But the anti-capitalist conception of freedom is only recognizing the “yoke of external nature,” as anarcho-communist Mikhail Bakunin called it. Or like Wesley Bertrand on a recent “Complete Liberty” podcast said, “Life is the freedom to starve.” This yoke cannot be removed so long as we are alive. It is the everlasting condition underlying every action we make: to live or die, to improve our material condition or suffer. To say that a starving man is not free is to reverse cause and effect. Consumption only becomes possible after production. It is only through production that an individual can provide for his well-being. A starving man has fewer opportunities to take advantage of his freedom, but also at no other time is his freedom of more value. Without it, his mind would be paralyzed to think, ensuring his destruction.

The root conflict between my understanding of liberty and someone like Bakunin, for example, is I believe that indirect and direct physical force are the only means of violating someone’s rights. All libertarians committed to non-aggression would agree that if a starving man is prevented by physical force from engaging in productive action, then he is not free. Bakunin is correct that the right to liberty is only of significance in the realm of interpersonal relationships, but I contend that that the only way of impeding someone’s rights is by force. We can be victims of our neighbor’s irrationality or bigotry. But so long as that injustice is not manifested in the unauthorized use or abuse of another’s rightly controlled property or person, the damage is psychological and not physical. We remain free to use our minds and the products of our mind as we see fit. We remain free to use the property in question to inform others of the injustice we received.

For those of political power, freedom is an outright threat to the existence of their power. That is because its origin is vested in violence and sought through favoritism, so the static quantity of its influence must increasingly become cartelized into fewer and fewer hands. That system can distribute wealth, but it cannot create it. Their power extents only so far as they can project authority over others or convince others they too can benefit from that power. For those of economic power, they are insulated from the harsh realities of tyrannical governments and can position themselves to profit from partnering with the state. So it is natural for the two to protect each of their interests. One has a legal monopoly on coercion, but not the ability to create wealth of its own. The other has wealth, but not supposed the authority to initiate the use of physical force.

It is important not to forget that political and economic interests acquire power from fundamentally different sources. The former confiscates wealth and subjugates individuals as a matter of course, while the latter serves to disperse power through mutually beneficial exchange (to the degree it does not cling to political power). Economic power, when not acquired by physical force, is a product of the limitless creative process, consensual regulation, market competition, and organized labor.

Confusing the two as one in the same leads to the support for less liberty and less opportunity. An example of this is the famed anarchist Noam Chomsky, who actively supports the expansion of state control. While justly viewing the state as a tool of domination and privilege, he looks to the state for protection from the same interests he believes are manipulating it in their favor.

In an interview, he said:

I’m not in favour of people being in cages. On the other hand I think people ought to be in cages if there’s a sabre-toothed tiger wandering around outside and if they go out of the cage the sabre-toothed tiger will kill them. … And there is a cage, namely the state, which to some extent is under popular control. The cage is protecting people from predatory tyrannies so there is a temporary need to maintain the cage, and even to extend the cage.

Under a banner of protecting people from the infringement of political privilege, Chomsky has become a tool of entrenched political interests. It is also not lost on me that economic power disparities can be seized upon and manipulated in favor of one side of an exchange more than another. No political model can guarantee that people will act justly. But one can minimize the consequences of injustice and promote the occurrence of mutually positive interactions. To do this, a just society would need a widespread recognition for private property rights, but that is not sufficient to ensure that freedom would have much meaning. Here, I agree with Bakunin that individuals are only capable of achieving emancipation once they have recognized their same humanity in others. As Mary Ruwart said in Healing Our World, when we seek to control others, we find ourself the one controlled.

As a practical matter, a lasting libertarian society would more likely come about by a widespread cultural shift of accepting the choices of others, treating others equally as individuals, and becoming less obedient to oppressors. Most people do not become libertarians out of a duty to the non-aggression principle. They are attracted to the sense of justice and fairness inherent in equal liberty.

A free market would be a more abundant society and would radically expand the scope of economic opportunity. It would also be more efficient at helping the disabled and poor, who are often the most devastated victims of political favoritism. Without the expense of tax collection and tax compliance, together which gobble up two-thirds of welfare revenue received, those in need would experience dramatic increases in charity. It should go without saying that when I am talking about the free market, I am not apologizing for economic conditions as they exists now in America or elsewhere. I am working analytically to explain the economic consequences of an unhampered market process. To the extent that an unhampered market existed, one could expect these consequences to follow.

A practiced and still principled way of promoting a libertarian society is by addressing people’s legitimate concerns of what would happen to the less fortunate in a free society. Direct action, like mutual aid, social ostracism, and counter-economics, should be potent models to demonstrate the validity of equal liberty while also challenging the status quo. The downside of charity is that it tends to be a short-lived solution, so I do believe mutual aid would be a better way of promoting social harmony and overcoming the root cause of despair — if we are going to be free, not by vote, but as a matter of virtue.

I understand the definition of “faith” to be the means of acquiring a belief in a concept that lacks emperical evidence of its existence or, better yet, a belief in something in spite of the available evidence. By this, making a judgement on the best available emperical evidence, even if incomplete, would not be acting on faith. I do not mean faith in the colloquial sense either, like remaining faithful.

For clarity’s sake, I understand virtues to mean the consistent actions by which one achieves moral values.

But everyone has faith in something, some might argue. Even if true (and I am not conceding it is) that would not mean people ought to have faith. “If all your friends jumped off a bridge ….” You get my point. No doubt, some benefit from their faith and achieve things they might have never dreamed possible.  In the coming paragraphs, I hope to prove that faith is not something that can be practiced consistently in order to achieve moral values.

