Speech to the Libertarian Party of Chicago on March 3rd, 2020

     The following text was written for a meeting of the Libertarian Party of Chicago, Illinois. It explains my platform and priorities for my fourth and current campaign for the U.S. House of Representatives, and also contains some comments on how World War II, and socialism and fascism, should be taught in schools. This speech was not delivered in full; instead, its first three sections were condensed into a two-minute speech.

     Thanks for having me. My name is Joe Kopsick, I'm running a campaign for the U.S. House of Representatives, up in the 10^th District, which includes Waukegan, where I live, most of Lake County, and parts of northern Cook County.

     I'd like to say a few things about unemployment and my campaign, and then I'd like to talk about a problem that's the primary concern of lovers of liberty: authoritarianism. Finally, I will address the issue of whether I am a communist and a Stalinist.

     We're being told that we've never had it so good; that the unemployment rate has never been lower. We're told that it's the lowest it's been since slavery! Well I guess we better bring back slavery, if our goal is full employment, right?

     It is not true that unemployment is at an all-time low. It was lower in the last quarter of 2019, and it was also lower in the late 1960s and early 1950s. Unemployment may be at its lowest in 50 years, but remember that there are six different ways of measuring unemployment (U1 through U6). Donald Trump loves to tout the unemployment rate as proof that he has helped the economy, but what he's neglected to mention is that he's stopped focusing on U6, which is the most comprehensive way of the six to measure general difficulty maintaining stable employment.

     But let's suppose that more people are working. So what? Most of the companies they're working for are companies that get handouts from government, like Wal-Mart, Amazon, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Boeing, etc.. Do we really want more people employed by corporate arms of the corrupt government?

     Moreover, the decrease in unemployment started before Trump took office, statistics show his influence could lead to an upswing in unemployment, and his claims that black and Hispanic unemployment rates were at all-time lows, have been debunked as half-truths.

     But it's the same on the so-called “left”; we saw at a recent debate, that the mainstream media are letting candidates like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have their own facts, rejecting objectivity in favor of neutrality. Over the past three years, not only have the Republicans and Democrats proven themselves completely untrustworthy, delusional, and cultish; each of them have sought illicit business and political dealings with both Russia and Ukraine.

     The time has come to stop believing our politicians.

     In the 10^th District, Congressman Brad Schneider is running for re-election. He has taken tens of thousands from the military-industrial complex, hundreds of thousands from companies that pollute our air and water, hundreds of thousands from big banks (including bailout recipients), and hundreds of thousands from the pro-Israel lobby.

     My platform stands in stark contrast to my opponent's. Unlike him, I promise to reduce the size and budget of the military, root-out corporate largesse and cronyism in government, fight the big banks by demanding an end to the Federal Reserve that gives them credit, and fight for the health of people in the 10^th District (without supporting the disastrous Obamacare or the unconstitutional E.P.A.).

     I want to usher-in a new era of race-relations through reviving the counter-culture. My top three issues are “POUND EMPATHIC SKA”. Which sounds like I want to just blare two-tone ska music until people of every race, color, and creed are jamming together and getting along. And I do. But “POUND EMPATHIC SKA” stands for my top three issues:

     1. (POUND): Pay Off the U.S. National Debt by 2047. We will drastically reduce spending, drastically increase taxes but only while making sure they're more efficient, or both; in order to run a trillion-dollar surplus budget for 25 years in a row until the national debt is fully paid off.
     2. (EMPATHIC): Eliminating Medical Patents to Achieve Human Technology for Immortality Cheaply. I want to shorten the “lifespan” of medical patents, in order to increase the lifespan of human beings. Stop protecting medical patents for so long, so that they become generics sooner; and tax the profits but not the sales of medical devices, so that they're less expensive and more accessible. As pharmaceuticals and medical devices become more abundant, their price will go down. As more machines do the work, and fewer people do the work, necessary to make them, their costs will go down.
     Research is being done on how to lengthen the human lifespan through genetic research on how the tips of our chromosomes (telomeres) work; bits of them fray each time our cells are reproduced; this is what leads to organ failure and eventually death. If we urge people to put more private funding into the research of telomeres, and implement the medical cost-reducing proposals I've outlined, then we can achieve human immortality through low medical prices. That is how we achieve free medicine without socialism: through mass production and automation; and through price competition (the freedom to offer lower prices).

     3. (SKA): The Safe Kids Act. We will keep kids safe, while preparing them for the future, by abolishing the Department of Education, or, failing that, threatening to withhold federal funds from all public schools that refuse to start teaching courses on the skilled trades. At the same time, high schools should be split in half, so that upperclassmen are the only ones exposed to the risk of harm from dangerous machines in such classes, and individual students may sign waivers to be around machines (thereby eliminating fear over potential lawsuits against schools). Splitting all high schools in half carries the added benefit of ending the practice of 14-year-olds and 18-year-olds going to school together. I also hope to propose needed reforms to end child marriage, and I believe that a constitutional amendment establishing a nationwide age of consent, will both help reduce child trafficking, and set up age - not just some vague definition of "maturity" - as a requirement necessary to consent to contract.

     But therein lies the problem; we cannot trust this current federal government to police child trafficking, because it does so much child trafficking. We are faced with the same problem Lenin faced; we want good government, but reforming the one we have now is impossible. Fixing child sex trafficking laws would be hiring the fox to guard the henhouse.

     In my recent research, I have identified more than twenty ways in which child trafficking is legal or government-supported. One of the first ones is obvious; the kidnapping of children by I.C.E. agents at the southern border. Others include both parties' complicity in the Jeffrey Epstein teen sex slavery ring case, and forms of government custody of children which could reasonably be called kidnapping or child trafficking. We must criminalize all of these legal forms of trafficking, in addition to prosecuting illegal child trafficking.

     There are “black sites”, or “concentration camps” at the border; it's true. Alexandria-Ocasio Cortez called them concentration camps, and got criticized for it, but before she called them that, she called them black sites. When A.O.C. called I.C.E. detention facilities “black sites”, I thought, “The only person I've ever heard use the term 'black sites' is Alex Jones.” In a way, the “far left” and the “far right” have more in common than they might think; for example, opposition to authoritarianism, monopolies, corporate power, big banks, harm to the environment, and incursions into civil liberties. The “far left” and “far right” aren't “extreme”; they're just the libertarian wings of their respective parties, who are fighting the establishments in each party. That applies a lot less to Alex Jones than to A.O.C., but let's talk about that.

     Until Trump showed up, the nationalist, conservative, main street, and libertarian wings of the Republican Party, were the elements that were fighting the mainstream of the party. But Trump united most of those elements and triumphed, preventing another Bush presidency under Jeb. So for the last five years, Alex Jones has been claiming, and frantically trying to prove, that he and Trump are libertarians. Even after Trump betrayed Alex on Syria and Alex admitted it, even after Trump showed his distaste for the 2^nd Amendment by banning bump stocks, even after James Mattis convinced Trump not to torture but Gina Haspel let him do it anyway. Alex Jones betrayed us.

     He deserves some thanks for exposing the deep state, and government's complicity in child trafficking, and many other things. But he has also used his show as a way to disseminate hate-filled tirades against liberals and leftists, going so far as to use textbook Nazi dehumanization rhetoric to compare them to helpless worms and maggots, etc.. Don't get me wrong; Marx, Lenin, and Mao all stooped to using this sort of logic; but nobody should talk this way about another human being. Our children should not grow up thinking it is OK to call people of different races “dirty”, nor “viruses”, nor call people of different religions or ideologies “cancers”, nor suspect all foreigners of carrying diseases. If we let ourselves talk like that, it's not long before we're treating each other like animals and diseases, even exterminating each other.

     We can no longer say that extermination is no longer possible in America, since we know about these I.C.E. “detention centers”, where people are being told to drink toilet water. Where people are having their religious jewelry taken away, like what happened to the Jews in the Holocaust. Where mothers are being told they'll get their children back after a quick bath, which is not dissimilar to the method employed to trick Jews into entering gas chambers thinking they were showers. As a matter of fact, America was using Zyklon-B on Mexicans, twenty years before the Nazis were using it to kill Jews. Have you ever heard of the Bath Riots? Immigrants entering America in El Paso were sprayed with harsher and harsher chemicals, to “disinfect them” from disease, until a teenage girl started a riot because pregnant women were being doused with toxic chemicals. This occurred years after the Mexican typhus scare ended.

     The Nazi-sympathetic German-American Bund, headed by Fritz Kuhn, held a rally thousands of people strong in Madison Square Garden in 1940. The German-American Bund was allowed to march in Grafton, Wisconsin around the same time. Nazis were allowed to march in Chicago, Illinois in 1980 after unsuccessful attempts to march in Skokie. F.D.R. advisor Henry Stimson, probably the most anti-Semitic public official America has ever had, not only advised F.D.R. to refuse to let the M.S. St. Louis (a ship full of 900 Holocaust refugees) allow people to disembark in America, he advised F.D.R. against approving a plan to bomb the train tracks leading to the Auschwitz death camp.

     America is deeply ultra-nationalist. If being a nationalist means loving your country or being proud of it, then there's nothing wrong with that. But if you're an ultra-nationalist who believes “My country above all others”, or, worse, “My country, right or wrong”, then you value patriotism more than you value knowing the difference between right and wrong, and acting as such. Too many Americans believe that, since America contributed to defeating the fascists in World War II, it should never have to worry about being accused of being fascist ever again.

     Well right now there are people in the Trump Administration who used to work for George W. Bush, and he and his father were fed on Nazi war profits, because Prescott Bush, while working for Brown Brothers Harriman, managed the American accounts of Fritz Thyssen, a German industrialist who financed hard labor camps and gave millions to Adolf Hitler. As George Carlin said, “Hitler lost World War II. Fascism won it.” America didn't defeat fascism; it helped defeat the Nazis, but then adopted fascism for itself, to make a new brand of uniquely American fascism.

     We are in complete denial about the grip the C.I.A. has on our information. Communists are just people – mostly industrial workers and farmers - who want to get compensated adequately for the work that they do. The fact that they sometimes commit violence, doesn't mean they're “fascist”, nor terrorists; it means that they've been cheated out of the fruits of their hard work, and they're willing to fight the people who cheated them, because their and their families' lives are on the line.

