Saturday, January 26, 2019

On Progressives and Libertarians, and Why "Property is Impossible"


Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. The Blending of the Public and Private Sectors
3. Responsibly Reducing Businesses' Burdens
4. “Property is Impossible” (-P.J. Proudhon)
5. Boycotts and Discrimination



Content

1. Introduction

     I am glad to see progressive Democrats increasingly consider radical and even libertarian ideas, as well as systems like socialism and democratic socialism, in the last several years.
     While I may not always agree with them, I welcome the representation of these views, because that representation widens the range of acceptable debate, which is necessary to create a safe environment for free speech to flourish, and for people to become aware of many different ways of living.
     I am glad to see that more Democrats are getting fed up with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Her refusal to consider impeaching George W. Bush, and then Donald Trump, have made her someone I could never support. Her refusal to impeach Bush in 2006 is probably what made me stop supporting the Democratic Party. I had supported for Kerry in 2004, but also admired Nader more at the time, but I wasn't eligible to vote, so that's beside the point.
     I appreciate that more and more progressive and left-leaning media sources are calling attention to the neoliberal establishment of the Democratic Party's support of crony capitalism. I especially admire Jimmy Dore, a Chicago-born, L.A.-based comedian turned political commentator and podcaster, who has been putting out progressive content with a lot of potential crossover appeal to libertarians. Dore has admitted on his show to admiring Senator Rand Paul's foreign policy, but not so much his domestic policy.

     I wrote the following article as an email to Mr. Dore about what progressives and libertarians have in common, but also about what they both get wrong about private property. Namely, how private property is protected, what happens when property owners invite the state to help protect their property, and whether most “private property” in America today is truly as private as people think it is.
     Another goal of this piece was to explain how to criticize right-libertarians (that is, staunchly pro- private property libertarians; or propertarians), but also what to criticize them about, and what arguments they are right about. I intend this advice as a way to potentially moderate right-libertarians, and encourage them to consider aligning, even if only temporarily, with radical progressives and socialists, in order to create a united front against the fascists in charge.
     This piece also contains advice about how radical progressives can successfully caution other progressives about the risks associated with having the federal government – or any government – have too much power; to be too large in size and scope, that it interferes with the economy, and with people's personal lives (especially in regard to property, enterprise, and income).

     The above has been a summary of my introduction to that email.
     What follows – in Sections #2 through #5 of this article – is the main body of the email, which concerns itself with libertarian and progressive views on property, as well as my own views, which are guided by the principles of radical libertarianism, market-anarchism, and mutualist-anarchism.
I have expanded on some points, where necessary to further clarify my points,



2. The Blending of the Public and Private Sectors

     I think Libertarians are correct to point out (although they don't do it nearly often enough) that the billionaires and large corporations that are lobbying for favorable legislation, got all of their privileges and protections from the government in the first place. Amazon and Facebook, for example, both have CIA contracts. It might even be fair to argue, also, that high taxes
drive the desire for high profits (to offset the cost of taxes).
     However, that doesn't mean the government is the source of all things evil about the business world. After all, our government was bought-out by private business interests a whole century ago; the same interests that promote wars, and whose propaganda is taught in "public" schools. We don't have a government that's subservient to the people; they're subservient to "private" banks.
     But remember, a bank – or any company, for that matter – isn't really "private" unless it receives zero taxpayer subsidies, zero government assistance of any kind. No patents, no trade subsidies, no tariffs or professional licensing regulation that hurts competitors, no discounts on public utilities, no police protection of physical property, no bank account insurance, no L.L.C. status to confer legal and financial protections, zero. Glass-Steagall is OK, but why bring back Glass-Steagall, when we could simply stop insuring deposits at taxpayer expense altogether?
     For that matter, if "public" schools are supposed to be truly public, then they should obviously stop teaching propaganda that was written by for-profit private companies.
     "Public sector vs. private sector" is all we talk about these days. Few people ever mention non-profits (and the "non-profit third sector", or "voluntary sector"), or cooperatives, or club goods, or "the commons" as economic sectors, or forms of ownership, unto themselves. That's why I think all the focus is on the "public" government (which masquerades as, and steals from, the commons) or the "private" corporations (which receive public assistance, but pretend to care about privacy, personal ownership, and individual rights).



