The Trillion-Dollar Defense Budget Is Already Here

by Robert Higgs

When President George W. Bush presented his budget proposals recently for the fiscal year 2008, he emphasized that the nation’s security is his highest priority, and he backed up that declaration by proposing that the Pentagon’s outlays be increased by more than 6 percent beyond its estimated outlays for fiscal 2007, to a total of more than $583 billion. Although many Americans regard this enormous sum as excessive, hardly anyone appreciates that the total amount of all defense-related spending greatly exceeds the amount budgeted for the Department of Defense. Indeed, it is roughly almost twice as large.

In the fiscal year 2006, which ended last September, the Pentagon spent $499.4 billion. Lodged elsewhere in the budget, however, other lines identify funding that serves defense purposes just as surely as—sometimes even more surely than—the money allocated to the Department of Defense. On occasion, commentators take note of some of these additional defense-related budget items, such as the Department of Energy’s nuclear-weapons programs, but many such items, including some extremely large ones, remain generally unrecognized.

Since the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, many observers probably would agree that its budget ought to be included in any complete accounting of defense costs. After all, the homeland is what most of us want the government to defend in the first place.

Other agencies also spend money in pursuit of homeland security. The Justice Department, for example, includes the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which devotes substantial resources to an anti-terrorist program. The Department of the Treasury informs us that it has “worked closely with the Departments of State and Justice and the intelligence community to disrupt targets related to al Qaeda, Hizballah, Jemaah Islamiyah, as well as to disrupt state sponsorship of terror.”

Much, if not all, of the budget for the Department of State and for international assistance programs ought to be classified as defense-related, too. In this case, the money serves to buy off potential enemies and to reward friendly governments who assist U.S. efforts to abate perceived threats. About $4.5 billion of annual U.S. foreign aid currently takes the form of “foreign military financing,” and even funds placed under the rubric of economic development may serve defense-related purposes indirectly. Money is fungible, and the receipt of foreign assistance for economic-development projects allows allied governments to divert other funds to police, intelligence, and military purposes.

Two big budget items represent the current cost of defense goods and services obtained in the past. The Department of Veterans Affairs, which is authorized to spend more than $72 billion in the current fiscal year, falls in this category. Likewise, a great deal of the government’s interest expense on publicly held debt represents the current cost of defense outlays financed in the past by borrowing from the public.

To estimate the size of the entire de facto defense budget, I gathered data for fiscal 2006, the most recently completed fiscal year, for which data on actual outlays are now available. In that year, the Department of Defense itself spent $499.4 billion. Defense-related parts of the Department of Energy budget added $16.6 billion. The Department of Homeland Security spent $69.1 billion. The Department of State and international assistance programs laid out $25.3 billion for activities arguably related to defense purposes either directly or indirectly. The Department of Veterans Affairs had outlays of $69.8 billion. The Department of the Treasury, which funds the lion’s share of military retirement costs through its support of the little-known Military Retirement Fund, added $38.5 billion. A large part of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s outlays ought to be regarded as defense-related, if only indirectly so. When all of these other parts of the budget are added to the budget for the Pentagon itself, they increase the fiscal 2006 total by nearly half again, to $728.2 billion.

To find out how much of the government’s net interest payments on publicly held national debt ought to be attributed to past debt-funded defense spending requires a considerable amount of calculation. I added up all past deficits (minus surpluses) since 1916 (when the debt was nearly zero), prorated according to each year’s ratio of narrowly defined national security spending—military, veterans, and international affairs—to total federal spending, expressing everything in dollars of constant purchasing power. This sum is equal to 91.2 percent of the value of the national debt held by the public at the end of 2006. Therefore, I attribute that same percentage of the government’s net interest outlays in that year to past debt-financed defense spending. The total amount so attributed comes to $206.7 billion.

Adding this interest component to the previous all-agency total, the grand total comes to $934.9 billion, which is more than 87 percent greater than the Pentagon’s outlays alone.
If the additional elements of defense spending continue to maintain the same ratio to the Pentagon’s amount—and we have every reason to suppose they will—then in fiscal year 2007, through which we are now passing, the grand total spent for defense will be $1.028 trillion. I confirmed the rough accuracy of this forecast by adding up the government’s own estimates of fiscal 2007 outlays for the various additional defense-related items, obtaining a total of $987 billion—an amount only 4 percent less than my ratio-based estimate. Future defense-related supplemental appropriations for fiscal 2007, which would hardly be surprising, might easily bring the lower estimate up the higher one.

Although I have arrived at my conclusions honestly and carefully, I may have left out items that should have been included—the federal budget is a gargantuan, complex, and confusing collection of documents. If I have done so, however, the left-out items are not likely to be relatively large ones. (I have deliberately ignored some minor items, such as the outlays of the Selective Service System and the National Defense Stockpile and the Treasury’s program to block financial flows to terrorists.) Therefore, I propose that in considering future defense budgetary costs, a well-founded rule of thumb is to take the Pentagon’s (always well publicized) basic budget total and double it. We may overstate the truth, but if so, we’ll not do so by much.
For now, however, the conclusion seems inescapable: the government is currently spending at the rate of approximately $1 trillion per year for all defense-related purposes. Moreover, even if I have erred in my calculations and overstated the correct amount somewhat, the total will certainly reach this astonishing sum very soon, given all the plans and programs already set in motion.

National Security Outlays in Fiscal Year 2006(billions of dollars)
Department of Defense
499.4
Department of Energy (nuclear weapons & environ. cleanup)
16.6
Department of State
25.3
Department of Veterans Affairs
69.8
Department of Homeland Security
69.1
Department of Justice (1/3 of FBI)
1.9
Department of the Treasury (for Military Retirement Fund)
38.5
National Aeronautics & Space Administration (1/2 of total)
7.6
Net interest attributable to past debt-financed defense outlays
206.7
Total
934.9
Source: Author’s classifications and calculations; basic data from U.S. Office of Management and Budget, Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 2008 and U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970.

A Foreign Policy of Freedom

Foreword to A Foreign Policy of Freedom by Ron Paul
By Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

Ron Paul has always believed that foreign and domestic policy should be conducted according to the same principles. Government should be restrained from intervening at home or abroad because its actions fail to achieve their stated aims, create more harm than good, shrink the liberty of the people, and violate rights.

Does that proposition seem radical? Outlandish or farflung? Once you hear it stated, it makes perfect sense that there is no sharp distinction between the principles of domestic and foreign policy. They are part of the same analytical fabric. What would be inconsistent would be to favor activist government at home but restraint abroad, or the reverse: restraint at home and activism abroad. Government unleashed behaves in its own interests, and will not restrict itself in any area of life. It must be curbed in all areas of life lest freedom suffer.

If you recognize the line of thinking in this set of beliefs, it might be because you have read the Federalist Papers, the writings of Thomas Jefferson or George Washington or James Madison, or examined the philosophical origins of the American Revolution. Or you might have followed the debates that took place in the presidential election of 1800, in which this view emerged triumphant. Or perhaps you read the writings of the free traders prior to the Civil War, or the opponents of the War on Spain, or those who warned of entering World War I.

Or perhaps you have read the speeches and books against FDR's New Deal: the same group warned of the devastating consequences of World War II. Or maybe, in more recent history, you understood the animating principles behind the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994: a generation had turned away from all forms of foreign and domestic "nation building."

Not only does this Paulian view have a precedent in American history; it sums up the very core of what is distinctive about the American contribution to political ideas. The proposition was and is that people are better able to manage their lives than government can manage them. Under conditions of liberty, the result is prosperity and orderly civilization. Under government control, the result is relative poverty and unpredictable chaos. The proof is in the news every day.

How unusual, how incredibly strange, that Ron Paul, who has stood for these principles his entire public life, is criticized by some as a radical, outside the mainstream, and influenced by experimental ideas that are marginal at best. And why is he treated this way? Because he takes the ideas of Washington and Jefferson seriously, just as seriously as he takes the idea of freedom itself, and he does so in times when faith in Leviathan remains the dominant political ideology.

Ideology is such a powerful force that it has propped up policy inconsistency for more than a century. The Left has a massive agenda for the state at home, and yet complains bitterly, with shock and dismay, that the same tools are used to start wars and build imperial structures abroad. The Right claims to want to restrain government at home (at least in some ways) while whooping it up for war and global reconstruction abroad.

It doesn't take a game-theory genius to predict how this conflict works itself out in the long run. The Left and the Right agree to disagree on intellectual grounds but otherwise engage in a dangerous quid pro quo. They turn a blind eye to the government they don't like so long as they get the government they do like.

It's one thing for the Left to grudgingly support international intervention. It makes some sense for a group that believes that government is omniscient enough to bring about fairness, justice, and equality at home to do the same for people abroad. In fact, I've never been able to make much sense out of left-wing antiwar activism, simply because it cuts so much against the idea of socialism, which itself can be summed up as perpetual war on the liberty and property of the people.

