I posted a comment, and usually that would be the end [...]]]> I commented on a hit piece on Austrian economics at the self-identified Marxist website Political Affairs. Besides being completely unwarranted and poorly written in terms of grammar and spelling, the blog post was riddled with misrepresentations and outright fabrications about the “Mieses Institute.”

I posted a comment, and usually that would be the end of it. But apparently, an administrator has decided (as of the time of this publication) to hold a number of comments from being published. According to the comment ID numbers, well over 20 comments, including every number between 12883 and 12895, have been deleted or held for moderation. I cannot say with certainty, but I suspect that many of them were comments critical of the blog post. Only comments favorable toward the post have appeared since.

Showing a complete lack of knowledge, the author claimed that Friedrich Hayek was the first Austrian economist, not Carl Menger or Eugene Bahm-Bawerk, who preceded Hayek by about 40 years.

The author said that the first “principal” of the Austrian school is that a “business cycle is a completely virtuous cycle,” forgetting that Austrians believe that the business cycle is an artificial consequence of government intervention of the credit supply. There is nothing virtuous about it, and many Austrian economists discourage credit manipulation precisely because of the hardship that follows. Once the manipulation has taken place, however, those malinvestments brought about by credit manipulation have to be cleared so that malinvested resources can be better utilized to provide for people’s needs. It is not some magic phenomenon or inherent to the market system. It is a result of the use aggression (money inflation) to favor the politically connected to finance wars and imperialism abroad and corporatism at home.

More pointedly, Austrian economics consider the field to be value-free, or at least value-neutral, so they would not describe anything about economics as “virtuous.” By calling for an end to government-decreed fiat currency and abolishing central banking, the Austrian’s political response is certainly more virtuous though.

Without any references being cited, Austrian economists are then accused of making racists statements. In fact, not a single link or citation is made throughout the post to substantiate any of the author’s claims. The later ad hominim attack of calling Austrian economics a cult has no place either.

The second principle of Austrian economics, according to the article, is that it “rejects a scientific foundation to economics.” Austrians reject scientism, the view that scientific claims are the most worthwhile, which itself is not a scientific claim and is thus self-defeating. The weaker sense of scientism is that the natural sciences are more worthwhile. However, natural sciences require repeatability and controlled variables, which is not applicable to the study of the constantly changing and adapting human condition. That is why Austrians consider economics a domain of logic, just as mathematics is. Yet, the author criticizes Austrians for not relying on math, another deductive science.

Simon Grey had this to say about the article:

Actually, the complaint with the mathematical models used by mainstream economics isn’t the math; it’s the assumptions and definitions. Also, you seem to ignore the fact that all scientific disciplines are inherently axiomatic. This is also true for mathematics. Anyone who has done a precursory examination of “official” statistics can easily see how Orwellian the system has become. As such, analysis based on the official statistics is bunk, because the underlying assumptions are bunk. Besides which, economic phenomena is simply too complex to be perfectly and completely explained by simplistic models.

The most outrageous fabrication is that Austrian economists are calling for an end to “roads, post offices, Internet, media of any kind, health care, retirement, fire stations, etc, etc, etc.” It reminds me of the Frederic Bastiat quote that socialists accuse non-socialists of wanting people to starve for not wanting the state to raise grain.

The author claims that libertarianism “strengthens the very corruption they decry,” a point I refuted just recently. Then libertarianism is criticized for its “futility as a guide to leadership.” I would think that would be a point in its favor that libertarianism is not compatible with authoritarianism.

The article closes with a parable about a ship that sinks because the captain was more concerned about sailors urinating in the hold than repair leaks in the hull. The parable is apt, but only because it demonstrates the inability for proper resource allocation under state socialism’s command and control economy.

Half-truths, personal attacks and the logical fallacies exemplified in the author’s post, I guess, are the calling card for Marxism. Libertarians, and Austrians in particular, have praised Marx’s class theory (though Marx misidentified who the exploiters and exploited were). But how likely is it that any reciprocal praise of Austrians in their appraisal of state capitalism is going to surface from Marxists? Now, again, which school of thought is said to be insular and cultish?

