I’m working on transferring this blog to this site. As you can see, it’s a total work in progress, but it shouldn’t look too much different from what you see here at good ole’ wordpress. On account of the fact that it’s being built using wordpress.

I’ve been throwing my spare time at reading lately, instead of blogging.  A list of my most recent reads, with a short description of the impression made upon me by each book:

Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon. Imprisonment of the vanguard.  A short novel about Stalin’s purges in the 1930’s.  Its drama is derived from the philosophical conflict between the instigators of the Russian revolution and those who imprisoned and shot them under the pretext of maintaining the revolution.  Recommended.

Lionel Trilling’s The Middle of the Journey.  Moral justification for defection of the vanguard. Another short novel.  An account of a fellow traveler coming to terms with the atrocities committed in the name of Soviet communism, and his close friends’ blindness to them.  (Stalin’s purges took the lives of Chambers’ Soviet contacts.)  Based in part on Trilling’s relationship with Whittaker Chambers.  Lionel Trilling was not Whittaker Chambers’ best friend, but he understood Chambers’ passionate communism and the moral passion that drove him away from communism and towards Christianity.  Not as strong a recommend as Darkness, but worth a read, and good if read in tandem with Darkness.  Try this essay by Cynthia Ozick to see if The Middle of the Journey is for you.

Essentials of Economics by Faustino Ballvé.  A short, to the point exposition on Misesian economics.  Self-recommending because it is short.  A nice companion to Hazlitt’s Economics in One Lesson.

W.M. Curtiss’ The Tariff Idea.  An eighty page pamphlet on protectionism.

A collection of essays by George Stigler called The Economist as Preacher.  A quote particularly relevant to the current climate change uproar, from an essay within entitled “Does Economics Have a Useful Past?”:

“As I understand Babbage’s main (unoriginal) contribution to the subject [the clique-ishness of scientific associations], it is the assertion that learned bodies are each run by a self-perpetuating inner clique.  I believe that this is true, and necessary to their survival.  Private property not only turns sand into gold but also committee meetings and journal editing into careers.  Babbage’s violent dissatisfaction with this state of affairs is reminiscent of Ambrose Bierce’s definition of the word incumbent: “A person of the liveliest interest to the outcumbents.”

Another collection of essays by a Nobel laureate economist, this one by Ronald Coase: Essays on Economics and Economists. Most gratifying: “The Market for Goods and The Market for Ideas,” and both essays on Adam Smith.  Coase’s writing on Smith has convinced me to tackle An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations.  I should have done so long ago.  No time like the present.  Coase is a treasure in his own right. Highly recommended; Coase is charming and humorous and a terrific writer.

David Henderson’s The Joy of Freedom. Also highly recommended.  For those on the fence about their libertarianism, this is the book that will graciously help down.  It will convince you, through subtle argument and solid logic that more freedom and less government really is the solution to most, if not all, social problems.  It is written in an easy-going, friendly style.  If you’re not a libertarian but are curious about what it means to be one, this book will welcome you into the fold.  And if you strayed away from libertarianism it will welcome you back.  Reading this book was like talking to an old friend; it was comforting and reassuring.  Henderson walks through big issues such as the insolvency of Social Security, ending the draft, socialized medicine, free trade, taxes, the war on drugs.  And he walks through such territory with gentle confidence and ease.

And you can’t fight the war on drugs by tripping on salvia in your garden. (You have to sign in to access this link)

The title of this post is a profound insight taken from Tom Palmer’s talk on his book, Realizing Freedom: Libertarian Theory, History, and Practice. Here’s the video.

Palmer mentioned an important fact I in my supreme ignorance did not know: throughout history, champions of religious tolerance have in most cases been religious people and not atheists or agnostics.

Being free means not only having the freedom to do what one wishes but bearing the consequences of one’s actions as well.  And unfortunately for users of any drug, whether it’s caffeine, alcohol or THC, there are consequences to its use.  This is not a blanket condemnation; this is a statement of fact.  There are consequences to eating donuts, whether one, two or eighteen.  There are consequences to smoking marijuana and salvia too.  Remember, in a world of scarcity—the real world we live in—there are no solutions, just tradeoffs.

…but Charlotte Gore said it better.

David Davis

I just contented myself with this.

My recent exchange with Stephan Kinsella (see here, here, and here) got me to thinking about the semantics of thick libertarianism. Specifically, is “libertarianism” the right word for what I am talking about?

I think that political philosophy is broader than just the NAP and homesteading principle and their deductions; to put it into Aristotelian liberal terms, I think that preserving personal and social autonomy are important to political philosophy in addition to political autonomy. Granting that, however, does it make sense to call the whole “libertarianism”? I’m not sure.

Now, I’m not saying that my political philosophy isn’t libertarian; it most certainly is. Nor am I saying that I am not a thick libertarian; I think that various other values/norms are implied and entailed by libertarianism. I am just not sure that it is accurate to call the whole thing “libertarianism”, given that the word has been traditionally been used to refer to a position on the proper use of force. The same thing applies to other concerns as well; I don’t call my whole political philosophy “feminism” or “anti-racism” either, even though it is feminist and anti-racist.

So, what is the proper term? As of now, I am not sure. Geoff Plauche’s term, “Aristotelian liberalism”, is a close fit, but I take a more leftist view of things than he, and I also see my political philosophy as being more of a synthesis of classical liberalism and classical anarchism than purely liberal. No other term really seems to fit, or has already been taken (“autonomism”, for example). Perhaps “eudaimonist anarchist”? It is descriptive, but a little long…

This is an excellent video from a webseries called Justice. As described on its website:

Justice is one of the most popular courses in Harvard’s history. Now it’s your turn to take the same journey in moral reflection that has captivated more than 14,000 students, as Harvard opens its classroom to the world.

In this twelve part series, Sandel challenges us with difficult moral dilemmas and asks our opinion about the right thing to do. He then asks us to examine our answers in the light of new scenarios. The results are often surprising, revealing that important moral questions are never black and white.This course also addresses the hot topics of our day—affirmative action, same-sex marriage, patriotism and rights—and Sandel shows us that we can revisit familiar controversies with a fresh perspective.

I haven’t watched the others (in fact I’m still finishing up the one below, but I’ve watched enough to know I want to post it), but this one is a fairly good discussion of the philosophy of libertarianism. I have to agree with Julian Sanchez, it’s a good portrayal, but an awful lot is the professor taking down libertarian undergrads who don’t have the philosophical chops he does (in particular I really wished the libertarian defenders had simply acknowledged that yes, democracy is a bad thing).

That being said, it’s still worth watching and the world would be a far better place if this were a top watched program rather than Gossip Girl or whatever other idiotic show it is people are watching these days.

HT: Cato@Liberty

It’s 2nd December 2009, ans this place does not really feel any different from what it did on 30th November (2009.)

David Davis

The fact that the UK is no longer a Sovereign State, I mean.

Libertarians, these last 50 years, have spent too much time hailing the virtues of Sovereign Individuality, and Rand has much to be blamed for here.You just can’t go off and do a John Galt any more, however good it makes you feel to read about it, in a world where all the Statists have guns and satellites, and you have nothing except, possibly a candle if you are allowed the fat (meat-eating) and string (global rain forests) to make it. (And nothing to light it with, for Health and Safety.)

Simultaneously Libertarians have spent too little time thinking about the inevitably-partly-Statist environment under which we all have for now to operate.  Too much effort has been devoted, with the best of intentions, to suggesting via think-tanks lots of interesting and entirely logical ways of “increasing choice” while simultaneously negating the influence of The Enemy Class.

Since the Enemy Class is currently in charge, this will no longer do. It is a waste of effort, since (a) they won’t listen and (b) they’ll “surveille” and then take down names. Some protection of an at least slightly non-fully-statist environment ought to have been undertaken, such as the British Conservative and Unionist Party, as an example of something we’d have liked to take over and redirected to proper objectives.

Perhaps, in our trying to take over Conservative Movements here and there, we ought to have covertly hidden our neutrality towards things like Guns, Drugs, Homosexuality, low tax, Rock Music, fast cars, gender-equality and proper education, until we’d got proper control of whatever movement it was we were trying to subvert. Our Policy Position should have resembled The Daily Mail for as long as it was convenient to do so, and as we are all more sexy than 1,000 Paul Dacres and Melanie Phillipses, we would have wiped the floor: Obama would be begging under a Chicago flyover by now, if we had thus had our way.

The future of libertarianism as a mass philosophy, if one exists, lies not in think tanks: these have been, are and will be bright stars of reason and correctness for sure, but are increasingly designed to be surrounded by armed Endarkenment backed up by a comatose population, which has been first disarmed, then de-educated and de-mobilised, and finally starved on purpose all together for one objective.

The passing of the UK into history in its form as a Soveriegn State does not seem to matter to most people in any way much. There is still the Wireless Tele Vision, which broadcasts much the same material as on Monday: Non-Denominational-Community Winter Trees still appear in all shops, slightly earlier and slightly more expensive than usual: Cheryl Cole still has “nights out” while wearing various items of clothing: the Tele Vision News still broadcasts footage of a “house fire” in which a “mother and young children died while a man was seen running away”, accompanied by a grieving Chief Constable who “appeals for information” while stating that “_his thoughts are with_”.

