Friday, July 9, 2021

Questions for Sam Seder on Euthanasia and Health, Environment and Immigration, General Welfare, and Law Without the State

     The following is a set of questions I would like to ask Sam Seder, the liberal Democrat who hosts the political commentary show The Majority Report with Sam Seder.
     This set of questions (and comments) is based on what I feel he does not yet understand about libertarianism.

 


 

Table of Contents

 

 

1. Introduction Regarding Alex Jones and Various Libertarians
2. Euthanasia and Health Insurance
3. The General Welfare Clause, Means-Testing, and Racial Discrimination by the Federal Government
4. What Authority Does the Federal Government Have Over Immigration?
5. Medicare for All
6. Cooperatives and Non-Profits, Wages, and Self-Governance as the Price of Exclusion
7. Fulfilling Libertarianism and Leninism Through Mutualism and Syndicalism
8. Regarding the Taxation of Unimproved Land Value, Church Land Holdings, and Criminal Enterprise
9. Federal Health Subsidies, Debt, and M.M.T. (Modern Monetary Theory)
10. How Much Union-Busting Should the Federal Government Do?
11. Property Rights Without the State
12. Courts and Laws Without the State
13. Resolving Property Disputes Without the State
14. Conclusion: Run for President
15. Post-Script

 

 

 

 

 

Content

 

 

 

 

1. Introduction Regarding Alex Jones and Various Libertarians

     Hi, I’m a libertarian, and I have several ridiculous points that I would like to make.


     First off, I want to make it clear that I do not listen to Alex Jones anymore, after he continued to support Donald Trump, even after Trump ordered the dropping of bombs in Syria in April 2017, and after Trump was revealed to be a longtime friend of Jeffrey Epstein.
     Jones should be commended for exposing the crimes of the Bushes and Clintons, and many other examples of corruption, but I cannot trust him due to his refusal to disavow Donald Trump.
     That said, however, I want to (sort of) defend Alex Jones on one thing: Aliens.


      Some people think that Alex Jones believes that alien-lizard-human hybrids control the world. That is not true. We do not know for sure whether Alex Jones believes in aliens.

     While on comedian Joe Rogan’s podcast, Jones told Rogan that he believes that the Nazis believed themselves to be in communication with aliens, but Jones has not directly stated that he believes in aliens.
     Jones sometimes talks about interdimensional beings, but he may be speaking in regard to spiritual dimensions, rather than about real aliens he may have seen. He stated on Joe Rogan’s podcast that he has never been an aliens type of guy.

     People think that about Alex Jones because he has had David Icke on his show, the sportscaster-turned- “conspiracy theorist” who has talked about reptilians.
     But Icke doesn’t really believe in alien lizard humans either; as it is evident from his 2001 book Children of the Matrix, Icke only writes about reptilians in relation to reptilian animal symbolism in ancient civilizations, anthropology, mysticism, and psychology.
     Icke comments on the so-called "reptilian complex" in the brain; that is, the basal ganglia. In Children of the Matrix, Icke makes reference to Paul D. MacLean's "Triune brain" model of understanding the evolution and the different parts of the brain.

     [Note: More information on the "Triune brain" theory can be found at the following link:
     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triune_brain]
     
     As the theory behind the Triune brain model goes, the reptilian segments of the brain are the most primal, and control the most important parts of the body that we need to survive; the heart and lungs. These parts of the brain developed before the amphibian and mammalian "brains" (or brain fragments) which developed around, and after, the reptilian brain.
     Icke described the reptilian brain as the most basal, and as the most related to ritual. This is why Icke sees the reptilian brain as integrally connected to the ritual aspects which are extremely common in organized religion.
     That's why it’s possible that Icke subtitled his book “How an Interdimensional Race Has Controlled the World For Years – And Still Does” solely in order to get people interested enough to buy it.

     I personally suspect that – on a subtle or perhaps even subconscious level – Icke’s allusions to an animal aspect to humanity (one that feels bestial or inhuman because it doesn’t seem to recognize our humanity) could be rooted in a desire to expose British royals for their genocidal crimes under colonialism (as well as their sex crimes), and achieve that task without communicating it so openly that Icke could end up imprisoned by the Queen of England.
     After all, Princess Diana once said of Prince Charles’s family, “They’re not human”. Granted, she meant this figuratively; but every bit as figuratively as any reptilian allusions that Icke may have made towards the British royal family and their cohorts over the years.

     Moreover, David Icke was not the first person to talk about this “reptilian-human hybrid” theory. Israeli author and mystic Drunvalo Melchizedek (born Bernard Perona) was writing about the possibility of gray aliens, gray-human hybrids, and the Anunnaki (Babylonian and Sumerian deities who supposedly visited humans), as early as 2011 (or earlier), long before anyone came to associate David Icke or Alex Jones with “reptilian conspiracy theories”.
     In fact, Drunvalo Melchizedek was not the first to speak of otherworldly beings coming down and interbreeding with human beings.

     The pseudepigraphal three Books of Enoch, which is read by Muslims, tells of the Nephilim, giant human beings traditionally explained by some Judaic texts to have been the spawn of human beings and angels who came down from Heaven.
     The Books of Enoch aside, the Old Testament itself – read by all three major Abrahamic religions and more – speaks of angels visiting humans for procreation purposes. The Nephilim giants (or giant-angels) are mentioned in the books of Genesis (Chapter 6), Numbers (Chapter 13), and Ezekiel (Chapter 32).Additionally, Chapter 19 of the Book of Genesis mentions human beings coming to the home of patriarch Lot, wanting to have sex with the angels who were visiting him.

     All of this is not to say that reptiles, aliens, or angels have interbred with human beings, however. My only points are that Alex Jones and David Icke possibly do not believe in aliens, and that human-alien (or human-angel) hybrid theories are at least as old as the Old Testament, if not older.
     This does not necessarily point to alien-human (or alien-reptile) hybrids existing, however; but it certainly does help explain why so many people nowadays seem to think, suspect, or feel that there is an animal, alien, or otherworldly presence in some of our fellow human beings (especially among the elite).

     If you feel that this issue is worth your time, then I urge you to independently investigate this issue for yourself, and have Jones and/or Icke on your show to ask them, point blank, whether they believe in aliens, and how sure they feel about their answer.



     Second, I’m sorry that you haven’t had much luck finding intelligent, consistent enough libertarians willing to debate you as well as (most importantly) find common ground with you on the issues that divide us the most.
     As an open-borders libertarian, I believe that the libertarian left and the libertarian right should work together against left-wing and right-wing variants of fascism alike. I would like to defend the idea that self-government, and voluntary association with mutual aid, can replace the state.
     I know that you support mutual aid, so I would like you to consider whether mutual aid could replace the state, or at least supplement our needs whenever the state collapses. But you don’t need to comment on that yet.
     I suggest that - if you want a detailed answer regarding what would happen with courts and law if the state ceased to exist – you invite either Gary E. Chartier, Charles W. Johnson, Stephan Kinsella, Stefan Molyneux, David D. Friedman, Roderick T. Long, or Robert P. Murphy on your show to do an interview on the topic of “personal law”, and D.R.O.s.
     I would also recommend that you invite John Stossel on your show, to discuss the topics of how government welfare primarily benefits the rich instead of the poor, and how government intervention in the economy to assist consumers often results in laws that hurt consumers and limit their choices. I think that you will be surprised by how much you agree with Stossel.

     Personal law is a sort of voluntarily-chosen legal system. And, as you're aware, D.R.O.s. are Dispute Resolution Organizations.
     Basically D.R.O.s (or “adjudication agencies” or “private courts” as you have called them in your discussion with Walter Block) are like private arbitration agencies that are not affiliated with the state.
     Each of them would also function as a sort of insurance company, on the basis that they’d offer replacements for the government’s social insurance (in terms of security for physical, property, and financial purposes). I want to clarify how these agencies would work, and interact. But I’ll get to that topic towards the end.

     First I want to talk about death and taxes, the only things that are (supposedly) certain in this life.



2. Euthanasia and Health Insurance

      I wanted to talk to you about the General Welfare Clause, and the other powers of Congress.

     But first, I want to ask you about euthanasia.
     Do you believe that terminally ill people should be free to end their own lives?
     Do you feel that your position on this comports with your belief that the government should protect people from their mistakes and bad decisions?
    You also seem to believe that it is impossible to survive without the government. It’s a funny coincidence that believing in both of those things, happens to obligate the government to compel people to associate with the government.
     If you believe that it is impossible to survive without the government, then I suggest that you look up the six following people and terms:
            1) Mike Gogulski (a stateless person);
            2) Daniel Suelo (who lives without money);
            3) Christopher Ryan (who writes in his book Civilized to Death about how “civilization”, or industrial society, only fixes what it broke in the first place);
            4) the stateless area of Zomia;
            5) the quasi-anarchic society of medieval Iceland around the year 1,000 C.E.; and
            6) the stateless practice of the Xeer form of community government.

     Believe it or not, it is possible to live without the state, money, and industrial society.

     Do you ever worry about the unintended societal consequences which could potentially be involved, in protecting too many people – or the wrong people – from experiencing the consequences of their own decisions?
     What happens when government loses sight of the need to protect the vulnerable from their mistakes (and to help them after accidents), and instead focuses all of its efforts on protecting its cronies from experiencing the consequences of their “bad decisions” to commit crimes!?
     The idea that the government can pay for us all to take a lot of risks, should not be used to justify obligating the taxpayers to foot the bill for the foolishness and risky behavior of complete strangers.
     Especially not when someone would rather take-on the consequences themselves.

     What if someone is not terminally ill, and wants to take his own life?
     Suppose, for example, because he is sick of being constantly stalked, and harassed, and spied on by the corrupt government?

     I wanted to clarify something you said about Ron Paul’s position regarding what someone should do if they are healthy and don’t buy health insurance, and then discover that they have a deadly disease and are at risk of dying.
     Paul did not say that an uninsured person dying is “a tribute to how free we are”, the way Noam Chomsky characterized it (during a question-and-answer session, following a speech at Kutztown University in 2011. Paul said that what is a tribute to how free we are, is the freedom to take our own risks, and experience the consequences of our own decisions.

     Nor did Paul say – contrary to Ben Burgis’s claim – that “churches would take up a collection”. Paul did mention churches, however, saying that in the 1950s, before Medicare and Medicaid, churches and charities took care of people. He was referring to hospitals run by churches and charities; not to churches “taking up a collection”.

     What Paul actually said was that “What he should do is whatever he wants to do”. He also said “I would advise them to have a major medical insurance policy”, but also that “what freedom is all about” is “taking your own risks”.
     While freedom is the upside of being able to make your own health decisions, the obvious downside is that you could die. In fact, one of Ron Paul’s campaign manager, Kent Snyder, died in 2008 of complications from pneumonia, at the age of 49. And that is certainly sad, and tragic.

     According to the article linked below, Snyder died after accruing $400,000 in hospital costs, and his friends started a website to solicit donations to assist with his medical bills.
     That article quotes Snyder’s sister as saying that he had a pre-existing condition which made his health insurance premiums “too expensive”.

     You could say that Kent Snyder died because he had no health insurance. But it would be more accurate to say that he died because he had a pre-existing condition, which made his health insurance expensive, and made him more susceptible to the often deadly lung disease that killed him.
     There is no government, or medical system, that is going to be able to guarantee that no person will ever get sick and then die because they got sick. There is no amount of money that will guarantee that death goes away forever.
     All we can do is mourn the dead, give the living opportunities to access and afford health services, and do our best to responsibly and selectively fund the research and development of drugs and medical technologies that could save people’s lives in the future.

     In my opinion, for the last ten years or more, the focus on federal health insurance legislation, has been largely a distraction from the need to improve access, affordability, and quality of care. People who are sick don’t need insurance; they need care.
     You could say that they need both, but as libertarian-conservative humorist and Rolling Stone columnist P.J. o’Rourke once said, [I’m paraphrasing] “Health insurance helps you get sick affordably. But getting sick has always been cheap. It’s getting well that costs money.”
     That health insurance helps us afford to get sick, is a double-edged sword; as it could give government and its cronies in the private health insurance industry an incentive to create a society in which people are perpetually sick and forever in need of medications and procedures. Why would health insurance companies and Big Pharma support a government that does not help them make us dependent upon them for medical care?
     Furthermore, if getting sick becomes affordable, then we may start thinking that getting sick isn’t a very serious problem.

     Comedian David Cross, whom you’ve had on your show, had a joke about ten years ago. He did the voice of a Republican who was saying “I don’t want the federal government to pay for my health insurance.” And then he responded, as himself (David Cross), by saying something like, “Well, I disagree with you… but wait… I don’t want you to have health insurance. I want you to die.” That joke was greeted with roaring laughter.
     Do you agree with that statement?
     To put it another way, do you care so much about making sure that Libertarians have medical insurance, that you would be willing to put us in jail for not paying the Obamacare tax? Or even kill us if we defend ourselves against police who attempt to arrest us for failing to pay that unconstitutional tax on our income?
     Why do that, when you could just as easily let us make our own decisions, and then (if you’re correct that we’ll die without federally provided health insurance) eventually we would die without your help?

