Invade the Newspapers

 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

 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?

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 **** ******** Foreign Policy

By Austin White

January 9th, 2012

I consider **** ********* 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 *********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 ********* is heroically attempting to bring young people away from statism.

For one particular class, ********* 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  ********* 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.

********* 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 ********* 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?

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

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

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