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 [...]]]>

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.

I do not like it any more than anyone else. Most voters will gleefully cast their ballots for politicians openly seeking the legal sanction to aggress [...]]]> On Nov. 2, tens of millions of Americans will exercise their political franchise to play their part in shaping the future of the country, or so the story goes.

I do not like it any more than anyone else. Most voters will gleefully cast their ballots for politicians openly seeking the legal sanction to aggress against others. It is enough that the state is illegitimate even if its sole purpose were to defend individual rights, but politicians across the spectrum make campaign promises to increase the level of state predation.

Indeed, “Law is force,” Frederic Bastiat said. This “legal plunder, organized injustice,” as Bastiat called it, has two sources. “One, as we have just seen, is in human selfishness; the other is in false philanthropy.”

Many libertarians take the stance that electoral activism, in and of itself, is an act of aggression since political power is vested in violence. As understandable as the anti-voting stance is, self-defense is ethically justified if I can support candidates who I believe will aggress less than another credible candidate. Still others say that voting either grants consent to the political system or at least gives the perception of consent. This is also dubious. For how can consent be granted if there is no credible opportunity to withhold consent? It is true that some could perceive voting as consenting, but so could choosing not to vote be viewed as apathy for whatever policy wins out. The solution would be to educate why libertarians participate in electoral politics despite not viewing the government conducting the election as ethical. Another objection is that it is fine to act in self-defense, but it would be unjust to elect a representative who would presume to rule someone else.

Now, I certainly do not think anyone is ethically bound to follow or support legislation simply because it is has received the majority’s support. A point Lysander Spooner makes is that no one in government can represent anyone but him- or herself. He said,

They say they are only our servants, agents, attorneys, and representatives. But this declaration involves an absurdity, a contradiction. No man can be my servant, agent, attorney, or representative, and be, at the same time, uncontrollable by me, and irresponsible to me for his acts. It is of no importance that I appointed him, and put all power in his hands. If I made him uncontrollable by me, and irresponsible to me, he is no longer my servant, agent, attorney, or representative.

If elected officials are personally responsible for their actions, what then are the ethics of holding office? Would it be necessary to only support an immediate abolition of aggression or a phased withdraw of government services?

Roderick Long argues that government aggression “lies in the fact that the services are funded by stolen money (taxation), and that competitors are often prohibited or severely restricted (regulation). Hence a gradual phase-out of government services (as opposed to immediate abolition) involves no violation of libertarian principle, provided some solution can be found to the problems of taxation.”

Except in those cases where private firms have been granted a monopoly on a product (or another artificial advantage in the market), a libertarian acting consistently with the non-aggression principle would have to advocate for a complete dismantling of regulatory controls. In those cases of that firms have been given a market advantage by government aggresion, any barriers to competition should be removed immediately, but pricing or other regulatory controls could be phased out gradually.

In order to raise funds for some of the more redeeming services performed by government, there are a few options that Long favors so long as a government regrettably were still in place.

1. Raise money by selling off government assets
2. Charge user fees for government services
3. Solicit voluntary contributions
4. Use non-coercive measures to get people to pay their taxes
5. Tax the beneficiaries of state privilege
6. Restrict the franchise to taxpayers

As an immediate matter, it most likely will not be possible to implement these methods. It would still never be ethically justified to vote in favor of any level of aggression. There are obvious pitfalls to avoid and cautions to take to prevent libertarian corruption or political backlash.

I do not support electoral politics as the primary method of political change. In fact, it is probably the least important factor compared to educating the population, leading by example, and raising emotionally healthy children. If libertarians have done the work necessary to spread these ideas, getting these policies implemented would be more of a formality.