     Wage theft is real. There is no difference between a politician, a boss, a landlord, and a banker; each makes his living only by oppressing another. We must fight all relationships of domination if we are to ever get rid of the rule of one man over another.

     So... am I a communist? Hell yes, I am a communist. But a libertarian communist; a pure communist, who rejects the state, borders, classes, and money. You might say, “Sure, abolish the state, but why the others?” The state creates the money, creates the borders, and incentivizes the class system by creating a well-paid permanent political class that's subject to corporate capture! Isn't the professional licensing system, just another form of classism, to perpetuate the rule of the employed over the non-employed? So establish that stateless, classless, borderless, moneyless society.

     You might say “How can you be a libertarian communist if you support Stalin?” I believe that Stalin wasn't an authoritarian communist, because I don't buy the propaganda that the U.S.S.R. helped the Nazis; Stalin tricked the Nazis. But I will explain that fully in a moment.

     High schoolers are becoming increasingly attracted to “extremist” ideologies like ultra-nationalism and communism. We can either view that as a problem, or lean into it and see what good we can take from it. We could use memes to teach history; history meme pages exist by the hundreds on Instagram and other sites. We could take this opportunity to adequately teach the history of World War II.

     All today's high schoolers know about World War II is that Hitler and Stalin were bad, they killed a lot of people, and don't be a fascist or a communist. We ought to teach them things like whether they ever fought each other, who killed more people and what the debate is on that topic, which one attacked Poland first and which attacked the other first (because it does matter who threw the first punch; remember, we oppose aggression and initiatory violence, not self-defense), and whether and when each were allied with America.

     Holocaust denial is terrible, and it is becoming more prevalent. The easiest way to nip this problem in the bud is to teach kids that Hitler hasn't only been accused of killing six million Jewish people; he has also been accused of killing some 13 million other Germans and 27 million Russians. People will stop asking “Did Hitler kill six million, or zero?”, and they will start asking “Did Hitler kill 40 million, or 50 million?” That is how you stamp-out Holocaust denial promptly, before racist kids become adults, and come out in the world where we have to deal with them without their parents around to protect them.

     Stalin did bad things; for example, the gulag system of work camps. People were worked to the bone, yes, but these camps were spaced far apart, and thus suffered none of the overcrowding, and much less of the communicable disease and male-on-male rape, for which American prisons are known. Furthermore, Stalin saved the world from Hitler. Many Americans will brag that their country helped win World War II, but America simply came in at the last moment and made the war end more quickly than it would have. Additionally, few Americans know the grave cost the Soviet Union paid for “helping” to defeat Hitler; 27 million lives. That's 50 Soviet soldiers for every American soldier killed in World War II. Take a moment to reflect on that fact.

     This is stolen valor. The C.I.A.'s America is treating communists like fascists, when the communists have historically been more staunch and fierce enemies of fascists than liberals and libertarians have. What was the Molotov-Ribbentrop Treaty(commonly known as the Hitler-Stalin Pact) but a treaty of non-aggression and mutually-beneficial trade? Any libertarian regime would have fallen for that.

     Stalin at least had the idea to use the materials that the Nazis traded to him – in this last opportunity to trade, when they knew war would come only in a matter of time - to feed the Soviet war machine, to eventually fend off the Nazi invasion. Stalin tricked Hitler by using against him, the extra resources he was willing to trade away. Stalin used Hitler's capitalism against him. Not to say that Hitler was fully capitalist; fascism has its own distinct economic ideology, which is called dirigism (referring to the direction of the economy by the government).

     We should not teach high schoolers that Hitler and Stalin were evil, unless we also teach them about the violence committed by Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill in the name of imperialism, capitalism, and “making the world safe for democracy” (such as interning 110,000 innocent Japanese-Americans).

     Alex Jones has discredited himself as a liberty lover, by using his show to urge his listeners to show up to protests with weapons, when they believe that Antifa members are likely to show up. I am making it a plank of my platform to oppose declaring Antifa a terrorist group, for the following two reasons.

     1) Have you ever noticed that Antifa usually have shields, instead of weapons? It's a stupid decision, true. But if they showed up with weapons – like the guns that nationalist protesters have been known to bring to protests – then the right would call Antifa “armed terrorists”. Nationalists bring weapons to protests to incite violence; Antifa bring shields because they expect that they will have to defend themselves from such people.

     2) Antifa was not founded two weeks ago by some loser in his mom's basement; it was founded in Germany in 1932, the year before Hitler took power.

     If you're anti-fascist, then you're Antifa. If you support declaring Antifa a terrorist group because you're anti-fascist and you think they're fascists, then logically you would have to support declaring yourself a terrorist (because you're anti-fascist, and therefore Antifa, which is an unincorporated movement that has no leaders and is directed by nobody).

     George Soros is not a Nazi, he was forced to join Nazi Youth as a teenager. Communists are not Nazis; Communists fought Nazis to the death and invaded the German capital. Communists with the Ukrainian brigades helped stop trains headed for death camps, and helped fully liberate Auschwitz after the Jewish prisoners partially liberated themselves in January 1945. Communists are not Nazis; Hitler banned Marxism in 1933, purged the Nazi Party of socialists, and faked being a socialist in order to avoid real socialism in addition to communism. The Nazis had quotas to confiscate Jewish wealth; not wealth in general. Nazism was not real socialism because it did not consider Jews part of that society, and the Nazis were not trying to do socialism.

     If you support taking people's money on their way out of the country - or requiring people to have permits and licenses in order to work, travel, or carry a weapon – then you're a fascist. Plain and simple. If not, then you might want to vote for me. Because there are real concentration camps in America, just like the ones funded by associates of the Bushes 80 years ago. And any day your driver's license could stop being accepted outside your state lines, and any day your school could “lose track” of your kid.

     Any day you could get swindled into thinking there are lots of jobs in the East, as the Jews were made to believe. And there were jobs; in hard-labor camps that eventually became death camps (as more and more people died from being overworked, and disease, and the Nazis resorted to extreme measures to prevent the spread of disease, which they knew would only make their prisoners sicker). After all, people from Honduras and El Salvador have been tricked into thinking there are jobs in America that you can easily leave, only to get stuck in I.C.E. facilities (when undocumented), or trapped in America at the end of harvest season (when documented).

     We are trapping Hispanics at the border and we are trapping black people in the jails. We are hunting human beings. America has made war and policing – killing and hunting human beings – into its national pastime and one of its most popular jobs. We have legalized treating people like animals, in our words and in our actions.

     It should be no surprise, then, that our teenagers are so prone to violence, with these murderers as their heroes. We blame violence on video games, but I blame school shootings, in part, on high taxes. Think about it: When our income is taxed, what we fairly earned through working for wages is taken away, and confiscated, and for the most part wasted. When our housing value is taxed, we lose all impetus to improve our property, because when our property value increases, our property taxes go up as well. There is no way to get ahead through producing something; the only way to make money is to destroy and invest in weapons, and the only way to save money and save on taxes is to produce less and own less. Kids are being taught that wasting and destroying things, gets you more money than producing and improving things. And it does! But this teaches them that they'll never be rich, because of high taxes (and barriers to employment, like lack of skilled trades classes), and so if they can't be rich, they can still be famous without being rich, by killing large numbers of people.

     If they do learn violence from violent video games, then yes, school shootings happen because kids are obsessed with who has the most kills. But if they're obsessed with who has the most kills, then there's a simple way to let those thoughts, and their politically extremist feelings, out: by debating Hitler vs. Stalin death tolls in high school. Hitler's fifty million dead will not only distract students from how many people they want to kill; it will also reassure them that they'll never be able to kill more people than the Nazis did. So why should they even try?

     It may sound ridiculous, but is that really more dangerous than what we're currently doing? Rationalizing the idea that the C.I.A. adopted from Winston Churchill; that the West should have aligned with Hitler from the beginning, because the Soviet Union and communism were the real enemies the whole time? Well, guess what: America did try to align with Hitler before World War II. It resulted in the deportation of Holocaust refugees and American assistance in the construction of forced-labor camps.

     I would much rather “teach the controversy” about World War II in high schools, than let troubled kids who understand extremism well, go without being challenged in front of their peers, and risk ending up isolated loners who kill their classmates. Socialists, nationalists, libertarians, anarchists, and others, all need to be respected alongside Democrats and Republicans in our public schools, and given equal time, or else the federal support of public schools should end forever.

     There is hardly any reason left to keep funding public schools anyway. The proponents of gun control argue “Even if it will save only one child's life, it will be worth it to ban guns.” And they make a good point; one child is shot or killed every school day in America. But you never hear anybody say “Even if it will save only twenty-four children from being molested a day, we should ban the public schools where this molestation takes place, with the help of our taxpayer money to defend the teacher.” I will be the first candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives to ever say that.

     I will also aim to lower the likelihood of school shootings through three methods: 1) Allowing students to take gun safety training courses; 2) Depend on private security guards to protect schools instead of the police, and 3) Pursue lawsuits or legislation which will result in the overturning of the 1980s Supreme Court case Warren v. District of Columbia, which holds that the police have no duty to protect and serve, unless there is a private contract.

     In my mind, the outcome of Warren is that we do not have a police force in America; we have a for-profit mafia-style protection racket. And the last thing it wants is for vulnerable people and minorities to be armed, defend themselves, and make the cops look bad.

     As your candidate, I vow to fight this mafia protection racket until the day I die. If I am elected to the U.S. House, I will do whatever I can to curtail the power of sovereign immunity, and charge police officers with an actual duty to protect and serve the general public (and, in doing so, restore civic order). I suspect that Warren has something to do with why these cops stand around at protests, and refuse to do anything when Antifa members come up to them saying Nazi sympathizers punched them and they're getting away and you can stop them.

     I will stop letting Nazis get away with all of this. I will do whatever I can to end the taxation of your children into joblessness, homelessness, debt slavery, depression, and despair. I will do whatever I can to restore the American dream of equality of opportunity and equal protection of the law.

     Please join me tomorrow at the public library in Lake Bluff, the town where I grew up, for the first meet and greet of my campaign. I will be giving an hour-long presentation about my platform, followed by an hour of question-and-answer from the audience. Feel free to take some of my campaign literature with you. Thank you.