3. Responsibly Reducing Businesses' Burdens
     If Libertarians want a company to be truly "private" – that is, to have a lower taxation and regulatory burden as a result of that privacy, and that lower degree of association with the government – then the company should simply give up all of those cronyist privileges. Private owners and for-profit firms must realize that a sizeable segment of the public will simply refuse to do business with minimally-regulated firms, because they believe them to be irresponsible.
     But then again, the government also needs to give companies the chance to survive without those privileges. Like by leaving them to pave their own roads leading to their properties (instead of getting the taxpayers to pay for the roads, and then getting some of those taxpayers build them as well). And by allowing businesses to develop their own alternative energy sources, or collect solar power on-site, so that they don't have to depend on the public energy grid – nor on discounts therefore, nor on discounts for internet service – in order to balance their budgets.
     Therefore, fortunately, there is a way to allow private owners and for-profit firms to take risks, without it risking harm to the public, or to non-consenting people, and without destroying the free market: Don't let the state protect property, don't let the state protect rights to profit nor to trade, and don't let the state make taxpayers responsible for insuring the deposits of any firms whatsoever!

     If a business wants to pay lower taxes, then there are already ways to do that: stop using a for-profit model that yields the kind of gains that the government would want to tax in the first place. Businesses should be given a choice between 1) giving up their profits, 2) re-investing them into their company (such that there are no profits, after all is said and done), and/or 3) operating as a non-profit or not-for-profit, or a cooperative, or a mutual firm.
     If we can eliminate all forms of privilege for businesses – and take steps to recoup our legally stolen losses from the Wall Street bailouts (and all the other bailouts over the years) and give them back to the people – then we can let individuals develop non-profit, de-politicized alternatives to politicized public institutions, through voluntary association and voluntary exchange, rather than through government direction.
     And that will bring development, and growth of businesses, in a way that helps employees and consumers, rather than simply doing whatever a corrupt government agrees with a set of corrupt businessmen they should do, while taxpayers foot the bill.

     As a Libertarian, and as an admirer of the Constitution and the ideals of a free market and voluntary exchange, I think that if government simply didn't have the power to bail companies out (and to offer them other forms of government assistance) in the first place, then we would not have nearly as many people sucking up to the cults of money and big business.
     Most importantly (at least as far as the topic of property is concerned), we would not have as many people sucking up to the existing set of enforced property claims, which embodies a massive disparity in ownership of physical wealth.
     In a stateless market system, or if the government's authority to intervene in matters of economy and property were much more strictly limited, we would have a market that is truly based on meritocracy. We are told that our current system does reward merit, but the number of people incarcerated for victimless crimes, and the number of people arrested for intellectual property theft, show that government often has nonsensical rules about what forms of economic activity are legal and respectable.

4. “Property is Impossible” (-P.J. Proudhon)

     Right-libertarians often need to be reminded that when "private" businesses expect police assistance, or favorable legislation (as in Jim Crow Laws) to help them "protect their property" – 
i.e., enforce their right to discriminate against whomever they please – they are really relying on a form of public assistance, and that fact renders the company not “private” at all. Which renders moot any claim that the companies are independent, or self-sustaining, or should be allowed to do whatever they want on "their own" property.
     Also, taking public assistance renders companies subject to the law. Most importantly, federal laws regarding keeping interstate commerce "regulated" or "regular"; that is, free from obstructions and interferences, like states protecting and favoring their own domestic products and labor over those of other states.
     Maybe if Libertarians understood that very little property is actually private, then it would become clear to them that property ownership is enforced, determined, limited, and conditioned by the approval of society. Unanimous societal approval is the only thing, besides the state, which will ever be effective when it comes to acknowledging and respecting a person's property claim.
     In a free society, even one or two people challenging the value or validity of someone's property claim, would have to be heard. Just as in a free market, each market actor has some say in influencing prices, only unanimity, or near unanimity, would guarantee the protection of property claims, without necessitating a domineering state to, well... frankly, get rid of those one or two dissenters, and scare everyone into forgetting about their disappearance.

