For example, liberals are keen to say that politicians, who have to be elected every number of years at least, can be flawed but are often more desirable than a rule by corporate oligarchs. I think the libertarians have the better argument that those corporate oligarchs are in power primarily because of politicians, which is all the more reason to strip government of the power to grant privileges to businesses and artificial restrictions on everyone else.

Leaving that point aside, I think there is a second point to be made about why the government’s direction of the economy and social affairs — central planning — is detrimental to the democratic process. Granted, having a say in who takes elected office and which statutes are enacted is preferable to not having a say at all. But what merit there is for having a genuinely democratic process is more often negated by the substance that process generates.

I think I have good reason for thinking why that might be. Having a unified plan of action is made more difficult in a legislative body. That is because the agenda has to be molded and interconnected in just the right way for it to function properly. However, planning a society requires making trade-offs among mutually exclusive ends using an unquantifiable number of means, each with a multiplicity of uses. And unlike coordinating fixed parts for an engineering design, there are over 300 million self-molding parts in the United States alone with their own motives and ideas. That kind of coordination would be difficult enough within a small committee of like-minded and trained experts, particularly as the committee process itself is not bent toward engineered action, but delay and compromise. Those inefficiencies are magnified again and again within a legislative body made of conflicting agendas.

As it becomes more apparent that central planning itself is inimical to a legislature’s piecemeal approach, policy making has to be entrusted to even more remote planners like the NCTCOG, TXDPS, NTTA, RCT, TRA, and any number of other alphabet state commissions and agencies just in my part of Texas. There are calls to “get it out of politics” or something similar, which really amounts to “do as we say.” Considering, it is understandable why people would favor giving power to planners who can escape political influence.

For a practical matter, unless the scope of the government’s powers are severely limited, the legislative and executive functions of government are likely to be tainted by corruption. To paraphrase P.J. O’Rourke, because politicians have so much sway over what businesses can buy and sell, the first thing businesses are going to buy and sell are politicians. Yet even in the unlikelihood that only incorruptible and uncapturable politicians and central planners were in power, the “iron law of oligarchy” teaches that their effort to direct people’s lives would increasingly become cartelized and cemented. If for no other reason, politicians and planners will have to rely on the economic data provided by big businesses for shaping their policies and determining how those policies impact the economy. Intentional or not, big government reforms will serve the interests of big business.

Some might say that democracy still functions as intended since these “independent” planners still face the scrutiny of legislatures, who are voted into office by the people. That is beside the point since there is no general consensus on the substance, only on the means for enacting what, the planning should consist of. Planning boards present their proposals as effectively a “take it or leave it” proposition. Some tweaks can be made, usually for it gain wider appeal, but the political pressures for approval will be coming from voters demanding that something — anything — be done to avert greater turmoil. That is hardly what democracy should look like. As Friedrich Hayek has pointed out in The Road to Serfdom, the legislature

will at best be reduced to choosing the persons who are to have practically absolute power. …

…; it will often be necessary for the will of a small minority be imposed upon people, because this minority will be the largest group able to agree among themselves on the question at issue.”

Whatever merit democracy might have, that surely is not it.

I regard democracy as a critical social value, but not as the primary social value — liberty — a value that individuals overwhelmingly share simultaneously with others in society. At its best, the democratic process is limited in scope and serves to maintain accountability to shifting popular opinion, but democracy does not in and of itself restrain the government (or restrain others at the behest of the government) from exercising arbitrary power. Unfortunately, the power of statism corrupts, and statism corrupts and distorts democracy just as it does the market economy and other beneficial practices.

Evidently, this theory is founded on the false premise that a rational individual could not willingly benefit by receiving less than the full produce of his or her labor. Please understand, I agree that exploitation is a real phenomenon, which is what takes place when someone without consent expropriates the benefits of another’s property rights. With that said, workers are facing actual exploitation by government controls that restrict the rights to collectively organize, that reduce opportunities for entrepreneurship and that push people into the labor market in the first place.

To that end, I have said:

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.

So I also support higher wage rates, but I would rather reduce the dead-weight loss of existing government controls instead of trying to counter-balance them with new government controls.

Why Agree to ‘Exploitation’?

This is not an exhaustive list, but there are a number of reasons why accepting less than the full produce of one’s labor would be sensible.

