Checks and Balances: Two Kinds

Checks and balances should be a fairly familiar concept to Americans. The standard definition of checks and balances is that the state must be broken up into multiple segments that function as checks against eachother's power and perform different functions, while these segments still remain within one central institution. Traditionally, the idea is that there must be three separate branches (executive, legislative and judicial) within one central government in order to prevent the accumulation of power into one group. At least superficially, this view slightly recognizes the principle of decentralization. Another somewhat more powerful conception of checks and balances is the idea that there must be multiple and separate levels of government, each with their own branches and jurisdictions, and that in order to combat the accumulation of power, individual states or parishes and cities should remain "independant" from the central state.

This is the doctrine of internal checks and balances. Both separation between branches and levels of government are internal theories of checks and balances. But how well do these theories stand up in the face of logic and empirical evidence? Not very well. The fundamental flaw in the idea that separation between branches within one institution will stop power from being concentrated should be fairly obvious: it is still within one institution. There is theoretically no "third party" outside of that institution functioning on a check on it, which is to say that the overall institution is a judge in its own case. The supreme court is still part of the federal government. All historical evidence shows a great deal of collusion between branches, and when there is collusion between branches, there is centralization of powers into one expanding group. Clearly, merely having three branches under one institution will not stop power from accumulating in that institution. Much heftier criterion must be met.

While the doctrine of state's rights is a step up from this, since it maintains at a minimum that there should be a multitude of jurisdictions within the overall territory bestowed to the central government, it nonetheless contains a similar flaw. The states are still ultimately subject to the territorial dominion of the federal government and there is once again collusion between the levels of government. If a central government still exists, it doesn't matter how many territorial jurisdictions that one tries to split the central state's control into, political power is still concentrated at a central point. Surely expanding the amount of people in the government or the number of sub-governments within a government's territorial monopoly is not necessarily a way to restrict political power. In order to at least be a "pure" advocate of "state's rights", one must support a more radical approach, with no federal government.

Once one has made it to this point, the same problem keeps repeating itself at each level of government. The states in themselves would now be the central governments, only over smaller territories. The size of the dominion of power may have been reduced, but the essential feature of territorial monopoly is still maintained. Counties, parishes and cities would synergize with and the states. If the states were gotten rid of, the counties would be the territorial monopolies and the cities and towns would synergize with them. And even down to the city-state level, the problem of territorial monopoly would persist. The advantages of so-called "state's rights" or "city's rights" mostly only have to do with the size of the territorial monopoly, but they do almost nothing to address the problem of territorial monopoly itself. All such mechanisms are ultimately within the structure of the institution of the state itself. A monopoly cannot be broken up without competition from other institutions external to it.

This is why external checks and balances are much stronger and more meaningful than internal ones. Checks and balances in which governmental institutions are held in check by non-governmental ones, which requires a separation between buisiness and state, constitutes an example of external checks and balances. An honest private institution that opens up a buisiness in competition with the state in a particular area, which inherently requires that the given buisiness not engage in any kind of patronage and protectionism with the state, is functioning as a check on state power by providing an alternative option for people and lowering dependance on the state. The improvement of technology and the availability of private alternatives to the state in a given field, and the long-term decrease in prices it often leads to, can function as an external "check and balance" on the state much better than any internal "check and balance" ever can.

On the other hand, a private institution that colludes with the state is participating in the centralization and expansion of power. Indeed, the leaders of such institutions become part of the ruling class. When such synergy between industry and government takes place, various buisinesses start to become more centralized, modeled more similarly to the structure of the state than would otherwise have been possible. When buisiness starts to merge at the hip with the state, this presents an oppurtunity to obtain and expand political power for both select private interests and members of the government itself. The union of church and state is a perfect historical example of territorial monopolies further centralizing and expanding as a consequence of collusion between the state and external organizations. The ultimate end of such collusion is the merging of a more multi-centered order into one large central organization.

In a sense, everyone who is outside of the ruling class of a given society is a potential check on political power, by the mere virtue of not being within or in control of it. There are many external methods of checking and resisting political power, which includes various types of civil disobedience and economic decisions. From the perspective of an individual as a consumer, withdrawing consumption from the state's "services" and merely patronizing a private alternative at a lower price and participating in peaceful black markets is an important haven from state power. On the other hand, actively and enthusiastically participating in the state's "services" transforms one into either a state of dependance on the state, or worse, part of the ruling class. Here too, collusion has a negative effect because it is internal to the institution. It's working within the system, which is precisely why it does not work.

