Who Plans Whom? » altruism

Re: Thoughts on Individualism (Why Libertarianism is Wrong)

Justin Oliver — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 18:00:26 +0000

William Pierce, who according to Wikipedia, was a white nationalist and founder of Cosmotheism, “a religion based on white racialism, pantheism, eugenics, and National Socialism.” Until his death in 2002, he was probably most well-known as the author of “The Turner Diaries,” which depicts a violent revolution leading to the overthrow of the United States government and extermination of non-Caucasian people.

In the vast majority of political circles, he has no credibility, except to say that his arguments append pretty smoothly to arguments for generic statism. Both incorporate the same premises, only Pierce believes the white race is the standard of moral value, not society as a whole. First notice that Pierce in the video (above) did not deny that he was a collectivist in this 1998 broadcast; he was rather pointed that he thought “that all of us have a responsibility for the future of our race, that we should put the welfare and security of our people ahead of personal considerations.”

That certainly is an assertion. To substantiate that assertion, he would have to demonstrate how he bridged the is-ought gap from a description of what is (facts of reality) to the prescription of what he claims morally ought to be (me taking “responsibility for the future of our race”). Of course, he has no basis for making such a normative statement. Even if it were possible to validate his claim, it would be meaningless for me to take responsibility for the actions of other people with their own free will since that is an impossible task.

Pierce continued, “What happens to our people is more important than what happens to any individual.” Later he added, “Perhaps some of our own individualists will realize their own lives can have no lasting value or meaning, no matter how rich or famous they become, unless they are a part of something larger and more enduring than themselves.” This is the epitome of collectivism.

I have to say that Pierce was pretty accurate in his portrayal of normative individualism (as opposed to methodological individualism) in the scenarios he gave, except when he said that individualism promotes selfishness and irresponsibility. Admittedly, the logical rubric for individualism, which is based on the idea that the concept of moral “value” is derived from and contingent upon the concept of “life,” which only exists in individuals, is the basic foundation for individualism. While individualists can practice crass or myopic behavior sometimes, it is empirically the case that being free to act in one’s rightly understood self interest promotes the interest of everyone in society. It could be summed up by the rational egoist phrase “Doing good by doing well.”

That is not to say that egoism and individualism are not necessarily synonymous. One could support normative individualism on the basis that people ought to be free to practice altruism (or self-sacrifice). Until which time as people are free to practice self-sacrifice without being compelled to do so by the government, then a person cannot freely express his own will to make moral decisions.

The reason Pierce supports using collectivism to accomplish his racist agenda is because he does not trust other whites to abide by his creed. The collectivist’s final salvation rests with authoritarianism, that is, aggression and indoctrination. That is telling. Maybe I am wrong, but Pierce would have likely agreed that I would have no obligation to “take responsibility for our race” if I had no means of taking responsibility for myself. For example, a newborn baby would have no such responsibility, I presume. So really, this obligation of Pierce’s is contingent on people who have earned their wealth or talents to share it with the race. Such a system would mean that a person can only act to the extent it serves his or her race, that individuals are the property of the race. The whole idea is self-defeating and stands in opposition to freedom, for it is nonsensical to be responsible for something which owns you, as if ontologically that were even possible.

Pierce was correct to be alarmed by the explication of individualism. It threatens the deepest recesses of his collectivist charade. Throughout the video, Pierce never bothered to address — and for good reason, there is none — how it came to be that white people ought to take responsibility for “our people.” All he had to offer were empty assertions, which appropriately enough is what his life and ideas have amounted to. Pierce has long past; may his premises and presuppositions soon follow.

Why ‘Anarchist’

Justin Oliver — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 17:00:36 +0000

The best reason for calling yourself an anarchist is because you are one. Yet, there are still good reasons to call yourself an anarchist even if you are not quite there yet, as Brian Micklethwait pointed out in a past edition of Libertarian Alliance.

An important point about anarchism is that no political movement seeking power is going to co-opt your name or core ideas as their own. Thanks to the Tea Party bandwagon, shameless opportunists like Glenn Beck and even Sean Hannity are the latest self-proclaimed libertarians, the party by the same name of Murray Rothbard and Harry Browne.