Perhaps it does not really matter that this is happening, or even that it happens against the background of public apathy about big things and shallow voyeurism about tiny ones. Except that both these trends are driven by and happening in a State which has actively sought to being them about. It did this so it can refortify itself behind a more powerful wall of absolutism, the EU (or should I say the USE?) than would have existed if Lisbon hadn’t been able to happen.

In 2010, Libertarians ought to consider how best to help existing parties and statists tactically, who have the best chance of forming British governments which are specifically not this one: even if it means only a slowing of the drift towards slavery for now and not even a cessation of the drift. This is better than falling down a torrent.

If that does not work, then one day perhaps we have to consider the alternatives.

My humble blog post on why I’m a left-libertarian drew the attention of the always-insightful Stephan Kinsella, who replied to me here. He catches me in a couple of errors (one of these days I’m going to start proofreading), and gives a good case for his view. I’m going to reply to the points that I think are important to the thrust of my post.

Still, I loosely agree with him so far, though I don’t think in my 25 or so years as a libertarian that I have ever thought of libertarianism as “a movement of the Right”–or even as a “movement,” really, since I don’t think it’s the same as politics or activism. It’s a political philosophy. But I will concede I for a while did believe, and it’s commonly believed, that we have more in common with some on the right. But even from the beginning, from Nolan Chart days, I thought of it as orthogonal to both left and right.

What I meant was that libertarianism appears, in my eyes, to be seen as a philosophy or movement of the Right to many, both libertarian and otherwise. For example, the Cato Institute and Ludwig von Mises Institute are often included in lists of “right-wing think tanks”, and many libertarian positions, such as being anti-tax, are seen as being “extreme right”. On a personal note, many social liberal acquaintances of mine hold the same view; that libertarianism is an inherently conservative or rightist position. All of this is rather secondary, though.

The Left is those who are for “peace, justice, and prosperity”? But that’s what libertarians are for (see my discussion of almost exactly this on p. 50 of my Knowledge, Calculation, Conflict, and Law, reviewing one of Randy Barnett’s libertarian books). I don’t agree that “leftists” are for prosperity, to be honest; or even for justice, unless you contort it to refer to “social justice” which is a misnomer; nor are they really for peace, since they are all breaking a few eggs to make an omelet. But this is just a semantical game at this point. If you define “Left” be include those for peace, prosperity, and justice, then all libertarians are left-libertarians, and the term loses its distinguishing capacity.

Here, Kinsella does catch me in a mistake. In my original post, I conflated 2 senses of “left”; the original sense that emerged in 18th Century France, and the sense in which libertarian socialists and the revolutionary Left uses it. In the first, “left” referred to the classical liberal and socialist elements that were opposed to the Ancien Regime, and “right” referred to royalists and conservatives (this is the sense used by Rothbard in his excellent “Left and Right: The Prospects for Liberty”. In the second, “left” refers to an admittedly fuzzy group of values, a rough list of which would include opposition to patriarchy, racism, and economic exploitation, and an emphasis on mutual aid and working outside of electoral politics. I think that the 2 senses are ultimately related, but they are distinct.

I don’t think this changes the thrust of my argument, though. Using left in the first sense, I was trying to illustrate that libertarianism should be seen as a leftist philosophy; in the second, I am saying that libertarians should advocate leftist norms and values. I see modern day libertarianism and leftism (2nd sense, although I think that there is at least some to be learned from mainstream social liberalism, in addition to the radical leftists) as being 2 parts of a unified “Left” philosophy that were separated by historical accident, and I think that both libertarians and leftists have a lot to learn from each other.

Anyway, later on Wombatron speaks of “the ‘leftist’ values of anti-authoritarianism, mutuality, and equality”: Now this sounds more like it. But this is not the same at all as being in favor of peace and prosperity. To favor peace, prosperity, and justice all you have to favor is private property rights and free markets. They do not imply these leftist values. So I’m a left-libertarian if left-means peace, prosperity…. but that does not mean I am necessarily for mutuality and equality and anti-authority. I think these “values” are frankly incompatible with libertarianism, and with peace, prosperity, and justice. Prosperity requires a free market and freedom to engage in capitalist acts among consenting adults. This leads to inequality (remember Nozick’s Wilt Chamberlain inequality example). There is nothing wrong whatsoever with inequality. Now if they merely mean “equality before the law,” then this is trivial and collapses into justice; but this is not what they mean.

What I mean by “equality” (and I think I speak for most LLs here) is “equality of authority”, as expounded by Roderick T. Long in “Equality: The Unknown Ideal”.

Mutualism is also unlibertarian, in my view, as it supports the taking of property from valid owners by mere possessors (see my A Critique of Mutualist Occupancy).

I see mutualist and Lockean property rules as being on a spectrum of possibilities, rather than being mutually exclusive, but this argument has been had before, and isn’t essential to the discussion at hand.

As for anti-authoritarianism: the left is not anti-authoritarian; they flock to the state to use it to impose their authority on society, to pay for others’ healthcare, and so on.

The mainstream left is definitely statist, as well as the Marxists and other state-socialists. The same can’t be said of libertarian socialism or classical social anarchism; these philosophies are anti-authoritarian. Even if they aren’t entirely consistent in their views, the same can be said of many libertarians (say, Objectivists or minarchists).

And as for opposing natural authority: libertarianism does not compel this at all. If anything, the “thick” view would say that to have a thriving society we need natural authority, hierarchies, and so on–from families, respected thinkers and religious and business leaders, churches, culture, and so on–in the absence of the state (see, e.g., Hoppe’s Natural Elites, Intellectuals, and the State).

Here we are using 2 different senses of the word authority. In the way that Kinsella and Hoppe uses it, I would agree, although I think the idea of hereditary natural elites is flawed and a rightist deviation. I think this Bakunin quote is a good demonstration of this view:

Does it follow that I reject all authority? Far from me such a thought. In the matter of boots, I refer to the authority of the bootmaker; concerning houses, canals, or railroads, I consult that of the architect or the engineer. For such or such special knowledge I apply to such or such a savant. But I allow neither the bootmaker nor the architect nor the savant to impose his authority upon me. I listen to them freely and with all the respect merited by their intelligence, their character, their knowledge, reserving always my incontestable right of criticism and censure. I do not content myself with consulting a single authority in any special branch; I consult several; I compare their opinions, and choose that which seems to me the soundest. But I recognise no infallible authority, even in special questions; consequently, whatever respect I may have for the honesty and the sincerity of such or such an individual, I have no absolute faith in any person. Such a faith would be fatal to my reason, to my liberty, and even to the success of my undertakings; it would immediately transform me into a stupid slave, an instrument of the will and interests of others.

If I bow before the authority of the specialists and avow my readiness to follow, to a certain extent and as long as may seem to me necessary, their indications and even their directions, it is because their authority is imposed on me by no one, neither by men nor by God. Otherwise I would repel them with horror, and bid the devil take their counsels, their directions, and their services, certain that they would make me pay, by the loss of my liberty and self-respect, for such scraps of truth, wrapped in a multitude of lies, as they might give me.

I bow before the authority of special men because it is imposed on me by my own reason. I am conscious of my own inability to grasp, in all its detail, and positive development, any very large portion of human knowledge. The greatest intelligence would not be equal to a comprehension of the whole. Thence results, for science as well as for industry, the necessity of the division and association of labour. I receive and I give – such is human life. Each directs and is directed in his turn. Therefore there is no fixed and constant authority, but a continual exchange of mutual, temporary, and, above all, voluntary authority and subordination.

I have no problem with “authority” in this sense of the word. What I have a problem with is when authority is used in an elitist sense; when someone presumes to know how someone else should live their lives, without it being the person’s decision. This includes aggression, but also other forms of hierarchy and oppression, variously propped up by the state and/or irrational collectivism. In his dissertation, Geoffrey Plauche distinguishes between different forms of autonomy, all of which are constitutive of an individual’s flourishing. Political autonomy, which corresponds to the libertarian and classical liberal idea of “liberty” is one; social autonomy, the freedom from constraints imposed by others in ways other than the use or the threat of the use of force:

There are any number of social influences that can lead a person astray from the life
appropriate for him. Some social influences are more pervasive and powerful than others. Some
such influences are in and of themselves malignant, but others are for the most part neutral or
benign. Among the more malignant are certain sorts of behaviors and institutions that discourage
or actively seek to suppress rationality, individuality, self-responsibility, productivity, and other
virtues. Cultures that encourage unquestioning obedience to authority and subordination of the
individual to the collective are prime examples. Other problematic cultural institutions are
paternalism, racism, and sexism.

I take a more leftist view than Plauche, but my approach is essentially the same. Authority, even voluntary authority, is not necessarily a neutral thing.

To be honest I am not sure what this even means. I am not sure that anyone is or can be a “thin” libertarian; and thus it is a mystery what it adds to call yourself a “thick” libertarian. It seems to me to be nothing but stating trite and obvious things and giving it a label, as if this is some significant, systematic, rigorous new field of study. We are not “only” libertarians. Yeah. Yawn. We do not live in isolation. Check. Ideas of libertarianism are interrelated with other ideas. Duh. You know, there are relations between philosophy and mathematics, but they are still distinct disciplines. As far as I can tell, “thickism” just names the obvious, and then acts as if it’s more profound than it is

I agree that it is probably impossible to be a consistent thin libertarian; if I recall correctly, even Walter Block, its greatest exponent, has since backed off from the position. However, I think that it is still useful to talk about thick libertarianism, because the connections between liberty and other values is often not explored.