Economic incentives is a very important check and balance on state power. A defining feature of the state as an organization is that it is an externalizer of costs, which is to say that those who hold the political power in a society do not actually bear the costs of the laws and policies that they work with. Therefore, mechanisms that internalize costs provide a disincentive towards political power. Political power cannot be obtained or maintained without externalizing costs through mechanisms such as taxation and eminent domain. If the state is denied access to external resources then it will eventually crumble, as the state as an organization depends entirely on the production of those who are not in it. If it is either cut off from recieving that production then political power obviously cannot be maintained for very long.

The ultimate check on political power is philosophy. In short, it is impossible to maintain or expand political power without the propagation of ideological ideas in favor of political power or encouraging resignation to it. What ideas people adhere to ultimately effects the course of history. All that is required to combat political power is the action of withdrawl of support to the best that one can manage. And in order for this to be done, it must be philosophically accepted that the only possible checks against the state that can possibly exist are external to the institution because the institution of the state is a compulsory territorial monopoly regaurdless of what one tries to do with it internally. It is logically inconsistant to maintain that one can reduce, restrict or abolish political power by using political power, and it is nonsensical to claim that one can provide checks and balances on an institution through mechanisms that are entirely within the framework of that very institution and when that institution has a territorial monopoly.

What about so-called "competition" between nation-states? If there can be said to be anything resembling checks and balances between goverments, it would be the total lack of both collusion and offensive intervention between governments. When states engage in economic hegemony with eachother they begin a gradual trend towards international or global government, taking the centralization process to the extreme of there being virtually no territory immune from being within the jurisdiction of the government monopoly. International government possesses all of the problems previously mentioned about federal and state government. It just conglomerates power even more than nation-states and has a larger monopolistic jurisdiction.

Modern state warfare essentially cannot be done without collusion and contracting with particular banking and buisiness interests through contracting. War is the most costly endeavor a government can possibly engage in and it can only be waged by externalizing the costs, particularly through the mechanism of monetary inflation and borrowing from from foreign governments and banking interests. War has historically been a means of maintaining and expanding political power. As such, it would be disingenous to use it as an example of checks on state power. It is, by definition, a flexing of state power. Even if a state is overthrown by another, the victor state usually has increased power when the smoke clears. War has been the main mechanism of expanding state power throughout history.

In conclusion, it should be clear that true checks and balances lies within the domain of private and decentralized mechanisms that are external to and not in any kind of collusion with any political power. The more standard concept of checks and balances, while a well intended attempt to form a structural means for restricting political power, is incredibly mistaken in its premises as to how the state functions as an institution. It is rather niave about the nature of political power. In order to truly have checks and balances, the state as an organization must be questioned altogether and participitation in the activities of and consumption of the loot of such an organization must begin to be abandoned in favor of a multitude of alternatives.

Pragmatic Utilitarianism: A Road to Tyranny

The arguements given by people to justify unethical acts are usually utilitarian, which is to say that a given act is defended on the grounds that it is beneficial to someone. This is commonly manifested in the arguements given in defense of the alleged "need" for a whole host of economic policies, and government in general. For example, conservatives often argue that the tax-funded defense industry helps "stimulate the economy". It is often argued that the public sector is justified because it "creates jobs". So long as a measure can be shown to be beneficial to a specific group of people, the utilitarian is prone to be comfortable with it.

On one hand, these kind of arguements are fallicious even in utilitarian terms in that they ignore the cost side of the equation. Government creates only government jobs, which inherently comes at the cost of private jobs. Governments cannot increase employment in one sector without withdrawing it from another. All government jobs represents a net loss to the tax-payer. Government cannot create wealth, it can only redistribute it, and in the process of redistribution it actually decreases overall utility by shifting production into consumption. The government itself does not produce, it consumes from private production. It is a leech on the producing classes, which includes both workers and genuine enterprenuers.