     No homestead, and no piece of property bought from the government and registered by one of its agencies, can ever be said to be truly private, unless the government (if it exists) agrees to be neutral on property, and agrees to place the burden of protecting the claim on the claimant himself (who might try to outsource this responsibility to others, through employing security guards, mercenaries, etc.). And that outsourcing of responsibility is a negative externality, which free market supporters ought to be against.
     If right-libertarians can be made to understand these things, then there is a chance that they will stop demanding that struggling poor individuals lose their government assistance as a precondition of businesses losing theirs. I agree with Rand Paul that we should not cut one dime from the social safety net until we get rid of corporate welfare, and I think that if the Libertarian Party cannot get on board with that, then it is positioning itself to the right of the Republican Party, which I think sends a message to voters that we are unsympathetic and unelectable.
     Republicans are already trying to limit what S.N.A.P. (Food Stamps) recipients can buy – from subsidized food companies, mind you – so why elect Libertarians when they might do the very same thing? Do you want the government to coerce you into a state of dependence by stealing your money and giving it to its friends, and then deciding what you can and can't buy with the Food Stamps card they bought for you with your own stolen money? That doesn't sound like freedom to me.
     If Libertarians cannot recognize that most recipients of government assistance were pressured into accepting assistance – through having to conform to the law, and the monetary and hourly wage labor systems established through that law – then they might as well admit that they have fallen for the idea that the state can legalize its own coercion, and that coercion by businesses (including lobbying) is harmless. One simply cannot believe that and call oneself a libertarian.


5. Boycotts and Discrimination

     If a business takes assistance (like L.L.C. status, S.B.A. loans, F.D.I.C. insurance, trademarks, etc.), and stays open to customers from other states, then it should rightfully be subject to federal laws against discrimination in interstate commerce and public accommodations.
     If this idea became formally codified in law – instead of just sloppily inferred from the outcome of the Heart of Atlanta Motel v. U.S. decision – then it would become clear to Libertarians and Republicans that if a company accepts public assistance and is involved in interstate commerce, then it is undeniably in the business of "public accommodations", and therefore should not be allowed to discriminate against the public.
     Radical progressives will probably not like what I am about to suggest, because it gives so much wiggle room to the pro-property idea. But perhaps it's time to give property owners an ultimatum.
     If they want to discriminate, or reserve the full right to kick anybody off of their property that they want for any reason (and without giving a reason), then they should have to give up all of the benefits that they're getting from the government.

     No business should be free to discriminate against – or boycott (depending on how you look at it) – a customer, who is unable to discriminate against, and boycott, that business.
     Granted, no particular recipient of government assistance is specifically coerced into depending on any one particular subsidized firm, but the only firms that exist are subsidized or protected in one way or another, so welfare recipients are coerced into dependence upon one subsidized business or another.
     Moreover, businesses that sell to welfare recipients have the option to give up subsidies and monopoly privileges, and cease reaping profit, as a way to avoid submitting to so much regulation and taxation. So businesses cannot rightfully argue that they are in any way obligated to serve people who are on government assistance. And certainly not any more than the people on assistance are being obligated to serve some set of those subsidized firms (from among which they have a limited ability to choose, because of coercive state intervention in business and in property protection).
     Additionally, individuals are simply not eligible for anywhere near as many government contracts, favors, protections, subsidies, loans, titles, tax credits, and monopoly privileges as businesses are. The idea that a person considering requesting government assistance, has as much ability to oppress a business as a business does to oppress him, is ludicrous.
     Libertarians can say all they want that both the social safety net and corporate welfare need to be eliminated, and they're correct. But now is not the time to pretend that, if we were faced with a choice between abolishing the military-industrial complex or abolishing the Food Stamps program, we should simply flip a coin.
     Libertarians who are ambivalent in this manner look insane to the average voter, and to the average progressive. And they don't look too intelligent to myself as a Libertarian Party member.


















Introduction Written on January 26th, 2019

Original Email Written on January 24th, 2019
Originally Published on January 26th, 2019




Originally Published Under the Title
"What Neither Radical Progressives Nor Right-Libertarians


Understand About Legal Recognition of Property Rights"

Title Changed on February 7th, 2019




Meme created in January 2018
and added on September 7th, 2021

Thursday, January 24, 2019

The Skilled Trades Lead to Engineering, Not Poverty and Shame


     On January 21st, 2018, I met a man who used to be a wood shop teacher at a Kindergarten-through-8th-grade school in Lake Forest, an affluent suburb of Chicago, Illinois.
     My acquaintance told me about how he lost his job. He said that, one day, he came in to work at the school as usual, and a construction worker walked into his wood shop classroom, and laid some blueprints on a table. When asked what he was doing there, the construction worker casually informed the teacher that he and his crew were going to have to start taking the machines down.
     Unbeknownst to the wood shop teacher until that moment, the school was ending the wood shop program, and wanted to re-assign the teacher to a different subject.