• Higher time preference — The premium someone places on the earlier satisfaction of a goal rather than a later satisfaction is called time preference. Someone with a higher time preference would value immediate gratification to a greater extent than a person with a lower time preference; someone with a lower time preference would still more greatly value immediate gratification, just to a lesser extent. A laborer who had a higher time preference might very well agree to accept reduced wages now instead of waiting for greater returns in the future, when a product’s purchase is completed by the final consumer. An employer facilitates the demand for earlier gratification by paying wages in the present and waiting for compensation from consumers in the future. The more distant the span of time between when the labor was performed and when the product’s purchase is completed by the final consumer means that the discount in wages would be more prominent. That is because a future good has less value than that of an otherwise identical present good. A dramatic contrast of a difference in time preference might be someone who has been diagnosed with a terminal illness compared to a young, healthy adult. The one does not have much longer to enjoy the benefits of his or her labor and may accept reduced wages that were paid immediately, while the other has a long life ahead of him or her and may be willing to wait until the final consumer has purchased the good produced. In an environment where savings were not eroded by money inflation, market-based interest rates encouraged savings, economic conditions were more stable, it was easier to start a business and people’s incomes were not confiscated through taxation or destroyed by coercive regulatory controls — anxiety about the condition of the economy would diminish so that people would be more inclined to adopt a lower time preference and demand a higher portion of the produce of their labor.
• Reduced risk — Even if time were not a factor in a decision, some people are less averse to risk than others. As the saying goes, “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.” The sentiment of that saying is that it is better to have a guaranteed reward than risking the possibility for even greater reward. That is an accurate statement for some people, but not all. Depending on the circumstances, which is practically impossible to share in common identically with another person, it could be more prudent to run the risk. A laborer with the resources to open a business could find it more sensible to continue working for a lower wage than possibly reaping greater rewards by opening a business and putting those resources at greater risk of loss. Here again, discriminatory tax policies and regulatory controls (like licensing laws and capital requirements) have made it is costlier and thereby riskier to go into business for one’s self, and the state’s crowding out of demand, like in the education sector, makes it more difficult to earn a return on investment. One of the reasons that large businesses favor greater regulatory controls is because those controls stymie competition from small businesses struggling to afford the added costs of regulatory compliance. Abolishing occupational licensing laws and zoning controls against mixed-use property would lead to a flurry of home-based, low-overhead enterprises, which are less risky and less costly to operate than store-front operations.
• Charity — It is pretty common for people to volunteer their time or offer special rates for their work if they know those savings are going toward a good cause. The social anarchist band Anti-Flag regularly plays at charity event, for example, and I do not ever recall its members mention they had been exploited by playing a charity event.
• Prevent competition — One of the reasons that profits tend to minimize over the long term is that profits signal that more resources need to be devoted to that good, which stirs competition. One way of preventing the rise of competition is to deliberately price a product or service for significantly less than its anticipated value to the consumer. The strategy is founded on the idea that resources will be devoted to more profitable investments first. The resulting diminished profit dissuades new competition from forming and may drive out old. In that way, businesses are also looking to build customer loyalty in case competition does arise. This works both ways. Purchasers, including purchasers of labor, have to be weary that paying too little will lead the seller of the labor to look more vigorously elsewhere for employment.
• Volume discount — One of the reasons that stores like Sam’s and Costco exist is because customers can save quite a bit of money by purchasing in bulk. The same principle holds for purchasing labor in bulk. To hire someone occasionally to make repairs around the house, the homeowner would expect to pay a higher price per hour than if he or she had agreed to pay a regular salary to work a set number of hours indefinitely or for some longer period of time. The person making repairs would benefit from having a steadier stream of income and reducing his or her time and expenses associated with recruiting prospective customers.
• Good will — Someone just entering a trade has a few disadvantages. One is that a potential employer is not quite sure of the laborer’s professional and personal skills. In order to entice a potential employer to accept the added risk of hiring someone without a known reputation, the laborer can improve his or her prospects by temporarily accepting reduced compensation. The same could hold true for someone wanting to improve a tarnished reputation. That is common for professional athletes, who might sign a short-term contract in hopes of displaying their skills for other potential employers.
• Experience — For people learning a trade, apprenticeships can be an important step to becoming an experienced professional. An ironic note is that Marx himself served as an apprentice for a German newspaper. By requesting a lower wage rate, more employment opportunities arise, which can provide a springboard to increased experience and higher compensation in the future, the same as what happened to Marx after attending college.
• Reduced warranty — One last scenario is that an agreement could be made that an employee would not have to guarantee his or her work. This arrangement is made less often, if only because one’s reputation typically is regarded as more valuable than any short-term benefit of avoiding the inconvenience of correcting a mistake. An example could be where a customer, over the objection of his or her car mechanic, insisted on having some mechanical repair or alteration made. An agreement might be reached that, for agreeing to a reduced fee, the mechanic is released of responsibility for warranting the work.