For sure, we accept ideas everyday without a complete understanding of the facts, but we can still deduce (or infer) beliefs from previous evidence we believe is true. In order to do so, we use logic to decide what evidence is relevant, what evidence is lacking, and how important is each in order to make a decision or withhold from making a decision. When I am driving down the street, how do I know that the driver coming in the opposite direction is not going to steer into my lane and cause a head-on collision?  Since everyone has a free will, I can never know absolutely.  Based on the preponderance of the emperical evidence, I have no reason to believe the typical driver will cause a collision. My judgement could be mistaken, but the only way of knowing that is by studying the consequences of the empirical evidence.

The distinction between human beings and the lower animals is our ability to form concepts and choose values. We are not especially superior in any physical sense to other animals, who can see better at night, travel faster, carry proportionally more weight, and adapt to the environment more quickly. But we sit atop the food chain. The greatest advantage we have is our ability to conceptualize.

Yet, we are also at another disadvantage. We do not not inherit knowledge from birth. We are a blank slate. Since values — those things which one wishes to gain or keep — are not given through instincts, they must be discovered with the only tool available to us for integrating perceptions of (objective) reality. We have the choice to make our character what we want it to be. We can choose good or evil. If we want a happy life, we have to discover and uphold rational, life-promoting principles (virtues) that make it possible. They are the actions that further and sustain one’s life when practiced consistently.

The extent to which people neglect or reject their their greatest tool of survival is the extent that they retard their life. The extent to which people believe something in the absence of evidence or in spite of it is the extent to which people believe something because they want to. They believe because they feel like it, meaning faith is a form of subjectivism. Unwittingly, they build their support for absolute truth on the soft sands of subjectivism.

Yet, many people of faith defend their religious belief because God gives authority to the purpose of morality. If God did not exist, anything goes, they might say. But without realizing it, supporters of faith concede that reality is not objectively knowable, that reason is a handicap to be subordinated to revelation, dogma and mysticism, and that support for morality rests on a whim.

I am not disparaging feelings or emotions. They are important factors, as are our cognitive powers. Emotions are the automatic responses to value judgments produced by the premises we hold. Conflict between reason and emotions only arises when the premises of our emotions are in conflict with reality.

Subjectivism as Sacrifice

The invariable contradictions that arise from such a mindset lead to incredible frustration and self-doubt. As people reject the crippling effects of faith, which they increasingly are, many cling to their subjectivist preconceptions of morality. They have heard all their life that without God, anything goes. So with their newfound disbelief, the truth is what you feel it is.

Morality becomes the domain of society. The “common good,” “the public interest,” and “majority will” become the dominant motives of morality. “If individuals have to be sacrificed to satisfy morality, then so be it.” Evil becomes “necessary.” The good is not longer tied to the individual but to the collective.

Life as the End

Meanwhile, the true paradigm is that without an objective reality, then morality does not exist. But reality does exist; therefore I am. Faith is not necessary to believe in morality. The law of identity, the law of causality, and the corollary law of non-contradiction are not debatable. They are the axiomatic metaphysical givens that underlie every action we take. The very attempt of dispoving them demonstrates their validity. They are absolute, self-evident and unchanging.

Individuals are all there are. The “common good” is a meaningless concept because the collective is only a metaphor. Try and point to a collective without pointing to the individuals or the consequences of their actions. We as humans are given a choice: to live or not to live. If we choose life, and there are objective reasons to live and prosper, the process of achieving that value (our life) is called morality. The concept of a value presupposes the existence of a valuer. Without life, values would be a meaningless concept. This means that sustaining one’s life is the purpose of all moral values; it is how they come to be. As life exists only in individuals, each individual’s life is an end in itself and should not be sacrificed to others or to metaphorical collectives.

That is why faith is so dangerous. It gives people an easy excuse to believe what they want, which others are sure to disagree with for their own subjective reasons. The only way to settle this dispute is by majority vote if we are lucky and by force of arms if we aren’t so lucky. In either case, the rule is might means right. The victory goes to the most underhanded, the most violent, and the most deceitful.

The alienation of man from his labor, which Marx contended was the result of treating labor as a commodity of production, no longer played such an explicit role as it had in the above quotes from his then-unpublished The German Ideology. Instead, the theme of his work began to analyze class struggle as the moving force behind history, and he extended his continuum of thoughts on alienation with his critique of the division of labor. It was these early manuscripts that would become unified in the first volume of Capital. His thesis was that private property had an inborn tendency to become more and more centrally managed due to the antagonistic relationship between capital owners and propertyless laborers, who were left with no option but to sell the only commodity they had — labor power. Marx reasoned that like any commodity, the average price of labor would fall to the average cost of its production, which for the laborer meant the cost of a subsistence living in society.

It was an ingenious revelation, and one on its face that was perfectly plausible according to the prevailing theory of value at that time. The capitalist could appropriate labor for the cost of maintaining a subsistence living and then sell the products of that labor for the market value set by supply and demand, reaping the “surplus value” of labor without doing additional work. Marx was not content with just ensuring higher wages for labor; he believed wage labor itself was abominable.

Except, Marx acknowledged that contrary to his theory, by historical records, the “surplus value” of production was in direct proportion to the total capital invested, not just the labor power invested in production. He said, “It appears therefore that here the theory of value is irreconcilable with the actual movement of things, irreconcilable with the actual phenomena of production, and that, on this account, the attempt to understand the latter must be given up.”

A Libertarian Theory of Exploitation

Communists are right in viewing the state as exploitative, but not because it upholds property rights, but because the state exists only by systematically usurping those rights. What would prevail in a stateless society — one without government propaganda championing that “taxation is voluntary,” “voting is freedom,” and “government is security” — is a strengthened sense of property rights and individual autonomy.

Despite the obstacles of state coercion, we create society anew each day for the mutual benefit of all; what makes this social cooperation possible is the existence of a medium of exchange. I do not mean to say that the desire for monetary gain should be the focus of our social relationships either. My point is that you cannot have meaningful and enduring fraternity without private property, firsthand, and an independent means of economic calculation, secondly.

