For crying out loud

Can we agree now that maybe subjecting 4-8 years of your future to the results of a popularity contest is a stupid idea?

Don't blame me; I voted to leave the office vacant.  If you voted, you have no right to complain. You agreed to live by the results.  Why is everybody so upset? I thought this was the greatest system ever!

Strange people in ballot booths handing out swords is no basis for a system of government.

The philosophy of liberty

This says it all:

The Philosophy of Liberty is really the best, most concise, and most understandable explanation I have seen of how to determine what is right and wrong in the realm of politics.  Any law that cannot be justified on the basis of these principles is unjust.  Any time a freedom lover, anarchist, libertarian, or voluntaryist justifies force to violate these principles, he or she is making a terrible mistake.

I've seen people in these camps (or this camp) occasionally veer off of these principles for causes that might seem "left-wing" or "right-wing" or might not seem to fit into either category.  At the same time, I've seen people who've never even seen this presentation follow these principles perfectly.  This is what libertarianism is about (and all those other groups I listed above).  This is what morality is about.  Everything else involves initiating force against people who have done nothing wrong.

Checks and balances

There are no genuine checks and balances in the American political system.  The only genuine check and balance would be "I don't have to give you my check if I do not agree with your agenda."  Since in the American system, the minority are forced to comply with the agenda of the majority, if only for a few years, there is no check and balance on government power, and as we have seen for over two hundred years, it grows without limit.

Imagine a world where nobody had to pay for a war they did not approve of.

Truce

I call for a truce. Conservatives will not ask Liberals to fund wars which the Liberals believe are murder, and Liberals will not ask Conservatives to fund abortions which they Conservatives believe are murder.

Why is it that so few people would agree to this completely rational proposal?

And why is anyone who disagrees with this principle allowed to have any say over my life at the ballot box?

Don't vote

Democracy is not freedom. It is the exact opposite. It is the power to rule your neighbor. If your neighbor is subject to your vote (or to the people you vote in), then he is not free.

Isn't this obvious?

I call for an immediate abolition of the government, to be accomplished by giving every person the right to secede and form their own institutions for the protection of their liberties, as called for in the Declaration of Independence.

And what I am doing is immeasurably better for you than voting. When you vote, you are attacking the welfare of me and my family. Meanwhile, I am lovingly calling for you to be granted freedom and prosperity.

This system is wrong. I will not legitimize it in any way.

Love does no harm to a neighbor

A small bit of truth from the media confusion regarding the FLDS:
Rep. Harvey Hilderbran, R-Kerrville[, TX], ... began looking for ways to rein in his FLDS neighbors.

Representative Hilderbran from Kerrville is a tyrant, a busybody, a crook, and the moral equivalent of a Mafia thug.

The FLDS are NOT Hilderbran's neighbors. According to Google maps, Kerrville is nearly two hours from Eldorado. Why should a man in Kerrville have the authority to tell people in Eldorado how to live? This is a moral question we really should answer, with monstrous implications for the whole foundation of most people's thinking.

There's a line drawn across the middle of the Rio Grande river. We call it the border between Texas and Mexico. People living north of the line don't have the authority to tell people living south of the line how to live, and people living south of the line don't have the authority to tell people living north of the line how to live. If people cross the line with guns and try to force their will on others, we recognize they are criminals. The only way for people on opposite sides of the line to influence each other is by voluntary agreement. This can happen on a massive scale, in the form of treaties, and it can happen on an individual scale, in the form of small purchases, and it can happen on every scale in between.

Representative Hilderbran has no more authority to force his approval or disapproval of marriages on the FLDS than I do to go next door and tell my neighbor who his daughter can or can't marry. Marriages at age 14 and up with parental consent were deemed perfectly moral and acceptable by the gang of thugs in Austin calling itself the State of Texas prior to October 2005. They did not suddenly become immoral. Apparently the Austin Gang thinks these marriages were just fine as long as nice Baptist and Methodist people were letting their children get married at 15; it's only a problem when scroungy FLDS people move in and do it. Baptists and Methodists don't constitute near as much of a threat to the established order as do the radical FLDS.

