As the pipe clamp blisters began to pop and heal on my hands, I knew I was in a race against myself to find my next gig in woodworking. I had just quit my job after I was put on a mandatory 72-hour work week schedule, which was neither safe nor necessary in the warehouse where I was a full time furniture maker. From my first taste of sawdust, I was hooked. I loved everything about it, especially the aches & pains associated with putting in a hard day of manual labor.
I had moved thousands of miles from my industrial Michigan factory roots, only to go to college and decide the blue collar life is what I wanted. I quit my job, only when it was obvious that it would either kill or permanently injure me...but it was still one of the hardest decisions I have ever had to make. Besides the fact that I love it, I realize now how wrapped up I was in the identity of being just one thing...In my working life, I have always had to have at least three side hustles going on and I've done everything from nude modeling, to being a maid, a well-paid executive assistant, an extra in movies, a make-up artist, to an apprentice sander in a woodshop.
When I call home to update my family, typically, whatever it is I describe is met with unconditional love & acceptance, even if there is a tinge of it not necessarily being understood. As a woodworker, I was finally able to align myself with an identity - one thing that I loved being and doing...and it was so much easier to explain that!
Predictably, when the job fell apart, I scrambled for any paying gig I could find on craigslist. As it turns out, it was a good time to be involved with film making and I even signed up for acting classes. Being involved in the process is as exciting as it seems like it would be - even the long hours of waiting, while being completely dressed to the nines for a 6:00 a.m. call time, shouldn't be exciting, but it still is.
Around this time I also found work as a fit model, working for a local design house. It's a job that pays very well but the work is inconsistent. Still, I am extremely thankful to have it, even if it is a bit weird for me to use it as an identifier at the dentist's office and have the receptionist squeal and ask me a bunch of questions about the job. That's a rock star moment, I'm not going to lie, but it's completely foreign to me to identify myself as "model" in any capacity...especially when "factory rat" was a closer signifier just weeks ago.
I'm not sure if all the discomfort in lacking a fixed occupation or identity squarely rests on my shoulders, or if I am reacting to other people's confusion when I try to explain, "Well, I'm actually a furniture maker, but I'm out of work, so I'm doing the acting and modeling thing, while looking for another woodworking gig." Who does that? I'm not sure if I even understand myself anymore.
In the long run, it's probably a good thing that I am so versatile & adaptable - I always have something relevent for any type of resume I'm creating for myself (and I have at least 3); but I long for the day when I have a short answer to the question, "So what do you do?"
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Is the financial crisis really over?
The mainstream media and the politicians say that its end is near.
Take a step back, though. Too much spending and borrowing, we are told, helped cause the crisis. And what has been the response? More spending and more borrowing has been the response by the power elite. It is not only that. They think that the answer to a bubble that has started to pop is to inflate it again. Instead of bad assets being liquidated, the Federal Reserve has basically become a giant hedge fund. What about the stability of banks? Every week, quietly behind the scenes, the FDIC takes over yet another failed bank or two and transfers their deposits to another bank.
Unemployment figures remain high, but they don't tell us the full story. A more accurate accounting of these figures reveals that the numbers are much higher than what politicians tell us. GDP figures are similarly distorted to even include such things as Cash For Clunkers. If President Obama started to build a Tower of Babel tomorrow for a trillion dollars, it would be positively added into the GDP. And who knows what the so-called Plunge Protection Team is doing to influence the stock market.
What about gold? Right now it is roughly $1,100 per ounce.
Mr. Charles Goyette, author of The Dollar Meltdown: Surviving The Impending Currency Crisis With Gold, Oil, And Other Unconventional Investments, says that the rising price of gold is "the canary in the coal mine." The assorted commodities are moving upward and the dollar is moving downward. The trend is clear.
Dollars are multiplied in quantity almost ad infinitum. Fed Chairmen Ben Bernanke, like his predecessor, is convinced that solving our problems can be done by creating more money and by attempting to price fix interest rates to levels lower than they otherwise would be at. Instead of interest rates being determined by the relationship between the supply of savings and the demand for them, men have been led to believe that this process can be, for all intents and purposes, socialized.
The supply of money has shot up to new heights. This (unhappily) canceled out, I believe, any kind of potential "deflation" from happening at the outset of the crisis. Bernanke, despite his double talk, has been aware that this monetary expansion would lead to a downward dive in money's purchasing power. Consequently, he started to pay banks not to loan new money. Taking, somehow, all or much of this new money out of the banks is virtually impossible. And Bernanke, to be sure, is still however worried about any kind of deflationary events in the future. Those in power will take "inflation" over deflation any day.