I am sure this does not include every scenario in which an employee could benefit from accepting a reduced wage. In a genuine free market, I think there would be fewer people working for a wage. More people would be able to afford to run their own business from their homes, or they could share spaces and tools at community-managed workshops. Self-organized, low-overhead market forces would be in a better position to rebuff widespread economic downturns, should they occur.

In an open market, two people are likely to have fewer mutually beneficial trading opportunities as their circumstances become more aligned, so they would not exchange at all if they assigned the same value to the items being exchanged. The noteworthy think about exchange is that it allows for people of distinct backgrounds and circumstances to flourish instead of conflict. Catallactic competition means that people with identical demands can more affordably satisfy those demands. The more people who have that same demand means that satisfying that demand can become less expensive. When a trade does occur, it does so because people in different circumstances have different values to satisfy. With that understanding, it becomes understandable why individuals would give greater importance to some values than they otherwise would for certain circumstances and why people in different circumstances perceive the benefits of achieving certain values differently.

Marxists and opponents of monied exchange are mistaken and do a disservice to alleviating actual exploitation in that they do not distinguish the one-sided nature of state privilege from the mutual benefit of consensual exchange. It is not only that they have a misunderstanding of the nature of property rights; they believe that the measure of an individual’s value exists independent of his or her unique circumstances (or context). To an opponent of the private ownership of property, an exchange involving money would be prima facie evidence of exploitation, since the measure of a value being equal across society, they believe one party’s benefit comes at the expense of the other. This is what leads them to believe that working for a wage is necessarily exploitation, claiming that workers are in a position of either receiving less than the value of their labor or starving. Besides being a false dichotomy and full of hyperbole, this is a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of value. A self-interested person would not act at all unless he or she expected to gain or keep more than the value of the labor expended. Because of opportunity and transaction costs, acting to gain or keep less than or equivalent to the value of the labor expended would only hasten death. From the circumstances of the laborer, the wages received in return are more beneficial than the benefit that could be have been received by working elsewhere or taking leisure instead. It could still be the case that exploitation is taking place, that better opportunities were never available because of a systematic violation of property rights, but working for wage labor is not a sufficient condition of it.

I claim that values are particular kinds of facts, that values relate to a specific person and for a particular reason. That is not to say that the process of evaluating which actions an individual ought to pursue is left to personal discretion, only that there are circumstances (or context) by which objective evaluations are made. For example, eating an apple provides a value (the satisfaction of my hunger) under certain circumstances. (Those certain circumstances, just to name a few, are whether I own or have permission to eat the apple, if the apple is sanitary and if the apple is ripe or not.) Since the decision to remain alive or to die is the only fundamental alternative I face, choosing to live establishes that my life is an ultimate value, an end in itself. My very own life, should I choose to remain living, is the only logically consistent standard of value I can have. I can discover these certain circumstances because they have empirically observable consequences on the standard by which I evaluate values. And it is that ultimate standard of value that can be used as a yardstick to evaluate the choice of alternatives within a given context, like eating the apple. That which promotes my life is a value, and that which hinders my life is a disvalue. Since this is true of all individuals, each individual’s life is an end in itself. For intrinsicists, values are not related to any particular purpose or any purpose at all since values just exist on their own. If someone were to ask an intrinsicist why eating an apple is a value, assuming the intrinsicist did believe eating an apple were a value in and of itself, the intrinsicist would say that eating an apple is the right thing to do. And why is it the right thing to do? Because eating an apple is a value. That is circular logic.

According to intrinsicism, a value resides in an object, thus shaping what that object is. So instead of saying that the nature of reality (what is) determines what are values, religions like Christianity are claiming that values determine the nature of reality (what is). A value would reside in the aforementioned apple, and it would be the right thing to do to eat more apples than less, regardless of the circumstances. One might object that stealing apples might not be appropriate since stealing is prohibited in the Bible, which is true. However, intrinsicism does not provide a way to formulate a moral code (or hierarchy of values) to evaluate possibly conflicting actions in light of particular circumstances. Since intrinsicism contends that values exist independent of their relationship to a particular valuer for a particular reason, intrinsicism cannot account for why an apple would be a greater value when a person is hungry rather than not, for example. Without a cognitive standard to make comparisons, a person would be left to decide which value is greater based on his or her desires (because one’s desires (or lack of) would be all that values shared in common). In practice, intrinsicists have to guess or take other people’s word for it. That is one reason why intrinsicism is a more elaborate form of subjectivism.