Written and Published on March 3rd, 2020

Introduction Added on March 5th, 2020

A Constructive Critique of the Libertarian Party's Platform and Messaging

     The following questions were written as part of the Libertarian Party of Illinois's vetting process for nominees. The answers were written on September 20th, 2019, as part of my application for the Libertarian Party's nomination for U.S. House of Representatives from Illinois's 10th Congressional District, for the election to be held on Tuesday, November 3rd, 2020.

     Q: Which plank(s) of the Libertarian Party Platform do you agree with, and why?

     A: I agree with the party's strong desire to protect civil liberties, and to achieve decentralized/localized government. I appreciate the party's understanding of the need to balance privilege with responsibility, while distinguishing privilege from freedom. I agree that economic freedom and social freedom go hand in hand, and that the government should stay out of both our bedrooms and our finances, and refrain from discriminating against us on the basis of our membership in any group. I agree that the Non-Aggression Principle should guide our economic morality to accept exchanges which are both voluntary and mutually beneficial. I agree that a person has a right to what he produces, and that most forms of taxation take away the incentive to produce by confiscating the product. I agree that both spending and taxation by government, and social and corporate welfare, are out of control, and need to be reigned in, and so do the size and scope of government in general, the size of the federal workforce, and the pay and benefits of elected and appointed officials. I agree with the right of self-determination and the right to alter or abolish our government if it becomes destructive of our liberties.

     Q: Which plank(s) of the Libertarian Party Platform do you not agree with, and why?

     A: I agree with the vast majority of the planks of the L.P. platform; the only areas of disagreement I might have at the nuts-and-bolts policy level, would be cases in which some proposed reform: 1) is extremely popular, or else optional; 2) is properly constitutionally authorized through the amendment process; 3) can be done as locally as possible; and 4) has a sunset clause. A proposed law which has all of these characteristics, would likely satisfy me, as long as it is a wise and necessary law. I would be willing to propose and pass new laws, but only while repealing several outdated laws for each new one enacted. I believe that most "taxation is theft", but I also believe that the least harmful taxes are those which are minimally detrimental to productivity.

     The issues I have with the Libertarian Party relate more to some of its messaging and rhetoric, than to its policy conclusions (which are nearly unobjectionable; their only flaw is that a variety of potential solutions is not articulated in each section). I consider myself an "open-borders", "free trade" libertarian, who supports "markets, not capitalism", and questions whether it is necessary for government to play a role in the recognition and protection of property claims and property titles. This puts me somewhat at odds with the libertarians who are more likely to describe themselves as capitalists than free-marketers, and as strong supporters of property rights and self-ownership.

     While I am a strong supporter of individual rights (such as bodily autonomy, the right to keep what you create, and the freedom from being forced to work), I do not see the rhetoric of "self-ownership" as a helpful or necessary way of thinking about our right of self-control, because I think it encourages us to see our bodies as mere pieces of property. I agree with the second sentence in Section 1.1 of the L.P. platform, but I don't think "individuals own their bodies" is either a meaningful statement, a clear statement, or helpful messaging to get people to understand our ideas, because some say self-ownership means the right to sell ourselves and destroy ourselves (which I would question, on the grounds that we didn't create ourselves). Some of the logic behind self-ownership theory is valid, but we must avoid misinterpreting it so as to suggest that our rights are based on how much property we own. But as long as Libertarians continue to value "life, liberty, and property" equally - and don't prioritize the need to protect physical property over the need to protect innocent human lives - then I will be with the L.P. one hundred percent.

     I should also note that, as a "markets, not capitalism" libertarian. I would caution the Libertarian Party to avoid designating "capitalism" as its preferred economic system, because I believe that "free markets" is not only a more popular term, but a distinct school of thought altogether. I agree with those who believe that America has never had totally free markets, not with those who believe we have free markets right now. I take the side of the "market anarchists" (but not the "anarcho-capitalists") in the debate between "minimal government" and anarchism, because I believe that government is unnecessary whenever voluntary association, direct action, mutual aid, and mutually beneficial exchange, are practiced freely.

     I support free markets, free trade (with no treaties being necessary), an open market system, free competition and free cooperation, and equal liberty through equality of opportunity. But I do not believe that being exploited, overworked, undervalued, or poisoned without one's knowledge, are among our rights or our freedoms. That's why I would be willing to support restrictions limiting the number of hours which can be worked consecutively, such as in the trucking trade (but I suspect that most LP members would have no issue with this, as long as such restrictions are properly authorized by the law, enforced by the most local level of government possible, and properly funded). While some foreign nations are plagued with labor abuses, I would not support increased tariffs, nor any other form of "economic punishment"; because that does not solve the problem. The solution is to unabashedly lower our own tariffs to zero, while achieving better labor standards domestically, setting a good example for other countries. Trade wars - and high tariffs and sales taxes - only lead to increased politicization of trade, and eventually to trade blocs, sanctions, embargoes, cold wars, and hot wars. The solution to unfree trade is more free trade.

     Some Libertarians may disagree with me on some of those points, but I am willing to engage them and entertain their ideas, while explaining why I think it would be better for the L.P.'s and the libertarian movement's principles and messaging strategy in the long term, if it maximizes its potential to appeal to everyone who has traditionally called themselves libertarians, including not only the classical liberals, but also the anarchists of 19th century Europe, with whom the term "libertarian" originated. I say this not as criticism, but as a way to suggest making the Libertarian Party into the biggest tent for libertarians possible.

Written on September 20th, 2019
Originally Published on September 20th, 2019
Edited on October 9th, 2019

Socialism and Capitalism Are Compatible Because They Are Economic Systems, Not Political Systems

     Socialism - just like capitalism - is an economic system, not a political system.

     Sure, there's a popular perception out there, that socialism and capitalism each imply a certain political system to go along with them. Most people believe that socialism requires a centrally planned economy, while capitalism requires a "minimal government" to regulate fraud in the market and protect people's property. But that is not necessarily so.
     In this essay, I will explain why socialism does not require centralism, nor strict controls, and why it can be achieved without political action; and I will also explain why the fact that socialism and capitalism are economic systems - rather than political systems - means that they are incompatible. I will also explain under what conditions they are compatible, and the ramifications of synthesizing them both with and without the guidance of the state.

     Nearly every economic system which has been proposed - socialism, capitalism, and others - have both anarchist and statist variations. For example, some socialist and communist turn out totalitarian and quasi-fascistic (usually because they adopt central economic planning, and then resort to political repression, privacy invasion, and social controls to enforce the laws which that economic planning requires).

     But when governments operate in the favor of capitalists - that is, the owners of land, loans, capital, and enterprises - capitalism resorts to political repression, privacy invasion, and social controls, every bit as often as corrupt socialist governments do. Oligarchy is the statist variant of capitalism, while anarcho-capitalism, Agorism, and market-anarchism are some of the anarchist variants of capitalism.

     While some socialist regimes do end up "totalitarian communist", socialism has anarchist variants just like capitalists do. These include anarcho-syndicalism - including its "autonomist" tendency - as well as anarcho-communism, libertarian Marxism, libertarian socialism, and others. Those schools of socialist thought value maximizing local autonomy and worker autonomy; and promoting mass individual and collective ownership of the tools and machines which masses of propertyless people depend on in order to survive.

     Libertarian socialists, anarcho-communists, therefore, support not central planning (which free-marketers despise), but decentralized, polycentric planning. This should be enough to satisfy free-marketers' economic and financial concerns about socialism, because polycentric economic planning of society is much less economically risky than centralized economic planning is. Decentralized planning of the economy helps the people organize production (including its ecological impacts) in a manner which is suitable for the area and environment which they live in, know well, and depend on directly for survival.

     Decentralized planning would require much less political repression in order to enforce, because it would adopt the original principle behind the federalist form of government, which valued deferring as many matters as possible to the most local level of government competent enough to handle them. This principle expresses itself in the form of several political ideas; namely localism, subsidiarism, dual federalism and triple federalism, "polyarchy", and others.

    Lenin explained that his goal was to have social planning of economic production; any "government" which would exist after the abolition of the current state should be created by and subject to the will of the regional governments, just like the original idea behind the American system. Additionally, such a government would not primarily be for social control, but for the planning of economic production by the whole of society in communication with one another. Lenin wanted for the Soviet Union the same sort of delineation between central and regional duties which the Americans originally had; he just had different ideas about which issues which level of government ought to regulate.

     Communism is the political system which most socialists - especially Marxists - believe that socialism implies. Many capitalists are aware of this fact too. But what most capitalists, and some socialists, don't know, is that socialism doesn't always lead to communism, socialism does not always lead to a totalitarian regime, and communism is not totalitarian.

   Socialism doesn't always lead to communism; sometimes it leads to fascism. I would warn capitalist critics of socialism that they cannot claim "socialism always leads to communism" without accidentally admitting that socialism doesn't lead to fascism. And the idea that socialism leads to fascism tends to be an important part of the capitalist critique of socialism.

     Moreover, communism is not totalitarian, because Marx originally envisioned the end goal of socialism and communism to be "pure communism" or "free communism". Thus, communism is not only compatible with freedom; it has freedom - and the full abolition of the state - as its main goals. Pure communism, or free communism, aims for the eventual full abolition of the state, and along with it, the borders which the states establishes and protects, and the money which the state creates and issues. Additionally, the abolition of the class repression and social hierarchy,  which are created by the citizen/"illegal" distinction and the rich/poor distinction which those border and monetary systems create.
     The goal of free communism is to create a stateless, borderless, moneyless society, which would have no need for the state, nor its borders, nor its currency, nor anything else it creates and establishes.

     That is not very far-off from the goals of radical libertarians, market-anarchists, and "anarcho-capitalists", who support abolishing the state and its monopoly on the issuance of currency. That's why anarcho-communism and anarcho-capitalism are compatible. But only if the state and its economic interventions are fully abolished, and permanently; and "ancoms" and "ancaps" can compete for resources and legitimacy in a truly free, stateless, "free market" for alternative proposals to reorganize the economy.