What strikes me as ridiculous is the right-wing view that the same government that is incompetent and dangerous domestically — at least in economic and social affairs — has some sort of Midas Touch internationally such that it can bring freedom, democracy, and justice to any land its troops deign to invade. Not that the right wing is principled enough to pursue its domestic views, but I'm speaking here of its campaign rhetoric and higher-level critique of government that you find in their periodicals and books. The precise critique of government that they offer for the welfare state and regulatory measures — that they are expensive, counterproductive, and hobble human energies — applies many times over to international interventions.

But the Right always seems to have an excuse for its inconsistency. In the early fifties, many on the Right said that the usual principle of nonintervention had to give way to the fight against communism because this was a uniquely evil threat facing the world. We have to put up with a "totalitarian bureaucracy" within our shores (words used by W.F. Buckley) for the duration in order to beat back the great threat abroad. And so Leviathan grew and grew, and never more than under Republican presidents. Then one day, communism went away, the regimes having collapsed from self-imposed deprivation and ideological change.

A few years went by after 1990 when the Right was inching toward a Paulian consistency. Then 9-11 happened, and the great excuse for Leviathan again entered the picture. Never mind that, as Congressman Paul pointed out, the crime of 9-11 was motivated by retribution against ten years of killer US sanctions against Iraq, US troops on Muslim holy lands, and US subsidies for Palestinian occupation. No, the American Right bought into the same farce that led them to support the Cold War: Islamic fanaticism is a unique evil unlike anything we've ever seen, so we have to put up with Leviathan (again!) for the duration.

Well, Ron Paul didn't buy into it. He is unique in this respect, and this is especially notable since he has been under pressure from his own party at a time when his party has ruled the executive, judicial, and legislative branches. He stuck by his principles, and not merely as a pious gesture. His critique of the post 9-11 warfare state has been spot on in speech after speech. He foresaw the failure of the US invasion of Afghanistan. He never believed the nonsense about how US bombs would transform Iraq into a modern democracy. He never went along with the propaganda lies about weapons of mass destruction. Nowadays, we often hear politicians say that they have changed their minds on the Iraq War and that if they had known then what they know now, they never would have gone along. Well, hindsight is child's play in politics. What takes guts and insight is the ability to spot a hoax even as it is being perpetrated. In any case, they have no excuse for not knowing: Ron Paul told them!

The freedom to trade internationally is an essential principle. It means that consumers should not be penalized for buying from anyone, or selling to anyone, regardless of their residence. Nor should domestic suppliers be granted anything like a monopoly or subsidized treatment. Nor should trade be used as a weapon in the form of sanctions. Ron Paul has upheld these principles as well, which makes him an old-fashioned liberal in the manner of Cobden and Bright and the American Southern tradition. He has also rejected the mistake of many free traders who believe that a military arm is necessary to back the invisible hand of the marketplace. For Ron Paul, freedom is all of a piece.

Ron Paul's singular voice on foreign affairs has done so much to keep the flame of a consistent liberty burning in times when it might otherwise have been extinguished. He has drawn public attention to the ideas of the founders. He has alerted people to the dangers of empire. He has linked domestic and foreign affairs through libertarian analytics, even when others have been bamboozled by the lies or too intimidated to contradict them. He has told the truth, always. For this, every American, every citizen of the world, is deeply in his debt. In fact, I'm willing to predict that a hundred years from now and more, when all the current office holders are all but forgotten, Ron Paul's name will be remembered as a bright light in dark times.

We can't but be deeply grateful that Ron Paul's prophetic words have been collected in this book. May it be widely distributed. May its lessons be absorbed by this and future generations. May this treatise stand as an example of how to fight for what is right even when everyone else is silent. May it always be regarded as proof that there were men of courage alive in the first decade of the third millennium. May public and intellectual opinion someday rise to its level of intellectual sophistication and moral valor.

Thoughts On Ayn Rand's Doctrine

Ayn Rand has always been a controversial figure, both inside and outside of the libertarian movement. While the bulk of the public never understood or favored her, she has been met with a mixture of favor and disfavor in libertarian circles. There are a number of philosophical and political conflicts that occured between Rand's camp of "objectivists" and various libertarian groups and individuals. Many Austrian economists and austro-libertarians have always contested Rand's conception of objectivism because they are bound by methedological individualism, which is ultimately a subjectivist methodology. Murray Rothbard had something of a "fall-out" with the Rand group in the 60's. Rand's own objectivist movement itself had a split not long after.

Are "objectivists" really Libertarians? It depends on the objectivist, or what particular definition of objectivism we use. While many followers of Rand have been known to come to various libertarian conclusions, they have also been known to come to blatantly unlibertarian ones in certain cases. For some reason many modern objectivists tend to favor an interventionist, militarist foreign policy, for example. It is hard to judge wether or not objectivism passes for a libertarian movement. On certain critieria, it very well may, while on other critieria, it very well may not. It's meaning may vary from objectivist to objectivist, which is quite amusing because it points to subjectivity. The question arises: which objectivists are the real ones?

A particular problem with the Rand doctrine in the first place is that it claims a monopoly on objectivism as a methodology. The idea that the universe and life is an objective reality, and that objective ethics can be formed on the basis of reason isn't something that Ayn Rand invented. It is an idea that dates back to Aristole and probably beyond; it is essentially the philosopher's stone. To her credit, she does mention Artistole as her major influence, but nonetheless Rand seems to superimpose some of her own personal whims onto objective ethics. She is entirely correct in asserting that man's rationality can be employed to discover and use objective ethics. However, the methodology that she uses ultimately is not perfectly objectivist. In short, to a certain extent, Ayn Rand anthropromorphasized objective ethics.

Is there a conflict between the idea of objective ethics and methedological individualism? To many, the answer is yes. Yet I think that both methodologies are true and work in different contexts. Both objective ethics and the Austrian economic methodology are valid. Methedological individualism is a device for analysizing economic phenomenon without making uniform judgements about collectives and their judgements. There is no good reason for these two things to be conflicting. Methedological individualism is a subjective methodology for dealing with economics; that doesn't mean that one can't hold an objective theory of just and unjust ownership simultaneously. Murray Rothbard was an Austrian economist who managed to develope an objective ethics without getting rid of methedological individualism.

The two are for different contexts. For example, methedological individualism has nothing to do with justifying property titles and has no way of doing so since it treats all actors subjectively; only an objective ethics can justify property titles. On the other hand, objective ethics has nothing to do with determining which products people should choose to buy; this is a subjective area that is treated subjectively by methedological individualism in economic analysis. The first example is an area that can be objectively treated while the second example is an area that can only be subjectively treated. The distinction being made is between an ethical judgement (which objective ethics applies to) and a judgement of personal preferance (which methedological individualism applies to).

One particularly interesting aspect of Rand's doctrine is its ardent atheism. But it isn't just atheism. It essentially holds that objective ethics cannot be formed or practised by people who aren't atheists. To be welcomed into Rand's cult, one had to aschew all of their religious beliefs. Is this not a bit too fundamentalist? Why can't religious people come to similar ethics? If these are truly objective ethics, then people can discover them through reason regaurdless of their religion or lack thereof. They cannot be objective if they are dependant upon one's group identity. This tenet of Rand's doctrine isn't based on objective criterion but by Rand's personal preferances with regaurd to religion. There's nothing inherently wrong with Rand being an atheist; what's wrong is for her to try to pass her atheism off as a necessity for objective ethics.

Rand's assertion that man must hold reason as an absolute is an agreeable one. However, she doesn't seem to consider the implication of the objective fact that all human beings are not always reasonable in all situations. In other words, human beings, even the sharpest of them, are not robots, devoid of emotion. Rand's ideal human being is unable to come to fruition because it is impossible for human beings to completely supress their emotions at all times. Followers of her creed are therefore attempting to achieve something that is impossible. Yes, of course man should try to be as reasonable as possible. But to characterize all emotion negatively in such a way is a mistake. And to hold oneself up as an example of someone who supresses all emotion in the name of reason is disingenuous, let alone to suggest that this is a possibility.

The notion that man must follow his rational self-interest is an entirely correct one. On this point in itself Rand is absolutely correct. However, she proceeds to set up a false and misleading dichotomy between altruism and egoism. Rand doesn't adequately explain how self-interest can benefit others and cause one to take actions that are also in the interest of others, rather, she gives one the impression that her definition of self-interest is complete egoism. This is a grave problem. Rand is correct in saying that the idea that everyone has a social obligation to serve everyone else is essentially evil, as it takes away one's obligations over their own self and enslaves them to others. She is correct that noone can legitimately demand or force others to serve them. However, there are plenty of times and situations when it is indeed in one's rational self-interest to help others. While Rand's critique of egalitarianism is essentially true, it is false to conclude from it that complete egoism is necessarily the correct path.