My experience is that theists will appeal to so-called innate moral knowledge as proof of objective morality. Yet, this so-called innate moral knowledge is often mistaken, according to theists, when confronted with the problem of evil. Suffering brought about by natural disasters or genocide would all be preventable by a god, yet those tragedies are permitted and orchestrated to take place by god. Because there is no empirical verification of innate knowledge, the argument is that god must have some reason unbenounced to humans for this destruction of innocent life to take place, which tells us that any innate moral knowledge is untrustworthy. The three possible conclusions (all of which theists deny is true) are that objective morality exists independent of a god, objective morality does not exist, or god is not naturally good.

Moreover, Christians are mistaken when they claim they believe that god is an ultimate value and that therefore god is the ultimate standard of value. For Christians, the ultimate value and the standard of value is the grace (or approval) of god. A value is that which one acts to gain or keep. Christians are seeking to gain or keep the grace of god so that they are accepted into the kingdom of god. Logically speaking, through, the grace of god cannot be an ultimate value because the grace of god is contingent on god’s decision to grant grace in the first place. God’s decision to grant grace could only take place if granting grace or not granting grace would somehow affect god, a purportedly all-powerful, all-knowing eternal being. An individual’s decision to accept and pursue god’s grace has no bearing on god, who is incapable of destruction and who is not susceptible to time constraints. Nothing can affect god, who cannot be changed in any respect. God would have nothing to gain and nothing to lose, so nothing can be of value to god. If nothing can be of value, there is no reason for god to act, let alone grant grace.

For the intrinsicist, these values — since they serve no actual purpose — are actually just duties. Why is it that god’s grace is something worth pursuing, one might ask? Because it is the right thing to do. Why is that? Because god’s grace is a value one ought to pursue. That is question-begging, and the illogic of that should be apparent before I can say “infinite regress.”

Frustrated, reasonable people might ask why should they accept that god’s grace is the standard of value. The answer is pretty straightforward: because you can either live in bliss with god or be tortured for eternity. The next question then becomes why should I consider living in bliss with god a good thing and being tortured a bad thing. Christians have one of two choices, as far as I can see. They can either return to the infinite regress of intrinsicism, or the intrinsicist can say that living in bliss with god feels pleasurable and being tortured feels painful. That does not really answer any questions either. Why should pleasure be considered good and pain considered bad? After all, pleasures can sometimes be harmful. For kids, only eating sweets might be pleasurable, but always eating sweets is not a good thing. Exercise phrases like “No pain, no gain” are expressing that one’s own life is the standard of value. Exercising can help an athlete become stronger, faster or build endurance. That is important because the achievement of those values helps one become a better basketball player or win more games, which would further boost self-esteem, a component of happiness. Genuine happiness is a consequence of achieving life-promoting empirical (fact-based) values and is a rationally consistent purpose of living one’s life.

A final argument given by intrinsicists is that their god is the lawmaker and that fact establishes the authority of god’s law. In fact, intrinsicists argue, god is responsible for every fact in the universe. Not only would god be responsible for the creation of existence, god is responsible for the identity (or nature) of all that exists. So things, including values and consequently morality, are what god chooses them to be. This would be the most overt and grandiose appeal to subjectivism imaginable and really underscores the subjective nature of a belief in god. If the subject of consciousness (god) has primacy over the subjects of consciousness (entities in existence) then nothing can be objective. If even a single consciousness has primacy over existence, then the law of identity, the basis for metaphysical objectivity, is meaningless.

Religious values are not based on facts, but on feelings. All the way around it, people accept religious teachings on faith. They accept on faith that god’s grace is the ultimate value because they feel like it. If the subjectivist teachings of religion were isolated to just theists, that would still be tragic. Unfortunately, it is much worse, and it is rooted in the truly evil idea that someone or something else is the beneficiary of another’s life. If the beneficiary of my life is god or god’s grace, I have no sanction to live my life for my benefit. Obviously, that is going to create some conflict. With all the religions in the world, not everyone is going to agree — particularly since god’s grace is not observable — what honors god’s grace and what dishonors god’s grace.

Since most everyone (including most atheists) agrees that I have no right to live my life according to my own judgement, then it is perfectly acceptable to apply coercion so that I might live my life by someone else’s judgement. The only things subjectivists have ever had in their favor are guilt and the gun. That is moral cannibalism.

