphasis added)

George Washington warned in his farewell address against "permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world.”

Opponents of a non-interventionist foreign policy should be prepared to publicly denounce the advice of Washington and Jefferson as kooky and dangerous if they are going to use such labels against Ron Paul and his supporters.

Non-interventionists are not cold-hearted, apathetic people who simply wish to see other countries perish in wars. Non-interventionists oppose entangling alliances precisely because they only serve to exacerbate international conflicts, make wars more likely, and make wars larger and involving more countries. It is the non-interventionists who have performed the deep thinking on this matter, not the jingoists who hate and agitate for war against whoever their government tells them to hate and fear.

The sole purpose of the U.S. military is to defend the U.S., not defend other countries. A war is not defensive if it involves soldiers leaving the borders of their home country. A war is not defensive if the country claiming to defend launches a preemptive strike. A preemptive strike, as the warmongers prescribe “we” hit Iran with, is an act of aggression, making the government who launches the preemptive attack the actual aggressor.

Individual Americans who worry about Israel are completely free to donate their money to the country and even go and volunteer to fight, but they may not use the U.S. government to compel other Americans to pay for Israel’s defense. There is nothing honorable or courageous about forcing people to fund a cause they may not agree with or feel has nothing to do with them. In fact, it is grossly immoral.

As Murray Rothbard explains in his timeless and heroic essay War, Peace, and the State, if Jones is being aggressed against by Smith, it is perfectly legitimate for Jones to use violence to repel Smith’s aggression. It would not be legitimate for Jones, however, to compel other innocent third parties to aid him. People may voluntarily contribute resources to Jones’s effort, but Jones may not force others to contribute their labor or money to his cause.

“Is standing by and refusing to act while harm befalls a neighbor a virtue?”

Is it virtuous to use coercive taxation to make other people pay for your cause against their will? Is it virtuous to throw them in jail if they don’t pay up? Is it virtuous to kill them if they resist being jailed?

Against College Cultism Part II: Responses to Common Objections

2012-02-17T10:27:00.000-05:00

My first article on the subject of college ended up being very long, so I chopped the last half off and made this part II article out of it.

Here are the common reactions I received, and continue to receive, due to my decision to withdraw from college.

1) “Most people go to college, so you should too.”

Could it be that the absolute dumbest reason for going to college could also be the most popular? Yes. I think this reason is in the background of every other reason people give for going to college. “Hey, this is what the majority of people do. The majority can’t be wrong and anyone who doesn’t go along with the majority must be wrong. “

If the majority jumped off a bridge, would you? Neither would I. In fact, the best life advice you can give yourself right now is to always be weary of what the majority is doing. Most people: are in heavy debt, are depressingly bored with their lives, and aren’t doing with their lives what they wanted to. Don’t take advice from people who aren’t living the lives they wanted to when they were younger, unless you want to end up in the same situation.

Just think of the majority as a bunch of zombies ready to follow whatever path the government-brainwashers set them on and you’ll be fine.

2) “If you drop out you’ll never be able to go back”

This one is just laughable. The logic behind it goes something like this: if you drop out you’ll likely get into some kind of trouble like getting a girl pregnant and you’ll be forced to work fifty hours a week at some low-paying job you hate, you’ll never be able to go to college again because all your money is going to support a family, and you won’t be able to afford to reduce your work hours in order to attend classes.

But can’t all of that happen if you are going to college?

People seem to think that upon enrolling in college a shiny blue force field bubble immediately forms around you that will protect you from screwing your life up.

Fact is you can go back anytime you want. You have infinite, unlimited chances. The colleges will still be there happily willing and ready to take your money. People who raise the fallacious objection that you won’t be able to go back are probably just cowardly, lazy, stupid, and stagnant people who simply can’t imagine themselves being able to drop out and then one day return.

Pity them for having such uninspired attitudes.

E Envy

More and more we are hearing stories about young people who go into horrid debts to finance their college education with the goal of scoring a spectacularly paying career, only to graduate and fail to find a job that pays more than $10/hour. I know a girl whose sister earned not one but two B.A. degrees and years after graduating the best job she’s been able to find is working at a movie theater.

People in this situation are understandably bitter. After getting their degrees they’re not a bit better off in the job market, only now they have a debt that will haunt them for years and possibly decades. Some of these people also lose their souls and become monsters. They want to see other people wind up in their situation. Instead of climbing out of their hole, they’d rather drag others into it.

These people do not want to see college dropouts surpass them. They will speak ill of and hate those who bypass college.

Even if they came out of college with no debt and did land a well -paying job, most college graduates are still hostile towards those of us who aspire to do great in life without getting a degree. Why? Because it makes them feel inadequate. They had to get a degree to do well in life; they don’t want to see people without degrees doing well nor do they want to see dropouts developing enjoyable careers.

Current college students will also express this toxic attitude towards drop-outs because many of them, maybe even the majority, don’t want to be in college. They have no idea what they want to do, they have no interest in what they’re studying, they’re depressed that they might be committing themselves to a life they probably won’t like, but they’re afraid to take a risk and pursue a different path. I have my own name for these people: stay-ins.

Stay-ins just keep staying in college because they’re afraid to do anything that isn’t a part of the prepackaged one-size-fits-all life plan society expects them to follow.

4) “Just get any degree. It doesn’t matter what kind. Getting a degree is all about showing employers that you’re willing to put in the time and hard work necessary to accomplish goals.”

Or it could show employers that you don’t understand the relationship between cost and benefit and don’t know what a good investment looks like.

You don’t actually accomplish much in college. You feel like you’re actually accomplishing something. You’re speeding through traffic to get to your morning class on time, you’re passing exams, and you had to write essays for three different classes last week, but at the end of the semester you have nothing to show for this labor other than a few extra letters on your transcript. Having some employer references on your resume looks better to employers than these letters you slaved away for.

5) “Without a degree you’ll forever work at McDonalds.”

This is the most offensive one. When someone says this to you they are literally calling you stupid to your face. They are saying you’re incapable of providing for yourself without a college education. I would say you should explain the meaning of this rude comment to anyone who utters it, but that would be a waste of time – just cut that person out of your life. Give them three strikes maybe if you’re a kind person. I’m not kind. I don’t care. I’ll cut out anyone who says something like this to me. No one is sacred.

****************

Want to show you can accomplish something? Then get out in the world and actually accomplish something. My friend Alec is twenty-one. He was not an exceptional high school student and he dropped out of college after one part-time semester. Alec has his own aerial photography business now. He gets paid hundreds of dollars an hour to fly his RC helicopter around and take pictures for people. This is an accomplishment. Alec had to invest thousands of dollars that he saved from delivering pizza into building a state-of-the-art remote control helicopter that can fly for miles, thousands of feet above the ground.

Alec also invested about $10,000 he made by delivering pizza into building a top-notch music recording rig and now he gets paid to produce bands and has even gained the written respect of a few famous music producers.

He didn’t have to have a professor threaten to fail him if he didn’t do it. He did it through raw ambition and will, the whole time being told by his elders to drop it all and go to college.

If only his elders were aware that:

1/3 of college graduates are now ending up working full-time jobs that don’t even require a degree.

Students are now borrowing TWICE as much money to fund their education than they were just a decade ago.

The average college student is now graduating with $25,000 worth of debt hanging around their neck and the average amount of time it takes for these debts to be repaid is approaching twenty years.

More and more girls are engaging in “sugar daddy” prostitution to pay for their education.

NYU sociologist Richard Arum conducted a study involving 2,300 students at 24 different universities and found that after two years of “learning” 45% of students shows no signs of increased intelligence.

In America (go to page 7), there are 107,457 janitors and 317,759 waiters with college degrees.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a full one quarter of all the retail sales people in America have college degrees.

70% of college graduates report that they wished they had spent more time preparing for the real world while they were in school.

Is Paul Gilbert a Libertarian?

2012-02-17T10:19:00.000-05:00

I’ve been a fan of guitarist Paul Gilbert since I was in middle school.

(Me and Paul. 2006? 2007?)

In addition to being one of the best rock guitar players ever, Gilbert is also a superb song writer, singer, lyricist, and not a bad drummer or bassist – something that can’t be said of the great majority of “shred” guitar players. Most “shredders” usually never become known for anything other than their ability to mindlessly wank through scale shapes and sweep arpeggios. There seems to be a positive relationship between guitarists’ speed and their lack of talent in all the other aspects of music. But not Gilbert. He has it all. He was even one of the first DIY producers well over a decade ago, producing his own surplus of albums out of his home.

Gilbert has carved out his own small, but firm, place in the music market. He won’t ever be a household name, but he has near complete control over every aspect of his career. Little is outsourced. He cheaply produces the bulk of his albums out of his own home, reducing his production costs and therefore raising his profits. He’s been making his own line of very funny and very helpful instructional videos since he was a kid – which have not only probably brought in a lot of money, but have also probably acted as the best business card that could have ever been invented to advertise his music. And there’s never a shortage of bands and projects that Gilbert can join when he gets bored. He’s done sixteen solo albums, been a main contributor to twenty-one collaborative albums, appeared as a guest on thirty-nine other artists’ projects, and has released eighteen DVDs. He’s been a non-stop productive musical entrepreneur since he was fifteen.

Kinda like how after you buy a certain car you all of a sudden start to notice other people driving that car around town, I became really sensitive to other people’s libertarianism after I discovered I was a libertarian. It always feels awesome when you notice evidence that one of your role models shares your personal views and I was definitely pleased to find indications that Paul Gilbert… is a libertarian.

Indication #1

Gilbert has an anti-cop song called “I’m Not Afraid of the Police” (lyrics here). Any real libertarian hates cops. Cops are the only group within society who actually claim the official authority to routinely violate other people’s rights. As a heavy metal youngster it is very possible Gilbert had some run-ins with state enforcers that inspired this song.

Indication #2

Gilbert has recently and often been wearing a shirt that says “Voting is for Old People”

I won’t assume that Gilbert has read Hoppe’s Democracy: The God that Failed, but a shirt like this does display a healthy disdain for politics. It’s difficult to imagine any serious advocate of democratic statism wearing this shirt.

The sentiment behind this shirt is one also shared by the radical, pure anarchist libertarians. Lewrockwell.com, the best-read libertarian website in the world, has an entire section of articles on the barbaric practice of settling society’s problems through mob rule.

When the clothing store Urban Outfitters carried this shirt before the 2004 election, there was an outcry from the fanatical believers in mob rule about the shirt specifically because it was influencing young people to disrespect the idea of mob rule.

Indication #3

Paul Gilbert lived in Japan for several years, something that no flag-waiving, nationalist American would do. American soil is sacred and magical and anyone who leaves it is a damn traitor!

***

Again I present these simply as indications that Paul Gilbert may have, at the least, libertarian leanings.

Hank Hill: Model Statesman

2012-02-15T12:20:00.001-05:00

Thanks to Adult Swim re-airing King of the Hill five nights a week I recently caught an old episode that has expanded my list of approved politicians to now feature two: Ron Paul and Hank Hill. The episode is Flush with Power (or here) from season four.

It makes sense that the only politician in American history whose integrity would rival Dr. Paul is a fictional cartoon character.

In this episode, the Texas town Arlen is experiencing a severe drought and the local government has instituted water rationing policies. Each household is permitted to only use a certain low amount of water each week until rain returns and an army of bureaucrats has been unleashed to patrol the neighborhoods of Arlen, randomly checking meters and cracking down on those who defy the ration.

Rationing is a very typical measure imposed by central planners ignorant of economics. Much like the saying that only having a hammer influences a person to see everything as nails, city managers see every societal problem as something that can only be solved by the exercise of their power. As if they are wizards holding magical wands they believe each and every trouble in their jurisdiction can be fixed by regulations and policies.

This rationing policy is very bad news for Hank Hill. Hank has a lush lawn he proudly maintains, but this requires a lot of water. In order to stay within the restrictions of the ration and still leave his family with enough water for their needs Hank has to let his yard suffer.

If, instead of rationing, the Arlen city government allowed the price of water to freely fluctuate according to supply and demand, people like Hank would be much better off. The price of water would rise, which would result in people who don’t value water as much reducing their consumption. This would leave more water left over for those who value the water more and are willing to pay the higher price. With rationing and price ceilings, yes the price is lower, but the supply is extinguished much faster.

An even better solution would be for the city mangers of Arlen to completely denationalize water distribution and let the market handle it. Entrepreneurs would compete with each other over who can offer the highest quality water services for the lowest price and the victor would be awarded with the highest profits. This profit motive would make new innovations in water distribution much more likely. One entrepreneur might buy the rights to a water source in another well-hydrated territory and pipe it into Arlen. Another might invent a new, cheap way to desalinize the ocean water surrounding Texas.

Another, more pitiful, solution the city managers of Arlen offer is the promotion of inefficient low-flow toilets being issued for “free” (at the expense of the taxpayers being forced to pay for them). This too is also a typical response of the central planners: reduce your quality of life by using lower-quality products, citizens, and shut up. Rather than owning up to the problem being the result of foolish government management, the bureaucrats place the blame on the citizens for using the “wrong” toilets. We not only see this with the American government on toilets now, but also with light bulbs and cars.

In the market you never hear entrepreneurs blaming their customers for problems. The customer is always right and entrepreneurs have to slavishly find ways to continue pleasing the customer. If an entrepreneur held a press conference and told his customers that they need to quit complaining and learn to accept lower quality products he would go bankrupt overnight, but with government it is always about making the tax-slave citizens sacrifice and suffer and using violent force against those who refuse.