Perhaps a far more interesting and useful dychotomy would be between forced altruism/egalitarianism and charity. The two concepts are diametric opposites. The original concept of charity is that of a voluntary gift; you give because you genuinely care. Forced altriusm/egalitarianism, on the other hand, is a forced gift; you give because you feel obligated to or because you are forced to, not because you genuinely care. Unfortunately though, it would seem that Ayn Rand's doctrine doesn't make adquate considerations for voluntary gift. That is, its methodology may very well blur the distinction between charity and egalitarianism, therefore forcing charity into the "altruism" side of the false dychotomy. But a more proper dycotomy would be between so-called "welfare" and charity, or between egalitarianism and charity.

John Locke's views on the matter seem much clearer than Rand's. Locke also strongly supported man obtaining his rational self-interest, but he emphasized how the persual of this self-interest leads to net gains and "goods" on a larger, societal scale; that it also effects the self-interest of others through social cooperation. Unfortunately, Rand does not make such considerations, as she writes books nonchalantly titled "the virtue of selfishness". It would seem that Rand drew the apriori conclusion that pure egoism and self-interest are the same thing. I think that this notion is false. There are situations where being an egoist is against one's self-interest, due to the harm to social cooperation that occurs, which trickles back to the egoist themself. There are situations in which what the egoist wants is against their rational self-interest or impossible to bring about.

On one hand, Ayn Rand was bursting with good ideas. On the other hand, she didn't adequately put those ideas in context, and to an extent she tried to pass off her subjective opinions as objective reality. She mistakenly phrased things in terms of egoism vs. altruism. Her critique of egalitarianism is good, but her defense of egoism is lacking. She was correct in maintaining the basic idea of objective ethics, but others have developed better systems then hers and use more sound methodologies (see Murray Rothbard's "The Ethics of Liberty" and Han's Herman Hoppe's "The Economics and Ethics of Private Property"). Non-Randian objectivism would seem to be much sounder than Randian objectivism. Rand's system ultimately has a multitude of flaws that should be corrected by any consistant libertarian. While she puts forth some sound principles on one hand (and a few unsound ones), she tends to distort their implications on the other hand.

When Is a Land Title Criminal?

by Murray N. Rothbard

The Problem of Land Theft

A particularly important application of our theory of property titles is the case of landed property. For one thing, land is a fixed quotal portion of the earth, and therefore the ground land endures virtually permanently. Historical investigation of land titles therefore would have to go back much further than for other more perishable goods. However, this is by no means a critical problem, for, as we have seen, where the victims are lost in antiquity, the land properly belongs to any non-criminals who are in current possession.

Suppose, for example, that Henry Jones I stole a piece of land from its legitimate owner, James Smith. What is the current status of the title of current possessor Henry Jones X? Or of the man who might be the current possessor by purchasing the land from Henry Jones X? If Smith and his descendants are lost to antiquity, then title to the land properly and legitimately belongs to the current Jones (or the man who has purchased it from him), in direct application of our theory of property titles.

A second problem, and one that sharply differentiates land from other property, is that the very existence of capital goods, consumers goods, or the monetary commodity, is at least a prima facie demonstration that these goods had been used and transformed, that human labor had been mixed with natural resources to produce them. For capital goods, consumer goods, and money do not exist by themselves in nature; they must be created by human labor's alteration of the given conditions of nature. But any area of land, which is given by nature, might never have been used and transformed; and therefore, any existing property title to never-used land would have to be considered invalid. For we have seen that title to an unowned resource (such as land) comes properly only from the expenditure of labor to transform that resource into use. Therefore, if any land has never been so transformed, no one can legitimately claim its ownership.

"Any existing property title to never-used land would have to be considered invalid."
Suppose, for example, that Mr. Green legally owns a certain acreage of land, of which the northwest portion has never been transformed from its natural state by Green or by anyone else. Libertarian theory will morally validate his claim for the rest of the land — provided, as the theory requires, that there is no identifiable victim (or that Green had not himself stolen the land.) But libertarian theory must invalidate his claim to ownership of the northwest portion.

Now, so long as no "settler" appears who will initially transform the northwest portion, there is no real difficulty; Brown's claim may be invalid but it is also mere meaningless verbiage. He is not yet a criminal aggressor against anyone else. But should another man appear who does transform the land, and should Green oust him by force from the property (or employ others to do so), then Green becomes at that point a criminal aggressor against land justly owned by another. The same would be true if Green should use violence to prevent another settler from entering upon this never-used land and transforming it into use.

Thus, to return to our Crusoe "model," Crusoe, landing upon a large island, may grandiosely trumpet to the winds his "ownership" of the entire island. But, in natural fact, he owns only the part that he settles and transforms into use. Or, as noted above, Crusoe might be a solitary Columbus landing upon a newly-discovered continent. But so long as no other person appears on the scene, Crusoe's claim is so much empty verbiage and fantasy, with no foundation in natural fact. But should a newcomer — a Friday — appear on the scene, and begin to transform unused land, then any enforcement of Crusoe's invalid claim would constitute criminal aggression against the newcomer and invasion of the latter's property rights.

Note that we are not saying that, in order for property in land to be valid, it must be continually in use. The only requirement is that the land be once put into use, and thus become the property of the one who has mixed his labor with, who imprinted the stamp of his personal energy upon, the land. After that use, there is no more reason to disallow the land's remaining idle than there is to disown someone for storing his watch in a desk drawer.

One form of invalid land title, then, is any claim to land that has never been put into use. The enforcement of such a claim against a first-user then becomes an act of aggression against a legitimate property right. In practice, it must be noted, it is not at all difficult to distinguish land in its natural virgin state from land that has at some time been transformed by man for his use. The hand of man will in some way be evident.

One problem, however, that sometimes arises in the validity of land titles is the question of "adverse possession." Let us suppose that a man, Green, comes upon a section of land not obviously owned by someone — there is no fence perhaps, and no one on the premises. Green assumes that the land is unowned; he proceeds to work the land, uses it for a length of time, and then the original owner of the land appears on the scene and orders Green's eviction. Who is right?

The common law of adverse possession arbitrarily sets a time span of twenty years, after which the intruder, despite his aggression against the property of another, retains absolute ownership of the land. But our libertarian theory holds that land needs only to be transformed once by man to pass into private ownership. Therefore, if Green comes upon land that in any way bears the mark of a former human use, it is his responsibility to assume that the land is owned by someone. Any intrusion upon his land, without further inquiry, must be done at the risk of the newcomer being an aggressor.

It is of course possible that the previously owned land has been abandoned; but the newcomer must not assume blithely that land which has obviously been transformed by man is no longer owned by anyone. He must take steps to find out if his new title to the land is clear, as we have seen is in fact done in the title-search business. On the other hand, if Green comes upon land that has obviously never been transformed by anyone, he can move onto it at once and with impunity, for in the libertarian society no one can have a valid title to land that has never been transformed.

In the present world, when most land areas have been pressed into service, the invalidating of land titles from never being used would not be very extensive. More important nowadays would be invalidating a land title because of a continuing seizure of landed property by aggressors. We have already discussed the case of Jones's ancestors having seized a parcel of land from the Smith family, while Jones uses and owns the land in the present day. But suppose that centuries ago, Smith was tilling the soil and therefore legitimately owning the land; and then that Jones came along and settled down near Smith, claiming by use of coercion the title to Smith's land, and extracting payment or "rent" from Smith for the privilege of continuing to till the soil. Suppose that now, centuries later, Smith's descendants (or, for that matter, other unrelated families) are now tilling the soil, while Jones's descendants, or those who purchased their claims, still continue to exact tribute from the modern tillers. Where is the true property right in such a case?

It should be clear that here, just as in the case of slavery, we have a case of continuing aggression against the true owners — the true possessors — of the land, the tillers, or peasants, by the illegitimate owner, the man whose original and continuing claim to the land and its fruits has come from coercion and violence. Just as the original Jones was a continuing aggressor against the original Smith, so the modern peasants are being aggressed against by the modern holder of the Jones-derived land title. In this case of what we might call "feudalism" or "land monopoly," the feudal or monopolist landlords have no legitimate claim to the property. The current "tenants," or peasants, should be the absolute owners of their property, and, as in the case of slavery, the land titles should be transferred to the peasants, without compensation to the monopoly landlords.

Note that "feudalism," as we have defined it, is not restricted to the case where the peasant is also coerced by violence to remain on the lord's land to keep cultivating it (roughly, the institution of serfdom). Nor is it restricted to cases where additional measures of violence are used to bolster and maintain feudal landholdings (such as the State's prevention by violence of any landlord's sale or bequest of his land into smaller subdivisions).

All that "feudalism," in our sense, requires is the seizure by violence of landed property from its true owners, the transformers of land, and the continuation of that kind of relationship over the years. Feudal land rent, then, is the precise equivalent of paying a continuing annual tribute by producers to their predatory conquerors. Feudal land rent is therefore a form of permanent tribute.