Without money, sunk is a division of labor, which more easily enables seemingly opposing economic interests to become complementary to one another for the benefit of the whole of society and themselves. Competition within a market framework has to do with excelling to the utmost and providing an understand of who best serve at any particular position. Without such a division of labor, there would be no society, and mankind would exist in a literal Hobbesian war of all against all. Yet, our productive capacity allows us to transform less valuable resources into more valuable resources for consumption and savings (later consumption). This means that life does not require the sacrifice of others. This understanding allows us to plan for long-range goals to achieve prosperity. A secured sense of private property rights permits such long-range thinking.

Please note that this is not an apology for the current economic model. I am calling for a radical break with statism and collectivism. In fact, I agree with Marx’s major historical tenets describing the development of economic history, yet his explanation for class exploitation, the rise of class privilege, the cartelization of power within the state and business, and the imperialist conquest to stifle foreign competition all fall short because he falsely pinpoints “wage slavery” as the culprit for those evils.

This is partly forgivable since his economic model was based on the labor theory of value, which predated other classical economics as far back as Adam Smith. Marx failed to account for the time dimension in the relationship between the capitalist and laborer. In theory, Marx should witnessed that the laborer is receiving a present good (his wages) at a discounted rate of interest for the time until the capitalist is able to bring the product to market in the future. Wages are in effect an advanced payment on future revenues.

In practice, today’s “capitalists” are able to create greater demand for their services through legal tender laws and restrictions on the availability of cooperative credit. Existing anti-labor laws, direct and indirect corporate subsidizes, monetary inflation by the central bank, and the general insecurity caused by government manipulation of the consumer and employment markets also put employees in less of a bargaining position to their bosses. In a genuine free market, one without government privilege and artificial barriers to entry, fewer large businesses would undoubtedly exist and we would be far wealthier. So employees who chose wage labor as an occupation would be in a greater position to demand better wages and benefits.

I think part of Marx’s confusion came about because of his conflicting views of the function of the state. On one hand, he viewed it as the tool of the ruling class, who he hoped might be the proletariats one day. In other writings of his and Engels’, he also saw it as always working against the interest of the society (and it does). All in all, the classical liberal theories including, but not limited to, Adolphe Blanqui offer clearer insights into the problematic entanglement of capitalism and the state and how the two together promote conflict for the purpose of exploitation.

The role of politics is to decide who controls the figurative pencil or another resource at any particular time and for what ends. The same could be said of government. Two individuals might have diametrically opposed reasons for supporting a government, but they both support the existence of government. For example, Thomas Jefferson stated that government should be established to secure our individual inalienable rights. In comparison, Benito Mussolini said, “Fascism conceives of the State as an absolute, in comparison with which all individuals or groups are relative, only to be conceived in their relation to the State.”

These two ideas cannot both be true at the same time. Nevertheless, there is an ideal form of government that could conceivably achieve both Jefferson’s and Mussolini’s ends, though not at the same time, of course.

What Is Meant by ‘Government’

As the argument goes, men are not angels, so government is necessary to resolve disputes that arise. But what is a government? John Locke put much thought into this and decided that a functioning government needed to satisfy three “inconveniences” that would arise when living in a society that lacked a government. Locke believed there needed to be a known, settled law by which all disputes are ruled against. Second, he believed there must be a sufficient threat of force behind those ruling so they are followed. Third, a government would need to function as an independent judge of disputes.

Why a Worldwide Dictatorship

The only way to remotely satisfy all three “inconveniences” is to establish a world government. Governments exist now in a state of anarchy with one another as there exists no supra-government that lives up to Locke’s standards to enforce international laws and agreements. Because of their ability to offset the costs of aggression with taxes, governments pose a far graver danger to peace and security than do regular criminals, so a world government is imperative if local or national governments exist. Citizens of other countries also exist in a state of anarchy with citizens of other countries, although this seems to be less of a problem than government-on-government coercion. The United Nations is the closest thing that resembles a world government, yet it does not have the power to coercively impose taxes on citizens of its member nations. Member nations voluntarily fund the UN, and it does not possess the enforcement power to make its resolutions binding.

Even if a world government capable of enforcing its rulings were established, members of the world government would still exist in a state of anarchy because no one external to the government enforces rules upon lawmakers. The one way to reduce conflicts within the government is to reduce the number of government officials. Conceivably, the least populated government would rest power in a single person to avoid incidences of anarchic relationships. Now, admittedly, even this would not entirely end the existence of anarchy since the dictator would also exist in a state of anarchy with everyone else on the planet. Yet, a worldwide dictatorship would be the most ideal government, should one exist, to eliminate anarchic relationships.

For Jeffersonians, world government would be a nightmarish thought at first blush. Many Jeffersonians also believe that government is inevitable, that some form of government will always exist. That is certainly a theory and all the more reason to support immediately establishing a world dictatorship of limited powers before a world government of expansive powers is possibly created by a Chinese-Indian coalition.

For the Mussolini crowd, a worldwide dictatorship would soon enough make “the State as an absolute” a reality.

Why Not a Worldwide Dictatorship

I am being facetious in advocating a worldwide dictatorship. But a world government is where support for any government inevitably leads its supporters. In fact, a worldwide dictatorship of limited powers would quickly dissolve into complete tyranny. (Hint: Hierarchical power structures are not responsive to demands for accountability.)

What we see is the more that power is disproportionately divided among people, the more violence tends to erupt and corruption festers. Government is so dangerous precisely because it can externalize the costs of its violence onto captive taxpayers. The more that power is dispersed and divided, the greater that rights are respected and peace prevails. The profit and loss mechanism and competition, not the impossibility of constant vigilance, provide a natural check on the size of business enterprises and the power they can aggregate to themselves.

In truth, the ideal form of government is none at all since its purpose, from a rights-respecting perspective, is impossible. That does not mean a lack of governance or rule-making in society. A society without the ability to bring order would quickly be no society at all. The absence of monopoly government does not mean everyone will be of a pure heart and display empathy for his fellow man. Precisely because we are not angels, rules and rules enforcement should not be centrally commanded and controlled.

