ChichaPlanet

LRC has, on this day of "celebration," published my latest article.

July 4th In Bizarro World

From colorful hot dog stands and front porch grilling to car dealerships and fireworks --once again the people celebrate July 4th. The media will join the festivities and will air documentaries about the founding of the country, its struggles during the revolutionary war, the adoption of the Constitution and the various leaders that inspired a country to fight for its freedom. Journalists and pundits shall hold hands and sing their praises to the gods state. The mainstream, hailing from its intellectually void ivory tower will no doubt offer hosannas to our overlords. In the meantime, the message of freedom is nowhere to be seen. Indeed, quite the opposite tends to happen.

What follows are just a few of the July 4th lies and errors that we are supposed to blindly accept:

• The military is glorious, its heroes heroic, and our support is patriotic
  
• Freedom is about authority
  
• The police keep us safe and have a duty to protect us
  
• We are better off now than when the war on drugs started decades ago
  
• Continually increasing prices is a product of the market and thus the central bank must control credit and the money supply
  
• With proper reform, government can become efficient, especially if we elect the right leaders
  
• The Constitution gives people rights
  
• The government has been formed by the consent of the governed
  
• Without the state regulating/subsidizing/taxing/prohibiting activity or industry X, said industry or activity would be produced in quantities and/or qualities that are too high or too low; or would run rampant, cartelize and monopolize the market; or would not survive in a predatory competitive environment
  
• The more politically democratic things are, the better for everyone
  
• No matter what the cost to the public, protecting the children/our veterans/our senior citizens/our teachers is always the number one priority
  
• The free movement of goods and people destroys jobs and threatens our standard of living
  
• Businesses have no incentives to keep their customers safe; licenses ensure fair practices
  
• The law may occasionally be wrong, but it should nonetheless be followed always
  
• We must forever give up essential liberties to guarantee safety: it?s for your own good
  

The list can go on forever but you get the clue. What?s really telling about the so-called Independence Day is that most the reminders about July 4th are related to the state! You will see, almost without fail, photos of past tyrants, video of the various monuments magnanimously erected in their memory, and audio of their speeches. News segments and even commercials that use the Fourth of July as a theme will invariable feature the military, the White House, Congress, the Supreme Court, the Washington monument or a close-up of the Constitution --usually the part that says ?We the People.? If July 4th is really about freedom, why is the District of Criminals the center of attention?

You see, we live in a bizarro world where might makes right and government aggression is the apotheosis of liberty. Our rights are relative and whatever freedoms we have left are a vote and a signature away from being eradicated.

I ask: What rights? What freedoms? Today we celebrate nothing. Get over your patriotism-inspired nationalistic jingoism already. Instead, celebrate the market, not the politicians and their bureaucratic-regulatory army of destruction.

Statist and economically ignorant articles like this one always chastise Congress (and other branches) for going on vacation instead of trying to fix a crisis. Of course, virtually every crisis out there is caused by government intrusion in the market. And because the statist/ignorant media largely believes that the housing crisis was caused by factors other than the Federal Reserve, they urge Congress to do something and thus should not take a break:

The Democratic-run Congress shut down last Friday and is not returning to work until next Monday. Between now and then, the New York Times notes in a blistering editorial Tuesday, another 55,000 homes will sink into foreclosure.

Yet it was the action of legislatures past and present that created this situation! If they had stayed home instead of legislating the banking system to deaeth, no foreclosure madness would have ensued.

My proposal, as usual, is simple: Congress (and other branches) should simply take a July 4th vacation and never return. In fact, if that ever happened, then we can really start celebrating July 4th.

Es un gusto anunciar que Albert Esplugas ya tiene su propio blog.

