Licensing Breeds Licentiousness: Speech to the Waukegan City Council on July 15th, 2019

     On July 15th, 2019, I wrote the following in order to criticize the activities of the city council of Waukegan, Illinois, which I witnessed at a public meeting on July 1st, 2019.

     Due to the three-minute limitation on the speaking time of each individual member of the public at these meetings, I was not able to read the entire speech which follows below. Instead, I summarized the following speech, after addressing the issue of why I believe the governor of Illinois should use Jeffersonian nullification to enjoin and prevent federal immigration authorities from rounding up undocumented immigrants (and also to enjoin federal authorities from taking the 2020 census).

     The title of my speech is “Licensing Breeds Licentiousness”. This title refers to the manner in which people tend to take liberties with other people, while they are in bars or casinos. I mean to imply that the government's endorsement of drinking and gambling, by way of approving liquor licenses and casino permits, communicates a libertinistic attitude towards the role of government in society.

     Namely, that if the government approves of the establishment existing and abiding by the law, then the owner has total leeway in regards to what rules (if any) will exist on his “private” property. [Which is, of course, usually publicly sponsored, because local Register of Deeds' offices register all “private” property claims. I say “private” because the public government's registration and tracking of all of these property claims, makes them quite not private].

     In the text that follows, I will explain why I believe that the taxpayer-funded local government, and its system of licensing and permits (and its monopoly to profit therefrom) offer perverse incentives to residents and establishment owners, regarding where, and under what legal circumstances, they engage in non-useful socio-economic activities; focusing on permitted legal drinking and gambling on government-registered “private” property. I will also explain why I believe that when the government is careless about what licenses and permits to approve and deny, harm to economic activity, the public's career opportunities, and social mores (especially in regard to our standards regarding business ethics, and whether we will take a demeaning or demoralizing job) are bound to result.

     I first came to this city council meeting two weeks ago. If what happened during that meeting is any indication of what usually goes on here, then it is a cause for concern, from both a constitutional and a theory of government perspective. What you aldermen do here – issue and deny licenses and permits – is not necessary, and constitutes a public harm rather than a public good, and I'll explain why.

     I'd like to make a comment about the woman who, two weeks ago, asked the city to require all people who wish to hold garage sales and yard sales, to apply for (and pay for) permits to do so. That resident made her statement without demonstrating why the fact that a lot of people are having garage sales in her neighborhood, constitutes any form of damage to her, or to the community.

     Garage sale signs never become eyesores, they increase economic activity in the community, and they provide people who have too much junk with a way to part with their things without letting go of too much monetizable value.

     To require yard sale operators to get permits, is to effectively ban people from having garage sales, unless they apply for permission from their government, and pay their government, for the privilege to do so. Making a few dollars off of some items we don't need anymore, should not be a privilege; it should not be something we have to beg and pay our government in order to do. Adult citizens are responsible enough to have garage sales without your permission.

     The 9^th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution reads “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” In modern English, this means “The fact that certain rights are listed in the Constitution, should not be used to deny the fact that the people have other rights”, meaning rights which are not listed in the Constitution.

     So what are those rights? The rights to defend ourselves, and speak freely, are listed specifically. But others are not, such as things we need to do in order to survive and have families; like the rights to move around and travel (locomotion); the rights to eat, drink, and breathe; to hunt, gather, fish, trap, and forage; to work and to join or start a union; to enter into a domestic union (meaning to marry whom we please).
     Things we need to do, in order to eat and work and survive and have families, should never require begging or paying the government for permission. They are natural human rights, which the government should either protect, or (if it cannot) leave us alone to protect those rights ourselves without government help. If ever a government becomes destructive of our abilities to provide for ourselves in these manners, then such a government forfeits its privilege to exist, which in a free society it can only derive from the consent and permission of the people.

     Members of the city council, why are we still requiring licensing and license applications for people over the age of 18 to get married? Why are Evanston, Illinois, New York, Hawaii, and other jurisdictions considering raising the tobacco purchase age to 18? Why can't an 18-year-old rent a car until they turn 25? Do taxpaying, voting-age adults really need this much coddling from their government?
     And who has the right to derive exclusive privilege, and profit, from the issuance or denial of these permits? The city council. And since every local government must comport with federal rules, all permit and license fees must be paid in the uniform monopoly currency which is issued by the Federal Reserve. Which, I remind you, (theoretically) operates under the auspices of the U.S. Constitution, which established gold as the sole legal currency, but through which, also, the Congress gives itself the power to “regulate the value” of the U.S. currency.

     Supposedly, the people need the city council to issue and deny permits and licenses, because if it didn't, nobody else is going to do it. However, through the fact of the federal government's monopoly on the issuance of currency, and the state's monopoly on the legitimate use of force within a given territory, we only “need” the city council, because the city council gives itself the sole authority to issue or deny them.