Admittedly, the word “anarchy,” which means no ruler like “monarchy” means one ruler, can be divisive thanks to the aid of government propoganda. Everyone with whom you speak will react differently, so I do not suggest dropping the word in a conversation without putting it in context. For that reason, some prefer calling it “self-government,” or “voluntary society,” or “stateless society,” or “private law,” but they are essentially the same idea and can be somewhat more confusing. “Anarchy” is short, bold, and definitive.

Whatever term you like, anarchists are also likely to get more of what they want than moderates. Radicalism moves the center more than moderation does. Even though the state is not going to vanish overnight, we can still advocate that it should.

It would not be a good thing if the state were destroyed overnight by a violent revolution though. An armed revolution would actually strengthen the government’s hand and present a common enemy to unite against. As Benjamin Tucker said, “Violence is the power of darkness. If the revolution comes by violence … the old struggle will have to be begun anew.” It would leave people confused and frightened and looking for a strongman to lead the way. The state has no permanence except that which we give it in our minds, and it has no power other than the power people tacitly accept it has.

The path of less government, and ultimately anarchy, is through the evolutionary process of convincing people of a revolutionary idea, that a society without a state would be more practical and just. Thanks to peddlers of altruism, so often people are led to believe that practicality and morality are irreconcilable.

The market-based solution is through peace. Where there are free markets, there is voluntary cooperation and mutual benefit. The state is the violent interloper, with politicians and bureaucrats getting their hands on other people’s money and making new laws on a whim or, when it suites them, enforcing imaginary laws. The market tends to smooth out transitions and imbalances, while the state exacerbates frictions and heightens conflicts. With less government, we could expect greater harmony in our day-to-day lives.

Anarchism is in the tradition of past movements for freedom. Whenever there have been movements that support greater freedom, they were at first outnumbered by opponents fearing that one more inch of freedom would send civilization into the oblivion. Anarchism is not inevitable. There is no materialist historical phenomenon that says anarchism must triumph. It is an idea, like any other. It is a true idea, I believe, in that abolishing all political authority will lead to a greater flourishing of humanity. Ideas must be put into practice to realize their full material benefit, and that effort is bettered by attracting others to our cause.

We continue to suffer the consequences of inherited ideas that have locked people in superstitious fear. True ideas, the result of reason, have bettered our lives and soothed our fears. It is a daunting task, no doubt. But there are so many ways we can do it: talking with our family, speaking out at public forums, taking action to better the lives of ourselves and our friends and family, and countering the power of the state with alternative solutions to mostly government-created problems.

So if you have ever been a little anarcho-curious, give it a spin. Once you go black (and gold), you might not go back.

Further Resources

“Darian Worden on Practical Anarchy“
“Glenn Beck is a Neocon“

Image credit: jam343, with a Creative Commons license

We All Fall Down?

Justin Oliver — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 18:12:40 +0000

As the famous nursery rhyme goes, “Ring around the rosey, // A pocket full of posies // ashes, ashes. // We all fall down.” So the scare goes, which some believe will happen when or if the federal and state governments collapse. (As far as I have read, the rhyme was created around the time of the Great Plague in Europe; so though it does not relate directly to this topic, it provides some convenient markers for discussion.)

There is good reason to believe that current government policies will not last. The direct and indirect costs of government controls have never been greater. Government debt, already at record levels, is only projected to grow at an even faster pace for the next decade. When central banks are left with no choice but to raise their lending rates to curb monetary inflation, the cost of carrying debt will balloon, putting debt-ridden governments at greater risk of insolvency. In fact, the parasitic political class now constitutes a majority of the population as early as three years ago. Accordingly, it certainly seems likely that the ship of state is going down hard.

As a result, some further fear a violent backlash will follow the collapse of the federal government, which will trigger dependent state and local governments to come crashing down too. It is all nightmarish stuff, which is why those who actually care for the poor and needy should support reducing the size of government now.

Ring Around the Rosey

This is not the first time a government is facing impending doom. All governments at one time or another will collapse or be overthrown. That is no surprise. Even a constitutionally limited government, if one existed, would still employ violence to solve complex social problems. Under political government, ruthlessness is rewarded and productiveness is preyed upon.

A Pocket Full of Posies

I will take my literary license here and say the ashes sung about are the posies, or dollars, becoming worthless. That is definitely the trend for the past 100 years. Prior to 1913, it had been that the value of the dollar gradually increased, save for times of war. But with the creation of the Federal Reserve, the progressive income tax, and later moving to a fully fiat dollar, the decline of the dollar has signaled the transfer of wealth from the productive to the political class, who receive substantial income and privileges from government power.