A great post by Butler Shaffer:

At first blush, today's Supreme Court decision recognizing the right to own handguns sounds good. Bear in mind, however, that it is a familiar practice for courts to announce a seemingly far-reaching opinion, only to begin back-tracking in subsequent cases. It would not surprise me to see a case come up involving a ban on assault weapons, with the court upholding the prohibition by distinguishing today's decision from the later one. When complaints are leveled against the court, the response would be made that the the 2nd Amendment was upheld in the D.C. case - as to handguns - thus creating the impression that the right to gun ownership was being respected, thus defusing the opposition to gun-control laws.

One sees this tactic in free speech cases. Flag-burning is a protected 1st Amendment right - largely because burning a flag represents no significant threat to the state - but picketing a munitions plant, in wartime, urging workers to not work, is not a form of protected speech. The same pattern emerges: liberty is always given a narrow interpretation by the state, while governmental powers are always given an expansive definition.

He's right. The government tends to rule for itself and against freedom.

A very good article about some of the problems that photographers have encountered while being in open, public spaces enjoying their hobby:

Since 9/11, there has been an increasing war on photography. Photographers have been harrassed, questioned, detained, arrested or worse, and declared to be unwelcome. We've been repeatedly told to watch out for photographers, especially suspicious ones. Clearly any terrorist is going to first photograph his target, so vigilance is required.

Except that it's nonsense. The 9/11 terrorists didn't photograph anything. Nor did the London transport bombers, the Madrid subway bombers, or the liquid bombers arrested in 2006. Timothy McVeigh didn't photograph the Oklahoma City Federal Building. The Unabomber didn't photograph anything; neither did shoe-bomber Richard Reid. Photographs aren't being found amongst the papers of Palestinian suicide bombers. The IRA wasn't known for its photography. Even those manufactured terrorist plots that the US government likes to talk about -- the Ft. Dix terrorists, the JFK airport bombers, the Miami 7, the Lackawanna 6 -- no photography.

Now, even if they did photograph something, so what? It should not be a crime to take a photo.

The evil and totalitarian Department of Homeland Security is going to announce a new rule that would require people who do not need visas to visit the US to register with the federal government.

Passengers will be able to register in advance from August this year, but the rule will become mandatory in January. Registration will be possible through travel agents, airline websites or through a special US government website.

I bet the tourism industry is going to love this one. Thank you, comissar, for keeping us safe.

[Cross-posted]

The free trade [sic] agreement between Peru and the US was signed recently. There's no doubt that some trade will be increased, sure. But this is far from free. It's managed trade. It's not unrestricted trade between any willing buyer and any willing seller. Indeed, you can read the text of the agreement here and draw your own conclusion.

The agreement consists of several sections filled with legalese. Take, for instance, the 43-page section about textiles and apparel which is filled with "free trade" language such as this:

At the request of an interested entity, the United States shall, within 30 business days of receiving the request, add a fabric, fiber, or yarn in an unrestricted or restricted quantity to the list in Annex 3-B, if the United States determines, based on information supplied by interested entities, that the fabric, fiber, or yarn is not available in commercial quantities in a timely manner in the territory of any Party, or if no interested entity objects to the request.

That sure sounds like freedom to me.

Further down, we see references to more managed trade:

If the United States determines before the date of entry into force of this Agreement that any fabrics or yarns not listed in Annex 3-B are not available in commercial quantities in the United States pursuant to section 112(b)(5)(B) of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (19 U.S.C. § 3721(b)), section 204(b)(3)(B)(ii) of the
Andean Trade Preference Act (19 U.S.C. § 3203(b)(3)(B)(ii)), or section
213(b)(2)(A)(v)(II) of the Caribbean Basin Economic Recovery Act (19 U.S.C. § 2703(b)(2)(A)(v)(II)), the United States may, after consultation with the Parties, add such fabrics or yarns in an unrestricted quantity to the list in Annex 3-B.

A truly free trade agreement would consist of one page and it would eliminate all tariffs and quotas and everything else. Let buyers and sellers come to mutual terms. That's it. These so-called free trade agreements give a bad name to the idea of truly free trade as they are often bathed in rampant protectionism.