     Communist and capitalist compromise is not without barriers and stumbling blocks, though; free communism would feature no government protection of private property whatsoever, and the only way a capitalist can get on board with that idea is if he is an anarcho-capitalist. This is to say that he must oppose not only state action to help protect property, but also the use of violence by anyone in order to protect property. In a free society, we would change each other's behavior through peaceful conversation and instruction, not through violent repression.

     Socialists and communists of all kinds, just as well as most supporters of free enterprise, oppose fascism and Nazism. That matters because fascism is intrinsically much more likely than socialism and capitalism to require statist intervention, violent enforcement, and central economic planning, in order to exist. It's not that "anarcho-fascist" systems haven't been proposed, however; "National-Anarchism" advocates non-violent "voluntary segregation" in order to avoid the need for statism, imperialism, and centralism, which they staunchly oppose.

     But the vast majority of people with racial supremacist and fascist ideologies, do support the state, do appeal to the state for legitimacy, and do resort to enlisting the help of violent government enforcement arms to protect their often dubious property claims. On the other hand, that is not to say that they won't resort to violence, or even violent revolution, in order to get what they want; the Spanish fascists' overthrowing of the legitimately elected social-anarchist government in the 1930s proves that.

     Fascism requires a strict hierarchy and high centralization of power in order to enforce its economic policy. The fascist economic policy is "dirigism", which etymologically refers to the government's direction of the economy. Under Nazism, for example, just like social and political issues, economic issues were subverted to the Fuhrerprinzip; the idea that the whole society should be organized so as to prioritize the needs of the Fuhrer (that is, the leader or "father" of the country). The need for military hierarchy under Hitler was used to justify the government's economic needs, and social repression was used to make it easier to enforce them.

     At the turn of the twentieth century, socialists such as Charles Maurras and Georges Sorel - as well as "war socialists" in the Russian Duma who supported World War I but rejected wholly dissolving the monarchy's power - began to articulate visions of socialism which required such strict enforcement of "labor discipline" (essentially, strict controls on workers and their production) that it bordered on fascism. This was typically justified by the supposed need for more strictly enforced and organized production during a wartime economy, in which resources must be prioritized so as to support the military's capability of defending itself. Not the "Fuhrer", mind you, but the country's defense capabilities. That tends to be what causes honest, reform-minded, progressive socialism to veer off-course and turn fascistic.

     The point being - to reiterate - socialism doesn't always lead to communism, because socialism sometimes leads to fascism. It doesn't always, but socialism - and fascist regimes parading as socialists - can turn fascist. Hitler was a fascist parading as a socialist. Mussolini was socialist as a youth, but became a fascist later in life. With the Molotov-Ribbentrop treaty, Stalin made himself look like a fascist by tricking Hitler into thinking he was going to give him everything he wanted. Franklin D. Roosevelt worked with Stalin, and imprisoned over a hundred thousand Japanese-American citizens who did nothing wrong, and at the end of his presidency wrote a letter decrying the selling out of the American people to foreign banking and business interests (which he helped facilitate).
     Socialism and fascism do go together sometimes. But that means that socialism doesn't always lead to communism. Because socialism can lead to fascism too.

     To be perfectly honest, in my opinion, it's entirely possible that the American presidential office could come to be occupied by a socialist or socialist-influenced candidate, and it could go off-course and end up fascist.
     I think that because I know that Bernie Sanders has voted for numerous military involvements in Africa and the Middle East - in at least nine countries - over his last 25 years in office. I am reluctant to support him for president - as "less bad" than Trump as that would be - because of those votes, and because I'm worried that he would dismantle American imperialism much more slowly than it needs to be dismantled.
     Based on what I've observed, instead of justifying the need for socialism on the need for military spending (as the "war socialists" did), "democratic socialists" like Sanders tend to excuse "a little" violent imperialist conquest, in order to placate the military-industrial complex lobbyists. I suspect that some self-described progressives and democratic socialists view this as necessary because they know that those lobbyists influence politicians so much, that the people can't strike a deal for a decent social safety net, unless the military and countless businesses are subsidized and supported (and rescued from bankruptcy time and time again) by taxpayers; such that there's a "balance" between warfare and welfare.

     The idea that these people are "democratic socialists" should bring shame to real socialists who value peace, and it does. Real socialists, who value freedom, support peace in all cases; they only support war against fascists and ultra-nationalists. Real "free communists" would never justify social control - nor political repression, nor the use of violence (except in self-defense) - in order to achieve either socialist economic goals or sufficient support of the need for collective defense. Thus, a self-described "communist" who supports any form of military spending, aggression, money, borders, or class distinctions, is an "impure" communist by the standards of Orthodox Marxists.

     The people of the Paris Commune took up arms, and bore them in public. Modern Libertarians and Marxists alike criticize Ronald Reagan for repressing the Black Panthers for insisting on being armed in public. The divide between libertarians and the far-left thus seems to be shrinking.
     Many radical Marxists now realize that the right to be armed in public is valuable, because they know that it is necessary for the most vulnerable people in our society to defend themselves, when the tools of social and racial oppression against them are deadly. There were even murmurs of "Tenth Amendment solutions" - that is, states' rights, Jeffersonian nullification, and "devolving" federal duties to the states - in some Democratic circles in early 2017. Andrew Yang is running for president as a Democrat, yet has a noticeable libertarian following.

     Some communists and socialists are coming around to libertarian ideas; while others are not. The opposite is true as well; many American libertarians are realizing that capitalism isn't working, and are turning to ideas like "free market anti-capitalism" and "markets, not capitalism" for answers and solutions. Once convinced that totally free markets imply statelessness while capitalism too often relies on subsidies from the state, many of these libertarians turn to quasi-socialist economic theories like Georgism and Mutualism for additional answers. From there, it's a short leap to stateless forms of socialism and communism.
     The reason why I am one of these libertarians - that is, one whom is interested in socialism, and not afraid of communism - is because I know socialism and capitalism do not always have to result in some certain political system, with certain modes of oppression. They are economic systems, which can be mixed, especially in an environment which is free of the state, and free of its repressive social and economic agenda (which further its aims of control and centralization of power).
     Additionally, I know that classical liberals were grouped together with leftists in the late 19th century French parliament, and that the original "libertarians" were the late 19th century and early 20th century European social anarchists.
     Democrats, socialists, and communists do not need to be rejected and maligned by libertarians, nor threatened to be thrown out of a helicopter. Democracy is not harmful if it is consensus-based, and has a concern for the minorities' rights and the right to opt-out and dissent. Any and all democrats, socialists, and communists who care about these things, and local needs - as well as individual human rights; such as our needs for social freedom and to defend ourselves, and our needs as workers to own the machines on which we depend on for survival -  should be considered potential friends of libertarians.
     That's because those leftists value what libertarians care about most: diminishing the ability of the centralized state to use violent enforcement to control our society and our economy without the consultation of the local population. They might have slightly different reasons for doing that at times, but Agorist Wally Conger explains in his book Agorist Class Theory that radical libertarians basically want to achieve the same goals as Marx did, but through different means and methods.
     This might help explain why Ron Paul was called a "communist" by some Republicans (mostly for his non-interventionist foreign policy); it's because libertarians and socialists are that strongly opposed to fascism, that to a Republican, they are difficult to distinguish (especially on issues related to the use of the state and military, and their violence, to give preferential treatment to one economic system or another, especially when that system is fascism).
     For all these reasons, and more, anarcho-communists and anarcho-capitalists should not be at each other's throats, claiming that each other's economic system always leads to fascism, while denying what they themselves did to allow that to happen by setting a bad example. To the contrary; ancoms and ancaps should be working together to build a new and better economy, based on the freedom-minded ideals which they determine, through negotiation, that they have in common.

     There is a way to reconcile capitalism and socialism, after all, without it leading to fascism. The way to do that is to refuse to rely on the state to moderate, arbitrate, or supervise such negotiations.

     The time for more communication across economic schools of thought is now. I encourage my readers to read about, and study, alternative economic proposals and systems, especially the anarchist and libertarian varieties. Especially - for the purposes of this essay - Mutualism, market socialism, Georgism, Geo-Libertarianism, panarchy, and anarchism of the "autonomist" and "platformist" varieties. Additionally, economic theories which reject the need for left-vs.-right systemization, such as gift economies, "post-scarcity economics" and "post-scarcity economics" and related topics.
     The dispute between minarchists (advocates of minimum government) and anarchists, is unnecessary; the minimum amount of government is zero. Just think about how much taxpayer money the government would save, if it did nothing at all.

Written on August 28th, 2019

Originally published on August 28th, 2019
under the title "Socialism is Compatible with Capitalism
Because They Are Economic Systems, Not Political Systems"

Letter to Jimmy Dore on Ron Paul and Free Markets

     I'm glad you've complimented Ron Paul for his consistent opposition to military intervention. It's regrettable that he's hired so many racist people to work and write for him, but I'm glad you're still willing to point out when he's right.

     I've heard you talk about interviewing Ron Paul, and supposedly proving him wrong about a free market system being possible and viable. I haven't seen that video. But I wanted to point out the following:
     Ron Paul has said that "we've never had free markets". There have certainly been times when free enterprise ownership and property ownership happened at higher rates, but that doesn't mean we had a fully free-market system.

     For example, on the border issue:

     While Paul may have a softly anti-immigration stance, he has also implied that if government were minimal or did not exist, then private property (and the risks involved in becoming a trespasser) would be the only thing stopping immigrants from coming to the United States.

     This could reasonably be construed to imply that in a free market society, individual property owners living along the border would be free to invite immigrants onto their property, and the government would be able to say little or nothing about it, because it would be fully private property, not the government's jurisdiction. As far as I know, America has never tried a system like that, with all property enforcement occurring voluntary (that is, unless you count vigilante border "protectors").

     It's also worth noting that there have rarely been times when the government both 1) adequately and effectively utilized its antitrust power against monopolies, and 2) declined to tax earned income.

     A real free market system would have no monopolies, no taxation of ordinary people's earnings, no state-controlled professional licensing systems, and most importantly, no government power to steal taxpayer money and then use that money to subsidize businesses and keep them afloat.

     Your point to Dr. Paul that "Markets have never regulated themselves" is perplexing. It's not that markets should be expected to regulate themselves. Consumers and workers are supposed to regulate the markets. By boycotting products they don't like, and companies which they feel are behaving unethically.