Government debt is out of control, to put it mildly, and is ultimately not payable. Its maintenance is akin to a Ponzi scheme. When such bills come in, government goes into even more debt by issuing more bonds to sell and often by simply creating more paper money. This can't last forever.
Leaders around the world see what is happening. They are not blind to the fact that dollars are not a good investment long-term. Rather than what were private whispers, there are public talks about moving away from the dollar as the reserve currency of the world. For example, India's central bank recently purchased 200 metric tons of gold. There is a clear shift in the world's view of both U.S. dollars and bonds.
This is not mere speculation, this is happening as we speak. The world will not support the U.S. Leviathan forever. It's only a matter of time, it seems to me. And Empires don't last forever; they go bankrupt.
In his book, Goyette shows---if you are not yet convinced that there's a problem---that the real figures to calculate U.S. debt are largely hidden. Added up, it is not $12 trillion but nearly $100 trillion. That's about $1.3 million for a family of four. Direct taxation undoubtedly has severe limits when it comes to these figures. Only repudiation and printing up money can solve this in the end. And if the Chinese backed away from buying more bonds tomorrow, U.S. authorities have no solution but (surprise!) repudiation and the printing press. That's it.
How did we get here? "America has become a piñata," answers Charles Goyette. Politicians, looking to get votes, pass the democratic stick around to various special interest groups so that they all can take a whack. Grabbing millions from this piñata are not enough. Even billions are too small. Now it's trillions. Next, I suppose, it will be quadrillions, then quintillions, and then sextillions. The piñata won't survive. We never think about that, says Goyette. We think of benefits, never costs.
He notes that the Iraq War alone, when you attempt to figure in all of the hidden costs, amounts to 4 or 5 trillion dollars according to Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes (which is even more than their conservatively titled book). Just think about the fear premium on the price of oil! Once again: We think about the supposed "benefits" of Empire, never the costs. China has it right: It is cheaper to buy oil than to steal it. Right now, like good capitalists, they are searching the globe to find it.
For these and other reasons the author of The Dollar Meltdown argues that a future currency crisis is unavoidable. The supply of dollars keeps moving up, and this speed is even in a position to potentially accelerate even more than it has already, and its demand is on the edge of falling. If dollars from around the world start to come home, hyperinflation is the next stop. There is no "quick fix" to turn this around. Politicians are not going to go straight and the American public is not going to wake up until the crisis happens.
So what can we do? All we can do is protect ourselves and our families to the best of our abilities. The more that protect themselves, the better off all of us will be. We can even profit. But note, no one has a magic ball. How things play out will depend on many factors, of course, and the question of "when" is always difficult to answer, but the responsible thing for any man to do is to insulate his family from the possibility of a currency crisis, be it a relatively mild one or a severe one.
Section four of the book is where Goyette walks us through his recommendations. Gold as you can easily guess is one of them. So is silver. Oil and agriculture are also recommendations. All of these things are explained in a straightforward way. You don't have to become a day trader or anything like that.
He names specifics, explains exactly how to invest in them, and how each of these markets work.
Silver, for instance, has much potential. Much of its demand is purely for industrial use. This would change in a currency crisis and the speed of it shooting up in price could easily be faster than gold. This, shown in the book, has historical precedence.
Agriculture contains many profit opportunities. There is a growing world population and therefore more and more mouths need to be fed. "Jim Rogers," writes Goyette, "says that ten years from now instead of twenty-nine-year-old stockbrokers driving Maseratis, it will be twenty-nine-year-old farmers."
Charles Goyette's expertise and intellect is clearly seen in the book. Section three of it explains "what happens next." In addition to some of the things already mentioned, here for example he explains what the probable reactions would be by the government in a currency crisis. (Hint: All of their reactions would be bad and would make the problems worse. They would attack the symptoms.) The second section talks about "how we got here" and the first section explains "where we are."
He additionally shows the link between sound money, liberty, and the rise and fall of civilizations. To harden his analysis, he looks at ancient Athens, the Byzantine Empire, and the city of Florence. He turns to Britain and early America. For historical cases of massive inflation, he looks to France and Germany.
Mr. Michael Nystorm, in his review of the book at The Daily Paul, remarks that it's "interesting that these lessons can be learned intuitively simply through the study of money."