Governments dreads deflationary periods (meaning a reduction in the supply of money in the economy). The availability of credit becomes harder, so government tax receipts go down as people begin saving more. Incomes and prices fall, which puts even less money in the hands of government.

An inflationary policy, meanwhile, loots people’s savings and tames their judgement of government action in light of their own increasing financial anxiety. The government’s economic outlook does not look as bleak relative to taxpayers’ own conditions. More importantly though, people become compliant when they fear the backlash of openly opposing government actions.

We All Fall Down?

So I have painted a pretty grim picture. And there is really nothing that can be done about it. I mean that. But even if my predictions come to pass, do not fret. That the dollar is backed by nothing works to our advantage. If the the dollar was still on a commodity standard, there would be real assets behind those paper promises, which would give people something to cling to.

When the dollar becomes worthless, people will just stop working for the government. The existing government people with any real power will be too busy slipping away with their stolen loot. Everyone else will just walk away. There is nothing to fight over because the dollar is worthless. Government employees switching to the private sector will rapidly increase productivity in the economy. Resources will be better allocated. It will not be easy, but the invisible hand is an incredible thing. We can soften any crash by getting people more independent, which is a good thing anyway. The federal government will still exist. They might still pass a flury of laws, such as to confisgate gold as happened under Franklin Roosevelt.

It will be a time of confusion for people. I do not expect a great majority are ready to face fundamental questions such as the scope of control they seek over other peaceful people. The more fundamental question worth asking is whether a 600-year-old solution called the nation-state, which has never delivered on the promise of maintaining peace and security, is worth saving.

In my mind, the move toward complete liberty will take place another day. First, it requires a change in people’s respect for themselves, rejecting the cannibalistic view of man as a sacrificial animal for society and, instead, replacing self-effacement with a new outlook that sees each individual’s life an end in itself.

Image credit: santheo, with a Creative Commons license

‘I Will Hang Your Ass’

Justin Oliver — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 23:20:08 +0000

Collectivists hold that individuals are subordinate to a group and have value only so far as they serve the demands of that group. Examples are racism, sexism, nationalism, statism, and altruism — second-hand ideologies of guilt and the gun. Because collectivism runs so contrary to the individual autonomy of human beings, collectivists snarl at sincere ambition and genuine loyalty. They can be more rancid at times, like recently when I was having an e-mail discussion with a constitutional scholar. He knows more about constitutional theory that I could ever hope or care to learn. He has an entire framework for the purported necessity of an institution known as government (or the state), a political entity which maintains an individually nonconsensual territorial monopoly.

His particular justification is the social contract (compact) theory, an ex post facto excuse for a dominant majority to subjugate the will of a minority while simultaneously attempting to evade their own psychological trauma for doing so. There are many versions of the social contract, some larger in scope than others, but his happens to be quite limited. He believes a social contract obliges adults to defend the rights of others in the community and to deliberate in an assembly to make legitimate changes to the government.

We’re going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good. — Hillary Clinton

This is all well and good, but I didn’t understand how a social contract could be established or what happens to those who disagree that a social contract had been established. As it turns out, individuals agreeing to pool their resources to defend against threats to their liberty (or rights) are forming a social contract. In doing so, a society is innately created, and as children become adults, they inherit this social contract and further these obligations of protection and deliberation onto their children, and so on and so on. Already, we can see the circular argument in this theory. Liberty and rights are a function of living in a society; societies cannot be formed for the protection of liberty since the concept of liberty is meaningless and has no value before joining a society. (For someone concerned about protecting liberties, forming a government is doubly confusing since governments are the greatest violators of liberty to have ever existed.) Ludwig von Mises said, “Society is division of labor and combination of labor.” The protection of liberty is not the purpose of society, but it is a fortunate consequence. Instead, the purpose of joining or maintaining a society is to form a division of labor, making the efficient protection from criminals one of the society’s many byproducts. Society is a mental pursuit, first. It is an attempt by individuals to quell some easiness about their existence, to improve the material conditions they experience. Some individuals in a society may make an explicit loyalty oath among themselves to defend each other from criminals, to educate the young, or to share their food in common, but those are not a necessary condition for a society to be created. In theory, a group of self-sufficient families who otherwise never interacted could form a self-defense compact, but they would get none of the benefits of a society. If an obligation of protection were a necessary component of forming a society, then it could equally be stated that there is an obligation to feed, to house, and to care for, and to educate the less fortunate, neccessitating an intrusive government that redistributes income. While I agree that it is moral to lend assistance to those who are deserving, I also agree with Lysander Spooner that those are acts “which each man must be his own judge, in each particular case, as to whether, and how, and how far, he can, or will perform them.”