     But they're not able to fully boycott those products. First, because the Taft-Hartley Act prohibits secondary labor actions (i.e., coordinated boycotts which take place across multiple industries), and second, because subsidies exist (that is, government steals our money through taxes, and gives the money to its cronies in business).

     So we can try to put a company out of business through refraining from buying its products, but the government can just bail it out in order to save jobs. That may look like "capitalism", but it's not free-market, because it's government intervention in the economy. The fact that the intervention is for the benefit of businesses, should not sway free-market supporters towards capitalism, although regrettably it often does.

     I respect your opinion, but I believe that Ron Paul is right on this one. We have never tried free markets; we have never tried having government without monopolies; and most importantly, we have never tried depriving the government of its ability to bail out companies we don't like, insulate them from legal and financial risk, and deprive us of our freedom to have sustained, coordinated boycotts of private sector institutions which we don't wish to help fund.

Written on June 27th, 2019

Rent, Profit, Interest, Usury, and Taxing Monopolies

Table of Contents

1. Introduction: Purpose of This Article
2. Rent
3. Profit
4. Wages
5. Wage-Theft is Real
6. Interest on Capital
7. Interest on Money
8. Usury and the Currency Monopoly

9. Usury = Rent x Profit x Interest

10. Exclusive vs. Semi-Exclusive Rent Collection Privileges

11. Conclusion
12. Post-Script: Taxation and Monopolies
13. Links and Additional Reading

Content

1. Introduction: Purpose of This Article

     The purpose of this article is to explain why rent, profit, and interest – and why the ownership of land, labor, and capital – are the results of laws and state-upheld monopolies.

     Herein I contend – as the anarchists, Mutualists, Georgists, Tuckerites, and others have contended – that: 1) excess rent is the result of monopolies on land and housing; 2) profit and wage-theft are results of monopolies on labor; and 3) interest and usury are the results of monopolies on capital, credit, currency, and money.

     They are the results of legally granted privileges to collect the various forms of economic rent; i.e., rent on land, profit off of labor, and interest off of capital (and loans, and money).

     I have already explained, in my March 2019 article “Why Rent is Theft: Against Economic Rents and Monopolies”, why this is so. Readers wishing to better understand my thoughts on these related topics can read that article for more information. The focus of the article is to explain why “rent is theft” from the perspective of some socialists, in addition to taxation being theft from the perspective of the Libertarians.

     For those who don't plan on reading that article, it will suffice to say that “rent is theft” because economic rent is theft. This is to say that rent, profit, and interest – which are all forms of economic rent – are either stolen, or else otherwise unjustly acquired, whether through semi-legal or extralegal means, or, if in the absence of law, then through violence, force, coercion, extortion, and manipulation.

     If and when the state registers and recognizes the legal ownership of all land, labor, and capital - and allows ownership of them only through permission - then all land, labor, and capital which is legally and legitimately owned, is owned only if and when the state and its enforcers agree to protect those ownership titles.

     In the act of enforcing exclusive claims to land, labor, and capital, those enforcers come to exercise some degree of the state's unique, exclusive privilege to wield a credible monopoly on the legitimate use of force within the territory. Thus, they exert the power traditionally wielded by the state, both in custom, and in definition (especially in the definition of the state which was developed and popularized by sociologist Max Weber).

     These facts have prompted the anarchists, Mutualists (etc.) to conclude that private property (inasmuch as it is protected by the state, and/or by violence) cannot, and could not, exist, without the threat of violence being levied against anyone and everyone who

     These facts, most importantly, have prompted the anarchists and Mutualists (etc.) to ask: “How could private property exist, then, without the state to recognize it and protect it? In a stateless or consent-based society, how could anyone wield monopoly over land (etc.) when everyone else is absolutely free to question and challenge the property claims of everybody else?

     “And with no ability to legally challenge property claims, and no ability to legally challenge occupancy-and-use norms in state courts (i.e., because there would be no state courts), how could a property claimant continue to exclude others from his property, without resorting to force? Without a legal privilege to commit acts of violence in order to protect property claims, how could ”

     The remainder of this article does not answer all of those questions, but it should help to provide some foundation questioning the legitimacy of ownership of labor, capital, and currency (in addition to landed property). I ask that my readers try, on their own, to ask the same questions of just ownership of labor, capital, and money, which I have previously asked about how land can be justly owned without the state.

     Readers seeking answers to the above mentioned questions, should read my March 2019 article “Private Law and Anarchism: Is Privatization a Solution to the State's Monopolies on Legal Services?”, and also read the works of Murray Rothbard, Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Stefan Molyneux, Walter Block, Roderick Long, etc..

     Of course, my answers will be much more critical of private property than the answers provided by these thinkers, save for perhaps Roderick Long. This is owing, in part, to the fact that I have spent so much attention to the various manners in which the rights of public and common actors (but not state actors) are unjustly ignored during the creation of most or all private property.

2. Rent

     Rent is the return to land. Rent is levied upon, and extracted from, buildings, and the land on which buildings sit. Landlords are granted exclusive monopoly rights (really, privileges) to collect rent on the lands which they own.

     This grant of privilege is performed by the state, through its unique (and self-granted) power to recognize and register landed property claims. The state registers landed property claims through apparati such as county Recorders of Deeds' offices. Thus, the ownership of land, under capitalists states, is not retained according to the active protection of the owner; on the contrary, it is a function of law, and of the force of the state.

     Excess rent (that is, “super-rent”) is landlordism, plantation slavery, and indentured servitude. Excess rent is therefore theft, if kept by the landlord, not reinvested into the community and/or its markets, and not reinvested into the tenants and their residences.

3. Profit

     Profit is the “return to management”. Profit is extracted from laborers, who work either in buildings which rest upon the land, or work directly upon the land (or even beneath it, as in mining operations).

     Profit is the “return to management” only because it is “returned” to management from labor. This is to say that profit is stolen wages, which are kept by management, instead of being returned to the laborers.

     Excess profit (that is, “super-profit”, “surplus profit”, or “excess surplus value”; extra-Mehrwert in Marx's and Engels's German) is the withholding of wages, benefits, and improvements in conditions, by management, from labor.

     Excess profit, stolen from labor and kept by management, is therefore theft, when it is not reinvested into the community and/or its markets, and not reinvested into workers.

     This reinvestment should be done chiefly for the purpose of: 1) improving the workers' benefits and conditions, including pay, and safety and health conditions; 2) helping workers to own their own tools, and to own shares of the means of their productivity and livelihood; and 3) allowing workers a realistic chance of buying-out the owner, and of creating a new (and, hopefully, self-managed, and more egalitarian) franchise, of the original firm, or perhaps even an entirely new company which has the full ability to freely compete against the original firm.

4. Wages

     Wages are the return to labor. They are the return of compensation to the laborer or worker, rather than to management.

     All wages, not returned to the laborer, are possessed mainly by either management, owners, or outside investors. Outside investors have little or no stake in the firm's long-term success, and management and owners have more stake but also a more realistic chance of thriving financially if they leave the firm as compared to workers.

     Wages are funds not reinvested into the firm in a way that directly benefits workers and their families, and are “returned to” managers, owners, and investors (whom cannot truthfully claim that those funds are actually returned to them, because they never possessed nor earned those funds in the first place). This is to say that all funds not stolen from workers and kept by others, and not reinvested into the community and/or its markets, are excess profit (superprofit), not wages.

     But those funds should be wages, and they should be returned – from management, owners, and investors – to the workers, so that the workers can spend those funds in the community and/or its markets.

     Wages are earned income, appropriately distributed and allocated; that is, wages are earned by workers, as compensation for performing labor. The idea that the worker's labor, is done chiefly for the benefit of himself and his family (and to a lesser extent, the community and its markets in which they will be spending those wages), stands in direct opposition to the notion that the laborer works chiefly for the benefit of managers, owners, and investors.

     Thus, the notion that labor entitles all that it produces, stands in direct opposition to the practice of profiteering from labor.

5. Wage-Theft is Real

     There may be some argument that “wage theft” does not exist, because while the laborer is a renter of capital, the capitalist is, just the same, a renter of labor. This is to say that owners and managers employ laborers, by “renting-out their hands” or renting-out their time.

     But the capitalists' “rent” of workers' time, talent, and physical effort, is never fully paid, and it never can be. That's because managers never compensate workers for the opportunity costs, and other indirect costs, which the workers bear before and outside employment.

     This is to say that few firms compensate new hires for all of the costs they undertook while seeking employment; few firms allow new hires to deduct, as work expenses, costs like the identification documents, clothing, sanitary items, paper and ink, printing costs, postage stamps, phone calls, and bus tickets, which they buy in order to apply for jobs and travel to job interviews.

     This occurs because, evidently, managers and owners feel that those costs are the workers' problems, and have nothing to do with the everyday operation of the firms, and especially nothing to do with the owners. But they could not be more wrong. A new hire – especially one who struggled for a long time before finally finding employment – will often spend months and months, even years, paying off debts and budgetary deficiencies created by those expenses.

     And the more a worker is thinking about where his next meal will come from, where he will sleep next, how his family will make ends meet, and what will happen if he gets sick or injured on the job, the less productive the worker (and, in turn, the firm) becomes. And thus, the less profitable it becomes to “rent” workers.

     So, in many ways, labor is not getting the full return from its effort, and wage-theft is real. Unless you believe that a worker is supposed to only earn as much as is necessary to keep him working another day, with nothing left over to develop himself, either through skills or education, even if he becomes more productive because of it.

     That increased production will only cause him to become self-sustaining, and independent; and thus less dependent upon others for what he needs to survive. Thus, increased self-management of workers, is not in the interest of managers because it puts them out of a job, and is not in the interest of owners because it makes workers less dependent upon owners, and more reliant upon themselves.

6. Interest on Capital

     Interest is the return to capital. Interest is extracted from capital investments, loans, and currency or money (which are not the same thing).

     Capitalists – that is, capital investors, lenders (and, less importantly for the purposes of this section, owners of labor, i.e., employers) – are granted exclusive monopoly rights to collect interest upon those loans and capital investments.