Hank, desperate to have water for maintaining his lawn, breaks down and gets a low-flow toilet.

The toilets are immediately revealed to be inferior products – requiring many more flushes to dispose of waste than normal toilets. This is a typical result of the government’s remedies: not only are they usually unsuccessful, but they also exacerbate the problems they were allegedly intended to solve. All the extra flushing has resulted in the Hill family using much more water than they were using with the old “eco-unfriendly” toilet. When considered that by now a significant number of Arlen residents are using these low-flow toilets, the city has a genuine decivilization crisis developing. Their standard of living is decreasing. They have less water and their waste is harder to dispose of.

Very quickly Hank expresses his desire to get his old high-flow toilet back, but discovers the old high-flow toilets that are collected get smashed up and dumped into the ocean to aid in the development of coral reefs. When Hank stops by the hardware store to buy a new high-flow toilet he discovers that they have now been outlawed entirely in his county. This is similar to the quickly abandoned “cash for clunkers” program of the Obama regime that consisted of using tax dollars to buy perfectly functional, but “eco-unfriendly”, vehicles, destroy them beyond repair, and replace them with “eco-friendly” cars. The decivilizing effects were and remain many. There were fewer used cars available on the market, which raised the price of used vehicles and hurt the poorer people who depend on the used car market to satisfy their transportation needs. Each and every tax dollar that was spent on this program is gone forever, leaving the economy as a whole poorer and our tax burden larger. And in the end it turns out the “eco-friendly” cars aren’t even any better for the environment.

Rightfully angry that bureaucrats have made it illegal to, as Hank puts it, “install a working toilet in your own bathroom!” Hank decides to go to the next Board of Zoning and Resources meeting and lobby against their ban on high-flows.

As Hank begins making his case to the board, the head bureaucrat, Nate Hashaway, cuts him off and announces that in order to discuss an issue at the meeting it must be formerly added to the agenda, but only a board member may add subjects to the agenda. Hank is politely told to shut up and the gang of bureaucrats moves on to a more important matter – wishing one of their members a happy birthday.

Hank’s powerlessness against his local government is quite reflective of American politics. Even the smallest, pettiest bureaucrats have no concern at all for the citizens they rule over. The political class doesn’t listen to reason. We’re simply expected to shut up and unconditionally obey their every foolish, illogical, and/or immoral command. If a local zoning board doesn’t care what you think, do you really think your congressman or senator does? For every one U.S. representative there are over 700,000 Americans. Your congressman, contrary to what he says in his campaign ads, does not care what you think. For every U.S. senator there are over three million American tax-slaves. How can one person possibly represent the interests of three million individuals? Your senator simply doesn’t worry about it, that’s how.

As the condition of his lawn worsens, Hank decides to run for office on a platform that consists completely of repealing the high-flow toilet ban. It turns out that a seat on the Board of Zoning and Resources has been empty for four years and Hank automatically wins the election upon submitting the paperwork.

Hank introduces a motion to repeal the ban at his first meeting with the board. He’s shot down again. Nate Hashaway is a bit more defensive this time.

After the meeting is adjourned and the members are leaving, Hashaway slyly asks to speak with Hank in private. Turns out Hashaway has a secret stash of high-flow toilets. He offers to give Hank one if he agrees to shut up about the toilet situation. Hank heroically turns the offer down due to the gross immorality of a lawmaker not following the laws he himself commands others to obey. Lawmakers seldom follow their own rules the way they say we must. One example is how elite congressmen and senators are often exempt from the humiliating TSA search procedures the rest of Americans endure. Anti-gun politicians often use tax dollars to pay for armed security for themselves. Elite environmentalist seek to force us to reduce our fossil fuel consumption as they fly around on private jets that emit more carbon emissions in a single trip than most cars emit in a year.

By now the lawn is nearly dead and Hashaway has launched a surveillance and blackmail operation against Hank, but Bobby Hill discovers some dirt on Hashaway just in time: Hashaway is the exclusive seller of the low-flow toilets.

Corporatism, also known as fascism, is collusion between businesses and the state and involves businesses bribing the government for unfair advantages that are absent in a free market. Examples include businesses lobbying for tariffs to protect from foreign competition (at the cost of domestic consumers having to pay more for goods), businesses lobbying for competitor’s products to be banned entirely (as with hemp and marijuana), businesses lobbying for monopoly privileges where the government outlaws their competition through instituting barriers to entry in the market, or any other scenario where private interests use the government to gain advantages at the expense of consumers.

Corporations often fear a free market because in this scenario there is no government there to protect them from new innovators and young entrepreneurs. In a free market, all businesses must be constantly on their toes, constantly innovating, and willing to evolve. Corporations instead frequently favor a vast regulatory-state that they can use to beat up their smaller competitors. (For a good example of Wal-Mart doing this with minimum wage laws, see Lew Rockwell here.)

This political thug Hashaway is using his government power to make people pay for his inferior toilets and then he bans the competing toilets. This is similar to the case of Michael “Skeletor” Chertoff promoting the installation of naked body scanners in airports during his time as the secretary of homeland security and then immediately going on to work as a well-paid consultant for the primary company that makes them.

Not backing down, Hank reveals Hashaway’s conflict of interest at the second meeting with the board and again introduces a motion to repeal the high-flow ban, but this time he begins a filibuster before the voting finishes.

As Hank reads his wife’s very boring columns from the local newspaper the members of the board eventually start needing to use the restrooms. One by one they go and come back, obviously frustrated by the poor performance of Hashaway’s low-flow toilets. All the other board members can clearly hear each restroom occupant having to flush multiple times. After several hours, both the men’s and ladies’ rooms are out of order with broken toilets.

All the board members, except Hashaway, vote for the repeal and toilet freedom is restored in Arlen.

Hank immediately resigns from the board.

Against College Cultism

2012-02-10T11:07:00.001-05:00

by Austin White

I mean no offense to people who go to college with the goal of becoming an academic. If you desire to be an economist, for instance, you are where you need to be.

But if you don’t know what to do, a very common and understandable circumstance, there is nothing wrong with refraining from impulsively choosing some random degree to commit yourself to for five years (the average amount of time it now takes a person to earn a four-year degree). Such an act would be one of panic; not rational, calm decision making. The opportunity cost of college is gargantuan in both time and money. Ever year you spend doing busywork in college is a year lost forever that can no longer be spent developing a business, working full-time to accumulate capital, or any other activity you might like to experiment with. As you make more progress towards completing your college education it also becomes more difficult to leave and you are more likely to stick it out and just finish the degree – even if you have no interest in pursuing a career that has anything to do with what you studied.

If you’re experiencing the above scenario then dropping out may be a perfectly rational choice. But it won’t come without consequence.

Drop out of college and you are likely to be treated with nothing but negative reactions ranging from shame to disappointment and even envy. Drop out of college, or bypass it entirely, and chances are high that your position in the family tree will be tainted. Relatives will look at you as if you’ve just become addicted to heroin. Aunts, uncles, and cousins come together at family events and put on a mock intervention to get you back on track because, of course, anyone who does not attend college has surely got off on a wrong exit towards self-destruction.

Don’t worry. Those responses are no more than exhibitions of these people’s poor attitudes and fallacious thinking. Ignore them entirely. Don’t even argue. Arguing is a waste of time and college graduates have already demonstrated that they are really good at wasting irreplaceable time, so don’t expect arguments with them to be brief.

If you’re brave enough to go against the college cult and have decided that you have better things to do than waste years of your life and tens of thousands of dollars of your money, your parents money, and tax payer dollars pretending to learn things about subjects you’re pretending to be interested in, then congratulations. But beware; you need to be ready to deal with the college cultists.

A cult it certainly is. People have a shockingly naïve faith in college being the door to a life of riches so much that many students seem to believe there is even a money-back guarantee. Kids go in, rich adults come out and that’s it. A pristine perfect plan if there ever was one.

College graduates if anything are worse off because they come out with a sense of entitlement to a great paying job – a very bad state of mind to have during bad economic times. Any lower-paying job that doesn't involve what they studied is considered beneath them. After spending four or more years writing papers and taking exam they feel as if they’ve already done all the work necessary to prove themselves. Unfortunately, they forgot that it’s really about proving themselves in the market, unless they are aspiring tax parasites who want to work in government.

There is a generation of people about to be unleashed on the world who have never worked an entry-level job and have no idea what the real world even is. They’ve never had to meet the demands of customers and bosses who can fire an employee in an instant. I delivered pizza for three years and during that time some of my coworkers were college graduates or about to graduate. They had awful work ethics. Every part of the job was beneath them: answering the phones, taking out the trash, and even having a good attitude was too much to ask. They almost seemed to believe simply because they were in college they should be the automatic owners of the restaurant and not working in it despite the fact that for most of them it was their first job.

This is quite alarming when you consider that currently 70% of high school graduates go onto college. Sociologist Richard Arum conducted a study involving 2,300 students at twenty-four different universities. 36% of students showed no improvement at all in their critical thinking abilities after four years of college. They came out not a bit smarter even after four years of taking classes. The unemployment rate among college graduates is only slightly better than those with only a high school education and just as many graduates are finding themselves working jobs that don’t require a degree. Despite all of this the price of a college education has risen 350% (adjusted for inflation) since 1980 and the debt a person incurs to pay for it is inescapable. An education can’t be repossessed the way a car or home can if the borrower can’t pay back. Student loan debt for the first time in American history is exceeding both credit card and home owner debt.

You might be better off going straight into the market without a college degree. Yes, college graduates still do better overall, but many will also have that debt to payback. If you bypass college you’ll be getting a huge head start in the real world. By the time your peers are graduating you’ll have already figured out how to progress and move up within your field. Employers don’t necessarily want smart college-educated employees; they want productive employees who will help them make more money. Only experience can give you this quality.

I spent three years in college and I can’t even remember 90% of my professors’ names. There was one teacher who demonstrated the evils of capitalism by holding up a can of Coca-Cola and saying “the fluid in this can costs less to make than the can it’s contained in, but yet they charge you a dollar!” It obviously never occurred to him that there are hundreds of competing beverages he can buy instead and he’s completely free not to buy the Coca-Cola. I took an elective course called Government and Media taught by a lady who thinks the FCC should completely regulate all media, even the internet, and that all TV channels should be a variant of NPR.

My U.S. Government teacher should rename his course Why I’m Infatuated with the State. He lovingly described each and every department of the government as if he’s the one who thought them up and is currently in charge. The only thing wrong with the state, to him, is that it isn’t even more controlling and powerful. He had a little in-class election in 2008, I wrote in Ron Paul. A humanities teacher I had taught me that one of the causes of the Great Depression was individualism, it grew worse because Hoover didn’t intervene at all, and military Keynesianism is what ended the depression. On the midterm I wrote in the real causes of the Great Depression along with a big list of Austrian economists I would contact if he marked my answer incorrect.

The claim that college is a venue for the free and open discussion of ideas is a myth. Teachers hate and despise anyone who challenges them. They’ve been making a living regurgitating the same lectures every semester for over a decade and don’t want some kid refuting them because that could mean having to rewrite a lecture. I probably wouldn’t put any effort into my lessons either if I was a college professor. The average college student is either stoned, hung-over, just woke up five minutes ago, braindead from the prior thirteen years of government school indoctrination, or all of the above. Boys speak with a combination of grunts and gargle sounds and the girls speak only with giggle sounds. It’s also shocking how many of my peers didn’t work or had never worked a job. “I’m a student” is what you hear when you ask many of them what they do for work.

My old economics professor does secret studies on his students. The last one he did showed the great majority of his students want tax victims to pay for their healthcare, tuition, and the down payment on their future homes – not exactly indicators of a generation that plans on producing much.

Of the twenty-five total classes I took I can honestly only remember useful concepts from two of them: a business law class and Jack Chambless’s economics class. But I could have learned all of those concepts without ever actually enrolling. All the business law teacher did was tell us to read the text book and then the next class he would orally skim through the book. He gets paid to read to people out loud.

Jack Chambless puts high quality recordings of his lectures online for the entire world to view. Anyone can take his economics class without paying tuition and they would be getting exactly what his classroom students get. Buy his book, check out the pre-recorded lectures, and if you’re willing to pay enough I’m sure he’d be happy to arrange for some type of proctored testing if you really want to see how well you understand.

Or you could go to Mises.org and have access to thousands of hours worth of lectures by Murray Rothbard, Hans Hoppe, Walter Block, Robert Higgs, Tom DiLorenzo, Joe Salerno, and even a few by Mises himself. For no cost at all you can receive the same economics lessons that Murray Rothbard’s actual students got. You can even download Man, Economy, and State for free.

I’ve learned more from Wikipedia alone than I learned in college and more and more people will be saying the same of Khan Academy and Mises Academy soon. The entire American education system is from the Stone Age. There is no reason for schools to be spending millions of dollars on new buildings and hiring professors to read textbooks out loud to people when the lecture can simply be recorded and uploaded to the internet for all to see for free in whatever venue the consumer prefers.

The American education system is in critical condition with an IV and feeding tube pumping tax-payer subsidies into its lifeless body as the accreditation cartel feebly stands between us and educational entrepreneurs who seek to offer us cheap, innovative ways to learn anything we want.

Is it the Lawmakers or Law Enforcers who are to Blame?

