A Market-Oriented Solution to High Health Insurance Costs

            Given the new Congress and president, and amidst signals that the now ostensibly voluntary individual health insurance purchase mandate will be weakened further¹, and following a widely publicized debate on the future of Obamacare between senators and 2^nd-place presidential primary candidates Bernie Sanders and Ted Cruz², it seems that the time has come for Americans to think about what kind of replacement for Obamacare they'll be willing to accept under the remainder of the Trump Administration, in case the last president’s key legislation is repealed.

            On January 25^th, 2017, Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky introduced the Obamacare Replacement Act (Senate Bill 222), legislation which would provide an immediate replacement for the 2009 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (called either P.P.A.C.A., the A.C.A., the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, for short).³ Paul favors repealing the entirety of Obamacare, and replacing it immediately.⁴ This is a clear, bold position which cannot be misunderstood, and which holds an auspicious potential for allaying the oft-voiced concerns of Obamacare supporters who believe that the opposition wants to repeal it and replace it with nothing.

The Washington Post estimates that some 18 million people could be kicked off their health insurance plans⁵, as millions were when Obamacare kicked-in in 2014. Senator Paul does not want to see the same thing happen again; he believes that establishing market-oriented health will help ensure uninterrupted coverage for policy holders who have pre-existing conditions. The senator is concerned that to continue to require health insurance companies to sell policies to people with pre-existing conditions could cause "adverse selection" of insurance policies, something that he fears could bankrupt the health insurance industry.

            In an op-ed essay, which was published on Rare.us on January 2nd of this year (the day before the 115^th Congress was sworn in), Senator Paul proposed replacing Obamacare with “freedom”. This includes "freedom for all individuals to join together in voluntary associations to gain the leverage of being part of a large insurance pool"⁶, in addition to three other specific points (which are outside this article’s range of discussion).

On the same day that Paul proposed the Obamacare Replacement Act, his senate.gov web page published a press release. The press release stated that Paul’s proposal would expand “Association Health Plans (AHPs) to allow small businesses owners and individuals to band together across state lines through their membership in a trade or professional association to purchase health coverage for their families and employees at a lower cost."⁷ Association Health Plans provide health insurance coverage to groups of businesses that share common interests, through an “industry organization”.⁸

Senator Paul’s proposal would allow people who work in similar professions to pool their money and resources together, in order to inexpensively purchase health insurance policies. Similarly-employed professionals joining into voluntary associations could make it easier for industries to demand custom policies from insurance companies; policies which are specially tailored to cover the unique and distinct safety and health risks which are associated with particular industries and particular types of workplaces.

            The broader purpose (outside of the issue of professions) of allowing people to “join together in voluntary associations”⁶ is, as Paul’s press release stated, “to gain the leverage of being part of a large insurance pool.”⁶ The point is to help customers (policy holders) to match, equalize, and balance-out insurance companies’ great selling power. When customers’ buying power increases, insurance companies’ price-setting power declines in comparison, which means that premiums decrease, enabling working people to more easily procure inexpensive coverage.

            It could be argued that the very same leveraging of economic power can be accomplished through government programs, and by increasing government involvement in health. This is to say that requiring as many people as possible to purchase health insurance, achieves the same kind of leverage that is necessary to balance-out insurance companies’ selling power and price-setting power.

This argument holds some water, because to establish (for example) a Medicare-for-all -type system, puts everybody in the same purchasing pool. Everybody in the same pool means maximum purchasing power for policy holders, which means lower premiums.

            However, putting all Americans in the same pool does not accomplish Paul’s goal of having these pools emerge as “voluntary associations” (“voluntary” being the operative word). Paul opposes Obamacare’s individual mandate, because he believes that mandates are antithetical to freedom.

            If the government can compel you – under the threat of fines and imprisonment – to purchase health insurance, then it can compel you to purchase it at a price that is satisfactory to both the government and the insurance companies. This is especially true when the government extorts taxpayers in order to fund at least ten types of artificial corporate privilege which would arguably not exist in a free market for health insurance and health care. Corporate privileges for health insurance companies produce an oligopoly; that is, a state of few sellers.