     Capitalists' ownership of those loans and capital investments, are secured through the state's legal recognition of the contracts which capitalists make. These include contracts wherein: 1) capitalists agree to employ laborers; and wherein 2) capitalists agree to rent and occupy buildings and/or land owned by others, and pay rent to those owners (and/or fees or taxes to state owners of land and buildings) for the privilege of occupying some of those lands and developments.

     Additionally, the continued ownership of capital assets, is secured (and securitized) to the owner – on either a temporary or permanent basis - through the state's power to grant L.L.C. status. L.L.C. grants allow owners of firms, and individual workers within them, to become both financially and legally irresponsible for their criminal actions. This is done through distributing and deferring the risk of financial culpability for lawsuits involving the firm.

     That these practices are acceptable, rests upon the premise of the “right of increase”, i.e., the right to acquire unlimited profits from investments, in perpetuity, forever. Most terrifyingly, the “right of increase” ethos now embodies itself in the pretended right of multinational corporations to sue national governments for passing laws which “limit their right to profit”, even when those laws are passed in order to protect workers, civilians, plant resources, and the ecology from being exploited by those firms.

     These capital investments, and loans, are further secured to their owners with the help of the state, through the various forms of wage-theft (and deprivation of improvements of benefits and conditions) which make workers more dependent upon loans, and upon employment by capitalists chiefly for the benefit of other people, than they otherwise would be (if they were independent, self-employed owners of their own means of production).

7. Interest on Money

     Leaving aside the issues of interest on capital investments, interest on physical capital, and loans to entities besides treasuries, and focusing only on interest on loans and currency (i.e., financial capital):

     For all intents and purposes, interest functions as a form of debt, when it is built-into currencies. Through inflation – whether accidental, or as a result of intentional “quantitative easing” of the monetary supply through the issuance of newly minted currencies – currency is imbued with interest, and with some measure of debt.

     The presence of this debt, causes the value of the currency issued, to be constantly decreasing. When done intentionally, the intent is that depletion of the value of the currency will lead its possessor to spend it earlier, and/or more quickly, than he otherwise would. This assures a prompt return to all those who invest in currency (i.e., bond-holders).

8. Usury and the Currency Monopoly

     Excess interest (that is, “super-interest”) is usury. Usury exists because of the exploitation of the demand for money, in order to increase the value of monetary assets already possessed by owners of money and currency.

     That the demand for money and currency is being exploited – and, at that, officially – should be obvious. Currency - which is not itself money, nor value, but a representation of value and money, and to some extent a representation of work – is created by the state. Through the state's self-granting of the legal privilege to designate an official currency, and to coin moneys and regulate their values, few transactions can be made without the use of the state currency to mediate the exchange.

     Thus, the state is able to cite these privileges – and also the supposed need to levy taxes upon potentially all transactions – in order to monopolize the creation and issuance of currency. This increases public demand for money and currency – that is, state-issued moneys and currencies – in order to perform most any and all of the tasks necessary to survive (i.e., labor, trading, etc.).

     If there were no monopolistic state to choose an official currency, regulate its value, and compel us to pay taxes on as many transactions as the state wants us to, then it would be difficult for most of us to imagine how useful such a medium of exchange could be for a free people.

     That's because free people would, more likely, use the value of labor, and human need, as more important indicators of the value of the compensation that someone is offering in exchange for work or items. Free people would not accept a currency with debt (that is, interest) built into it, unless they understood why, and under what circumstances, that debt is helpful (i.e., when that debt causes currency to be returned to a publicly-held issuer of currency or credit).

     Excess interest (i.e., usury) is bankerism, capital misallocation, and pernicious predatory lending. Excess interest is theft, whenever interest (and debt, and excess monetary value) are kept by the lender or the investor of capital.

     Whenever lenders do not allow borrowers to pay some of what they owe into a security reimbursement fund, for emergency purposes - and whenever the returns from investment and lending are not reinvested into the market and/or community, and into making loans available for those same borrowers as well as others – then a theft has occurred.

     This is no less “theft” simply because it does not appear violent on its surface. The dependence of the borrower upon the lender, only exists without challenge, when the lender is free to change the terms of the lending contract at will, without review by the lender. Each the state's recognition of the legitimacy of the contract while it changes, and lack of transparency into the justice of contracts on the part of community agencies or voluntary associations, can lead to borrowers being dependent upon lenders.

     And, of course, in the presence of the state and its official currency, few transactions (loans included) can be conducted without the state's approval, without using the state's official tool of oppression (i.e., its currency), and without paying taxes upon those transactions (in that official currency).

9. Usury = Rent x Profit x Interest

     While in the previous several sections, I have used the word “usury” to denote “excessive interest” (especially on capital and loans), usury possesses characteristics unique among the various types of economic rent. As such, “excessive interest” alone, does not constitute usury at its fullest and most pernicious extent.

     While interest on capital and loans is popularly referred to as “usury” when it is excessive, excessive interest on currency is a different animal altogether. That's because currency – the medium of exchange through which loans and capital investments are made – possesses characteristics more strongly associated with rent and profit than with interest.

Meme created by the author on November 30th, 2017;

first published here on May 22nd, 2019

     Think about it: the act of profiting off of the state issuance of official currency, results in misappropriation (that is, theft) of all three major types of economic rent: 1) interest; 2) rent; and 3) profit.

     First (and most obviously): profiting from currency results in excessive interest, because the debt which inflation imbues in our currency, results in pernicious levels of interest, because of the artificial, state-created, unnaturally high demand for acceptable media of exchange.

     Second (and second most obviously): profiting from currency results in excessive profit, through profiteering from the lending of that currency, and for the same purposes just described, pertaining to interest.

     Third (and least obvious of all): profiting from currency results in excessive rent, because in a way, users of currency (as well as those who borrow in official currency) are paying a rent on the currency they possess and use. This rent is levied upon bearers and users of currency, through – you guessed it – the imbuing of the currency with debt (caused by inflation).
     To summarize, to reap usury on money is to profit off of the rental of money at interest. It is to take maximum advantage possible of the artificial need for money; artificial, because it is compelled by the state, through the state's granting of a legal monopoly on currency to itself.

     Thus, usury is that most destructive and deadly of economic rents, because it is the best example of an economic rent, and the best example of how economic rents overlap and become almost indistinguishable. Especially when a monopoly currency, and monopolies on financial capital, are combined with a system wherein land, labor, and physical capital are owned according to the recognition and dictates of the state.

     If the above is an accurate assessment, then it may perhaps be fair to conclude that we must measure – and multiply together – all three economic rents (rent, profit, and interest), if we desire to come up with accurate measurements of the degree of “usury” (in its fullest sense) existing within an economic system.

10. Exclusive vs. Semi-Exclusive Rent Collection Privileges, and a Note on Emergency Funds

     If what I have said above, and also what the anarchists say on these topics, is correct, then in state-capitalist and protectionistic economies (forms of economic governance which feature monopolies heavily), to claim property ownership, and to get it recognized in a manner which is monopolistic, monolithic, unquestionable, unchallengeable, and final, requires a lot.

     It requires either: 1) the state and its violence to uphold the claim and keep people out; 2) the use of violence, to do the same, without the use of the state; or else 3) 100% approval by the remainder of society, that a person deserves and earned what he claims as his property.
     Furthermore, to claim ownership (in these economies) entails making a claim to an exclusive and exclusionary right (or privilege) to access and make use of certain lands, buildings, or other assets (even including, unfortunately, other people's labor).

     The tangible outcome of the practice of exclusive and exclusionary private property ownership, is that people are met with violence, for attempting to “squat” on a property (“engage in adverse possession”, in fancier terms), even if they pose no threat of physical harm to the property's claimant(s).

     But must we suffer this? Can we suffer this? Absolutely not.

     We cannot survive much longer if, every time we try to use one of what we thought were our own possessions, we are obligated to pay that possession's actual owner (from whom we are merely borrowing, renting, or accessing and using the things which we possess but don't own). We cannot survive much longer, if we are not allowed to fully own any of the things that we use every day; if we have to pay and ask permission every time we want to use one of “our own” possessions.

     Although, in a sense, for everyone to be able to fully own their possessions, constitutes universal, ubiquitous ownership of private property; this would not grant those owners “private property” in the same sense in which the anarchists, Marxists (etc.) have traditionally conceived of private property.

     This is to say that private property owned for the sake of owning and using, is fundamentally different in purpose, from private property owned solely for the sake of producing more value therefrom. For everyone to own property - and for everyone to be able to acquire it through their own efforts and defense - would not result in depending upon others to acquire property; for precisely the reason that if everyone had property, nobody would have to please anyone else (through paying or begging) in order to acquire property.

     I do not wish to give the impression, through this essay, that all forms of rent, profit, and interest, result from perfectly exclusive ownership of property, nor from grants of total rights to exclude others from accessing property.

     The returns of rent, profit, and interest, are, however, certainly, greatly increased, the more exclusive, exclusionary, and monopolistic that ownership gets. For example, if a renter has no realistic opportunity to buy his residence from his landlord, then the renter will pay rent for a much longer period of time than he otherwise would.

     Likewise, if a laborer has no realistic opportunity to own his tools and a share of the company, and no opportunity to buy-out his company and start a new franchise, then the laborer will end up working for a much longer period of time than he otherwise would. And, to repeat, if a borrower has no chance of recouping any sort of emergency funds paid to the lender, because the lender kept them, then the borrower will end up owing the lender for a much longer period of time than he otherwise would.