Common objections to profits themselves are that they are unearned, that they drive up prices for consumer goods, and that excessive profits run others out of business. I am not sure how critics measure the interest of society, but I am pretty sure that by any standard the overwhelming evidence proves just the opposite. For simplicity, I want to deal just with competitive profits, and not monopolistic profits yielded from government privilege in a “mixed economy.”

The first thing to note about profits is that there are different kinds of profit measured in relation to time. Investment profit is a simple accounting measure weighting an action’s costs and revenues. Entrepreneurial profit takes investment profits and measures those against the opportunity costs of alternative decisions, of what could have been. Psychic profits are the purely intrapersonal gains or pleasures an individual experiences from action (like reading this commentary, I hope).

Another important point about the profit mechanism is that it is a system of profits and losses. In a consensually regulated market, entrepreneurs make predictions with capital they control to predict the future behavior of consumers. The entrepreneur is the sole risk bearer for all past decisions. Of course, others will most likely be affected by those past decisions, but employees and customers only risk their capital to the extent their have chosen to become investors.

Some see this profit as exploitative, saying the entrepreneur is skimming the wages of his or her employees. This indeed does happen — when government intervention prevents or undermines collective bargaining. In other cases, the profits reaped are what remain after paying wages and other factors of production. The entrepreneur, the first laborer, has foregone another profit opportunity and is rewarded last, after paying expenses, according to how efficiently he or she put capital to use.

Often, entrepreneurship is seen as a distinct field of economics rather than an integrated economic process of economic calculation. From reading Ludwig von Mises, he thinks of entrepreneurship more generally as making decisions under a condition of uncertainty to acquire and combine resources for a higher valued use.

Profits are Information

Profits are created when someone takes resources that are in less demand by consumers and transforms them into products of higher demand. Therefore, the existence of profit is a signal of a misallocation of resources, which consumers have implicitly expressed with their own actions.

Profits provide extra incentive to continue putting resources to their higher valued use, and it helps correct a prior misallocation of resources. Without a system of profit and loss, it would be impossible for those in control of capital resources to know the demand for one product vis-à-vis another.

Collectivized markets, like government policing, are incapable of devising such an efficient system because there is no reliable or automatic feedback mechanism, like prices in a market economy, to gauge consumer demand.

Profits as Anomaly

Profits come about from a change in market conditions. In a hypothetical scenario of universal complete information, profits would tend toward zero. If all businesses knew the future price and demand for all consumer products (goods and services), businesses would compete in such a manner that the costs of production would match the prices of the end consumer goods, less the depreciation and interest accrued on capital resources. However, because of  technological advances, changes in consumer tastes, and unforeseen events taking place in the future, there is a constant hashing of new information that must be deciphered.

It is this uncertainty about the future that, in the long run, makes profits possible.

Tending Toward Zero

As I said, profits are not the norm. They come about by correctly predicting future market conditions. As the market for a product matures, profits will tend to decline. This happens for several reasons.

The method of production becomes more refined, and competitors begin cutting into one another’s profits. One method of increasing profits again is to reduce costs. This encourages competitors to emulate that success in order to improve their own profits by reducing prices, which spurs the whole cost-cutting cycle again. There is a limit to the point where costs can be reduced, and that is the price level consumers are willing to pay for a product. Below that point, businesses will tend to cease production and invest their resources into more profitable areas and seek higher returns on investment.

Cooperatives tend to exist in well-established, more ossified industries with predictable consumer demands, like farming, where the necessity for entrepreneurship is decreased. A reason why relatively few cooperatives exist is because people can possibly invest their capital into more profitable ventures. Losses also tend to disappear for much the same reason. Poor performers tend to go out of business or end production of losing products.

Counterintuitively, the criticism of high profits falls flat. Far from being unearned, an entrepreneur is in a constant flux of reading the future demand of consumers and managing the resources available to him or her. The maligned profit motive has the tendency to reduce final consumer prices, as we see in the electronics market. It is in the centrally planned markets like health care and insurance that prices continue to skyrocket. We can also see how high returns inform less-efficient business of potential profit opportunities.

It should go without saying, but a genuinely free market does not exist and never has. If one had, cooperatives and worker-owned collectives would probably be more common because technology and information would spread more quickly and barriers to entry would be diminished. Corporations exist at the pleasure of the state, meanwhile, receiving subsidies and protection from liability and competition.

Do not think for a second those privileges come without a price. Without government-financed intellectual property enforcement, a foreign policy of American hegemony, bail outs and rent seeking, and a fiat credit monopoly, were else would these corporations get the money to pay off politicians?

I’d want to disband the military or abolish the CIA. Maybe the government entirely? That would be ideal.

But what effect would it have? If we had some round robin presidential selection system, the odds are that the next president would be some statist. Even if I did abolish the CIA with my only decision, the following president would just re-enact the agency.

You could argue that would leave one less statist presidential decision to inflict upon everyone. I thought about that too. But if I did some radical move like that while working within the system, it would lead to calls for more centralized command and control. It would leave people confused. In turn, they would look to expanding government power to prevent such occurrence in the future.

Any change I made would just be ignored if it did not meet with the intersubjective consensus of the government bureaucrats.

There will always be political opportunists flocking to the next thing, so electoral success will come. But it is a lagging indicator of political progress. Society is currently arranged (not to say in an preconceived way) based on fear of others, which is a projection of the lack of honor people have for themselves.

That is why the government is as large as it is. Government is never responsible for reducing violence. It is constantly aggravating or inducing conflict at home and abroad. And so it aggregates power to itself. (I’m using government as a metaphor to mean the actions individuals take as representatives of the State.)