Just as with student loans, for government to promise to pay all health costs (with taxpayers footing the bill) only encourages high expense. When government buys all health insurance, it becomes a monopsony; that is, a single buyer. As Libertarian Party presidential nominee Gary Johnson explained during the 2016 campaign, if college students boycotted college for a single year, the price of tuition would plummet.

Similarly, if Americans were suddenly able to exercise their natural freedom to refrain from purchasing health insurance policies, premiums would plummet. It is only our freedom to refuse to purchase health insurance, which gives us the negotiation power we need to bring premiums as close to zero as possible.

            Senator Paul’s Obamacare Replacement Act intends to put to good use the natural market incentive which people have to join into large insurance pools in as numerous quantities as possible. The existence of this natural incentive renders the idea of an individual purchase mandate completely unnecessary and superfluous.

            The individual mandate, and unconstitutional taxpayer-funded corporate favors, have assisted in the birth and growth of a price-setting cartel of health insurance companies. Allowing an oligopsony (state of few buyers) to arise naturally through the market, would be sufficient to balance-out the price-setting power of the insurance oligopoly (state of few sellers). But government takes it one unnecessary step further; it takes our money, and uses it to buy all health insurance. Thus, it not only makes itself into a health insurance monopsony (that is, the sole purchaser of insurance, the “single payer”); it also remains the same defense monopoly it always was, being the only agency legally authorized to sell military and police protection to the people.

Although some may argue that any market-oriented or voluntary proposal to fix health policy is “privatization” that risks the very same kind of monopoly that free-marketers should rightfully oppose, Paul’s plan is not “privatization”. Privatization refers to a system in which government gives favors to cronies, picks winners and losers in the marketplace, and sells-off parts of itself to the highest bidder. But Paul’s proposal resembles “radical privatization” than privatization.

“Radical privatization” is a term which radical libertarians use to refer to a situation in which government gets out of the way, by exiting an industry entirely, rather than transferring management or ownership of government agencies to members of the for-profit private business sector.

Radical privatization frees-up taxpayer funds, allowing taxpayers to choose from among goods and services that compete in the market; when these types of goods and services were previously monopolized by government and not readily available for individual purchase in markets.

To allow voluntary associations, while repealing the mandate, means a truly optional “public option”. In fact, multiple voluntary associations really means multiple public options. If Paul’s proposal passes, we could see these “public options” (if the term would still rightfully apply) compete on the market alongside ordinary plans. This is because a truly voluntary and optional public plan would transform government health insurance cooperatives into market actors.

The result would be a wider and more diverse array of types of policies; a wider array of the set of conditions and ailments which health insurance policies cover. Additionally, people would be free to choose between plans tailored to their profession, versus plans tailored to their individual or family needs. Perhaps most importantly, nobody could be rightfully compelled to pay for coverage of ailments which they reason will probably never affect them.  

Moreover, to eliminate the tax credit for employer-provided health insurance (which Paul did not mention specifically in his proposal, although he does support it), would make that choice easier, because people who lose their insurance when they lose their job would be free to choose non-professional policies whose premiums are not distorted by the price-altering influence of government tax credits.

But professional voluntary associations, and cooperatives competing on the open market, are only the first step.

While cooperatives and E.L.M.F.s (egalitarian labor-managed firms) empower workers, consumer-cooperatives (sometimes called worker-consumer cooperatives, or mutual firms), ensure that consumers and workers have equal power. Just as with insurance cartels, the goal here is to ensure that consumers have as much power to demand low prices as workers do to demand adequate compensation for their labor.

In a consumer-oriented health insurance purchasing cooperative, policy holders and policy providers would have equal negotiation power, moderated and adjudicated by neutral agents. The prime candidates to moderate these disputes would be individuals who both buy and sell insurance; such as a health insurance company employee who has purchased health insurance for himself.

If policy holders (the consumers of health insurance) do not feel that such an enterprise would be sufficiently balanced and fair, then they would still be free to join (or form) consumer-oriented enterprises and consumer interest groups which intend to make sure that health insurance policy providers do not demand so much compensation that it puts ordinary policy holders in dire financial straits.

Furthermore, cooperatives, consumer-cooperatives, and consumer-oriented enterprises, are not the only types of agencies which could buy and sell insurance, and negotiate on premiums. Many types of agencies could accomplish this; there is no limit to the number of combinations and permutations of existing business models into new types of firms.