     The reason the school gave was that there was a safety risk; a student could lose a finger, or get seriously injured in some other way.
     But on the other hand, high school students would be better able to understand and adjust to that risk than younger high school students, so why not allow only seniors and juniors to take the courses? Students need to acquire hands-on skills at some point, and they should start acquiring those skills, so that they're ready to start working when they're 18 (or 16).
     Aside from being better able to respond to dangers in the wood shop, older students are better able to understand the risks and consequences associated with using wood cutting equipment. So why not allow juniors and seniors to sign waivers, indicating that they understand the risks, and – with parents' permission – agree to accept them, in exchange for receiving wood cutting skills.
     While we're on the subject, why don't we make sure that more (or all) schools, have wood shop, auto shop, and other technical courses and programs, on site? And why don't we encourage more schools to take others' lead, and have one campus for juniors and seniors (who can drive, and take wood and auto shop), and another campus for underclassmen (i.e., the freshmen and sophomores who still mostly take the bus to school)?
     But I'm getting off topic.

     The supposed safety risk associated with wood shop classes is just a ruse, because that risk can be allayed; through proper safety education, and waiver programs.
     But, of course, waiver programs do not satisfy those who support terminating wood shop classes. That's because waiver programs do solve the problem.
     Parents who want to take wood shop classes out of high schools, want to avoid the risk of liability lawsuits against the school. For a public school to be found liable for an injury to a student, and have to pay damages, would be costly to the school (and the local school board) in terms of both finances and reputation.
     It is my assessment that parents who are against wood shop classes, by and large, do not care that waivers and proper safety education solve the problem, because the waiver system eliminates the possibility that the school could be found liable to pay damages to an injured student. It does this by refusing to accept students into wood shop programs if they do not agree to foreswear suing the school.
     This is a wise policy in my opinion. The intent is to reduce the chance that a student will behave carelessly in a wood shop classroom.
     What upsets parents who are against wood shop classes, is that solving this problem exposes their real agenda. That's because the ulterior motive behind the opposition to wood shop classes is more than just safety concerns, and concerns about legal and financial risks to the school.

     People who enter the trades – such as construction, automobile repair and maintenance, electrician work, heating and cooling, plumbing, etc. - are generally not regarded in a positive light by wealthy suburbanites.
     The wealthy tend to see those types of jobs as somehow “beneath” themselves and their children; particularly construction and auto repair. And plumbers? Forget about it. Plumbers are garbagemen in the eyes of many of these people.
     But then, of course, “garbagemen” are really sanitation engineers. People who get really good at automobile repair and maintenance, end up offering suggestions that improve the quality of their trade. Wood shop can lead to wood crafting, not just construction. And construction, heating and cooling, and plumbing, are all essential things we need to survive comfortably in the modern world.
     Any person who takes wood shop or auto shop in high school, or studies electricity, could become an engineer. Don't believe me? Think of all the math that goes into the study of those subjects; algebra in electricity, trigonometry in simple construction, calculus in advanced construction.
     Studying a skilled trade late in high school could potentially lead a student to choose a trade school or technical school over a university.
     There, students could study C.A.D. (computer-aided design), 3-D printing technology, CNC machining and die casting, mechanical engineering, electrical systems engineering, architecture, bridge design, and more. And the electrical systems, homes, and bridges that result from those studies, improve all of our lives.
     So why disparage tradespeople? Why pretend that someone who wants to work with their hands, learn a trade, develop their skill, and produce or manufacture something of value, is only going to be a garbageman for the rest of their life?