Well, any social norms that are not aggressive are, well, not aggressive, and do not violate rights. But you can imagine any number of possible societies and associated norms that would not be good “from the libertarian point of view”–say, one dominated by ignoramuses or (private) censorship–after all, libertarianism is based on ideas discerned by reason; most people who are libertarian would be stultified and not lead a good life in such a society. And we could not expect it to last long either, because liberty does require reason to be free to defend it. But this does not mean that libertarianism–the idea that aggression is unjustified–automatically says anything about any given set of cultural norms. Not that this is not a field worth studying: meta-libertarianism, or libertarians with outside or related interests, might well want to study not only want interpersonal force-related norms are justifiable, but what societal preconditions are necessary to preserve it or likely to accompany it, just as others might specialize in researching tactics and strategy–just as some lawyers specialize in knowing an area of law really well, while others study legal theory itself.

Here I disagree; I think that the social preconditions for a free society are an essential part of libertarianism. Perhaps we are just using libertarianism in different ways; while Kinsella is calling libertarianism a “political philosophy defined by our opposition to the use of aggression in social interaction”, I see it as being my complete political philosophy. We may even be using “political philosophy” in a different way: fundamentally, I think that politics is the joint pursuit of eudaimonia by equals (to use Plauche’s phrasing). Liberty is not my highest political value; flourishing is. Should this view be called “libertarianism”, then? I am not sure. It is definitely “libertarian”, though.

This is a problem I have with leftism: it uses vague, nonrigorous statements like this–which are okay as far as they go–and then builds on them as if they are rigorous, operationa, and profound. They are not. They are just fairly obvious, unenlightening observations. Sure, liberty is “fundamentally intertwined” with other “concerns”. I guess. My libertarianism is fundamentally intertwined with the concern of clear and concise communication, but maybe that’s just me. So if this statement is construed in a normal way, it doesn’t say that much, and once again, “thick” adds nothing since by this uncontroversial standard all libertarians are “thick.” What libertarian can deny that liberty (I assume he doesn’t mean liberty itself, but rather libertarian philsophy, or libertarians themselves?) is “fundamentally intertwined with other concerns”?

I think that thick libertarianism is a useful term because the intertwining of concerns isn’t always as obvious or trivial as the communication example Kinsella gives. It is not necessarily obvious that libertarians should also be feminists or anti-racists, for example, but upon further examination, one might indeed (and I do) conclude so.

I think what happens is we have a disagreement over what those concerns are. The leftists get frustrated that libertarians dismiss their incessant, vague complaining about “hierarchies” and so on, so they try to argue something like this: look, Mr. Libertarian, surely you don’t deny that we should, “qua libertarian,” hold “other values,” do you? Answer: “uh, no, I guess not–after all I think honesty is important; if I didn’t believe in honesty I would not be a libertarian.” Right. And you don’t like aggression do you? Because it’s wrong to push people around, right? “Uh, okayyy”. So, you see that we are really not about aggression, but we are “against pushing people around.” But there’s many ways to push people around, right? You don’t think it’s nice to be abusive to your employees, do you? Isn’t that pushing them around, hmm? Isn’t that liek aggression, then, really? So if you are a libertarian, you should be against bossing people around. Libertarianism is about so much more than just opposing mere crime, silly!

I think this is very slippery and disingenuous. Look, the leftists should argue like this, in my view. If they are talking to a libertarian, and you want to persuade him to oppose (in some moral sense?) a given institution like … wage slavery or “pushing people around” or whatever, just come up with a reason. Appeal to shared values. Analogize it to common libertarian ones. Fine. Try to find mutual shared values you are likely to (or even necessarily) hold by virtue of being a libertarian. There is nothing wrong with this. But it doesn’t require any goofy appeal to something officially labeled “thick libertarianism” (or “thick humanism”) or pretending that all these other things are “really part of” libertarianism. I might argue against some racism I detect in a the private views of a libertarian friend, say, by observing that racism is incompatible with individualism, fairness, decency, “due process,” whatever–some of which I know he holds because he pretty much has to hold them to be a libertarian. In other words: we are complex humans, with a variety of interactions, relationships, interests, activities, and values. And we interact with each other. Newsflash.

I think that Kinsella is essentially arguing the thick libertarian case for me, without calling it “thick libertarianism”. The values that he mentions (individualism, fairness, decency) are indeed essential to a successful free and just society, which I think should be of vast concern to libertarians qua libertarians. As Kinsella stated earlier, we don’t live a vacuum. Our political philosophy should not be disconnected from the rest of our lives, or from the real world. Charles Johnson argues at length the case for thick libertarianism, as well as distinguishing between different kinds of thickness, in Libertarianism Through Thick and Thin. Instead of quoting him, I will just refer anyone who wants to see a deeper and more rigorous case for thick libertarianism to him.

Well if justice is “more than” non-aggression, then we are talking about justice in a broader sense than justice in terms of rights. Now we are going with some idea of unfairness or immorality or wrongness, where aggression is just a subset of this. But libertarians have from time immemorial recognized that just because you have a right to do something, it does not mean you should do it or that it is moral to do it. This is implied by our view that the only way to violate rights is to use force. To try to blur this opens the door to the use of force against not only aggression, but other forms of “injustice” or unfairness. That is the statist view of things. Not the libertarian one.

I am talking about justice in a broader sense than in terms of rights. By justice, I mean the sum of the expressions of the virtue of justice, which is, roughly, given everyone what they are due, whether in a legal sense or a more personal moral sense. Now, rights are the only norms that can be backed by legitimate force. But that does not mean that other norms are not associated with justice.

If you want to argue against “patriarchy” and “being subject to the arbitrary whims of others” (whatever that means), you are going to have to do more than just assert that if you are for peace, you already favor these things. You need to carefully define these things, and offer coherent reasons for them. I think that’s what traditional leftists have tried to do, and they have failed–in part, because they mix these things in with statist-socialist means, so corrupt their message. I do not doubt that a libertarian, with clean politics, and with a better understanding of sound economics, can make a far more coherent argument for why decent people, and those interested in liberty, should be opposed to patriarchy etc. But just make it. Don’t be so frustrated by your failure to win adherents to leftism that you try to pretend that it’s all a built-in, natural part of libertarianism, to try to twist liberarians’ arms to make them come along.

I found this passage especially interesting. To a point, I agree. However, I see various other concerns as being logically implied by libertarianism. Similar to Hoppe’s claim that ideal argumentation implies that one is committed to a libertarian view of rights, on pain of contradiction, I think that libertarians are committed to opposition to forms of oppression other than aggression.

I think that Kinsella made some good points. But, I still think it is useful to talk about thick libertarianism, and that a libertarian qua libertarian should recognize that various norms and values that are thought of as “leftist” are essential to libertarianism.

I’ve recently restarted work on the Left-Libertarian FAQ, after a long hiatus. Anyone who wishes to contribute, or has suggestions for edits or editions, please contact me! Passages that sum up the various schools of thought (agorism, mutualism, etc.) are especially appreciated.

‘A Constitutional Counterfactual’, FreedomDemocrats, 1st December, 2009.

I’ve linked with this item from the FreedomDemocrats, a free market libertarian group within the US Democratic Party, because though it does not mention the Lisbon Treaty which amends the core treaties of the European Union, it is very relevant.  I’ve got quite a lot of detailed argument coming, so here is the big point up front.  The United States was founded through a process which makes the process of ratifying European Union treaties look like text book democratic fastidiousness, despite which the right-leaning element amongst opponents of European integration, which is the dominant element in the UK, tend to be hyper-enthusiasts for the United States as an example of liberty, constitutionalism and limited governments (things I’m rather supportive of myself).  That would be a model of federalism, instituted through considerably less fastidious means than those used by the EU political elite.

In addition it should be noted that the United States fought a Civil War to prevent the secession of the Confederate (southern) States of America.  I am sure a few Confederate enthusiasts can be found amongst the Eurosceptics, but not many.  No one can deny that the American Union was created by abrogating the Articles of Confederation in favour of the more centralising Constitution of the United State of America; and no can deny that this federal Union was re-founded, and strengthened by President Lincoln and the Republican Party of the time, in the blood and iron of a war fought to coerce the Confederacy to stay in the Union.

The methods employed in that war included a deliberate policy of the destruction of the property of southern whites, suspension of habeas corpus in the Union, and covertly sanctioned illegal violence against the anti-war press.  One could argue about how much of this was justifiable, but I would say the price was worth paying to the recreate the Union as a unified democracy freed of slavery, showing as Lincoln argued in the Gettysburg address that the government by the people, of the people, for the people, could succeed and endure.  That’s not an unusual argument, and its one shared by most Eurosceptics as well as Euro-federalists who give any thought to American history.