2012-02-02T11:59:00.001-05:00

Walter Block has a very interesting defense of the inciter of a riot. He argues that a person who inspires others to commit violent acts is guilty of no violent act at all because the inciter is doing no more than engaging in free speech activity. The act of advocating violence is not a violent act and directly harms no one, therefore the inciter should not be held responsible for any chaos that ensues from his words. It is the fools who listen to and carry out the inciter’s wishes who should be held responsible. They were completely free to reject the inciter’s evil suggestions to loot or destroy, but instead voluntarily chose to do evil.

This is a sound argument and many libertarians would agree with it, but fail to apply it consistently when it comes to the lower-level members of government – especially the police and military.

Even among self-described libertarian friends I frequently hear excuses for the evils committed by police and soldiers. “They don’t know what they’re doing.” “They have to follow the lawmakers’ or their superiors’ commands.” “It’s not their fault; it’s the politicians’ faults.”

Perhaps it’s because more Americans than ever have a friend or relative who is a cop or soldier and they don’t want to rock the boat too much and lose that relationship. Maybe they daydream about converting their cop uncle and soldier cousin to liberty and so they tone down their libertarianism to make the philosophy appear more attractive to police and military men, knowing that the philosophy unadulterated condemns those chosen careers.

These motivations don’t change the fact that they are cutting cops and soldiers far too much undeserved slack and failing to hold them responsible for the evils they commit on behalf of the American State. Libertarians who do this are performing a disservice to the future of liberty because it is precisely allowing those who commit evil to get away without being held responsible that the evils continue. If cops and soldiers were instead condemned there would be a reduction in the evil they are willing to perform.

What are the legislatures, lawmakers, judges, generals, governors, and even the president of the State other than well-dressed and well-spoken inciters of violence?

It isn’t the legislatures kicking down doors and pointing guns at families during drug raids, pulling people over and taking hundreds of dollars from them for minor traffic offenses, and locking people up for years over marijuana possession. It isn’t the lawmakers out there using tasers, mace, clubs, fists, and guns to enforce and impose their political opinions on the citizens. It is the low-level cops who have voluntarily agreed to join and remain on the force with the job of doing whatever they’re told to do to whoever they’re told to do it to. The individual cops are fully responsible for the evils they commit on a daily basis; not the lawmakers.

It wasn’t Bush and it isn’t Obama dropping bombs in the Middle East and mowing down civilians. Members of Congress aren’t putting on helmets. The generals aren’t pulling the triggers. It is the young men who have voluntarily agreed to join an evil organization and voluntarily carry out its every evil command. The blood of all the murdered innocent Iraqis and Afghanis is on the soldiers’ hands, not the “politicians who sent them there.”

It makes absolutely no difference if the cop or soldiers disagrees with the orders he’s following. If anything that is even worse because in that case they know the orders they’re carrying out are immoral, but continue anyway.

To take the argument further: Hitler never killed a single Jew. Not one. Hitler probably never killed anybody after becoming the fuehrer. It was the men who voluntarily agreed to invade other countries and operate the concentration camps. Hitler was no more than a very persuasive inciter of violence. No one had to listen to him. No Nazi soldier had to follow his commands. This truth was partly recognized during the Nuremberg Trials. “We were just following orders” was not accepted as an excuse because indeed they did not have to follow the orders.

But why is this not consistently applied to American police and military by Americans? Surely everyone believes that the Nazis should have disobeyed Hitler. 99% of the entire world is probably even of the opinion that the Nazi soldiers should have turned on and killed Hitler for even making such insane and evil commands. Hollywood movies have been made glorifying attempts by lower-level Nazis to remove Hitler of power.

Ask people who proclaim to be opponents of the foreign wars or the domestic police-state and drug war if they think the individual soldiers and cops should be held fully responsible and given the same punishment a regular citizen would receive for bombing neighborhoods, tasering or beating innocent people, or breaking into homes with their guns drawn during a drug search and the majority of them will unfortunately deny this and say that it’s really the politicians’ faults – despite the fact that the politicians do no more than give speeches and write stuff on paper.

It is precisely the fault of the cops and soldiers and it is precisely they who deserve to be condemned. The longer this is denied, the longer it will be before the herds of state enforcers begin to question their orders a little more.

Economic Illiteracy in the Amateur Music World

2012-01-27T13:14:00.000-05:00

By Austin White

January 27th, 2012

There has been a growing view of aspiring professional musicians on the internet that musicians should not have to work for free nor should they even be asked to work for free. They believe they are for some reason entitled to getting paid well for their work regardless of whether or not there is even a significant demand for their services.

The possibility that they individually might not be offering anything of great value to the world to get paid for never crosses their minds and they tend to believe there is some sort of capitalist conspiracy being perpetrated against them. Artists are also more likely to demand welfare (i.e. the government using violent force to steal money from one group of people and giving it to another) with either the view that they need a guaranteed income because they don’t have time to work a regular job due to their pursuing of musical goals or because, the very elitist view, that they are special creatures who are above working regular jobs and should just be provided with free money in return for their creative genius that the world should be grateful for.

Here is the latest picture off the internet which perfectly illustrates the economic illiteracy of many artsy-types.

It’s a Craigslist ad by a small restaurant owner looking for live musicians to perform in the restaurant. The owner makes no money offer, but states that the performers are free to promote their own work and sell their CDs and if customers respond positively the performers will enjoy an increasing number of opportunities to perform and promote themselves.

Also included in the picture is a reply from a musician who is obviously appalled that he has even been asked to perform for free.

It’s quite a generous offer considering that the restaurant owner doesn’t owe any musician such an opportunity. The owner could simply play Top 40 music on a stereo, but instead chooses to share his customers with aspiring performers.

Everyone wins. The performer gets free advertising, a venue to perform in and sell CDs, and access to customers who have been drinking, eating, having a good time and are possibly more likely to buy the CDs on the spot than if they were browsing Amazon. The customers get to enjoy a unique dining experience with live music that can only be found at that particular restaurant at that particular time. The restaurant owner gets to enjoy whatever increase in sales the performers bring in. This is the owner’s reward for arranging this meeting between the performer and a new audience, and the audience and a new performer. He’s acted as a broker for the performer and deserves every penny of his increased profits.

But what if the performer doesn’t put on a good show? This is where the restaurant owner is revealed to be an even greater friend of the starving artist.

The restaurant owner is taking a great risk upon himself in order to arrange the meeting between the performer and his customers. What if he was wrong about live music enhancing his business? What if his customers turn out to hate live music while they eat? What if they do like live music, but hate the specific performers? What if he loses some customers over the experiment? What if he loses a lot of customers over it?

The only party in this arrangement that stands to lose is the restaurant owner. He must endure all the financial losses that may result from his decision to feature an amateur performer.

The performer on the other hand only stands to gain. He might sell a lot of CDs or he might sell very few CDs, but, unlike the restaurant owner, faces no risk of losing business. The performer bears no costs other than gas money and a few hours of his time – money and time that he’s completely free to decide whether or not to spend on this performance opportunity

If anything the restaurant owner is being foolishly over-generous to aspiring performers. The performers should be paying for the opportunity, not getting paid. If they’re actually good they’ll make back the performing fees in CD sales and tips.

Invade the Newspapers

2012-01-24T14:54:00.000-05:00

This article originally appeared at the great Lewrockwell.com

by Austin White

January 24th, 2012

If you want to spread the message of liberty there are more efficient ways to do it besides waving Ron Paul signs on an overpass. On-the-ground grass roots activism is necessary and certainly has its place, but I would also say that the majority of it is pointless and wastes time, energy, and money.

Think about it, the goal of your activism should be to reach as many people as you can with as little effort as possible. If you work, go to school, or both, you're probably already running on a low tank and don't have a lot of time and energy left for spreading liberty - don't waste what's left by spending hours going door-to-door collecting signatures for some petition that your congressmen's secretary is just going to use as a beverage coaster. Don't spend hours trying to reason with some neocon cousin on facebook. None of this accomplishes anything except draining your batteries.

Writing articles and getting them published is the most efficient and effective activism a normal person can do. It takes little time, minimal physical energy, and requires no money, yet you can realistically reach hundreds of thousands of people with a single article.

When you write articles you're also doing something that benefits you personally. Gradually developing your writing could possibly lead to a new career, or at least a really cool side job or hobby. Getting published a few times could lead to getting published often to eventually getting paid to write. As you develope a portfolio of accomplishments it will only get easier to market your work. Other people will respect your opinion more and listen to you. Getting published will boost your confidence to proceed further. And you're getting full credit for your labor.

Personally benefitting and getting clear credit for your activism is essential to avoiding burn out in the long run. Getting paid for your effort is even better. Writing can accomplish these things.

You don't have to have a long list of impressive credentials either. A little over a year ago I got an article published in the Orlando Sentinel (with a readership, I've heard, of almost 250,000 people) about why young people should be against socialized health care. That's right, a pizza delivery guy with a lousy college attendance record and no academic credentials at all was able to pull that off.

I spent about three hours total writing and revising the article, submitted it, and two weeks later saw my face in the paper next to the article. The article was actually pretty controversial and led to about a week-long discussion of my views. The online version had about 100 debating comments under it. One of the Sentinel's staff writers wrote an article soon after attacking me and then this guy Martin Kessler wrote a letter to the editor defending me against the attack. I later found out that Martin Kessler is an economist who used to work for Ronald Reagan. Pretty cool.

If I was successful in converting just 10% of readers, that's 25,000 people. Even if it was just 1%, that's still 2,500 people. Even if I didn't reach anybody, it gave me something cool to put on my resume.

You could wake up more people by getting an article published in some kind of mainstream publication than you would have doing years' worth of conventional grass-roots activism.

Follow these simple guidelines and you can get published too:

1 - STOP RANTING ON FACEBOOK.

Every single libertarian could easily crank out an article a week if they put their Facebook ranting energy into real writing. I've seen so many regular, average people post amazing philosophical statuses that could easily have been developed into essays.

When you post your deep libertarian thoughts on Facebook you're basically flushing great writing material down the toilet. You have this witty thought explaining why taxation is evil, you have the urge to express it, but instead of opening up a word processor and fully fleshing the thought out you put in on Facebook.

The reason I say you're wasting it is because by posting the thought on Facebook you've satisfied your urge to express the opinion and you're less likely to do anything with it again. Your brain checks off that task and says "all done!" What could have been the opening paragraph in a ground breaking article is forgotten as just another Facebook status.

2 - WRITE ON A CONSISTENT BASIS

You're better off sitting down and writing for thirty minutes a day every day than not writing anything for a month and then going on a two-day long writing binge. Writing takes practice just like any other skill and expecting to just jump in and be great at it will lead to discouragement. Think of all your writings as nothing more than practice and each article you write as nothing more than an exercise. If it gets published, great. If not, oh well it was just practice.

Consistency is key. Good musicians don't go three weeks without practicing, then suddenly pull a twelve-hour practice day, and then take another two weeks off. They practice a little bit every day and discipline themselves to stick with their daily practice regimen no matter what.

For me, one hour a day is perfect. That's just enough time to really get something done if I'm on a roll, but if I don't have any juice it's still a short enough amount of time that I can just power through anyway.

So try to set aside an hour or less of writing time everyday that's free of distractions. Unplug the TV, turn off the internet (unless you're looking for sources to put in your article), and turn off your phone.

If you follow Guideline #1 and stop ranting on Facebook you'll be surprised to see how much free time you really have.

3 - KNOW YOUR TARGET

Figure out who the audience is for each article before you write it and think up publications you can send your work to that would best reach that audience. If you're trying to inject some libertarianism into a mainstream newspaper you'll probably have to tone down your rhetoric and not rant about abolishing the state. If you're target audience with another article is anarchists then you won't get very far with "we gotta get back to the Constitution!"

A lot typical newspapers have certain sections reserved for young people and regular middle-class adults to write for. Take advantage of these because you'll have a lot less competition. The Orlando Sentinel section I wrote for was called New Voices for people under twenty-five. Most Americans under twenty-five are morons so get in there!

Find the submission email for the publication you're trying to get into and email them once a week. If you're not having any luck then try another publication and then another. As a last resort you can get your own blog going at Blogger.com for free and just publish yourself.

Smaller, newer websites that haven't garnered a lot of attention yet are usually hungry for original content. Take advantage of them too.

Keep in mind, however, that some publishers demand exclusive first dibs on your article and don't want material that you've already offered to others or put on your own website. Other websites don't care a bit and will post anything.

4 - REMEMBER, IT'S JUST PRACTICE

At this moment I've now spent only three total hours on this article. People might like it or might not, but I don't care because by writing it period I've increased my writing skills by 0.08% and my next article will be better.

There Are No Good Cops

2012-01-13T15:38:00.004-05:00

There are no good cops anymore. They’re all bad. Even this former New Orleans cop says 70% of his department should be fired or indicted.

Don’t email me about your best friend from high school who you swear is a good cop. He’s not a good cop. Neither is the cop who lives down the street who has the fun July 4^th party every year. Your cop uncle isn’t a good cop either. They’re all bad cops. They might all be good people, great people, when you hang out with them on their days off, but being a good person outside the job does not translate into being a good cop.

If your cop friend has ever ticketed or arrested someone for a victimless crime he’s a bad cop and the poor souls he arrested or ticketed were so for committing acts that harmed nobody.