After looking at the deontological (or rule-based) and the consequentialist basis for [...]]]> Silly question, right? Of course, consequences matter. More precisely, how do consequences affect one’s ethical beliefs? We hear all the time how there is a dichotomy between how one should act and how one must act to satisfy his or her best interests.

After looking at the deontological (or rule-based) and the consequentialist basis for libertarianism, both sides make convincing arguments. In consequentialism’s favor, how bizarre would it be that libertarianism made for such beneficial outcomes but in no way did those consequences validate the case for libertarianism? This is a point Roderick Long makes. From the deontological side, applicable ethics derived from human nature make setting codes of rational conduct more or less uniform. One Misesian point is that a person cannot reliably achieve his ends by disposing of principles whenever there is an occasion where it might benefit to do so. Long points out that when someone is treating principles, regardless of why they are doing so, as ends in themselves, then those principles are ends of their own.

While the source and content of human nature is hotly contested, the fact that all humans have the same nature means that no one has a superior or dominant claim over others. As highly conceptual beings, our minds must be free to create and refine complicated abstract thoughts. I’m not saying this is the most accurate or complete case for libertarianism. From there, the secular and religious strains of deontological libertarianism split ways.

The consequentialist argument is more straightforward. The idea is that no matter what human nature is, a libertarian society would still produce better results than a statist one. Even if human beings were brutes or were highly evolved beings with a collective conscience, an environment without a dominant structure in place to institutionalize violence would still be preferable to a society with such commands and controls. So even if all men were good, no government would be necessary. If all men were evil, then having a government would make things demonstrably worse since those evil men would have a greater number of resources at their disposal to act on their evil. If some men were good and other evil, then evil people would be drawn to that power more so than good people. That is why libertarians, for the most part, support pluralizing political power, if not eliminating it altogether.

But consequentialists share more in common with the deontologists than they usually care to admit. On purely consequentialist grounds, it would be best to have firm codes of conduct in place in order to maximize the happiness or pleasure of society. For people to most effectively plan, they need to know the rules of the game and how they are administered. Since human life can span decades, those norms are manifested in the formation of property rights.

You could not just say that everything goes, and let the chips fall were they may. If people had no adequate reassurance that their property claims were respected by others in society, everyone in society would be geared toward immediate consumption, and the incentive to save and invest in long-term capital projects would be sunk. A consequentialist society would need hard-set rules in place that could not be overturned on a whim. So a consequentialist would have to practice as a deontologist.

As a matter of ethics, consequences do matter. And an Randian theory of rights incorporate consequences.

Ayn Rand said a right is a principle that defines the proper actions for an individual to take within society. By “proper,” she meant that which is necessary to serve an individual’s ultimate end, which is an individual’s own life. The primary necessity is to remain living, obviously. So each individual has a right to his or her life (self-ownership), a right to act in order to preserve that life (or liberty), and a right to the consequences of those actions (or property). It follows that it would be moral to enforce these right to prevent their breach. Those rights extend only so far as to include the force necessary, and nothing more, to protect those rights.

Long points out elsewhere that the right to life (what he called self-ownership) is the most fundamental right of all. He said,

For if there were such additional rights, then there would be claims other than self-ownership that could be legitimately enforced, which would mean that refraining from invading the self-ownership of others would no longer be sufficient to exempt one from liability to coercive interference. But self-ownership, as defined above, just is exemption from liability to coercive interference.

He added that there “cannot be rights in addition to self-ownership, but must instead be specific applications of the self-ownership right itself.”

There is no dichotomy between the ethical and the practical. It is only by surrendering ethics to the arbitrary that such a split forms and some find excuse to rule over others.

In 2006, Sylvester Davis accused his former employer, military contractor Lockheed Martin, of following “unsafe and fraudulent practices in developing flight control software for the F-35 joint strike fighter,” according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Siding with [...]]]> A recently dismissed whistle-blower lawsuit highlights the double standard of those who derive privileges from government aggression.