For example, cooperatives (and / or consumer-cooperatives) could band together into federations known as Cooperative Wholesale Societies (or C.W.S.s) – or purchasing societies – in order to arrange and manage bulk purchases. As we all know, buying in bulk, and buying at the wholesale price, saves us money.

Rand Paul’s Obamacare Replacement Act would help provide a smooth transition away from a health policy built on a command-and-control model, to one that potentiates a nationwide interstate market for health care and insurance. Paul’s is a voluntary, market-oriented proposal that carries the potential of addressing consumers’ unique needs, without seeming to necessitate increased government spending, nor the expansion of federal involvement in health (an industry which the authority of managing is not specifically enumerated in the Constitution).

Perhaps voluntary public options and professional voluntary associations, competing on the open market on a nationwide basis, will result in a multi-state health insurance purchasing pool that acts as a C.W.S., subsuming all health insurance purchasing cooperatives into-under it, upon consent of each cooperative, choosing individually whether to join the federation. Maybe the telos of all this is some sort of “federative society of wholesale health insurance purchasing consumer-cooperatives”, whatever that might look like.

I guess there’s only one way to find out.

Sources

1. http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/2017/02/15/IRS-Has-Just-Made-Obamacare-s-Individual-Mandate-Optional

2. http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/07/politics/obamacare-cruz-sanders-highlights/

3. http://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/316084-rand-paul-unveils-obamacare-replacement

4. https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-01-04/rand-paul-sticks-to-old-health-care-gimmick

5. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2017/01/17/18-million-would-lose-insurance-in-first-year-of-obamacare-repeal-without-replacement-cbo-report-says/?utm_term=.99470d36947f

6. http://rare.us/rare-politics/rand-paul-repeal-all-of-obamacare-and-replace-immediately/

7. https://www.paul.senate.gov/news/press/dr-rand-paul-unveils-obamacare-replacement-act

8. https://capitalbenefitservices.com/what-are-association-health-plans/

Written on February 10^th, 2017

Edited and Expanded on February 16th, and 18th through 21st, 2017

You Don't Need Money to Live

            You don't need money to live. Money has no intrinsic value. What you need in order to live are the basic needs that money buys.

            Almost everything else that you buy are wants, not needs. You can obtain things that are redeemable for your needs, without working to earn mass-printed Federal Reserve currency (whose value is determined by government fiat, and public faith therein).

            You can work for real constitutional currency made of precious metals (like the U.S. Golden Eagle). You can work for non-monetary compensation, or use local currencies (like the "Mountain-Hours" currency in Colorado), or alternative e-currencies such as Bitcoin.

            In the past, you could work for interest-free money such as Greenbacks, and gold and silver certificates. Admittedly, eliminating interest and debt from money doesn't go anywhere near as far as necessary to solve the money problem. To eliminate interest would merely halve the infinite profit on money; and of course half of infinity is infinity).

            But you can also sell something you have. Of course, when you sell something, you're trading something with intrinsic value, for money that has no intrinsic value, so selling is out. But if you feel that the value of your labor can be expressed as an hourly wage, then you might prefer to use labor notes and time-based currency (for more information on this, read about the Cincinnatti Time Store, and TimeBanks and TimeDollars).

            But if you reject the wage system entirely - remember, you don't buy things with money; because of the wage system, you buy things with hours of your life that you trade away for money - you can also trade-out, barter, gift, share, or donate your time. Additional developments in non-monetary trade include free stores, social credit, mutuum checks, and mutual aid. Finally, "paying it forward" could help avoid coercive reciprocity and help achieve truly voluntary reciprocal altruism.

            Regardless of whether you engage (or want to engage) in monetary or non-monetary transactions, your purpose of engaging in these transactions is always the same. That purpose is to satisfy your six most basic needs - air, water, food, medicine, shelter, and clothing - and, once you have satisfied those, to satisfy your wants and desires.

            There is nothing that money can do for us that the things we trade it for can't do much better. You can't eat or drink money, and you can't make a house out of it. That is, unless you're using Chinese tea bricks as currency, which are used as construction material, and also for making medicinal tea. They can even be eaten as food in emergency situations such as famines. Durable foods, foods that don't go bad, well-preserved foods, and foods that are meant to go bad - like canned goods, honey, beef jerky, and sour cream and croutons (respectively) - could potentially be used as food-based currency. After all, as the Greenpeace slogan goes, "When the last tree is cut down, the last fish eaten, and the last stream poisoned, you will realize that you cannot eat money."