Watch the video as reported by local media here and the raw footage. There's also an article and video with viewer responses.

I guess the reporter should have followed the "reasonable" edicts of the police! Time for the media to start following orders. That's the rule. If you feel the need to violate it, you take a big risk. Why take it? Bow your head and comply, citizen. For as the great Jailiani once said, "freedom is about authority."

Over the last week I've watched with sadness and anger the disaster that is unfolding in Myanmar. People are dying by the thousands and the state there is making things worse (but what else is new?). Instead of getting out of the way it has resorted to blocking aid from entering the country; it has banned foreign journalists from reporting; and has set up --in traditional police state manner-- roadblocks and checkpoints around the most severely affected areas.

Yet the problem is not just the intervention that is happening now; the problem is with the state itself. Indeed, Myanmar is not exactly ruled by teddy bears. On the contrary, the Junta doesn't place nice with anyone or anything. Thus, whenever I hear about places that are "cut off from the rest of the world" or that are "out of contact" I can't help but think that this has to be the result of government intervention at a massive scale. For how else can we explain the widespread lack of infrastructure?

In countries where the market is relatively free we see greater prosperity. Along with prosperity comes more and better infrastructure --hospitals, communications, transportation, insurance and savings, and of course charity. However, in Myanmar, where people are kept poor at gunpoint, none of the expected growth and development that we see elsewhere has taken place.

Poverty is not a voluntarily-occurring long-lasting phenomenon so long as there is a free market to improve conditions. Poverty is evil and is sustained by the deliberate actions of that criminal gang known as the state. The monsters who rule Myanmar have no place in a civilized society.

[Cross-posted]

I have an article today on LRC about licenses and their problematic nature.

A Rant About Permits And Licenses

A license is a grant of permission. The licensor grants permission to the licensee to do something that the licensee does not have a right to do. A rental contract, though usually called a lease, is a form of license. In exchange for money, the licensee (in this case the lessee/tenant) is allowed to occupy and live in the premises owned by the lessor (in this case the licensor/landlord). Notice that the owner of the property does not have a right to the (potential) tenant's money until after the contract is signed. Similarly, the (potential) tenant does not have a right to enter the property. If the landlord takes the money without consent or agreement it is theft; if the tenant moves into the property without consent or agreement it is trespass.

Only those who have rights in property can grant licenses over that particular property. The difference between borrowing a car and stealing it is the license, or permission. Thus, it is clear that whenever a person owns a particular resource, only he or she can legitimately decide how to use or not use it. Yet this is not what we see in everyday reality. In fact, quite the opposite is true. Upon entering most establishments you are greeted not just by an employee or manager, but also by a barrage of government papers that are usually framed and hanging on the walls. Why, one asks, can this be? As we mentioned before, only the owner of a resource can decide how it should be used. How, then, can state governments demand permission from owners before they can engage in certain activities?

There are two solutions to this question:

A) The state owns certain things and thus has the right to license them
B) The state owns nothing but acts as if it did

Let's quickly go through the ways that the state claims it can own resources:

1) Buying them. This is financed through taxation, which is theft. Because the state does not own the tax revenue, its purchases are invalid.
2) By decree (legislation, proclamations, executive orders, etc.). There is no connection here. The government merely claims ownership without a link to it. It's as if I were to claim that I own a patch of forest without ever having worked the land, lived there, embordered it or other reasonable connection.
3) Conquest. Does this one really require an explanation?
4) Eminent domain. A form of theft.
5) By "homesteading" it. This is still not really homesteading as everything the state does is financed through taxation and backed by aggressive legislation. If a thief steals your money and uses that to build a house on virgin land, he does not get to own the land (or the house).
6) As the recipient of donations. Even this one is not safe, for the management of resources donated to the state requires taxation and an army of bureaucrats.

