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Saturday, March 9, 2013

Is Ron Paul Wrong?

Is Ron Paul Wrong?:

Is He a Nationalist, White-Separatist, Neo-Fascist
Exploiter, as His Liberal Detractors Claim,
or is He an Open-Borders, Anti-Racist, Cultural-Marxist
Egalitarian, as His Conservative Detractors Claim?



A problem that many people have with Ron Paul is that he believes that "charity" and "private enterprises" would provide people with health care (and other services) if government didn't.

What many of his critics may not understand is that:
1) by "charity" he doesn't mean "charity as it currently exists", but rather all voluntary giving which would exist after bureaucrats and politicians were to stop raiding the public funds they're supposed to protect, and compulsory taxation were to be abolished;
2) by "private", he doesn't necessarily mean businesses and properties the owners of which expect the government to defend on their behalf;
3) by "enterprises", he does not mean to exclude those firms which organize themselves in egalitarian manners (like syndicates and co-operatives); and
4) he believes that communities would be free to practice socialism in a libertarian society.

Understanding most or all of these things, many of those influenced by Ron Paul began to study paleoconservatism, classical liberalism, Austrian economics, and Objectivism. Some went further, towards Rothbardianism and left-Rothbardianism, Agorism, market anarchism, individualist anarchism, and egoist anarchism.

Many adherents of these ideologies - especially when debating with anarcho-collectivists, anarcho-communalists, libertarian socialists, anarcho-syndicalists, geolibertarians, and Mutualists - frequently make concessions along the lines of the four points enumerated above. Many also believe - as Rousseau and Benjamin Franklin believed - that private property rights are conditional; they are only legitimate if negotiated with the remainder of society.

I contend that all of these groups deserve a seat at the negotiation table, along the lines of Synthesis Anarchism / Anarchism without Adjectives. Effectually, non-hierarchical businesses, mutuals, co-ops, communities, and unions (insofar as they are willing to evolve into syndicates) would compete against existing governments and hierarchical firms - to provide individuals with any and all varieties and combinations of goods and services - unless and until governments give them seats at the table.

Were it to be resolved among anarchists that negotiation with the State were useless and / or inexcusable, we would have to employ non-State-assisted tactics in order to out-compete the State to provide people with the means of subsistence and production; we would use counter-economics, direct action, mutual aid, and (quoting left-Rothbardian Gary Chartier) the "elimination of privilege [,...] freeing the market [,...] acts of solidarity [,...] radical rectification [of State theft, and...] radical homesteading".

Were it to be resolved among anarchists that being conciliatory to the State's way of doing things were imperative for the stability and cohesiveness of society - and that the State may actually be interested in diminishing the power of itself and its beneficiaries - we would have to change things through party politics.

We could:
   1) gradually convert Democrats and Republicans to anarchism,
   2) grow and empower third-party and independent politics,
   3) diminish the role of party dominance in the congressional ideological caucuses (of which there are four in the Democratic Party, and five in the Republican party) with or without turning them into parties in their own right, and / or

   4) build
       (a) a general Labor, Syndicalist, and / or Co-Operativist party, to balance the interests of individual workers, fledgling unions, and egalitarian labor-managed firms against the interests of the National Labor Relations Board, and against government collusion with capital and Big Labor to exploit workers through profit, taxes, and union dues;

       (b) a Communalist and / or collectivist party, to balance the interests of the peoples and economies of neighborhoods, communities, counties, and small regional governments against the interests of large regional governments and centralized governments;
       (c) a Mutualist party, to balance the interests of lending institutions operating on the credit union model - and their customers - against the interests of usurious banks, corrupt treasury departments, fraudulent currency traders, pernicious lenders, stock brokers and speculators who trade with other people's money, and the insurance and securities industries; and
       (d) an Agorist party, to balance the interests of individually-run enterprises and non-hierarchically-managed firms (those which regulate and protect themselves efficiently and effectively) against the interests of those who support a State monopoly on the coercion of business and property owners, and against those who support State-monopoly licensing of the police and "private" security guards employed to protect person and property.

Ron Paul has played a significant role in popularizing the terms "Statism" and "Statist" in the American political lexicon. According to sociologist Max Weber, the State "upholds the claim to the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force in the enforcement of its order." President Obama adopted this definition when speaking about mercenaries while serving in the U.S. Senate.

The components of this definition of Statism are 1) monopoly and oligopoly, 2) territorial integrity, and 3) perceived legitimacy of initiatory force. Panarchy turns Statism on its head by supporting 1) polyopoly (diversity in competition), 2) open "borders", and 3) non-initiation of unwelcome intervention into people's disputes and affairs.