There is no moral reason why there should be a line across the Rio Grande between Texas and Mexico, but no line drawn between Eldorado and Kerrville. People have the right to self-determination. If Texas and Mexico each have the right to self-determination and it must be mutually respected, then so does each component territory within the U.S. and within Mexico, so does each county within each U.S. State, so does each city, in fact, so does each household. Why should there be a line between Texas and Mexico? Surely it's not because the people to the south have dark skin and speak a different language, is it? Is that why it's okay to draw a line to keep those people out, but not okay for FLDS near Eldorado to draw a line to keep whites out? I don't think that's the motivation ... but what other consistent response can be offered?

We've invented the fiction that voting equals self-determination. Here the truth is exposed: voting in this case eliminates self-determination by giving a fake legitimacy to the crime of a man from Kerrville oppressing the FLDS. Self-determination is robbed from the FLDS. Their fate will now be determined by "neighborly" thugs like Hilderbran, offering us all "protection" if we will pay and acknowledge his authority, as he makes us an offer we literally can't refuse.

The cult here is not the FLDS. It's the religious belief that the gang in Austin is legitimate in exercising its authority and is beneficial as it does so. And that belief permeates almost all of society, within and without Texas. This is why Austin is so scared of groups like the FLDS: they offer something else to believe in and venerate, an alternative culture to the one mandated by our gang. They are competition, and the gang is trying to wipe them out.

Practical anarcho-capitalism

What would anarcho-capitalism look like, if we had it? How would it work? How would we solve all the problems that government now solves for us? It is easy to see how the need met by such things as government postal delivery might be met. It is not so easy to see how defense would be handled, or how we would be protected against tyranny.

Many people love the original Constitutional United States government system because they believe it to be the best system mankind has discovered for protecting liberty. Often you'll see such good patriots attempting to educate today's public about the fact that the U.S. system is not a democracy; it is instead the superior system of a Republic. Of course, in practice our system has been attempting to devolve from republic to democracy, and from there to socialism (did you ever know a Communist nation that didn't like to refer to itself as "The People's Democratic Socialist Republic of [Region]?"). And personally I think the similarities between republic and democracy are greater than their differences. But I do agree that Republican government was a great protection for liberty, and a great check against tyranny.

History has produced a long list of such checks against tyranny:

• the rule of law


• Constitutional government


• law applying to the ruler as well as the ruled


• democracy


• republicanism (not the political party, the form of government)


• separation of powers


• bills of rights


• checks and balances

In the end, though, none of these is sufficient to guarantee liberty is never violated. And in fact some of them don't work nearly as well as advertised. And unfortunately many of them get equated with "liberty." Right now we say we want to spread "democracy," and we act as if that means spreading "liberty." The very definition of democracy is actually incompatible with liberty.

Anarcho-capitalism surpasses them all. And what's more, anarcho-capitalism actually is liberty.

I think a Republic was a great advance and a great protection for liberty, but in the end I think it always devolves again into tyranny. I do not believe one government can check itself, even if you have separation of powers. I believe governments can only be checked by the people, or by other governments.

Being checked by the people has always been a part of government's existence, even under tyranny, even since the first raiders rode into a peaceful town and proclaimed themselves kings. The government takes a lot from its people, in the form of liberty and resources. It loudly gives a large portion back in the form of services. They give enough back to keep the people from revolting, and this keeps their power and income sources secure. It's a little more civilized under a Republic, thankfully.

This necessity that government be checked by the people is always the reason for the need for the rights granted by the US second amendment to be secure and absolute. I know a lot of people think the 2nd amendment is about hunting (I used to), or personal defense against local criminals (I used to think that, too), but the reason the founders talked about was the need to protect from the main criminals of history: government.