     In Lake Forest, Illinois in particular, and in other nearby affluent suburbs, there is a sentiment among many well-off parents, who believe that - to paraphrase the words of my wood shop teacher acquaintance - “We want our children to be doctors and lawyers; we don't want them in construction or plumbing. We pay people to do those things for us, and we want our children to as well.”
     My friend's portrayal of the attitude among these parents, confirmed my worst suspicions about this topic, which I had long suspected.
     Parents like that would never tolerate their child become a skilled tradesman. Even if it meant cheaper electricity or a better home for themselves. After all, a person who becomes a skilled tradesman might join a union, or even – God forbid – become a card-carrying red! A bourgeois parent would never tolerate it, when they'd rather see their child working in an office or a trade floor, or better yet managing a workplace from afar.
     The effect is that any child who grows up wanting to earn an honest living, without manipulating money or simply managing and moving resources that somebody else produced, is not going to have an easy time finding a career in which his parents can take pride.

     Perhaps more importantly, one potential outcome is that many children will grow up in privilege and opportunity, without any skills or common knowledge to take advantage of those opportunities.
     The students who would have studied the trades, but were deterred by their parents' disapproval, would have found paths to perfectly comfortable livings. In the more valued of the common trades, tradespeople can even earn six-figure salaries (that is, if they're particularly skilled in their fields, or if they become managers). That's a hefty sum, compared to the salaries earned by most people who graduated college after having studied humanities, social sciences, and liberal arts.
     How is a wealthy parent harmed by having a child who grows up to be an industrial engineer, civil engineer, or public works employee (even if he is a garbageman)? A parent is only harmed by such an outcome if they have both 1) an unhealthy sense of identification with their child's achievements; and 2) a twisted set of values that derides honest work that hurts no one, based on the field somehow being “dirty” or “low-class”.
     Well, disparaging people for being “low-class” is how you get a lower class. Antagonizing people who perform tasks that are essential to making our lives easier and more comfortable, is how you get both increased social division and increased stagnation of infrastructural development.

     What about the rich kids who weren't intelligent enough to become doctors? What about the kids who studied political science, but were too honest to defend obviously guilty people or push a political agenda? How are they supposed to make ends meet?
     It might sound like I'm saying “the poor rich kids”, and in a way, I am. But the poor and rich alike deserve opportunity to acquire skills and become independent, and become self-employed if they choose, and to choose a field that has meaning and value to them.
     Students who grow up well-off in the suburbs, grow up disconnected from both the reality of nature on the rural farms, and from the reality of large concentrated numbers of people (and, importantly, poor people) in the urban centers. So they grow up without people skills and without connection to animals and nature, and to the life processes which sustains human beings. They grow up away from the world of the productive; away from places where food is grown, and things are built and manufactured, alike. Away from the majority of the people, and as a consequence, away from people who might suggest alternative ways of living and working, of which a student might not have otherwise heard.
     As a result, they grow up without essential sets of skills that have to do with life outside the suburbs.  Without picking up hands-on skills, they grow up completely unprepared for the real world and its problems, and with little practical ability to be independent and self-sustaining. These are real problems, and neither they, nor the problems that poor kids experience, ought to discount the seriousness of the others'.
     Poor kids (and rural kids), at least, get to go on school field trips to farms, plants, factories, and refineries. Those field trips can do either of two things: 1) prepare them for farm work, factory labor, working in a steel plant or oil refinery, etc.; or 2) scare them away from those fields, so that they'll be effectively encouraged to go to college instead (and pursue a “higher” course of study).
Rich kids never had those field trips. Or if they did, then it was mostly about scaring students away from “dirty work”, and there was no real risk anyone would end up in those fields (unless they wanted to).
     That is, as long as the rich kids are willing to take advantage of all of the privileges and opportunities which their upbringing affords to them. And sometimes that means taking advantage of white privilege, or succumbing to social pressure to boast about your achievements and employability to the point of it compromising your humility.
     The suburbs are no fun. Say what you will about poor urban areas, and rural areas; they're where real life takes place.