     Which do you care about more: Protecting libertarians (who annoy the shit out of you) from their own mistakes; or being able to mock us for the rest of our lives, until everybody worships the corrupt, bloated, racist criminal federal government (which you, for some reason, love)? Why keep mocking libertarians when you could simply let us die, and spare us from the horrors of being controlled by you, thereby conveniently ridding the world of us libertarians who do nothing but annoy you?
     If the government is so great that we’ll die without it, then why not let us prove it? If we fail, we fail, and the rest of you are under no obligation to support us. And we, and our businesses, have to pay for our own roads, and utilities, and security detail, and so on.
     Do we have a deal?




3. The General Welfare Clause, Means-Testing, and Racial Discrimination by the Federal Government

 

     It’s my understanding that, in your opinion, the federal government can spend money on pretty much whatever it wants, as long as that spending generally benefits the American people. But also you believe that there are abuses like the Bridge to Nowhere that shouldn’t be allowed. Is that correct?

     So what’s the benchmark, then? What sorts of things definitely shouldn’t be federal powers, and should be left up to either state or local government, business, or the people?

     Should the federal government be able to order us to eat broccoli? Should the federal government be able to see what library books we check out? Monitor our phone conversations without a warrant? Dispatch F.B.I. agents into our house without a warrant?
     Kill us on suspicion of breaking a federal drug law when we try to defend ourselves against the police when they don’t have a warrant? Wage a racist drug war (that also happens to threaten whites and be unconstitutional as well, despite liberals and leftists’ high degree of attention to its impact on minorities)?
     I know that you don’t like it when corporations cause problems, and then nobody in particular is made to take responsibility for the problems. But you don’t seem to criticize the government much when it does the same thing. So should the federal government be free to fail to honor treaties made with the indigenous tribes?

 

     Oglala Lakota activist Russell Means (1939-2012) testified to Congress that the federal government has not only dishonored those treaties, but also has hurt the tribes’ abilities to economically thrive.

     Russell Means ran for president in 1988, as a Libertarian, losing to Ron Paul (who left the party shortly thereafter). Means’s simultaneous criticism of centralized government and economic suppression embodies the libertarian message.

     Perhaps Means should have won the nomination for the presidency that year. But it’s not as though Ron Paul has never criticized the federal government for enforcing racially discriminatory policies. Paul has criticized Jim Crow laws, and racial segregation in the military, saying “that’s the government”.

     This is hardly something which most liberals or Democrats would expect to hear from the same congressman who came under fire for racist newsletters published under his name in the late 1980s and early 1990s. In fact, Paul’s statement is arguably just as “woke” as what’s taught in Critical Race Theory.

     We must not teach children to tolerate racial discrimination when practiced by the federal government, just because the government sometimes punishes companies for practicing similar kinds of discrimination.


     Do you remember the 2014-2015 Bureau of Land Management disputes in Nevada and Oregon?
     When a Nevada rancher named Cliven Bundy owed a million dollars to the federal government, you – Sam Seder – and other liberals, wanted something to be done about him.
     But few of you realized that this came at a time when Senator Harry Reid had come under scrutiny after being suspected of profiting $1.1 million from land dealings, several years after he had ceased owning that land.
     http://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna15234219
     So the story evolved into a debate over whether ranchers, or the federal government and its politicians, were behaving more disrespectfully towards the land than the other.

     Next - unfortunately - the American public got distracted from the “Bundy land lawsuit” story and the “Bundy racist comments about slavery and Obama” story, and began focusing on happenings in the State of Oregon.
     Associates of Cliven Bundy - such as his son Ammon, and his friends, the Hammond family of ranchers, and LaVoy Finicum – became the focus of the media attention, when Ammon Bundy and friends peacefully occupied the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.
     The peaceful occupation was characterized as if it were a violent occupation of a “federal building”, almost as if the order of the terrorist act committed by Oklahoma bomber Timothy McVeigh.
     What’s more; when LaVoy Finicum lost his life to F.B.I. agents, he was an old, unarmed man who was trying to lift his arms to gain balance while stumbling around in the snow, after being pulled over by police suddenly and violently via a barricade. Federal agents shot this man to death for trying to prevent himself from falling down.
     Few liberals knew at the time – nor still know – that Finicum grew up with Native Americans, was the foster father of more than ten children (many of them Native American), and made a video shortly before his death detailing the mishandling of Native American artifacts by the same wildlife refuge which the anti-B.L.M. activists occupied.
     Moreover, the Hammond family of ranchers did not set fire to federal land, as the government claimed; they set a controlled burn in order to stop an existing wildfire from destroying their ranch house. This occurred after the Bureau of Land Management declined to get back to the Hammonds to give them permission to light the controlled burn.
     I know this is something that matters to you, because you mentioned – during your recent appearance on Ben Burgis’s show – that the Iroquois would do controlled burns to keep the land lush for farming.

     The Malheur standoff, and Finicum’s death at the F.B.I.’s hands, were just two more examples of Native Americans dishonored and betrayed by a eugenicist federal government that has no regard for the sanctity of the land, nor for the people who hold it sacred.
     Liberals demanded that the federal government do something about Bundy (or his sons, or the Hammonds, or Finicum or the other activists). But the action that was taken in response for the liberals’ salivation for blood, was that the F.B.I. killed an old man in the snow, and made four activists fear for their lives after peacefully taking hold of a wildlife refuge during a holiday when no employees were present.

     It is popularly thought that all Libertarians hate the federal government so much, and are so dedicated to states’ rights, that they would have no problem if some states were to allow slavery.
     But only some libertarians are silly or stupid enough to say this and mean it. Only some self-described libertarians are stupid enough to support slavery of someone else in order to promote his own “freedom” (which is actually just dependence, but upon that slave instead of the government or himself).
     I do not believe that slavery would be a realistic concern in a free society.
     Most libertarians would agree that, in a sufficiently libertarian society, enough people (and enough African-Americans) would have guns - and the right to use them in self-defense - that there would be less of a chance of getting taken captive than there is now (considering all of the sex trafficking that’s happening).
     If the government collapsed, it’s likely that libertarian and pro-gun activists would give away enough weapons to people in need, that even the poor would be able to defend themselves. A Libertarian candidate in Michigan gave guns away to homeless people during his campaign, after realizing that homeless people need protection yet are unable to register weapons because they have no address.
     Liberals should never forget that, in 1956, the racist government of Alabama denied Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. a concealed gun carrying permit shortly before he was shot to death in Tennessee. This occurred after his house was bombed, and before he devoted himself to non-violence.
     Still, it’s possible that the denial of King’s concealed carry permit was one of the major events that led to him abandoning the principle of self-defense.
     Hopefully liberals can acknowledge these facts without succumbing to the temptation to ridicule the idea of M.L.K. trying to shoot back at his assassin.

     If the government left us free to defend ourselves, then it would be doing one of its few legitimate jobs; that is, allowing us the self-defense of our own bodies. I demand this right, because the state’s claim on a monopoly on force, does not make police officers omnipresent. Even if it did, I would still trust myself, rather than the police, to defend me.
     To demand the right to defend myself, at no expense to the state, is to save the government (and thus, the taxpayers, and myself) the expense of being drained of our productive income to fund the criminalization of more and more peaceful activities and transactions.
     I demand the right of self-defense because I do not want to spend my whole life building and funding the construction of my own jail cell. I would also like to avoid funding, building, and authorizing a standing army of police officers, which effectively act as federal agents (i.e., F.B.I. agents) because most of the laws they enforce are unconstitutional federal laws (which are null and void) instead of those state statutes which have been duly and transparently ordained by the people.

 

     So what if I reject the federal government – or even want to secede from it - but not on racist grounds, and not violently?

     That is, what if I reject the federal government on the grounds that it has done so many racist things, and assisted in genocides, and committed horrible atrocities, that I can no longer support it?
     I object to draft registration and the use of my tax revenue to kill children overseas. Can I dissociate from the federal government on those grounds? What if I feel so deeply ashamed of the federal government’s history of massacring millions of people, to promote imperialism and capitalism, that I want to secede from that government?

     What if I want myself, and Russell Means, and everyone else, to be free from central government control, and free to live in an intentional community or intentional city of their choice, run on any social and economic principles as they agree to abide by voluntarily?

 

     Is the supposed need for the federal government to provide for the general welfare, so important, that it outweighs the need to respect the consent of the governed?

     In my opinion, any and all existing welfare programs should be universal and not means-tested according to income. But additionally, the need to respect the consent of the governed, suggests that any such programs be participated in on a totally voluntary basis.

     This could be done through asking the citizen to opt-in to a program, rather than having the government automatically enroll people; and also through implementing a voluntary taxation program which only requires people to pay the taxes that they feel they owe (within reason).

     [Note: Andrew Yang ran for president in 2020 while promising this sort of voluntary tax reporting idea.
     I have described my own idea of such a plan, which is sort of a hybrid of voluntary tax reporting and payment, and the Negative Income Tax described by Milton Friedman. You can read more about that proposal in my 2014 article and infographic “The Flat Negative Income Tax”, available at the following link:
     http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-flat-negative-income-tax.html]

 

     You say that you support federal spending programs as long as they provide for the general welfare. But “general welfare” doesn’t mean what you might think it means.

     “Welfare” means well-being, in a general sense. “Welfare” does not refer to government food aid, nor housing aid, nor educational loans, nor to any form of government-provided welfare in particular.

     Also, “general” does not mean “broad”, nor “vague”, nor does it mean that we can spend money on anything and everything. “General”, here in the phrase “general welfare”, means universal.

     That is, the spending must benefit everybody. [Note: It is up for debate whether that means all Americans, or all documented Americans, or all tax-paying Americans, or all residents, or Americans between 18 and 65. But I think all non-racists and non-sexists should be able to agree that whiteness and maleness should never again be limiting factors, in terms of participating in government or receiving government services. However, property ownership as a limiting factor is still debatable; as some Americans believe that the only people who should derive benefit from government are the people whose property taxes pay for that government to exist in the first place.]

     Additionally, Clauses 1 and 8 (of Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution) provide that excises and customs are to remain uniform, while Clauses 1 through 3 provide that direct taxes must be apportioned according to the Census. So as long as those requirements about taxes are fulfilled, then spending which benefits everybody, should be allowed, as long as it’s implemented constitutionally, via the amendment process.

     This means that non-means-tested programs – such as Medicare for All, a Universal Basic Income Guarantee, Social Security, and other programs – could be enacted, without violating the limitations which were intended to be imposed by the General Welfare Clause (which liberals interpret as expansive rather than limiting). That is, as long as the legislation authorizing those programs were to be passed constitutionally (through an amendment authorizing exclusive federal power over medical insurance, retirement, or whatever).

 

     Why do you think it is, that the Environmental Protection Agency is powerless? Do you think it could have something to do with the fact that the environment is not specifically mentioned in the Enumerated Powers of Congress?

     How can an E.P.A. be created by the Congress, if Congress has no original power to legislate on environmental matters in the first place?

     From where does Congress’s power to regulate the environment, and create an E.P.A. derive? Nowhere.

     Another absurdity related to the E.P.A. is that federal fuel emissions standards work the opposite way that the federal government tells us the minimum wage laws work; that is, the federal government’s ability to regulate wages supposedly causes standards to rise, while the federal government’s ability to regulate the environment has caused environmental standards to fall.
     The government leads us to believe that wherever the federal government offers a higher minimum wage than the state government, the higher wage wins-out and the federal wage “trumps” the state wage. But that is not true; there are federal exemptions (under the Fair Labor Standards Act) - like exemptions for tipped workers – which may make some workers ineligible for federal minimum wage increases. Only eligible workers who are motivated and connected enough to file complaints, will be able to experience the benefits supposedly offered to them by the federal minimum wage laws and their protections.
     Suppose that there were not so many exemptions to the federal minimum wage law, that the federal government’s claim that federal wage laws trump state wage laws were actually true. Even then, that would not explain the absurdity; it would not explain why federal environmental laws can prohibit states from having better standards than the federal standard.
     In December 2007, the Environmental Protection Agency under the George W. Bush Administration denied California a waiver from federal vehicle fuel emissions standards which would have allowed that state to have stricter, better standards resulting in less pollution.
     Fortunately though, in 2013, the Obama Administration granted California a waiver of Clean Air Act (C.A.A.) pre-emption, leaving states free to adopt California’s standard. However, in 2019, the Trump Administration’s SAFE-1 action withdrew that waiver.
     In summary, the federal E.P.A. inhibited California from reducing fuel emissions from 2007 to 2013, and again from 2019 until the present day. The fact that presidents can tamper with environmental regulations, is, no doubt, caused by the flimsy foundation on which environmental regulations are based.
     [Note: From a reading of Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution, and the history of the formation and evolution of cabinet-level posts and departments, the supposed authority to protect the environment flows through a long chain of successively more questionable justifications. The need to protect federal buildings, is cited to justify federal ownership and management of lands outside of the District of Columbia, and that is used to justify the use of the land by being involved in agriculture and food processing, and government farming is cited to justify creating the Food and Drug Administration and having federal involvement in health and environmental protection.]
     So why should we tolerate these unconstitutional interruptions? Is the need to keep the Union together, so important, that the Constitution must be a suicide pact? Make no mistake; the Constitution did not allow this state of affairs; as environment is not mentioned in the powers of Congress, and is thus appropriately the people’s or the states’ business until such time as a constitutional amendment has been passed.
     But the point is: Is the cooperation of the states so important, that states must be stopped from “showing off” by having better standards than those that are set nationally? Is America so fractured, that states regulating their own health and environmental affairs, presents a danger to the security or legitimacy of the U.S. government, or to the integrity of American society?
     Why should America be a fifty-state-plus-D.C. “marriage” that’s “for better or for worse”, when California could easily defend and govern itself? Why shouldn’t California be free to secede, if by doing so it can only gain in environmental quality, in economic independence, and in military independence from a corrupt government?