Note also that the peasants in question need not be the descendants of the original victims. For since the aggression is continuing so long as this relation of feudal aggression remains in force, the current peasants are the contemporary victims and the currently legitimate property owners. In short, in the case of feudal land, or land monopoly both of our conditions obtain for invalidating current property titles: for not only the original but also the current land title is criminal; and the current victims can very easily be identified.

The feudal "tenants," or peasants, should be the absolute owners of their property, and the land titles should be transferred to the peasants, without compensation to the monopoly landlords.
Our above hypothetical case of the King of Ruritania and his relatives is one example of a means by which feudalism can get started in a land area. After the king's action, he and his relatives become feudal landlords of their quotal portions of Ruritania, each one extracting coercive tribute in the form of feudal "rent" from the inhabitants.

We do not of course mean to imply that all land rent is illegitimate and a form of continuing tribute. On the contrary there is no reason, in a libertarian society, why a person transforming land may not then rent it out or sell it to someone else; indeed, that is precisely what will occur. How, then, can we distinguish between feudal rent and legitimate rent, between feudal tenancies and legitimate tenancies?

Again, we apply our rules for deciding upon the validity of property titles: we look to see if the origin of the land title is criminal, and, in the current case, whether the aggression upon the producers of the land, the peasants, is still continuing. If we know that these conditions hold, then there is no problem, for the identification of both aggressor and victim is remarkably clear cut. But if we don't know whether these conditions obtain, then (applying our rule), lacking a clear identifiability of the criminal, we conclude that the land title and the charge of rent are just and legitimate and not feudal. In practice, since in a feudal situation criminality is both old and continuing, and the peasant-victims are readily identifiable, feudalism is one of the easiest forms of invalid title to detect.

Land Monopoly, Past and Present

Thus, there are two types of ethically invalid land titles: "feudalism," in which there is continuing aggression by titleholders of land against peasants engaged in transforming the soil; and land-engrossing, where arbitrary claims to virgin land are used to keep first-transformers out of that land. We may call both of these aggressions "land monopoly" — not in the sense that some one person or group owns all the land in society, but in the sense that arbitrary privileges to land ownership are asserted in both cases, clashing with the libertarian rule of non-ownership of land except by actual transformers, their heirs, and their assigns.

Land monopoly is far more widespread in the modern world than most people — especially most Americans — believe. In the undeveloped world, especially in Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America, feudal landholding is a crucial social and economic problem — with or without quasi-serf impositions on the persons of the peasantry. Indeed, of the countries of the world, the United States is one of the very few virtually free from feudalism, due to a happy accident of its historical development.

Largely escaping feudalism itself, it is difficult for Americans to take the entire problem seriously. This is particularly true of American laissez-faire economists, who tend to confine their recommendations for the backward countries to preachments about the virtues of the free market. But these preachments naturally fall on deaf ears, because "free market" for American conservatives obviously does not encompass an end to feudalism and land monopoly and the transfer of title to these lands, without compensation, to the peasantry.

And yet, since agriculture is always the overwhelmingly most important industry in the undeveloped countries, a truly free market, a truly libertarian society devoted to justice and property rights, can only be established there by ending unjust feudal claims to property. But utilitarian economists, grounded on no ethical theory of property rights, can only fall back on defending whatever status quo may happen to exist — in this case, unfortunately, the status quo of feudal suppression of justice and of any genuinely free market in land or agriculture. This ignoring of the land problem means that Americans and citizens of undeveloped countries talk in two different languages and that neither can begin to understand the other's position.

American conservatives, in particular, exhort the backward countries on the virtues and the importance of private foreign investment from the advanced countries, and of allowing a favorable climate for this investment, free from governmental harassment.

This is all very true, but is again often unreal to the undeveloped peoples, because the conservatives persistently fail to distinguish between legitimate, free-market foreign investment, as against investment based upon monopoly concessions and vast land grants by the undeveloped states. To the extent that foreign investments are based on land monopoly and aggression against the peasantry, to that extent do foreign capitalists take on the aspects of feudal landlords, and must be dealt with in the same way.

A moving expression of these truths was delivered in the form of a message to the American people by the prominent left-wing Mexican intellectual, Carlos Fuentes:

You have had four centuries of uninterrupted development within the capitalistic structure. We have had four centuries of underdevelopment within a feudal structure…. You had your own origin in the capitalistic revolution…. You started from zero, a virgin society, totally equal to modern times, without any feudal ballast. On the contrary, we were founded as an appendix of the falling feudal order of the Middle Ages; we inherited its obsolete structures, absorbed its vices, and converted them into institutions on the outer rim of the revolution in the modern world…. We come from … slavery to … latifundio [enormous expanses of land under a single landlord], denial of political, economic, or cultural rights for the masses, a customs house closed to modern ideas…. You must understand that the Latin American drama stems from the persistence of those feudal structures over four centuries of misery and stagnation, while you were in the midst of the industrial revolution and were exercising a liberal democracy.

We need not search far for examples of land aggression and monopoly in the modern world; they are indeed legion. We might cite one example not so very far removed from our hypothetical king of Ruritania:

"The Shah owns more than half of all arable land in Iran, land originally taken over by his father. He owns close to 10,000 villages. So far, this great reformer has sold two of his villages."

A typical example of foreign investment combined with land aggression is a North American mining company in Peru, the Cerro de Pasco Corporation. Cerro de Pasco, having legitimately purchased its land from a religious convent a half century ago, began in 1959 to encroach upon and seize the lands of neighboring Indian peasants. Indians of Rancas refusing to leave their land were massacred by peasants in the pay of the company; Indians of Yerus Yacan tried to contest the company's action in the courts, while company men burned pastures and destroyed peasant huts. When the Indians retook their land through mass non-violent action, the Peruvian government, at the behest of the Cerro de Pasco and the regional latifundia owners, sent troops to eject, assault, and even murder the unarmed Indians.

What, then, is to be our view toward investment in oil lands, one of the major forms of foreign investment in underdeveloped countries in today's world? The major error of most analyses is to issue either a blanket approval or a blanket condemnation, for the answer depends on the justice of the property title established in each specific case. Where, for example, an oil company, foreign or domestic, lays claim to the oil field which it discovers and drills, then this is its just "homesteaded" private property, and it is unjust for the undeveloped government to tax or regulate the company. Where the government insists on claiming ownership of the land itself, and only leases the oil to the company, then (as we will see further below in discussing the role of government), the government's claim is illegitimate and invalid, and the company, in the role of homesteader, is properly the owner and not merely the renter of the oil land.

On the other hand, there are cases where the oil company uses the government of the undeveloped country to grant it, in advance of drilling, a monopoly concession to all the oil in a vast land area, thereby agreeing to the use of force to squeeze out all competing oil producers who might search for and drill oil in that area. In that case, as in the case above of Crusoe's arbitrarily using force to squeeze out Friday, the first oil company is illegitimately using the government to become a land-and-oil monopolist.

Ethically, any new company that enters the scene to discover and drill oil is the proper owner of its "homesteaded" oil area. A fortiori, of course, our oil concessionaire who also uses the State to eject peasants from their land by force — as was done, for example, by the Creole Oil Co. in Venezuela — is a collaborator with the government in the latter's aggression against the property rights of the peasantry.

We are now able to see the grave fallacy in the current programs for "land reform" in the undeveloped countries. (These programs generally involve minor transfers of the least fertile land from landlords to peasants, along with full compensation to the landlords, often financed by the peasants themselves via state aid.) If the landlord's title is just, then any land reform applied to such land is an unjust and criminal confiscation of his property; but, on the other hand, if his title is unjust, then the reform is picayune and fails to reach the heart of the question. For then the only proper solution is an immediate vacating of the title and its transfer to the peasants, with certainly no compensation to the aggressors who had wrongly seized control of the land. Thus, the land problem in the undeveloped countries can only be solved by applying the rules of justice that we have set forth; and such application requires detailed and wholesale empirical inquiry into present titles to land.

In recent years, the doctrine has gained ground among American conservatives that feudalism, instead of being oppressive and exploitative, was in fact a bulwark of liberty. It is true that feudalism, as these conservatives point out, was not as evil a system as "Oriental despotism," but that is roughly equivalent to saying that imprisonment is not as severe a penalty as execution.

The difference between feudalism and Oriental despotism was really of degree rather than kind; arbitrary power over land and over persons on that land was, in the one case, broken up into geographical segments; in the latter case, land tended to concentrate into the hands of one imperial overlord over the land-area of the entire country, aided by his bureaucratic retinue. The systems of power and repression are similar in type; the Oriental despot is a single feudal overlord with the consequent power accruing into his hands.

Each system is a variant of the other; neither is in any sense libertarian. And there is no reason to suppose that society must choose between one and the other — that these are the only alternatives.