On the other hand, even if it can be substantiated that a given measure is beneficial to people, this does not necessarily justify it in ethical terms. Afterall, one can try to argue that a thief is justified in their theft because they donated the stolen goods to charity, but that would not justify theft. Just because something may be beneficial to some people does not necessarily mean that it is justified, nor does it negate the fact that it may very well be at the expense of other people. Economic efficiency and metric benefit is not a proper measuring stick of justice. In short, the ends do not justify the means. One can very well show how a redistribution benefits certain people, but that would not justify confiscation of property.

A common mistake made by many utilitarians is the broken window fallacy. The broken window fallacy refers to a situation where one argues that a destructive act is justified because it may lead to the gain of others in some way, usually by stimulating economic activity. Should we encourage children to break windows of baker's stores because this stimulates the economy by making the baker buy a new window? Or are destructive acts never justified, and this actually represents a loss to the baker? To take the former view ignores how those same resources would have been used otherwise. This fallacy is precisely what is going on when people claim that warfare benefits the economy, ignoring that there are immense costs that can only be delayed at best.

While some utilitarians think more long-term than others, utilitarians may often take a short-term view, being concentrated on obtaining the maximum utility in the present, regaurdless of long-term consequences. A good example of this is manifested in monetary policy. The establishment view goes roughly as follows: "monetary inflation is a good thing because it stimulates the economy by raising wage rates, creating jobs and stimulating growth". But as Ludwig Von Mises demonstrated close to a century ago, in the long-term this is unsustainable, it must be reconciled in a downturn, malinvestments must be cleared and the debt it generates must be payed off. This is beside the fact that the inflation also reduces the value of each monetary unit, thereby raising some prices and diminishing the purchasing power of the wages. Viewed in ethical terms, all of this is irrelevant to the question as to wether or not the stealing of the value of people's money can be justified.

Also, utilitarianism is all about maximizing "happiness". But the problem is that there is no concrete definition of happiness, which is to say that it varies from individual to individual. The question becomes "who's happiness"? It is not really possible to statistically measure "happiness" in the first place. In practise, therefore, it seems as if the utilitarian is stuck either arbitrarily trying to measure things in terms of their own definition of happiness (which makes way for authoritarianism), or playing the role of a value-free observer that accepts whatever a person's own definition of happiness is (which makes way for hedonism). Another route that may be taken is to define happiness by whatever a majority defines it as (which makes way for persecution of the minority).

Furthermore, and this is very important to stress, happiness is not the criteria by which we measure right and wrong. The happiness of a murderer may come from murdering, but surely we do not condone murder simply because it brings happiness to the murderer. Pleasure may seem like a good goal to strive for, but some people may find pleasure at the expense of others. In some cases, commonly accepted morality may very well require that people abstain from acting out of primitive desire for pleasure. A man may find pleasure from sexual intercourse, but in order to be ethical they must abstain from simply forcibly mounting every woman they see. And if utility is defined more in terms of general economic well-being, a person may steal in order to stay alive, but in order to remain ethical even the most impoverished person must abstain from robbing banks.

In short, it is impossible to consistantly apply any ethical principle using utilitarianism as a method of looking at things. Any ethical consideration can in theory be overturned using utilitarianism so long as it is percieved or can be sufficiently proven to be net beneficial or bring happiness. At best, utilitarianism can be used to show how certain actions will have negative or unintended consequences. It can have a limited use in this respect. But as an ethical system it is a nightmare. Pragmatism becomes more important than principle and even if a long-term view is held a utilitarian may find ways to attempt to justify just about anything. In particular, so long as something can be shown to benefit a larger amount of people, the individual or minority is fair game to be trampled upon in a utilitarian world. This is fundamentally determental to the cause of individualism.

A fundamental requirement for justice is universality, which is to say a logically consistant application of principles to each individual. Utilitarianism cannot possibly consistantly apply a principle to each individual, for it seeks a numerical maximization of variables in which whoever has the most numbers wins. It turns everything into a numbers game, into a game theory of a sort. There is a fundamental clash between universal justice and bare consequentialism. Universal justice proclaims that certain things are wrong regaurdless of the consequences and regaurdless of the amount of people involved in or benefited by them; even if it's one individual against the world. Utilitarianism, on the other hand, essentially proclaims that anything is right provided that it has good consequences; even if the individual or minority must be forced to sacrifice for a "greater good" (whatever that means).