The only way it seems I can reduce government would be to change the minds of individuals, one at a time. If I want to promote individualism, I have to use the methodology of individualism. If, however, I wanted to promote collectivism, then using the collectivized abstraction of government would be ideal. Not so for liberty lovers. Put another way, if I want to abolish the authority some claim over me, I cannot do that from an inherently authoritarian position as president. Are you listening, Ron Paul?

Originally posted at I, justino.

Before I had run out of excuses, as one bumper sticker chides, I was still a minarchist — whereby I believed the only purported role of the state was the defensive protection of individual rights. I was still fiercely opposed to immigration restrictions, based on my reading Ayn Rand, who was obviously sympathetic to immigrants having moved from Russia in her early adult life.

I still have the same support for open immigration today but for different reasons, of course. What I mean to say is that support for open immigration is not exclusive to anarchists, though I do believe they have a deeper understanding of why immigration should be unregulated. Support for open immigration is not universally adopted by anarchists. One example would be Hans Hermann Hoppe, who claims that open immigration is equivalent to “forced integration.” I believe Sheldon Richman has sufficiently eviscerated that argument though.

Another libertarian unfortunately caught in the current immigration scare is Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX). He has called it “an invasion.” Constitutionally, congress has no expressly delegated power to regulate who may immigrate to or emigrate from the country, only how to become a citizen. The framers of the constitution had intended that states would be responsible for their own immigration policy but never envisioned such a welfare state either. In the interim, until government welfare is no longer subsidizing immigration, Paul and other constitutionalists dumbfoundingly insist that government needs additional powers to alleviate the consequences of the immigration problem it created.

Using Paul’s own premise of the necessity of political government, I believe it is self-evident that the only practical and ethical immigration policy is to open the borders. I do not happen to share Paul’s premise that government is necessary or proper, but I think I understand his stance after being a minarchist for several years myself.

Through Minarchist Glasses

Accepting for a moment that the state, as commonly understood, is necessary for the protection of individual rights, an open immigration policy would be a necessity. With that said, open immigration does not mean letting anyone into the country for any old reason whatsoever. A minarchist government could still require immigrants to register and pass a screening check to ensure they are neither perennial aggressors nor intent on committing aggression in the future. Additionally, a government could establish its own guidelines for becoming a citizen.

The argument against open immigration, as I understand it, is that government has the final say who can use its property. For this to be true, two conditions must both be true, that government property is legitimately controlled and that government can properly be assigned powers outside the scope of the defensive protection of individual rights.

First, I have said before that a stipulation on whether property is legitimately controlled is the means by which it was acquired. Government property, presently, is commonly acquired under coercion and with stolen money. Mandatory taxation is one form of theft, even to minarchists like Rand and Andrew Napolitano, who support the idea of a voluntary taxation paid in exchange for government services. Presently, no state in the history of civilization has met this fist condition, so no state in the history of civilization has the legitimate power to exclude peaceful, honest immigrants.

So far, I have made the gross assumption that government is necessary for the protection of individual rights. Simply as a thought experiment, I’m going to imagine that a government had aquired its territory by just means. The second hurdle a government would have to prove is that it can properly be assigned powers that are outside the scope of its legitimate function of defending individual rights. But this is objectively impossible. In the metaphysical sense, an individual or a group of individuals may not transfer power to a government other than those which are used expressly for the defense of individual rights. Government by its nature is coercive. That coercion may be used defensively or aggressively. Any government action that does not involve the defensive protection of individual rights must necessarily be used in aggression, even if everyone in the society agrees beforehand to grant government additional powers. To say that somone has the right to aggress is contradictory, so government can have no proper powers beyond the scope of the defensive protection of individual rights.

Rand said, “To take rights like those of property and contractual freedom that are based on a foundation of the absolute self-ownership of the will and then to use those derived rights to destroy their own foundation is philosophically invalid.”

Transferring additional rights other than those necessary for the defense of individual rights would require being able to transfer one’s free will, which is impossible, of course.

In the same way, a group of people could not form a government wherein someone becomes a voluntary slave. Free will is not transferable, in whole or in part, so a voluntary slave can never exchange his free will. The notion that property like roads and parks, neither of which are necessary for the protection of rights, can properly be granted to government would still require a transfer of free will but only to a lesser scale and in a slightly augmented way. At worst, a voluntary slave could be looked upon as a making a promise. A slave who breaks that promise could be ostracized, but it would not be legitimate to use force against him.

Basically, just as someone cannot be held liable for agreeing to voluntary slavery, one cannot properly assign rights or powers to a government other than those which make forming a government a necessary function of society. This is important because a government that goes beyond its proper function could no longer operate as an objective referee who enforces objective rules. A government is given this exception of having a legal monopoly to determine the proper use of force, according to minarchists like Rand, because free will could not function in any practical sense without the existence of a limited government to defend rights and enforce lawful agreements.

Further Implications as a Minarchist

Property that is currently under the unjust control of government does have an owner. It just so happens that proper claims are made so murky that it would practically impossible to determine who deserves restitution and to what degree, making property under unjust government control de facto unowned.

Sentimentally, I agree that someone with long-standing ties to the community or the original owner has a higher moral claim to that property than a recent mover. But when left with the alternative of leaving it in the hands of an oppressor or liberating that stolen property, the emphasis should be to reduce the harm being inflicted as soon as possible.

If government property is being used to violate individual rights, that property should revert (edit May 6, after some reconsideration) to whoever is being aggressed against. If someone were to destroy that property or liberate it, then the government responsible for violating rights would be morally responsible for providing restitution to the willing legitimate owner.

Back in Reality Mode

My thoughts are that citizenship under political government is just an embellished form of voluntary slavery, making it void and in contradiction with human nature.