In 2006, Sylvester Davis accused his former employer, military contractor Lockheed Martin, of following “unsafe and fraudulent practices in developing flight control software for the F-35 joint strike fighter,” according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Siding with Lockheed, a U.S. district judge dismissed the suit on grounds that Davis could not provide adequate enough evidence to support his claims.

Under federal law, anyone who reveals knowledge of improperly performed or unfulfilled work done for the government can receive a portion of the money recouped by a judgement or lawsuit settlement.

Regardless of how credible Davis’ claim might be, Lockheed’s stance on the allegations reveals an important point about the nature of government-granted privilege.

Authority is a one-way street. As evidence of this, are Lockheed’s corporate managers so demanding of evidence from and judgemental of F-35 pilots who fire on agrarian Afghani farmers accused of being terrorists? I think not, which goes to the strategy for achieving a libertarian society.

Governments have many forms of intervention into the market, some involving blatant wealth confiscation in the form of subsidies and monopoly protections. Elsewhere the state’s managers direct counterbalancing policy crutches, like welfare, so as to gin up support for existing self-inflicting policies.

The priority of libertarians should be first to knock down structural interventions so that the government’s half-hearted measures to help those in need are no longer in such demand. Kevin Carson described it “as removing the shackles before removing the crutches (e.g., eliminating corporate welfare before welfare to the poor)” in his “Organization Theory: An Individualist Anarchist Perspective”.

I knew there would be a fair share of Republicans hitching [...]]]> I attended the Wake Up America Tea Party in Fort Worth on Saturday as part of a nationwide tea party event. While volunteering at the Campaign for Liberty booth, I got a lot of positive reaction talking with attendees about conventional constitutional ideals.

I knew there would be a fair share of Republicans hitching onto the liberty message, so I thought it was important to present a more comprehensive small-government message, even if I do not subscribe to those views myself. Mostly, I emphasized the importance of decentralizing political power and scaling back American foreign policy.

I was there with Debbie McKee, the CFL state coordinator in Texas, and her daughter Adrienne. Our most popular item was CFL’s newly released pocket constitution that included the Declaration of Independence and the Kentucky and Virginia nullification resolutions written by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, respectively.

A few people scoffed when the saw Ron Paul’s Revolution or End the Fed on our table. We also had Bruce Fein’s new book American Empire. (I have not read Fein’s book, but here is an interview with Scott Horton on Anti-War Radio.) However, many more I spoke with expressed that they thought the government’s belligerent foreign policy was doing more harm than good.

The most talked-about speakers were Bridgette Gabriel, who preached the dangers of “Islamic supremacism,” and conservative commentator Ann Coulter. They received the loudest applause lines I heard from the booth outside the auditorium. From a post on “The Whited Sepulchre,” Gabriel asked all the military veterans to stand and take an applause, which garnered a thunderous applause. The veterans obediently remained standing well into her speech.

Debra Medina, the founder of We Texans, spoke of the declining freedom in Texas. She said that Texas has went from a top-10 state in terms of economic freedoms and has fallen 23 spots to 31st in the nation since Rick Perry has been in governor’s office. Despite an impressive showing against establishment candidates in the Texas Republican gubernatorial primary, Medina had a distinctly less friendly reception because she highlighted that conservative rhetoric does not match the empirical evidence of a decade of Republican rule in Texas.

A few minutes before I was planning to leave, a man who described himself to me as a “constitutional conservative” wandered to the CFL booth and said he did not want to listen to Coulter. I gave a sympathetic nod. He said that he wanted nothing do with the Coulter and went on the explain that she attends meetings with pro gay-rights groups. That, he said, was unacceptable.

He talked about the source of this information, and how a website had been tracking Coulter for the past 18 months. As I recall, he went on to say “There is no place in the Republican Party for homosexuals or anybody with them.” From my reading of the state party platform, he is probably right. I guess he felt comfortable confiding this nugget of bigotry with those of us at the booth.