Having briefly gone through each one of the possibilities, we can definitively conclude that the state cannot coherently own anything because all of its methods are criminal; it is aggressively managing and/or occupying resources against the desires of the owners. (If anything, it should be the people who give the government permission to do things!)

Here's a short list of peaceful activities that either require a license or are generally prohibited (i.e., no license is granted) or that are highly regulated:

-Produce and sell eat unpasteurized dairy;
-Create vehicles that run on alternate forms of energy;
-Install pool tables in one's bar (yes, in some places there is a law against that);
-Hire anyone regardless of national origin or status;
-Sell food without nutritional information;
-Manufacture handguns without serial numbers, attach suppressors to them, and raffle them off at the weekly bingo night for local seniors;
-Become an experienced marijuana gardener and open a neighborhood kiosk;
-Run a brothel;
-Teach;
-Open a website for organ donations and sales;
-Gamble;
-Gamble online;
-Research, develop and bring to market life-saving medicines;
-Videotape, sell and broadcast pornography;
-Cut hair, arrange flowers, give manicures, fix roofs, become a beautician, drive a cab, install plumbing or remove teeth;
-Coin money;
-Build a house or expand said house;
-Build an airstrip (and use it of course); and last but certainly not least...
-Sell liquor.

The common thread across the examples above is that barring state interference (through licenses and permits), anyone should be allowed to create, buy, sell, lease, give away, destroy, transport, inherit or bequeath anything so long as no one else's property is compromised. It's that simple. Anything else is tyrannical.

Surely this one takes this week's Most Moronic Government Intervention award.

Brooklyn raw milk enthusiasts are crying over the loss of their supplier - a horse and buggy-driving Amish farmer from Pennsylvania.

Mark Nolt of New Line, Pa., was arrested and shut down last Friday for selling the contraband.

The Brooklyn outcry came after six Pennsylvania state troopers raided Nolt's farm and confiscated his illegal dairy.

"They swooped in on Friday morning like a bunch of Vikings, handcuffed me and stole $30,000 worth of my milk, cheese and butter," Nolt told the Daily News.

Nolt is a devout Mennonite who sells raw dairy products at his farm and has them transported by truck to customers in Delaware and across New York City, where the raw goods are illegal.

It is a violation of federal law to transport raw milk across state lines with the intent to sell it for consumption. Nolt was arrested for not having a permit to sell the goods in Pennsylvania, where they are allowed.

What free market? What free trade?

The Amazon tax is meeting some resistance in the state of New York as Amazon.com is suing to try to stop it.

The state is claiming that because Amazon partners with retailers in NY, Amazon needs to collect taxes.

Amazon.com?s lawsuit argues that New York State is overstating the retailer?s presence here. In legal papers, Amazon.com argues that if it can be forced to collect sales taxes, there is no reason that any other out of state retailer, Internet-based or otherwise, that runs television or radio advertisements in New York, shouldn?t have to.

Two legal experts said they expected Amazon.com to win.

I hope so, too!

Next time you are in NYC and you have a camera, be careful around the cops.

This video shows several arrests and aggressive behavior towards people in bicycles and photographers. Notice how, thanks to clever editing by the makers of this video, the official version does not quite match what happened. Pay attention to the government's claim that the people in question were interfering with police business or blocking official procedures. This is, for lack of a better word, hysterical, as the opposite appears to be the case --people are minding their own business and the police are the troublemakers.

The entire video is about 12 minutes long, an eternity for today's Twitter generation, but give it a try. I recommend the first 3 minutes. For one of the most ridiculous claims against bystanders, jump to 9:05.

The availability of cameras and internet access is making this kind of exposé more common. When you have dozens --perhaps hundreds-- of people recording events, it becomes more burdensome for the government to attempt to hide the truth or shift the blame.

As the fear mongering campaigns expand, hobbyist photographers are caught in the web of the well-oiled Orwellian machinery.