Historical thinking on this entire matter was shunted onto a very wrong road by the statist German historians of the late 19th century: by men such as Schmoller, Bücher, Ehrenberg, and Sombart. These historians postulated a sharp dichotomy and inherent conflict between feudalism on the one hand and absolute monarchy, or the strong State, on the other.

They postulated that capitalist development required absolute monarchy and the strong State to smash local feudal and guild-type restrictions. In upholding this dichotomy of capitalism plus the strong central State vs. feudalism, they were joined, from their own special viewpoint, by the Marxists, who made no particular distinction between "bourgeoisie" who made use of the State, and bourgeoisie who acted on the free market.

Now some modern conservatives have taken this old dichotomy and turned it on its head. Feudalism and the strong central state are still considered the critical polar opposites, except that feudalism is, on this view, considered the good alternative.

The error here is in the dichotomy itself. Actually, the strong state and feudalism were not antithetical; the former was a logical outgrowth of the latter, with the absolute monarch ruling as the super-feudal overlord. The strong state, when it developed in Western Europe, did not set about to smash feudal restrictions on trade; on the contrary, it superimposed its own central restrictions and heavy taxes on top of the feudal structure.

The French Revolution, directed against the living embodiment of the strong state in Europe, was aimed at destroying both feudalism with its local restrictions, and the restrictions and high taxes imposed by the central government. The true dichotomy was liberty on the one side versus the feudal lords and the absolute monarch on the other. Furthermore, the free market and capitalism flourished earliest and most strongly in those very countries where both feudalism and central government power were at their relative weakest: the Italian city-states, and seventeenth-century Holland and England.

North America's relative escape from the blight of feudal land and land monopoly was not for lack of trying. Many of the English colonies made strong attempts to establish feudal rule, especially where the colonies were chartered companies or proprietorships, as in New York, Maryland, and the Carolinas. The attempt failed because the New World was a vast and virgin land area, and therefore the numerous receivers of monopoly and feudal land grants — many of them enormous in size — could only gain profits from them by inducing settlers to come to the New World and settle on their property.

Here were not, as in the Old World, previously existing settlers on relatively crowded land who could easily be exploited. Instead, the landlords, forced to encourage settlement, and anxious for a quick return, invariably subdivided and sold their lands to the settlers. It was unfortunate, of course, that by means of arbitrary claims and governmental grants, land titles were engrossed ahead of settlement. The settlers were consequently forced to pay a price for what should have been free land. But once the land was purchased by the settler, the injustice disappeared, and the land title accrued to its proper holder: the settler. In this way, the vast supply of virgin land, along with the desire of the land grantees for quick profits, led everywhere to the happy dissolution of feudalism and land monopoly, and the establishment in North America of a truly libertarian land system.

Some of the colonial proprietors tried to keep collecting quitrents from the settlers — the last vestige of feudal exactions — but the settlers widely refused to pay or to treat the land as anything but their own. In every case, the colonial proprietors gave up trying to collect their quitrents, even before their charters were confiscated by the British Crown.

In only one minor case did feudal land tenure persist (apart from the vital case of slavery and the large Southern plantations) in the English colonies: in the Hudson Valley counties in New York, where the large grantees persisted in not selling the lands to settlers, but in renting them out. As a result, continuing resistance and even open warfare were waged by the farmers (who were even known as "peasants") against their feudal landlords. This resistance culminated in the "Anti-Rent" wars of the 1840s, when the quitrent exactions were finally ended by the state legislature, and the last vestige of feudalism outside the South finally disappeared.

The important exception to this agrarian idyll, of course, was the flourishing of the slave system in the Southern states. It was only the coercion of slave labor that enabled the large plantation system in staple crops to flourish in the South. Without the ability to own and coerce the labor of others, the large plantations — and perhaps much of the tobacco and later the cotton culture — would not have pervaded the South.

We have indicated above that there was only one possible moral solution for the slave question: immediate and unconditional abolition, with no compensation to the slavemasters. Indeed, any compensation should have been the other way — to repay the oppressed slaves for their lifetime of slavery. A vital part of such necessary compensation would have been to grant the plantation lands not to the slavemaster, who scarcely had valid title to any property, but to the slaves themselves, whose labor, on our "homesteading" principle, was mixed with the soil to develop the plantations.

In short, at the very least, elementary libertarian justice required not only the immediate freeing of the slaves, but also the immediate turning over to the slaves, again without compensation to the masters, of the plantation lands on which they had worked and sweated.
As it was, the victorious North made the same mistake — though "mistake" is far too charitable a word for an act that preserved the essence of an unjust and oppressive social system — as had Czar Alexander when he freed the Russian serfs in 1861: the bodies of the oppressed were freed, but the property which they had worked and eminently deserved to own, remained in the hands of their former oppressors. With the economic power thus remaining in their hands, the former lords soon found themselves virtual masters once more of what were now free tenants or farm laborers. The serfs and the slaves had tasted freedom, but had been cruelly deprived of its fruits.

Government Laws Are Not Contracts

by Jim Fedako

Despite what you were taught in school, governance is ugly; in all forms, and at all times. Don't believe me? Attend a meeting of a local governing entity. You will find the council — omnipotent by vote, omniscient by delusion — seated before you at the table. All night long, they'll bicker and battle all the while proposing and dissecting plans and schemes with shouts and pounding shoes; Khrushchev moments indeed.

This is the reality of man lording over man, and it's been that way for eons. Ugly, just plain ugly. And it doesn't matter the span or purpose of the governing entity. This ugly reality holds equally true for the fist-fighting Taiwanese legislator as for the insult-hurling band booster. Power corrupts at all levels.

One other aspect of governance appears to be consistent at every level: the broader the scope of the proposed plan or idea, the further they reach beyond the stated bounds of the entity, the more receptive a hearing that the entity's council will give to the idea. Everyone dreams grandiose dreams, whether during solitary reflective moments or while monopolizing the public microphone. But it's the bully at the public mic, entertaining the media and sparse audience, whose dreams we must fear.

Given that these aspects are inherent in the essence of power, the issue is not how to improve systems of governance, but how to control their scope.

Because enforced contract law and full property rights are the foundations of freedom, governance systems should be based on enforceable contracts that defend property rights. The concepts of general welfare and public good have no place in such systems, as the intent of those ideals is to break contracts and trespass on property.

Governance — government — must be limited in a manner that is akin to a legal, binding contract, where rights are understood and unchanging. While a contract-based system will not change the ugly aspects of the lording class, it will limit the effects that the omnipotent and omniscient have on your pursuit of happiness.

The best way to compare the current systems of unbounded authority with that of contract-based systems is to attend meetings of a homeowners association and meetings at a local township hall. Both entities have documents that define the span and purpose of their respective assemblies, yet only the contract-based system shows any real restraint. Certainly, both dream of utopia, but only the homeowners association must accept the inherent realities of signed agreements.

In Ohio, townships can pass comprehensive plans and zoning codes in order to create orderly communities. Zoning codes are supposed to provide hard, fast rules akin to a written contract between community members with township officials acting as enforcers. Yet, zoning codes are perceived by the marginal vote getters and their appointed minions as something else entirely. In the hands of the township officials, zoning codes are, in the words of Barbossa from Pirates of the Caribbean when referring to the concept of parley, "…more what you'd call 'guidelines' than actual rules."

Consider this situation: You moved into an area that is zoned as a conservation district where developments are limited to 1 home per acre, with natural exteriors, and abundant green space. You desired to live in your neighborhood since it is within the conservation district, an area that meets the development standards you prefer. You had assumed that the zoning codes in place would protect you from development based on subjectively lower standards.

After living in your new home for a year or so, you catch a notice in the local paper that your township is considering a proposed development on the fallow farm fields and woods that abut your backyard. So, you attend the zoning hearings to see what will become of your backyard vista. At those meetings you quickly remember the prescient words of Barbossa.

The zoning commissioners are willing to trade homes per acre, natural exteriors, and green space for a donation of an offsite piece of land for a future community park or fire station. Sure, you hold the zoning codes — still in force — in your hands as if it is a contract to be enforced by the township, yet the zoning commissioners and township trustees see that document as the starting point for exactions and extractions; what the developer considers extortion by other means.

You can complain and shout, but the governance system that you have encountered has no consideration for your assumed contract. The commissioners and trustees only care about their grandiose plans for a utopian community. Your long-term vision of your local neighborhood, based on current regulations, just met their long-term vision of posterity; the one where future residents sing praises to the plans and vision of the current ruling elite.

Now, consider the homeowners association (HOA). Certainly, the same taste of power has corrupted the key players. They have dreams too, but their dreams are limited by the restrictive covenant that governs use of the property covered by the association. Sure, they send out a monthly newsletter with words of wisdom regarding how residents should live their lives, but they can't do anything about it. The concepts of general welfare and public good are not defined on the deed filed at the county offices as purposes of the association.