What is the ‘Eurosceptic ‘ criticism of the Lisbon Treaty? In part, that it is the rape of democracy, because only one country held a referendum to ratify it, Ireland, and that country held the referendum a second time, after a no vote on the first occasion.  In the language of the Eurosceptics, this was like a rapist who never accepts ‘no’ for an answer from a woman, and a form of totalitarian oppression equivalent to that prevailed in the USSR and its satellite states.  I’m not making this up, or exaggerating, this is the standard discourse.  Rapists do not request a second answer which might be the same as the first, they  use violence.  Totalitarian regimes do not hold a referendum a second time, they rig elections in the first place through falsifying results in an atmosphere of terror against opposition.

Even if we take the Eurosceptic language in its (rather rare) calmer moments, it makes accusations of lack of democracy which cannot be sustained.  It is the Eurofederalists who are arguing for more direct accountability of EU institutions to a European electorate, through increasing the power of the Parliament,  and maybe considering a directly elected head, and certainly a head selected through an open and competitive process in the Parliament.  The Eurosceptics oppose such ideas, fiercely, so reducing the EU more and more to a venue for intrinsically unaccountable diplomatic manoeuvres between states lacking a common democratic decision making body.

The second vote in Ireland was held in the context of assurances from the European Union and the Irish government that the claims made by treaty opponents about restricting Irish sovereignty, particularly with regard to military neutrality and the constitutional ban on abortion. were not at all true.  No one of any honesty and integrity whatsoever can deny the truth of those assurances and the misguided nature of contrary claims made by anti-Treaty campaigners.  Of course politics is a rough nasty business, and everyone tells lies, directly or implicitly.  Nevertheless, those who directly use obvious lies, or at least rely on their widespread circulation, cannot reasonably complain when a referendum is held a second time, to test whether the electorate will still vote No after some of the more blatant lies have been countered by official assurances, based on clear law.  The Irish people were very free to say no a second time, they did not.  The Irish government was very free to block the Treaty of Lisbon, it did not.  The Treaty was ratified in other countries through votes in freely elected parliaments in 27 of the world’s more solid democracies.  Each of these 27 parliaments was very free to derail the Treaty, none did.

All of these countries have experienced moments of change in national political and constitutional arrangements without a referendum, no one denies that these countries are democratic.  Of course a referendum can be appropriate in deciding on constitutional issues, but most established democracies in the world allow constitutional change without referendums.  A referendum is a tool of democracy, not the only aspect of democracy; and while a few Eurosceptics may be advocates of government by direct democracy, most are not, and no one has tried to argue that established democracies are not democracies, because at least part of their constitutional development took place without legitimation through referendum.

It must also be noted that while the Eurosceptics shriek about undemocratic repression, the Lisbon Treaty increases the power of the European Parliament in relation to the non-elected decision making elements of the European Union (Council of Ministers and the Commission).  That would be the kind of ‘totalitarianism’ that keeps transferring more and more powers to freely elected, multi-party bodies then.  A variety I had previously overlooked, and which Hannah Arendt, Albert Camus, and George Orwell carelessly ignored.

So back to the FreedomDemocrats.  Like many of the UK Eurosceptics, the FreedomDemocrats identify themselves as libertarians of a kind who advocate free markets.  There are other Eurosceptics, but the dominant tendency, such as the United Kingdom Independence Party and Daniel Hannan, a well known Conservative Member of the European Parliament (!), the current Big Man in Conservative Eurosceptic circles.  UKIP Libertarianism is the kind which favours reducing immigration, that would be the kind of libertarianism that reduces individual liberties to cross borders freely.  I would like to say that this kind of nonsense is unusual, but unfortunately it is all too normal for militant social conservatives to adopt the ‘libertarian’ label to mean freedom to be oppose rights for people they don’t like.  The point of the item I’ve linked to, is that the (federal)Constitution of the United States of America was adopted without  a popular vote, and that it is clear that a popular vote would have failed.  The only consultative vote that would have had any chance of succeeding would have been one restricted to the biggest property owners.  The FreedomDemocats like the idea of a history in which the Constitution was not ratified, which they think would have meant a number of regional confederacies lacking the power to violently expropriate Native Americans or create a militaristic interventionist superpower.

That brings up the whole question of the ‘libertarian’ (in the sense of individualist property owning and limited government principles) basis of the United States Constitution.  The idea that the Constitution is either a perfect libertarian document, or at least that the adoption of the Constitution was the nearest the United States has ever come to libertarian perfection and that is has been in constant decline since some later point at which it apparently started to move away from the Constitution, is rather prevalent amongst US libertarians, though particularly those who could best be described as conservative-libertarian fusionist, and who tend to think conservative and libertarian mean the same thing.

The FreedomDemocrats in this item, and others posted on their website, correctly insist that the US Constitution was designed by large property owners who wished to use political power to preserve an existing pattern of property distribution, including ownership of slaves, and the freedom to increase property by violating the rights of Native Americans, along with various trade, tax and monetary rules designed to give their property a privileged status.  The FreedomDemocrats lean towards minarchism (a state that does nothing but uphold the right to life and property rights in a purely neutral way), and even outright anarchism.  I cannot go along with them on that, partly because I think what they say in a critical way about the US Constitution is really inevitable, in some form, to stabilise and legitimise the state body that is necessary to uphold law.  A feasible libertarianism can only try to make the trades of self-interests around the constitution and around state policy, as balanced and as genuinely beneficial to the common good as is possible.

The other tendency in libertarian thought, to make the Constitution a quasi-religious document is just bad for liberty, bad for legal thinking, and bad for critical rational thought, for reasons I cannot explain in this already long post.  But returning to the right-wing UK Eurosceptics, they cannot both: commend a US Constitution adopted with no referendum and designed to be very difficult to amend; and condemn the European Union for a process of progressive integration through Treaties, all ratified by representative assemblies elected by popular vote.  The Treaties have been ratified by the unanimous agreement of all parliamentary bodies in all member states.  It is difficult to reverse these treaties, but that is because the requirement of unanimity goes both ways.  It would be good to see easier means of amending treaties, or even rejecting them at a later date. but that would only be possible if the ratification became easier in the first place.

Suppose that you were in charge of a school district and you were given the responsibility of making the students healthier.  Thus, you have a few options:

1. Take away all of the candy and soda from the vending machines.
2. Serve the desserts in the lunch line first instead of last.
3. Make the students eat in the cafeteria instead of an off-campus period during lunch hour.
4. Close the vending machines down during the lunch hour.
5. Make a separate dessert line from the regular lunch line.

Now with these options, let’s say these have been the respective responses:

1. From option 1, the students complain and no one is happy.
2. From option 2, kids eat the dessert first, which went against your plan.
3. From option 3, some students complain, but it may force others to prepare a lunch at home, which might upset some already busy parents and the already stressed students.
4. From option 4, the students may complain because those are the peak hours of getting food.  Plus, the school might lose some money because no one is buying food from these vending machines.
5. From option 5, there may be some inconvenience, but surprisingly, the kids get healthier.

Now this isn’t just some thought experiment.  You really do these five options in five different schools and collect the data and you discover that option 5 is the most practical choice without losing a huge benefit.  Thus, you “nudged” the kids into eating healthy.  But why the word “nudge”?  The authors claim that they are for a new term that goes with nudging: libertarian paternalism.  We often think that just maximizing choices is the best option.  However, the more choices one has, it just makes things more confusing and it could make things worse.  Thus, there should be a choice architecture where you’re nudged toward a certain route.

Notice that you’re not forcing the kids to not eat dessert in option 5.  The students can still eat dessert if they wish.  There is no separate cost, it still comes with the meal.  But perhaps the students don’t want to get into a second line for some reason.  And this makes the students healthier.  Thus, the choice is still open (hence the libertarian portion), but you have nudged them into not getting that dessert (hence the paternalism portion).  Basically, this is what the book is about.  It’s about building up a choice apparatus to nudge the people around you into the optimal choice even though there are other choices around.  You can think of it like putting candy at the cash register instead of fresh fruit.  By putting candy there, you have a choice of getting that candy or not, but the store is nudging you into getting that candy.

Now that we’ve got the concept: let’s apply this to finances, schools, health, and marriages.

Finances

When it comes to saving money for retirement, stocks, school loans, social security, etc. there are many options on what to do.  Unfortunately, most people just pick the default option (which is basically don’t do anything).  The authors recommend that the default option should be something else.  For example, when it comes to 401(k) plans, you have to fill out a form just to get that started.  But what if you automatically get the plan, and if you don’t want the plan, all you have to do is put a check mark next to the question “Check here if you don’t the company retirement plan” or something like that on your application form?  It gives advice on employers and businesses to nudge people to a certain choice.  It doesn’t really apply to me because I work in the public sector, but surely this advice would be beneficial to governmental jobs and the government should use this.

With stocks, never invest all of your paycheck into the company that you work for.  Enron is an example of that going wrong.  Don’t put all of your eggs in one basket in other words.  However, you should put the same amount of eggs into different baskets.

Health

At this point, I think you’re getting the idea: if you give people too many choices, they have no idea how to begin because there’s no guide on what to choose.  Thus, you must give them some nudges and design a choice architecture to make them have good choices.