     The General Welfare Clause is Clause 1 of Article I, Section 8 (and the general welfare is also mentioned in the preamble to the Constitution). There are sixteen other powers of Congress listed in the Enumerated Powers (clauses 1 through 18) aside from promoting the general welfare. Most of these powers related to money, mail, and military.

     This is why Ron Paul and Libertarians want to get rid of departments like Energy, HUD, Interior, Education, and Commerce. That is; because energy, housing, land management, education, and giving handouts to businesses, are not mentioned in the Constitution (although commerce is mentioned).

     We also want to abolish these departments because: 1) the Departments of Commerce and Energy are arguably repositories of corporate greed; 2) we arguably shouldn’t have an Interior Department because the federal government isn’t supposed to own and manage so much land; and 3) education and housing could easily be handled by the states as long as they got their tax codes and budgets under control.

     If you want the H.H.S. and the E.P.A. to remain, as permanent fixtures of the government, then wouldn’t you want to pass a constitutional amendment, making health and environment into exclusive federal powers (that the state and local governments can’t interfere with), so that governors and courts can’t easily make those agencies toothless and ineffective and corrupt?

     Is this unreasonable?

 



4. What Authority Does the Federal Government Have Over Immigration?

 

     Do you believe that the authority under which I.C.E. (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) operates, is constitutional?

     In my opinion, it’s not, as I.C.E. was created as part of the post-9/11 Department of Homeland Security, which is unconstitutional. The 1947 reorganization of the state intelligence apparati allowed unprecedented executive control over what is and is not part of the federal government.

 

     But this was never something that all Americans were supposed to obey in the first place. Duties related to homeland security are contained in Title 6, a portion of the U.S. Code which is non-positive law, meaning that it is not part a positive law code which confers an obligation upon all Americans to obey it.

     Thus, the P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act is null and void, and I.C.E. is operating illegally. I.C.E. agents, and all who enforce the P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act, should either be arrested, or at the very least not be allowed on state property.

     The P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act must be abolished immediately, and Title 6 of the U.S. Code (on Domestic Security) must be prevented from becoming positive law (and thus obligatory upon all Americans).

     You can read more about that topic in my January 2021 article “Half of the Federal Laws Do Not Apply to All Americans: Explaining Positive vs. Non-Positive Law”, available at the following link:

     http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2021/01/half-of-federal-laws-do-not-apply-to.html

 

     Liberals and Democrats are allowing their belief that the Constitution authorizes border patrols, to justify appeasing Republicans by agreeing to pay for border enforcement.

     But why risk that these funds could be re-routed towards paying for a border wall, when liberals and Democrats could simply point out that the only immigration-related power which the federal government has, is the authority to “establish a uniform rule of naturalization”?

     It says nothing about an obligation to enforce that rule; only to establish it. There is no reason why the states, or even counties, couldn’t be the ones to enforce that rule.

     So why appease Republicans, and pretend that they’re right about a part of the Constitution which liberals and Democrats are not even that familiar with, when, instead, we could have open borders? Why put guards on the borders, when we could place Immigration and Naturalization Services employees, and Doctors Without Borders on the border?

 

     We should abolish the Department of Homeland Security – and Immigration and Customs Enforcement along with it – citing the Constitution itself; specifically, the naturalization clause, and Amendment IV which provides for due process.

     If the Fourth Amendment had been followed and respected, then it would have prevented the sorts of civil liberties deprivations seen in the post-9/11 wave of legislative overreach on security matters.

 

     The Constitution can be a limiting feature upon the overreach of expansive federal government. We just have to understand it; that is, comprehend it and obey the limitations it set down.

     So it’s not as if there is nothing about the Constitution that is worth saving.

 


     Finally, as an open-borders libertarian who is in favor of alter-globalization, I believe that it is possible to oppose international government (or globalism, which is embodied not in an international Jewish banking conspiracy, but in the form of the United Nations, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund), without opposing the globalization of trade. 
     This is to say that I believe in market globalization, not globalism (if that means global governance). And I want market globalization to benefit ordinary people; not multinational for-profit corporations, but for small businesses, non-profits and cooperatives. I want consumers and workers to negotiate with one another on as direct a basis as possible, in order to eliminate the apparent need for external management and investment.
     I want free movement of both people and labor (and “jobs”), as well as free movement of financial and physical capital (and so-called “job creators”). I intend to be consistent on this; as there should be no limit to the movement of workers when corrupt law guides businesses abroad (leaving domestic workers jobless). But at the same time, the fact of outsourcing (and the apparent need to retain jobs) should not be used as a justification for restricting travel and migration, unless and until serious and successful measures are undertaken to rid the government of the corrupt influence which the interests of organized capital wield against it (or within it).
     I also believe that there should be an equal balance between the interests of the U.S. and the rest of the world, in terms of weighing population against the need of a particular country or place to economically develop, when it comes to considerations regarding international trade infrastructure.
     To put it another way, I believe that non-profit-oriented trade is the best way to avoid or minimize government involvement in our transactions; and that therefore non-profit activity (and mutual aid, and voluntary association(s)) could potentially replace the state.



5. Medicare for All

 

     I heard your debate with Libertarian Party Chair Nick Sarwark on Medicare for All, and I wanted to ask you some questions to clarify your position. Would that be OK?

 

     Would it be accurate to say that you believe Medicare for All would save more money than private insurance, because of: 1) the risk that the profit motive of private insurance could lead to companies making short term and self-interested decision making, which could hurt the public, and be unsustainable; and 2) the multiplier effect of cooperatively pooling purchasing, and the single-payer  / sole-buyer monopsony?
     [I assume that Seder would say yes.]
     So, then, it would be fair to say that you would like to achieve health insurance coverage for all Americans, and that, preferably, that health insurance should be non-profit, because of the savings and responsibility and sustainability involved?

 

     If there were a way to get high rates of voluntary enrollment in a public health insurance system or public option – like by guaranteeing access to all residents – then would you admit that the need to respect the consent of the governed is more important than the need to enforce a mandate that everyone be insured?

     Would you agree that a purchase mandate can only increase the price of health insurance because it gives the private health insurance companies a captive market, as long as there is any chance that the single-payer system could fall prey to corrupt influence?

     Would it be unreasonable to suggest that Obamacare wasn’t merely a “bailout for private health insurance companies and Big Pharma”, but in fact, was even worse? That is to say, didn’t the Obamacare purchase mandate effectively turn greedy, for-profit health insurance companies into what could more or less be described as subsidiaries of the Internal Revenue Service (being that they were empowered to collect people’s money, as taxes, for health insurance)?

 

     What would you say to me, if I were to ask you to try to guarantee to me that a single-payer health insurance system does not fall prey to either corrupt influence by the private health insurance industry, corrupt influence by Big Pharma, corrupt influence by corrupt medical malpractice attorneys, corrupt influence by excessively risk-averse health providers or administrators, or the waste of expenditures on maintaining a health care bureaucracy (and paying politicians six figures each to manage it)?

     If you can answer this question, and we can implement exclusive federal control over health insurance constitutionally (via the amendment process), then I could potentially get behind a Medicare for All type system.

     I might add that Libertarians would be most likely to support such a program if it could be made as voluntary as possible; for example, “Medicare for All, But Opt In” or “Medicare for All Those Who Want It”. Such a program would not have to throw people off of their current health insurance, but could instead give them a long window of time (for example, 18 months, which Rand Paul proposed) during which they can opt into the system.

 




6. Cooperatives and Non-Profits, Wages, and Self-Governance as the Price of Exclusion

 

     Cooperatives reinvest all of what would have been profits, back into the company, so that all workers benefit, and share in those would-be profits.
     So, then, would it be correct to say that cooperatives run on a non-profit basis? [I assume that Seder would say yes.]

     So, then, you would have to agree that there is such a thing as a private entity which is non-profit, and that not all private entities are for-profit. Right?
     Does this mean that cooperatives are part of the private sector? Doesn’t this seem a little odd, that we’re defining every type of agency that’s non-state, as private?

     I agree with you that we need to protect the commons (and I’ll get to that soon).
     But I think it’s difficult to protect the commons, if we don’t even recognize it as a distinct sector of the economy (alongside the public, private, voluntary/charity, and club sectors).
     I’ll explain.

 

     We’re taught that there are two basic sectors of society; the public-sector government, and private-sector businesses.
     But can private residences, clubs, and public-private partnerships between government and businesses, be easily categorized into either public or private? Absolutely not. So why the false dichotomy?

 

     What makes something “private”? Does it have to be a business? Does it have to operate on a for-profit basis? Does it have to offer sufficient degrees of privacy? Does it have to be able to practice exclusion against whomever the owner wants?

     This is difficult to answer. So lumping-in everything which is not the state, with “the private sector” is an unwise way to go about understanding political economics.

     The commons is not the state, yet it is vastly different from for-profit corporations which we associate with the private sector. The commons is the environment; the state did not create it. So obviously more exists than simply the public government and private business; there are also the common-pool environmental resources which exist all around us, and private personal residences, and communal housing, and cooperative enterprises, and clubs that can exclude people, and so on.

     In my opinion, the perpetuation of false dichotomies has led to the 50%-vs.-50%, black-vs.-white, socialist-vs.-capitalist mindset, that keeps us fighting in the streets, and at the ballot box, when we should be uniting with each other and with the rest of the world (excluding the corrupt governments and greedy interests of all types).

 

     Is public insurance non-profit because the state subsidizes it, or is public insurance non-profit because the markets and the investors want public insurance to be non-profit?

     The answer is obviously that public insurance is non-profit because the state subsidizes it. Cooperatives (or, at least, cooperatives that don’t operate as cooperative corporations) are the least likely types of enterprises to allow investment from outside sources.

     I believe that there would be no need for the federal government to be involved in the subsidization of health care in the states, if the states got their budgetary and tax affairs in order, such that the people and the states could more easily afford to pay for health costs themselves (i.e., without any federal assistance).

     But I’ll get to that.

 

     Libertarians and liberals alike can admit that for-profit businesses are known for cutting production costs at the expense of safety, underpaying workers and committing wage theft, and overcharging consumers for their products.

     Well, the solution to that – workers being exploited, and not having enough money, and products being too expensive – is pitched as “American workers need a minimum wage increase.” That was December 2020, after Biden was elected.
     Do you know what happened next? because I know how the law works – I and other libertarians have to remind everyone “This wage increase will only be for the lowest paid federal workers!” and look crazy to most people.
     And we were right; only 0.2% of American workers will see an increase in their wages as a result of Biden’s so-called “minimum-wage increase” announcement in January 2021; that is, federal workers currently earning the minimum wage.
     Now, maybe that is a small victory to celebrate, because federal workers need pay raises too. But the Biden administration’s budget division calculated that 1,400,000 jobs would be lost in the government’s upcoming effort to raise the federal minimum wage, which would only lift 900,000 people out of poverty.
     So Biden hurt 1,400,000 people in order to help 900,000? Is that progress we should be celebrating?