I kindly asked if he supported making it illegal to practice homosexuality. Without hesitating, he said he would and that it already is according to the Bible. I asked, then “would you think that all sins should be made illegal under political government?” So I asked about divorce. I went on the say that the Bible calls divorce a sin, and I asked if he thought it should be illegal too.

He danced around the question, so I asked again. He said that couples who have underwent counseling before marriage and before splitting up should be allowed to divorce on the condition that they would forfeit custody of their children to already-married couples.

After some prompting, he reiterated that the Republican Party was a party for Christians only, and that I would have to do some “soul searching” before becoming a genuine Republican, which I have no desire of becoming anyway. He said I should become a Democrat instead. I didn’t bother telling him, but neither sound that appealing. I should have told him, “Fuck You (Very Much).”

Completely devoid of historical evidence, he then went on to explain for a second time that libertarianism and socialism were spawned by Karl Marx in “his communist books” and the political environment of revolutionary France.

Tea Party Reflections

The tea party has no founding principles on which the movement is based, and most of its grassroots members are political newcomers who have a deep-seeded resentment for the direction that the country is going. It does not take long to realize that the government has been royally screwing up, and not just for the last 20 months.

Originally, the tea party movement was focused on excessive government spending as a reaction to the bailouts of the same large financial bodies that enabled the current economic collapse. The loudest voices were crying “Socialism” when Barack Obama was just adding to the same policies of his predecessor. Even still, so long as the movement was a reaction to fiscal mismanagement, there was some possibility that it would affect positive policy changes. But more and more, the tea party has less to do with battling run-away spending than it does with embracing cultural conservatism. The undertones of the currently embodied movement are based in the fears of white Christians of losing political power, fear that the same government many white Christians have exploited to their own advantage will be turned against them. “To take back our country.” That is the root cause for the present wave of backlash against Muslims and immigrants.

A poll [PDF] published in March from the University of Washington said that those who strongly support the tea party had more hostile views of gays, racial minorities and immigrants. On average, tea party supporters consistently thought less of the intelligence, trustworthiness and work ethic of blacks and Latinos than did the average Republicans. In a separate poll [PDF], and for all their talk about liberty, supporters of the tea party were far more likely to favor indefinite detention without trial of anyone accused of a crime, less privacy, and racial profiling. They were also less supportive of equal rights.

Even for the self-described constitutional conservative I talked with, he was more than willing to set aside any pretence of a modern society for an opportunity to enforce his morality on peaceful people. The momentum I witnessed Saturday will springboard into big electoral gains for Republicans, including many of the same responsible for this mess, in the mid-term elections. It will not amount to many policy changes for more liberty. No major tea party candidate is calling for cuts to any of the largest expenditures, not the military empire nor entitlement programs like Social Security.

It is a sad reality, but the ditching of any libertarian sentiments is inevitable so long as tea partiers are concerned with gaining the reins of power instead of abolishing that power altogether.

An important point about anarchism is that no political movement [...]]]> 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.

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

For me, the least impactful line of argument I would think is the constitutional argument. That so [...]]]> For context, I have written before why libertarians, and particularly libertarians committed to small government, should support open immigration as a matter of principle. Further, I have given a consequentialist argument for open immigration and what that entails.

For me, the least impactful line of argument I would think is the constitutional argument. That so many constitutionalists nevertheless support uniform immigration restrictions demonstrates how meaningless the constitution is if its most ardent defenders conveniently pervert it so far from the original meaning.

As an Implied Power

A common line is that the Naturalization Clause, which gives the legislature the power to make a uniform process of becoming a citizen, implies the power to regulate immigration in context with the Necessary and Proper Clause.

That is an interesting idea, and it would have been worth mentioning by the Federalists since immigration had been under the domain of the states during the existing constitution. Yet, the framers who supported the constitution never so much as hinted at that idea during ratification. In fact, “Agrippa,” the Anti-Federalist who is supposed to be John Winthrop, lamented that congress would have no such power under the then-proposed constitution.