Imagine if a normal citizen started going around acting like a typical cop. Imagine a normal-looking guy in regular clothes handcuffing people, throwing them in the back of his vehicle, and then locking them up in his dungeon because he doesn’t approve of them consuming marijuana, carrying a handgun on their person for self-defense without government permission, or even fishing without a license. Imagine if this guy was demanding that people who don’t wear their seatbelts give him money. Imagine if this person was claiming the right to use violent force against anyone who didn’t comply and the right to kill anyone who physically fought back.

Regardless of whether or not he believed he was doing a good deed, such an individual would rightly be seen as crazed and criminal. But this is exactly what typical police do on a daily basis.

The only good cop is an ex-cop who left the force disgusted by the number of victimless crime laws he was asked to enforce.

“Well, we’ll see who how much you hate cops after my cop friend saves your life!”

See one of my previous articles challenging the claim that police provide any protection at all. Cops are too busy ruining young pot smokers’ lives and giving single mothers $200 tickets to worry about protecting me from bad guys. On top of that violent crime rates are at a four-decade low (in spite of the bad economy and in spite of a great deal of that violence being a result of the government’s drug war) and there’s evidence that an American is more likely to be killed by an American cop than a terrorist. I also own and carry firearms, have a security system, a loud dog, and no compassion for aggressors – so bring it on bad guys.

History will not look kindly on the modern American police. We have the highest incarceration rate in the world and there are daily police-brutality incidents, each one slightly more horrific than the last, being documented on YouTube so historians fifty years from now will be able to look back and study the Great Amerikan Police-State.

School children in other countries will watch footage of American police dressed up like Darth Vader kicking down families’ doors, pointing guns at the children, and killing the family dogs over minor marijuana possession the same way American school children learn about (or used to learn about) the frightening brutality of police in Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union.

When that time comes you won’t want to admit that you were related to or friends with American cops anymore than someone would want to admit that they were friends with or related to Nazis. If you’re related to one of the really bad cops you might even have to change your name and move far away.

Take steps now to prevent yourself from being put in that position and to reverse the trend towards tyranny. Shame your cop friends into getting real jobs and if you’re unsuccessful gradually cut them out of your life completely. We need potential police to know that becoming a cop could cost them friendships and their invitation to the family Christmas dinner. Police need to know that a rapidly growing percentage of the American population looks at them with disgust. Only then will wannabe thugs stop joining police forces. Only then will the idea of becoming a cop be so degraded that law makers will be forced to end the war on vices because there won't be any people willing to put on the badge and enforce the vice laws anymore.

Why Do Most Soldiers Join the Military?

2012-01-10T11:22:00.002-05:00

By Austin White

January 10th, 2012

I graduated high school in 2008 and now, three and a half years later, I would confidently wager that eventually 20% of my entire graduating class will end up in the military. The majority of my own high school buddies were snagged by recruiters in less than a year after graduating.

Not a single one of the many people I know who joined the military ever mentioned anything about how excited they were to defend my freedoms, uphold the Constitution, or even defeat the Omnipotent Intergalactic Muslim Empire as they were leaving for basic training. No, they joined because they were afraid of being in control of their own lives and wanted to thrust themselves into a system that would make all of their decisions for them.

Young people are more coddled than ever. Unless home-schooled, young people go through thirteen years of the American public school system where ,for seven to nine hours a day, they are told what classes to attend and when, where to sit, when they can eat, and when they may use the restroom (after you beg for permission, of course). For the majority of a young person's waking lives they are having their daily lives planned out by bureaucrats. Before they know it they are graduating and for the first time have the complete freedom to make their own decisions and plan their own lives - and they're terrified of this freedom.

They're so used to administrators bossing them around all day that they have no confidence in their own decision making abilities. They've never thought about planning their own lives before; they thought the bureaucrats would handle this task forever. And so many join the military, where they can go back to the control of the bureaucrats. Once again they will be told when to eat and what to wear, but now with the additional command of who to kill.

Cowardly people are afraid of freedom because it means they are fully responsible for any bad choices they make. They're much more comfortable having the option to shift the blame for their mistakes elsewhere.

I would say most military men are cowards. Sure they're signing up to grab a rifle and run into whatever battle they're ordered to, some will even jump out of airplanes, but this is recklessness, which is very different from courage. Modern American soldiers aren't rushing into any kind of heroic battle; they're occupying innocent peoples and imposing dictatorial martial law at the barrel of a gun so they can get their college paid for. How is this a respectable act? Courage is not blindly and unconditionally carrying out whatever order you're told to; the courageous soldier is the one who questions his orders, speaks out against them, and as a last resort refuses to obey regardless of the consequences.

I do sympathize with military recruits. They are regularly bombarded with big budget military recruitment propaganda, they see the yellow "Support the Troops" stickers everywhere, country music stars write songs praising the troops, and the troops are always the good guys in American movies - it's no wonder they struggle to see the evil in what they're a part of.

Once they're in the military all of their expenses are covered. They're provided with food, shelter, a salary, free college, and healthcare - ALL of which is funded by the government forcefully taking money from us mere civilians here at home without our consent. It probably is indeed hard to give those welfare freebies up.

But none of this matters and it doesn't matter that the troops mean well, because the same could be said of the Nazis. Nazi soldiers believed they were doing a good thing, that God was on their side, that their wars were defensive, and that Jews really were an evil force in the world (similar to how Muslims are viewed by modern Americans) that must be stopped. The great majority, if not all, Nazi soldiers probably had the full support of their families, friends, and neighbors just like American troops do.

The majority of people in the military are there because they didn't know what to do with their lives and instead of taking a deep breath and facing the opportunity to carve out their own place in the world head on they ran with their tail between their legs into a recruiting office so some guy who doesn't care the least bit about them can make those decisions for them.

Joining the military is not a respectable decision; it is a pathetic one. It is a cheap and artificial way for young men to gain undeserved respect and admiration. For most men it is no more than a remedy for unemployment. The longer this is denied, the longer it will be before young men stop marching into the recruiting offices.

A Case Against the Jack Chambless Foreign Policy

2012-01-09T11:12:00.004-05:00

By Austin White

January 9th, 2012

I consider Professor Chambless to be a friend, a great fighter in the cause for liberty, a brilliant economist, and I have much respect for him. However, when an influential libertarian fails in promoting a pure, consistent definition of liberty, fellow libertarians simply can't sit on the sidelines and allow this to go unchallenged.

Unfortunately, I do not know if or where his specific foreign policy model can be found in his own writings. So I will be retelling it as he explains in his economics classes. I'm confident in my precision, having had additional discussions with him on the subject in his office.

Professor Chambless's courses are about 70% economics and 30% libertarian philosophy. Not only will he explain why the actions of the state are economically destructive, but also why they are often immoral and undefendable. For example, students are required to read The Law by Frederic Bastiat for the first exam. So you can easily get the picture that Chambless is heroically attempting to bring young people away from statism.

For one particular class, Chambless took the class discussion to foreign policy where he immediately gave a quick history lesson of the U.S. government's actions in the middle east, starting with the 1953 CIA-led coup in Iran, then explaining how terrorism against the United State is blowback from an imperial foreign policy, and then bookending everything with an explanation of the foreign policy he thinks the American government should adopt.

The Chambless Foreign Policy pitch starts out as a great case for non-interventionism. He says we should end the wars, refrain from starting new wars, close the 900+ foreign U.S. imperial bases in 130 countries, and have free trade and free immigration with all.

So far, so great. But then he ruins it all.

Chambless says that if after fully adopting this humble, non-interventionist foreign policy that America is attacked in any way at all the American government should respond by literally obliterating the country behind the attack.

"If so much as a foreign fire cracker goes off within our borders, we nuke the country it came from."

To make sure I understood right, I spoke with him about later on in the semester and he defended this part of his foreign policy, calling it "the most efficient."

This is why utilitarianism is inferior to natural rights libertarianism: efficiency is considered a higher end than morality.

The problem with a nuclear response to any attack on America is that 99.99% of the people killed by the nuclear bomb are innocent civilians who have and never would have harmed any American person during the entire course of their lives.

The sole purpose of nuclear weapons is to mass murder civilians; therefore a libertarian can't support the use of nukes under any circumstances. It is impossible to discriminate with who the nukes will kill. There is no way of preventing the innocent neighbors of the bad guy from perishing if the bad guy is nuked - and the neighbors harmed would span for miles. A quick Google Image search of "depleted uranium Iraq" will show you how even minor amounts of radiated residue can ruin the lives of an entire future generation of people (those people certainly having nothing to do with an attack on America).

Only the specific individuals responsible for the planning and carrying out of the attack can be punished, and even then they are entitled to a trial. The ruler of the country, the military commander who devised the attack, and the lowly privates left to carry out the attack are the only people who should pay. Punishing anyone else simply because they live within some arbitrary borders makes no more sense than the mayor of Orlando nuking all of Tampa because a Tampa cop attacked an Orlando citizen, but this is what the Chambless Foreign Policy proposes.

It is the height of collectivist thinking to hold normal citizens responsible for the actions of their government. As if 100% of all the people of a country are in complete agreement that they want to start attacking America and that all 100% of them are willing to drop everything to defend their dictator. As if the ruler of that country (just another sociopathic politician like you find at the head of any government) can be considered the precise representation of the sentiments of those people.

For a deeper elaboration of a libertarian foreign policy read Murray Rothbard’s timeless essay War, Peace, and the State.

How Much Protection Do Police Really Provide?

2011-08-17T14:13:00.000-04:00

by Austin White

August 17, 2011

Even as emerging research is revealing that you are more likely to be killed by a cop than a terrorist, the overwhelming majority of Americans show no concern at all about the rapidly growing police-state. Americans are so concerned about what they believe would happen if there were a lack of government security that they are willing to tolerate the highest incarceration rate in the world and daily incidences of horrific police brutality. “The worst tyranny is still better than chaos,” they argue.

But how much protection do government police actually provide? Very little if you think about it.

Police, overall, are paid the same whether they are pursuing murderers or jaywalkers. Police have no concrete incentive to choose pursuing violent criminals instead of busting harmless pot smokers. Why would a cop risk his life fighting violent crime when he can make the same amount of money ticketing people for having faulty tag lights?

And what are the odds that this cop could actually prevent or stop violent crimes from happening even if he was actively trying to do so? How many rapes have been stopped by a police officer heroically crashing through a window and apprehending the rapist seconds after he’s initiated the act? Police do not become omniscient and all powerful upon receiving their badge and the idea that police have the ability to stop violent crimes is laughable. Their badge may give them magical legal powers, but nothing else.

The idea that police have the wits to smell out and stop violent crimes becomes even more laughable when you consider that most police became police because they were unable to sell their labor and skills in the more competitive private sector, where intelligence, good social skills, and strong work ethics are rewarded. Police departments are more likely to be filled with stupider, lazier, and reckless people who desire a job where it is virtually impossible to get fired and are not likely to contain the brightest minds. Reno 911 is the probably the most accurate portrayal of police ever produced.

The best the police can usually do is show up a half hour later, if they were even called, and do the paperwork.

The rape victim can’t get her tax dollars refunded. The police might arrest her for buying marijuana days later to alleviate depression. She may even get arrested for illegally purchasing a firearm for future defense.

Aside from the frequent cases of police brutality, police produce a negative effect by providing people with a false sense of security. Because there are police on the streets supposedly ready to lay down their life in an instant to save you, people who have faith in police are less likely to lock their doors, possess guns, and take measures to provide for their own safety just as wearing a seatbelt makes a person more likely to drive aggressively.

And there is no reason to expect police services to ever improve. Unlike in the voluntary market, where the failure of a seller to provide a service leads to losses, police can’t go out of business for failing to provide adequate protection and investigative services. Even worse, police actually benefit from crime epidemics because they provide police with justifications to receive more funding.

How to Assess Your Local Police-State

2011-08-06T11:32:00.001-04:00

How to Assess Your Local Police-State

August 3, 2011

By Austin White

I was purchasing gas recently and picked up one of those $1 garbage publications that list and show all of the people who have been arrested in your area in the past few weeks. They usually have names like Jail Paper and Under Arrest Gazette. Normally I would never buy a publication that profits from the police-state in such a way, but my curiosity got the best of me and I had to see just how many of the arrested people displayed in this rag were arrested for victimless (i.e. non) crimes.

The magazine covers arrests in central Florida counties Hillsborough, Pinellas, Hernando, Pasco, Orange, Lake, Seminole, and Osceola and is issued twice a month.

I went through and added up, county by county, the total number of arrested people displayed and then counted how many of those were arrested for committing a victimless crime. I excluded people arrested for out-of-state and out-of-county warrants due to the lack of information on the charges.

I used the most consistent definition of a victimless crime, which is any action that is illegal according to government policy, but does not actually bring direct detriment to any person or property. Examples include prostitution, drug possession, drug selling – none of the people arrested for these actions actually violate anyone else’s rights. Some people were arrested for driving without a license or registration and driving with an unregistered license plate – all acts that harm no one. I also considered drunk driving to be a victimless crime while counting, because the act of driving drunk itself harms nobody (see Radley Balko, Lew Rockwell, Jeffrey Tucker, and Mark Crovelli, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here for further elaborations on drunk driving policies).

A real criminal is someone who has actually violated another’s property rights, i.e. someone who acts governmentally. Examples include the acts of assault, trespassing, theft, fraud, rape, and murder. The great majority of crimes of this sort in the magazine were assault and theft.

