In
1961, an American president said, “we must guard against the acquisition of
unwarranted influence… by the military industrial complex”.
In
1850, Frederic Bastiat warned us
about the broken window fallacy; the notion that destruction can be beneficial
to the economy, provided that recovery involved the spending of money and the
creation of jobs.
Perhaps
this fallacy is the very motivation for our policies of financing the
destruction and re-building of foreign infrastructure; of sabotaging our own infrastructure to keep inflation
under control; of subsidizing housing in areas prone to floods and fires.
Of
course, the broken window fallacy holds true for you in particular if you are one of the lucky few given the
privilege of exclusive contract to rebuild;
one of the special interests able to curry favor of those with discretion to
spend public funds.
But
who are these special interests? Who
are these agencies able to thrive on society’s dime? And which of them are
among the most responsible for the financial mess in which we find ourselves
today?
Military
technology and private security contractors; Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon,
Halliburton, and Blackwater? Certainly. The security apparati and those who
serve them; commanders, soldiers, domestic law enforcement officers? Certainly.
Banks
like A.I.G., Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Goldman
Sachs; and auto manufacturers like General Motors and Chrysler? Of course.
People
who brought their goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for, and who
hired workers the rest of us paid to educate? Some would say so. Presidential
pet projects like Solyndra, and public employees like educators and physicians?
Some would say so. Perhaps even the public employees we elect to represent us are special interests.
Whatever
our view on which stimulus projects and which government employees are holding
the economy back, we can certainly agree that the military-industrial complex
and the banks are the main culprits, and that they help to prop one another up.
This
is especially obvious given that Goldman Sachs – the seventh-largest receiver
of bank bailout funds – is financing the campaigns of both major-party
presidential candidates, and given the vastly disproportionate percentage of
former Goldman employees working for the Federal Reserve and other financial
agencies of the federal government.
It
should come as no surprise, then, that both major-party presidential candidates
are proponents of both wasteful, aggressive foreign military interventionism
and central banking; especially bearing in mind that in 2009, a candidate for
president said, “it is no coincidence that the century of total war coincided
with the century of central banking”.
It
is this total war which saps the strength, the labor, and the attention of the
citizen, and which pilfers the existing wealth of foreign nations, creating a
convenient “war bubble” to replace any other market bubbles whose collapse may
be impending. Thus, truly, it is the military-industrial complex and the banks
– and, by association, the American public and its financial institutions –
which thrive off the dime of global society.
Of
course, the reason these military technology and private security firms, big
banks, auto manufacturers, and so on, are given taxpayer funds, is because they
are able to afford to hire powerful lobbyists to attempt to curry favor of
politicians, who have the discretion to spend such money in the first place.
By
now, it has eluded few that lobbying and special interests have significantly
contributed to the culture of corruption, financial irresponsibility, and
ill-gotten power which pervades the nation’s capital. And, of course, the
barriers to unlimited and secretive campaign finance have been eroded by the
nation’s courts in recent years.
Thus,
we arrive at the phrase “corporate personhood”. Our knee-jerk response to this
phrase is to simply assert that corporations are not people, but such an
assertion has no legal repercussions, and does not change the law. The law
still defines corporations as legal persons.
Corpus mysticum,
the mystical body of the church. The body politic of the American public. A legislative body, such as Congress. Head
of church, head of State. Why are political and religious institutions likened
to the human body? Of course, because the root of the word “corporate” means
“body”.
I
– a living, breathing human being – possess corporeity
(that is, bodiliness); the quality of
having a body. Corporeity is a quality I possess; a characteristic, a property which I possess. My bodiliness
is my property.
Property,
the characteristic of being one’s own; that which is unique to oneself. I possess
my body, my bodiliness, my corporeity, my own, my ownership, my uniqueness. I
am corporeal, regardless of whether my characteristic of having a body is
recognized by church, State, et cetera.
But
the State may still have legalistic
methods of recognizing the characteristic of being of a body. Thus, businesses
such as corporations – and, indeed, labor unions – who perceive themselves as
possessing a single physicality (a single body) may wish to take the
opportunity to have their bodiliness believed, endorsed, and upheld by
government, and treated like you and I, able to give to campaigns, and to
receive special-interest money as if it were the general welfare.
But
unlike you and I, corporations, unions, and governments have the potential to
live forever. Some writing on a piece of paper supposedly makes them perpetual,
regardless of our attempts to destroy them; to end their “lives”.
Philosopher
Max Stirner notably rejected the corporeity of “God, Emperor, Pope, Fatherland,
et cetera”, and asserted that the
only way to reclaim what is one’s own is to proclaim “I alone am corporeal”,
and destroy the corporeity of these “geists”
(typically translated as either “ghosts” or “spirits”).