The questionable land acquisition of nearly every government in existence is an obvious point in favor of anarchism. But that debate usually breaks down into how consent of the governed can be achieved. My deeper concern is whether granting final decision-making authority to a single organization could result in a just social order. Often, we can see how relationships based on power are exploitative without either party resorting to aggression. After all, the state minimizes its naked aggression because it can rely on the inertia of majority will, propaganda, or its overwhelming military presence to command obedience. Many libertarians or so-called anarcho-capitalists I read do not seem to object fundamentally to these power structures, which is disappointing, because they do overly focus on the low-hanging fruit of the state’s land acquisition process. So, I associate a pro-liberty mindset with more just anti-statism but with a more robust expression of opposition to collectivist authoritarianism in general.

It is still an on-going process in my own mind to understand, and I am open to criticism (including the ones I mentioned above). If anyone would like to discuss this off-site, let me know.

(Note: This post was compiled from an e-mail discussion.)

In actuality, what conservatives do not understand is they are furthering the statism that he embodies.

The uproar that caused this anti-immigrant backlash was the fault of government. Whether it be the lax enforcement of property rights of farmers, the government welfare benefits given to immigrants, the terrible safety conditions on government roads, obtrusive regulations that prohibit honest competition in the labor market, or the gang violence created by the prohibition of tabu drugs, they are all the result of government intervening into peaceful people’s lives.

This new Arizona law is rewarding government failure with more government power. How can we ever expect to achieve liberty if we support expanding government every time government decision makers fail?

Instead, we could encourage immigrants to build social aid organizations, so they can reduce their dependence on government welfare. We could also support those who avoid paying the taxes that fund the government programs that immigrants allegedly exploit. We could welcome a whole new generation of families, who for the most part are escaping their own failed governments. Those are much better solutions to promoting liberty in the long term than punishing people for moving across arbitrary political lines on a map.

Government, as is true of all hierarchical violent organizations, relies on assigning blame and inflicting misery on scapegoats. If government decision makers ever had to take responsibility for the harm they do, not even the most ruthless savages would take the reigns of government. But they never have to worry about that. The purpose of political government — as it is currently understood — is to avoid responsibility. A small minority of people decide how to spend taxes on self-serving programs they could not accomplish by market means. How many would support the current foreign policy of the United States, for example, which runs approximately a trillion dollars per year? If only the people who voted for Barrack Obama and John McCain were responsible for funding the empire, it would cost each voter approximately $8200 per year. You can bet that would bring the war to a swift conclusion.

I mean, read The Road to Serdom for goodness’ sake.

I admit, the video above cracked me up.

On a serious note, I feel sorry for the young man who posted it. The lessons he is learning now will likely be the foundation for his worldview and affect the relationships he has with others. He no doubt has empathy for others who are being bullied at school and wants more than anything for his harassment to stop. He might recognize that school attendance is made compulsory by government and to some degree by his family, so he sees no reasonable escape from his present circumstances. He even said that he has thought about committing suicide, so he must believe his options are severely constrained.

When he matures, he will very likely, if he has not already, carry the same mistaken notions forward with him into society, that there is no feasible means of avoiding morally corrupt people and that therefore an entity must exist that is powerful enough to defend against abusive people. The most readily available candidate for that power is government, so a strong centralized nanny government is key to safety.

According to Dr. Charles Whitfield’s heirachy of needs, safety is second only to survival. Comparatively, freedom ranks 19th.

That is the root concern liberty activists must address, I believe. We can tell people all about how government is our greatest abuser (and they might agree), but any call to weaken or abolish nanny government — a so-called necessary evil — is interpreted as a greater threat to their safety. The devil that we know is better than the devil we don’t know, as the saying goes. What we have to communicate is that life offers much more opportunity than was available to them as a child. You are not trapped in abusive relationships. You are free of them the moment you want to be. You don’t have to associate with people who have a history of hurting people. Therefore, it is not necessary for a nanny government to watch over us and “keep ‘protecting’ you by commanding you to bow down and serve him; by requiring you to do this, and forbidding you to do that,” as Lysander Spooner said.

They wouldn’t be left abandoned to the biggest bully on the block, which incidentally now is the case. Natural law ensures that those bullies would cut their own throats first. The market demand for security would eliminate the remaining stray bullies, and individual compassion would care for the less fortunate. So I don’t resent statists (those who believe individuals exist to serve the well-being of the state); I offer them my sympathy for their burden: believing evil to be “necessary.”

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.

Immigrants and their friends and families, many of whom have experienced or witnessed government persecution, could have been the most receptive audiences of a consistent message of liberty. Instead, they may have permanently associated the message of liberty with a perceived hostility toward immigrants. In the long term, that is going to create some challenges for future candidates wanting to promote a message of individual autonomy. They recognize the common objection — that some immigrants take far more from the government trough than they contribute — as a spurious argument, at best, since some government employees and some government contractors take all of their resources from the government, yet immigration foes do not propose deporting them. For that matter, legal immigrants are far more likely to acquire government welfare than unsanctioned movers.

What brings this to mind is the announced immigration platform of one of Paul’s supporters, Texas Republican gubernatorial candidate Debra Medina, someone to whom I have donated my own time and money. For the most part, she sounds a lot like Paul in that she really dislikes the federal government. She wants to nullify the enforcement of some federal laws she believes are unconstitutional and to end property taxes. Thumbs up on my end, though I would prefer nullifying all federal laws and ending all taxes. As someone opposed to non-consensual monopoly government, I can’t enthusiastically endorse any policy other than to disband. However, that shouldn’t discourage me from critiquing existing political proposals or from identifying that some ideas are better or worse than others.