     Students should not leave high school, having practically no clue what a factory is, nor what S.T.E.M. fields are (science, technology, engineering, and math).
     An eighteen-year-old graduate from a public high school ought to instantly know what you're talking about if you say the phrase “the trades”. A young adult should be able to recognize a grain elevator, or an energy plant, when he sees one.
     Someone who is just entering the work force should also know what their basic rights are in the workplace; in regards to safety, health, breaks, wages, conditions, and how to participate in effective negotiation with management.
     Neoliberals and neoconservatives in the suburbs don't care about workplaces having good, or even adequate, safety and health conditions, or good pay, or good break policies. They just wonder why employed people can't start their own businesses, create jobs, and contribute to society to a degree equal to the help they've received.
     Not that they would ever listen, but there is a simple answer to this: If you didn't shame them for becoming independent contractors, or for trying to survive without striking a deal with some large corrupt multinational, then they might do just that!
     The last thing a wealthy parent wants is for their child to grow up a unionized tradesperson. Someone who can destroy the work they've just done, if the person who hired them refused to pay what they promised. A wealthy suburban parent would hate to have to treat such a person like a human being with dignity; whether it's their child or not.
     The only thing they care about is shitting on those people, criticizing them at every opportunity, controlling them, and making it as difficult as possible for them to become independent through honest work.

     The last thing we need is for parents and teachers to educate children, while completely neglecting to inform them as to what types of professions the world will need most badly when they enter the workforce.
     If I had been told at age 14 that the world desperately needed more engineers, doctors, or whatever, then I would have considered studying engineering or medicine, and I would have thought about how I could fit in to those careers. Not only to make a lot of money; but because I know that people need those services. I'd know that I'd be contributing something which is valued by others, and that would give my work (and the studies which precede it) a sense of purpose. And the quality of work of someone who believes in the work they're doing, is impossible to put a price on.
     It saddens me to realize that many wealthy parents have neglected to suggest back-up plans to their children, in case they don't turn out to be the doctors, lawyers, astronauts, cowboys, and artists they expect to be when they leave college.
     While they heap criticism and disdain upon the skilled trades (which they regard as unskilled), such parents are usually also content to allow their children to make money carrying bags at gold courses. To such parents, the fact that caddying involves sucking up to the wealthy for money, makes the indignity of that job tolerable.
     Moreover, it provides the caddy with an opportunity to ape the most Machiavellian, narcissistic, and psychopathic tendencies of the business and political elite who belong to those golf courses. This, of course, will be essential to furthering their future white-collar career.
     The fact that, by allowing their children to caddy - and intern with corrupt businesses, law firms, political offices, etc. - they are conditioning their children to serve the elite and the old money, not to become independent of it. In effect – despite their privileged upbringing - they are reduced to the same level of servitude to the wealthy elite, to which the poor are reduced as well.
     The only consequences of obedience to affluent suburbanite parents is eternal servitude. The best form of rebellion against such a flawed parenting style is total independence.

     In 2014, Chicago teacher Douglas Bartlett, was suspended for four days without pay, after he showed common hand tools to his elementary school students. The tools included screwdrivers, wrenches, pliers, a pocket knife, and a box cutter.
     According to Warren Richey of the Christian Science Monitor, Bartlett “thought he was using physical objects to help his students learn the required course material.” However, since the set of items he displayed in his classroom included a pocket knife and a box cutter, his instruction that day was deemed to be in violation of Washington Irving Elementary School's policy against “possessing, carrying, storing, or using a weapon on the job when not authorized to do so.”
     I guess they were worried that one of the kids might pick up the box cutter, hijack the classroom, and fly it into the World Trade Center.
     Bartlett maintained that he displayed all of the items as tools, not as weapons. The school, on the other hand, says that Bartlett failed to ensure that the knife and box cutter were inaccessible to the students, and that he failed to obtain permission from the school before showing the items.
     Auto shop and wood shop classes are disappearing from high schools, depriving students of hands-on skills, while standardized multiple choice tests relieve students of the burden of having to actually remember the correct answers. Wealthy parents want their kids to get into good schools so they can have dignified jobs (that is, jobs that the parents consider dignified).
     So you have to wonder whether reprimanding the teacher for showing common tools, was anything more than a way to distract students from acquiring valuable trade skills that could risk injury to them (or, more importantly, to their public school's finances).
     Where are those life skills and agriculture classes in high schools?