The authors begin with Medicare.  President Bush proposed Plan D which literally gave seniors over 100 plans.  That’s a lot!  Even the experts in these fields were confused on the differing plans.  Thus, many seniors didn’t sign up and they got the default plan, which was basically one assigned at random.  The authors propose that the default shouldn’t be chosen at random, but an intellectual assessment so that the plan works best for each person.  They give other ideas too but I won’t go into details here.

With organ donations, they get into some controversy here.  The default has always been thus: You’re not an organ donor unless you specify that you want to be one.  The authors suggest to change the default: You are an organ donor unless you specify that you don’t want to be one.  They’ve done studies and organ donations increased about 80%.  This would save lives.

In terms of environmental concerns, they think the cap-and-trade is good in principle, but it goes against the idea of libertarian principles.  Thus, the bring up the whole idea of taxes.  For taxes, it’s an incentive to not do a certain activity.  They suggest to put a tax on gas.  This will create an incentive consumers not to use gas that much or else buy a hybrid.  At the same time, this will create an incentive to automobile makers to make more fuel-efficient cars.

They also suggest to create a Toxic Release Inventory which means that companies must report to the government what hazardous chemicals they are using.  This is released online.  With this, each company gets a grade but you still choose in buying those products.  For example, there are grades with meat: Grade A choice cut steak, or Grade A.  The former is better, but you can still choose to buy the latter if you want.  The same should be done with companies that produce pollution: give them grades.  With cars, the authors suggest putting a sticker on each car to show how economic the mpg that vehicle is.  Thus, you can see clearly how fuel efficient the car is, but you can still choose to buy a Hummer if you want.  There were other creative nudges as well that you should check out.

Freedom

We start off with education.  The authors are for vouchers, but with a revised stipulation.  They suggest that the parents puts their children on a list of the schools of their choice.  With this, it requires them to research the many schools around their area.  Also, the law could possibly be changed so that one cannot graduate from high school unless one submits an application to a college, even a community college.  An experiment was done in Texas.  The enrollment (and not just the application process) of a community college went up 45% in one year.  That’s pretty impressive.

With health care, they have a simple, yet interesting rule that I’m still thinking about: you should have the option to waive your right to sue.  The reason why health care is so expensive is because most of the premiums are going toward malpractice suits.  But if you waive your right to sue, then your insurance will be much cheaper.  Now this doesn’t have to be all-or-nothing deal.  If you’re going to get a major operation, you’d probably want to pay the full premium.  If you going to just get your cheek swabbed, you’d probably want to waive your right to sue.  Thus, insurance would be much cheaper.

When it comes to marriage, it should be privatized.  Thus, if you want to get married, you must follow the rules of the religion or institution.  If you want the legal benefits, then you must go to the courthouse and get that figured out.  It doesn’t matter if you’re gay or not.  Thus, marriage can be private, and the legal benefits are public.  On a side note, I have to say that this is a good solution.  Think about this: how would you feel about the government getting involved in your baptism, your temple recommend, your Catechism, or your Bar Mitzvah?  You don’t like it huh?  So why do you like the government getting involved in something as personal and private as a marriage?  That doesn’t make any sense.  Therefore, the government should get out of marriages altogether.  They shouldn’t be in the business of handing out marriage licenses.  Only private institutions should do that.

In the end, the authors conclude with some objections and their replies to them.  I thought the objections were very weak.

If anyone knows me, I can’t stand economics.  So if I like a book about economics, that’s really saying something.  This book was great.  It really trains your thinking into “we must change the default position for the better” perspective.  Overall, it won’t affect me.  However, I believe everyone in government and business should read this.  More than that, it should be required reading in political science, business, and economics classes in college.  I can’t recommend this enough.  It’s a great, and fast read.  Plus the authors provide some humorous anecdotes as well.  Hopefully, this will take on instead of holding onto the tired ideologies of liberalism or conservativism.

You can check out their website here and possibly offer some nudges of your own to the authors.  Their blog also offers updated nudges on how to improve society.  Behavioral economics is awesome!

UPDATE: In their paperback expanded edition, they add another chapter of nudges that could be implemented are have already been implemented.  I’ll add some that really captured my eye:

• Limos for drunks.  Drunk driving is a problem.  That’s why a city in Michigan has a company where the drunk can rent a limo for $20.  It’s fairly cheaper than a taxi (sometimes) and it makes you look classy.  They tried this and drunk driving went down 34%.
• Showing calories in Chain Restaurants.  New York made it a law where chain restaurants had to show how much calories their food items were on the menu.  Thus, you can still choose to eat the food, but you’re nudged into not eating it.
• Recycling.  A company in CA has made people in a certain neighborhood aware of their recycling habits.  When you receive the bill, it shows how much you’re recycling compared to everyone else in the neighborhood.  It turns out that the reason you recycle is because everyone else does too.
• Putting a sticker in a urinal.  Men usually don’t aim when they pee and so they make many messes, which causes more clean up, which means more usage of hazardous chemicals, etc.  By putting a sticker inside the urinal, the men have something to aim at and it makes the clean-up much easier.  They’ve tried this in a lot of countries and the results are amazing: the cleanup is less in ALL of those countries.

What can I say?  Nudging is awesome.  It has seriously influenced my way of thinking.

The Left, it seems, is getting quite a hangover from their Il Duce, President Obama. What can one howl to the Left? “We told you so?” But voting for those free goodies, and punishing high income producers, was worth getting a lot more folk killed in Afghanistan to them, and now they are wringing their hands in anguish, but still saying that they voted right, even though they voted for death and warmongering. If those people had voted for Ron Paul or Bob Barr, the troops would all be home by now, and the burden could have fallen on the wealthy Saudis and Gulf Arabs or whomever in the region felt threatened by the religionous Fascists of the Taliban. The Taliban are Miscreants, but America or a NATO coalition can never defeat them on the ground, without incurring massive civilian casualties and refugee misery that no American or Englishman would tolerate in their “Homelands”, especially when imposed by countries half-way around the world. Thanks Leftists for getting a whole bunch of women and children butchered; their blood is on your hands. Those of us who voted for Ron Paul and later Bob Barr would have saved many lives if we had succeeded. Those who voted for Obama have caused the deaths of many innocent civilians, and they must bear the weight of their guilt in their minds forevermore. Those who voted for McCain would probably have caused the same misery; perhaps even worse.

And the manifestations of  that hangover of the Left came clearly in two distinct missives, one paper, one shortwave.

Silverwolf happened to peruse an issue of the latest newsletter from Rural Organizing Project, a “progressive” Oregon non-profit which espouses the usual laundry list of demands: tax the rich and give free everything to everybody in the name of “Human Dignity”. The Human Rights violations in robbing someone through the tax system of what they have produced to give to those who have made no effort to produce never seems to occur to these folks, and in a sense what they want is the Power to be able to do this, more than the actual tax revenue. If you can tax someone 40 or 50%, well, then one day in an “emergency” you can tax them 90%, as they did in Britain and Truman’s America, or impose Eugene McCarthy’s idea for a 100% confiscation of one’s Estate upon death. Now that’s an idea that will really appeal to the followers of Robespierre: a financial guillotine for the talented people of the country so that the others can drink the lifeblood of the labour with which they filled up their days for forty or sixty years. The years of drudgery sustained by their victims are soon forgotten by the looters.

Anyway, the writer of the newsletter lamented the high hopes they’d had for Obama (you mean all those flipflops like saying he’d limit himself to public funding during the campaign if McCain would, and then backing out when it was more profitable for him to do so, his overthrow of Wisechief Jefferson’s “Wall of Separation between Church and State” by expanding Bush’s “Faith Based Initiative” garbage, his advocacy of mandatory Volunteering, which is involuntary servitude and paves the wave for another Draft in the Hitler-LBJ tradition, his calls for prolonged detention, overthrowing 700 years of Habeas Corpus, his kowtowing to some of the worlds leading Human Rights Violators, like the heads of Saudi Arabia and Totalitarian China, his vowing to end secret CIA prisons, and then permitting them in Afghanistan because they are under the Army Special Forces Division — all these contradictions didn’t make you skeptical? Can’t you tell a lying hypocrite when you see a lying hypocrite?) They’d been suckered by the rhetoric of peace and change — again. Seems to Silverwolf there is something seriously lacking in the political perceptions of these “progressives” who will regress us right back to the economic chaos of the Weimar Republic, and the inflation that made Hitler possible.

And no sign on the Left of a consciousness about how the Obama monetary policy, under Cardinal Timothy Geithner of the First Keynesian Church of Washington, causes inflation, leads to economic chaos, and just makes it more impossible for the poor to survive. Leftist policies cause inflation and inflation kills poor people — a lesson the Left has never learnt, or rather, doesn’t want to acknowledge because it would destroy their “raison d’etre”, their reason to be, and their reason to be is to wage economic warfare on Capitalists. That’s why they’d rather vote in a war under Obama than a Peace under Ron Paul.