     Moreover, this “wage hike” helped so few people, that it’s hard not to suspect that this promise of a wage hike only served as a recruitment drive for that new (destined-to-fail) federal jobs program. And a donation drive for government employees’ favorite unions, and favorite political party, the Democratic Party, which inevitably support the growth of government (requiring more employees).
     Essentially, they are overtaxing us of our money – and, I admit, disproportionately taxing the rich (I’ll get to that) – in order to tempt us with high-paying government jobs, to grab more resources (i.e., Federal Reserve notes) than our own friends and families. Is this ethical? No!
     Moreover, I have to give it to Bernie Sanders; he was right to offer an amendment to the minimum wage hike proposal. His amendment would have increased the sub-minimum wage, the minimum wage for tipped workers. I do not agree with Jimmy Dore that Sanders sabotaged the minimum wage hike on purpose.
     [See the links below to learn more about the wide varieties of exemptions from federal minimum wage laws, which caused the situation wherein only 0.2% of American workers are helped by minimum wage increases:

     See also: Part II of my January 2021 article “Half of the Federal Laws Do Not Apply to All Americans: Explaining Positive vs. Non-Positive Law”:


     Additionally, I want to point out that I think you are wrong to say that minimum wage increases don’t lead to increases in unemployment. I think they do, whenever: 1) the economy and job increases are stagnant; and 2) people are not thrown off of unemployment, or off of eligibility for unemployment.
     For my short article “Inflation-Adjusted Minimum Wage vs. Unemployment” from February 2012, I compared inflation-adjusted minimum wage with the federal minimum wage, from 1957 to 2011.
     Based on that data, I feel confident estimating that a 75-cent federal minimum wage increase will tend to result in a one percent increase in unemployment, some time between 18 and 36 months after the minimum wage hike is enacted. Also, that the steeper and more rapid the wage hike, the sooner and more pronounced the increase in unemployment will be.
     You can examine the chart for yourself, to see why I have made such conclusions.
     I offer this claim – which I arrived at myself, after an independent investigation of the data – to counter your claim that libertarians cannot debate you on issues like the hard data pertaining to labor, wages, poverty, and people’s well-being.

     I should also address child labor and the work week before leaving this topic.
     I believe that protections against child labor are necessary due to children’s inability to agree to contracts without parental guidance (as well as the guidance of the community). But that community guidance need not necessitate external enforcement from state or federal authorities. Hence, children can be protected by families or communities, and the state is not necessary to assist in that protection. But also, communities of adults that fail to protect children should suffer the consequences, and be pressured by other communities to protect them better.
     As for the work week, I believe (and the Constitution provides) that the number of hours worked per week should not be limited by the federal government, unless and until there is a constitutional amendment saying that such a thing would be legal to do in the first place. Until then, states should be free to set a limit, but I believe that there are millions of people who work in farm labor, who would object to limitations which would set maximum numbers of hours which can be worked in a day or a week. For example, about ten years ago, some Wisconsin farmers objected to a proposed law which would prohibit farm workers from working more than 13 days in a row. Of course, workers who don’t want to work that much, shouldn’t have to. But whether laws like this – and overtime laws – help employees, all depends on how much control employees have over their work schedules, as compared to the people who make their schedules.
     It is more important to me that the prevailing wage goes up, than that the minimum wage goes up.


     But leaving aside, for a moment, the details of the failings of federal promises of minimum wage increases, I want to ask you about why businesses cut costs, overcharge, and commit wage theft. Obviously, many of them are greedy. But do high taxes make them become less greedy?

     But would you admit that businesses do a lot of these things because they are worried about how much their taxes might rise the next year?

     If we could tax greedy, corrupt businesses enough to pay for the expenses of government, then would you be OK with lowering taxes on small businesses?

     Knowing that entrepreneurship is the dream of many Americans, can you see why it might make sense to lower taxes on some businesses (or, at the very least, on small businesses, nonprofits, and cooperatives)?

 

     Would you agree that cooperatives re-invest all of their would-be profits back into the company for the benefit of the workers (or, at least, that that is the purpose of a cooperative)?

     Would you agree that this means that cooperatives do not produce any profits, and do not produce anything that could justifiably be taxed?

     Then, would it be fair to say that cooperatives deserve to pay no taxes, simply because they don’t turn a profit?

     If not, then what if you could tax cooperatives, but only of their land holdings, and not of their non-profit economic activity?

      I’ll get to taxes soon. But I have a few more questions.

    

     Would you agree that we all have the right to vote, but that that right to vote isn’t limited solely to elections sponsored and approved by government?

     For example, that we have the right to vote in meetings of minor political parties (such as the Libertarians, Greens, and Socialists), and in our clubs and voluntary associations, and in autonomous unions (like the I.W.W.), and even among our friends when we decide what kind of pizza to order?

     Then doesn’t the right to have democracy exist independent of government? Don’t we have the right to run as much of our society as we wish on democratic principles?

     Let’s take a vote and see how many of us agree with that idea. Who agrees that we can have as much democracy as we want – in society and in the economy – as long as the government’s version of democracy doesn’t interfere with it?

     [I assume that everyone present would agree] …So we’re agreed!

     Who agrees that some degree of autonomy from the government is fine, as long as it goes through traditional democratic processes, where people have the freedom and time to voice their objections, and discuss the proposals thoroughly before coming to a consensus?

 

     Would you agree that there are at least some non-profits which are not corrupt, which should also not be taxed, because of their non-profit (or non-profit cooperative) status?

     If a cooperative or non-profit enterprise owes no taxes, and it’s also fiscally sustainable and responsible enough to provide all of its own services on its own (like security and some degree of public utilities), then shouldn’t it be allowed to be self-governing or autonomous in some way?

     That is, what if a company were free to provide all of their own utilities; like security guards instead of police, and solar panels on the roof instead of connecting to the public energy grid, and (most importantly) footing the bill to pay for the construction of roads leading from their businesses to the state roads?




     If your answer is “no”, then what if such a company operated on a non-for-profit or cooperative basis? What if it operates on democratic principles?

     Or better yet, what if the enterprise operates on the basis of a consumer-cooperative, such that workers and consumers each make up half of the board of the company, allowing them to negotiate with each other directly? This would make it impossible to continue to defend workplace practices such as having multiple levels of management, paying C.E.O.s countless amounts of money, and having outside investors who could influence the company in any way other than consumers.

     What if imposing unnecessary taxes on businesses’ productivity, makes them more likely to charge high prices, exploit their workers, and cut costs at the expense of safety?

     What if we ended unnecessary taxes on production, increased taxes on waste and destruction, and created a situation in which businesses faced jail and fines for producing while polluting, but faced lower taxes and no fines for producing without polluting?

     Should a totally financially independent non-profit enterprise - that provides all of its own services - be free to govern itself?

 



     And what if it could govern itself, and provide all its own utilities? Then, is there any reason why it shouldn’t be free to exclude or discriminate? After all, it would be non-state property which would be responsibly owned, probably collectively.
     So the question is: Can a collective exclude, if it is not public?

     Do you believe that a business should be free to exclude police officers? If not, then what about at a time and place where there is likely to be a high risk of violent conflict between police and citizens (such as near a protest)?
     Is the need to have compulsory integration by the government, to create a public space, so important, that we need to sacrifice people’s right to refuse to associate with others whom they might reasonably or unreasonably consider dangerous (such as the police, possible gang members or criminals, or anyone)?
     About five or ten years ago, a black-owned business in San Francisco refused to allow police officers. If a business (typically thought to be open to the public) should be free to discriminate against the police, then is there any reason why I shouldn’t be able to keep an F.B.I. agent out of my private residential home when he doesn’t have a warrant?
     Should the F.B.I. be able to enter my home without a warrant, to enforce unconstitutional laws? Should the fact that I rent my apartment mean that I have no privacy and no real property? Should the fact that Texas and Alaska are the only states that have any semblance of full private property rights, mean that none of us in the other states should ever be free to try to acquire property which will be fully ours (in a way that no government can take it away)?
     What about the fact that the public police protect private property (Warren v. D.C., 1981), while private security guards are trained to protect members of the public instead of the property they guard? Shouldn’t public police protect public individuals, while guards guard the private property?
     You point out that a free society might not have enough guidelines to tell us who owns what, but what about your government’s refusal to distinguish the private sphere from the public sphere? Doesn’t this refusal kind of make it difficult to tell “who owns what”, in a way that is no less problematic than the confusion supposedly posed by a free society?


     I should add that I am confused by the way you talk about discriminatory businesses. You talk about Chik-Fil-A like it is a Woolworth’s that is practicing segregation on site.
     If a business owner spends his money in a way that you find distasteful and discriminatory, you should not risk minimizing the struggle against racial segregation, to call this illegal and demand that the government step in.
     Inevitably, the government’s intervention will only serve to help the company more than it punishes it; such as, by securing the company’s property as long as the company agrees to some piecemeal act of contrition or tokenism in order to keep its reputation intact and its brand alive.
     In my opinion, you should: 1) stop spending your money there; and 2) support the repeal of any existing laws that limit your ability to boycott such a company. That’s because the Taft-Hartley Act may inhibit your freedom to boycott Chik-Fil-A., and because some of your tax money is used to subsidize companies (with Small Business Administration loans, F.D.I.C., protections, and so on).
     This is why ceasing to pay your taxes is so important; it helps us be sure that nobody is being forced to pay money to a company whose practices disgust or offend them.

     I also hope you realize that if you adopt such a loose definition of discrimination, then the kind of exclusion which private security guards practice every night – and which club and bar bouncers practice their entire careers – could be considered illegal on federal anti-discrimination law grounds.
     If you object to discrimination on private property altogether, then that poses a difficult question: How can public law affect private property, without rendering it no longer private? Certainly, private property which submits to public law, inevitably sacrifices some aspect(s) of ownership (such as exclusion, privacy, or both), right?
     This is why the Fifth Amendment requires that private property shall not be taken for public use without just compensation. But consent should be required as well, due to the principle of the consent of the governed. However, if a business owner is using or abusing public utilities, while practicing discrimination against potential customers, then that is unacceptable, and (in my opinion) is the only thing that would merit overriding the need for consent of the governed.
     That’s because discriminating against people while using public services is unethical and should be a crime in all cases (if it is not already). Companies should not be free to exclude potential customers, when those same customers are compelled to fund those companies through the process of taxation and subsidization (and hence, are unable to discriminate against those same companies which are free to discriminate against them).
     Otherwise, if the government (or the public) wants a company to stop discriminating or segregating or excluding, then, by law, it has to compensate the property owner for the loss of income or property value which results from taking away or altering part of the property owner’s bundle of rights.

     Finally, I hope that you will learn to tell the difference between a legal use of the federal government’s authority to regulate interstate commerce, and unconstitutional federal actions which interfere in interstate commerce.
     For example, it would be legitimate for the federal government to prevent states from passing economic, trade, tax, or professional regulations which unfairly benefit labor and capital originating in that state, to the disadvantage of out-of-state bidders.
     But it would not be appropriate for the federal government to redistribute money (first by disproportionately taxing states in defiance of Clauses 1 through 6 of Article I, Section 8;  and then by giving that money disproportionately to other states).
     Also, it would be illegal for the federal government to set up borders between the states that impede commerce, while if the states set up such borders, the federal government could stop them, on the grounds that the federal authority to keep commerce regular (i.e., free of unnatural inhibitions) obligates it to dismantle such barriers.
     Essentially, the federal government only gets to intervene when a state government makes legal moves to monopolize the economy for the benefit of the same state government. Understanding this takes some study of case history regarding the interstate Commerce Clause (and the clauses regarding what makes a tax constitutional), but it’s true.





7. Fulfilling Libertarianism and Leninism Through Mutualism and Syndicalism

 

     If what enterprises want is low (or zero) taxes and regulations, then the government should give them a chance to provide their own utilities and self-regulate.

     Whether that should merit obligating an intentional community, or a cooperative, to provide health services to all people, should be decided among that particular community (as some people will inevitably want to, at least sometimes, purchase health goods and services through an agency other than the federal government).

 

     If enterprises could be financially independent, and self-governing, and they could also be free to cooperate with one another – with the only caveats being that they cooperate on a mutually beneficial voluntary basis, and remain non-for-profit and largely self-regulating – then should they be free to form into a syndicate (i.e., a cooperative of cooperatives)?

     Should they be free to form a recognizable “union label” which will help consumers easily identify all enterprises associating with one another on cooperative or non-profit principles?

     There should be no limit upon boycotts, nor strikes, as far as libertarians understand it. So any Libertarian or liberal who understands that the Taft-Hartley Act unfairly limits the freedom of private-sector workers to engage in boycotts and strikes across multiple industries, needs to understand what that means.

     It means that the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 is an obstacle to a general strike, if we want that general strike to occur legally.

     Repealing the Taft-Hartley Act would widen the realm of legal union organizing activity, and make it possible for boycotts and strikes to be as effective as their participants want them to be.

 

      This legislative strategy – i.e., of repealing Taft-Hartley – would result in a restoration of our natural rights to demand increased democracy in the workplace. It would also utilize our freedom to act within markets, cooperatively pooling our work and our property together, while also leaving cooperatives totally free to cooperate with one-another; and in whatever combinations they wish.
     Even as in the manner of a worker’s council (i.e., a soviet).

     I challenge anyone, on either the left or the right, to argue that this state of affairs would violate the central tenets of either the Libertarian Party line or Marxism-Leninism.
     As a reminder, Lenin allowed trade in his New Economic Policy. If we have voluntary cooperation, then what would stop cooperatives and non-profits from trading with one another?
     That would give us market socialism; a situation in which most of the allocation and distribution is done in markets, but most of the property and businesses would be owned cooperatively or collectively.