     If you take liberties with the word “regulate” in “regulate the value”, you can basically excuse the federal government (or the Congress, or the Federal Reserve) manipulating the value, and doing so legally. The federal, state, and local governments' profiteering off of its self-granted monopoly on licenses and permits – with the help of the federal government's manipulation of the value of our money – constitute what would be considered a racketeering operation, if it were taking place in the private sector. But it is taking place in the public sector, where government monopoly prevents any and all alternative agencies which would compete for legitimacy against the existing government (and thus prevents truly effective transparency and accountability of government).

     What if we had independent, de-politicized agencies, whose membership were fully optional, that could fulfill the role that “checks and balances” and Register of Deeds offices currently fulfill in our society? These agencies could act sort of like independent business alliances, while registering property claims, and engaging in academic study regarding how to raise the standards of business ethics (which would guide their policies surrounding whether, and when, and how, to shut abusive and fraudulent businesses out of business, and if necessary, confiscate their property for legitimate public use). And the best parts: Nobody could be compelled to fund any one of these agencies whose practices they didn't agree with, and if there were any fees for licenses and permits, they could be paid with anything but the U.S. Dollar (whether that's silver, gold, Bitcoin, labor, a labor-backed currency, a resource-backed currency, a local currency, forms of promissory notes such as mutuum cheques, or any item that holds and/or represents a real store of value).

     There's just one problem: If we had independent, de-politicized organizations, competing for legitimacy against each other and against the government, which could issue licenses and permits (and, if necessary, shut companies out of business for fraud and abuse), then it's quite likely that this would cause the government itself to go out of business. That's because government is operating a racketeering operation, in operating the system of licenses and permits. I say this because the government has, again, granted itself the sole authority to profit off of fees collected for issuing licenses and permits. Denying those permits only raises the demand for those permits, which increases their price; while they also increase demand for ways to get around the requirement of permits and licenses. If the public has no way to peacefully circumvent the requirement of licenses and permits which they cannot afford - and which are not reasonable because they infringe on our everyday abilities to move around and make a living and put food on our tables to feed our families – then the state's system of licensing and permission will lose legitimacy in the public mind, such that developing alternatives, and even abolishing licensing itself, begin to seem like reasonable alternatives.

     I suggest that the Waukegan City Council dissolve. The mayor should retain his post, but the decisions regarding whether to issue or deny permits and licenses, which are being made by aldermen at the present time, could just as easily be decided by the members of the audience who agree to attend this bi-monthly meeting of the city council. I suggest that the aldermen on the panel be replaced with a single clerk, who can read the meeting's agenda to the audience, which can decide on the basis of a majority vote whether to deny or issue a permit. If you aldermen want to have a vote, then you can and show up and vote on the floor with the rest of us, while the mayor and the clerk retain their posts. If not that, then at the very least, aldermen should have strict term limits, or could even be made instantly recallable. I assure you that any resident could do just as good of a job as these city council members, or better.

     If all the residents in attendance today got a vote, do you think that what happened here two weeks ago, would have happened? The City Council confirmed liquor licenses for several establishments, without questioning the purpose, or what economic good the community derives from these establishments having these licenses; meanwhile, the issue of whether a sports facility that serves youths should be adequately lit with the help of public funds, had to be debated before it was accepted? If the public were in charge of the votes at this meeting, wouldn't it be the other way around? Wouldn't we be more worried about who's getting a liquor license, than whether our kids have enough lighting to play basketball under?

     It's one thing to promote youth sports as a matter of increasing sports- and leisure- related tourism to Waukegan (which, in turn, increases construction and property values) and to promote local interests, but it's another thing to support youth sports because it's the right thing to do. Does it promote local interests to sponsor a young athlete, if that child grows up to leave town? No; but that should not be the local government's worry.

     To cease worrying about the loss of local benefit which that athlete leaving town would bring, though, would require the local government to cease doing what is in its own nature; that is, to promote its own interests, by way of promoting local interests. And that is why local government – and all governments - should never be trusted, except to rule in their own interests (and also in the interest of the property developers who stand to bring the most property value, taxable revenue, and/or “jobs” to the community).

     Finally, I would like to “thank” the city council for approving the casino that will be coming to town. There have been concerns that the approved casino developer has a history of serving alcohol to minors. This suggests that the casino which is coming, will find ways to circumvent local liquor licensing requirements.

     I hope the city council realizes that carding minors for alcohol is, if only in some small way, essentially a policing, executive function, and as such, is not something to be taken lightly. Can we really entrust alcohol servers at private establishments with a police function? I hope that the city is prepared to police underage drinking in this casino, if it must be built. I would suggest that it not be built, or at least that it not have a liquor license.

     Alcohol has been shown to impair people's ability to make responsible decisions, casinos are nowhere for an impaired person to be, the casino could not stay in business unless it took more of people's money than it paid out, and the city should not directly promote (nor should it even appear to promote) drinking and gambling for leisure. Throwing one's money away on gambling and betting, is by no means a thing that merits official promotion by way of taxpayer-funded benefits, subsidies, and privileges.
     Despite the concerns about the likelihood that underage drinking will occur at this casino, you, the members of the city council, have made the bold move to approve the casino. And thank God you did, or how else would financially irresponsible people find a way to gamble away all of their hard-earned money; money which could have been spent feeding their families, putting a roof over their heads, making car and home repairs, etc.? What would we do without the city council to offer financially irresponsible people perverse incentives such as these?