Anyway, in the last two weeks of July 2011:

-Orange County had 103 arrests, 45 of which were for victimless crimes (44%)

-Hernando County had 68 arrests, 33 for victimless crimes (49%)

-Pinellas County had 269 arrests, 123 for victimless crimes (46%)

-Lake County and Seminole County combined had 152 arrests, 76 for victimless crimes (50%)

-Hillborough County had 215 arrests, 121 were for victimless crimes (56%)

-Osceola had 49, 14 for victimless crimes (29%)

-Pasco County had 119, 74 of which were for victimless crimes (62%)

In total, the published arrests from these eight counties amounted to 975 in two weeks. Of those 975 arrests, 486 were for victimless crimes – making the overall percentage of victimless crime arrests 49.8%.

One out of two people arrested in the Central Florida area in the last half of July didn’t harm any person or property, but yet they were arrested, humiliated, and will now have to spend great deals of money and exhaust irreplaceable time and energy dealing with the state.

(In Hans-Hermann Hoppe voice): Not only are the arrested individuals harmed, but each arrest costs taxpayers thousands of dollars even if the arrested choose not to challenge their charges in court. With each person put in handcuffs the tax burden on the productive class increases, which produces decivilizing effects on all of society as the increasing tax burden reduces incentives to produce and raises the social time preference as people become more present-oriented and more likely to engage in crime. In addition, people will become less likely to save and invest their money which will produce a negative effect on economic growth as capital accumulation decreases. The increase in crime and decrease in economic vibrancy will influence many people to demand an ever bigger government which will only speed up these decivilizing effects brought about by the same government in the first place.

Reparations for Taxation - Unfinished

2011-07-07T12:28:00.003-04:00

UNFINISHED ARTICLE - Reparations for Taxation

by Austin White

Originally written around November 2010

Would a slave be consenting to his slavery by accepting a meal from his slave master? Is a tax slave wrong to accept benefits from the tax masters?

Discussions on how a libertarian can live in a statist world without deviating from libertarian principles produce many difficult questions. Participants in the discussions soon realize that they are living in a statist minefield where they are constantly at risk of being forced to act in ways contrary to their philosophy. The conclusion is usually that it is near impossible to avoid becoming a tax parasite while still living within civilization and that the best the libertarian can do is lead by example and try to minimize the amount welfare parasitism they engage in.

In this essay I will attempt to explain to what degrees libertarians may consume government-provided services and benefits while still retaining the ability to authentically say they consistently follow the non-aggression principle and live out the libertarian philosophy to the best of their abilities.

To clarify, in this essay the state is defined as no more than a criminal gang; a band of thieves. I am not making a case as to whether or not it is a good idea for libertarians to cease minimizing the amount of welfare-state outputs they consume. I am pondering to what extent people have rights to actively consume government services and benefits.

The word “taxation”, in this essay is shorthand for violent, coercive, compulsory seizure of property. Indeed taxation is a violent act because the entire act is backed up with the threat of death if one sufficiently resists taxation and the threat of prison time and humiliation for less sufficient resistance to taxation.

My thesis is that it is acceptable for a person to reclaim any property of theirs that has been stolen by a criminal gang and that it is equally acceptable for a victim of taxation to reclaim their property by consuming the outputs of the welfare-state. A person has the right to actively (in contrast to unknowingly and unavoidably) consume elective government services and benefits as long as the person is only consuming an amount not exceeding the amount of taxes the person has been forced to pay. If an individual has “paid” $10,000 in taxes then it is okay for the individual to consume $10,000 worth of welfare, but no more. When the tax victim consumes an amount of welfare equal to or less than what the state has stolen from the tax victim, the tax victim is simply taking back what was first stolen from him by the state. Surely if a man has paid $50,000 in taxes, it would be erroneous to label him a hypocrite or welfare parasite if he decides to enjoy $10,000 worth of unemployment or disability welfare.

However, this is no longer the case if he begins consuming an amount of tax-funded welfare greater than what he has paid in taxes. At this point the man has not only retrieved what was first stolen from him, but is now taking other people’s property.

So an older libertarian who has been paying an especially painful amount of taxes for decades is much more justified in actively consuming more government services than a teenage libertarian who has paid little taxes.
Although I agree with Rothbard’s theories of proportional punishment and that a victim of aggression has the right to retaliate and violate the aggressor’s rights to a degree no greater than twice what the victim originally endured (two teeth for a tooth [for instance, a victim of theft has the right to steal an amount from the thief that is double what the victim had stolen from him]), I do not believe this can be the case when it comes to reparations for taxation. The state, at the most, only posses what it has stolen from others and has no wealth of its own. If the two teeth for a tooth system were followed in tax reparations, the state would be unable to pay back half of tax victims. If tax victim A had $100,000 stolen from him by the state and then takes back $200,000, this would result in tax victim B who also had $100,000 stolen from him being unable to get his money back.

Therefore, for justice to be achieved the tax victims would have to be compensated with an equal mix of monetary reparations and labor from the bureaucrats who stole the money (IRS agents, legislatures, the president, etc.). Each tax victim would have to be awarded the exact amount of their money back (no more, no less), which would equal one tooth of the two teeth, and then the other tooth would be the agents of the state providing the tax victim with an amount of labor that would equal the amount of monetary compensation. Other methods of providing compensation will eventually include the auctioning off of the state’s assets as well as the personal assets of government employees who received tax-funded salaries. For the sake of simplicity we will stick with the scenario where tax victims are awarded an equal mix of money and labor.

In the case of tax victims A and B, both would be given back their $100,000 each and then the government employees who participated in the theft would have to be A and B’s restitutional slaves until they’ve worked off an additional $100,000 – if A and B desire the full two teeth for a tooth. Rothbard’s proportional punishment legal system hold’s that the victim has a right to the two teeth, but not an obligation to obtain the two teeth and neither does a third party, such as an arbitration agency, have an obligation or right to obtain the two teeth if it is against A or B’s wishes. If A and B desire, they may seek no reparations and exonerate their aggressors (IRS agents, legislatures, the president, etc.).

Unfortunately, full reparations like this will not be possible until the overwhelming majority of the population becomes libertarians and the state disbands. Fortunately, tax victims may, through increasing their present active consumption of welfare (government services and benefits), take back one of the two teeth now. The other tooth, which will be composed of the restitutional slave labor of bureaucrats, will have to wait.

Determining a reasonable method of calculating the amount of elective government services and benefits a libertarian may justly consume will be difficult and is sure to provoke much debate. Many libertarians believe that the libertarian should at all times be attempting to minimize as much as possible the amount of tax-funded benefits they use – only making exceptions for things such as roads, street lights, sidewalks, police, and fire department services that the government prohibits the private sector from providing and services that there are simply no ways of avoiding (short of becoming a recluse who never leaves the house or moving to your own private island).

What services constitute welfare and elective benefits? What taxes should be included in this calculation? Should consumers who benefit from price ceilings deduct those benefits from the total amount of welfare they can justly consume? What about consumers who detriment from price floors and tariffs? What about libertarians serving in public office who are receiving giant, tax-funded salaries like Ron Paul? Will legislatures who fought for smaller government be punished less? Will legislatures who fought for bigger government be punished more? Can one make a living as a teacher in a public college with a clear conscience? Is it okay for a libertarian college student to enjoy in-state tuition? What should be the criteria for “public goods” like “national defense” that no free market monetary value can be placed on? Is it evil to ship via USPS? Should businessmen who have lobbied for protectionism have to deduct the benefits derived from the protectionism from the total amount of tax-funded benefits they may consume? And don’t forget about subsidies and corporate welfare.

These questions reveal how pervasive wealth redistribution has become in America.

Before continuing it is important that we address the fact that government employees do not pay taxes; therefore government employees are parasitic tax consumers living off of the labor of tax payers. Government employees rarely accept this statement and point out that they pay taxes. What they don’t realize is that any taxes they pay are on income composed of others’ tax dollars. If a government employee receives a salary of $100,000 a year and pays $25,000 in taxes annually, the reality is that the bureaucrat receives a salary of $75,000 a year and pays no taxes at all – because government employees are paid out of tax dollars. Because of this, few people are in a position where they can work for the government without becoming total beneficiaries of stolen property.

A person may work for the government and receive a tax-funded salary as long as the total amount of money they will make in that “job” does not exceed the amount of taxes the person paid before getting the government job. If a person has paid $100,000 in taxes and gets a government job that pays $50,000 a year (after the illusory taxes the government employees pay) that person may work the government job for no longer than two years. After the two years the person is now consuming more tax dollars than they paid and can reasonably be called a tax parasite. An exception would be if a person works for the government, but makes a legitimate living outside of office at the same time and pays taxes on the other source, the non-tax-funded source, of income.

So in the case of Ron Paul, he may be able to work in government and receive a giant tax-funded salary and be able to say that he “walks the walk” of libertarianism. Before going into Congress, Paul was a doctor who probably paid more taxes than the majority of the population. Paul left Congress in the early eighties and returned to medical practice and then once again went to D.C. in 1996 after another decade of paying taxes. In addition, Paul has had much success as a book author (which produces income that he must pay taxes on). He also actively minimizes the amount of benefits he receives by returning unused portions of his congressional budget back to the treasury (he is the only congressperson who does this).

Walter Block believes that a libertarian can work for the government as long as the libertarian is doing so for the purpose of reducing the amount of damage the state inflicts. For instance, Block believes that one could even work as a concentration camp guard if the goal is to help some prisoners escape. Or people can work jobs at the IRS if their goal is to help people get their money back. This theory needs to be elaborated further, but it certainly contains some merit and gives Dr. Paul bonus points considering that every piece of legislation he has ever sponsored is to reduce state power; he always votes against expansions of state power; and he has the record for the most single (434-1) “no” votes.

Whether or not Ron Paul is acting hypocritically by working in government is debatable. We would have to determine the amount of taxes on income obtained in the private sector that the state has extorted from Paul and then determine the amount of tax dollars Paul has consumed as a congressman and compare the two numbers. If he has consumed more than has been stolen from him then a case can be made that he is a tax consumer and is not a tax payer reclaiming his property. It cannot be debated, however, that compared to people who have worked in government their entire lives, it is much more likely that Paul would pass this test.

People who have worked in the public sector for their entire working lives are not at all able to make this case. They are entirely the recipients of stolen money and for justice to prevail they would have to return every dime they have ever received during their working lives back to the specific taxpayers from whom the money was stolen from.

It makes no difference that government employees provide services because no tax payer ever signed a contract agreeing to pay any bureaucrat for the services provided (never mind the fact that few government services offer any benefit to society and that any benefits that are produced are mere fractions of what the market would produce if allowed to).

Tax Payer A never voluntarily traded his money to the government in return for services X, Y, and Z; the government expropriated Tax Payer A’s money and decided what services the money would go to providing without seeking any permission from Tax Payer A. Not only does the state forcefully expropriate money from tax payers without their permission, but it unilaterally decides how much money will be taken. The relationships between tax payers and public service providers do not resemble at all the voluntary, contractual relationships that are the cornerstone of the private sector. Voting and majoritarian democratic elections are not grants of permission; Tax Payer A is not consenting to his money being stolen simply because the majority of voters decide to tax him

Defeating the State through Language

2010-12-30T14:24:00.002-05:00

by Austin White

12/30/2010

One of the statists’ biggest weapons is the manipulation of language through the utilization of euphemisms and transforming of definitions. The Department of War is now the Department of Defense. Government perpetrated torture is now called enhanced interrogation. Massive institutionalized theft by government is called taxation. Instead of being called an aggressive, coercive redistribution of wealth, the welfare state’s actions are called charity. One of the most damaging blows to the Bill of Rights ever is called the USA Patriot Act. Massive government spending, inflating, and deficit financing are simply referred to as The Keynesian Model. State-worshipping jingoist warmongers who advocate a blatantly unconstitutional foreign policy are patriotic. Compulsory government indoctrination centers are public schools.

The amount of damage and distortion that language has suffered at the hands of statist ideologies is approaching a level as bad as the Newspeak in George Orwell’s fictional Nineteen Eighty-Four, where the goal of the political class is to destroy the language through the consolidation and simplification of words, with particular emphasis on words that may inspire rebellion and undermine the dominance and superiority of the State. In short: the goal of Newspeak in the book is to continually reduce the intelligence of the ruled –i.e. taxpayers – and make them easier to regulate.

The American government shares this goal, but the methods differ. Instead of dumbing down the population to make them easier to rule, although this is occurring as well, intentionally or unintentionally, through the public school system, the primary method of the statist intellectuals and political class in obtaining people’s obedience is by legitimizing the violence of government. In addition to conditioning people to comply with its each and every edict and into believing that the State is allowed to do what the rest of us are rightly prohibited from doing –i.e. aggressing against persons and property – by maintaining the perverse theories of the divine rights of the majority, the enemies of human freedom have succeeded in normalizing the State and making it seem as if it is no different than a business or voluntary organization and that its interventions in everything are no more illegitimate than a man washing his car on Saturday.

In fact, it is even worse. The State has not only been normalized, but it is believed by nearly the total population to be entirely above everyone and everything. In past times, the State had to compete with other institutions such as the Church. Its perceived superiority was more checked. The State now faces almost no competition at all from any other institution. It is the ultimate authority figure and enjoys the ability to compel nearly everyone to do anything. The federal government has obtained an amount of power so great that it can physically molest and digitally strip search children openly in airports and has achieved a level of legitimacy where people not only tolerate it, but ridicule and denounce the minority who actively oppose the TSA.