Some of her proposals, like wanting to reduce the scope of gun regulations and to nullify sham free-trade treaties like NAFTA that primarily benefit corporate special interests, would be great. Her most disagreeable idea is to assign “sufficient numbers of Texas National Guard and Texas State Guard” to help local law enforcement. Ethically, it is an abandonment of the non-aggression principle (NAP) as she openly calls for the use of aggressive force to solve what she perceives to be a social problem. The troops and all their resources are funded by the use of force, taxation. In turn, they will initiate force against peaceful movers and foreign entrepreneurs. (Insert the obvious caveat that not all individuals wishing to cross the border are peaceful.) The result will be failure, as all government prohibitions are. It will increase the violence on the border, breed corruption among those guarding the border, and cost a fortune. She also plans to target documented movers convicted of a state or federal law. So for those who break a non-violent federal law, which is done by each individual on average three times a day, they could get tossed, again violating the NAP.

What a Consistent Immigration Policy Looks Like

Since Medina has already shown her support for nullification of unconstitutional federal law, let’s start with all federal immigration laws. The constitution provides no existing expressed powers for the federal government to make immigration policy, only for the naturalization process of becoming a citizen. In fact, the Texas constitution that congress approved after Reconstruction had a Bureau of Immigration, as did most other former Confederate states.

Step two would be to end all government welfare benefits. Then fully re-legalize the prostitution, drug and arms trades. It would completely eliminate the need for anyone to enter the country by sneaking across the desert or trespassing on private property. The vast majority wanting to cross the border conventionally would be those wanting to earn their own way. The fear is that gangs would run wild, causing chaos in the streets. That is unfounded since dishonest criminals who could no longer sustain themselves on inflated black-market profits can in no way compete on the open market. Those wanting to live off the government or engage in criminality would remain in their own country.

We could reduce the scope of government, relieve taxpayers of an extra burden, and demonstrate the fruits of freedom. Government meddling and excuses to circumvent the Bill of Rights would be curtailed, which might get the ire of conservatives in the Republican Party who would rather imprison strangers rather confront the reality of emancipating themselves. If there were ever a litmus test for empathy for the oppressed, immigration surely is it.

An Examination of Alternatives

But maybe I am being too hard on Medina. She’s running a state-wide race in Texas, after all. It is extremely unlikely voters would support a candidate who took such radical steps. We can’t expect someone to be agreeable on every issue, and she would certainly be better than the any other credible choice. The other candidates in the running would have no qualms about some academic non-aggression principle. I agree with all that. But I presume that she has read Paul’s books and articles, in which he has advocates his support for the NAP. In End the Fed, he said for example, “We must reject the initiation of violence by individuals or governments as morally repugnant.” Apparently, even Ron Paul does not get the full impact of that idea. His claim is that it is an “invasion,” yet his emphasis is on curtailing it through economic means by removing the welfare incentives. Medina lists that at the very bottom of her of proposals and puts the state guard patrol at the very top, a complete reversal of Paul’s priorities.

My primary and probably only significant purpose in participating in electoral politics is to spread the ideas of liberty. I readily concede that if I want to participate in electoral politics, I can’t expect ideological purity. Engaging the government in any manner, driving on government roads or attending government school, is a regretful concession. I suppose that “When one gets in bed with government, one must expect the diseases it spread,” as Paul declared. The temptation is to bite one’s tongue. That is my source of resentment for electoral politics. It offers this simple, elegant solution, making it very seductive. The danger is that by not expressing criticism of supposed pro-liberty candidates who abandon that message, assuming that is their highest political goal, we come across as just another empathetic-less political movement wanting to impose our beliefs on others. I don’t even ask that a politician be opposed to all forms of aggression to receive my support, only that he or she oppose increasing the present scope of violence against the peaceful. In this respect, Medina readily and consistently advocates increasing the use of government violence against largely peaceful immigrants. If I were to vote for her in the March primary or the November general election, I would necessarily be sacrificing the interests of an already exploited group of people for my own interests.

I think it is more practical to practice libertarianism consistent with its principles. There are steps that have already proven more effective and more immediate. Primarily, they focus on liberating ourselves to demonstrate firsthand how beneficial living by these principles can be. That is, if you want freedom, you don’t have to participate in the elaborate resource-depleting, shame-inducing rituals of voting and petitioning for a band of thieves to recognize your humanity. Those rituals and institutions are in place to obscure the violence behind it all. Once the glaring blessings of liberty are realized, all mystic pretenses for an intrusive government will be shattered. Now I’m not saying that being right is easy, for if it were easy than it would have already been done.

I have a compelling interest to engage society. I find joy and happiness in interacting with people in a peaceful manner. I do not wish to participate in any coercive actions. If we are to cooperate together, we must interact in a manner that is congruent with our nature as human beings. Seeing that human beings progress together through voluntary association and that violence, by its nature, is destructive and pernicious, the initiation of a condition of violence is regressive. A society can only exist, in the long term, on this understanding or acceptance of voluntary cooperation among other peaceful individuals. That is the only thing resembling “the common good.”

With that said, I would still choose to live in a community that makes this an explicit function of participation in place of operating on an implicit assumption or blunted rancor as it is today.

As the state claims to legitimately initiate violence at its discretion, the state and all its political franchises of government are the enemy of “the common good.” The only reason the predatory statists attempt to co-opt the sum of individual’s values and actions, society, is to pervert that impulse for their own ends and continued perpetuation.

They (MUSLIMS) don’t even believe in Christ, & they’re getting their own Christmas stamp! BUT, don’t dare to dream of posting the ten commandments on federal property! This is truly UNBELIEVABLE !!!

USPS New  42-Cent Stamp!!!   Celebrates  Muslim holiday.

REMEMBER  the MUSLIM bombing of Pan Am Flight 103!

REMEMBER  the MUSLIM bombing of the World Trade Center in  1993!

REMEMBER  the MUSLIM bombing of the Marine Barracks in  Lebanon !

REMEMBER  the MUSLIM bombing of the military Barracks in  Saudi Arabia !

REMEMBER  the MUSLIM bombing of the American Embassies in  Africa !

REMEMBER  the MUSLIM bombing of the USS COLE!

REMEMBER  the MUSLIM attack on 9/11/2001 !

REMEMBER  all the AMERICAN lives that were lost in those  vicious MUSLIM attacks!