            And you can't use money as a medicine; you can't rub it all over yourself to make yourself feel better. I mean, you can, but there won't be a medicinal effect. Unless you consider that 70-80% of American bills have trace amounts of cocaine on them. Unless you also consider that American bills are processed with the hormone disruptor bisphenol-A (B.P.A.). Money is literally covered with poison; you can buy medicine with it, but you're going to need some extra medicine to treat the B.P.A. that you're absorbing cutaneously when you touch it. I'd warn against handling money without gloves on, but some sterile gloves contain toxins as well.

            I suppose it's also possible to make clothing out of money, and to burn it for energy and heat. However, making clothing out of money is only practical on a mass scale if it is almost totally worthless (although perplexingly, it is).

            My point is that money buys our needs, but it shouldn't be the only way to get our needs (I mean, they're our needs, for God's sake). I'm fine with working to pay for my wants and desires that I have in excess of my base needs. But we shouldn't have to pay taxes or fines or fees on being alive or taking up space; things we can't help but do, if not for killing ourselves. Furthermore, money isn’t the only way to get our needs.

            We must make the negative rights vs. positive rights dichotomy obsolete. We will do this by developing an open-access theory of rights, which holds that nobody is obligated to do anything for anyone, except leave them alone, and also cease to impede them from accessing basic means of survival. After all, nobody goes into the food service industry because they want to deny people food. Nobody goes into health care because they want to hurt people instead of heal them, nor because they get a kick out of denying people care. People come in to work because they want to give goods, and provide services, to people in need.

            Safe foods and drinks are usually specialty items, and for the most part, foods and drinks are not available in generic forms. This means that most foods and drinks do not resemble raw materials sufficiently to qualify as land; at least not in the sense that the full economic definition of land includes raw materials. Hence, foods and drinks are not strictly common resources.

            However, even without commonwealth of (that is, common possession of, or common access to) our most basic needs, each one of our needs could each be made so accessible, abundant, cheap, and distributed so widely, such that anyone could access them on demand without being expected to pay, nor to use money, nor to work to earn the given need.

            As I explained above, money shouldn’t be the only way to get our needs. But moreover, money isn’t the only way to get our needs. It’s the simple law of supply and demand; when demand and other variables hold constant, lower prices (and, eventually, free products) are the results of increased supply.

We can improve the quality of the air we breathe by imposing intentionally punitive Pigouvian taxes on pollution and the release of toxins into air, streams, groundwater, and land.

            We can start programs to distribute and drive down the costs of straw devices that filter water. We can continue to refrain from preventing people from accessing free water on both public and private property.

            We can improve the efficiency of food distribution. Spread information about the T.L.C. (The Learning Channel) program Extreme Couponing, and teach people the time- and money- saving couponing techniques featured in the show. These techniques allow people to afford their expensive needed items by coupling them with the significant savings provided through coupons for small, cheap, mass-produced items for which shoppers often have little need. Additionally, we can make it easier for people to grow produce, and keep small livestock, in their own yards, in order to decrease dependence on mass-produced foods; foods which would otherwise have to travel long distances and go through questionably healthful sanitation procedures before they reach our plates.

            We can boycott companies that send food overseas to be processed, and protest against any subsidies that your tax dollars provide to such companies (but of course, to fully boycott such companies, we would have to lobby our governments to get them to stop sending those companies our tax dollars). We can give supermarkets tax incentives to donate excess food to the needy. We can stop enforcing food patents, or stop enforcing them for such long periods of time. We can get our F.D.A. to stop bleaching farm-to-fork meals, stop destroying homemade baked goods, and stop disposing of donated meals simply because they haven't been inspected by local authorities.

            Most nurses and doctors would have no problem becoming formally subject to the provision of the Hippocratic Oath that says they can't turn people away due to inability to pay. Either government or non-state dispute resolution agencies could enforce these obligations. This would render the health insurance industry obsolete, since no co-pays would be necessary on a zero-dollar charge.