The reason I mention it is because it is arbitrary to claim that personal property is the only valid form of property. It is arbitrary because there is no reason in reality for making such a distinction between the validity of personal and non-personal property. I suppose the writer might counter that non-personal property permits “robbery, extortion, and slavery,” as is claimed. Even if true, that would only be begging the question. While I of course agree, Warren does not explain why “robbery, extortion, and slavery” are wrong. I believe that if Warren were to examine why “robbery, extortion, and slavery” are wrong, it would be because each individual has an inalienable right to his or her life. In summation, the only way of exercising that right is in material reality. Since human beings are capable of living for such long periods of time, over 100 years in some cases, it is necessary to be able to plan ahead for that eventuality. The occupancy-and-use theory to which Warren prescribes purposefully imposes on intentions to plan for the achievement of long-term values, because accumulating property for later use is not recognized. That, among other reasons, is why the occupancy-and-use theory is irredeemable. (My criticism would not necessarily justify a belief in the Lockean theory either. I will be publishing an alternative justification for individual rights on March 14.)

But say hypothetically that I am wrong and personal property is the only valid form of property. Contrary to what Warren said, personal property could allow for intellectual property of “anything an individual actively uses and is in direct possession of a good amount of time” so long as the person willfully kept the idea to him- or herself. I presume that Warren would agree that if personal property were taken without permission, the one who took possession without permission from the previous possessor would have no right to the property. If Warren believed that to be the case and if a person unwillingly communicated or transferred a unique idea to another person, the receiver might have to pay some restitution for having remembered the idea. It is absurd.

Another logical leap is to claim it would be necessary to possess something “a good amount of time” before becoming the owner. Unless there is some other floating criterion I am not aware of, someone who had not possessed an object “a good amount of time” and is thus not the owner would have no greater moral claim to use force to prevent it from being taken or destroyed by another person. Additionally, no objective (empirical) standard exists, only personal arbitrary whim, to determine when “a good amount of time” has passed.

Warren added that opposition to non-personal property would entail opposition to rent, interest and profit. I do not see how that could be. It might entail opposition to the coercive enforcement of rent and interest, but I suppose people could still contract on the basis of non-coercive reputation management. Most poor people today do not have access to courts or to police enforcement of their agreements, but their agreements are formed all the time, particularly in the black and gray markets. They typically are limited to the exchange of personal property in part because of poverty-creating government policies have prevented them from acquiring non-personal property. I also do not understand how the exclusion of non-personal property would lead to an opposition to profit, unless trade itself were prohibited too. When people exchange, each person does so under the expectation that he or she will benefit. That is a form of entrepreneurial profit and creates wealth. The only seeming justification for an opposition to profit would be if one person’s profit necessarily results in someone else’s loss, a centuries-old fallacy.

All in all, Warren offered no substantive arguments against non-personal property and inadvertently makes a case for intellectual property and the theft of personal property.

To his major points, the rabbi begins his letter with an immediate misunderstanding of atheism. He said “that there really are no true atheists” because such a belief would require absolute knowledge of the universe. But again this is wrong for at least three reasons.

Atheism is a lack of belief in a god, meaning there is no empirical (fact-based) evidence to support a belief in a god. For many atheists, that is the extent of their claim. They do not say that the existence of a god is impossible, only that they do not possess any empirical evidence to believe there is one.

The second fault in the rabbi’s thinking is that the burden of proof is not on atheists to prove that there is no empirical evidence for theism. The burden of proof lies with theist to prove that they have empirical evidence for their belief, since theists are the ones making a positive claim. A belief without empirical evidence is arbitrary, as in not grounded in reality, and therefore neither true nor false. If such definitive empirical evidence existed, there would be no reason to rely on faith, which is the act of acquiring a belief in knowledge in the absence empirical evidence or, more often, in spite of the available empirical evidence.

Even with those clarifications, the third fault in the rabbi’s reasoning is that we can prove by logical deduction that there is no god. Part of the difficulty in proving there is no god is that there are so many definitions for the word “god.” Some will say god is love or energy or the perfect good. We already know what those notions are or at least understand the thinking behind them, so there is no reason to use the word “god,” which brings with it supernatural connotations. At a minimum, “god” is defined as an eternal incorporeal being responsible for the creation of existence. Existence would be defined as the totality of all that had existed, that does exist and that will exist. The notion “god” can be proven to be self-contradictory and therefore non-existent in reality in the same way that a square circle cannot exist. Self-contradictory notion can be used as figurative tools, but it would be pointless to search the universe for a square circle, a married bachelor or an instance where two plus two is five.