Then came a missive by shortwave from the Stralasian “Land Down Under”. The well-known Radio Stralasian interviewer and semi-Leftist, Phillip Adams, (though he is Capitalist enough to own private property and raise cows, belching methane while he laments climate change and the opposition to carbon emissions schemes in Stralasia — also a fanatic when it comes to forcing every to get vaccinated, a most unLibertarian posture) interviewed Rabbi Michael Lerner, the (self-defined) Left-Progressive who edits Tikkun magazine. Now Lerner is one of those in the Jewish Community who is highly critical of Israel’s policies vis-a-vis the Palestinians, and who had high hopes for Obama. (Lerner’s debate with Alan Dershowitz, available on youtube,in which Dersh rips him to pieces in front of Paula Zahn, will give you a good appreciation of his views.) His disappointment in the President, expressed in the Adams interview, was palpable, and similar in tone to the R.O.P. Newsletter writer. Another Left-”Progressive” who voted in the Warmonger. More American lives lost, more Afghani lives lost, more U.S. debt piled on debt.

The Pathetic Left has no comprehension of the principles of true economics, and now the problems that Socialism and its ally, Keynesian Economics, bring eventually to every economy are hitting the people who think like the folks at R.O.P. And since they are economic illiterates and ignore the self-evident Truths of the Austrian School of Economics, they and their policies can never govern efficiently, but their rule only leads to more chaos and misery for the People of America.

And the Left has a vast blindspot where they cannot see that the values that they are trying to force upon everyone in the America Community are religious values, whose proper place is in the realm of the Church, and not the State or the Government. The Left has either forgotten or ignores the fact that the Jeffersonian Constitution is a Libertarian Document, perhaps THE Libertarian Document,  designed to protect the Individual from the arbitrary power of Government, the exact power that the Left wishes to impose, and needs to impose, to extract wealth from the producing class; but that Jeffersonian Constitution makes no Collectivist attempt to impose essentially Religious Values on the populace at large. These are in the realm of the Church, and there is nothing stopping these people from starting a church or civic group to implement their perceived religious values. Or rather, the only thing stopping them is the need to acquire private property and maintain their right to it — the exact thing they want to outlaw for the Capitalist-Libertarian.

Well, Silverwolf’s advice to the Left is: Get used to economic chaos and Warfare for the next three years, because that’s how long Obama’s term as President will last. Thanks for you gift to America.

Hooooooooooooooooooooooowwwwwwww! — Silverwolf

I am a left-libertarian. This is a position that seems contradictory to many, both libertarian and not; libertarianism is traditionally seen as being a movement of the Right, or even the farthest extreme of the Right, existing as an apologetic philosophy for corporatism and elitism. I believe that this is fundamentally mistaken. The Right, I think, is properly seen today as being the status quo of state-capitalism, dominated by an elite of bureaucrats and plutocrats, whose ends are power and authority at the expense of everyone else. Even modern day “liberals” and social democrats are rightist in this sense; merely reforming a fundamentally evil system is not enough, and the state-socialist means of compulsion and centralization contradict their declared “leftist” ends. Thus, the Left is properly conceived as being those whose ends are peace, justice, and prosperity, and whose means don’t conflict with those ends.

For libertarians reading this, it will probably help if I explain why I am a “thick” libertarian first, as opposed to “thin” libertarianism. Thin libertarianism is the position that politics is the ethics of the use of force; nothing more and nothing less. Political philosophy doesn’t and can’t have anything to say about society, other than that aggression is wrong. Any set of social and cultural norms is seen as being compatible with the political philosophy of liberty, as long as they are non-coercive. Thick libertarianism, on the other hand, is the position that liberty is fundamentally intertwined with other concerns. Politics is broader than statements about the permissible use of force, and justice is more than non-aggression. Note that left-libertarians are not the only thick libertarians; paleolibertarian conservatives and Objectivists also hold thick views on political philosophy.

I am a left-libertarian, because I am a thick libertarian who sees that the “leftist” values of anti-authoritarianism, mutuality, and equality are fundamentally entailed by the same principles that make me anti-statist. A society built on authority and hierarchy, where social evils such as patriarchy and xenophobia are widely accepted cultural norms, is not a just society, even if it is non-coercive. A just society is one where every individual’s flourishing is not subject to the arbitrary whims of others, one where people are not held back by society, but instead encouraged to become the best person that they can be.

New Libertarian Manifesto

Click it, save it, read it, live it, change the world, simple as that.

Not sure what the heck they’re talking about? visit Agorism.info for more, well, info.

But have no fear, this sexy blog is not forgotten! If any of y’all are personally familiar with me, you’ll know I’ve been really busy lately. But, while I may not have been blogging, you’ll be happy to know that I’ve been busy promoting liberty. I have begun broadcasting once a week from 10pm-12am on wednesday nights. I broadcast with rick caldwell, and you can listen at Ifaq.us we’ve got about 9 shows under our belts so far (we did an annex of our 8th show because of massive content overflow). So far it has been an exceptional expierence and has grown much more quickly than I would have expected. I’ve also registered Thenewactivist.org, although I have not yet fixed it up like it needs to be. (actually, right now, it’s a picture of a hot japanese girl and a bunch of random test pages).  But yeah, thats what I’ve been up to, and most of why I’ve been gone for so long.

In every good moral panic one needs a deviant group on which to blame the ills of the current moral (financial, political) crisis. Since moral panics seek to fix some broken part of society, it makes sense that a group of people is singled out to symbolize the ills associated with the crisis.

Since the late nineties (around the time of the last BMI revision in 1998), the number of news stories about the so-called “obesity epidemic” increased exponentially, reaching a fever pitch in 2004. Check out the timeline chart on the top of the Google News results for “obesity epidemic”:

Frequency of "obesity epidemic" in news stories from 1990 - 2009, via Google

(I can’t find the chart, but I think this somewhat parallels, oddly, the average BMI increase in that same time period, which topped off in 2004 or 2005)

A recent example of the creation of a deviant group to take the brunt of the latest healthism/healthcare panic is the assertion that cases of diabetes are going to keep rising, with a concomitant soaring of costs. (h/t Andy Jo)

Blaming rising healthcare costs on us fatties is one way of covering one’s ass when one isn’t willing to institute any meaningful healthcare reform, just new entitlements.

This is case-building: so that when people are pissed off that healthcare costs haven’t dropped under a new system of entitlements, they direct that anger at some deviant group, rather than where it belongs — at the philosophy of entitlement with its false utopian vision, and the proponents of that vision.

I’ve said it before, and will say it again. When you make your body the financial business of your neighbor, get ready for your neighbor claiming the right to have say over your body. In other words, making healthcare a public financial burden makes your body public business, and thus erodes the most fundamental right of living in a free society.

This is merely the tip of the iceberg, folks. The government takeover of healthcare hasn’t even passed in the Senate, yet, and there’s already talk of reigning in costs by discriminating against particular groups of people, in this case a popular deviant group of the Healthistic moral: fat people. Do you think it’s going to stop at higher taxes for fat people, if that isn’t bad enough? I predict it will not: forced interventions, children being taken away from their parents, fat people being practically barred from some kinds of  employment, and the ultimate loss of the freedom to pursue happiness in the confines of liberty will be the end result of this government takeover of healthcare. And it will start with fatties, but it won’t end with us, because we are not the source of all healthcare-related ills.

Stay tuned. It’s going to be one helluva ride.

W.H. Auden is probably my favorite poet, and the only poet I’ve read enough of that I feel like I could discuss seriously without feeling like a giant fraud. His poem “Law Like Love” is undoubtedly the best known among lawyers, for obvious reasons, and from a quick search, the poem seems to have been quoted in law review articles over 40 times. It says something about Auden that his other works are also quoted relatively often in legal academia, a community that, in general, does not pay all that much attention to poetry.

Auden’s appeal, for me, is that he embodies some strange brand of cynically ironic libertarianism. How else would you describe a line like “To be free/is often to be lonely”? Still, his libertarian streaks are often overlooked, as Auden is better known for his dabblings in Marxism. Two of his most famous poems were, technically, communist propaganda, but his later repudiation of them is telling. The poems were removed from his later collections for being “dishonest,” and, as Auden described it, “A dishonest poem is one which expresses, no matter how well, feelings or beliefs which its author never felt or entertained.”

Auden’s communism was not based in some economic theory, or in any desire for the state to control the machinery of civilization. In Auden’s view, communism’s appeal was that it provided a path to freedom from the oppressive coercion of the State. As he wrote in his poem “New Year Letter,”

“Who has ever met a poet (at least one who has had any success) for whom the real attraction of Communism did not lie in its premise that, under it, the state should wither away for others as it has already withered away for him?”

I’m pretty sure the idea of Auden-as-a-libertarian is not exactly widespread, but under the brand of textualist interpretation that Auden endorsed, I don’t think it’s an unfair characterization. His communism was motivated by much the same impulses that motivate libertarian ideology today, and he was unquestionably anti-totalitarian and pro-individual. His poem the “The Unknown Citizen” is my favorite of his commentary on the state verses the individual, and I wanted to share it here below. I always feel like it should be read alongside Epitath on a Tyrant, so go check that one out as well, it’s short.

As a side note, to carry on with my quest to show how every topic is, in some way, connected to international law, I’ll also mention that Auden translated the work of Dag Hammarskjöld, the second Secretary-General to the United Nations.