One's options are as clear as a bell: either ethics are definitive and universal, or they are prone to juxtoposition and subordination based on consequences and sheer pleasure.

State Interferance

State Interferance by William Gramn Sumner

[Excerpted from "War and other Essays"]

I desire, in this paper, to give an explanation and justification of extreme prejudice against State interference, and I wish to begin with a statement from history of the effect upon the individual of various forms of the State.

It appears, from the best evidence we possess, according to the most reasonable interpretation which has been given to it, that the internal organization of society owes its cohesion and intensity to the necessity of meeting pressure from without. A band of persons, bound by ties of neighborhood or kin, clung together in order to maintain their common interests against a similar band of their neighbors. The social bond and the common interest were at war with individual interests. They exerted coercive power to crush individualism, to produce uni-fortuity, to proscribe dissent, to make private judgment a social offense, and to exercise drill and discipline.

In the Roman State the internal discipline gave victory in contests with neighbors. Each member of the Roman community was carried up by the success of the body of which he was a member to the position of a world-conqueror. Then the Roman community split up into factions to quarrel for the spoils of the world, until the only escape from chronic civil war and anarchy was a one-man power, which, however, proved only a mode of disintegration and decay, not a cure for it. It has often been remarked with astonishment how lightly men and women of rank at Rome in the first century of our era held their lives. They seem to have been ready to open their veins at a moment's notice, and to quit life upon trivial occasion. If we can realize what life must have been in such a State we can, perhaps, understand this. The Emperor was the State. He was a mortal who had been freed from all care for the rights of others, and his own passions had all been set free. Any man or woman in the civilized world was at the mercy of his caprices. Anyone who was great enough to attract his attention, especially by the possession of anything which mortals covet, held his life at the utmost peril. Since the Empire was the world, there was no escape save to get out of the world. Many seemed to hold escape cheap at that price.

At first under the Empire the obscure people were safe. They probably had little to complain of, and found the Empire gay and beneficent; but it gradually and steadily absorbed every rank and interest into its pitiless organization. At last industry and commerce as well as all civil and social duties took the form of State functions. The ideal which some of our modern social philosophers are preaching was realized. The State was an ethical person, in the strictest sense of the word, when it was one man and when every duty and interest of life was construed towards him. All relations were regulated according to the ethics of the time, which is, of course, all that ethical regulation ever can amount to. Every duty of life took the form and name of an “obse-quium”; that is, of a function in the State organism.

Now the most important relation of the citizen to the State is that of a soldier, and the next is that of a taxpayer, and when the former loses importance the latter becomes the chief. Accordingly the obsequia of the citizens in the later centuries were regulated in such a way that the citizen might contribute most to the fiscus. He was not only made part of a machine, but it was a tax-paying machine, and all his hopes, rights, interests, and human capabilities were merged in this purpose of his existence. Slavery, as we ordinarily understand the term, died out, but it gave way to a servitude of each to all, when each was locked tight in an immense and artificial organization of society. Such must ever be the effect of merging industry in the State. Every attempt of the Roman handicraftsmen to better themselves was a breach of the peace; disobedience was rebellion; resistance was treason; running away was desertion.

Here, then, we have a long history, in which the State power first served the national interest in contest with outside powers, and then itself became a burden and drew all the life out of the subject population.

In the Middle Ages a society which had been resolved into its simple elements had to re-form. The feudal form was imposed upon it by the conditions and elements of the case. It was as impossible for a man to stand alone as it had been on the hunting or pastoral stage of life or on the lower organizations of civilization. There was once more necessity to yield personal liberty in order to get protection against plunder from others, and in order to obtain this protection it was necessary to get into a group and to conform to its organization. Here again the same difficulty soon presented itself. Protection against outside aggression was won, but the protecting power itself became a plunderer.

This oppression brought about guild and other organizations for mutual defense. Sometimes these organizations themselves won civil power; sometimes they were under some political sovereign, but possessed its sanction. The system which grew up was one of complete regulation and control. The guilds were regulated in every function and right. The masters, journeymen, and apprentices were regulated in their relations and in all their rights and duties. The work of supplying a certain community with any of the necessaries of life was regarded as a privilege and was monopolized by a certain number. The mediaeval system, however, did not allow this monopoly to be exploited at the expense of consumers, according to the good will of the holders of it. The sovereign interfered constantly, and at all points, wherever its intervention was asked for. It fixed prices, but it also fixed wages, regulated kinds and prices of raw materials, prescribed the relation of one trade to another, forbade touting, advertising, rivalry; regulated buying and selling by merchants; protected consumers by inspection; limited importations, but might force production and force sales.