Logically proving the self-contradictory nature of the notion “god,” an eternal incorporeal being responsible for the creation of existence, is as follows.

1. Consciousness is the faculty to perceive that which exists.
2. Consciousness can only occur if something exists to perceive.
3. In the absence of existence, nothing exists to be conscious of to perceive.
4. A being that lacks consciousness is unconscious.
5. An unconscious being cannot act purposefully to create existence.
6. The notion “god” exists as a manifestation of the human mind, which is an entity in existence.
7. Therefore, there is no god.

The basic summation is that if there were a god, it could never act. By the fact that existence exists, there can be no god.

The supposed attributes of quantitatively infinite goodness, presence, knowledge and power are themselves self-contradictory as well. As Leonard Peikoff said, ” ‘Infinite’ as applied to quantity does not mean ‘very large’: it means ‘larger than any specific quantity.’ That means: no specific quantity—i.e., a quantity without identity. This is prohibited by the Law of Identity.”

Having shown why the notion “god” contradicts the fundamental meta-physical principles of reality, I do not think that the rest of the rabbi’s open letter is founded. However, he does mention the good that has come of people’s belief in Judaism. Even if it were the case that Judaism was less opposed to human happiness and equality, that should not warrant its belief. Considering the teachings of other religions, Judaism had a pretty low hurdle to cross. Of the points he made about the positive impact of his religion, in no way is a religious belief required to perform them. Atheists are just as capable of justice and love as atheists.

Pointing to “Hitler, Mao, Stalin and Pol Pot” as examples of secular injustices gives his case away. In the case of Hitler, he was very outspoken about his Christian belief. What united all of them were beliefs shared almost universally by theists, the virtue of self-sacrifice to the collective.

To the rabbi’s final point, atheism does not have to be asserted on faith. He added, “Being a rationalist, of course, you know that failing to make such an observation is different from proving that there isn’t one [a god], which, by its very nature, is an impossible task.” That is what the rabbi does not understand. A negative statement, such as one that there is no god, can be demonstrated as true if it is true. To demonstrate that two plus two is not five or 20 or 55 only takes proving that two plus two is four. To demonstrate that there is no god only takes demonstrating that existence exists and A is A, both (irrefutable) axiomatic primaries of logic. To say that one cannot prove a negative statement is itself a negative statement. So if the statement is true, it refutes itself. If the statement that one cannot prove a negative is false, that means negative statements, including that one, are then arbitrary and therefore meaningless. In either case, the statement that one cannot prove a negative is untrue. The purpose for the rabbi’s use of the statement that it is impossible to prove “that there isn’t one [a god]” is to deny that knowledge is even possible. If it is impossible to rule out the possibility that two plus two is not five, it is equally impossible to claim knowledge that two plus two is four. If I cannot prove that this thing I am punching my fingers on is not a poisonous snake, I cannot claim with certainty that it is keyboard either. The statement that one cannot prove a negative statement is a claim to knowledge that denies knowledge is possible.

Forgiving the fact that the rabbi completely misunderstands atheism and peddles the idea that we cannot use reason, even as he communicates through the use of our reason, I welcome having an “open mind and a spirit of appreciation for our shared humanity.” It is just that so many theists do not see it that way. The goal of this post is not to rob people of their beliefs, and for the most part I do not initiate conversations about religion with theists nor do I support violence in the name of my beliefs — if only I could say the same for statists, some theists and some anarchists (for that matter).

Insofar as we live in a statist society, where some gain the reigns of power for the explicit purpose of lording over others and depriving them of their wealth, Tremblay is certainly right. I would go so as to agree that (state) capitalism does suffer from the anti-social consequences he cited, such as encouraging conformity, causing artificial scarcity, and raising dysfunctional children who perpetuate the existing failed system.

Statism is the negation of society.

Society, naturally though, is chiefly an outcome of cooperation. Society is spontaneously formed, not out a sense of brotherhood, but for the purpose of attaining higher levels of productivity that otherwise would not be possible by isolated individuals. The friendship and benevolence experienced within society, then, is the fruit of that materialistic benefit, not its antecedent. In the absence of the increased productive power of a division of labor, there would be no place for cooperation. Survival would mercilessly consist of all-out competition.