Take
a look, Goyette says at the end of the book, at America's earliest
coins, which "portrayed Liberty," in comparison to today's coinage,
which "celebrates the state." Look at today's symbols and its culture, and you'll understand where we are.
The following excerpt is from Dr. Guido Hülsmann's The Ethics of Money Production, pages 170 to 172 (all emphasis is untouched):
“The West is still at the beginning of its great experiment with paper money-----thirty years is not a long time for a monetary institution. But already the foregoing considerations find a ready confirmation in the economic statistics of the past thirty years, which witnessed an exponential growth of the money supply, as well as of debts private and public, in all major western countries.
“Evidence for moral hazard on a mass scale could be found in the last ten years or so in the stock-exchange mania, as well as in the real-estate boom in the United Kingdom and the U.S. Here the market participants have invariably displayed the same characteristic behavior. They have evaluated the assets without regard for the price-earnings ratio, speculating entirely on finding, at some point in the future, a buyer who is even more bullish than they are now, and who will therefore consent to pay an even higher price.
“Consider the current (2006) U.S. real-estate boom. Many Americans are utterly convinced that American real estate is the one sure bet in economic life. No matter what happens on the stock market or in other strata of the economy, real estate will rise. They believe themselves to have found a bonanza, and the historical figures confirm this. Of course this belief is an illusion, but the characteristic feature of a boom is precisely that people throw any critical considerations overboard. They do not realize that their money producer-----the Fed-----has possibly already entered the early stages of hyperinflation, and that the only reason why this has been largely invisible was that most of the new money has been exported outside of the U.S. Money prices have increased tremendously above the level they would have reached without the relentless production of greenbacks, but the absolute increase of the domestic price level (as measured by CPI figures) has been relatively moderate so far. However, as soon as foreigners slow down their purchases of U.S. dollars domestic prices will start soaring, and then hyperinflation looms around the corner.
“In the past, governments have tried to counter this trend through regulations. Moral hazard first became visible in the banking industry, and today this industry is indeed very strongly regulated. The banks must keep certain minimum amounts of equity and reserves, they must observe a great number of rules in granting credit, their executives must have certain qualifications, and so on. Yet these stipulations trim the branches without attacking the root. They seek to curb certain known excesses that spring from moral hazard, but they do not eradicate moral hazard itself. As we have seen, moral hazard is implied in the very existence of paper money. Because a paper-money producer can bail out virtually anybody, the citizens become reckless in their speculations; they count on him to bail them out, especially when many other people do the same thing. To fight such behavior effectively, one must abolish paper money. Regulations merely drive the reckless behavior into new channels.
“One might advocate the pragmatic stance of fighting moral hazard on an ad-hoc basis wherever it shows up. Thus one would regulate one industry after another, until the entire economy is caught up in a web of micro-regulations. This would of course provide some sort of order, but it would be the order of a cemetery. Nobody could make any (potentially reckless!) investment decisions anymore. Everything would have to follow rules set up by the legislature. In short, the only way to fight moral hazard without destroying its source, fiat inflation, is to subject the economy to a Soviet-style central plan.
“Central
planning or hyperinflation (or some mix between the two)-----this is
what the future holds for an economy under paper money. The only third
way is to abolish paper money altogether and to return to a sound
monetary order.”
Here are two excellent discussions with Hülsmann (mp3s):
“Intellectual Property” is not Property
I am against so-called "intellectual property" (e.g., patents and copyrights) because it results in the theft or the coercive control over the scarce and physical properties we have legitimately homesteaded or acquired via voluntary trade (e.g., our papers, computers, audio recordings, video recordings, even our physical bodies and brains, etc.).
Things that are scarce, physically controllable, and discernible we treat as private property because otherwise there would be---chaotic and irresoluble---conflict, and quite possibly violence and bloodshed, over who controls what: Do I own this computer or do you? Who has legitimate control over it?
But ideas are not scarce. They are infinite. I can sing a song, for example, again and again without disallowing anyone else from singing the same song. There is no chaotic conflict. To say that I "own" the song says that I can control you and your property. However a song is not property because rules of exclusivity do not need to exist and if they are present they are entirely, artificially imposed from the outside by the backing of the government. If I am the first man to say "hello," it makes no sense to say that I own it and that you need to get my permission to say the word.