     This means that – through trust, mutual obligations, and a mutual desire for all parties involved to be prosperous and eventually own property – it is possible to lessen the exploitative effects caused by legal recognition of ownership titles to land, labor, and capital.
     Such exploitative effects could additionally be lessened through increasing the prevalence, and variety of form, of emergency security disbursement funds - for not only the lender/borrower relationship, but for the landlord/tenant and employer/worker relationships as well. Security deposits on housing rent could be paid into a fund which is held in a neutral territory, which landlord or renter may only access upon absolute verification and agreement that the landlord's and/or tenant's expenses justify the expenditure of part or all of the security deposit. Such funds would be subject to total transparency, and this could be done with the help of blockchain technology, or through any number of practices involving multiple forms of verification.
     Setting up more worker-managed firms, or allowing communities to offer tax incentives to businesses in order to transition their model of private ownership into a collective one - for example, E.L.M.F.s (Egalitarian Labor-Managed Firms), or W.S.D.E.s (Workers Self-Directed Enterprise) - will also help increase the number of firms that have funds set up for their employees in emergency situations.
     Additional solutions to the lack of emergency funds of all of these borrowers, may be found through firms offering E.S.O.P.s (Employee Stock Ownership Plans). U.S. Senators Bernie Sanders and Kristin Gillibrand have supported proposals requiring the establishment of E.S.O.P.s in large companies. Sanders has additionally called for corporations to seat workers on their boards.
     Proposed and adopted programs similar to E.S.O.P.s and so-called "funds socialism" include: 1) the Meidner Plan in Sweden, calling for the establishment of "wage-earner funds"; 2) the American Solidarity Fund, proposed by the People's Policy Project; 3) the Norwegian G.P.F.G. (Government Pension Fund Global); 4) the U.K. Labour Party's proposed "Inclusive Ownership Funds"; and 5) the NSW Generation Fund in New South Wales, Australia.
     More solutions may be found through modifying Disaster Relief Emergency Grants, retainer fees, or emergency corporate legal funds and insurance plans, to something which is mutually acceptable to all parties to contracts involving financial trust.
     Emergency funds - whether accessible by all parties to a contract, or to none - should be set up for all borrowers. They should be set up for people who borrow land, labor, and capital alike. That's because the people of the proletariat, lacking land and capital, sell their labor. They own  nothing else, and thus have nothing else to sell. It should not be ignored, that, in selling their labor, they are selling the last thing they have, and thus have nothing else, save for what little compensation they receive from work. The security of that compensation should, at the very least, be transparent to the worker.

     What I am recommending, in general, is diminution and lessening of the monopolistic, exclusive, and exclusionary characteristics of property ownership. Thus, monopolist property owners would be turned into oligopolists.

     The propertyless become property owners, and the monopolists become oligopolists, at the very moment when renters, borrowers, and workers begin to receive sufficient amounts of exclusive property (and sufficient rights to that property) as compensation. That is, as compensation in exchange for the efforts they put into their relationships of financial trust with landlords, lenders, and employers.

     Once the privateers of the bourgeoisie (that is, the government, landlords, land speculators, lenders of physical and financial capital, and employers of labor) come to wield oligopolies on possession, instead of outright monopolies on ownership, then renters, borrowers, and workers (i.e., the proletariat) can increase their “market-share” of possessed assets, and increase its value relative to the value possessed by those who desire to be monopolists.

     Thus, through increasing their market-share of property, and the degree of their control over their property, the proletariat can lessen the degree of their exploitation, and lessen the monopolists' degree of control over their property claims; and in so doing, they make it easier for workers to work for shorter periods of time, in order to acquire their own slices of property.

     But – again – for proletarians to own such property, can only be rightfully described as the result of violence, if no constraints whatsoever are placed upon the owner's (landlord, boss, lender, etc.) ability to exclude others; upon the owner's ability to unfairly estop people from fulfilling their obligations (i.e., by buying the residence, buying the workplace, repaying loans, etc.).

     If those constraints exist, then the property is not fully private, because the exclusivity is not total, and, in effect, not fully exercised. And those constraints, by the way, do not even need need not be imposed by the state, but can be accepted as a matter of mutually beneficial contract; between the owners, and the workers and their associations.

     Finally, I must add that, to turn monopolists into oligopolists, would, by no means, result in universal property ownership by itself.

     It is not enough to resign ourselves to allowing “property ownership” to increase, simply by allowing current owners sub-contract and sub-let all their properties out to others. This is not ownership, but renting-out what's already being rented. It is rent upon rent; that is, compound rent. Creating hundreds of shell corporations within one-another, while the original firm gets all the profit - or sub-letting-out smaller and smaller portions of a residence, while the tenant is increasingly boxed-in – don't have anything to do with either anarchism, or a just conception of property rights that desires for all people the realistic potential to become owners.

     What is necessary – in addition to the practical opportunity to acquire property without either the hindrance or assistance of a state – is for workers to struggle.

     Not suffer, mind you, but struggle. Not work too hard, nor work their fingers to the bone, nor work themselves half to death. By “struggle”, I mean that workers – after they are freed from the legal constraints placed on their ability to acquire property justly – must also free themselves from the economic and social constraints which hinder them from acquiring property.

     What, exactly, it means to “free oneself from economic and social constraints on acquiring property justly”, is beyond the scope of this essay, so I will allow my readers to form their own ideas about what this means, and how it could be achieved.

11. Conclusion

     I hope I have made it clear, in the above, why I believe that rent, profit, interest, and usury all result, and thrive, due to monopolistic as well as oligopolistic ownership of property.

     Additionally, due to monopolistic and oligopolistic control of property rights; for example, through hiring privatized security forces to protect property claims, and through hiring lobbyists who petition the government for property laws which are favorable to people who already own property.

     If it weren't for the state, and its self-granted privilege to recognize exclusive title to land, then monopolies on labor and capital (which rest on that monopolized land) would not exist. It is because of the state's self-granted privilege – to recognize the monopoly privileges of all of its other favored marketplace actors – that other monopolies exist.

     If not for the state's recognition of the privilege of the owner to exclude, the privilege of the landlord to evict, the privilege of the boss to fire, and the privilege of the lender to collect – the vast majority of these privileges being completely unchecked by any agency other than those of the state – then people would acquire property and find work according to their own efforts, and according to what all parties to a contract believe is a fair (not just adequate) amount of compensation, in a manner which is beneficial to the mutual long-term interests of all parties involved.

     Finally, it behooves me to note that the above mentioned problems, are precisely why the state cannot be trusted to perform either its antitrust or its anti-usury functions. Because, as I have stated so many times in the past, the state creates monopolies, and thus cannot be trusted to do away with them. The state creates currencies, and all but compels people to use them (when they'd rather use money, which is backed by real value, unlike currency), and thus no other currency has a chance to compete against the state's “money monopoly”.

     Granted, firms which generate profit should be taxed at a higher rate than those which reinvest all would-be profits or generate no profit at all. [Note: This is to say that non-profit, cooperative, and egalitarian firms should not be taxed, provided that they don't receive any privileges to wield exclusive monopolies.] Moreover, firms which do not generate profit, should probably not pay taxes at all. But the only reason they should be taxed, is because the funds being taxed away were “earned” (acquired) thanks to the assistance of the state's monopoly powers.

     The reason, however, to tax those profits, should not be construed to imply that the state should collect those taxes. Granted, the state is the only entity which we perceive of as capable of collecting all those taxes in the first place (at least right now). But being theoretically capable of performing this task, does not make it morally deserving of the task, nor does it guarantee that the government will collect as much taxes as it intends to, nor that it will collect solely those taxes which are duly imposed for the privilege of financially benefiting off of the state's monopoly protections (which can even include extorting funds from taxpayers in order to provide privileges, subsidies, and bailouts for firms that are supposedly “struggling”).

     What will be necessary - and appropriate, and moral - for the collection of taxes upon the funds gained from wielding monopoly privileges, will be for a non-monopolistic, or less monopolistic, form of economic governance, to emerge. The monopolistic nature of the state, just like the monopolistic nature of exclusive and exclusionary property rights, can be lessened. This can be done through decentralization, localization, and strict delineation of spheres of policy influence across the various levels of government. One example would be for community associations to levy taxes on profits, rather than for the state or federal government to do it.

     Readers desiring to know more about my ideas about how our government could be made “less statist” (which is to say, less monopolistic), can read my July 2013 article “On Max Weber's Definition of the State”.

     All legal and economic monopolies must be destroyed.

     We will destroy monopolies by making them into oligopolies, and gradually into polyopolies. The final form of our economy should be a polyopoly-polyopsony, a state of many sellers, many buyers.

     Without legal titles, any de facto, monopoly which is perceived of as “natural” (except for land, the monopoly on which is natural, at least in a limited, local sense) will not last as a monopoly for very long, given the total freedom of all others to enter into competition with it, and to challenge its right to exclude. (Note: Land would likely prove to be the easiest monopoly to abolish, because of the vast amount of it which exists; however, many people have yet to be convinced of this fact. Once land proves abundant, then the cost of mixing labor and capital upon the land will plummet.)

     Without the state, people would have the unlimited right to challenge a company's privilege to “exclude” some people; especially if it forcibly includes them at the same time. Firms with significant financial privileges and/or legal immunities often exclude workers and customers from benefiting sufficiently from the company, while at the same time compelling them (as well as taxpayers), to pay the company through taxes (due to the privileges, subsidies, and bailouts for which those taxes pay). Thus, the taxpayers, workers, clients, and consumers have little to no recourse with which to free themselves from this benefit-free obligation, save for hiring a lobbyist to change the law, so as to allow them to fully boycott the company, by removing all of those privileges and favors which help keep the company afloat.

     However, the anarchists, of course, would object to such lobbying, and rightfully so, since lobbying the state to change its laws, requires the legitimized use of violence. Unless, however, if in the process the state ceases becoming a state as we know it - like by shedding all of its monopolistic aspects and abdicating all of its power to rule and enforce with finality - then a change in the law is just what we need. Especially if only those contracts and agreements which are both mutually beneficial and voluntary, come to be accepted.

     Only by establishing “O&U norms” (that is, occupancy-and-use norms) can we avoid depending upon the state, and its legitimized violence, for a resolution to our property disputes.

     It's time to say “R.I.P.” (“rest in peace”) to “R.I.P.” (rent, interest and profit). And, with them, usury, the most complex and pernicious form of economic rent and excess return.

12. Post-Script: Taxation and Monopolies

     While I have explained at length why monopolies deserve to be taxed, and alluded to an answer as to whom ought to tax them, I have yet to explain the issues of whether taxation is a monopoly, and whether taxation has to be done in a monopolistic fashion.
     I believe that taxation is currently a virtual monopoly, at least in the United States. I say this because federal government expenditures constitute about 25% of the G.D.P., while state and local government expenditures constitute 15%, while other expenditures constitute the remaining 60%. Since 1789, the federal government has certainly demonstrated its ability to suck whole sectors of the economy into its legislative purview. And with it, a much higher percentage of the economy is taxed-away by the federal government; both in comparison to state and local governments, and in comparison to the level of taxation which Americans enjoyed 100 years ago.
     Having the state and local governments spend more than the federal government - or, to put it a better way, having the federal government spend less than state and local governments - will help reduce the federal government's monopoly over the legislative and judicial functions related to taxation, and thus enable state and local governments to take-over any federal functions which they can handle.
     [Note: The executive function of taxation, has already been sub-contracted-out to our employers, whom are obliged to collect taxes from our paychecks. What would our country be like if those taxes were retained in a mutually accessible fund, or would only be paid to the government on April 15th if both employers and workers agreed that the government had done a good job the previous year? It simply cannot be, that we "can't afford" to have a basic level of financial transparency in all transactions; it should be financial transparency which dictates what is affordable, rather than the amount of wealth thought possessed.]