            We can repeal vagrancy laws. We can loosen homesteading laws such that people do not have to occupy homes for such long periods of time before government recognizes the homestead as the new occupant’s legitimate property. We can extend homesteading tax credits, by allowing them to apply to apartments, trailers, and other small residences. We can give apartment owners and boards tax incentives to allow homeless people to sleep in their empty units. We can stop arresting members of the public for sleeping or squatting on public land. We can relax local building codes in such a way that allows for experimentation in architecture, in order to allow the re-use of safe building materials that would have been otherwise discarded. For more information on this, please look up Mike Reynolds and Earth Ships.

            We can do less to hinder people's abilities to donate clothing to clothing drives that benefit the poor and homeless. Set up free laundry services in homeless shelters. We can repeal public nudity laws and other laws that dictate dress codes to the public.

            There are six vacant homes for each homeless person in America. There are car graveyards, sitting in deserts because they're not in perfect condition, and the people who own them think that they can't make money off of selling more of them, because they would flood the market and prices would plummet. We can do something about that.

Most importantly, we can increase awareness that scarcity is a myth; and increase awareness that hoarding – and police protection of the right to accumulate unlimited capital and wealth on private property – is the true cause of the scarcity that we think we experience and feel.

These steps will help ensure universal and open access to the basic means of survival for all human beings. Additionally, they will ensure that nobody is harmed, nor stolen from, for failing to purchase goods or services in what the government judges to be insufficient quantity or of insufficient quality.
            Universal access to our basic needs will help eliminate the need for money, taxation, the social and corporate welfare state, the criminal justice system, the health insurance industry, the for-profit market for land, the banking industry, competition for reasons other than recreation, and the study of economics.

            Without having to devote so much of our rewards from labor on bare subsistence, cut-throat competition in the job market would drastically decline, as would competition whose purpose is neither entertainment nor leisure (such as games and sports).

            Human attention could be dedicated to more worthwhile ventures; such as the development of medical technology and biological and astrophysical sciences, the healing of communication disorders and preventable diseases, and the eradication of toxins from our consumer products and environment (especially air; common property that is arguably the primary human need).

            Additionally, the engineering and advancement of robotics and training in the maintenance of automatons, and the study of episodes of slavery in history in order to avoid repeating the same bad habits that have plagued human experience since the dawn of global consciousness. We shouldn't stand for this indoctrination any longer; we're only perpetuating our own servitude by using money and agreeing to associate and transact with others who still use it because they have no idea how harmful it is.

            The money creators at the Federal Reserve Bank make astronomical, exponential profits off of the creation of money. They loan-out money - at face-value, plus interest - to the U.S. Department of the Treasury, in exchange for government bonds. Through the low cost of printing money, the Federal Reserve makes 95% profit off of the creation of $1 bills, and about 99.88% profit off of the creation of $100 bills. But that's only the first stage.

            After the Federal Reserve lends this money out, it makes its money back again - almost in quadruplicate, nearly doubling that original near-doubling of value - off of their investments in business, and in the government. They do this in such a way that they receive the bulk of our taxes as well, the bulk of the proceeds from most of our rent and property taxes, and the bulk of the profits from nearly all of our purchases (of goods and services alike).

            Land owners, laborers, and capitalists all need land, labor, and capital. That's why loaning money to government workers (under the guise of paying them), and collecting the money over and over again (through each stage in the processes of loaning and trading), makes for theoretically infinite profit off of the creation of money (that is, money creation in exchange for more than the cost it took to produce it, factoring in the interest at which it is loaned).

            If all of your disposable income goes to paying for the space that you occupy, paying taxes, and paying for the things that you need to consume (and services that you need to use) in order to survive, then you are arguably in the position of a slave. Neither you, nor the slave, has any means with which to obtain the wants and desires that you have in excess of your bare subsistence needs (such as entertainment). Just like slaves, we are told that we aren't working hard enough, and that we are free to buy our way to freedom. It's a con.

            Our merely agreeing to continue to use this money has rendered us, and will continue to render us, impoverished. On top of that, it renders us liable to fill out all sorts of forms for as much as a solid year-and-a-half after we earn the money to begin with. This tax calendar keeps us from escaping the use of money. You can pay your taxes in Bitcoin, but you can't avoid paying taxes, and the government prefers that we pay it back in the money that it buys from the Federal Reserve.