The Unknown Citizen

(To JS/07 M 378
This Marble Monument
Is Erected by the State)

He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be
One against whom there was no official complaint,
And all the reports on his conduct agree
That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a saint,
For in everything he did he served the Greater Community.
Except for the War till the day he retired
He worked in a factory and never got fired,
But satisfied his employers, Fudge Motors Inc.
Yet he wasn’t a scab or odd in his views,
For his Union reports that he paid his dues,
(Our report on his Union shows it was sound)
And our Social Psychology workers found
That he was popular with his mates and liked a drink.
The Press are convinced that he bought a paper every day
And that his reactions to advertisements were normal in every way.
Policies taken out in his name prove that he was fully insured,
And his Health-card shows he was once in hospital but left it cured.
Both Producers Research and High-Grade Living declare
He was fully sensible to the advantages of the Instalment Plan
And had everything necessary to the Modern Man,
A phonograph, a radio, a car and a frigidaire.
Our researchers into Public Opinion are content
That he held the proper opinions for the time of year;
When there was peace, he was for peace: when there was war, he went.
He was married and added five children to the population,
Which our Eugenist says was the right number for a parent of his generation.
And our teachers report that he never interfered with their education.
Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd:
Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.

W.H. Auden (1939)

-Susan

A brown paper envelope for the digital age, Wikileaks.org is now home to more than 1m documents that governments and big business would rather the public did not see. The site – similar to Wikipedia in style, but otherwise independent of it – serves as an uncensorable and untraceable depository for the truth, able to publish documents that the courts may prevent newspapers and broadcasters from being able to touch. This month it has come of age in Britain, hosting the Minton report on the activities of oil trader Trafigura, even while the firm was trying to use its solicitors to prevent the press from revealing its contents. It was Wikileaks, too, that this week published a membership list of the British National party, revealing how few activists it has. Earlier this year, Lord Oakeshott, using parliamentary privilege, pointed those curious about Barclays’ tax activities to Wikileaks to read the evidence. Useful in Britain, it is invaluable in less free societies, such as China, where the authorities play a cat-and-mouse game with Wikileaks’ Swedish webhosts to try to block access. So far Wikileaks has stayed ahead, with technology leaving the law lagging behind. The site exists in a sort of legal limbo, not private, but not yet fully accepted by courts as part of the public domain. It takes power away from the powerful and hands it to citizens, controversial but essential example of what the web does best: offering unrestricted dispersal of information so that people can judge for themselves.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/oct/22/in-praise-of-wikileaks

IMHO
Wikileaks is another excellent example of Libertarianism working! Please feel FREE to check out what is happening in YOUR AREA that the government and big business and the MainStreamMedia Presstitutes DO NOT want YOU to KNOW!

PLEASE SPREAD THIS LINK!!

http://wikileaks.org/

For more on this topic please see my Libertarian vs Authoritarian Today’s REAL Politic blog. Its time to take the power back!

 http://cuthulan.wordpress.com/2009/11/04/libertarian-vs-authoritarian-todays-real-politic/

The Wiki phenomina has been a great benefit to all of humanity that can access it. It has been shown that the worst offenders for posting FALSE informations are the very authorities that claim its full of false information.

According to the BBC, WikiScanner found that some editorial contributions to Wikipedia had originated from computers operated by the Diebold company, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the Vatican.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiScanner

It has been shown that Wikipedia contains LESS factual errors per catagory than the encyclopedia Britanica,even with the Vatican and other world authoritarians filling it with LIES!

It is thanks to Wikileaks that the Trifigura gag order was by-passed and the public got to hear ,NOT just about the polution and corrupt business practices BUT also the effort put into covering these work practices up ,rather than CLEAN the practices up!

You can be very sure that YOUR POLITION will be doing everything he/she can to find away to CLOSE DOWN this ESSENTIAL SITE that ensures our very liberty at a time of global government DECIET AND CONSPIRACY!!! Wait for the effort to cast doubt on the reliablity of such sourses etc..etc.. This is the typical response , attack the messenger when you cannot attack the message!

For more on this topic please check these blogs.

http://cuthulan.wordpress.com/2009/10/12/us-government-making-a-killing-on-war/

http://cuthulan.wordpress.com/2009/10/05/us-government-terrorists-still-in-power-iran-contra-to-911/

http://cuthulan.wordpress.com/2009/09/22/the-fedbank-bailouts-and-fascist-coups-the-great-depressionnaziscommies-and-the-bush-family/

http://cuthulan.wordpress.com/2009/09/03/the-record-of-the-federal-reserve/

http://cuthulan.wordpress.com/2009/09/02/a-short-history-of-global-domination-or-rockefella-rothschild-and-the-capitalist-communist-nwo-con/

http://cuthulan.wordpress.com/2009/09/02/governments-traitors-terrorists-and-drug-dealers/

http://cuthulan.wordpress.com/2009/09/10/are-us-wars-in-iraq-and-afghanistan-well-intended-mistakes-what-we-now-know-from-the-evidence/

http://cuthulan.wordpress.com/2009/11/26/tony-blair-liar-and-traitor-and-eu-reject/

http://cuthulan.wordpress.com/2009/09/09/iranian-oil-bourse-the-real-reason-for-war-with-iran/

BUT I do have to give praise to the Guardian for running such an article in praise of an uncencored and uncontrolled  internet news site.

REMEMBER

THERE’S NO JUSTICE , THERE’S JUST US!!!

This guy is definitely highly educated and one smartarse.

I couldn’t possibly even go to UC Irvine, let alone write an argument like that.

So I don’t.

Oh… the angels serenade.

New Kind of Mind: The Difference Between Libertarianism and Anarchism:

I typically describe myself as a “libertarian anarchist.” People who don’t understand what either word means will essentially assume that I’m doubly insane. Libertarian is a more friendly word; anarchist is generally perceived to be hostile. Libertarians are usually considered fringe; anarchists are usually considered dangerous. Yet some people, especially people who are libertarian or anarchists, view the words as essentially the same thing. Analytically speaking, it seems there should be a distinction even if the situation likens itself in many cases to a square being a rectangle, but rectangle not necessarily being a square.

Libertarianism is an ethical doctrine. It is concerned with rights. Most commonly this right is referred to as the right to self ownership which includes the right to the product of your labor. For some (probably most) libertarians, this is essentially a faith based, though not necessarily theological, concept. It is taken on faith that men are imbued with this right through nature or that that these rights are implied by the nature of truth, knowledge, existence, reason, etc. What is ironic about this faith based libertarian concept is that it is widely accepted on face value by most participants in modern (classical) liberal societies. It is conservative (not as in American Conservatives, but as in historically organized society) culture that refutes the idea of self ownership by subjecting the behavior of the individual to the enforced law of the moral majority. However, the concept of self ownership is thoroughly ignored by most in society even while they champion it as the bedrock of their modern culture of tolerance. This is because most of society is conservative and Rightist as opposed to liberal and Leftist. This betrayal of self ownership is implied by the aggression of the government that is condoned by the populace. Even commonplace policy positions in support of a state single payer health care system or a central bank or drug prohibition demonstrate the contempt the populace shows to the individual who libertarians argue should hold sole dominion over his own life. The popular opinion demonstrates a fondness for collective ownership of individuals – a collective slavery, if you will – that the scope of control over humanity extends past one’s own fingertips to some degree.

The other form of libertarianism holds that libertarianism is a desirable ethical standard because it results in the most beneficial outcomes. Consequentialists do not operate on faithful assumptions about the nature and rights of men. Their considerations are directed towards a scientific standard that observes and deduces that greater degrees of self ownership and liberty result in a flourishing of society in terms of wealth and culture. While not completely comfortable throwing myself into either category (since I do believe in Divinely granted human rights to self ownership), I probably fit best in the consequentialist camp.

The libertarian principle of non-aggression simply is a means of asserting the premise of self ownership. The non-aggression principle states that one may/should not use coercive physical force to violate the self ownership of any other person. The principle clearly understood merely asserts that all actions should be voluntarily untaken. Likewise, toleration is a key characteristic of libertarian ethics. Libertarians are not required to approve of the actions of others, but, so long as those actions are non-coercive, persuasion is the only ethical outlet for change. The use of force is illegitimate for libertarians. Only the initiation of such force justifies the use of force and only as retaliation. What is clear is that libertarians oppose government. Government is any actor, individual, or collective that negates the liberty of self ownership – any entity that claims control over another person or persons. Libertarians generally concede the necessity of institutions that may seek to prevent violations of liberty in advance through the use of defensive tactics. The purest and most cogent form of libertarianism is anarchistic because the existence of a State requires the involuntary submission to pay for the monopoly services of that State, an obvious violation of liberty.

Anarchism has nothing to do with rights or ethics. The concept of “philosophical anarchism” may, but that is very similar if not the same as libertarianism. Anarchism is a political concept that promotes ideas hostile to the State. The State can essentially be viewed as a self enforcing monopoly with power over a specified although possibly indefinite region. Because governing institutions are most effective at depriving individuals of liberty, they are well equipped to claim dominion over and submission to itself, while aiming to protect itself from competition. The most effective tool at the disposal of a State or a government that wishes to obtain or maintain Statehood is propaganda which to reinforce its Laws through pop justification. Statist institutions maintain their monopoly through force and through the repeated demonization of competing government and defensive services. Usually, States will seek to expand their role from just that of a governing body to one of greater scope ie education, health care, postal services, etc. States are emblematic and self-reinforced by their governing AND governed classes. In monarchy, a single person is put in charge of the lawmaking process. In oligarchy, a few people decide the laws. In aristocracy, the wealthy decide the laws. In a democracy, the law is decided by the majority of people. Anarchism is opposition to all of this. Fundamentally, anarchism is a strain of political anti-authoritarianism that regards the authority of the State governing class as illegitimate. Anarchists seek the abolition of the political State and its resultant law in lieu of a new order of organic law.