The second way of checking government is why a Republic is not the greatest hope for human government, and anarcho-capitalism is. Under such a system, every person would have the right to secede from their government, as well as the right to form new governments within the same territory. Noone would have the right to compel anyone to be a citizen of their government; government would be by true contract. If a government became tyrannical to its citizens, they could form a new one (or several) to protect themselves from its depradations. If a government acted tyrannical to those who were not its citizens, they could protect themselves by forming their own government. And this is pretty much exactly what the Declaration of Independence says, that government is an institution with the special purpose of securing rights, and that all people have the right to form such an institution as seems best to them (though I doubt Jefferson envisioned multiple such institutions in the same geographic region).

Noone has the right to do that which is wrong, not even governing officials, and in all history the biggest threat to man's rights has been the government; therefore the most pressing reason to form a government is to protect its citizens from another government. Under our present system government does much which is wrong. As it exists, taxation is simply legalized theft (indeed, the government is simply a group that has a monopoly on breaking laws such as this with impunity), and much of the rest of what governments do is simply legalized slavery. Under a system of anarcho-capitalism this could not be the case. A government's only citizens would be people who had explicitly agreed to its terms, which would include whatever fees the previous citizens or founders had deemed necessary. Governments could actually compete for citizens by trying to offer the best protection for the best price.

People who wanted to keep the existing institution, the United States federal government, could do so. They could support it with their taxes, pledge their allegiance to it and salute its flag, think of it as the greatest country on earth, and everything they want to do now. They just couldn't compel other people to do so, and they'd have to allow their children to make the decision for themselves when they grew up, and they certainly couldn't force everyone who lived in their land after they died to be bound to the same institution for hundreds of years or forever. They'd have to grant everyone else the right to be free.

I'm going to say something you might not have realized anarcho-capitalists believed: we do need government. At least, we need to have our rights protected, and we need to create institutions to do that for the common good. What we don't need is to take away the rights of other people in order to protect that for ourselves. Government as it exists today rests on the premise that you and I cannot protect ourselves unless we force other people to furnish the means and manpower to do it, and to surrender complete allegiance to our system and any decisions it makes as well. This is not true! It might provide some form of protection, but it is inferior to what could be developed in a world of true freedom, it weakens the foundations of society by making us interact together in forced ways rather than those we would naturally choose, and it damages our economy because of the damage to our freedom, resulting in decreased wealth and therefore decreased capacity for the very defense we were trying to achieve, as well as decreased capacity to enjoy the fruit of our labors.

Three reasons not to be a part of democracy

I was going to title this post "Three reasons not to vote." But actually, I do vote, just in a very unorthodox way that I have found to register my disapproval of the system. So here are three reasons not to vote. Much. Or at least, not in a normal way.

• It's ineffective: Change is never going to come by this route. I voted Republican in 2000 and 2004 because I believed in smaller government. It didn't work. Even when your candidate wins you don't get what you want. (Even if you wanted bigger government you wouldn't get what you want, because the costs of reality and the impossibility of centralized economic calculation always prevent big government planners from fulfilling all of their promises.) And the candidates always believe in expanding some portions of the government's power. (George W. Bush, for example, believed in socializing healthcare, which distressed me greatly because "we" Republicans had stood against this staunchly when Hilary Clinton wanted to try it. I compromised. May God forgive me for supporting a man who would steal from other people.) And of course all politicians believe in taxation. The history of elections in the United States has been the history of the expanse of federal power and the decline of liberty and the intent of the founders of the country. Even politicians who believe in a limit to government power seem to weaken their principles with only a short time in office; some believe this is because power is simply so intoxicating.

  
  
  

  Meanwhile I have two avenues to effective change. As a Christian, I may have confidence that if I practice the things God requires of me, which include prayer and the preaching of the Gospel, change will occur in my life and in the lives of those who come in contact with me. If Christians really believed this we would see a dramatic decrease in the amount of time they spend discussing politics and a dramatic increase in the amount of time they spend discussing the word of God. Secondly, I may spend my time peacefully persuading people that anarcho-capitalism is best for them and best for everybody; throughout history governments of all types, tyrannical and democratic, have survived by throwing out enough "benefits" that the populace never gets mad enough about the violation of their rights and continues to support the government. Eventually as enough people cease to support the government, there is a tipping point where its power will begin to rapidly decay. Some optimists think this tipping point is very small, at somewhere near 10% or 25% of the population. All I know is I'd rather reach that than obtain a temporary majority for some flawed candidate in an election.