     In my opinion, the rights of enterprises to work together and self-regulate – and the rights of collectives to work together and self-regulate – in this manner, are the same. They are both examples of voluntary cooperation.
     I think that this actually vindicates you in terms of your debate with Charlie Kirk at Politicon in 2018. Some felt that you lost that debate when Kirk pointed out that the American Medical Association (A.M.A.) has a quota which limits how many people can become A.M.A.-licensed doctors each year.
     In effect, the ideas that: 1) the A.M.A. did something that caused there to be less doctors; and 2) the A.M.A. is thought to be a union of medical professionals; were used against you, because you are on the left. However, only the first point is true.
     The A.M.A. is not a union, but an industry trade group, also called a trade association or business association. It could be argued that industry trade groups are more similar to business alliances or professional associations than they are to trade unions.
     So why, then, should the A.M.A.’s failings be blamed on unions, the left, and Sam Seder? They shouldn’t.

     Here is how I suspect an agency like the American Medical Association would operate in a free society:
     1) Doctors would be free to associate voluntarily for mutual benefit.
     2) But any third parties negatively affected by the agency’s without their knowledge or consent, would be free to petition the medical professional agency for redress of grievances, through negotiation that occurs through private arbitration.
     3) The organization’s membership should not be limited on the basis of country, unless all members consent to this being the organization’s policy.
     4) The medical association would not derive its authority to license doctors from the state, but from the consent of the remainder of the medical community (which would be embodied in a multitude of medical associations, competing for legitimacy, instead of just one).
     5) Medical professionals should be free to associate with one another, as long as they do not attempt to use violence, or the state (and its violence) to compel people to become their customers or pay them money.
     6) Because of that prohibition on compelling customers to pay (or conscripting a government to do that for you), it would be impossible to bail-out any particular medical professionals’ agency. Since any and all existing “governments” (or self-governments”) would be voluntary-chosen, no existing government or armed authority would rightfully be able to claim a duty or obligation to bail any medical professionals’ agency out. This would allow endless competition for legitimacy; with any particular agency going out of business only when it goes bankrupt, loses credibility, or becomes obviously corrupt. People would be able to withdraw their money without the federal limitations upon boycotts that the Taft-Hartley Act imposes, and without the limitations posed by the process of taxation to support the subsidization of businesses.


     We can practice mutual aid, create mutual aid societies, have direct democracy in our society, and have increasing degrees of democracy in our workplaces, while at the same time demanding lower prices, and lower taxes on things that don’t need to be taxed.

     We can use our already existing right to democracy, and what purchasing power we have as consumers and selling power we have as workers, to effectuate dual power. This is to say that we must use our democratic social power, and our democratic economic power, to challenge and replace our corrupt government.

     We must replace our corrupt government with a consensus between societal interests and economic interests, which imposes a reasonable degree of responsibility upon people not to commit financial crimes and crimes against social decency and sexual innocence.

 

     The right to demand a health insurance premium of zero, is the same thing as the right to refuse to purchase health insurance altogether. And those rights are indistinguishable, in effect, from the right to boycott the health insurance industry.

     To mandate that people purchase health insurance, is thus the same thing as – and indistinguishable from - limiting our right to boycott health insurance companies.

     There is no reason why the disputes between the left and the right cannot be resolved. All it takes is to look beyond mandates and federal power and controls, and to instead immediately seek out whatever common ground exists between the left and the right on the issue, and then to propose new legislation accordingly.

     That is why the people must never be required to buy any particular product, nor any particular type of product (such as health insurance or state mandated identification). Whatever the government wants to force us to buy, the politicians, bureaucrats, government contractors, etc. should, at the very least, pay for it.

 

     We can resolve the differences between the left and the right, as long as we adopt that as a goal, and focus on it.

     We can reduce conflict between the left and the right by re-introducing options which we have long since forgotten, in terms of the economic systems which we could practice, aside from capitalism and socialism.

     Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez once stated in an interview that she believes that the private sector is better than the government at making consumer products, and therefore she supports having a mixed economy. We must teach high school and college students about mixed economies, if we are to expect less violent conflict between left-wing and right-wing extremists.

 


     I believe that teaching people about the syndicalism of Rudolf Rocker, the Mutualism of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (and propagating mutual aid societies), and “Georgism” (Henry George’s Land Value Taxation model) will help decrease the conflict and antipathy between the socialists (etc.) on the left and the capitalists (etc.) on the right.

     Which brings me to Georgism.

 

 



8. Regarding the Taxation of Unimproved Land Value, Church Land Holdings, and Criminal Enterprise

 

     You say that you want to protect the commons. Yet you seem to be unconcerned about the risk that the commons could be subsumed under, and crushed by, the public sector and the federal government. You seem to think that there is no role for the states and localities, and the markets or the people, in terms of taking care of the environment, and managing land.

     Why should the federal government protect the environment, when federal authorities have to travel long distances to the localities? Doesn’t this take up energy, and pollution, and doesn’t the environment suffer in the process?

     The fact that the commons must be protected (and it must) does not necessarily mean that the federal government should protect it. If all localities had the same basic standard on environmental protection – from whatever source, not necessarily the federal government – then there would be no need to establish statewide or federal legislation, nor international treaties, on the environment, in the first place.

 

     Sometimes you speak as if, if the markets or the businesses or the people can’t solve the whole problem, then only the federal government should be allowed to solve the problem. But I disagree.

     I think that what you are doing is - in effect, whether you are trying to do it or not - making excuses for the federal government, when it tries to stop states, and businesses and the market, and ordinary people, and churches and charities, etc., from attempting to solve the problem.

     Are you OK with people living in tiny houses? [I suppose that Seder would say yes.] What about tents? [I suppose that Seder would say that this is a shame and government should intervene to help people into better living conditions.]
     I won’t ask you to defend the idea that living in a tent is better than living with no house at all, the way Walter Block wanted you to admit that a very low wage is better than no wage at all. But I do want to point out that tiny houses and tents both help solve the problem of homelessness (albeit to a small degree).
     Now, I admit that “fixing” the problem with the housing market, would help solve homelessness and houselessness a lot more than letting people set up more tent cities. Especially because high rents keep livable units unoccupied.
     But those high rents are not solely the fault of greedy landlords and developers. Those high rents are also enabled by government; by local government that thrives on tourist dollars and construction dollars, and that wants to bring wealthy people in and house them, and want to exact high taxes from landlords.
     So it is true that solving homelessness should involve more placing homeless people in already livable units, than expecting them to keep trying to construct their own. But that doesn’t mean that more government intervention is necessary to do that; in fact, as I explained, government intervention props up the over-production of housing units. And also, because government intervention tends to justify destruction and raids when it comes to homeless encampments.
     The homelessness and housing problems need “fixing”, but not in the sense that the economy should be “fixed” in the same way that a crooked casino game could be “fixed”. More government intervention is not a solution.

     There is no need to get rid of people’s attempts to provide solutions, like tiny houses and tents, just because they do not solve the entire problem. The federal government does not solve the entirety of the problems which our country faces.
     If the fact that the federal government doesn’t solve everything, can be cited to justify limiting all other organizations’ abilities to solve those same problems, then why should I even bother to get out of bed in the morning? Why shouldn’t the federal government get me out of bed, and dress me, and feed me, and wipe my ass?
     I cannot wrap my mind around the level of trust you have in the federal government’s power to solve problems, despite all the historical evidence showing how many times it has failed and betrayed the American people. I hope that you realize that you are living in a country in which right-wing, poor-shaming police tell churches not to feed the homeless, and then those concerns are supported by supposedly well-meaning liberals, who jump up and say that they support those restrictions because the food was not inspected by the local health inspector.
     People would rather have something than nothing. Walter Block saying it doesn’t make it true, and you not saying it doesn’t make it not true. It’s just true. People would rather have a sandwich than starve, they would rather sleep in a tent than a bush, and they would rather take medicine without a prescription than take nothing and risk death.

     We need to look outside of the federal government for solutions sometimes; namely, when the government fails.
     Market failure is a real concern, but so is the failure of government. We don’t need to limit the market’s ability to respond when the government fails.
     This country is in dire straits. Poverty and homelessness and drug addiction and disease are everywhere. It is irrational to suggest that the solution to market failure is to increase the number of problems which the federal government has the exclusive authority to solve, because this makes us more susceptible to government failure.
     It’s not that markets, private property, and contracts are always a better way than collective economic planning, to distribute resources. But they are necessary when the government collapses, or the economy collapses. Especially after government has monopolized the ways in which collective economic planning can be legally performed.
     This is why non-state-affiliated cooperatives could and should wield their economic power, and not surrender it to the state.

    
     I believe that the markets, the people, and the communities can and should work together to establish a minimum standard regarding how to achieve rapid advances in both environmental preservation and economic prosperity simultaneously.
     This standard should be applied in as many locales as possible, but always on as voluntary and democratic a basis as possible (that is, making sure to require unanimity at some point or at some level, or at the very least, participatory and consensus-based democracy).
     I suggest that Land Value Taxation be that standard; that is, Henry George’s model of a fee, paid to the community, for the protection of land which is falling into disrepair (or which is losing value through rent theft, etc.).

 

     Many on the left want to tax churches. Others argue that churches should not pay taxes because many are non-profit and engage in charity works.

     What if a church is a non-profit, does no business (and only does charity), and makes no profits whatsoever? Would it be justifiable to tax the church’s owner (or owners) of anything else besides the value of their land?

 

     I think the rich should pay more taxes than the poor. But I don’t believe that the rich should be taxed simply because they’re rich.

     In my opinion, people should be taxed because (and if) they chose to do something illegal (or, more importantly, immoral) in order to make money. But to call this taxation isn’t exactly accurate; they should be fined, and jailed. And if they acquired their wealth through illicit and/or immoral means, then they should be found guilty of a financial crime.

     And, if applicable, any assets they stole - or “legally stole” through eminent domain, or through the often unconstitutional process of taxation to fund business subsidies - should be given back to the people from whom they were stolen.
     Also, some additional costs should go towards reimbursing government for prosecuting the financial criminal, and for ensuring that the victim be compensated. But in a free society, there would be no need to tax people to reimburse government for these purposes, until after the government has apprehended the criminal.
     This could be described as “bounty hunter rules”, but the point is to compensate a job well done, and to reduce the risk that someone will turn in an innocent person for a reward, by making the “bounty hunter” take the cost of apprehending the suspect onto himself.



     I say this – that taxes should only be levied in order to punish financial criminals (etc.) on purpose - to suggest that, perhaps, the government should chiefly be funded by funds legally expropriated from people who defrauded taxpayers.

     It’s fine if you want to use the tax code to deter unwanted behaviors, but you should first make sure that those behaviors are behaviors which actually hurt someone or damage their property. The tax code should be used to deter crimes (such as financial crimes, and pollution), and should never deter productivity.

     And then, in my opinion, the vast amounts of land which the federal government owns and/or manages, should be given back to some combination of the states, their county governments, groups of non-profit environmental preservation agencies, Native American tribes, all of the above, or the people in general.

 

     What if you could tax land instead of taxing wealth?

     And what if - as part of such a tax program - you could tax churches, but only for their unimproved land value, so that they couldn’t be required to generate a profit in order to cover the costs of their taxes?

     That is, what if you could tax churches only for allowing their land to fall into disrepair, or for defrauding people of their money? Say they can keep their buildings but not their land.

     And the same goes for businesses. How about that?

     Tax waste and destruction, not work and production. What about taxing unimproved land value?

 

     Enacting land value taxation could recoup a whole third of the G.D.P. in taxes, paying for all levels of government combined (which now costs about $8 trillion per year).

     All other currently existing forms of taxes (the majority of which are hated by most Americans) could be eliminated, and replaced with a new tax, payable to each local community. Those fees would fund Community Land Trusts (C.L.T.s), which are non-profit, non-governmental entities. These C.L.T.s would bring together people and organizations in the area (preferably in the watershed or bioregion) who share the goal of aligning a community’s economic future with its environmental sustainability goals and ecological preservation goals.

     The eventual long-term goal of this would be to create a situation in which as many non-polluters in the area as possible, profit economically from cooperative efforts to preserve the local environment.

     Thus, Georgism, Land Value Taxation, and C.L.T.s could potentially function as a sort of decentralized version of a national “green jobs initiative” or Green New Deal -type program. It could also reduce the need for federal environmental legislation, the E.P.A., and international environmental treaties.

     If the E.P.A. is ineffective and unconstitutional, then why not seek other means to protect the environment? What do you think?

 






9. Federal Health Subsidies, Debt, and M.M.T. (Modern Monetary Theory)

 

     Would it be fair to say that the only reason that we, as Americans, are talking about federal Medicare and Medicaid subsidies going to the states, is because the state governments can’t (or simply don’t) sufficiently fund themselves?