     I'd love to be a teenager graduating from Waukegan High School right about now, looking at the job prospects available to me, thanks to this new casino. Especially from a young woman's perspective: “Let's see, I can work at a casino, and deal cards or serve alcohol to older men who will leer at me; or I can join the R.O.T.C., and let the Army beat the shit out of me and inject me with unknown chemicals for some paltry sum; or I can work for Medline or some other pharmaceutical company that makes pills while also creating the same problems those pills solve by emitting toxic chemicals. What a myriad of options, what freedom and opportunity!”

     I urge the city council to – if possible – rescind the order to approve the permit for the new casino. The risks to the community which will be caused by the perverse incentives offered by public approval of this casino, are too great. Unhesitating approvals of liquor licenses and gaming facilities will only lead to increased (private) demand for venues such as strip clubs and massage parlors. But should the public necessarily sponsor venues which would exist conditional upon prevailing private demand in the market? Absolutely not; I do not wish to see any taxpayer funds disbursed in order to turn downtown Waukegan into an “economic opportunity zone” full of drinkers, gamblers, strippers, and (coming soon) legalized brothels.

     Government must not send the message to kids coming out of public school, that these jobs – and the military, and working for companies releasing toxic pollutants – is their best bet on a long-term career. These jobs are only good for short-term profit, because they destroy as much as they create. Until the economy improves, many kids coming out of Waukegan schools will be stuck in Waukegan for a while. Does a downtown Waukegan full of legal, publicly-supported, publicly-funded drinking and gambling really send the right message about either the importance of civic engagement or the value of working hard to build your own business?

     As much as I am pleased that the city council has taken caution to avoid building the casino too close to a school, but should we really have a similar requirement that the casino be far enough away from a church? Where are these gamblers supposed to go after they've blown all the money they would have otherwise spent feeding and sheltering their families? They're going to want to go to church. If it were up to me, there would be a city ordinance requiring every casino and bar to be surrounded by churches.

     You members of the city council - you aldermen - you get paid more than the average citizen. Which begs two questions: 1) Why can't you solve these problems, and protect the public from pernicious outside property developers, and 2) Why shouldn't you cease to exist, seeing that you are a permanent political class whose members permanently earn more than the average citizen? Doesn't the fact that you pay yourself more than us, prove that you are one of the fundamental causes of our economic problems?

     The needs to secure property, protect it, and provide for basic zoning to separate residential from commercial properties, are the fundamental ideas upon which the government and its necessity are predicated. However, that fact entails that the nature of zoning is thus, that the government cannot avoid but to separate where wealth is earned from where people live. Zoning, quite simply, causes regional economic disparities; and the government's power to perform zoning can only result from property takings that intrinsically subvert the very same principle of property ownership upon which the necessity of government is more firmly based.

     Furthermore, any local government that does not employ multi-use and/or multi-use-on-multi-level zoning, is wasting space, and is contributing to a problem which it should be solving (namely, unequal economic development over territory).

     And now the city council is considering taking away our right to have garage sales without paying for applications and receiving permission? I know a family of lawyers, which operates a law firm out of their residence. Why can't everybody else turn their homes into small businesses, without them being deemed full-scale commercial enterprises, to be regulated and zoned as such? Let's not be ridiculous; nobody who's holding garage sales, is running delivery trucks through their neighborhood.
     Is the value we'll get from either legitimizing or criminalizing all economic activity which occurs without the permission of the state, really worth the cost we'll lose from suppressing the economic activity, opportunity, and creativity of the people of this community? From suppressing the American dream of equal economic opportunity; to sell your own possessions on your own property?

     What value will we bring to the community, if we are bringing tourists to Waukegan, only to expose them to the diverse set of pollutants which are emanating from the various factories, rock-crushing operations, chemical spills, and pharmaceutical and sterilization companies scattered around Lake County?

     We can complain all we want about the frauds and abuses committed by these "private" companies, but while they continue to receive public funds to balance their books, and public supports and privileges, should they really be considered private? Why should we expect anything other than abuses to occur on sites which are deemed "private" but which are in fact backed up by public promises of bailouts?
     Waukegan City Council, why aren't you protecting us? If you're not going to protect us, then why are you here? To offer outside property developers opportunities to exploit our labor and environment, while we are effectively conscripted into working for them, having no other viable options? And soon, we may no longer be free to hold garage sales without government permission, in order to avoid accepting demoralizing jobs.
     What is the point of government, if we get nothing from it but more problems, which the government gives itself the sole authority to solve, whether it feels like doing its job or not?




To watch videos of me summarizing this article, please click on the following links:

- “Licensing Breeds Licentiousness: Speech to the Waukegan City Council”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=326V8zVCY7E

- “Nullify Federal Immigration Laws and Abolish Government Licensing”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiAISB94GXs

Written on July 15th, 2019

Video Links Filmed on July 15th, 2019,

and Added on July 19th, 2019