So
how do we destroy the wealth-sucking,
undead, zombie entities of government, unions, and corporations, and reclaim
our lone corporeity? How do we eliminate secrecy from the electoral system, and
make the government spend the money earned by all of us in order to benefit
all of us?
I
say that the General Welfare Clause – were the Constitution obeyed – should
protect us against special interests, being that the common and universal good
should be the only recipient of taxpayer funds.
I
say that the root of secrecy in the electoral process is the very practice of
secret-ballot voting itself, in which we refrain from requiring citizens to
sign their ballots, and requiring representatives to sign and obey the
contracts they make with We the People; and in which we even give our
representatives – who act as our power of attorney, who act as legally us –
special privileges to break the law.
We
give our representatives license to commit crimes on our behalves; and yet we are the ones who receive the
punishment. On top of it all, we obligate ourselves to obey them financially, whereby we become names on
pieces of paper; legal fictions on-par with corporations and so on.
Corporations are people, yes, but only to the extent that people are
corporations.
But
this merger of State and corporate power; is this a problem of capitalism?
Socialism? Mussolini defined corporatism
as the merger of State and corporate power. But why call “corporatism” what
most call “unfettered crony capitalism”? Is corporatism the free market? Is it
a form of socialism? Do socialism and the free market have any common reasons
to oppose corporatism?
Proponents
of the free market desire a minimal standard of economic efficiency.
For
this to occur, transaction costs and externalities must be eliminated.
To
minimize transaction costs, usury and fraud in banking practices are to be
discouraged. This would prohibit fractional-reserve banking, the use of debt as
a medium of exchange, the misrepresentation of funds, and speculation without
the full backing of assets, and all sorts of fraudulent banking-sector activity
which precipitated the current financial mess. Indeed, many of these practices
have at times been prohibited by federal law.
Furthermore,
low interest and lending rates are to be desired, insofar as they are natural
and not manipulated by lenders. This necessitates that interest rates be only
high enough to cover administration costs, and can allow for the possibility of
zero- and negative- interest-rate lending. This type of banking has been supported
by Mutualists and individualist anarchists alike, whom are generally regarded
as falling on the left side of the political spectrum.
Minimizing
and compensating for externalities requires that people have the right to
pursue restitution and compensation, whether they have been harmed
intentionally, or inadvertently, and regardless of whether the action resulted
in harm or benefit.
This
stands in contrast to the “privatize-the-gains,-socialize-the-losses” model; in
that it necessitates compartmentalizing risk, through localization and
specialization, for example. It would also necessitate solutions like
fee-for-service models, encouragement of safety and discretion,
minority-unionism, and members-only collective bargaining.
Thus,
we see that an ideal left-anarchist banking system and an ideal free-market banking
system would not be very different at all.
What
else unites these two schools? The freedom of the individual to determine for
his own subjective purposes the values of goods and services; the value of the
product and fruits of one’s labor; and the value of the wages, benefits, and
conditions for which one is willing to work.
Additionally,
the freedom of the individual to determine for his own purposes his ethical
principles, and which agencies should hold him responsible and answerable to
his own claimed moral code.
The
left has typically been very supportive of such civil liberties and market
freedoms. After all, the left has contributed non-violent resistance, civil
disobedience, conscientious objection, and the consent of the governed.
However,
there have been a few slip-ups along the way, such as direct democracy and
market abolition (in which all economic decisions are made by vote, and
individuals have no freedom to profit, or to name their own prices), as well as
cartelization of the labor market (in which people are free to decide what
compensation they will work for, unless it is below some standard set by the
privileged and the already-employed).
But
in general, both left-anarchists and proponents of the free market have
supported the freedom of action, preference for large numbers of alternatives
in economic and political decision-making, the freedoms of speech and
expression, and the notion that peoples should live and let live.
But
why, then, if consent of the governed and plentiful alternatives are desirable,
do we not have more than one choice in who will govern us? Leave aside the
ideas that we can “vote with our feet” by moving to the place with the set of
laws we despise the least, and that we have political choice due to choice
between parties; where is our freedom to choose an entire government whose ethics is in-line with our own?
Isn’t
this the state of affairs which are decried by the left as “monopolistic”,
monopoly typically thought of as leading to abuse, given the lack of
alternatives? Doesn’t the government – in the absence of competitors – tend to
make decisions in its own selfish interest whenever given the opportunity?
Doesn’t the government in these respects behave as a greedy corporation?