     And isn’t that because they don’t have their shit together, vis-à-vis their budgets and taxes?

     And wouldn’t it also be fair to say that we have two debt crises on our hands; i.e., the national debt, and also the states’ debts (in terms of their unfunded obligations to state workers, through pensions)?

     I assume that you would agree.

     So why not give the states a tax regime that allows them to produce, while holding polluters responsible, so that they can fund their governments adequately, instead of depending on the federal government’s money?

     If the states can fund health and environment, and other things, without the federal government’s money, then health and environmental problems can be solved without the state requiring their people to submit to unpopular federal government’s laws in the process.

 

     If the states and the people didn’t need the federal government so much, and we had the unlimited right to strike and boycott and form new unions, and businesses could self-regulate as long as they provided their own utilities and protected their own property, then the private and public sectors (and the other sectors) would not be anywhere near as entangled with – and unnecessarily dependent upon – each other, as they are now.

     At the same time that we disentangle the government from society and the economy, we should disentangle the oikos – the socio-economic sector of the home and the private residence – from the chrematistics (unnatural wealth acquisition) associated with the for-profit stock market, large corrupt multinational corporations, and business that prop themselves up with taxpayer dollars.

     Nobody would be dependent upon the need to curry favor – whether for themselves or their businesses – from corrupt government (nor its cronies, nor bureaucracies and politicians), nor the for-profit capitalist system, in order to obtain wealth, or recognition of our many freedoms.

 

     You say that things like food and health care and environmental quality are things that the government should do, so that the people no longer “have to worry about” problems like starvation and illiteracy and pollution.

     But I’m concerned that you care more about not worrying about some problems, than you care about solving the problem.

 

     Take the national debt, for example.

     The United States currently holds more than $25 trillion in debt. And maybe a tax on wealth could fix that problem gradually over a few decades. Maybe a tax on unimproved land value could do the same. Set that aside for a moment.

     Most people on the left, say about the national debt, “We just print money and give it to the banks, so why can’t we just print money and bail-out the people?” You act like we can inflate forever, because if we default, we mostly default to “ourselves”.

     As if that doesn’t mean future generations; i.e., our children and grandchildren, who will have to inherit the messes and debts we leave behind. As if our foreign creditors will not eventually stop investing in us (or worse yet, work with each other to form an economic and military alliance that could potentially challenge the United States militarily) as a result.

 

     Will you admit that those consequences are not impossible? Why kick the can down the road, or reason that the problem is not a severe problem (or that it can be ignored), when you could easily solve the problem instead?

     Why not simply solve the problem, and avert the debt crisis, so that you don’t have to worry about the possibility that the national debt could cause problems, ever again?

 

     We could easily pay off that debt, by one trillion dollars per year, by: 1) passing a tax code that targets destruction and waste rather than work and productivity and trade; and then 2) by having the federal government take in one trillion more dollars than it spends, every year, for the next 25 years, and paying that money directly into the hands of our creditors.

     The size of the federal government would be negotiable; whether it’s $2 trillion, or $3 trillion, or $4 trillion, or $5 trillion. As long as the expected tax revenue is one trillion dollars greater than the spending total, every year for 25 years, the federal government’s overall budget could be whatever size people want it to be.

 

 

10. How Much Union-Busting Should the Federal Government Do?

 

     You want government to do enough to help keep people free from fear that they won’t be able to provide their families with the basic necessities of life.

     But increasing the number of federal workers, and increasing the number of industries which the government regulates or participates in, could lead to more limitations upon workers.

     Think about it: If we had obeyed the Constitution, the only workers whom would be employed by the federal government as a function of Congress’s powers, would be military, treasury, and postal workers (and a few others, like immigrant naturalization services employees).

     If there were more – or total – federal control over health and the environment (and other industries), then wouldn’t the federal government be able to declare that certain industries are so essential, that long strikes by their workers are unacceptable, and must be broken up by government (as in what happened with the air traffic controllers’ union under Reagan)?

 

     I suggest that workers are safer when fewer people are working for the federal government, than when the federal government is employing massive numbers of people.

     We may be tempted to take federal jobs for the high pay and the job security, but in our hearts, we know that these agencies are often unconstitutional, and could be rendered ineffective (or ordered disbanded) with the stroke of a governor’s pen.

     In my opinion, the more industries in which the federal government is involved, the more industries in which the federal government can break strikes. The federal government will always have more power to break-up strikes by public-sector workers than by private-sector workers.

 

     I caution you about excusing federal involvement in health and education, because of what it implies, with regard to the interpretation of the legitimate powers of Congress as laid out in the Constitution.

     The only reasons that regulating health and regulating the environment continue to be perceived as federal powers, are that: 1) the abuse of the Necessary and Proper Clause has led to numerous acts of Congress being justified solely on the basis that they seem necessary, and that we think only the federal government is capable of doing them; and 2) the abuse of the General Welfare Clause and the government’s authority to defend lands of strategic importance to the military and to protecting government buildings, allowed the creation of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, which split into the Department of Education and the Department of Health and Human Services.

     To say it more directly: If you don’t pursue newly proposed legislation through a constitutional amendment, then you cannot excuse federal involvement in health and environment, without also excusing federal government overreach in land management, and unlimited exclusive federal authority over territories which rightfully belong to the states.

 

     This overreach is important to avoid, because it hinders the states’ abilities to make full productive use of that land, and to protect that land better than the federal government does. Negligent land management also increases the risk that wildfires could harm people besides federal employees and property not owned or managed by the federal government.

     All federal lands outside of the District of Columbia and overseas possessions, should be returned to whomever can make the most productive use of the land, whether that’s the states, the people, or the indigenous tribes. That is, without either devastating the quality of the land, or exploiting the workers, or denying the public the right to share in the profits from the removal of those natural resources.

 

 

11. Property Rights Without the State

 

     I noticed, in your talk with Yaron Brook, that Brook seems to think that government should only protect our lives, liberty, and property. He seems to think that courts are necessary to make this happen.

     I noticed that you were disappointed to discover that Brook didn’t have an answer, when it comes to the question of what court (or whom, or what principle) would determine what kinds of property rights claims are acceptable, if not the government and the courts that it constitutes.

     So far, I have defended a “minarchist” (minimal government) idea of libertarianism, which provides that the federal government perform few functions other than “money, mail, and military”, but I would be glad to “keep going” in terms of explaining how property rights and courts would function in a stateless society, if you’ll indulge me.

 

     It seems to me that Yaron Brook would not require much in order to justify a property claim.

     Brook didn’t use the phrase “possession is nine-tenths of the law”, but I suspect that he might agree with that idea.

     If he does, then in my opinion, this is a problem, and his stance on what makes a property claim just, should not satisfy you.

 

     I believe that some basic rules regarding homesteading - and regarding what constitutes productive use of property - must be exercised, long before we consider using force to back-up someone’s property claim.

     Having something in your possession should certainly not be regarded as outweighing all other factors, as “possession is nine-tenths of the law” would suggest. If mere possession were more important than all other factors, then the fact that I own a slave could potentially be construed to justify my continued ownership of that slave.

     So, in my opinion, “possession is four-tenths of property” would be a much more reasonable thing to say. The fact that you own something is important, but it should not be the only factor in determining whether your property claim is just.

 

     The principles that would tell us what sorts of property rights claims should be enforced, are the principles implied by O&U norms (occupancy and use norms).

     This is to say that if someone allows their property to fall into disrepair, or abandons it, or doesn’t use it often enough for it to be considered “in use”, then it would be difficult to argue that the government should use force in order to protect that property claim against people who wish to occupy it (or make it into a “squat”) in order to make (more) productive use of it.

     Occupancy and use norms could become more widespread through: 1) expanding homesteading rights; 2) urging all states aside from Wisconsin to pass homesteading tax credits that relieve the tax burdens of people who rent apartments (as Wisconsin already has this credit); and 3) expanding the set of conditions under which people can take advantage of their adverse possession rights (“squatters’ rights”) in order to acquire disused and abandoned property.

 

     A Geo-Mutualist economic system would fit right in line with occupancy and use norms.

     That’s because a Geo-Mutualist system would combine Georgist Land Value Taxation (which would govern the tax code, the environment, and the management of land) with Mutualism (which would govern possession rights, and the credit and banking systems).

     Georgism would entail that a decentralized network of not-for-profit, non-state agencies manage the environment and collect fees to manage the land. Meanwhile, ordinary residents would be free to possess and own their homes, without fear of worrying that their property rights and privacy will be eroded by warrantless searches and wiretaps, and without fear of worrying that they could be taxed out of their neighborhoods or out of their homes.

 

     If Community Land Trusts can prove themselves better than the government at managing land and protecting the environment, then C.L.T.s could begin to exercise the functions of a civil land registry – or county recorder of deeds’ office – and establish a registry of legitimate claims to landed property in a given community or region.

     This may seem strange and unnecessary, but it is completely necessary, to solve and confront the problem presented by corrupt politicians helping their business criminal friends acquire vast amounts of land (of which the rest of us are then incapable of making use).

     Think about it this way: If a county recorder of deeds office becomes corrupt, it can’t go out of business; it can only be reformed through legislation, or better policing, or the election of new officials (or some combination of the above).

     Until such a change can occur, the people will need an alternative registry of legitimate landed property claims in the community. This registry should provide that all polluted, abandoned, and vacant lands, be considered illegitimate property claims.

     There is a pro-cryptocurrency organization called E.F.F., which stands for Electronic Frontiers Foundation. The E.F.F. is creating a list of illegitimate intellectual property claims, which it wishes to challenge, while promoting internet civil liberties.

     This is what needs to happen, but in regard to landed property claims, as well as intellectual property rights claims.

 

     Such an alternative registry of landed property rights claims should serve the “dual power” goal of creating a new, voluntary, popular form of self-government, which would eventually grow, until it is capable of doing things the government has failed to do.

     And then, finally, until it can challenge the government for legitimacy, and replace it (or, at the very least, present people with an opportunity to safely choose between the U.S. government and the new people’s government, without fear of consequences or reprisal from the government they didn’t elect).

 

 




12. Courts and Laws Without the State


     If you want to know how courts would be run, and how laws (or something like laws) would be administered, in the absence of the state, you can read Robert P. Murphy’s book Chaos Theory, or Gary E. Chartier’s book Anarchy and Legal Order, or read what Roderick T. Long and Stefan Molyneux have said on the topic of Dispute Resolution Organizations (D.R.O.s).
     Please notice that, in the previous sentence, I used the word “administered” rather than “enforced” in regards to how law would be applied.

     To summarize, the government is a social contract whereby we all agree to defend each other’s lives and liberty and property. It is a contract which is (supposed to be) mutually beneficial.
     And, observing that large numbers of people manage expensive social insurance programs through the government, and observing that the government maintains a military apparatus which insures us against attacks, it becomes evident that one of the most important functions of the government is to act, to some degree, like an insurance company.
     Through the social contract of government, we promise each other various forms of social insurance; such as insurance in times of joblessness (unemployment), hunger (Food Stamps / S.N.A.P.), old age (Social Security), and sickness (Medicare and Medicaid).
     But I don’t want to take 320 million Americans in sickness and in health. I want to take my future wife in sickness and in health! Who we ask for help, when we are sick or old, is our business, and it is certainly not a national issue.
     So this prompts us to ask whether there is a way to provide social insurance outside of the state. And the answer is that, of course, there is. Mutual aid societies and burial societies facilitate this. If a credible, responsible insurance company were to operate without state licensure – and it were to trade in a currency not considered a legal currency in the U.S. - then that company would be able to provide social insurance outside of the state.
     So therefore, there is libertarian theory regarding the provision of social insurance outside of the state; as well as regarding the provision of justice – including law, courts, property protection, and property dispute resolution – outside of the state.    

     Many libertarians believe that if society became stateless, and didn’t abolish markets, then Dispute Resolution Organizations - or “private adjudication agencies”, “private arbitration agencies”, or so-called “private courts” - would act as social insurance companies, and perform many or most of what few beneficial functions the state now performs.
     The D.R.O.s’ only clients would be those who agree to be their clients. Clients could not – legally nor ethically – be obligated, by any government, to associate with any D.R.O. for any reason, unless and until it has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt that they committed a crime against another client of that D.R.O. (and thus owe that D.R.O. something).
     Nor would anyone be compelled to associate with any particular D.R.O. due to the location or jurisdiction of their residence.


     I want to make sure that you (and Ben Burgis) understand the difference between a D.R.O. and a Brazilian drug gang. Agencies like drug gangs, other street gangs, and the types of police officers that we call “beat cops”, all operate on the principle of territory. The legal organizations among those, operate also on the principle of jurisdiction.
     Dispute Resolution Organizations, and any armed people who might be in the street so that they can volunteer to help others around who may be in need of protection, do not operate on the principles of territory. D.R.O.s, and the type of police officers that America had in the 1950s which were known as “peace officers”, would serve the people who choose to ask them for help.