     A world where everyone knows advanced math, and everyone knows one or more skilled trades, and anyone can farm part-time on their own property, is not something that the business or political elite want. They want obedient workers who are equally dependent on big business and the corrupt governments with which they collude.
     Luckily, however, many of these people are dying, and their death cannot come soon enough. They, through their ignorance and passivity – and their need to be persistent social-climbers and yes-men – are causing the destruction of our ecosystem, and the poisoning of our food with toxic industrial preservatives.
     But this is not enough for them; they must also profit off of our efforts to save the planet, in order to render them ineffective and useless. After all, what do they care? They're intent on dying before anyone can catch them in the act. They'd hate to sit around waiting for judgment and revenge to come. And it will come.
     But the fact that their judgment is coming, does not stop them from encroaching on our ability to merely subsistence-scavenge from within the shell of the old world which they have destroyed, but kept alive like a zombie. Just like the “headless” “zombie corporations” which they have kept alive through bailouts and restructuring, heading companies with C.E.O.s who often have little to no understanding of the industry in which they're working. Just like the idiot politicians who know nothing about the things they're regulating.
     Don't ever allow yourself to become so deluded as to think that you could never become like one of these people. All you have to believe, in order to slip down the road to their twisted line of thinking, is “Hey, I got mine, and I'm not complaining!”
     I, for one, will complain as long as I am pressured into renting things which I would rather own, and as long as I have to beg and apply and pay for permission to use something that I thought was my own property.

     We must each own a means of production, if we are to be independent, and self-sustaining. For only when we own the means to produce, can we keep everything we produce with it, without the owner of the equipment demanding compensation for its use. We should return to the days when many companies gave their employees tools as part of their compensation package.
     We should also seek to ignore and invalidate all contracts which pressure employees into agreeing - as a condition of gaining employment - to refrain from competing with their employer company, when they leave that company, for some duration of time. These are called “non-competition contracts”, and they interfere with the freedom of competition which is afforded to us in the marketplace.
     These contracts, as well as other anti-competitive agreements, only make it harder for a worker to resist the temptation to borrow other people's means of production in order to earn a living, instead of the owning a means of production outright by himself. The enforcement of non-competition contracts results in a truly sorry state of affairs, in which virtually every worker who 1) is not the best in his field, and 2) dares to quit working for an employer, is effectively unable to operate successfully and competitively in the field he has chosen. And maybe even the field to which he has decided to dedicate his life.
     The only alternative to redressing this unjust state of affairs, is to coerce 99% of people into dependence and “skill-lessness”, while those who already have advanced skills – and those who represent them  receive more pay, more economic rents, and more legal insulation from competition and legal responsibility, year after year.

     Students in high school today, as well as all young people in general, should be encouraged to at least consider the trades. Being a doctor or a lawyer is all well and good, and medicine is literally a life-saving field. But skilled farm labor, and H.V.A.C., will become devastated fields if several million people do not learn the skills necessary to join them within the next several decades.
     And that is the kind of information that I wish I'd had when I started high school. I hope that the younger of my readers will not discount the value of that information.




Based on a Facebook Post Published on January 22nd, 2018
Edited and Expanded on January 24th, 2019
Published on January 24th, 2019

Wednesday, January 23, 2019

Thoughts on School Prayer


     How should we address the controversy over prayer in schools?
     I believe that the solution is to neither force prayer, nor ban prayer altogether.

     Continue prohibiting teacher-led prayer in public schools, but end public funding of all private and religious schools (in order to keep them actually private).

     If public school students initiate prayer themselves, howeversay, before a meal in the cafeteria, or in any other manner that doesn't interrupt other students' learning - then don't be a monster and ban them from praying when they want to. When student prayer would interrupt other students' learning, then allow public school students to pray in designated rooms, without being led or forced by teachers.
     Don't punish kids for not participating in a moment of silence. Especially not if they consider a moment of silence to be a form of prayer. Leave students free to step outside during the moment of silence, or just don't have the moment of silence. The same should go for saluting the flag, reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, or standing at attention for “The Star-Spangled Banner”, et cetera.

     I do not support requiring all churches to pay taxes on all of their properties. In keeping with the provisions of Land Value Taxation, private religious schools should pay taxes only on their land holdings, and only if they own the land in full allodial title.
     As long as an ostensibly “private” religious school is not subsidized by taxpayers in any way, and as long as a private or religious school does not own the land underneath the building, the owners of private religious schools should pay no taxes on the school building itself, and keep everything they produce on their own property.




Originally Written on January 22nd, 2019
Edited and Expanded on January 23rd, 2019
Originally Published on January 23rd, 2019

Wednesday, January 16, 2019

The Case for Clear-Market Capitalism: Why Free Markets Are Supposed to Clear

     Truly free markets are supposed to clear.
     In a free market system, firms that overproduce would not be saved, nor bailed out, nor protected, nor have their assets' value held aloft, through government intervention.