[A] 49-year-old [man] started by firing off a few shots of the warm-up act on stage. But before the main attraction showed up, Mr Smith was challenged by a police officer who asked if he had a licence for the camera.

After explaining he didn't need one, he was taken down a side-street for a formal "stop and search", then asked to delete the photos and ordered not take any more. So he slunk home with his camera.

"People were still taking photos with mobile phones and pocket cameras, so maybe it was because mine looked like a professional camera with a flash on top," he says.

So let's see. We have the UK government installing tens of thousands of cameras (particularly in London) that can easily keep track of the ordinary citizen throughout the day. Yet if a the average person aims a camera at the wrong time (police brutality, demonstrations) or the wrong thing (government buildings and even normal tourist attractions), a government crackdown becomes necessary.

The London Metropolitan police has launched an anti-terrorist campaign aimed at photographers, asking people to report suspicious behavior.



I love the "we need to know" part.

[Cross-posted]

An excellent blog post by Dick Clark. I am copying it here in its entirety.

Civil Disobedience and the Libertarian Division of Labor

Having witnessed first hand the fruits of brutal libertarian in-fighting, I think it is important to examine the roots of such needless, yet casualty producing conflict. Libertarians believe in a legal theory based upon non-aggression--that is, a respect for the rights of others. We oppose the idea of a monolithic, ever-present state wielding arbitrary and capricious power over subjects. Where so-called libertarians deviate by endorsing some form of aggression, we should, no doubt, ferret out the incorrect position so as to prevent anyone from confusing it with a libertarian one. The evil sell-outs and the misguided retreatists, as Rothbard called them, ought to be battled on philosophical grounds. Not all inter-libertarian conflicts arise from such principled disputes, however.

Wilt Alston has previously addressed the problem here with his posited categories of "pre-lib" and "pre-con" libertarians. I think that one's previous political disposition that may be inculcated by parents, or by some other means, may color our libertarian lens like Wilt suggests. I think, though, that the way many libertarians focus their indignation may be even more obvious and primal than mere prior team affiliation. When dealing with the government itself, we each see the face of the state in the areas where we have best tasted of its evil effect.

For those of us who are successful businesspeople, the taxing power of the state that has so many times inhibited the growth and success of vibrant enterprises is the arm of the state that must be attacked. For those of us who are parenting young children and are required to jump through legal hoops to home educate them, the specter of centralized, regimented, state regulation of education is the usurpation that ought be battled first. For those of us who have a friend or relative who has been imprisoned for self-medication outside of the bounds of state approval, on the other hand, the War On Drugs is the tentacle most in need of a chopping.

It is obvious, and to be expected, that one would hate the part of the state with which he has had the misfortune to wrangle most often. Yet, it isn't obviously right to say--speaking as a libertarian strategist--that any of these branches of the state apparatus is necessarily the right one with which to start. This is because they all are. An individual soldier must defend the front that he occupies. So too must we libertarians defy the state's grasp where it reaches for us personally--an activist division of labor.

It is some small satisfaction, no doubt, to moralize about the wrongs committed against others, and to voice opposition to their oppression. This is itself praiseworthy, and can be helpful in popularizing a movement, and in guiding its participants. Yet, when we look for the heroes of any revolution that casts off one tyrant or many, we must look first for the individuals who simply stood their ground. The most lauded heroes--and thus the most effective figures for the purposes of fomenting revolutionary ideas--are those who did not seek out a fight, but rather stood steadfastly and refused to yield when assailed by the usurper.