Now, I'm not saying that some residents will not suffer the occasional annoyance as HOA trustees hold the color pallet against your mailbox to verify the hue of the stain which you applied, but they can't change the usage of your neighbor's property from residential to commercial. Nor can they subdivide properties or dig up sidewalks. The HOA members have utopian dreams, but contracts limit their reality to mending fences and mulching entrance ways.

Other than showing excessive exuberance at times, the HOAs are typically indicted in the press when the singular property owner wants to turn his front yard into a memorial for the flag, replete with search lights and a continually repeating sample of Taps. What's worse, the property owner knowingly agreed to such restrictions prior to purchasing the property. The homeowner, attempting to trample on the agreement, is hailed as the last defender of Lady Liberty herself, while the HOA, defending its contract with all homeowners, is perceived as evil incarnate.

Such inconveniences and annoyances are nothing compared to the damaged resulting from unbounded governance. As you move up the governmental food chain, you will find that each subsequent level reaps more damage, more ills. At the federal level, it is as if no bounds exist anymore. Sure, the separate branches mention the Constitution, but only as a means to pervert its moral authority.

Some will claim that the Constitution is our written contract, binding rule of law, and restrictive covenant, yet its perversion would seem to imply that contract governments, whether constitutional public or anarcho-libertarian private, are bound to fail.

But, not so fast. For the private supplier of governance, the entrepreneur across the street offering a similar service is enough of a threat to keep private governing bodies in line.

On the other hand, the political class simply requires rumblings from the masses. Rumble, and they shall fear. Shout, and they shall bend. Scream, and they shall wither.

The ilk that sit at the head of the table, whether local, state, or national, are most concerned about keeping their power and status. These are not men and women of principles. They are simply power seekers. They will wither and do as told once this great nation says, "Stop! Respect the Constitution." They would rather flip and flop than risk the next election.

The ruling elite know this, that's why they utilize a coerced education system to perpetuate their nonsense. Yet, a simple booklet such as the comic version of Hayek's Road to Serfdom can turn enough minds to shake the tables of power. But, just because many have lost site of "Don't Tread on Me," doesn't mean all is lost. A little more education, a stronger tug on the collar of the elected, and the direction toward socialism could reverse overnight.

So, whether your concept of government is constitutional public or anarcho-libertarian private, contract governments will work. They'll be messy, the public version will take conviction of the governed, but their scope will not creep onto your property and liberty.

Accrediting and The Politisization of Higher Education

The establishment of a college, a higher educational institution, is subject to accrediting. Each college, both private and public, is judged to fit a certain pre-determined criteria of subject matter. Perhaps the criteria varies somewhat from state to state or locality to locality. If a college conforms to that subject matter, it is accredited, and therefore is given permission to grant degrees. If a college does not conform to that subject matter, it is not accredited, and therefore it is denied the right to grant any degrees.

I would like to dwell on the significance of the latter scenario. This essentially means that the ability to get a college degree is dependant on biased political, economic and historical criteria. One cannot get a college degree at a college that teaches ideas that various governmental officials disfavor - even at a private institution! For example, the Ludwig Von Mises Institute is a functional college that specializes in economics and political science, but since the subject matter it teaches does not conform to the government's criteria, they are not allowed to grant degrees.

This is quite significant because it extends into one's worklife (particularly for jobs that require college degrees to suceed in), and therefore effects the course of people's entire lives. Why should a political science or economics job require that one have a degree only from certain state-approved colleges? Why should it effectively be impossible to get a degree without state-santioned subject matter? Basically, people who prefer to attend higher educational institutions that the government doesn't approve of are forced to go without a college degree. The only way for them to get a degree is to attend other institutions, which may very well deprive them of any alternative subject matter and methods of learning.

It should be no wonder why so many American college professors tend to teach historical, political, economic and social doctrines that are biased towards the establishment. Their ability to teach courses that grant degrees is entirely dependant on the subject matter conforming to governmentally-determined criteria. In a sense, I feel bad for them. The better of them try their best to bend the rules and encourage healthy debate. But ultimately the structure of the system is stacked against them. They can only go so far before they are being too "controversial" for the higher-ups to allow, even at private colleges.

In a system in which subject matter is determined by a one-size-fits-all criteria, there is no such thing as a genuine diversity of ideas being presented. Nor is there room for any genuine debate. The areas that are most harmed by this are political science, history, economics, buisiness, sociology, law (especially law) and even some subsets of the natural sciences (such as ecology and climatology). The majority of economics professors in America are either (1) Keynsians (2) Friedmanites/Supply-Siders or (3) Marxists. It is practically impossible to get a degree in economics without being taught classes biased towards these things. It is practically impossible to get a degree in history without being subjected to questionable revisionisms and centric historical doctrines.

All of this constitutes the politisization of education. Independant ideas and innovations cannot be created in such an atmosphere. Such an atmosphere can only slowly condition people into certain uniform ideas (most often wrong ones) and make their careers dependant on the personal and political considerations of a central planning board in an ivory tower. Every time a college is denied accreditation by the government on the basis of subject matter, people who are students and prospective students of those colleges are denied legal recognition of their work and the employment oppurtunities that come with having a degree.

A truly independant and free college system would consist of a diversity different types of colleges that each teach from different standpoints and perspectives, different methods of teaching and different selections of subject matter. While this is obviously not the case for the public college system, for the most part it isn't the case with the private college system either because it is regulated to the point where it still has to conform to the government's criteria of subject matter. A very small percentage of accredited private colleges can get away with meaningfully bending or breaking the rules.

The central planners, the determiners and enforcers of the uniform criteria, are unable to concieve of the possibility that different people prefer and/or require different/diverse methods of learning, or that it is good to expose them to different ideas. They would rather deny people educatonal and employment oppurtunities than expose them to variety and ideas that they might not personally like. Consequentially, our colleges have increasingly become bastions of irrationality, because rational debate and variance among rational people is severely discouraged.

It is often said by conservatives that the colleges are run by liberals. I disagree (that is not to say that it isn't run by SOME liberals). All public colleges and most private ones are run by the government and assorted establishmentarians who ally with it, which can include anyone of any party allegiance or any political ideology, including conservatives. However, it would be accurate to say that this group is dominated by a particular set of ideas, all of which are ultimately biased towards the government and leave little or no room for flexibility. The politisization of highschool and lower is bad enough as it is, but we have also politisized higher education and therefore onwards into the workplace.

Why I Fled George Bush's War

Joshua Key on changing his job (i.e., "deserting").

The Ethic of the Peddler Class

By Frank Chodorov

I was born on the lower East Side of New York and brought up on the lower West Side. (I bring in these facts as introduction to some ideas that may be of general interest, not as autobiography.) Of my earliest experiences I remember practically nothing.

But, one incident does come to mind. My father, an immigrant who, like many others, took to peddling as a means of making a living, brought me a toy of some sort from one of his trips; maybe the fact that this was the only toy I ever had, if memory serves me right, made an indelible impression on me. In those days, and under the circumstances, a toy was a rarity in the life of a youngster.

As a vocation, peddling has long since gone out of style in this country, and the image of the peddler that has remained is not a glamorous one. Yet, the peddler must be given credit for helping to build the great American economy. He began his enterprise by bringing to the hinterland a modest pack on his back, as much as he had capital for, selling the contents and returning to his distributing point as soon as possible. He lived frugally, saved much of the proceeds of his sales, and invested his savings in a larger pack. He continued this process until he had saved enough to buy a horse and wagon, which enabled him to go more deeply into the sparsely settled areas and distribute more merchandise.

After a few of these trips he found a burgeoning community that gave promise of supporting a permanent or resident peddler, that is, a merchant. He built a shack in this town and filled it up with things folks wanted, and made his residence in the back of the store. In due time, he brought a wife to help him with the chores and to share with him his meager quarters. As the town grew so did his store. He built another room to hold more wares, and then an upper story, meanwhile moving his wife and children to a more commodious house. And when he died he left his heirs a department store.

This is the story of most of the department stores, the merchandise marts, that dot the American landscape today; they began with a pack on some peddler's back. Indeed, it is the story in broad outline of many of the industries that make up the American economy, from steel to automobile; some pioneer, beginning in a small way, exercised industry and thrift and plowed back his savings into his business to serve the needs of the community. He might have, as conditions warranted, borrowed the savings of others to expand his enterprise, but until he had demonstrated his ability to render service, and the need for it, his capital consisted mainly of his own savings.

That practice has gone by the boards these days for one reason: the income tax absorbs the savings of the entrepreneur before he can lay his hands on it. The tax-collector gets the accumulations that might have been plowed back into the business, and growth from modest beginnings is therefore impossible. This has the tendency to discourage enterprise, to freeze the proletarian into his class regardless of his ambition or ability. The imaginative entrepreneur of today must begin on a relatively large scale, by borrowing from the government against a government contract or some enterprise undertaken on a government grant or guarantee. The "little man" must remain little.