Ideas (e.g., songs) are by their very nature nonphysical but with "intellectual property" are artificially treated as if they were indeed physical. Though ideas can of course be applied to property----and they always are----they are still per se detached from property. A man can transform via production the property he acquired through homesteading or exchange (e.g., clay) into what he perceives as a better state (e.g., pot). This transformation of his property, nonetheless, does not alter the nature of his ownership. The physical components are the same, what has changed is the arrangement of those owned components. In addition, because ideas are always applied to property, from a practical point of view it would be impossible to consistently and non-arbitrarily enforce such idea "ownership." The whole concept of this "property" is consequently spurious.
With the introduction of "intellectual property" the logical detachment between ideas and their relationship with the scarce, physical world is ignored, and involuntarily and unilaterally the private properties we have acquired are violently delimited in their use.
Private Property brings Order
The whole notion of exchange and contract between specific individuals work because acquiring property from nature happens at specific points in space and time by specific individuals.* Socialistic-nationalistic notions of property can only be artificially and aggressively imposed after the fact. Before a trade can take place between two men, there obviously must be something to trade. They, or specific men before them, must therefore have acquired something from nature beforehand in a non-socialistic way. And only then can a trade take place where the specific property of a specific man can be exchanged for the specific property of another specific man.
To have any real concept whatsoever of liberty, liberty must have an exclusive as opposed to an inclusive nature for men. Or else there would be no domain for man to have liberty to actually do something and control something, and to do so without running into conflict with another man and his abilities to control things and do things with these things. Here we find the only way for men to have---to possess---liberty. (In our day of course the focus of "liberty" is not exclusivity but inclusiveness. This idea is internally filled with contradictions and thus cannot be upheld consistently. [My blog post "Paradoxes of Liberalism" partly displays this erroneous view.]) Without exclusivity, liberty does not exist and is hence illusory: I have no liberty if my physical body did not exist as my private property. I have no liberty if I cannot own the fruits of my labor's homesteading and exchanging of property. Hence, the fountainhead of liberty is private property.
Restricting a man, for instance, from using a super-atomic bomb to kill every man on the planet is clearly not restricting his liberty. A man's liberty is to his private property, i.e., his physical body and the property he acquired through homesteading or through voluntary exchange from a previous (non-thief) owner. This implies that private property delineates borders between specific properties belonging to specific men. Man A's exclusive control over his private property prevents man B from taking it for himself and at the same time prevents man A from using his own property in a way that trespasses upon the private property borders of man B's. In addition, conflicts are eradicated from the get-go in the creation of property borders. The property borders of man C's land are created when he homesteads this land. Because he does this before any other man, there is no conflict and the borders that were created prevent conflict in the future. Insofar as man recognizes the borders of private property, conflict can be prevented and order can be pervasive across society.
Saint Thomas Aquinas was one scholar to recognize some of the basic principles spelled out here. Not only do men take care of what is theirs better, any kind of "common" ownership leads to confusion and tension (ST, II-II, q.66, a.2). The dominion of the earth was given to man by God (Genesis 1:28). To control and own private property is in our nature.
*(Hans-Hermann Hoppe's argumentation ethics presents the case that because property must be acquired in such a manner, it is impossible to argumentatively justify any ethical norm that contradicts such facts. "Otherwise," he writes, "it would be impossible for anyone to ever say anything at a definite point in time and space and for someone else to be able to reply. Simply saying, then, that the first-user-first-owner rule of the ethics of private property can be ignored or is unjustified, implies a performative contradiction, as one's being able to say so must presuppose one's existence as an independent decision-making unit at a given point in time and space." As those familiar with his work can see, my analysis here has been heavily influenced by Dr. Hoppe. On the other hand, one of the main differences here is my analysis does not use argumentation ethics as a starting point. While I am endlessly fascinated by it, I personally think it is somewhat a shaky and incomplete idea. But I do think his analysis is more powerful, especially in terms of highlighting prior-later distinctions, than Rothbard's analysis of disproving the alternatives to private ownership (e.g., collective ownership and master-slave ownership.)
“But no man can own land!”
OK. So, you don't mind if your neighbor dumps some garbage into "your" lawn?
Also, why stop at land? If man's homesteading of land does not make him the (legal and just) owner of it, why not say that his homesteading of any "external" thing does not make him the owner of it?
In such a case, man would only be a possessor. But then the only thing that would matter about property is who the possessor is. It would not matter who was the prior or later possessor. Theft would be non-existent, etc.
That would be a world of conflict and chaotic anarchy.