            We don't fully own the things that are really worth owning, like "our houses" and "our cars"; we merely purchase some of their use-rights, pay sales taxes on that, pay to register them, and then we occupy and use them. For the most part, we can't sell them without filling out paperwork and obeying all kinds of regulations. For the most part, we can't exclude the police from our houses, nor from our cars. If we can't keep people out of our property, then it's not our property. And that excludes our own bodies, which we still can't manage to keep police out of, in so many ways. If you can't own property, then you are property.

            There's no point in owning any property at all, if we're just going to be taxed for "owning" it. Whether the highway robbers masquerading our government "tax" us out of our property, or whether it's highway robbers not masquerading as our government "taxing" us as we walk down the street, displaying wealth with our sharp suits. Property makes you a target. Your labor is wealth, too, so owning your own body as property makes you a target even if you use no currency, as long as you are able to work, and agree to do favors for people (whether compensation is assured or not).

            If you don't use any form of currency, you can't be taxed. You can't tax away a third of a favor; not without enslaving someone. Quantifying the value of that favor in national currency (that is, monetizing it), and commodifying a social exchange, makes that involuntary servitude easier and less noticeable. Now we know.

            Quit your job and put some money aside for next year's taxes. Do with your savings whatever you think is appropriate; put it in a safety deposit box, bury it somewhere, or exchange it for durable items that will help you survive more easily without money. Pay your taxes next year with U.S. dollars, and then don't ever use national currency again.

            Exit the rat race.

            For more information, look up Daniel Suelo, "the man who quit money".

 Written on February 17th, 2017

Edited on February 18th through 20th, and 25th,
March 19th and 23rd, and April 4th, 2017,
and August 16th, 2019

Each U.S. State's Republican and Democratic Presidential Primary Selection, 2016

Thoughts on the Alt-Right and Hate Speech

     I am not a fan of President Trump, nor of National Policy Institute president Richard Spencer. Trump and Spencer have nothing better to do with their time than bully people on Twitter. The American people should be careful not to stoop to these people's level; be careful not to bully them back in a way that backfires on us.

     I do not want to see Spencer rise to fame even more, or perhaps even start a political party and run for office. In my opinion, the best way to overcome hate speech is to ignore it; don't respond if someone calls you by a racial slur and tells you to go ahead and fight them, don't engage people like Spencer on Twitter or other social media.

     We must also speak out in order to ensure that the constitutional process limits the Trump Administration properly. Using the same old Democratic Party machine procedural tricks will not cut it; if liberals and progressives want to be taken seriously, they have to respect decorum and not engage in disorderly behavior (like what we witnessed last June, with the Democrats' "No Fly, No Buy" sit-in).

     On the other hand, in my opinion, it is worth listening to the opinions of people like Alex Jones, Ben Shapiro, Milo Yiannopoulos, Gavin McInnes, and Jordan Peterson. These men don't spend all of their time praising people who share their ethnic heritage, nor do they dedicate most of their energy into making people look stupid, the way Spencer and Trump do (respectively). They talk about the effects of immigration, and they often do so in a thoroughly dignified, academic manner.

    

      I maintain my support of non-aggression; I still believe that it is wrong to initiate physical conflict against someone. That is, unless the attack is clearly on its way, and could be stopped. The Non-Aggression Principle (N.A.P.) should only be "broken" in order to prevent a clear and present danger from resulting in actual harm (although it is arguable whether this is actually a violation of the N.A.P.).

     Furthermore, when the physical conflict is retaliatory, the force used must be proportional; that is, you can't bring a chainsaw to a fist-fight. Defense of people other than oneself should only occur in defense of people incapable of defending themselves.

      On the issue of freedom of speech, the only time it is acceptable to interfere with someone's freedom of speech is if they are inciting a mob of people to riot. Empty threats should not be taken seriously unless they include specific information about a prospective victim. I have said about the Charles Manson murders, "if everyone who ever suggested killing the rich, or killing off several hundred million or billion people, were charged with a crime, then half of the country would be in prison".

     When you reveal someone's phone number or address of the workplace or home (this is called "doxing") - and it's the personal information of someone who you think is a racist or a Nazi - then you are trying to incite people to commit violence against someone, and you have given them all the tools they need to hunt people down. This creates a credible threat, and this fulfills the requirement that a threat be believable in order to be illegal.