Now, the peddler, using the term figuratively, was the backbone of the American economic and social system. He was the middle class man who prided himself on his initiative, self-reliance, independence and, above all, his integrity. He might be shrewd and even grasping, but he never asked for favors and certainly did not expect society to take care of him.

In fact, if he thought of society at all, he thought of it as a collection of individuals, like himself, each of whom contributed to it, and that without them society simply did not exist. To keep his standing in the society of which he was an integral part, he paid his debts and taxes regularly, went to church as a matter of course, voted as his conscience dictated, contributed to local charities and took part in civic affairs. To be "good" a society had to consist of "good" men, and therefore the ethos of his community was his own. He was society.

And he was middle class. But, the term, in the context of the early part of the century, carried certain connotations that have been lost. In popular usage the term "middle class" designates those whose incomes provide them with more than the mere necessities, who enjoy some of the luxuries, who have saved up something for future contingencies, and who are neither "rich" nor "poor." That is, we think of the middle class in terms of income.

In that context, we might include in the present middle class many who in former times would have been classified as proletarian; for the income of many who work for wages today is sufficient to provide them with satisfactions that would have been luxuries to the old middle class. The merchant or the banker of that era did not dream of an automobile or of a Florida vacation, nor did he enjoy any of the home conveniences that are now considered necessities by most of those who have nothing to sell but their labor. Thus, in economic terms, the middle class is much larger and much more affluent than it was in the past.

The middle class, of the earlier period, was identified by something besides economic status; one thinks of them as a people motivated by certain values, among which integrity was uppermost. The middle class man was meticulous in fulfilling his contractual obligations, even though these were supported only by his pledged word; there were few papers that changed hands, fewer laws covering contracts, and the only enforcement agency was public opinion. In the circumstances, personal integrity in the middle class community was taken for granted; anyone who did not live up to his obligations was well advertised and lost his credit standing. Bankruptcy carried with it a stigma that no law could obliterate and therefore was seldom resorted to.

The life of the old middle class man was, by present standards, rather prosaic, even humdrum, being enlivened only by plans for expanding his business. If he had dreams, these were concerned with getting ahead by means of serving his community better, of widening the scope of his enterprise. But, his personal life was quite orderly and quite free of eroticisms; rarely was it disturbed by divorce or scandal. His sense of self-reliance imposed on him a code of conduct that precluded psychopathic adventures and gave him stability. Orderliness in his personal life was necessary to his main purpose, which was to produce more goods or render more services for the market; that burned up all the surplus energy he had at his disposal.

It never occurred to this middle class man that society owed him a living, or that he might apply to the government for help in the solution of his problems. The farmer is a particular class in point; the present day agriculturist, who must be included in our present day middle class in terms of income, holds it quite proper to demand of government, that is, the rest of society, a regularized subsidy, even a subsidy for not producing; the farmer of the early part of the century would hardly have thought of that.

The merchant or manufacturer located in the area served by the Tennessee Valley Authority has no hesitation in accepting electricity at rates that are subsidized by the rest of the country, and even demands more of that handout, without any hurt to his self-esteem. The pride of the peddler, the entrepreneur, has left the industrialist who now grovels before legislatures and bureaucrats in search of government contracts, while the independence that characterized the early banker has been replaced by a haughty obsequiousness of the modern financier in his dealings with government.

Indeed, it has become a "right" to demand a special privilege from the authorities — as, for instance, the urgency of professional athletic organizations for publicly financed stadia in which to display their wares; and the man who secures such a privilege does not feel humiliated by its acceptance, but rather holds his head as high as did the earlier entrepreneur who made his way on his own steam.

Among the modern middle-class men, in terms of income and the station in life they have attained, there are two categories that deserve special attention: the bureaucrats and the managers of the great corporations. In earlier days, the government employee was held to be a man who could not have made his way in the business world and was therefore tolerated with condescension; he had little to do and his remuneration was correspondingly small. Even the few entrepreneurs who entered the public service did so mainly under draft, as a necessary though unwanted duty, to be got out of as soon as possible.

Today, the government agent holds his head higher than do those who furnish him his keep — he is the government while they are only the people — and is held in esteem by the very ones he dominates. He is, of course, a non-producer, but in the present ethos that circumstance does not degrade him, either in his own eyes or that of society; indeed, the producer holds an inferior position in life than does the government official. The government official is the law.

The managers, of corporations owned by stockholders, have largely taken the place of the old peddler class. But, while the latter were characterized by self-reliance and a willingness to assume responsibility for their choices, the managerial class, taking them by and large, hide their personalities in committee decisions. To be sure, the corporations must abide by the decision of the market (except where its principal customer is the government), but its operations are bound by rules, conventions and rituals behind which the management can well hide. Risk is something nobody takes, if he can avoid it, and where he must make a decision he is sure to have an excuse or scapegoat in case he decides wrongly. "Passing the buck" is considered de rigueur by even the supervisory help.

And, above all, security has become a fetish among all classes of society, from the lowliest wage-earner to the president of the corporation. To be sure, security against the exigencies of life has always been a human aim. But, while in the last century man made provision against disaster, in insurance, in paying off the mortgage on the old homestead, in savings, the tendency during the latter half of the twentieth century is to put the burden of one's security on society. The young man entering the business world is not concerned with the chances of advancement that are open to industry and skill, but rather with the pension system provided by the company; and the candidate for president of the corporation is concerned with his retirement even as he takes on the duties of the presidency. This change of attitude from personal responsibility to collectivized security is probably the result of the income tax; it would be difficult to trace it to any alteration in human nature or any deterioration of character.

It is most difficult to find a cause and effect relationship to explain changes in the ethic of a people, as, for instance, the transmogrification of the freedom-loving (and therefore self-reliant) American of times past into one leaning on society. Undoubtedly, ideas have consequences, and the current urgency to turn to government for assistance in solving life's problems might be traced to the socialistic and populist ideas promulgated during the last part of the 19th century.

But, ideas must be institutionalized before the mass of people can accept, or even comprehend, them; a religious concept has no meaning until it is ritualized, given material form in a church and reduced to a catechism. So with political ideas. The socialists and the populists might have ranted on and on ad infinitum and without effect, had not the politicians, in their own interests, taken hold of these ideas and institutionalized them.

The first of these ideas to attract the attention of the politicians was the income tax; the socialists and populists advocated this as a "soak the rich" measure, purely out of the covetousness which is in all men's hearts, but the politicians took to it because more taxation means more power. And getting and exercising power is the principal business of the politician.

Changing values do not indicate a change in the nature of man. In all likelihood, the American of 1900 was as equally inclined toward getting something-for-nothing as was the American of the 1960s. The land-grabbing schemes and the tariff-mongering of the 19th century indicate an inclination to improve oneself at the expense of neighbors, while the "robber barons" were likewise out for all the traffic would bear. The one facet of human nature which, because of its invariability and constancy, we can put down as a natural law is: man always seeks to satisfy his desires with the least effort.

It is because of this inner compulsion that man invents labor-saving devices, and it is also because of this inner compulsion that man sometimes turns to exploiting his neighbor, which is a form of robbery. But, robbery is attended with the use of force, which might be met with a contrary and defeating force, and is therefore risky; however, when the government, which has a monopoly of coercion, exercises its power so as to favor one individual or set of individuals to the disadvantage of others, there is nothing to do but to comply with its edicts.

And, because its edicts are regularized by law, mental adjustment to the exploitation takes place, while the recipients of the advantages thus gained learn to look upon their loot as a "right." The urgency for something-for-nothing is endemic to the human being; therefore, when the government exploits one group in favor of another, the cry goes up by other groups, in the name of "justice," for some of the same. Thus, a new ethic, a new complex of beliefs and conventions, takes hold of the people; all of them expect society, through the agency of government, to take care of them.

The ethic of the 19th century (sometimes called the Protestant ethic) held that man was endowed with free will and therefore was a responsible being, responsible for himself, responsible to his fellow man and to his God. The origins can be traced to the Industrial Revolution, with its emphasis on individual initiative; or perhaps to the introduction of the capitalistic system, with its emphasis on contract rather than on status, which prevailed during the feudalistic eras. The emergence of the idea that "a man was a man for a' that," that freedom from restraint was his due, not only gave him a sense of individual dignity but also put upon him the necessity of making choices and of suffering the consequences. This called for industry, thrift, and self-reliance. Society could do nothing for the individual which he could not better do for himself; in fact, society could do nothing for the individual.