     You might argue that this principle of only helping people who ask for our help, could be used to justify excluding people who didn’t pay, from being helped by private fire-fighting companies. But those of us who know that firefighters sometimes steal things from people’s homes, can decide for ourselves whether we want government employees in our homes.
     Moreover, there is nothing about private fire companies which would preclude them from allowing a neighbor to pay last-minute to put their fire out; whether at a higher rate than normal, or at a normal rate. In a free society, nothing would stop such a company from allowing the neighbor to volunteer to aim one of the hoses, in order to qualify for that lower rate. People would be free to shop around, and choose the firefighting service they like the best.
     Additionally, there are not only public and private firefighting agencies, but there is also a quasi-nongovernmental (QUANGO) agency which combines features of the two, called the Illinois Mutual Aid Box Alarm System (M.A.B.A.S.). In my opinion, the more diverse types of businesses we have, offering services, the greater degree of choice the people will have regarding how they would optimize quantity, quality, etc. when choosing a service provider.

     The point is that we should only be protected by people we trust, and people we choose.
     Right now at protests in America, you can tell a police officer that someone just assaulted you, and if the officer was ordered to stand where he is standing, then he has no obligation to do anything about the crime, as long as he didn’t see it happen.
     You may worry about private fire-fighting agencies excluding people who are in need, but: 1) those people are adults who cannot ethically be prohibited from making the decision not to pay for private insurance; and 2) you don’t seem the least bit worried about the government excluding people who are in need, when it comes to the police deciding not to protect people (who have been legally disarmed, and can only legally come to state gun licensing boards, or else the police, when they feel their physical safety is under threat).

     Returning to the topic of drug gangs:
     Two drug gangs going to war with each other, is not the same thing as two Dispute Resolution Organizations negotiating with each other. D.R.O.s would not go to war with each other, because in a free society, the only “laws” would be: 1) protect those incapable of protecting themselves, i.e., children; 2) respect other people’s property unless they stole it; and 3) nobody is allowed to use force except in self-defense.
     The fact that nobody would be allowed to initiate violence is what would require D.R.O.s to keep negotiating with each other even when they feel the temptation to resort to violence. Suppose that I accuse you of trying to kill me, I have no evidence, but I am adamant that I feel unsafe, and I say we have to negotiate. Even if I believe you’re trying to kill me, there is a way to avoid violence.
     Just find a mutually agreeable arrangement. Any mutually agreeable arrangement. Say we have to stay 2,000 miles away from each other at all times. Say one of us has to relocate. Say one or both of us can’t be allowed to use certain tracking technologies that could help us hunt the other down to kill or harass them.
     A mutually agreeable arrangement will be found, as long as nobody is free to resort to violence to end the conflict, and as long as the state does not arbitrarily take away methods which could resolve the conflict. [Note: I’m not talking about dueling. Dueling is arguably voluntary, but it is murder and involves violence, which a prohibition on initiating violence would mean to avoid. And a duel has to be initiated by one person or the other, through a challenge.]

     Saying that a resolution must be found – and then resolving to do something about it when somebody resorts to violence – is very different from assuming that a resolution will be found. It’s very different from simply reasoning or guessing that drug gangs wouldn’t go to war with each other just because fighting each other presents risks of harm.
     As Hannah Arendt said, the use of violence is pre-political. To put it another way, the point of politics (in this case, the point of D.R.O.s and libertarianism), is to prevent and avoid violence. If you think about it, this is diametrically opposed to the idea that the state is supposed to wield a monopoly on the legitimate use of force. If the point of politics is to avoid violence, then what is the state doing legitimizing violence?


     I suspect that you believe that it’s acceptable that the state legitimizes violence, because tax cheats need to go to jail, and as long as the state is representative of society at large. But I also think you have failed to understand why libertarians criticize the idea of a monopoly on force.

     Libertarians criticize the state wielding a monopoly on the legitimate use of force, not because libertarians want to use force a lot and have it be legitimate, but because they want to defend themselves and their own property.
     We acknowledge that the state’s monopolization of force, has the effect of taking away our right to defend ourselves without begging or paying the state for permission to do so. We also acknowledge that the state is legitimizing violence instead of making it go away.
     Therefore we challenge the monopolization of force, not because we resent force being monopolized, but because force and violence should not be used against anybody (except in self-defense, after somebody else has already initiated it, or has attempted to do so, or has made realistic or credible threats or plans to do so).
     We reject the legitimacy of violence, and the monopolization of force, towards the state and the police, to the detriment of the dispersed individuals who are actually on the ground and in their homes and in need of defending.

     Currently we use violent enforcement, and the threat of fines and jailing, to try to deter people from behaviors we consider harmful. But couldn’t potentially dangerous activities be deterred through the widespread adoption of high insurance rates as the price of engaging in such activities?

     Imagine that you are a hospital employee, and you smoke cigarettes. Then, one day, you are told that you will be fired if you continue to smoke cigarettes. Is that reasonable? Wouldn’t you rather lose a quarter an hour of your pay, or pay a little extra in union dues, or pay a fine, or pay higher insurance premiums, than lose your job and your livelihood?

     If anyone is going to tell you that you can’t smoke, for example, then shouldn’t it be your employer, or your medical insurer, or the particular person whose property you are standing on, instead of an entire state or country (which is a lot harder to leave than someone’s property)?

     You can learn more about the realistic possibility of firing health workers for smoking at the article linked below:

     http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/can-employer-threaten-fire-us-quit-smoking.html

 

     If higher insurance premiums are the most appropriate countermeasure against the risks associated with your continued smoking, then it might be reasonable to suggest that, some day, we could deter most harmful activities through higher insurance costs, instead of through violence and jail time.

     But when it comes to D.R.O.s, it’s not that high financial disincentive to resort to violence would be the only thing that deters D.R.O.s. from going to war with each other. There would also be a law – probably more or less the only law (aside from two others to respect legitimate property, and protect children and the vulnerable) – that would prohibit D.R.O.s from going to war with each other.
     You might say to this, “Well one D.R.O. could just attack the other, and break the law.” That’s true, but it was always true. The benefit of a free society is that initiatory acts of aggression like that, and wars, would be considered organized crimes perpetrated by insane companies and gangs, rather than being brushed off as legitimate acts of governments.

     We could potentially replace the monolithic federal government (and the local and state governments which it considers to be its subsidiaries) with a large handful of insurance companies.
     These companies would compete against each other for legitimacy, without any such company being allowed to force or otherwise require anyone to become a client, customer, or member (that is, unless they’ve stolen from, or defrauded that company first).
     If no company in the whole economy could be bailed-out with extorted taxpayer funds, and no company could conscript its clients with the help of a government, then we would have an economy based on consent. We would have a stateless market society, where everyone who wants access to markets can have it, and everyone who doesn’t like markets can choose non-governmental avenues of participatory economic planning and cooperative forms of distribution.

     The government would not have a monopoly over courts, nor democracy.
     No government would have a monopoly over “law” (but again, public law would probably not exist; at least not outside of intentional communities). Arguably, law doesn’t even originate in the state.
     The most common model of the state in the modern day, is the bourgeois Westphalian nation-state. Yet law itself, and courts, and contracts, the institution of property, the use of bills of lading as currency, merchant law, democracy, and republicanism, all preceded the rise of centralized states, federations, and imperialism.
     So why, then, are we looking to the state to provide us with democracy? Democracy was within us the whole time.

 

     If insurance companies were to coordinate with agencies like the I.S.O. (the International Organization for Standardization, the international agency dedicated to establishing reasonable and uniform technical, industrial, and commercial standards), then it’s possible that a handful of upstanding insurance companies (of all kinds) would step up to challenge the government for legitimacy, touting those successes. Especially if such companies could establish health and safety standards, and standards regarding technical precision, and administer those standards reliably, with minimum or zero use of force.

     Those insurance companies which become capable, and wise enough, to establish trustworthy standards, and apply and administer them with as little use of force as possible, will emerge the victors in the economic competition to deter risks and dangers, without making risk-taking impossible (just expensive) and without threatening violence, by making sure that people who suffer from crimes are compensated and people who suffer from accidents are assisted.

     Companies that fail to do those things should expect to be exposed, if they used violence or approved of flawed standards in order to benefit financially. But companies that prove themselves exceptionally trustworthy will set standards for other companies; not to be obeyed, but to be topped, outdone, and outperformed.

     However, the issue of which company is the most trustworthy, will be considered, to some extent, subjective (especially if a very individualistic society were to attempt to achieve such a stateless state of affairs). But the need for popular and widespread standards will diminish the severity of this problem, as standards will come and go; more so during periods of intense innovation, but overall, less and less, slowly, over time.

 

     Arbitration agencies and D.R.O.s – some for-profit and some not for profit - could compete for legitimacy against one another, instead of being maintained by corrupt governments, each given its own fiefdom in which to rule (i.e., its jurisdiction).

     The less we think of “the public” as the government, and the more we think of “the public” as a group of 320 million people who were wronged and need to be compensated, the sooner we will realize that there is no such thing as a “crime against the public”.

     Even if there were, that does not make it OK for the government to play the victim by impersonating We the People. But “the public” cannot appear in a courtroom, except as represented by corrupt political entities that legalize their own crimes.

     If we realize that individuals are wronged, whenever “the public” is supposedly wronged, then the need for public courts will vanish. All crimes will be seen as what they are; crimes committed by one particular person against another particular person (or multiple people). If we punished criminals for their crimes enough, then we wouldn’t feel the need to tack extra blame onto them for supposedly threatening the remainder of the community (which not every criminal does).

     So, then, why should criminal law, and public law, exist at all? Why should anything remain, except private law, private arbitration, private courts, and the contracts which we make among ourselves? After all, contracts begin to resemble laws, when they exist for decades and decades.

 

     There is a place for the public sector (or “pure public” sector), but if its existence makes it more difficult to differentiate private from public - and public from common – then the public sector must be shrunk.
     Labor contracts, allowed to exist for decades without being re-negotiated, arguably cause the stagnation of wages. Since the Constitution prohibits the government from impairing the obligation of contracts, the effect is that a contract comes to resemble a law, the longer that it is allowed to stand, and go un-renegotiated.
     The Constitution is arguably one of such contracts; it is a contract regarding which types of laws we ought to allow to exist, and at which level of government.
     Ron Paul once said something to the effect of, “The First Amendment begins, ‘The government shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion…’, but if you ask me, they should have stopped after ‘The government shall make no law’.”
     That is basically what libertarians are asking for. The minarchists among us want a government that only protects life, liberty, and property; while the radical stateless libertarians go further, demanding that there be only, essentially, one law: that nobody is allowed to use force, except in self-defense.

     So if we have contracts, which are similar enough to laws; and we have consensus-based democracy in society, which is better that the democracy afforded to us by our corrupt government; and we have private arbitration, which affords us more privacy and less exposure to corrupt government officials than public courts do…
     … then why on Earth don’t we switch to stateless market-anarchism!?

     Because there is still one problem to work out: Whether it is acceptable to use violence in defense of your property, in addition to using it in defense of your own body.






13. Resolving Property Disputes Without the State

     To a significant extent, this debate breaks down along left-vs.-right lines (with most of the left saying it’s not acceptable, and the right saying it is).

     Arguably, defending your home is necessary (especially if defenseless people are inside of it), but the use of violence is arguably only permissible if the intruder is armed or threatens violence.
     Still, some would argue that the mere act of intrusion itself constitutes a threat, and thus support “Castle Doctrine” -type laws (which hold that “a man’s home is his castle” and protect homeowners from responsibility).
     In a voluntary society, each intentional community would be free to choose whether to hold such homeowners responsible, and they would also be free to change those policies.


      I should answer the question you posed to Adam Kokesh (which I’ll paraphrase); “What happens when Chevron wants to buy your land, and you don’t sell, and then they hire a private army to harass you or take your land?”
     The answer is that Chevron would have to take “no” for an answer, and stop harassing the land owner. Yet you still ask, “What if their army is bigger than yours?” Then you call your friends, family, and neighbors to help you defend your land.

     Yet you still ask, “What if Chevron’s army just decides to defeat your army, and takes your land?” In my opinion, these are the answers:
     1) Then that is a horrible atrocity, and someone should destroy Chevron, or charge its owners with murder, to stop it from doing such a thing ever again; and
     2) Sometimes the smaller army wins. Sometimes the smaller army has better, more tenacious, and more resilient fighters. Sometimes you lose a battle but go on to win the war.


     Suppose that there is a real dispute over who owns a piece of land, or a house, and there’s a lawsuit at private court about it. Say that nobody truly knows who owns it. Is violence unavoidable at this point? You might say “yes”, but it is not.
     Have you ever heard of time-shares? A so-called “private court” - mutually trusted and chosen by the plaintiff’s D.R.O. and the defendant’s D.R.O. - could decide that the two litigants should each take the house for six months out of the year (or some more detailed arrangement optimized to accommodate as many of their needs as possible).
     Have you heard of buildings having multiple levels? If two people want to occupy the same territory, one of them can live at the ground level, and the other can live in the basement or on a second floor or attic.
     Violence is avoidable. You just have to keep looking for peaceful solutions which are sufficiently agreeable to all parties involved.