Were it not for the calculated use of Orwellian euphemisms and doublespeak the State’s legitimacy would plummet and its regulations and rule would not be tolerated. If the TSA was referred to by enough people as a criminal gang of pedophiles and perverts, there would be no TSA. If the Internal Revenue Service was more appropriately called by enough people the Federal Theft and Robbery Administration, the days of income taxation in America would be over. The ultimate reason that military conscription was eventually abandoned in America was because enough people came to call it out for what it is: slavery.

Remove the government’s euphemistic, official-sounding titles and it is quickly revealed to be no more than an illegitimate criminal gang that operates in a status of lawlessness and is the supreme violator of people’s natural rights with no moral justification at all for being allowed to continue its racket.

It is for this reason that the most effective, and easy, strategy for defeating statism is simply for people to vocally acknowledge that the emperor has no clothes. It is time to do away with the government’s Orwellian terms and phrases and it is time to call ‘em like you see ‘em. Don’t just call taxation theft; laugh uncontrollably at the very idea that the bureaucrats would actually expect you to think of taxation as anything other than blatant theft. Laugh at the ridiculousness of the largest, most belligerent military empire in the history of the world being called the Depart of Defense. Make a deliberate effort to train yourself to discard the State’s sterile, Orwellian words from your vocabulary and to constantly delegitimize the regime in your day-to-day conversations by calling ‘em like you see ‘em.

Think of any government policy, edict, or act, then think of what it would be called if a private individual committed it, and then forever and at all times use that term when describing the government act.

Get creative. Here’s a starter list:

Taxation

Taxation is theft; it is the aggressive, coercive seizure of another’s property. Therefore the word taxation should be replaced by the word theft in discussions about the State. An exception would be when discussing theft committed by private individuals. Replacing “That mugger stole my wallet!” with “That mugger taxed my wallet!” may have an even greater effect. Slavery is also an appropriate synonym. If the IRS takes a third of your paycheck that means you are working directly for the State for the first four months of the year; you’re working for nothing for four months.

War on Drugs

The war on drugs should now be referred to as the war on the natural right of people to peacefully and nonviolently consume whatever substances they want on their own time, with their own money, and with their own body. A shorter version can simply be the war on the fundamental right of people to own their own bodies or the war on individual liberty.

Gun Control

“Gun control” should be replaced with coercive citizen disarmament, followed by a brief explanation of why governments disarm their subjects in order to make them easier to tax and control and how some famous examples of countries where only the government has guns are Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, Maoist China, etc.

Eminent Domain

Is theft.

Federal Reserve Purchases of Government Securities

Printing money. Counterfeiting. Inflating. Diluting the currency. Punishing savers and the frugal. Raising the social time preference.

The Myth of National Defense: A Review

2010-12-15T09:30:00.000-05:00

The Myth of National Defense: A Review

December 15, 2010

by Austin White

The Myth of National Defense: Essays on the Theory and History of Security Production, edited by Hans-Hermann Hoppe and dedicated to Gustave de Molinari, the first known anarchocapitalist, provides one of the most compelling cases ever published on the incapability of the state to provide adequate security. Although other libertarian and economic books have featured a chapter or two on the subject, as well as a handful of wonderful essays, Hoppe is the first to present such a large, scholarly elaboration on the subject of privately produced defense. The work is composed of eleven hefty papers by authors Luigi Marco Bassani, Carlo Lottieri, Murray Rothbard, Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, Bertrand Lemennicier, Gerard Radnitzky, Joseph Stromberg, Larry Sechrest, Jeffrey Hummel, Walter Block, Hoppe, and Jörg Guido Hülsmann.

The Myth of National Defense shines uncompromising light on the failures of governmental protection and the intolerable conduct of inter-state wars and then provides historical examples of private alternatives to state defense and extensive explanations on how entrepreneurs could, would, and should produce all security in the future. Hobbes was wrong.

Hoppe starts the introduction to the book off quoting Thomas Jefferson from the American Declaration of Independence, which states that the only legitimate purpose of government is to protect people’s liberties and when a government’s means begin to contradict this purpose, when a government begins to violate people’s natural rights instead of protecting natural rights, when a government fails in performing its only legitimate function, it is a people’s right, their duty, to dissolve or secede from that government and “provide new guards for their future security.”

The state is then taken to task for its complete failure to provide security and property protection and makes the case that not only has the state failed to provide adequate protection, but it is the biggest threat to our liberty and security. The state in general is the biggest hazard to mankind presently and it is indeed time to throw off the state and begin to think about alternative, market-supplied, guards of our liberties.

We are less safe and there is more harm with a state than without. No fact illustrates this case more than the conservative estimates that the governments of the 20^th century murdered 100,000,000-200,000,000 of their own people –not including wars. The sum of all violent crimes committed by private individuals in last century is a mere fraction of the ruin the state wrought.

The largest state in the history of the world – with its nearly 1000 foreign military bases; vast global networks of spies and intelligence gatherers; air defense systems; the largest air force and navy in the history of the world; and defense budgets larger than the rest of the worlds countries’ defense budgets combined – was powerless in protecting its own defense headquarters on 9/11 from fanatics armed with only box cutters. Not only was the American state incapable of protecting itself, but its own military actions (sanctions, bombings, occupations in the Middle East) of previous decades are what contributed to the attack. To add insult to injury, the American state responded to the attacks with more of the same foreign interventions that contributed to the 9/11 attacks – increasing the likelihood of future similar offenses.

Domestically, the American state reacted by dramatically increasing spending on its failed defense and security methods. New bureaucracies were established. Security services formerly provided by the market were nationalized and bureaucratized. The state granted itself gargantuan amounts of new surveillance, torture, and police powers – further violating the liberties it is supposed to be protecting.

Unlike in the market where the failures of a supplier result in losses or bankruptcy, the state wins when it fails. The state even has an incentive to fail. Government failures lead to budget increases. “If the Department of X only had more funding catastrophe Y would surely not have happened.”

Not one bureaucrat was ever fired over the defense failures on 9/11 and nines years after the attack the elderly, sick, and resourceless Osama bin Laden has still not been captured.

It is almost universally accepted by political economists that monopolies, where there is a single supplier of a good or service and no other suppliers are permitted to compete, are bad for consumers. The monopolist has no incentive to supply a high quality product and can charge whatever price the monopolist desires – only being limited by the eventual inability of buyers to afford the product. Even worse is a situation where the monopolist also has the power to force people to purchase services.

Hoppe rightly condemns this as a racket and this is precisely the scenario we are living in now: we are subjected to the will of what Hoppe calls the territorial monopolist of compulsion and ultimate decision-making that enjoys the power to unilaterally decide what protection services we must buy, the quantity, and the price – combined with the related power to tax. It faces no negative financial consequences for not pleasing consumers. The state doesn’t get fired when it fails – it uses its failures as a justification to further expropriate the fruits of the citizens’ labor. If people refuse to pay for the services, that they never signed a contract agreeing to pay for, they are imprisoned. Government is inherently incapable of being a property protector because its process for doing so starts with the theft of people’s property.

Governments are motivated, like everyone else, by self-interest and the disutility of labor and will always seek to maximize protection expenditures (through taxation) while simultaneously minimizing the production of protection.

Government monopolies produce lower quality products at higher prices. The competitive, voluntary market produces higher quality goods at lower prices. This book forever deflates the myth that security is an exception and, as the authors show, it does not matter what type of government, whether democratic or totalitarian, is producing the defense.

All of the tools we use to protect ourselves emerged from the market: locks, alarm systems, guns, guard dogs, surveillance systems, and the gated community – the gated community with its private security guards is all you need to think about to realize that many people already implicitly know that the government is not a sufficient protector.

A private defense firm, because the owners would personally bear its costs, would have a much greater incentive to avoid unnecessary conflicts, to end conflicts as fast as possible, and to keep conflicts as contained and small as possible. It would not be in a private institution’s interest to maintain a global empire of expensive bases or engage in actions that would provoke future blowback. A private firm, unlike the government, would have an incentive to encourage its customers to arm themselves and to live in areas that are less vulnerable to foreign attack. A private firm would have a much greater incentive to not fail or else it would lose customers to a competitor.

The Problem with Supporting the Troops

2010-12-03T13:20:00.001-05:00

December 3, 2010

By Austin White

This is what I eventually hear whenever I’m involved in a discussion over foreign policy and the wars: "Hey, hey, hey! Don’t blame the troops! It’s the politicians! Support the troops, NOT the war.”

Don’t blame the troops? Don’t call out the people who voluntarily joined the military knowing that they would likely be sent to Iraq or Afghanistan to engage in unconstitutional, immoral occupations?

As bad as Bush, Cheney, and Obama are - the fact is that none of them ever dropped a single bomb or have fired a single shot. It’s the soldiers willing to unconditionally follow each and every order doing all that. The only thing that makes these wars possible is the troops’ willingness to wage them.

Why do the troops follow the orders? Because they don’t get called out on the fact that they are the perpetrators of the wars. Blame is always placed on Congress and the president, even though all those goons do is sign pieces of paper and give speeches.

They follow the orders because society has elevated them to the sacred cow status known as “the troops” and are completely immune from criticism – even from opponents of the wars.

Soldiers come back home on break and they see the yellow ribbons and “SUPPORT OUR TROOPS!” bumper stickers. They get discounts when they go to restaurants and movies. Strangers walk up to them on the street, shake their hands, and thank them for their services.

The thought that they are involved in something shameful never crosses the soldiers’ minds. How could their participation in the wars be bad? Even the people who are against the wars support the troops. Even when soldiers are caught indiscriminately killing civilians or killing civilians for sport and taking the bones as trophies, most of the public give the troops the benefit of the doubt.

And so they continue to unconditionally follow each and every command, young men continue to walk into recruiting offices, and the wars keep going.

What if, instead of walking up to soldiers, shaking their hands, and thanking them, people walked away from soldiers, shook their heads in disapproval, and scolded soldiers for participating in the wars.

The wars would end.

I don’t hate the troops. I don’t want any more to die. I don’t want any more troops to have to live the rest of their lives with painful memories and guilt. I don’t want any more troops driven to suicide -especially when it comes to my friends who are in the military.

But I can’t support them as they unjustly invade, occupy, and bomb for Leviathan. I can’t support the people who are the reason that the wars continue.

Open Letter to Conservative and Libertarian Protectionists

2010-11-28T11:56:00.005-05:00

By Austin White

This essay is basically just my raw notes and arguments that I used in a formal debate over protectionism in November 2010.

For far too long, support for protectionism has been present in the liberty movement. I have noticed a large amount of the conservatives and libertarians demanding smaller government simultaneously demand bigger government when it comes to free trade. This essay is meant to show the reader why this must stop.

One of the most basic pillars of capitalism is that market competition is good. Competition and a large division of labor are what we owe our prosperity to. Competition puts pressure on suppliers to reduce their production costs and to figure out the most efficient methods of producing, leading to lower prices for all of us. It puts pressure on entrepreneurs to be the best stewards of capital that they can possibly be. It puts pressure on businesses to serve consumers to the best of their abilities. And the greater the amount of competition there is in the market, the greater these wonderful effects are.

Any good capitalist wants to see the maximization of these effects by allowing as much competition as possible to take place, by allowing commerce to flourish without restriction. Restricting trade reduces these effects and results in increasing prices and decreasing quality of goods.

It’s a pretty simply concept. The best man for the job gets the job. If you don’t get the job then you need to keep improving yourself. Don’t cry to the government, the paternal nanny-state, and demand some bureaucrat intervene and bludgeon your competitors. Acquire new job skills, offer your goods and services for a lower price, and if that doesn’t work just accept that you’re not the best man for that job and that you need to find one where you have a comparative advantage.

Protectionism, through tariffs, import quotas, and other trade restrictions, is a form of wealth redistribution. You have the businesses and labor unions lobbying the government to artificially increase their businesses’ and employer’s abilities to survive at the expense of other people - all consumers.

Some lobby the government to restrict the rights and abilities of people to engage in free commerce for the sake of what they fallaciously consider the “greater good of the Nation” – which is just a more attractive way of saying “for the good of the collective.”

By embracing protectionism even a little bit, a person is revealing that they, in fact, don’t think capitalism is good. They are saying that only a certain, arbitrary amount of capitalism is acceptable. The proponents of tariffs are not only revealing their doubts about capitalism, but are demonstrating their approval of opposite ideologies and economic systems, namely socialism and mercantilism.

By demanding mercantilist tariffs, the protectionist is not only saying free commerce is bad, but that government interference is good. That government interventionism and central economic planning are the answer. The genuine, honest protectionist believes that the market, if left alone, is a destroyer of prosperity and that only the regulatory state can bring us more wealth.

Economic nationalism is contrary to liberty. It is based on the ancient statist idea that it is okay for the government to restrict the natural rights some people for the benefit of others. The right being violated under protectionism is the right of people to freely buy goods from whoever they want and to employ whoever they want; it tramples on the freedom of contract as well as the freedom of association.

It’s no surprise that some of the biggest opponents of free trade are outright leftists and socialists like Ralph Nader, Michael Moore, and trade union leaders. If you go to the Socialist Party USA website, the very top plank of their economic platform is cracking down on free trade; as well as the Communist Party USA.

In The Communist Manifesto Marx and Engels denounced what they considered the unconscionable freedom of trade.

When the socialist Fabian Society in Britain began gaining power and influence in the late 19^th century ,their very first target was free trade.

One of the first developers of German National Socialism, Friedrich List, is known almost completely for his, now debunked, theories supporting protectionism.