Time to celebrate, right?  But what, uh, maybe that good ol’ American value, Separation…?

Blessings,

For less government, more individual responsibility, and with God’s help, a better world.

Chuck

Charles G. Poole
President, Masterkey Financial Services

I responded, in part.

I intend to send him my objections to his bigoted comments. I implore others do the same and refuse to do business with him until he issues an apology.

Ironically, Mr. Poole is guilty of the same belief in collectivism as the attackers, the mindset an individual has value or disvalue unto himself only so far as he does or does not serve his collective identity. The attackers held 3,000 people guilty for the crimes of others. Mr. Poole holds two billion people guilty for the crimes of others. The attackers were willing to give their lives for their beliefs. I’d be willing to bet Mr. Poole is willing to give the lives of other for his.

Being a believer in a voluntary society, ostracism can be one of the most effective tools to shame people from committing irresponsible or immoral behavior. I think public ostracism should be reserved for the grossest acts of misconduct. I also believe this is one of those times.

Katy (NARRATOR) – The year is 2019. Things are not all that different than they were 10 years ago. The television reporters seem pretty confident that the Detroit car makers just need a few more months of support, and then they’ll get things turned around. Commander Obama’s food rations have been very generous this year. The chocolate quota alone is up almost three percent over this time last year.

Justin, age six, needs to raise money for his over expenditure of carbon credits at recess last week. He exhaled an estimated three pounds of carbon dioxide on the Nancy Pelosi Elementary jungle gym alone, according to his bio-feedback implant. This is where our tale of a young San Francisco native’s transformation to individualism from divisive collectivism begins.

Here we see Justin, who thinks he has a foolproof plan.

Justin – I know what I’ll do; Bobby is always talking about how big his allowance is. He doesn’t even spend it all, I hear. He’s one of those greedy savers. I’m just going to go over there and kick him in the leg until he gives me some too. It’s no fair that he has more than me.

Katy (NARRATOR) – Justin gets his way. He had to kick his old friend Bobby three times until Bobby surrendered his lunch money. But in the attack, little Bobby dropped and destroyed his Chuck Norris hologram action figure. And now the other kids are worried that they may be next victim.

Scene

Justin (SITTING DOWN) – That was not too bad. I’m able to buy some more carbon credits, but now no one wants to play with me. I just don’t get it.

Katy (STANDING NEXT TO JUSTIN) – Do you know why no one wants to play with you any more? It’s because they are afraid you will start kicking them and take their lunch money or break their things.

Justin – Hey, don’t I recognize you? You’re the leader of that opposition group that’s talking about “individual rights.” Well, what about society. Who’s going to protect the minority?

Katy – Well, the smallest minority is the individual. Now, if you want your friends back, you’ll have to apologize and replace the broken action figure.

Justin – You’re right. My mom always says it’s bad to hit people. It’s still not fair that that they have more than me. I know what I’ll do. I’ll form a democracy, so that everyone can get what they want. And I can raise enough money for a Chuck Norris action figure and everyone will be treated the same. Why didn’t I think of this before?

Katy – Oh, boy!

Scene

Katy (NARRATOR) – Over the next few days, Justin organizes the school playground by promising the fourth graders that they won’t have to worry about the third graders taking all swing sets and teeter totters. Almost all the third graders, except those promised leadership positions in the new government, turned against the idea.

A slight majority of the playground supported the motion, and the dawn of a new democracy began. But not long after, some unintended problems came to be realized.

Justin (TALKING TO KATY) – I never knew how expensive this new democracy would be. We’ve already had to raise the jungle gym tolls twice this week. Almost all the money we’ve raised has been to pay officials’ salaries or to fund the military against the third grader’s militia attacks. Worse yet, I’ve got almost no money left for the Chuck Norris hologram action figure. We actually owe the fifth grade middle schoolers two day’s worth of debt.

Katy – If you really want to raise those funds, then you need to provide a product that people value.

Justin – All six of my non-vegan friends tells me that my mom makes the best turkey sandwiches. I know what I’ll do. She wouldn’t mind make a few more sandwiches each morning. 

Katy – Now, Justin, this is your debt, not you mom’s.

Justin – I guess.

Scene

Katy (NARRATOR) – The next day, Justin brings six freshly made turkey sandwiches that exactly followed his mom’s recipe. He sells them all in a flash, raising a good sum of money. However, others in the new government see Justin’s good fortunes as an opportunity to exploit.

Justin (NEXT TO KATY) – This is just great. I woke up an hour early this morning to make those sandwiches and the playground is taxing half of my income. Since the grocery store that our vice president’s mom owns won a no-bid contract to be the exclusive food supplier, my supplies costs are going to double. Oh, what’s the point? I’ll never raise the money fast enough with these costs.

Katy – You know, Justin. You’ve got to give the people a reason to resist. What are they missing out on? If you can provide that, you’ll be in the homestretch.

Scene

Katy (NARRATOR) – Justin spent all day pondering this question, and then suddenly like a bolt of lightening, it hit him. He has his answer. He can abolish the government sanctions, raise enough money for the new Chuck Norris hologram action figure, and then get his old friends back again.

Justin (NEXT TO KATY) – Look what I have here. I call it barbecue tofu. Since almost of the school’s parents make their kids eat vegetarian meals, the students crave the taste of meat. What’s the next best option? Meet flavored tofu. With some help from my mom, I created this tofu that has all the taste of barbecue and none of the meat. So almost everyone is happy. That grocery store does not sell barbecue, so I told all my customers that if they did not protect my rights to purchase my supplies where I needed, then I couldn’t serve them these great meals any longer. 

Best of all, I’ve convinced the third and fourth graders that we don’t need all this bureaucracy to tell us what to do. The only one benefiting is the bureaucracy itself. We’ve got to stand up for our rights, and not let our neighbors be taken advantage of, because we could be next.

The End