It was not until 1875, after congress had passed four separate naturalization bills, did the Supreme Court discover the new-found power to control immigration.

As a Protection from Invasion

Further in Article 1, Section 8, congress is also given the power to summon the militia to “repel Invasions.” This line of argument has been given by Ron Paul and other less distasteful politicians as a reason to resist open immigration.

For this to be true, we would need to look at the meaning of the word “invasion” at the time of ratification. The widely circulated Johnson’s Dictionary defined an invasion as “a hostile entrance, an attack.”

I have defended extending open immigration, at a minimum, to peaceful, honest people. Obviously, that would exclude violent criminals who have not offered restitution for their crimes. With that said, peaceful, honest people entering the country to better their lives should not fall within the scope of “a hostile entrance” by any means.

As a Limit on Slavery

I do not encounter this argument often, but the constitution does provide for the prohibition of “Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit” after to 1808 in the 13 original states. Ironically, this was meant as a check on congressional power to control the importation of slaves.

In all other cases, immigration control should be reserved for the states, according to the constitution. However, as a practical matter, any federal immigration controls like that would break down under political pressure within a generation, so soon enough all the states would be setting their own policy. After all, it is unlikely that the other 37 states would be willing to pay for the immigration enforcement of others states.

Lessons from History

Mary Ruwart once wrote, “We reap as we sow. In trying to control others, we find ourselves controlled. We point fingers at the dictators, the Communists, the politicians, and the international cartels. We are blithely unaware that our desire to control selfish others creates and sustains them.”

The decentralization of power is a good thing. For one, it would slow plans for this New World Order that so many constitutionalists tell me about. The expansion of immigration controls follow closely with the expansion of government power in general.

For the most part, peaceful, honest foreigners are trying to escape exploitation so they might live somewhere they do not have to get permission to create wealth. It is a false choice to have to choose between our own happiness and abundance and that of others. All interests are served by practicing non-aggression. By refusing to aggress against others, the special interest groups and politicians in government have no authority over of us.

The controversy stems from the creation of the heretofore obscure Shire Society, the several dozen signatories claiming their [...]]]> In some respects, I agree with both sides in the heated L. Neil Smith-Shire Society intellectual property dispute. There has been some childish name-calling from each camp, although Smith’s has been far more harsh.

The controversy stems from the creation of the heretofore obscure Shire Society, the several dozen signatories claiming their “commitment to peace, individual sovereignty, and independence.” The signing of the declaration took place in June at the 2010 Porcupine Freedom Festival affectionately known as Porcfest, which is hosted by the Free State Project. (Note: I am a Free State Project participant, but I do have my own reservations about the Shire Society Declaration.)

The drafting of the precise language of the Shire declaration involved about 10 people and took place over several months. The final document borrowed heavily from Smith’s “A New Covenant.” From what I understand, this fact was acknowledged early in the deliberation process, though some were not aware of this at the time of their signing.

Smith’s twofold complaint is that he has not received enough credit for inspiring the society’s declaration and that he could suffer financially if people decide to back the Shire’s document instead of paying Smith two dollars to archive their pledge to his original work. He is also critical of the revisions made by Shire members.

I cannot say this represents all the facts, but they are the most relevant facts I know of. The primary ethical defense for the action of the Shire Society members is that non-tangible objects are fundamentally different from tangible objects insofar as they can be replicated without the destroying the original object. (I agree that much is true.) Consequently, Smith has not been injured by the copying of his original thoughts. Shire defenders lose me when they say restrictions backed by force on the use of non-tangible objects constitute aggression by restricting how users may use their own tangible property in the duplication of existing works.

This last claim is dubious because it tries to state as fact that non-tangible objects cannot be property. [Edit: In the original copy, this paragraph read as if I was expressing that I believe ideas, in and of themselves, can be owned; whereas, I was trying to express that it was someone’s labor that created those ideas.) It should be a simple matter of demonstrating that labor is owned and can be negotiated on what terms a laborer thinks favorable.