Here was plainly a complete system, which had a rational motive and a logical method. The object was to keep all the organs of society in their accepted relations to each other and to preserve all in activity in the measure of the social needs. The plan failed entirely. It was an impossible undertaking, even on the narrow arena of a medimval city. The ordinances of an authority which stood ready to interfere at any time and in any way were necessarily inconsistent and contradictory. Its effect upon those who could not get into the system — that is, upon the vagabondage of the period — has never, so far as I know, been studied carefully, although that is the place to look for its most distinct social effect. The most interesting fact about it, however, ig that the privilege of one age became the bondage of the next and that the organization which had grown up for the mutual defense of the artisans lost its original purpose and became a barrier to the rise of the artisan class. The organization was a fetter on individual enterprise and success.

The fact should not be overlooked here that, if we are to have the mediaeval system of regulation revived, we want it altogether. That system was not, in intention, unjust. According to its light it aimed at the welfare of all. It was not its motive to give privileges, but a system of partial interference is sure to be a system of favoritism and injustice. It is a system of charters to some to plunder others. A mediaeval sovereign would never interfere with railroads on behalf of shippers and stop there. He would fix the interest on bonds and other fixed charges. He would, upon appeal, regulate the wages of employees. He would fix the price of coal and other supplies. He would never admit that he was the guardian of one interest more than another, and he would interfere over and over again as often as stockholders, bondholders, employees, shippers, etc., could persuade him that they had a grievance. He would do mischief over and Over again but he would not do intentional injustice.

After the mediaeval system broke up and the great modern States formed, the royal power became the representative and champion of national interests in modern Europe, and it established itself in approximately absolute power by; the fact that the interest of the nations to maintain themselves in the rivalry of States seemed the paramount interest. Within a few months we have seen modern Germany discard every other interest in order to respond to the supposed necessity of military defense. Not very long ago, in our Civil War, we refused to take account of anything else until the military task was accomplished.

In all these cases the fact appears that the interest of the individual and the social interest have been at war with each other, while, again, the interests of the individual in and through the society of which he is a member are inseparable from those of the society. Such are the two aspects of the relation of the unit and the whole which go to make the life of the race. The individual has an interest to develop all the personal elements there are in him. He wants to live himself out. He does not want to be planed down to a type or pattern. It is the interest of society that all the original powers it contains should be brought out to their full value. But the social movement is coercive and uniformitarian. Organization and discipline are essential to effective common action, and they crush out individual enterprise and personal variety. There is only one klud of cooperation which escapes this evil, and that is cooperation which is voluntary and automatic, under common impulses and natural laws. State control, however, is always necessary for national action in the family of nations and to prevent plunder by others, and men have never yet succeeded in getting it without falling under the necessity of submitting to plunder at home from those on whom they rely for defense abroad.

Now, at the height of our civilization and with the best light that we can bring to bear on our social relations, the problem is: Can we get from the State security for individuals to pursue happiness in and under it, and yet not have the State itself become a new burden and hindrance only a little better than the evil which it wards off?

It is only in the most recent times, and in such measure as the exigencies of external defense have been diminished by the partial abandonment of motives of plunder and conquest, that there has been a chance for individualism to grow. In the latest times the struggle for a relaxation of political bonds on behalf of individual liberty has taken the form of breaking the royal power and forcing the king to take his hands off. Liberty has hardly yet come to be popularly understood as anything else but republicanism or anti-royalty.