Although Ron Paul has made statements on immigration reform which have been characterized as anti-immigrant, Paul repeatedly voted against measures which would allow the military to assist in the protection of the U.S.-Mexico border, and measures which would provide for increased fencing and other infrastructure at the border. Furthermore, he has said that "[i]n the ideal libertarian world, borders would be blurred and open". These actions have drawn the ire of conservative commentators, some of whom have even gone so far as to characterize Paul as an "open borders politician, and an [']anti-racist['] cultural Marxist egalitarian".

Ron Paul has been influential in popularizing the 10th Amendment (the "states' rights" amendment) to the Constitution. Although often characterized as "racist" due to its having been cited to justify the secession of the southern states in the Civil War, the right of people and states to choose whether to delegate certain powers to the federal government was also invoked in Wisconsin to oppose the Fugitive Slave Act (thus assisting escaped slaves to evade capture). Furthermore - despite what Barack Obama may have claimed to believe about the following issues - the potential assertion of federal power against governors supporting the 10th Amendment is a major threat to the American people gaining the freedom to responsibly use marijuana and to enter into legal marriage with their domestic partners irrespective of their sexual orientation.

The 10th Amendment embodies the principle of decentralized government. So too does the "municipal home rule" of Wisconsin's Robert M. LaFollette. The market-anarchist and panarchist principle of a "free market in governance" contends that the individual should have the ability to choose who resolves his disputes and provides him with security, regardless of where he lives and travels. It supports the geographical decentralization of decision-making to the community (in Marxist and democratic-federalist formulations of the idea); and supports subsidiarism, the notion that decision-making and administration should be carried out at the smallest or lowest level of government capable and competent enough to do so. When these principles are applied, individuals and local governments become the "competitors" of centralized governments, competing with them to provide people with governance and other services.

Being that Ron Paul supports "de-regulation" only of those laws which suspend, prohibit, and nullify self-regulation of markets and regulations by states, communities, and consumers, we see that he would view the Interstate Commerce Clause as justifying federal "regulation" of markets within states only if states cause irregularities, interruptions, distortions, and barriers to trade, i.e.; barriers to the adjustment of individuals and economies to one-another's needs, in a mutually-beneficial, voluntarily-cooperative manner.

When we see that modern governments exercise monopolies over their territories - and can compel people to come to them exclusively to be provided with certain ostensibly essential services - and when we learn that not only does the government give businesses "corporate personhood", but also that the U.S. Code defines the federal government as "a federal corporation", we understand that national and state boundaries (especially when they take the form of physical borders), are intrinsic interruptions to voluntary cooperation and trade; when not de-facto interruptions, they are potential interruptions.

If we are resolved to gradually alter the State, I suggest that we invoke antitrust laws to empower the federal government to abolish not only business monopolies, but also oligopolies (control by the few) and hierarchies within them; as well as government monopolies, oligopolies, and hierarchy within government. This should be done with the intention of keeping the potential for commercial provision of governance (and other services) across state and national lines open and "regular" (i.e., well-"regulated" and uninhibited by aggressive, admittedly violent agencies with totalitarian motives).

This is how Obamacare was supposed to lower health insurance costs; by legalizing the sale and purchase of health care across state lines, and by providing a "public option" as an alternative to private health insurance. Well, guess what happened instead:

1) Health insurance and care costs are still going up,
2) it's still illegal to buy health insurance across state lines,
3) the public "option" compels us to buy from "private" health insurance agencies,
4) the law is being implemented at the most highly centralized level of government possible, and5) the law gives employers a way to avoid having to insure their employees, the effects of which threaten to establish a 28-hour work-week as the new national standard of the lower working class.



   “Regulations" don't result in production; people produce. "Regulations" don't work; people do.
   The most secure people with the most secure property in our society are not the ones producing security for us; we are the ones who produce security for them, and for their unjustly-acquired possessions.
   While our most cherished possessions – our property, our homes, and our families - are within meters of us, their most cherished possessions – our mortgages; the deeds to our property and homes and everything in and on them – are thousands of miles away behind bank vault doors.
   The idea that a market in the provision of security is untenable is false, as those who have the most to lose will relinquish the most in order to keep the remainder. We must cease performing the charitable act of allowing their privileges to go unchecked, which placates them and only serves to increase the efficiency of their parasitism.

  Every man ought to play a role in choosing who protects and secures him, and who resolves his disputes, and no man ought to intervene in the affairs of others without their consent, unless there exists clear and present danger of direct harm.
  Panarchy is governance by all people. No man is a ruler, but every man is a king.
  Peacefully defy boundaries, respect diversity in the spirit of friendly competition, and be not so callous as to pretend that your aggression is The Law.


For more entries on enterprise, business, business alliance, and markets, please visit:
http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2010/10/enlightened-catallaxy-reciprocally.html
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