The confusion between anarchy and chaos is fair to a degree. With the abolition of the State, the law would be the natural outcome of community, market, and physical dominance. However, this does not distinguish it from the State at all. The society that approves the will of the State determines the legitimate scope of the State. Furthermore, the rule of the State is enforced strictly through physical dominance. In an anarchist society, one could act “anti-socially” to any degree he pleases and can get away with, but it is unlikely in civil society that he would last very long. The fear that these people would run rampant is unwarranted. The benefits of cooperation discourage “anti-social” behavior. The cooperative aspects of society have been learned and evolved into to deal with “anti-social” behavior. So, any man exposing the world to tyranny would not likely have long before voluntary and contractual coalitions of people were to fight back. Even if this were not the case, the pro-State assumption that “anti-social,” and in this sense I mean both malevolent and incompetent, people will not infiltrate the State apparatus is false. In fact, the opposite is true. The State apparatus, not existing on a competitive level to help ensure quality and customer satisfaction, involves the gradual usurpation of power by the “anti-social” (of course assuming the originators of the State were not themselves “anti-social”). The cohesive force in anarchist society is contract and cooperation for mutual benefit. In other words, anarchist society promotes the thriving of the market by leveling the playing field, increasing transparency, and reflecting the demands of society over State.

An interesting way to view the anarchist struggle is to envision a society of political ladders of power. Statist leaders attempt to climb these ladders to gain power and oversight. Anarchists shake the ladders and expose as phony the pretense under which Statists argue they had a right to become lawmakers instead of market participants in the first place. As the evolution of Statism takes hold and the justifications for it become more broad, the privilege of Statism extends to a larger base of people, starting as monarchist and culminating in democratic. Anarchists are there the entire time to shake the ladders and challenge the idea there should be ladders at all.

In summation, libertarians promote voluntary human interactions as morally imperative or advantageous. Anarchists oppose others holding dominion over them. Libertarianism is the liberation of all individuals from the authority of society. Anarchism is the liberation of self from (political) authority. A (pure) libertarian is an anarchist, but an anarchist is not necessarily a libertarian.

Next Up: Why I Am First and Foremost an Anarchist and Less of a Libertarian

A fascinating piece titled Are Property Rights Enough? appeared in the November 2009 issue (and online on October 20) of Reason Magazine, a libertarian U.S.-based magazine. The lead essay, by Kerry Howley, argues for a “thick” conception of libertarianism, which includes not just freedom from state coercion, but also cultural freedom and freedom from social coercion, as a part of what libertarians should care about. Todd Seavey and Daniel McCarthy provide response essays. Seavey’s essay argues, among other things, that expanding the scope of libertarian thought to include cultural norms complicates matters and alienates potential recruits. McCarthy delves on the difficulty of settling on what is right, and why it is better to let people choose cultures, even if such cultures reduce certain aspects of personal freedom. Howley replies to both pointing out that people aren’t born in a vacuum, and some cultural constraints may be ingrained into them from childhood.

Other response essays include:

• Ilya Somin: Libertarianism and Culture (October 24) where he agrees with some of Howley’s key points but argues that a culture that restricts freedom need not be a problem in so far as people have other options and exit rights.

• Will Wilkinson responds to Ilya Somin (October 25) (NOTE: Wilkinson is Howley’s domestic partner).

• The oldest libertarian debate (October 24) by Abhishek. He says that the difference between Howley and Seavey isn’t as wide as one might suppose, and in fact, he agrees with both.

• Ordinary Gentlemen: Libertarians and diversity argues that libertarians have difficulty grasping Howley’s point because libertarians are largely drawn from a white and male background and often face fewer cultural constraints of the kind that worry Howley.

• Timothy B. Lee: Libertarianism as a liberal project (October 21), wherein he argues that people who care about liberty ouht to be interested in the things Howley advocates for.

If you don’t want to go to each blog individually, check out this round-up by Around The Sphere.

I find myself agreeing with everybody, though my take is closest to that of Ilya Somin. My view is that the “state” has no monopoly on liberty-violating coercion, and that society can also induce liberty-violating coercion. So, the source of the coercion — whether state or society, is not relevant. The more relevant question is the particular form that the coercion takes.

If the coercion is physical coercion, or backed by a largely enforced threat of physical coercion, then it is liberty-violating. This puts a lot of social coercion in the same boat as state coercion, but leaves a lot out. If a person living in a society knows that violation of certain cultural norms (beyond the basic respect for the liberty and freedom of others) will lead to physical punishment or literal physical coercion, then, even if that person experiences no violence, that threat of violence is liberty-reducing.

In the case that powerful states create and enforce laws, however benignly and pleasantly, that threat of coercion is very much present. There may be several layers to it (violating the law in and of itself may not land you in jail, but it may require you to pay a fine, and non-payment of the fine may subject you to legal action, and so on). This is one good reason to be a lot more careful about what gets codified in law. Thus, a libertarian, even if broadly sympathetic with the goals of a law, may be wary of the implicit additional coercion that every new law and regulation creates. For those who care about libertarianism, it is also a good reason to try to influence the direction of debate towards a smaller and less powerful state, i.e., to influence the direction of public debate and views about liberty.

What about social pressures? Again, the situations where a social pressure actually leads to physical coercion, or literally dictates to people what physical actions to undertake, may be very narrow, but there could be a much broader range of situations where the threat of coercive social pressure bars certain courses of actions.

How should this be handled? Should this be handled in the same way that libertarians try to handle state coercion, i.e., by trying to reduce the set of cultural norms that might restrict people’s actions, through the use of persuasion and argument? The problem here is that while it’s easy to think of some broad parameters that make for highly coercive and highly non-coercive societies, things get a lot murkier in between, and unlike the simple mantra of “small government”, there’s no corresponding mantra of “small society”. The simplest answer, that I (and perhaps many libertarians) would espouse is the enforcement of clear boundaries on the nature and limits of coercion — that physical coercion, or the threat thereof, or literally violating people’s freedom, is not to be tolerated. Next, any culture or society that threatens to use such coercion against those who dare to dissent or exit must be suitably condemned for it. In cases where these threats may be implicit but aren’t explicitly seen, a libertarian who cares about liberty should ask the pointed questions that seek to expose the coercion that keeps the system running and stifles dissent.

For instance, if a “society” stones to death a man and a woman who hold hands or kiss on the street, that is not only a violation of their liberty — it is also a violation of the liberty of everybody else, including those who didn’t plan on exercising these rights. Whether this stoning occurs because of the state, because of a consensus in the society, or because of a consensus among a small segment of hooligans in society whom nobody cares or dares to oppose, does not matter for concluding that it is a violation of liberty. On the other hand, if the public lovers’ colleagues mock them or consider them too brazen and indecent, I don’t see that as a violation of liberty. The question then is what the ultimate enforcement mechanisms for intolerance are and whether these worst-case enforcement mechanisms are limited to things that respect people’s individual freedom.

This is not to say that social isolation or opprobrium don’t have costs, or that it is inappropriate to try to change (through the use of persuasion and argument) attitudes in society that lead people to be punished severely in the social sphere for things that we think should be matters of individual choice. But this gets into a more fuzzy area, and getting rid of the ultimate coercive element of social and state pressures seems to be quite enough for libertarianism as a political philosophy.

I’ll also take this opprtunity to quote from what Friedrich Hayek wrote in The Constitution of Liberty. I take the liberty of quoting from Chapter 4 (Freedom, Reason and Tradition), Section 6 (Pages 62-63):

We understand one another and get along with one another, are able to act successfully on our plans, because, most of the time, members of our civilization conform to unconscious patterns of conduct, show a regularity in their actions that is not the result of commands or coercion, often not even of any conscious adherence to known rules, but of firmly established habits and traditions. [...] In some instances it would be necessary, for the smooth running of society, to secure a similar uniformity by coercion, if such conventions or rules were not followed often enough. [...] There is an advantage in obedience to such rules not being coerced, not only because coercion as such is bad, but because it is, in fact, often desirable that rules should be observed only in most instances and that the individual should be able to transgress them when it seems worthwhile to incur the odium which this will cause. It is also important that the strength of the social pressure and of the force of habit which insures this observance is variable. It is this flexibility of voluntary rules which in the field of morals makes gradual evolution and spontaneous growth possible, which allows further experience to lead to modifications and improvements. Such an evolution is possible only with rules which are neither coercive nor deliberately imposed — rules which, though observing them is regarded as merit and though they will be observed by the majority, can be broken by individuals who feel they have strong enough reasons to brave the censure of their fellows. Unlike any deliberately imposed coercive rules, which can be changed only discontinuously and for all at the same time, rules of this kind allow for gradual and experimental change. The existence of individuals and groups simultaneously observing partially different rules provides the opportunity for the selection of the more efficient ones.