     Moreover, if you publicly claim that someone is a Nazi or a racist, without any evidence, and you release such information, then you are engaging in extrajudicial vigilante justice. It is wrong to punch someone for being a Nazi, for the same reason that it is wrong to torture someone just because you think they're a terrorist. Even if you believe there's nothing wrong with vigilante justice, if you don't have any evidence, then you don't know for sure. Furthermore, there is a difference between simply hating people and inciting genocide.

     If you're making no formal charges, and you want someone punished without a warrant or fair trial, then you have no right to claim that you are standing up for people's constitutional rights, even if it's true that your political opponents are interfering with constitutional rights just a little bit more than you are.
      Additionally, the argument that "hate speech is not free speech" or "hate speech is unfree speech" is flawed. We don't have government-recognized freedom of speech because we want the freedom to talk about mundane things like the weather; we have protection of free speech because we need to talk about controversial topics like politics and religion in order to solve the problems of the day.
     If we prevent people from expressing their racism (or other phobias), then they won't be free to out themselves as racists. To admit that you believe your race is (or ought to be) supreme, or to suggest genocide through speech or writing, or to display a flag that might connote racism, do not present the same clear and present danger that actions like leading a mob or actively inciting genocide do.

     The argument that "you have the freedom of speech, but you don't have freedom from the consequences" is wrong as well. You do not get to decide that the consequences of someone standing in place giving a racist television interview includes being punched.
     You don't get to decide that, for the same reason that the T.S.A. should not get to decide that the consequences of walking into an airport includes being forced to choose between an intimate, grope-like search (or possibly strip search, or cavity search) and an electronic scanning that might give them cancer, without either a warrant or probable cause to believe that the person is a threat. It's for the same reason that G.G. Allin should not get to decide that the consequences of walking close enough to him include being raped full of A.I.D.S. and then shit on.
     That reason is simple: your body is your body, and other people's bodies belong to them, not you. You don't get to take away their freedom of choice, nor do you get to subject people to consequences that they didn't agree to or know about. It's the most important one of the first things we're taught in kindergarten to make sure we get along with each other; "don't steal, don't take, share, and don't hit". And if someone hits you, tell someone. It's just too bad that we also tell our kids that "it doesn't matter who started it".

     What is the most mind-boggling about this is that for some reason, I still defend the rights of "free speech" of people who engage in "doxing", even though it's pretty clear that it's a violation of the Non-Aggression Principle, and also of the law. So if you want to say that I'm defending hate speech, please draw attention to the fact that I am defending the hate speech of the left as well as of the right.

     If this is a free society, then we have the right to due process, the right of voluntary association, the freedom from association, the freedom of speech and press, and numerous other freedoms. I don't have to do anything for anybody, unless I am compensated to my satisfaction. I do not have to use the words that anybody else tells me to use. You have the same natural rights, whether you want them or not.

     We can either have a society where people on the left and right who hate each other are protected from one another equally; or we can have a society where we continue to isolate and abandon people, coercing them into striking out in their own defense, often using disproportionate violence. We can continue not obligating our police to protect and serve the general public (outside of a private contract), or we can incite people to attack others.

     I am not going to sit back and watch the left destroy themselves by throwing race-baiting boomerangs, and attack the Bill of Rights (like in December 2012, when The Journal News published a map of gun owners). I am speaking out not because I want to see non-whites exterminated, but because I don't want to see progressives kill themselves. We're not going to survive long as a society if we keep proclaiming the winner of the debate to be the person who can shout "racist" or "Nazi" first and loudest.

     If the Obama administration had made it illegal to call the president a Nazi, then Trump would have had an even easier time becoming president. It's legal to be a Nazi and read Hitler's book; if it weren't, then we'd have no idea what Nazis believe and we'd have no idea how to argue against it. Likewise, if Twitter censors Richard Spencer or other white supremacists, then we won't have any way to keep track of the latest racist dog-whistles, so we can shout-down and silence other progressive white people for accidentally using them.

Written on February 5th and 6th, 2017

Edited on February 18th and 21st, 2017

2017 Political Spectrums

First image created and published on February 2nd, 2017

All other images created on February 23rd, 2017 and published February 25th, 2017