During Obama’s first year in office he slammed a 35% tariff on Chinese tires – which immediately stirred up the global market with China and several other countries threatening to implement tariffs on American exports in retaliation. Luckily, the tariff has been seen for the failure that it is and Obama has decided to start reducing it.

Protectionism, in its most extreme form, is autarky – where a country completely cuts itself off from the international division of labor with the goal of becoming self-sufficient. A famous historical example of a country striving for autarky is Nazi Germany. A current example would be North Korea – who, according to the Heritage Foundation’s annual ranking of the world’s economies, has the least capitalistic economy in the entire world and whose GDP is literally a fraction of a percent of America’s.

If it is true that protectionism and the restriction of trade would bring America more prosperity, then wouldn’t it follow that autarky – the complete cessation of trading with other countries – will bring us even greater prosperity.

If restricting trade between countries is a good idea, why not stop trade between the fifty United States? Why not end trade between the counties within the states? Why not end trade between the cities within the counties? After all, according to a consistent protectionist, if Orlando imports goods from Tampa that means Tampa is “stealing” jobs from Orlando. Why not restrict trade between city blocks? Why not between individuals? If I “outsource” the job of cutting my hair to a barber that means I just lost a hair cutting job. That barber took my job!

Though most protectionists probably oppose total autarky, they are inconsistent when they do so because all the arguments for restricting trade at all are the same arguments used in support of autarky.

Likewise, most protectionists would also probably agree that it would be bad if Orlando citizens were prohibited from importing goods from Tampa, but if it isn’t a good idea at the city level why is it a good idea at any level?

I am convinced that the core reason for the persistence of economic nationalism is people’s lack of faith in liberty, capitalism, and the miracles of spontaneous order, combined with a simultaneous and dangerous faith in bureaucracy and government.

All human beings are born with the natural right to buy goods from whoever they want and from wherever they want. If your money is truly your private property, then you have the right to spend it however you wish. Saying that a person doesn’t have the right to purchase foreign goods or doesn’t have the right to purchase foreign goods without paying the tariff is to say that a person’s money is not in fact their private property.

The state has no right at all to wedge itself in between peaceful transactions. It has no right to impose penalizing tariffs or quotas. Nor does it have the right to steal money from people and then use that money to subsidize exports.

Tariffs are taxes and if you’re pro-tariff, you’re pro-tax.

If we truly want to rollback leviathan we would be wise to not beg for additional taxes. I don’t see how giving the government yet another source of revenue will do anything to bring us smaller government.

The aim of all libertarians should be to abolish as many of the government’s revenue sources as possible; as quickly as possible. We should be just as opposed to tariffs as we are to income and property taxes.

The key reason why people seem to oppose free trade is a lack of understanding of comparative advantage and opportunity cost.

Having a comparative advantage means that compared to someone else you can produce a good or service at a much lower cost than someone else.

Consider this example (which I have completely ripped off of Walter Block):

Costa Rica has a comparative advantage in the production of bananas. Compared to the rest of the world, Costa Rica can produce a lot more bananas at a much lower cost.

Canada on the other hand, has a comparative advantage in the production of maple syrup. In Canada, they probably have entire lakes and rivers of maple syrup. It’s everywhere. Canadians probably have to get maple syrup insurance in case a flood of maple syrup destroys their homes.

Ok, so imagine if Costa Rica decides, in an effort to become more self-sufficient, to start producing maple syrup. The Costa Rican government spends an enormous amount of tax dollars subsidizing the construction of giant, 200-ft tall refrigerators that maple trees can be grown inside of.

Now imagine at the same time, Canada, in an effort to become more self-sufficient, decides to start producing bananas. The Canadians vote to blow billions of tax dollars subsidizing the building of giant greenhouses that banana trees can be grown in.

Now are these good ideas or bad ideas?

They’re terrible ideas. Both countries will be poorer and overall productivity will decrease.

In Costa Rica, the amount of resources that will have to be diverted from banana production just to make a modicum of the amount of maple syrup Canada makes will be enormous. Just to produce a gallon of maple syrup, Costa Rica might have to forgo the production of hundreds if not thousands of bananas.

In Canada, they might end up forgoing the production of ten gallons of maple syrup just to produce a single banana.

There is no way Costa Rican maple syrup producers will be able to compete with Canadian producers and they will be quick to demand tariffs. The Costa Rican maple syrup producers will cry out about how if they don’t get their tariff they’ll go out of business and all of their employees will lose their jobs and lose their income and they won’t be able to buy other Costa Rican goods and services and it will be a drain on the entire economy.

The same will happen in Canada. The Canadian banana industry will demand the banning of all Costa Rican bananas and if that doesn’t happen then the Canadian banana farmers will go bust and lose their jobs to those dirty rotten Costa Ricans.

So what should Canada and Costa Rica do in this scenario? They should let the market determine what each country has a comparative advantage in and let go the industries that they don’t have a comparative advantage in. Canada should realize that their banana industry isn’t worth propping up with tariffs, Costa Rica should do the same with maple syrup, and the market should be left alone so that entrepreneurs in both countries direct resources to their most valued uses instead of being wasted on producing goods that they suck at producing. If they do this and then agree to let the citizens of both countries freely trade with one another overall productivity will increase and both countries will be richer. It’s a positive-sum game. Everyone wins. Costa Rica gets cheap maple syrup from Canada and Canada get cheap bananas from Costa Rica.

III

Myth: Free trade destroys jobs!

The following examples are totally ripped off of Jack Chambless and Walter Block

When Sony makes a TV in Japan and then exports it to America, the American dock worker who carries the imported TV off the boat gets paid. The truck driver who delivers the TV from the dock to Best Buy gets paid. The sales clerk at Best Buy who sells the TV gets paid. The repairman who fixes the TV a few years later gets paid. And when the TV finally breaks, the garbage man who hauls it off to the dump gets paid. Millions of jobs are supported in America because of the importing of foreign goods.

If the government all of sudden put a big a tariff on foreign TVs, yeah it would increase the likelihood of a domestic TV industry emerging that might create some jobs, but only after the tariff destroys other American jobs and causes an inefficient redirection of capital and labor.

Think about this scenario: You have an American TV company who sells TVs for $500, but the Japanese are so efficient that they can sell the same quality TV for only $100. What will happen if we have free trade? The American TV maker goes out of business. But since American consumers can now buy TVs for only $100, they’ll have $400 left over to spend on other goods, at least some, probably most, of them American goods – which will stimulate demand and create employment elsewhere in the economy. We used to spend $500 and only got one TV. Now we get a TV for $100 and have another $400.

And what will the Japanese do with the $100 they get with from every TV sale? Well those U.S. dollars won’t do them much good in Japan, so eventually Japan will have to spend them on American goods – stimulating more demand for American goods and creating more employment- or invest the dollars in America, providing more capital and putting downward pressure on interest rates for the benefit of American job-creating entrepreneurs - or trade those dollars with other countries who will do these things.

So, the benefit of protectionism that a small minority of inefficient jobs are temporarily preserved, but the cost is many, many more efficient jobs are sacrificed or never come into existence at all and valuable capital and resources will continue to be locked into inefficient enterprises, only surviving due to tariffs, and not available to more efficient producers.

As a side note, Asian producers aren’t the ones putting American firms out of business – it’s the American people. The American people are the ones deciding with their dollars that they prefer the Asian products over American products.

For a much longer debunking of common protectionist myths see Tom DiLorenzo.

Also see Hazlitt, Block, and Rothbard.

The Smoot-Hawley Tariff

One reason there has been an increase in support for protectionism recently is the recession. Unemployment is high and we’re importing from foreign countries and the protectionists come to the conclusion that it is this importing that is causing higher unemployment. The politicians love this and enjoy reinforcing this theory because it shifts blame away from the government, who is responsible for the severity and prolonging of the recession, and onto foreigners. The final resort of government – BLAME FOREIGNERS!

The protectionists believe that if we impose and raise tariffs on foreign goods our economy will strengthen and employment will improve.

Well, this theory has been put into action before and every time the results are disastrous. The best example of this would be the Smoot-Hawley Tariff.

In 1930, President Hoover signed into law the Smoot-Hawley Tariff. Before he did so, over a thousand economists signed a protest letter urging him not to. Hoover did this because he thought it would help America out during the depression and strengthen the economy – exactly what the protectionists today are saying we should do.

This law increased tariff rates on over 800 different goods. The average tariff rate sky rocketed to 59%, the highest tariff rate in the American history at that point. Just imagine what that must have done to the standard of living in America to have an average tariff rate of nearly 60% imposed on 800 separate items.

Immediately trade wars broke out and twelve countries retaliated. Spain basically banned the importing of American automobiles. Switzerland completely boycotted all American exports. Canada raised tariffs on 125 American exports. Within three years the seventy-five most active trading countries experienced an 83% reduction in trade-a complete meltdown in world commerce. The United States suffered most with exports declining by 53% by 1932. The depression got worse.

(Also see Rothbard on the tariff here)

Free Trade Deters War

Free trade is the road to peace. Countries that trade with other countries, plug themselves into the international division of labor, depend on other countries, and have other countries depend on them are less likely to fight with each other. It would be economically ruinous for them to do so. Even the country that “wins” would be devastated. I don’t get in fights with my boss and he doesn’t get in fights with me because then I lose a job and he loses an employee. It is in both of our interests to get along, even if we hate each other.

So not only would free trade make us more prosperous, but if we had more of it, it would further deter these multi-trillion dollar wars and greatly reduce the amount of taxes we have to pay. I’ll take a trillion dollar tax-cut, free trade, less war, and less foreigners being murdered; the protectionists can have their tariffs, keep paying income taxes to fund never ending wars, and keep burying the troops.

For much better elaborations on the relationship between capitalism and peace, see Mises (here and here) and Bastiat.

An Examination of Gary Johnson

2010-11-28T10:13:00.002-05:00

By Austin White

Written sometime in mid November

Because it is highly likely that former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson will be running for the presidency soon I feel it necessary to provide libertarians with an in-depth examination of where Johnson stands on key libertarian issues. Johnson recently visited the Orange County, FL Campaign for Liberty group, where I taped his speech and the following Q&A session. I also had a chance to speak with him when he came to the Orlando Nullify Now! conference. He is very nice, humble, and appears to have successfully retained his full humanity after leaving political office.

One thing, as of yet, that has the libertarian movement curious is whether or not these plans will be altered should Ron Paul decide to run again. Johnson stated in a September interview with Alex Jones that if Ron Paul asked him to be his VP, should Paul run against the presidency again, Johnson would accept. Johnson stated during his recent visit with the Campaign for Liberty group that if could not run in 2012 he would endorse Ron Paul. Johnson was also a speaker at Rally for the Republic (back when CFL events were only cool; not like now where they are super cool).

Although I have recently, thanks to Hoppe, accepted the fact that no good will ever come from the political process , have finally kicked my voting habit, and I now consider advocacy of massive, decentralized secession to be a moderate view, I can’t deny that I am a little excited about Gary Johnson. If Ron Paul does not run, I consider Johnson to be the best substitute at the moment. He is certainly more radical than Rand Paul, Bob Barr, War Allen Root, and any “tea party” candidate I’ve seen. He has even criticized the newly elected tea party candidates for only “nibbling around the edges” of the federal government.

Foreign Policy: D-

Johnson advocates an immediate withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan and was against invading Iraq from the start. He acknowledges that we can’t afford the empire and believes it is not the proper role of the U.S. government to be the world’s sheriff. He opposes foreign aid, but does support (entangling?) military alliances. Johnson sticks to the utilitarian America First! arguments that our foreign policy is costly and bad for America, shying away from the moral argument, the most important argument, that killing innocent people is wrong and killing a lot of innocent people is really wrong. I can let that slide though. Surely the moral argument is politically unfeasible or something like that. The approval of military alliances brought him from a grade of A to a B.

Where does the D- come from?

Although Johnson rejects the idea of American exceptionalism and that “we” should police the world, he simultaneously and explicitly rejects the idea of non-interventionism, supports “surgical” preemptive strikes, and does still believe that America should go abroad in search of atrocities to end. Johnson makes clear that he is an interventionist, but that he would be a much smarter interventionist.

Some may say that I am being far too critical, but once military interventionism and preemptive strikes are accepted even a little bit the flood gates are open and anything goes. The proper role of the U.S. military, if we are to have one, is to defend the property of Americans and that is it; to repel actual threats that constitute blatant acts of aggression on the U.S. If the military leaves U.S. soil it can no longer be called defensive.

Johnson believe that what “we” should have done with Iraq was use “our” surveillance capabilities to monitor Iraq and if/when Saddam rolled out the WMDs “we” should have simply done a quick surgical strike and stopped it right there. While that is certainly preferable to invasion/occupation, interventionist it is. Does the U.S. government have the right to forcefully disarm other sovereign countries that have not attacked America? I say no. Especially considering the fact that the U.S. president has the capability to nuke the entire world ten times over and the U.S. government is the only government in the history of the world to use WMDs against innocent people.

A friend of mine asked Johnson, see this video, why he rejects non-interventionism. Johnson’s reply was that he believes the U.S. military should be the brave kid on the playground who defends the weak from the big bully. He says that the U.S. should not sit idly by as genocide occurs somewhere in the world. So when push comes to shove Johnson seems to favor the foreign policy of Bush and Obama– it just has to be carried out by someone smarter.