This ethic held, in this country, because it was institutionalized. There was the institution of the Declaration of Independence, and the institution of the Constitution, with its inhibitions on the power of the government. A particularly inhibitory influence was the limitation on its taxing powers; the government could do little in the way of interfering with private affairs because it did not have the wherewithal necessary to effect interference. What it could get by way of excise taxes and tariff duties was just about enough to make it a going concern; its power of exploitation, inherent in all governments, was sharply delimited. Washington was a village on the Potomac where some legislators met for a few months in the year, to pass a few laws which little affected the welfare of the people, except when the laws had something to do with war. Debates in Congress were interesting to read about or to talk about, but the issues involved did not concern the making of a living or the manner in which one got by in this world. Newspapers sent reporters, not correspondents, to Washington.

The ethic was further institutionalized in the manners and habits of the people, in the books that were written and the plays that were produced. For instance, the moral concepts of Hawthorne's stories, the peccadilloes of Mark Twain's characters, the simple tragedies in the lives of Louisa Alcott's Little Women all emphasized the worth of the individual, while the popular plays dealt with individual heroics, rather than social trends. The school books, too, stressed the virtues of independence and personal responsibility. Charity was a personal matter, both for the donor and the donee; somebody gave to somebody, as a duty and not by way of law. Young folks took care of their parents, with love, not as they do now through the medium of taxation.

This Protestant ethic has been largely supplanted now by what has been called the Freudian ethic,[1] which is based on a peculiar notion of the nature of man. Sigmund Freud came up during the latter part of the 19th century with the queer notion that man is indeed a complex of emotional impulses, the principal one being sex. He comes into this world without the biological equipment with which to meet its demands. What kind of world would best suit the needs of the babe Freud does not say, although it seems it should be one most like the warmth and comfort of the womb. At any rate, his entry into the world is accompanied by a traumatic experience, the first in a series that complicate for man his way through life. Society is to blame for all these neuroticisms. The best the individual can do to make his way through this vale of gloom is to make adjustment as best he can to the demands of society, until death at long last releases him from the uncongenial climate of existence.

There is no empirical knowledge to support this concept, nor are there any demonstrable facts underlying any of Freud's fanciful psychological ideas. Nevertheless, his notion that society is at fault whenever the individual cannot or will not meet its demands appealed to the socialists and other do-gooders — it gave them something "scientific" on which to base their urgency — and they promoted it as incontrovertible truth. Psychologists, educators, jurists, criminologists, social workers and, of course, politicians, took to Freudianism as a fish does to water, so that, during the second half of this century, it is generally taken for granted that the ills of the individual are all socially made, and that there is nothing to do but to change society. The old idea that man is a free willing, responsible and self-reliant individual was swept aside by the new ethic, and in its place we have a neurotic who must be ever coddled, provided for, adjusted and generally managed.

Whether or not Freudianism is the cause of this change in attitude, it is difficult to say. Other ideational vogues have had their sway without getting beyond the realm of fanaticism, and have died away; as, for instance, the bimetallism of William Jennings Bryan, or the end-of-the-world enthusiasms of earlier times. To get hold of the people an idea must be institutionalized, must be fixed in custom or validated by law; then only does it become part of that complex of beliefs which motivates men.

Now, associated with the rising vogue of Freudianism was the rise of statism; the politicians, who knew nothing about Freud, but who are very astute in evaluating any vote-getting device, instituted the Welfare State, and this fitted in very nicely with the Freudian notion. The Welfare State does indeed relieve the individual of self-responsibility, and does indeed undertake to remodel society; therefore, the Welfare State seemed to validate all that Freud claimed as to the nature of man.

And so it has come to pass, during the second half of the 20th century, that the ethic of the peddler class has been replaced by the ethic of mendicancy. I am inclined to the thought that the change indicates a deterioration of the American character; but, then, I am loyal to my youth, as is every older man, and may be prejudiced.

It may well be that social security is an advance over self-reliance, that the individual prospers better under the ministrations of the bureaucrat, that juvenile delinquency is a social rather than individual malady, that individual proficiency is a social curse, that freedom is indeed the right to feed at the public trough. The young people, those who were born or got their rearing during the New Deal era, do not question that concept of freedom, and the professors of economics, psychology, jurisprudence, sociology and anthropology write learned books in support of it. Therefore, it must be so.

Any attempt to revive the old concept of freedom — that it is merely the absence of restraint — would be a fatuous undertaking; it would be like trying to "turn back the clock."

Yet, one cannot help speculating on the future. When the present generation, well inured to the Welfare State, shall have grown old, will it not also write books on the "good old days," even as this book speaks lovingly of the ethic of the peddler class? And what new ethic — every generation has its own — will these books decry? Maybe it will be the ethic of the totalitarian state. Who knows?

Modern Times: Some thoughts on Utopia, Dystopia, and Equality

Utopian ideas are not long forgotten or unrealistic. They are the collective dreams that we have as a society for a lack of a better term, perfect world. In the early 19^th century novellas and literature was packed with ideas of a world of shining white concrete, people living forever, and the conveniences of advanced technology available to all. Lately it seems that we have become a society obsessed with dystopia. Often people think of dystopia as a world where everything –for lack of a better term- went wrong. Dystopia can go further than that, many times the characters in a “dystopian society” do not believe nor see it as that. In fact, they see it as a utopia, a world where ideological perfection and generally servitude to the “state” or sovereign is held in the highest account. Usually in this story there is an individual who does recognize the flaws of the society they inhabit and as George Orwell characterized it in his story, you are “…a majority of one.”

Perhaps the reason why modern story telling has taken the idea of dystopia to heart is because we tend to relate to it more than the latter. This brings me to my point. Political dystopia is something we can especially relate to. American society has in a lot of ways lost its innocence. We have also begun to lose our hope for the future. I see this in the news media, popular culture, and religion. The news media does not do interest stories on positive events. No rather they do exclusives on serial killers, pedophiles, and corrupt politicians. They claim that this is what people “want” to see. That people do not want to see fireman rescue cat’s from trees. I wholeheartedly disagree. Similarly, in popular culture elements of dystopia are scattered ubiquitously. Many of the syndicated shows on popular cable networks are focused on “end of the world” scenarios and criminal perversions of the most evil breed. These images and stories are rather a likeness of “modern times.” Often we feel like Charlie Chaplin caught in the wheels, of the great machine—a cog, with no control, no individuality. So I pose the question.

Where did the Utopia go?

In Greek the world Utopia means “no place” or somewhere that does not exist in physical reality. Nevertheless, there are several kinds of utopian ideas. Heterotopias are best described as a mix of realism and utopian ideas. It is attainable only because it allows for imperfection and mixes some dystopian elements. Still individuals are reaching for the highest level but hope to attain it. Of course we can not forget Marx and Robert A. Heinlein. Although Marx did not really coin the idea of an egalitarian utopia, he is given credit. Still for my purposes it is not that important to nitpick. Often people claim that it is that very idea of utopia that makes communism and its less rigid counterpart socialism impossible to attain in its purest form. Either they degenerate into authoritarian regimes or worse. What is never asked is that “is it there an inherent flaw in the ideology that makes a socialist utopia impossible?” Or “is there an inherent flaw in the individuals that comprise that society?” Well to answer that another example is in order. In Robert Hienlein’s novel “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress” rather than a socialist utopia, he depicts a rugged individualist, libertarian world where the “perfect market” has eliminated all problems of distributive justice and equality. Ultimately it becomes clear that it is not the flaws of people, but the flaws of the ideology that goes against human nature. Complete equality through central planning is not possible, so negation of a socialist utopia is a self-fulfilling prophesy. Simply, because if humans plan it, there is bound to be flaws since human concepts of distributive justice are incomplete. By allowing market forces and technology to fill the “human gap” the ideological flaws become superfluous. Then we are not working against nature, rather we are working with it. It would be a common sense axiom to recognize that if we were meant to be completely and totally equal in every way nature would have born us in that image. However, nature extenuates survival traits and eliminates ones that are not necessary to survival of the species. No where does it say we are all equal in ability or intelligence. That means that because we all know that, but for some strange reason we inherently crave equality.

What does it all mean?

So because we can never have equality that can translate into modern societies dislike of utopian ideas? I believe this is part of the equation. We as a people have a very weak grasp of history. We feel it and live it, more than we reflect and observe it. It is in that feeling that most people, if you ask have totally different ideas of “where we are going,” and if “were on the right track.” It is that “feeling” that leads so many Americans to not be optimistic about the future. In that pessimism and lack of sanguinity, we make dystopia so much more believe able than its counterpart. Now don’t get me wrong. I believe that we can have things much better than they are, but if we as a society do no believe that, it will inevitably get worse.

It is in the cleverness of relative deprivation and that by lower the standard of living universally something happens. It is only when we have historical or modern reference are we able to have a context for comparison. If that comparison were to be removed or altered then creating that situation would be easy. What most historians and economic-political theorist have believed is that when the scales of equality become unbalanced something will happen a revolution, civil unrest, war, etc. I guess a question that is raised is at what point will individuals recognize deprivation and act on it. If trends continue as they are my guess is that people will never recognize how deprived they really are. So it could so easily pass, that fiction would become fact.