     I heard your conversation with former Libertarian presidential candidate, and radio host, Darryl Perry.
     I’m sorry to hear that your take-away from that conversation, was apparently that different armed enforcement agencies would fight each other for the right to defend people’s parcels of land. That is not at all what a stateless market society would involve.
     As I hope I’ve made clear, territory would have nothing to do with it. If you hire someone to protect your property, and then leave for the day, and you come back and some other guard has kicked his ass and taken his place, then that would be considered an attack and an act of theft.
     That upstart guard (who’s really just a terrorist) would not “win” just by defeating someone else who was hired specifically to guard someone’s property for them. Anyone who forces people to pay them – or tries to give someone a service against their will, by first occupying their land, and then saying they’ve defended it – will be considered a financial criminal (and in the case of this example, a trespasser as well).



     It’s important to remember that property disputes don’t only relate to homes and landed property; they also relate to our income from labor.

     The Fifth Amendment provides that none of our property may be taken for public use without just compensation. The Thirteenth Amendment provides that we should not be subjected to involuntary servitude unless we are first duly convicted of a crime and then punished.
     Doesn’t this servitude include rendering money to the government, for the payment of taxes, being that we earned that money through work and servitude?

     If we are required to render our income to the government, and the Constitution never originally provided for the federal taxation of our earned income derived from labor, then for what are we being punished?
     Certainly you don’t think that having our income taken away, is a reward, do you? Or that the costs and corruption of government are worth the price we “pay” for them?
     But there it is: We don’t “pay” taxes. Taxes are taken out of our checks before we ever get to hold the money in our hands. The money is taken, the government makes money off of our money by holding onto it, and government gives us whatever level of transparency about how the money was spent, that it feels like giving us.
     Arguably this is an extortive process, since we have no choice but to pay, or else go to jail.

     This is why taxation is immoral.
     When it is done involuntarily (ignoring the need to respect the consent of the governed), or done by a corrupt government, then taxation is immoral. When the tax rate is egregious, or the type of tax is economically inefficient, then that is an insult to injury.
     Liberals should keep the following facts in mind that when the punishment for not paying your taxes is going to jail:
     1) the fact that you can “choose” to go to jail, doesn’t make paying taxes “optional”;
     2) you support depriving people of their right to defend themselves against both physical assault and sexual assault (i.e., rape) while they’re in their jail cell; and
     3) we risk creating a society in which we assume that people are good and law-abiding and “charitable” as long as they pay their taxes, and in which we assume that all people are law-abiding because we assume that the government is taking money out of everyone’s check and making them into charitable people by force.

     Do you think the punishment for non-payment of taxes, should include having your right to defend yourself against rape, taken away from you?
     This is not necessarily. Putting people in cages is not necessary. Threatening people with guns as a first-ditch effort is not helpful.
     Force isn’t how you turn bad people into good people. Force, and the legal use of it, only show bad people how to get away with what ought to be considered crimes.


     It is possible to get people to pay their taxes without the threat of force. Just provide them with a wide array of options.
     It’s not that you want people to give the I.R.S. money; presumably the point is to fund public services and infrastructure, right?
     So, then, why not say to people who don’t want to pay their taxes, “Give us a few weeks of physical labor per year, to clean up parks and construct government buildings, and then you won’t have to pay anything.”? Why not let them work in lieu of payment, or opt out of certain programs in exchange for a reduced tax bill, or let the citizen make suggestions himself?
     I hope that, by increasing the number of alternatives available to people, we can arrive at a place where participation in taxation, government programs, and eventually government itself, are wholly voluntary.


     I should add several points about income taxation before moving on.
     First off, the Sixteenth Amendment (which allowed the federal taxation of income) was rushed through Congress, and voted on at a time when lawmakers were eagerly awaiting their trips home for the holidays. Essentially, congressmen were pressured to approve of that amendment.
     Aside from federal taxation of income having previously been unconstitutional prior to 1913 (aside from a brief period during the Civil War), it was also unnecessary, as tariffs and other sources provided enough federal revenue that income taxation wasn’t needed.
     I do not support increasing tariffs, but I will say that only half of federal revenue comes from income taxation. This means it would be possible to eliminate federal income taxation, without decreasing overall spending, as long as we could ensure that the total revenues expected to be yielded from all the other forms of taxation combined, would be roughly (or precisely) doubled.

     Additionally, I will caution you against taxing income, because it is legally classified as earned income. If we earned this income (from working), then why is it being taxed? If anything, we should be taxing unearned income; things like capital gains, corporate income, investment income, etc.. Earned income from labor should be protected from taxation; or at least the first $30,000 of it.

     Finally, I noticed that you have said, “If the government didn’t tax you, then your money would be worthless.” I would argue that our money is worthless, at least as compared to its value 100 years ago. The U.S. Dollar has lost roughly 97-99% of its value since the Sixteenth Amendment was passed, and the Federal Reserve was created, in 1913.
     I suppose you think that the value of our money derives from the value of our public infrastructure and the credibility of our government. And that is true to some degree. But our government is rapidly losing credibility. So our ability to keep placing faith and trust in our government, and in its monetary institutions, will decrease more rapidly as the federal budget (and the national debt) get more and more out of control.
     I just hope you have a plan about what you will do when (and if) the federal government loses all credibility, and/or the U.S. Dollar becomes totally worthless (instead of just mostly worthless; costing less than 1/100th its face value, to produce).
     


14. Conclusion: Run for President

 


     I don’t fault you for being disappointed in libertarians who fail to articulate a consistent, thoroughly stateless vision of libertarianism.

     I hope that you understand, now, that there are libertarians – like me, Robert Murphy, Gary Chartier, Stefan Molyneux, and others – who believe that it is never acceptable to force anybody to buy any particular product, and never acceptable to force anybody to fund, or become a member of, any insurance company, or government, or arbitration agency, or anything else.

     To say otherwise is a denial of our natural freedom to resist subordination to involuntary servitude, a right with which we were born.

 

     We must protect legitimate property claims, and people’s freedom of choice, which includes their freedom to boycott any agency they please; even the government.

     If we do not have the right to boycott the current government - and possible future governments such as insurance companies or arbitration agencies - then we risk allowing the current state to bail-out those companies which it favors, by altering the tax code so as to require us to buy their products (whether directly or indirectly).

     We must not surrender any of our economic power to the state, in our quest to replace or reform our corrupt government. We must smash the state, in order to make it possible to appeal all court decisions, until all parties involved are satisfied.

     We must smash the state – while upholding the Seventh Amendment and protecting common-law courts – in order to prevent corrupt agencies of government from bailing-out corrupt arbitration agencies, and from making bad court decisions permanent and irrevocable.




     If these ideas sound the least bit feasible, or promising, to you, then I urge you to reconsider libertarianism.

     And furthermore, I would urge you to consider running for the Libertarian Party’s nomination for president in 2024, as a libertarian socialist, libertarian Marxist, “democratic libertarian”, or “progressive libertarian”.

     I would suggest that you do so in conference with the Libertarian Socialist Caucus, the Geo-Mutualist Caucus, and/or any other left-leaning caucuses in the party.

 

     I would suggest that you run on: 1) a constitutional version of Medicare for All; 2) a constitutional minimum wage raise that includes tipped workers; 3) a decentralized Green New Deal -type program; 4) the abolition of I.C.E.; and 5) the repeal of the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947.

     In defending the fifth plank, I would tell more right-leaning libertarians that, although repealing Taft-Hartley would revoke the states’ rights to have Right to Work laws, it would be a net gain for the average worker (and the average American, poor person, and libertarian), because it would restore private sector workers’ rights to boycott and strike without requiring the permission of government.

     If some Libertarians have a problem with this, I would suggest that you tell them that they only want to keep Right to Work laws because those laws were perceived as a necessary reaction to a state of affairs created by the Wagner Act (i.e., the National Labor Relations Act of 1935).

     I am referring, of course, to the requirement that the union with a majority of support, be required to represent all workers in the bargaining unit.

 

     Unfortunately, all too often, it is assumed that the union will represent all workers, and the only proof offered to show that it has been required to represent all of them, is the fact that they have all been made to pay union dues.

     This is something that we can debate later. I would tell all Libertarians who are concerned about your potential support of repealing Taft-Hartley, to support you anyway, see how it goes, and then worry about amending the Wagner Act in a way that either: 1) obligates unions to represent all people in the workplace; or 2) gives workers more options in terms of which union or unions they want to support (or form).

 

     If you feel that I haven’t said anything too unreasonable during this discussion, then I wish you luck!

     I just hope that you will avoid calling for mandates, price controls, violent enforcement, and taking away the ability of governments aside from the federal government to respond to problems.

     I also hope that you will stop crediting the government for fixing a problem, when in fact all it did was fund it, or swoop in at the last minute and give it a seal of approval. If we assume that government can do everything, then we might stop innovating and producing, and we might forget to honor the hard work of people who never worked for the government.

 

     I also hope that you will do something to fix a society which seems, on one hand, to be made up of an excessively risk-averse government and health industry, and on the other hand a self-destructive populace which is so unafraid of taking risks that it is not worried about experiencing consequences because the taxpayer will usually foot the bill.

     I am getting really sick of being expected to continue to support, fund, and enable other people’s self-destructive behavior. A society plagued with drug addiction, self-mutilation as a fashion statement, and suicidal ideation, should not endlessly support risky and self-destructive behavior.

     Enabling self-destructive and risky behavior leads to suicide and accidental deaths, and ass a moral person, I refuse to support that. The need for every person to have as much independence as is realistically possible for them – independence from addiction, from capitalism, from corrupt government, and more – matters more to me (and should matter more to them) than their material comfort, and their ability to constantly feel pleasure.

 

     There is more to life than groveling at the feet of whomever will give us the most money. There is more to life than protecting yourself from experiencing the consequences of your actions.

     It’s fine to want to take care of people, and provide for health care and mental illness treatment, and to help people afford those services. But we should never pretend that the federal government’s endless supply of money, makes the problems of getting sick, and experiencing mental illness, into things that don’t need to be taken seriously.

     The debt is a real problem. Our culture of irresponsibility is a real problem. A consequence-free culture is a real problem. They are real problems, and they cannot be ignored.





15. Post-Script

     (added on July 14th, 2021)

     In August 2019, Medium.com reported – in an article titled “The Ideological Failure of the Young Turks” – that Emma Vigeland, co-host of Majority Report with Sam Seder, has ties to Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York.
     Medium reporter Robbie Jaeger reported that one of Vigeland’s parents once donated several thousand dollars to each Gillibrand and then senator Kamala Harris, and also that Vigeland interned for Gillibrand’s senatorial office. Jaeger characterized Vigeland as “understating” the degree to which her family is “establishment Democrat”.
     http://medium.com/@RobletoFire/the-ideological-failure-of-the-young-turks-90c15ddde408

     I hope that you and Emma are aware that Senator Gillibrand’s father defended the NXIVM Hollywood sex cult.
     According to a 2006 court document published by Frank Parlato, Kirsten Gillibrand’s father, Douglas Rutnik, worked as an attorney for the NXIVM sex cult, earning a $100,000 retainer.
     http://frankreport.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/2006-06-29-rudnick-settlement-agreement.pdf

     Additionally, according to the article below from Big League Politics, a man named John Tighe claims that he saw Senator Gillibrand sat at “the NXIVM table” at a Hillary Clinton fundraiser.
     http://bigleaguepolitics.com/court-docs-confirm-kirsten-gillibrands-father-worked-for-the-nxivm-sex-cult/

     According to Frank Parlato’s and others’ reports, Douglas Rutnik was fired by NXIVM and had to pay them $100,000. Then, Gillibrand accepted money from Clare Bronfman (who was funding NXIVM).
     These reports make it sound like Rutnik was betrayed by NXIVM, and that could be true. But keep in mind that he worked for them, how well they paid him, and also the reports claiming that Rutnik fell in love with Gillibrand’s stepmother because of the cult.
     http://www.artvoice.com/2018/06/23/nxivm-love-story-kirsten-gillibrands-father-and-stepmother-fell-in-love-because-of-sex-slaver-cult/

     I hope that you and Emma Vigeland (and her parents) will stay away from Gillibrand, for the sake of your safety, and the safety of anyone who might come into contact with the Gillibrands, or members of the Bronfman family or remaining members of the NXIVM sex cult, as a result of not suspecting anything insidious about Senator Gillibrand’s connections.








Written on July 8th and 9th, 2021
Published on July 9th, 2021

Edited and Expanded on
July 12th, 13th, and 14th, 2021

Post-Script Added on July 14th, 2021

Section 1 on Alex Jones and "reptilians"
edited and expanded on September 21st, 2021

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