The search for libertarian heroes is made more difficult, though, by the fact that while we libertarians nearly universally recognize an individual's inherent freedom to do with his body as he wishes, we don't necessarily find the use of intoxicants or other acts of carnal indulgence praiseworthy. For example, take the massive act of civil disobedience staged by ten thousand students and activists in Boulder, Colorado on 4/20/08. Some libertarians may find this sort of behavior foolhardy, even without the risk of arrest. With that view of the underlying drug use, they then find it difficult to praise the act of resistance to the state, even though they advocate the abolition of all drug prohibition. Yet, these college students are heroes. Whatever a libertarian may think of the wisdom of smoking marijuana, it cannot be denied that these particular pot-smoking college students--who were presumably not picking up the habit solely for this event--were engaging in what can only be called anti-state activism. Rather than cowering away from the state, hoping to be overlooked, they risked arrest in an act of defiance that brought one of the state's more ridiculous laws into greater disrepute. And what may be helpful to libertarians who are apprehensive about fully applauding such behavior is the fact that they did it without engaging in anything more or less moral than what they already do anyway.

Likewise, regardless of what one thinks of Wesley Snipes' acting abilities, his battle against the IRS is more heroic than Susan Sarandon's speeches against the war. After all, while Ms. Sarandon's antiwar position--insofar as it is a consistent one--is laudable, it is only a matter of words. Wesley Snipes acted to defend his property from federal usurpation--he stood his ground, and paid heavy consequences for it.

Now, I do not mean to say that each and every libertarian must subject himself to a scourging by the state to show his devotion to resisting it. I agree with my friend Manuel Lora that libertarianism is not an altar call for martyrs. I do not think that most libertarians ought to pull up stakes and abandon their gainful employment only to throw their bodies into the cogs of the state. However, when the state comes roaring towards your home, it is heroism to dig in, stand firm, and resist for as long as possible. Likewise, those students in Boulder were already part of a legally vulnerable class of citizens--recreational drug users. By taking their resistance outside, where others could see some indication of the strength of those in defiance, they are to be praised as having made a contribution to the cause of liberty.



Just as atheist libertarians should applaud the sentiment of Daniel's pious disobedience to Darius, so too should socially-conservative libertarians applaud the revolutionary sentiment expressed by those tie-dyed students in Boulder.

Ah, yes, nothing like state-granted monopoly status to run competitors out of business:

Imagine you were a state legislator and some folks asked you to pass a law making it a crime to give advice about paint colors and throw pillows without a license. And imagine they told you that the only people qualified to place large pieces of furniture in a room are those who have gotten a college degree in interior design, completed a two-year apprenticeship, and passed a national licensing exam. And by the way, it is criminally misleading for people who practice interior design to use that term without government permission.

These folks represent the American Society of Interior Designers (ASID), an industry group whose members have waged a 30-year, multimillion-dollar lobbying campaign to legislate their competitors out of business. And those absurd restrictions on advice about paint selection, throw pillows and furniture placement represent the actual fruits of lobbying in places like Alabama, Nevada and Illinois, where ASID and its local affiliates have peddled their snake-oil mantra that "Every decision an interior designer makes affects life safety and quality of life."

What next, going to jail for filing a nail without permission from THE AUTHORITIES? Oh wait...

He descubierto nuevos blogs:

• Anarcoliberales: "anarcoliberales.com es un Website independiente y autónomo en todos los sentidos que tiene como objetivo principal la difusión de las ideas anarcocapitalistas o anarcoliberales en España."
  
  
• Toni Mascaró Rotger vuelve a ser blogger luego de una gran ausencia.
  
  
• Matar a Lois, un blog agorista ("anarquismo de mercado revolucionario") muy entretenido.

David Kessler as quoted in Robert Higg's The FDA: A Billy Club Is Not A Substitute for Eyeglasses (from Against Leviathan):

"If members of our society were empowered to make their own decisions about the entire of range of products which the FDA has responsibility ... then the whole rationale for the agency would cease to exist. ... To argue that people ought to be able to choose their own risks, that government should not interfere ... is to impose an unrealistic burden on people when they are most vulnerable to manufacturers' assertions. ... Those are precisely the situations in which the legal and ethical justifications for the FDA's existence is [sic] greatest."

[Cross-posted]