The United States, starting on a new continent, with full chance to select the old-world traditions which they would adopt, have become the representatives and champions in modern times of all the principles of individualism and personal liberty. We have had no neighbors to fear. We have had no necessity for stringent State discipline. Each one of us has been able to pursue happiness in his own way, unhindered by the demands of a State which would have worn out our energies by expenditure simply in order to maintain the State. The State has existed of itself. The one great exception, the Civil War, only illustrates the point more completely per contra. The old Jeffersonian party rose to power and held it, because it conformed to the genius of the country and bore along the true destinies of a nation situated as this one was. It is the glory of the United States, and its calling in history, that it shows what the power of personal liberty is — what self-reliance, energy, enterprise, hard sense men can develop when they have room and liberty and when they are emancipated from the burden of traditions and faiths which are nothing but the accumulated follies and blunders of a hundred generations of “statesmen.”

It is, therefore, the highest product of political institutions so far that they have come to a point where, under favorable circumstances, individualism is, under their protection, to some extent possible. If political institutions can give security for the pursuit of happiness by each individual, according to his own notion of it, in his own way, and by his own means, they have reached their perfection. This fact, however, has two aspects. If no man can be held to serve another man's happiness, it follows that no man can call on another to serve his happiness. The different views of individualism depend on which of these aspects is under observation. What seems to be desired now is a combination of liberty for all with an obligation of each to all. That is one of the forms in which we are seeking a social philosopher's stone.

The reflex influence which American institutions have had on European institutions is well known. We have had to take as well as give. When the United States put upon their necks the yoke of a navigation and colonial system which they had just revolted against, they showed how little possible it is, after all, for men to rise above the current notions of their time, even when geographical and economic circumstances favor their emancipation. We have been borrowing old-world fashions and traditions all through our history, instead of standing firmly by the political and social philosophy of which we are the standard-bearers.

So long as a nation has not lost faith in itself it is possible for it to remodel its institutions to any extent. If it gives way to sentimentalism, or sensibility, or political mysticism, or adopts an affectation of radicalism, or any other ism, or molds its institutions so as to round out to a more complete fulfillment somebody's theory of the universe, it may fall into an era of revolution and political insecurity which will break off the continuity of its national life and make orderly and secure progress impossible. Now that the royal power is limited, and that the old military and police States are in the way of transition to jural States, we are promised a new advance to democracy. What is the disposition of the new State as regards the scope of its power? It unquestionably manifests a disposition to keep and use the whole arsenal of its predecessors. The great engine of political abuse has always been political mysticism. Formerly we were told of the divine origin of the State and the divine authority of rulers. The mystical contents of “'sovereignty” have always provided an inexhaustible source of dogma and inference for any extension of State power. The new democracy having inherited the power so long used against it, now shows every disposition to use that power as ruthlessly as any other governing organ ever has used it.

We are told that the State is an ethical person. This is the latest form of political mysticism. Now, it is true that the State is an ethical person in just the same sense as a business firm, a joint stock corporation, or a debating society. It is not a physical person, but it may be a metaphysical or legal person, and as such it has an entity and is an independent subject of rights and duties. Like the other ethical persons, however, the State is just good for what it can do to serve the interests of man, and no more. Such is far from being the meaning and utility of the dogma that the State is an ethical person. The dogma is needed as a source from which can be spun out again contents of phrases and deductions previously stowed away in it. It is only the most modern form of dogmatism devised to sacrifice the man to the institution which is not good for anything except so far as it can serve the man.

One of the newest names for the coming power is the “omnicracy.” Mankind has been trying for some thousands of years to find the right ocracy. None of those which have yet been tried have proved satisfactory. We want a new name on which to pin new hopes, for mankind “never is, but always to be blessed.” Omnicracy has this much sense in it, that no one of the great dogmas of the modem political creed is true if it is affirmed of anything less than the whole population, man, woman, child, and baby. When the propositions are enunciated in this sense they are philosophically grand and true. For instance, all the propositions about the “people” are grand and true if we mean by the people every soul in the community, with all the interests and powers which give them an aggregate will and power, with capacity to suffer or to work; but then, also, the propositions remain grand abstractions beyond the realm of practical utility. On the other hand, those propositions cannot be made practically available unless they are affirmed of some limited section of the population, for instance, a majority of the males over twenty-one; but then they are no longer true in philosophy or in fact.

Consequently, when the old-fashioned theories of State interference are applied to the new democratic State, they turn out to be simply a device for setting separate interests in a struggle against each other inside the society. It is plain on the face of all the great questions which are offered to us as political questions today, that they are simply struggles of interests for larger shares of the product of industry. One mode of dealing with this distribution would be to leave it to free contract under the play of natural laws. If we do not do this, and if the State interferes with the distribution, how can we stop short of the mediaeval plan of reiterated and endless interference, with constant diminution of the total product to be divided?