If
anything good has come out of this financial crisis, it is that many Americans
have come to perceive government as a business. Of course, it should be frugal,
have a balanced budget, and not spend money it doesn’t have, like money which
will have to be earned by – and taken away from – future generations.
But
it is crucial to perceive government as a corporation, which seeks to
horizontally integrate by competing with other nations in armed conflict, and
which seeks to vertically integrate
by controlling and conquering smaller and more local governments.
Why
have we abandoned the maximal localization of the provision of government
services? Don’t we support checks-and-balances, and the separation of powers?
Don’t we want to protect the local economy from the distortions caused by the
Federal Reserve and the big banks? Why should every national problem have a
federal solution?
Proponents
of the free market do not support artificial collusion, monopolies, or
oligarchies. They support voluntary cooperation and collaboration, and friendly
competition as an alternative to unfair economic and power privileges for the
few.
The
minimal standard of economic efficiency which I described earlier, in fact,
rests on the notion that no seller or buyer should be so large that it can
disproportionately affect the supply, demand, and price of goods and services.
Such an environment would seek to eliminate unnatural scarcity and conspicuous
consumption, as they are antagonistic to economic efficiency and equality of
opportunity in the marketplace.
Furthermore,
information of consumers (and consumers of government services, i.e., citizens)
is desirable. Voters and buyers in the marketplace act most reasonably and
logically – and in accordance with the public good – when they are informed
about their alternatives as much as possible, and able to rank their
preferences in accordance with their own subjective needs, desires, and ethics.
This
is what we should be pursuing: information and alternatives in the electoral
system. Information and informed consent in voting; full disclosure, and lack
of secrecy. Not privacy, but privity;
the right to be privy to contracts
made with our elected representatives, and the right to hold our representatives responsible for the
crimes which they commit in our names and with our money.
Alternatives
in voting; increased access to polls, debates, and ballots for independent
candidates and alternative political parties. Furthermore, the elimination of
the effects of pandering as bribery, as well as other forms of undue external
influence on independent voter choice.
Alternatives
in government; the freedom of the
individual to choose a government whose ethics are in-line with his own, and to
choose which government obligates him to follow the set of ethics in which he
claims to believe, and by which he claims to act.
I
believe that all goods and services typically provided by government exist in a
marketplace, and that receipt of such goods and services constitutes commerce.
In the Interstate Commerce Clause of the Constitution, we find legal
prohibitions on state monopolies on commerce.
I
believe that this clause can and should be used to justify the use of federal
power to eliminate the states’ monopolies on the representation of citizens
within their claimed jurisdictions.
Why
should we remain unfree to choose which among the many governmental agencies in
this country best suits our personal ethics? Why should we remain unfree to sue
our government, without appealing to the very same government to make the
decision? Hasn’t big business made
enough decisions that have affected our lives without our consent? Why should
government continue to imitate big business?
Ladies
and gentlemen, I’m running as a write-in independent candidate for the U.S.
House of Representatives from Wisconsin’s 2nd congressional
district. As a write-in candidate and as an independent, I support a multitude
of reforms which would make it easier for alternative candidates and parties to
get into the electoral system, as well as a multitude of reforms which would
make government, politicians, and businesses more responsible and responsive to
the people.
We
can no longer tolerate the degree of government secrecy to which we have become
accustomed, nor the degree of pandering to special interests. If I am elected
your congressman, I promise to combat special interests; by voting against the
legislation which they sponsor, but also by adhering to the Constitutional
provision that taxpayer funds should only benefit the universal, common good;
that funds which are earned by – and taken from – all of us, should benefit all of us.
A
government in which I would see reforms which I favor enacted would be
protective of individual privacy and civil liberties; basic and essential
freedoms of the marketplace; subjective decision-making in political and
economic matters alike; and diversity, whether cultural or ethical.
There
is no such thing as freedom so long as those who perceive themselves as among
the most tolerant do not tolerate the
freedom of others to choose to be subject to political institutions which
obligate them to act in accordance with their own moral principles; as long as
they do not harm others; others are free to seek compensation for harms
inflicted upon them; and individuals give fully-informed, uncorrupted consent
to the political associations to which they become party.
Please
vote for me – independent candidate Joe Kopsick – by writing-in my name on the
ballot for U.S. House on November 6th, 2012, and we can have a free
society; with freedom of the individual, freedom of the community, freedom of
the marketplace, freedom in the voting booth, and freedom from worry that
violent collusion between business and the State will cause our economic and civil
society to collapse before it arrives at the precipice, which we have been
anticipating for decades, and which seems all the more immediate and impending
as the days go by.
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