• It legitimizes the system: When I vote for a politician, I'm saying that I pick him to represent me, to act on my behalf. As the declaration of independence says, the government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed. I can delegate my right to self-defense to an agency to defend my rights. I can delegate my right to decide what to do with a portion of my land to a group that is going to pool land and use it for a particular purpose. But since I don't have a right to dictate to other people (other than requiring them to respect my rights), I therefore can't delegate to the government all of the powers it is exercising. Selecting a representative means picking a person to act as my agent. If I get together with someone and ask him to steal for me, he is acting as my agent and we are both guilty. This is government as currently practiced. This is "we the people."

  
  
  

  Furthermore, when I've picked someone to hold the king powers for a term, I'm stuck with him, and if he doesn't do what I need or want, or what is right, it's my fault for picking him. As I said above, no person can or will use the king powers in the "right" way (there is no right way, other than using those powers to destroy themselves). But under our system, you have three options, and no matter what it's your fault:

  
  
  
  • You can vote for your man and win. If things don't go well, it's your fault for picking the wrong man. And all the men are wrong, and things will never go well for everybody for any length of time.
  
  
  • You can refrain from voting. In this case when they come to take your money your haughty voting neighbors justify their theft by saying you didn't vote and therefore you granted your consent to everything they wanted to do. I wish it were more obvious that this couldn't be more wrong, but we were all taught this in government school and almost everybody believes it. Funny, that.
  
  
  • You can vote for your man and lose. In this case you have to suffer all kinds of things being done to you that you did not consent to, but you agreed to participate in this democracy and you are told you have no room to complain and should work for change within the system. What a joke.
  
  
  

  Funny how the government keeps taking money that doesn't belong to it, keeps keeping people from using what belongs to them, keeps abusing people ... and then tells people that it is their fault, not its. When this happens between a man and a woman we call it domestic abuse. Interestingly enough in many domestic abuses the abuser tells his wife that all the bad things he does are her fault, and she often believes him. (This without loss of generality; I don't mean to imply that all abusers are men.)

  
  
  

  Democracy is a domestic abuse situation. The people are battered. It's time to realize that we need to abandon this partner once and for all. We're not really married to him, anyway. Worst shack-up we ever made. Let's get on with our real lives.





• It sacrifices real change: There were a variety of views on slavery in the 1800s. Some believed in immediate, total abolition: free all the slaves immediately, no compromises. Some believed in gradual abolition or various compromises: slowly free the slaves, slowly truncate slavery's territory, have the government buy some of them, send them back to Africa, etc. The fiery insightful abolitionists recognized the truth: if you argue for gradual change, real change may never happen. The change to anarcho-capitalism should happen now because it is right, because the current system is wrong, because it is better, because the current system is far, far worse, and because any gradual transition period would really just be another formation of the current system, which is tyrannical and wrong as well as damaging; an instant transition to doing what is right might be destabilizing, but it would actually be healthier than a tyrannically managed transition, as well as being the moral thing to do. The truth is that if you argue for complete change, what you will really get is gradual change as more and more people accept the truth. If you argue for gradual change, nothing meaningful will ever happen, and thousands of years from now we will still have all-powerful government.

  
  
  

  Voting for "the guy who is going to shrink the government the most" or "the guy who is going to grow the government the least" may seem like the libertarian or even Christian thing to do. But the reality is that you give your approval to someone who is not going to shrink the government, someone who is going to do wrong things in your name, and you perpetuate the situation rather than sounding the message that reform must come swiftly.

Why Christians cannot tax

Imagine you meet a man in an alley and demand his money. You tell him that if he does not give you his money, you will kill him.