For a logical proof of this, we can recognize that even the most asocial individuals would not want their actions to become the norm, for that would leave them with fewer riches to plunder. Even in warfare, the bloodiest form of competition, people find it in their interests to cooperate somewhat with the enemy. It even became recognized that enslavement was a superior form of victory than the outright killing of hostiles. Over time, more people have come to accept that peace is preferably to war.

Foremost, Ludwig von Mises said, “Catallactic competition, one of the characteristic features of the market economy, is a social phenomenon.” The fact that people generally strive for the same ends transforms what otherwise would be a biological conflict into a fortunate harmony of what Mises called “rightly understood interests.”

Mises continued,

The fact that my fellow man wants to acquire shoes as I do, does not make it harder for me to get shoes, but easier. What enhances the price of shoes is the fact that nature does not provide a more ample supply of leather and other raw materials required, and that one must submit to the disutility of labor in order to transform these raw materials into shoes. The catallactic competition of those who, like me, are eager to have shoes makes shoes cheaper, not more expensive.

Similarly to the variations of the tit-for-tat cooperative game strategy, the cooperative framework of catallactic (or market) competition insures that all players benefit, unlike games of winner takes all. While there are certainly instances in which someone forgoes certain advantages of living as an isolated individual, those are passing and insignificant compared to the overall benefit of social cooperation. The fault with thinking of market competition in the same manner as conventional zero-sum competition like sporting events is that it gives the impression there can only be one winner with each interaction. When in life, our interactions are cumulative; they carry forward from one experience to the next. As variations of the tit-for-tat strategies have demonstrated, it is not even necessary to be the most successful partner in each interaction. To be successful, what matters is the cumulative results of one’s efforts.

Tremblay did offer a definition for competition, calling it “an activity which is done for the sake of some external reward.” By this thinking, nearly all human interaction, including cooperation, would be a form of competition. In contrast, I think a better explanation of competition is a condition in which people strive for a goal that cannot be shared.

In that sense, market competition provides for distinct indivisible goods to be divided among people. However, in doing, all parties share in the wider benefit of cooperation that permitted competition to take place. Cooperation and market competition are not antithetical to one another, but part and parcel. Only from pre-existing cooperation can market competition take hold. From an economic perspective, the function of competition is to identify who is best suited, given a set of economic particulars, to provide for the consumer. If anything, market competition could aptly be described as the process of discovering mutually beneficial prices, which takes place with a pre-existing commitment to cooperation.

Later in his post, Tremblay noted that “A common excuse for competition is that resources are scarce and that competition tells us who ‘deserves’ more resources than others.” As I stated above, it is because resources are scarce that cooperation (a division of labor) is needed to organize production. Economization (pricing) is necessary to calculate the realized and opportunity costs of production. The function of market competition is to reveal mutually beneficial prices.

That is not to say that all forms of interaction to be monetized either. I am eager to participate in mutual aid programs or to provide a helping hand to those in need. In order to do so, though, there has to be some mechanism to know how my resources can be used to provide the greatest benefit. The pricing system is able to in a decentralized, non-hierarchical way provide that information for no overt cost to me.

Even if we lived in a society of abundance, economization (pricing) would still be present, because there is one thing that could never be made more abundant, time. Living in the Garden of Eden, we still would be subjected to the dilemma of “sooner or later.” Also, nonscarce goods (like ideas) could be the subject to pricing if their means of distribution (a book) were limited.

As far as “who ‘deserves’ more resources,” economics cannot tell us who was actually a worthy recipient of another’s resource in any normative sense. A study of economics can reveal if an individual’s decisions were conducive to the ends pursued, but not whether the ends deserved pursuing.

Tremblay continued, “There isn’t enough for everyone because any monetary system is a rationing system, and if the rationing system bars millions of people from getting what they need, then they won’t get what they need.”

I agree with his criticism as it relates to the existing economic conditions. A consensual monetary system (if one existed), which would have the intention of facilitating trade, has nothing to do with restricting access to products and everything to do with securing the most productive use for those resource, according to consumer demand. The primary quest in economics is not to find out how to disperse already produced goods; it has to do with answering how those goods should be produced in the first place.

Following the Jan. 8 attempted killing of Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and murder of several others, the Libertarians Party soon after released a press statement saying how libertarians support the non-aggression principle and that they condemn the killing of innocent people. That is fine and good. Several innocent people were wounded by gun fire and others were killed.

But that does not speak to the guilt of Giffords as an elected member and supporter of a decision-making body responsible for the death of hundreds of thousands of people killed in aggressive wars. If the media were as self-righteous about the deaths caused by police violence or the human destruction of foreign occupations, we would have a better society.