All Property is Intellectual Property

Ultimately, I believe the Shire Society should prevail in this case, but the argument against non-tangible property that its defenders put forth is unconvincing.

All wealth is a product of the ideas of the mind. We may use our muscles and bones to move earth or write a play, but our physical body is just a tool of our mind, which propels the use of those tools. As Lysander Spooner said, “There is, therefore, no such thing as the physical labor of men, independently of their intellectual labor.” The motion of our bodies, our labor, is equally non-tangible, yet no one would deny we own our own labor.

The creation of property (wealth that is possessed) is primarily an intellectual exercise by integrating an individual’s abstract and perceptual knowledge of objective reality into concepts to act upon. That is how, counter-intuitively, writers such as Smith can arrange words, which are limitless and therefore valueless in and of themselves, into highly valued books that people find it worth trading their scarce time and labor to read.

The value is found, not in the printed words themselves, but in the usefulness (or entertainment) of the expression of those ideas. The same is true of tangible property. Tangible property is by its nature scarce, but it is not necessarily finite. Wealth is not finite either. It is a product one’s mind, as Ayn Rand said, and endless imagination.

Whether someone’s work is harmed by duplicating it or not is irrelevant to the question of who may use the work.

Property does not exist so much in the physical dimensions of an object as it does in identifying the decision-making interest of the object. It means acquiring “the full services that can be derived from a good,” as Ludwig von Mises said. A property right is the ability to act freely (without the threat of force) and accept the consequences of that action at the exclusion of that same right to others while simultaneously honoring the property rights in relation to other objects.

Resolving Intellectual Property Disputes

The right to free speech is the right to use his or her property to disseminate information, except in cases to coerce others of their property, and the corollary right not to disseminate information. In that respect, the Shire Society has a case for borrowing from Smith’s work.

One possible limit could exist if the information was first acquired conditionally. To illustrate, if I sell a book under a certain explicit condition, such as a restriction on duplication, then I have not sold the full ownership and still retain certain property rights to that particular copy. Of course, the onus is on the original owner to state those restrictions before the transaction. If my customer transferred or lost ownership of the book, the next owner could not morally acquire any greater ownership rights than the previous owner, because I would retain whatever conditions were originally created.

The problem with existing intellectual property law is that the conditions of ownership are set by government law, that is, by force. The involuntary intervention of government enforcement enables intellectual property owners to place far harsher conditions than they could negotiate freely. Effectively, government intellectual property conditions are made under duress and should not be enforced.

In the case before us, Smith set no such additional property conditions on the use of the work on his Web site. And if he did set forth such conditions, the burden of proof would be on him to prove that someone deliberately copied his work and that it was not mere coincidence. The principle is, not that people owns ideas, per se, but they do own the labor that contributed to those ideas. Smith could not claim ownership of a coincidental duplication since he cannot own another’s labor either.

Had Smith clearly stated on his site the terms of use, he would be in the right. Instead, he owes members of the Shire Society an apology for his caustic language. The ambiguities of intellectual property have haunted libertarians for the past 50 years, and they likely will for some time. On the bright side, this is an opportunity for a proof of concept for a dispute resolution organization to resolve.

The Center for a Stateless Society published its rather extensive political quiz Wednesday.

It turned out that I am not as entirely anti-militaristic as I thought, only 71 percent. Economically, I’m a 72 percent leftist, which is evident in my affinity with worker self-management. I had a feeling that some of the [...]]]>

The Center for a Stateless Society published its rather extensive political quiz Wednesday.

It turned out that I am not as entirely anti-militaristic as I thought, only 71 percent. Economically, I’m a 72 percent leftist, which is evident in my affinity with worker self-management. I had a feeling that some of the questions did not measure what they might have wanted to measure, but on balance, the quiz was very insightful — and I think accurate. Measuring along five different axises, it certainly was more in-depth than the libertarian Nolan Chart survey.

The “Find Your Philosophy Quiz” is available here.