If land is to be used at all----and it must be if mankind is to survive----and if we are to avoid chaotic and irresoluble conflict, we must say that one can control land and therefore own land. The distinction of who the first possessor is in comparison to later possessors, who either have become possessors compatibly or not with the prior man's possessing ownership (which allows man to homestead and later trade without conflict), cannot be gotten rid of. And, to iterate, how can man own the fruits of his labor on land (and fruits which are derived from land) if he cannot own land? "Georgism" (Geoism) is incoherent.
Respecting Man’s Liberty = Peace, Prosperity, & Civility
For it is in the nature of things that when I eat my apple that I exclude all others to it. Any "common" ownership is impossible once these consumer goods are employed or used. To say that this is untrue is to talk nonsense. It is in the nature of all things to be privately owned. The original appropriation of property to be used as a consumer good or capital good is always and by necessity acquired in a private (Lockean-like) manner. Our physical bodies, too, are naturally, individually our own. We are the first and only user to (directly versus indirectly) control our physical body. Furthermore, just as man must have property prior to exchange, man must produce before he can consume. This logical chain cannot be broken. All that can happen is that it is artificially diverted afterwards into destructive and parasitical ends that are incongruent with this logical chain.
The appropriation or homesteading of a specific location of virgin land, before any other man, into a specific man's control and hence property ownership is beneficial, ex ante, to him and at the same time does not infringe upon, or trespass upon, the property of any other man. The voluntary trading of specific goods by specific men, correspondingly, are by their very nature, in the ex ante sense, mutually beneficial for all parties involved and at the same time do not violate any man's property.
Here we find the road, as Murray N. Rothbard wrote, to "multiply ... resources enormously in peaceful and harmonious production and exchange." Instead of fighting over the existence of scarcity, men cooperate with each other and recognize private ownership rights. They homestead, produce, and exchange private properties. Trading leads men, who are naturally different and unequal vis-à-vis each other, to specialize in the division of labor. To expand wealth upward and upward, men develop technologies so as to produce round-about methods of production. Profit and loss continuously moves the production of goods and services from those who produce less well to those who produce better. Men start to save, i.e., not to consume present consumer goods, and invest in capital goods with the aim of enlarging the amount of consumer goods in the future. Salaries begin to reflect this and, with salaries on the rise, young children and mothers can exit the labor market. Capitalism as a result becomes geared to stronger families. And so on.
Peace between men, and hence respect for private property, requires us to think about how we can better serve our neighbors, since a man must use the goals of others as economic means to achieve his own goals. It is therefore untrue, as many dullards claim, that the free market promotes egotistical selfishness. The diminution of the division of labor would help to accomplish that. The very rich man, in a free market, gets rich by making the masses rich. As men learn to gain wealth at no one's expense, hostility, violence, and war between men diminish and mutual respect, sympathy, and tranquility between men increase. Thus men become more invested in the rule of law. Moreover, private property makes men more interdependent, and hence reduces perverse forms of "radical individualism." This interdependency requires men to have trust, faith, confidence, and loyalty in others. Otherwise, no one would do business with another. And since socio-economic mobility is flexible, these positive values and feelings between men are promoted to all. On top of this, as wealth increases, there is more time for the arts, community, charity, spiritual development, etc. More material wealth produces a tendency for men to invest in non-material wealth. The latter's marginal utility increases and the former's decreases.
Practical wisdoms and common sense, what is more, spread. With more dependency, mobility, competition, and interactions, such things as politeness and punctuality increase (as far as humanly possible). Punctuality, for instance, makes interactions stronger and results in greater wealth (materially and non-materially). Similarly, education spreads. And very destructive practices and traditions that diminish civilization and men's interactions will tend to diminish in the common ethos. Virtues like charity increase. Without private property, after all, men could not practice it and there would hence be less cultivation of this virtue. (It is only through liberty that a man can individually cultivate virtues!) Thrift, prudence, fortitude, and conservative discipline increase as they are rewarded on the free market. Long-term thinking and planning (both linked to familial management as well) become more common as they are necessary in capital production.
Society becomes somewhat hierarchical. Entrepreneurs, inventors, scientists, natural authority figures, saints, etc. build society upward as they rise above the common man. Not everyone can be a manager or a captain of industry, for example. This further becomes reflected in family and community relationships. No man is a social or economic atom. Private property (which is inegalitarian, hierarchical, exclusive, undemocratic, etc.), outside of our physical body, is not a "given" to us as we are born into the world. We must earn it and therefore must work within the framework of families and authorities in civil society. Most interactions in civil society are communal or institutional and therefore "pure" autonomy, so to speak, of the individual is absent in this regards. Likewise, the shaping of ideas and cultural attitudes are social phenomena. Civilized society knows of no isolated, detached man. With greater peace, the union, the cooperation, between men is stronger.