Another justification, I was told, was that the majority support the social contract, yet the vast majority of people are not legislators. By what right may legislators make laws if they are so greatly outnumbered? Supposedly, these legislators are chosen by the people in the society — who have reached a certain age, have not committed one of the several thousand vague laws or regulations, have filled out paperwork correctly within a certain number of days before the election, have citizenship approval of the government, and have attended the polling station on a certain day within an allotted number of hours every two years. In 2008, only 31 percent of United States citizens chose who would be in control of the government’s thermonuclear warheads, and most polls give Congress a job approval rating of less than 30 percent. Worse still, government regulators — the ones who interpret and enforce the laws to their own liking — never stand for election. Setting aside the immorality of majoritarianism, it is impossible to prove the intent of those supporters. It is possible that the support of anyone who chooses to remain within a territory was contingent on preserving some liberties or being made a slave. If my only options are to live in a neighborhood prone to terrorism or a neighborhood prone to vandalism, I could probably live with some random vandalism. That decision is not an approval of vandalism as much as it is an objection to being killed. In a stateless society, there exists an additional option, to form your own community or not participate, just as individuals can provide their own services, which ensures that the market has the possibility of satisfying the smallest minority of one.

I don’t know of anyone who believes that the majority will should be followed all the time, so there must exist a higher standard. Others believe that the will of the majority may be fallible but nevertheless should be given priority. Can the will of the majority be accurately determined by the political process? Voters are never given the choice of none of the above, so it is impossible to determine if a candidate won an election because he or she was the true favorite or if he or she was the “lesser evil” who actually stood a chance of winning. Determining the will of the majority is preposterous, but perhaps this centralized bureaucracy with no financial incentive to provide timely, efficient service had a crystal ball in its possession that could read the mind of every resident. It would still be necessary to prove that the will of the majority had not been tampered with by bribes or propaganda from the government. Nothing could be less true. Those in the government give one another special favors; they bailout failing companies, stymie competitors, offer discounted credit, and give preferential treatment to politically connected laborers. That is what they do. Government-approved education is compulsory during a child’s most formative years. In 2008, H. Walter Croskey, a California appeals court judge, in essence made homeschooling illegal in the state, saying that “A primary purpose of the educational system is to train school children in good citizenship, patriotism and loyalty to the state and the nation as a means of protecting the public welfare.”

Well, maybe the government’s crystall ball can see past the theft and propoganda of the government. Even still, a social contract, since it is not material, in no way makes clear that the agreement is perpetually binding on everyone except those who intentionally opt out. Implicit contracts are unenforceable because the terms of the agreement are not objective, so any enforcement is capricious. If someone is obliged to defend the rights of others in the society, how many times, to what extent, and by what means? Who knows. For this reason, individuals ought not enforce implicit contracts; and individuals acting in concert under the guise of a government have not moral claim to enforce them either.

If nothing else, the social contract is a self-defeating idea because it violates the premise of its own existence, the protection of liberty, since a coercive majority may impose the social contract on a minority. (There are also the tiny discrepancies that no government has ever been established this way and that United State Supreme Court justices have ruled since 1855 and subsequently that agents of the government do not have an obligation to protect residents from “killers or madmen.”)

When I confronted the scholar with some of these seeming contradictions in the social contract theory, he said that if I knew of a mortal threat to the community, “[Y]ou had better respond and do your part, or I will hang your ass.” At that point, I knew there was no purpose in continuing the discussion. Once a person resolutely accepts evil and proudly brandishes it (at your throat no less), rational discussion ceases.

He continued that the social contract exists to serve “the group” as a whole since it “may not be rational for the individual member.”

How many things that are good for you, that you will benefit from, need to be imposed on you … with force? — Brett Veinotte

Contemplating the risk and reward of negating the peaceful will of another human being for the sake of the collective is moral cannibalism, giving man the same status as a sacrificial animal. Insofar as force is applied, the only tool available for human beings to progress and flourish — his reasoning mind — is lost.