     Even if the Federal Reserve is supposed to act as a clearing house for bad loans, then it should only be in an emergency. And that should not mean that government in general should act as a clearing house, to help push overproduced products on people at inflated prices.
     Yet government does this; through 1) eminent domain, 2) taxation, and 3) spending that arguably stolen “tax revenue” to create programs tying consumers' financial futures to those of favored firms.
     Those programs include the F.D.I.C., through which taxpayers are made responsible for insuring producers' bank deposits. Additionally, our money is spent paying people to enforce legislation – and government contracts – which award favored firms all sorts of exclusive privileges and monopoly rights, including the right to sell in foreign markets unobstructed, and the right to unlimited profit (through the “right of increase”; the right to earn more and more each year).

     In real free markets – that is, in free and clear markets; in the absence of subsidies or bailouts or taxpayer assistance of any kind - the prices of overproduced goods drop.
     That's because keeping prices high would be unprofitable for the producer, and unaffordable for the buyer. Even if buyers could afford overproduced goods, then the mere knowledge that the good is overproduced, will lead the buyer to conclude that purchasing at a high price only benefits the producer and seller, not himself. Most importantly, there would be no way to force anyone to buy anything at a higher price than they can tolerate.
     As an example, in grocery stores, when customers aren't buying as much of a particular food item as the store anticipated, then the store will mark the price down, in order to accommodate the lower demand than they expected, while still selling something. The “price signals” which are sent - by the store marking the price down, and by the consumer choosing to buy something only when the price gets low enough – are communicated to other buyers and sellers. As a result, either less of the item is ordered, or the same amount is ordered so that it won't rot on the shelves.
     It is interesting to think about how, rather than to simply lower their price, food items are sprayed with chemicals, in order to preserve them. The effect is that they can stay on the shelves longer, without the appearance of decay. But industrial food preservatives are often toxic, so the idea that the goal of food preservation is solely to keep us healthy, is far from an accurate picture of what's going on. The purpose of food preservation - including the use of bleach in meat processing - is to keep items on the shelves longer, without losing value, through retaining solely the appearance of healthfulness.

     When they are allowed to clear, truly "free and clear markets" allow the prosperity that comes from from prices falling slowly over time. When markets clear, supply and demand curves are actually allowed to meet; so that an amount of demand can be satisfied with an equal amount of supply, and prices reach an equilibrium (that is, a “clearing price”), and stabilize.
     Then people can more easily afford to buy goods, but also plan their lives more easily, thanks to that price stabilization (although this is not to say that in free markets, fluctuations in price and supply wouldn't happen; they would, but they would be more tolerable).


     Free markets result in free stuff. Don't just “free the markets”; clear them! And do it without the government's “help”.





Post-Script:

     For those wishing to learn more about market clearance, and the notion that "free markets result in free stuff" (or even "full communism"), please read the following book and articles:

     - Principles of Economics, the 1871 book by economist Carl Menger (especially the section "The Theory of Price"). A PDF file of the book is available here: http://mises.org/sites/default/files/Principles%20of%20Economics_5.pdf


     - "Advocates of Freed Markets Should Support Anti-Capitalism" (2010), by Gary E. Charter, at:
http://c4ss.org/content/1738

     - "Who Owns the Benefit: The Free Market as Full Communism" (2012) by Kevin A. Carson, at:

     - My 2016 infographic "Government is the Source of Corporate Privilege", at:
http://aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2016/04/government-is-source-of-corporate.html

     - My 2017 article "You Don't Need Money to Live", at:

     - My 2017 article "A Market-Oriented Solution to High Health Insurance Costs", at:
http://aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2017/02/a-market-oriented-solution-to-high.html

     - My 2017 article "Markets and Socialism Can Both Lead to Free Housing", at:

     - My 2017 article "Supporters of Free Markets Should Oppose Gifts of Privilege to Property Owners", at:
http://aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2018/12/supporters-of-free-markets-should.html




Originally Written on January 16th, 2019
Edited and Expanded on January 17th, 2019
Post-Script Written on January 17th, 2019

Published on January 17th, 2019