Stop vb. , to arrest the progress of; to hinder; to impede; to cease
State n. , a gang of thieves writ large; a territorial monopolist of compulsion and ultimate decision-making (jurisdiction) which may engage in continual, institutionalized property rights violations and exploitation in the form of expropriation, taxation, and regulation of private property owners; the group within society that claims for itself the exclusive right to rule everyone under a special set of laws that permit it to do to others what everyone else is rightly prohibited from doing, namely aggressing against person and property.
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 worldanddaily 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.
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.
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
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 theftin 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 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 20th 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.
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.
This essay is basically just my raw notes and arguments that I used in a formal debate over protectionism in November 2010.
I
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 19th 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.
II
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.
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.
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.
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.