Not Respecting Man’s Liberty = Violence, Poverty, & Incivility
Peaceful coexistence between men means accepting the principles of liberty. It depends on knowing that aggressing against your neighbors' properties destroys peace. Given that civilization and its advancement depend on the existence of the division of labor and the private ownership of the means of production, it thus depends on the recognition of self-ownership and the homesteading principle.
Society is not an end to itself; it is a means. Men come together to do things together. Peace must be in the heart and mind of men. True fraternity---brotherly love---is something that can only develop when peaceful cooperation is established. It is the fruit of peaceful cooperation. It is based on peace, not war. Peace, as Ludwig von Mises would say (contra Heraclitus), is the father of all things. War, theft, rape can never develop fraternity. Men under such an arrangement would see all other men as enemies. No feelings of friendship could develop under this arrangement, said Mises. Wealth and therefore prosperity can only come from peace, and peace can only come from respecting property.
But the State is institutionally configured to be a war making institution. "[I]f we look at the State naked, as it were," wrote Rothbard, "we see that it is universally allowed, and even encouraged, to commit all the acts which even non-libertarians concede are reprehensible crimes." It is a monopoly of violence that exploits and expropriates life and property. Without the consent of a specific property owner, the State can seize property from this specific owner in full or in part.
The State is not a real producer. It obtains its revenues parasitically from those who actually produce wealth and improve society. Private property is logically prior to government. Government is a parasite. And, given a legitimate owner can do what he wants with his property (because it is his) as long as he does not aggress against another's (because such property isn't his), any contract he makes with another is only a contract if it is voluntary. But, recall what has been said in these mini-essays, the government makes no legitimate contracts with anyone. Contracts are entered into by specific men and their specific property. Government is thus a criminal organization that (ironically) has monopolistic power to define what "criminal" is and is not. In addition it becomes a legalized channel for crimes, i.e., it institutionalizes crime, and is therefore the most dangerous institution and is hence more dangerous than any other criminal person, group, or institution. Historically, this is statistically confirmed. States have murdered the greatest number of men.
With the introduction of "political means" to obtain wealth, which is based on looting and exploiting men's private properties, men are ever less required to think about improving the well-being of their fellow men. Civility and respect become less important in life. Dependence on the "economic means" to obtain wealth, through peacefully respecting the private properties of others and by non-parasitically producing wealth, for men lowers and fraternity diminishes. Social interdependence is depressed and the costs of incivility and atomistic-individualistic action is socialized and therefore increased. Cultural degeneration is the result, and it snowballs when the political means become increasingly more attainable for men. As this happens a tragedy of the commons is produced and a "war of all against all" occurs.
The State that does X activity necessarily does it at the expense of other things. It is absolutely impossible to judge if alternative Y or Z or A or B, or a combination of them, is more or less wanted and needed by the public----a public that is heterogeneous. There is no way to tell if the resources that go into X activity turns those resources into something that is better than not doing so. The only way to tell, however, is if there is a profit, but this would require that X be done through peaceful, voluntary activity which respects private property. Being cost-efficient is hence impossible. Waste and loss is hence implied in all statist activity. Neither can a proper conservation of resources happen. Nor is a State directly dependent on changing consumer demands, since it can easily expropriate property. States, for these reasons, do not have to directly serve their constituents well in the things that they supposedly need to provide. In fact, even if they wanted to, they can't.
Officials in the State naturally have a basic interest in expanding their wealth like any other man, but they can expand their wealth by not serving voluntary consumers directly in the free market, which would prove that their services are serving them well versus competitive alternatives, but by expropriation and exploitation, which proves that State officials are in fact obstructing consumers by destroying their "sovereignty" and thereby destroying competitive alternatives.
The less private property is respected, the more poverty and incivility. Homesteading, producing, and exchanging decline. The structure of round-about capital production is temporally shortened. Thriftiness, self-restraint, prudence, and other conservative values decline. Men become atomistic and detached. And as they shift into becoming political animals to greater degrees, they become more antagonistic toward each other. In the context of this discussion, it should now be clear, peace (market) and violence (power) are the two fundamental poles that advance and hinder the division of labor, the overall wealth in society, and civilized life in general.