     Because the only morally just goal of taxation (in my opinion) is for the purpose of diminishing the influence of monopolies, taxation cannot and should not be performed by a single institution, nor by any agency affiliated with the state (which I contend is an intrinsically monopolistic institution).
    As I explained earlier, if community associations were to levy taxes, instead of the state or federal government, then it would be a less monopolistic way of doing things. Other agencies which could perform the task of taxation in a stateless society, aside from the most local governments possible, which would also lead to the diminution of the monopolistic enforcement and characteristics of taxation, could include:
     1) voluntary associations;
     2) Georgist C.L.T.s (Community Land Trusts);
     3) mutual public banks; and
     4) private (though non-state-affiliated) security agencies (and other types of firms) which charge dues based on one's ability to pay, or based on the value of the property being protected (such as the libertarian activists who protected portions of Detroit, Michigan following the 2007-08 financial crisis).
     But more importantly than one's ability to pay, however, is the issue of to what degree one's wealth was acquired because they helped the state extort people in exchange for land, labor, and capital.

     Taxation does not have to be performed by an agency wielding any monopoly powers, nor even privileges to make any decisions bearing any sort of finality whatsoever. Decentralized governments, and non-state-affiliated nonprofit organizations can levy taxes.
     Community Land Trusts can be set up, which levy "taxes" (although Georgists call them dues and fees) in a decentralized manner, for the benefit of the community. But that community need not exist with territorial limitations, however; if nobody can be stopped from joining, and nobody can be excluded, without unanimous or consensus-based agreement of just cause, then the community is not a state, because it is neither monopolistic, exclusive, nor exclusionary.
     Additionally, it is possible to fund an entire government solely through charitable contributions, without punishing people for refusing to pay (save for social ostracism). We know this from the experiences of the Jewish people who lived in the Holy Land (i.e., Israel-Palestine) in the 1930s and 1940s; they set up charitable funds which were spent on building Israeli government buildings and bringing the land back to life.
     Any tax which a person can be convinced to pay, is voluntary (unless he is tricked or defrauded, or otherwise unjustly deprived of the freedom to choose other viable forms of taxation). Any tax which is agreeable to all people, is voluntary. Taxation systems based on voluntary payment of dues (for as long as one wishes to receive benefits), and fee-for-service models, could and should replace compulsory taxation.
     I mean, we have to do something. People should not get shot to death on their front lawns for refusing to pay their taxes. Harsh punishments for tax evasion are only warranted if the tax is just and unanimous, and people enthusiastically sign up to be shot if they refuse to pay. Only the very insane, and the very suicidal, would do such a thing. Or, perhaps, the very confident.

     Finally, I would be remiss if I neglected to mention the following: While it is very good to tax monopolies, governments would have no need to do so, if they did not create those monopolies in the first place.
     And a government which consciously reduces the monopolistic characteristics of all of its functions - legislative, executive, and judicial functions - is less likely to have enough power to create imbue firms with monopolistic privileges and rights to exclude.

13. Links and Additional Reading

     As promised, I will hereafter include links to additional readings about the topics of why most monopolies are state-created; as well as how to tax profits without the state (as solutions have been offered by left-anarchists and right-anarchists).

Articles about the taxation of monopolies, written by various authors:

http://www.jstor.org/stable/1008701?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents
http://www.economicsdiscussion.net/monopoly/effect-of-taxes-on-monopoly-equilibrium-with-diagram/17081

http://mnmeconomics.wordpress.com/2011/09/29/taxing-a-monopoly-firm/



Articles by Left-Anarchists / Anti-Propertarians / Anideotists:

- introduction to anarchist economics (no state, no private property):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchist_economics

- Jeff Smith, student of Henry George, on replacing taxes with Land Value Dues:
http://www.wealthandwant.com/themes/Land_Dues.html

- website about Georgist student Ralph Borsodi (look for the articles about Community Land Trusts):

http://www.schoolofliving.org/borsodi

- explanation of Community Land Trusts:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_land_trust

- Pierre-Joseph Proudhon's “The Misery of Philosophy”, on monopoly and property:
http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/economics/proudhon/philosophy/ch06.htm

- Benjamin Tucker's “Four Monopolies” (land, money, patents, and tariffs):
http://attackthesystem.com/2011/06/03/benjamin-tuckers-four-monopolies/

- Roderick T. Long and Charles W. Johnson on “the many monopolies”:
Long: http://fee.org/articles/the-many-monopolies/
Johnson: http://praxeology.net/cjohnson-state-monopolies.pdf

- Gary Chartier on redistribution without the state:
http://bleedingheartlibertarians.com/2011/04/bleeding-heart-libertarians-for-redistribution/

- on Spencer Heath, Heathian anarchism, proprietary communities, and multi-tenant properties:
http://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmXoypizjW3WknFiJnKLwHCnL72vedxjQkDDP1mXWo6uco/wiki/Heathian_anarchism.html
http://www.explorersfoundation.org/glyphery/280.html
http://attackthesystem.com/spencer-maccallum-interviewed-by-wayne-john-sturgeon/
http://fee.org/articles/introduction-to-proprietary-cities/Articles by Right-Anarchists / Propertarians / Ideotists

- Walter Block's support of Rothbard's criticism of Henry George:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/henry-george-weak-economics-example-rothbard-rule/

- Hans-Hermann Hoppe on different types of property:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNTDqAunbCc

- Robert P. Murphy's Chaos Theory (read the section on security, especially the parts which address the issue of how people could secure property claims in the absence of the state):
http://mises-media.s3.amazonaws.com/Chaos%20Theory_2.pdf

- Robert P. Murphy's “The Economics of the Stateless Society”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoJF_psh8AI

- Stefan Kinsella's criticism of Occupancy and Use norms:
http://mises.org/wire/critique-mutualist-occupancy

- Linda and Morris Tannehill's “The Market for Liberty”:
http://mises-media.s3.amazonaws.com/The%20Market%20for%20Liberty_2.pdf
See also: articles by Joe Kopsick on related topics:

- Joe Kopsick on the taxation and securitization of property:
http://aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2014/11/panarchist-securitization-and-taxation.html

- Joe Kopsick on private alternatives to the state:
http://aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2019/03/privatization-or-anarchism-providing.html

- Joe Kopsick's “Why Rent is Theft”, criticizing economic rents (rent, profit, and interest):

http://aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2019/03/why-rent-is-theft-against-economic.html

- Joe Kopsick on Max Weber's definition of the state, and how to make government less monopolistic:
http://aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2013/07/on-max-webers-definition-of-state.html

- Joe Kopsick on Geolibertarianism (a description of how to turn a system based on rent and taxation, into a system based on the collection of dues from vacant land):
http://www.lclp.org/articles/geolibertarianism/

- Joe Kopsick on why Libertarians should be interested in Georgist Land Value Taxation:
http://aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2017/01/what-is-geolibertarianism.html

- Joe Kopsick on how prisons could be privatized without risking corruption by the profit incentive:
http://aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2019/05/how-to-fully-privatize-prisons-without.htmlSee also: a free-market perspective from in the middle:

- “Property is Only Another Name for Monopoly”, by Eric A. Posner and E. Glen Weyl:
http://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=12668&context=journal_articles





See also: taxation without the state among Jews in Palestine in the 1930s-1940s
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1983331




See also: descriptions of private dispute resolution in a stateless society:

- traditional definition of a private dispute resolution organization:
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/dispute_resolution_organization

- more detailed definition: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dispute_resolution

- Stefan Molyneux on Dispute Resolution Organizations (D.R.O.s) as an alternative to the state:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1B-5Lbpk_3Y

- David D. Friedman on medieval Iceland's justice system:
http://notendur.hi.is/bthru/friedman.htm (link within leads nowhere)
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Academic/Course_Pages/Legal_Systems_Very_Different_13/Book_Draft/Systems/SagaPeriodIceland.htm
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Academic/Iceland/Iceland.html
http://praxeology.net/libertariannation/a/f13l1.html

- Roderick Long on dispute resolution without the state:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelandic_Commonwealth#Legacy
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2002/06/roderick-t-long/the-vikings-were-libertarians/

- other authors on dispute resolution without the state:
http://libertarianism.fandom.com/wiki/Dispute_resolution_organizationSee also: links regarding the management of firms by labor:

- Richard Wolff on worker self-management and Workers Self-Directed Enterprise (W.S.D.E.s):
http://www.geo.coop/content/richard-d-wolff-worker-co-op-solution
http://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/03/workers-control-coops-wright-wolff-alperovitz/
http://www.rdwolff.com/crispy/legislative_package_introduced_to_encourage_employee_owned_companies

- Richard Wolff on WSDEs:

http://www.rdwolff.com/faq_worker_coops_wdes

- the labor-managed firm (or Egalitarian Labor-Managed Firm; E.L.M.F.):
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00213624.2017.1391592

- articles about workers' savings funds:
http://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2019/05/29/bernie-sanders-gives-the-nod-to-funds-socialism/

- Occupancy and Use norms:
http://c4ss.org/content/41421http://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAnarchism/comments/1rf2ly/what_is_the_occupancy_and_use_theory_of_property/

Based on notes taken in April 2019, and May 19^th, 2019

Written on May 21^st and 22^nd, 2019

Edited and Expanded on May 27th and 31st, 2019
Edited on October 30th, 2019

First image created in May 2019
and re-created on September 8th, 2021
and added on September 8th, 2021

Originally Published on May 22^nd, 2019

Author's Post-Script written on May 22nd, 2019

Additional Links Added on May 31st, 2019