Obviously, this is theft. It is a violation of God's command "Thou shalt not steal." You are also threatening to violate God's command "Thou shalt not kill." No Christian would justify such an action.

Suppose the man weighs the situation and decides to comply with your threat: he gives you his money. Has he done so willingly? Have you therefore not committed theft? Can you just say that the man made a gift? Of course not! The man only gave you his money because you gave him no choice. (Or, at least no choice other than death.) If you do this, God will judge you.

Now, suppose you and one other person meet a third person and demand his money. If the third person doesn't comply, you will tie him up and leave him. Again, whether he gives you his money or chooses to resist, you are committing theft. You are committing sin, and God will judge you.

Suppose you and ten other people meet two people and demand their money. You threaten them, and whether they comply or resist, you are committing theft.

Suppose you and fifty people decide to take the money of ten people. You tell the ten that the sixty of you are going to take a vote as to who should own the money. The ten lose the vote. You take their money. Did this theft become right because you pretended to give the ten a say in where their money should go? Of course not. You have stolen that which is not yours.

Suppose the ten resist. They see through the sham of the vote and realize they have no chance to keep their money and that it is being stolen. You tell them that if they do not make their voice known that this means they are willingly letting you decide who will keep the money, that they have no cause to complain when the vote does not go their way. You tell yourself that you are justified in taking their money. But of course you are lying to yourself. You have stolen other people's money.

Suppose you and fifty-one percent of the population of America meet the other forty-nine percent of the population of America. You tell them that you are going to hold a vote as to who gets the privilege of taking money. You call this privilege "taxation." You tell the forty-nine percent that they must participate in the vote and that they must abide by its outcome. You tell them that if they do not participate that they are bad people and that they will have no cause to complain if the vote does not go the way they want it to. Most of the forty-nine percent participate, they of course lose the vote, and the rest of you get your leaders in place with the privilege of taking as much money as they want. Even though you've voted to give these people the privilege of taking money, does that mean that they now have the right to do so? Of course not. You can call it what you want, but it is still theft.

You may rightfully hire someone to do anything that it is right for you to do. You are rightfully permitted to drive your car, so you may hire a chauffeur to drive it. You are rightfully permitted to defend yourself against a thief, so you may hire a security guard. You are rightfully permitted to preach the Gospel, so you may hire a preacher to do so.

You do not have the right to hire somebody to take money that is not yours though, do you? So if you hire somebody to do so, you are hiring them to commit theft. You are responsible for the actions of people acting on your behalf, just as surely as if you hired a hit man to kill for you.

Back to our series of "supposes": suppose you and eighty-percent of the population vote for leaders with the right to "tax" people. Does that mean they may now rightfully take money, on your behalf? That anyone who wants to keep his money away from your hired goons is selfish? Of course not. You are empowering people to steal on your behalf.

It doesn't matter how many people become involved, they never have the right to take what isn't theirs, because none of the people in the group have that right. You can call it taxation and pretend it's justified because of democracy, but you're still stealing.

Christians are not allowed to steal, not even for noble purposes. Therefore, Christians may not tax, and may not empower people to tax on their behalf. Doing so would be stealing.

And again, let me remind you of this marvelous fact: economists of the Austrian school have proved that a society without the interference of taxation runs the best and reaches the maximum satisfaction that can be reached in a world of scarcity. Taxation turns out to be waste (even when the tax money is spent). This shouldn't surprise us. If a band of raiders rode into a town every year and took twenty percent of the town's property, we'd recognize that as a twenty percent loss to the town, and a horrible economic inefficiency.

It also shouldn't surprise us because God told us not to. We should have enough faith in God to do what He says even when it hasn't been proved to us like this.

But didn't God command us to pay our taxes? Yes, He certainly did. He also commanded us to give up when we are sued, to let people take things from us when they want to, to allow ourselves to be defrauded, and not to resist if someone wants to steal from us. God can and does use the actions of wicked men to accomplish good, and therefore He may accomplish good through those who practice taxation. But this does not mean that we are permitted to do this. Let us leave it up to wicked men and let God use them as He will.