***
And if theft is wrong, then it is wrong. Taxation and the like doesn't make it right in some cases. Any kind of relative ethics destroys the very foundation of ethics. Relativistic notions destroy man's reason----and cannot be defended because these notions self-contradictorily intend that they per se are true in a non-relative sense. Even the use of violence to stop a man from doing something that is immoral is unethical and illegitimate if this man is not invading another's property. The ends don't justify the means and two wrongs don't make a right. Clearly, we cannot make all immoral personal acts illegal by State fiat. This is a recipe for tyranny.
There is a reason, by the way, why democratic-republican governments are not filled with hundreds of Ron Pauls. An institutional bias is present against a Ron Paul being able to govern in a high office. Now it is true that public opinion can theoretically make a democratic government be filled with hundreds of Ron Pauls, but this utopian scenario is institutionally unstable and would unlikely last for long. Democracy favors anti-Ron Pauls for the simple reason that it pays to be one. Those men who use the democratic apparatus to its fullest extent possible get further ahead than those who do not. Once the political means to obtain wealth exist, the incentive is to develop the characteristics that define a typical politician of today. No reforms are possible; those who value peace must "strike at the root."
Democracy is a powerful ideology. It cloaks slavery. "Republicanism permits," wrote Albert J. Nock, "the individual to persuade himself that the State is his creation, that State action is his action, that when it expresses itself it expresses him, and when it is glorified he is glorified." The masses play a Ping-Pong game in electoral democracy. This helps to furnish the obfuscatory idea that the masses rule themselves and gives the illusion that there is always an "opposition" party standing by. When things go wrong, there is always a particular party to blame and a particular party to take over. But the statist establishment itself is left intact, instead of it being looked at as the true villain.
“But without a State, we would have anarchy!”
In one sense, there will always be "anarchy." At the present there is international anarchy between the various nation-governments because there is no world government. More fundamentally, all nation-governments are in "internal" anarchy because there is no outside government making it anarchy free within itself. Obviously, such a task would be impossible to truly fulfill (unless, theoretically speaking, there is a dictator). Notwithstanding this internal anarchy present in the government, it is able to maintain law and order within itself. If anarchy were per se unstable, this would be impossible; hence, anarchy is feasible in terms of producing law and order.
And if one claims that peace cannot be had under anarchy, Murray Rothbard would point out that it seems to follow that it cannot be had with different nation-governments. So, if someone thinks there must be government, he must think there must be a world government. Accepting the idea that smaller governments could form and thereby break off from a world government, while additionally proclaiming this process would uphold moderately stable peace under such increasingly anarchistic international relationships, has no logical end point in terms of these new and smaller governments being similarly broken up, leading to the obliteration of all governments. Moreover, Hans Hoppe, echoing Rothbard, points out that the anarchistic relationships between governments holds for the anarchistic relationships between men of different governments. Not surprisingly, the latter anarchistic relationships are more peaceful, historically speaking, than the former.
(Plus the idea of a world government is the most dangerous of ideas! Briefly: The larger the territorial government, the more it can afford, and get away with, imposing lots of intrusive and anti-capitalist laws on its subjects without too much adverse consequences to it, itself, directly. Conversely, ceteris paribus, the smaller a government is territorially, the less this is true. When you think about this more and more, it should become more and more clear that greater anarchy, ceteris paribus, produces better conditions. Now put this in the context of the above paragraph.)
When disputes do happen between two men of different governments, these cases are generally resolved even though there is no world government. A sovereign is not required and this is why the free market can provide judicial functions. In addition, international trade is yet another example of anarchistic relationships. There are several examples of anarchistic trading partners using non-governmental means (e.g., privately created law and arbitration) to keep the trade as honest as possible.
Other questions come to mind: Who will protect us from our "protectors"? Who will protect the "protectors"? The next reasonable question is this: Why is there not "a war of all against all" between the "protectors" and the "protected"!? It seems to follow that if the theory is true about the need for a sovereign government to prevent chaos between men, the relationship here between these two "classes" would nevertheless be chaotic. Accordingly, anarchistic chaos does not exist not because of the State but despite it.
Some Blog Entries that Expand on These Topics: “You Want Justice? Don't Make Me Laugh;” “Debunking Deterrence and Rehabilitation Justice Theories;” “Reparations and Private Property;” “Some Analysis on the Logic of Private Property;” “Don’t Give the State Consent;” “Are ---We--- the Government?;” “Does Freedom Come From The State?;” “Power Destroys Civil Society;” “The Market for Liberty --- Privatize Everything;” “Aggression, Defense, and State.”