We can see from the reaction of every political stripe that no one wants to appear sympathetic to the killer’s cause. We are fortunate that people are not willing to accept open violence to solve political problems. They would rather political violence be hidden away, which is why libertarians are scorned for pointing out just how violent government is.

For those who seek liberty, there is no good reason for supporting political violence. Foremost is that government knows exactly how to respond to violence, with greater violence. They will always have a greater stock of helicopters and guns. It also gives government an excuse to point to a looming, shadowy threat in order to play the victim for the rest of the population to unite behind. A third reason that political violence is counter-productive is because it destroys the limited wealth that would be need for economic recovery. All the way around, political violence against the government has no place in a movement to promote liberty.

• Committing Genocide — In the first book of the Bible, God decides Man is so evil that almost all living things must be killed in a worldwide flood, including children and animals. There is little discussion of why such a step is taken, and no convincing explanation is offered. Also left unanswered is why it was necessary to kill so many animals, which could have provided some value to the poverty stricken people of that time. It is inconceivable that it could be. Unfortunately, this would not be the last time God was responsible for the premeditated murder of children.

  In Egypt, the Israelites were being held as tax slaves to the state. Following a series of plagues that God commanded in an effort to besiege the pharaohs into freeing the Israelites, God concluded by killing the firstborn child of Egyptian families. By comparison, the American government’s economic sanctions and illegal invasion of Iraq, which together have resulted in more than a million deaths, seem tame.

• Condoning Chattel Slavery — I have never heard of a respected living conscious being that has ever condoned slavery, save for God. Surely, he must have seen the shift in public opinion coming.

  Throughout the Bible, though, slave owners are told how to conduct themselves but not that slavery is evil, that the pretense of the ownership of another person is evil. Sickeningly, slaves are even told to obey their masters.

• Enforcing Inherited Guilt — A central tenent of Christianity is that everyone is evil as a result of the fall of Adam and Eve from God’s grace in the Garden of Eden. The early parts of the Bible display cases of people being punished for the sins of the father. Really, what sense does that make?

  Morality is a matter of choice. To say that human beings are inherently evil (or good) would mean that they are not responsible for their decisions. It would be like a doorman forcing me into a casino to play craps only to find out during my roll that I have no choice but to play with the trick dice provided by the casino. I then have to pledge my unquestioned support and offer remuneration to pay off the inevitable debt I have incurred. The whole idea is mad and undermines a proper conception of morality.

• Punishing Victimless Crimes — For not supporting god, according the the Bible, I can expect eternal punishment. The belief as to what exactly such a punishment consists of spans across a wide spectrum. Some believe this punishment will consist of unspeakable torture, while others say an unbeliever remains in an oblivious unconscious rest.

  A central tenant of a civilized legal theory is that a crime has only occurred when a non-consenting individual has sustained an articulable injury to one’s person or property. Refusing my allegiance to the Bibilical god can in no way be an injury to a living person, much less to an immaterial entity. For example, even if I refused to acknowledge that Michael Jordon existed or if I believed that he was a terrible basketball player, I am not causing an injury to his body or property. A further difference is that Michael Jordon exists in material reality, while believers in the concept of god concede that god exists only in an immaterial supernatural realm that I presently am not able to experience.

  Since I can pose no possible injury to a god, I have a pretty strong case of being a victim of extortion since this almighty god has purposefully made such an ambiguous threat of eternal torture against me.

These are just some of the more egregious moral failures of the Biblical god. Even for those who believe the concept of god is valid, the tyrannical god described in the Bible could very well be a test of a believer’s moral code. So even if we played Pascal’s wager, there is at least as much reason to not lend your support for such a vile creature.

A revolutionary business model that defies government-privileged intellectual property is unfolding. The primary product is provided for free, and premium paid services are offered to provide support or build custom software on top of the existing freeware.

Popular Web browsers Firefox and Google Chrome are playing their part as well. Both have a number of free applications that help with online shopping. Just to highlight one, the Google Chrome and Firefox versions of PriceBlink seamlessly compare prices of retailers when browsing online stores. PriceBlink factors in shipping charges to avoid being attracted to a low price just to pay exorbitant shipping rates. It also surveys coupon sites for the latest coupons and shipping deals. For good measure, privacy safeguards prevent a particular user’s browsing data from being identified.

With the release of Version 2.1 on Firefox, PriceBlink can keep a wish list and set targets in the hope a product’s price drops.

Dozens more Firefox shopping add-ons are available, and other free extensions are provided in the Google Chrome web store.