The problems with this argument are that the U.S. government: starts more wars than it prevents; it kills more people than it saves; it is the metaphorical bully Johnson speaks of; it caused more harm in the previous century than any other regime in the history of the world; and whenever the worst genocides occur the U.S. government has a track record of doing absolutely nothing, but expecting us to keep supporting future wars with the excuse that “we” are ending atrocities.

What Johnson should say is: the proper role of “our” military is to defend America. Period. If you want to go help some country across the ocean throw off an oppressive leader, then you personally do something about it and leave tax dollars out of it.

The notion that military interventionism is good as long as it is done “smart” is best summed up by Jim Powell: “…nobody seemed to consider that an interventionist foreign policy is more complicated to mange. One never knows how different people might react to interventions, so there are more likely to be unintended consequences. Such a policy requires people with considerable knowledge and the ability to anticipate developments and make sound judgments. Nobody has figured out a way to assure that an interventionist foreign policy will ever be managed by such people.”

Of course, all proponents of military interventionism must arrogantly believe that they are one of those people or else they wouldn’t be advocating such a foreign policy.

The Fed: C+

During the Q&A portion of his visit with Orange County CFL, he was asked multiple times about what he would do about the Fed.

Johnson will talk about the Fed. He opposes it. He opposes what it is doing. He supports an audit. He says he would sign a bill abolishing the Fed. He speaks favorably on the idea of having competing currencies. A+ so far…

…but, he says it will never happen or won’t happen anytime soon so it is basically a non-issue.

His campaign brochures state that he wants to reign in the Fed, but when asked about his strategy to accomplish this he gave the very unsatisfying answer that the Fed simply needs to stop printing so much money. No kidding.

Gary, if you want to have any clout with the rising Rothbardian libertarian movement you need to look deep within yourself and find your END THE FED! attitude. This will raise your grade from a C to an A.

The War on Drugs: D+

Also known as the war on self-ownership and the war on the natural right of individuals to do whatever peaceful, non-violent act they want.

Johnson is surely taking a position on the drug war that may leave many conservatives shocked and Johnson’s position on drug legalization is more radical than the overwhelming majority of politicians. However, I can only give him a D because he doesn’t actually want to legalize any drugs. The furthest he is willing to go is decriminalizing marijuana (along with the whole “we can tax and regulate!” pitch). He clearly states in his campaign literature that he does not advocate the legalization of harder drugs. On marijuana, he simply wants the substance treated like alcohol – which means that individuals can only purchase it if they agree to pay some tax, individuals can’t consume it before driving, individuals can’t consume it until they’ve reached some arbitrary, government-established age limit, etc.

It is a big misconception in America that alcohol is legal. It is legal for some people, in some places, at some times, and only if you agree to pay the taxes on it. At the most, alcohol is kind of legal in America.

In spite of the fact that Johnson acknowledges that the majority of drug problems are caused by prohibition, he believes only a slow, gradual legalization of drugs is the answer – because of political feasibility or something like that.

See Laurence Vance on the moral case for drug freedom.

Education: A+

Johnson advocates a complete abolition of the Department of Education. He doesn’t want to reform or downsize it. He wants it gone and then the battle against government schools will be brought down to the state level.

Although as governor, Johnson was a proponent of vouchers –he agrees with the end goal of education being entirely left to the market.

Healthcare: A+

Johnson opposes both the Republican and Democratic parties’ interventions in the healthcare market. He seems to favor abolishing the majority, if not all, barriers to entry in the healthcare market. He wants the market unrestricted to allow for as much competition and specialization as possible. He favors the pre-WWII pay-as-go system (or lack of system) that the majority of people don’t even know once existed.

In short, his answer to fix healthcare is to get government out of it and simply let the forces of the market do their thing.

TSA: A+

Johnson says get rid of the monstrosity and let the airlines handle security.

Immigration: N/A

Johnson takes a moderate view saying that he approves of work visas and making them easier to acquire. His solution to the problem of immigrants feeding off of the welfare-state is to get rid of the welfare-state (whether or not he would do that first he does not say). He also points out that welfare-parasitism among Americans is as bad as or worse than among illegal immigrants.

I don’t believe libertarians have settled the issue (see here and here). It would have been an A+ if Johnson had said that all property should be privatized/denationalized, which both libertarian sides of the debate can probably agree on, but I don’t think he said anything on the issue that I can fervently disagree with.

Abortion: N/A

Once again I believe this to be an unsettled debate (see Vance and Block), therefore I can’t comment on whether or not Johnson’s approach is libertarian or not.

He says the federal government should have no say on the matter and that it should be a state issue; the same stance Ron Paul took. If you can’t decide on the issue I say localize and decentralize it.

*********

That is my anarcho-libertarian two cents are your platform, Gary. You’re certainly on the right track and the only plank that I can fundamentally criticize is your support of military interventionism. 99% of other politicians would most likely get straight F's.

Do Gays Have the Right to Join the Military?

2010-11-27T11:48:00.004-05:00

Written October 23, 2010

By Austin White

Most on the left, and even some libertarians, portray the movement to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” as freedom fighters trying to end a gross injustice. It is astounding how many people who consider themselves anti-war and pro-peace can be turned into militarist warmongers when the topic of gays in the military comes up. “Dammit! My Aunt Richard has as much of right to bomb Muslims as straight soldiers do! Live free or die!”

If only Bill Hicks were still alive to set these people straight.

Gays who are lobbying to lift the ban on homosexuals in the military are really just trying to obtain for their collective group special privileges from Leviathan to bomb, invade, and occupy other countries while getting a sweet tax-funded salary and college education. They are not lobbying for the right to defend Americans’ freedoms. The military doesn’t do that anymore. Smedley Butler blew the whistle on this fact seventy-five years ago. The military doesn’t defend our freedoms; it suppresses the freedoms and undermines the sovereignty of other peoples in other countries. Our offense apparatus doesn’t defend and uphold the Constitution; just about everything it now does is in violation of it.

Gay individuals fighting to join the military really just want to get in on some of this empire maintenance the central state has going on. They want the magical uniforms, medals, and cool combinations of letters next to their name that elevate them above the rest of society. They want to be part of that sacred cow known as “the troops” that no one is allowed to criticize. They want to get the pro-troop discounts when they go out to eat.

And don’t forget the free stuff. The military is a shining bastion of welfare-statism. Soldiers are provided with everything and all at the expense of other, more productive, people who have been the victims of extortion by government. It’s a socialist paradise where the paternal state provides troops with food, clothing, shelter, education, healthcare, and a salary to top it all off. Gays fighting for the privilege to join the military are not only fighting for the right to warmonger, but they’re also your common welfare parasite, like any government employee, trying to get a chunk of the plunder while the getting’s good.

Why the pro-war right is vehemently against repealing DADT is a great mystery. Here we have people who want to join in the empire building so much that they are willing to protest for the privilege to do so when the warfare-state tells them they can’t join. The pro-war, pro-empire, nationalist, American-exceptionalist gays seem to be just what the warfare-state needs.

Libertarians would do more for the future of liberty, peace, and prosperity if they dropped the Goldwater quotes about only needing to be able to shoot straight, abandoned any missions to repeal DADT, and instead adopted the message “Don’t join. Don’t join. Nobody join the military.”

Gays do not have the right to join the military. Neither does anyone else. Soldiers, like all government employees, are the recipients of stolen money. Taxpayer A never signed a contract agreeing to give the government X amount of his paycheck so the government can distribute the amount among soldiers B, C, and D in return for defense service Y that will probably increase taxpayer A’s chance of being a blowback victim.

To all openly gay people demanding to be allowed in the military, and to all straights considering enlistment: join a militia if you’re really concerned about defending your loved ones’ liberties. Don’t join the central government; the institution most responsible for the suppression of liberty.

Postponing Adulthood

2010-11-27T11:33:00.002-05:00

Originally published 11/27/2010 in the Saturday edition of the Orlando Sentinel

By Austin White

On September 23, 2010, one of the first phases of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, also dysphemistically known as Obamacare, was implemented. Now that I am entering my twenties, I have taken much interest in section 2714 of the legislation that requires the healthcare providers of parents to extend coverage to their children until they reach the age of twenty-six; regardless of dependency; regardless of student status.

Many would say that I should be happy about this. I can get free healthcare for the next six years. I don’t even have to be going to school. I can even enjoy these benefits long after I’ve moved out. Or as the president says, I can put total focus on my career and future; no longer having to worry about the setbacks of a costly injury; no longer having to worry about going broke due to high monthly premiums.

But at what cost? In order for insurance companies to afford this, the price of healthcare for others will have to be increased. This increase in premiums can be concealed to an extent. People who have employer-provided health insurance will experience slower wage increases; some may experience pay cuts. Business owners may try to cover these increased costs by reducing the expenses of other production costs. In other words, they may be forced to cut corners and dilute the quality of their goods and services.

Someone will have to eat these costs, no one will want to, and the costs will be shifted onto the least expecting. At this point, ten different people will give ten different answers for who is to blame.

The government is trying to improve my life; I get it. However, it is being done at the expense of others. I feel like apologizing to every person I encounter today. In one way or another, everyone will eat these costs.

Will my life really be improved by this? In the short-term, maybe. As for the long-term, the president, however well-meaning, is taking away my incentives to be a productive, mature person. He is postponing my adulthood. Under section 2714, I will still be considered a child for the next six years. The moral hazard will be unavoidable, no matter how aware I am of it, and my behavior will be altered. The existence of this policy and knowing that I can continue mooching off of my parents’ healthcare will make me less likely to stay in school and it will reduce my incentive to provide for myself. To what degrees I don’t know, but I do know my adulthood is being postponed and that I will remain a child longer than I would have without section 2714.

My concerns swell when I read that some 2.4 million people around my age will also be affected by section 2714. What will this mean for America’s future if the members of my generation will be more likely to drop out of college, knowing that they can still get free healthcare? What will the future look like if the members of my generation, up into their late twenties, have a reduced incentive to provide for themselves and an increased incentive to be dependent on their parents and a paternal government?

In a period where America is continually losing its comparative advantages in the world market, in a period where much of the world seems to be pursuing the American dream as America abandons it, should we really be removing young people of the motivations to be responsible and prosperous?

Fire and Jail Officer Travis Lamont

2010-11-27T11:11:00.000-05:00

This article was originally publsihed October 20, 2010 at orlandocopwatch.com

On the night of September 18th, 2010, the Orlando Police Department received numerous 911 calls from witnesses appalled that they had just watched Orlando police officer Travis Lamont slam a frail, elderly man onto the pavement head-first and so hard that Daniel Daley’s neck was broken.

The injuries were so severe that Daley required immediate surgery. Doctors told Greg Daley, son, that this injury kills nine of ten people upon impact.

For over a month now, Daniel Daley has been lying in a hospital bed in and out of medically induced comas and receiving additional surgeries.

This all started when Daley’s car was being towed outside of a downtown bar. There was a dispute over it and was the reason for the presence of Lamont.

The towing dispute was resolved and ended with Daley and Lamont making friendly conversation.

According to Orlando police chief Val Demings and Sgt. Barbara Jones, who were not there, Daley was uncontrollably violent, was attempting to strangle and punch Lamont, and putting Lamont’s life in serious jeopardy.

It is at this point that brave Travis Lamont heroically performed an “armbar” technique to slam the 84 year-old on the pavement head-first. Had Lamont not taken this action Daley surely would have killed him right there.

However, the only source for this seems to be Lamont himself.

According to the eyewitness accounts of bar owner Tim Scott, bartender Nicole Butler, and Sean Hill, Daley did no more than touch Lamont’s shoulder and was not acting violent at all.

“He [Daley] touched the police officer. This young police officer flips him [Daley] through the air on his face,” one angry 911 caller stated. “This is totally over the top.” “I want to meet with the mayor after watching that. That was incredible. Totally excessive.”

Greg Daley says his father has never been arrested in his entire life.

OPD originally tried to charge Daley with felonious assault of a police officer, but soon dropped the ridiculous charges.

After waiting a month for public outrage to die down, the Orlando police department issued a report clearing Lamont of any wrong doing. Police chief Demings says he acted appropriately and within department guidelines, even though she was not present at the incident.

The report does include statements from three witnesses, but makes no mention at all that two of them, Scott and Hill, are on record in news interviews expressing their anger over Lamont’s brutal take down and that they are on record saying Daley was acting calm and friendly. The other witness listed, Faith Palermo, was the one who called the tow truck. The report states that Palermo did not witness the take down, but she is on record in an Orlando Sentinel article expressing her disapproval of what happened that night.

The report also states that Lamont’s partner, Natasha Endrina, was sitting in the car during the entire ordeal between Lamont and Daley. If Lamont was at such a great risk of being battered why wasn’t his partner helping him?

Six other senior officials signed the report approving of the take down and neck breaking of 84 year-old Daley.

OPD’s October 15th report has set a dangerous precedent and the relationship between police and Orlando residents has been altered dramatically. OPD have now demonstrated that they will defend their officers no matter what. They have shown that they will engage in blatant deceit to protect their police from being punished. They are allowing Travis Lamont to keep his badge and patrol your neighborhood. A man who only a month ago, and for no good reason, broke the neck of a respected WWII veteran because the elderly man committed the heinous crime of touching the cop’s shoulder.

Call the OPD complaint desk at 321-235-5300 and demand that Lamont be fired and put behind bars immediately. Police are not above the law. They should be subjected to the same punishments that any other citizen would receive. The taxpayers are the employers and the police are the employees. It is about time that law enforcers be reminded of this fact. Imagine if Daniel Daley was your father or grandfather.
Lamont