Quite a few essays that have been written by prominent libertarian thinkers can be recommended here, not only to acknowledge my very, very large intellectual debts, but perhaps more importantly to have those interested explore. But because most of the above blog posts have such links, I will not do so here.
My advice is to simply read the works of Spooner, Nock, Rothbard, Hoppe, Block, Kinsella, and others.
My first job was working as a make-up artist in my mom's cosmetic shop, which was located in "the dead mall" across the street from the mega-mall, where everyone respectable went to shop. The only folks who ventured into the dead mall were those with bizarre fetishes they wanted to try out in "public" without actually being too far out into the public sphere. My four hour shift was often punctuated with high school principals and construction workers in drag, trying out the new high heels they just scored at Payless; a 60 yr. old woman dressed as a naughty school girl being led around on a leash by her husband; your occasional flasher; foot fetish guy who would creepily make me show him the colors of "toenail" polish we carried and on & on...
Anyway, it appears that Vox is now the dead mall. Of course, I'm sure there are still many "respectable" folks on here...but more so, there are a lot just letting their freak flag fly. And I love it. You are my people and I'm happy to be back. But don't send me pictures of your penis. Thanks.
Hello Members of Girl Germs,
I am very sorry that I went MIA for so long and spammers have been allowed to contaminate this space. I'm back now and ready to lay the smack down. I nuked as many spam posts as I could find and members that are clearly robots...but I'm sure I didn't catch everything. If you see something that should be destroyed, please let me know so that I can take care of it.
Thank you so much for adding all this wonderful content to the group - I have enjoyed catching up with everything I missed and have learned a lot. Also, you have inspired me so much! I can't wait to start writing again!
xoxo,
Miss Scotch
First, we're happy to announce that the team has identified and fixed the issue with the YouTube conduit; you can now find and add videos from YouTube to your library and posts. As always, thanks for your patience!
The other news we have today is about a new addition to the Six Apart family: TypePad Micro, a new free level of TypePad that is streamlined for microblogging. We see a new form of blogging emerging that lives between the quick status updates of Twitter and Facebook and the long-form posts of "classic" blogging; TypePad Micro is designed to meet that need. You can read more about TypePad Micro in Chris Alden's post on the Everything TypePad blog.
A lot of the new capabilities we've added to TypePad this year were actually inspired by some of the best things about Vox: favoriting, member profiles, a dashboard to follow other bloggers, and easy ways to post content from other social media sites. But the things that make Vox different from TypePad are still there: Vox has always been -- and still is -- the best place for "friends and family" blogging, where you're in control over who sees what. TypePad, on the other hand, is built for the blogger who wants, no, craves, attention.
Do you have a passion or interest you want to share with people beyond your Vox neighborhood? If so, we'd love it if you tried out TypePad Micro. Maybe you've always wanted to start that obsessive blog that's just about waffle restaurants. Or want a place to share videos of your favorite band (Jonas Brothers, anyone? Anyone? ...). TypePad Micro's great for those topic-specific blogs. Take it for a spin and let us know what you think.
On the Vox front, our designers are working on some cool new themes (coming soon!). We'd also love to hear your thoughts about where we should take Vox in the coming year. What are the key things you'd like to see for Vox? If you've had a chance to use TypePad this year, what are the features there that we should bring over to Vox? And, if you're thinking big thoughts, how could we connect the Vox and TypePad communities in order to bring together bloggers and their shared passions? Your feedback is really important to us, so please leave a comment here, or shoot me a message.
And again, thanks for your patience as we found and fixed the YouTube bug!
~ daisy
As many of you have noticed, the YouTube Conduit is not working. I am so sorry about this; I know how frustrating it is.
The team is looking into how to get this fixed and I will update you as soon as I hear something. In the meantime, not all is lost... There is a work-around for posting videos.
When you're in the Compose Screen, just click on "embed." Ignore the fact that it says "Widget" before everything because you can definitely use this to embed videos as well. You'll just need to input the embed code from the video, enter a title (if you want) and hit OK.
It might not show up perfectly in your compose screen, but when you hit "Save," your video should appear just the way you wanted it to.
Hopefully this will allow you to keep posting videos while we figure out what's happening on our end.
As always, thanks for your patience.
Go forth and fill your libraries with media.
Seriously, thanks to everyone for being so amazing and patient. You are the reason I love Vox.