We have seen above what the tyranny was in the decay of the Roman Empire, when each was in servitude to all; but there is one form of that tyranny which may be still worse. That tyranny will'be realized when the same system of servitudes is established in a democratic state; when a man's neighbors are his masters; when the “ethical power of public opinion” bears down upon him at all hours and as to all matters; when his place is assigned to him and he is held in it, not by an emperor or his satellites, who cannot be everywhere all the time, but by the other members of the “village community” who can.

So long as the struggle for individual liberty took the form of a demand that the king or the privileged classes should take their hands off, it was popular and was believed to carry with it the cause of justice and civilization. Now that the governmental machine is brought within everyone's reach, the seduction of power is just as masterful over a democratic faction as ever it was over king or barons. No governing organ has yet abstained from any function because it acknowledged itself ignorant or incompetent. The new powers in the State show no disposition to do it. Nevertheless, the activity of the State, under the new democratic system, shows itself every year more at the mercy of clamorous factions, and legislators find themselves constantly under greater pressure to act, not by their deliberate judgment of what is expedient, but in such a way as to quell clamor, although against their judgment of public interests. It is rapidly becoming the chief art of the legislator to devise measures which shall sound as if they satisfied clamor while they only cheat it.

There are two things which are often treated as if they were identical, which are as far apart as any two things in the field of political philosophy can be: (1) That everyone should be left to do as he likes, so far as possible, without any other social restraints than such as are unavoidable for the peace and order of society. (2) That “the people” should be allowed to carry out their will without any restraint from constitutional institutions. The former means that each should have his own way with his own interests; the latter, that any faction which for the time is uppermost should have its own way with all the rest.

One result of all the new State interference is that the State is being superseded in vast domains of its proper work. While it is reaching out on one side to fields of socialistic enterprise, interfering in the interests of parties in the industrial organism, assuming knowledge of economic laws which nobody possesses, taking ground as to dogmatic notions of justice which are absurd, and acting because it does not know what to do, it is losing its power to give peace, order, and security. The extra-legal power and authority of leaders over voluntary orgenizations of men throughout a community who are banded together in order to press their interests at the expense of other interests, and who go to the utmost verge of the criminal law, if they do not claim immunity from it, while obeying an authority which acts in secret and without responsibility, is a phenomenon which shows the inadequacy of the existing State to guarantee rights and give security. The boycott and the plan of campaign are certainly not industrial instrumentalities, and it is not yet quite certain whether they am violent and criminal instrumentalities, by which some men coerce other men in matters of material interests. If we turn our minds to the victims of these devices, we see that they do not find in the modern State that security for their interests under the competition of life which it is the first and unquestioned duty of the State to provide. The boycotted man is deprived of the peaceful enjoyment of rights which the laws and institutions of his country allow him, and he has no redress. The State has forbidden all private war on the ground that it will give a remedy for wrongs, and that private redress would disturb the peaceful prosecution of their own interests by other members of the community who are not parties to the quarrel; but we have seen an industrial war paralyze a whole section for weeks, and it was treated almost as a right of the parties that they might fight it out, no matter at what cost to bystanders. We have seen representative bodies of various voluntary associations meet and organize by the side of the regular constitutional organs of the State, in order to deliberate on proposed measures and to transmit to the authorized representatives of the people their approval or disapproval of the propositions, and it scarcely caused a comment. The plutocracy invented the lobby, but the democracy here also seems determined to better the instruction. There are various opinions as to what the revolution is which is upon us, and as to what it is which is about to perish. I do not see anything else which is in as great peril as representative institutions or the constitutional State.

I therefore maintain that it is at the present time a matter of patriotism and civic duty to resist the extension of State interference. It is one of the proudest results of political growth that we have reached the point where individualism is possible. Nothing could better show the merit and value of the institutions which we have inherited than the fact that we can afford to play with all these socialistic and semi-socialistic absurdities. They have no great importance until the question arises: Will a generation which can be led away into this sort of frivolity be able to transmit intact institutions which were made only by men of sterling thought and power, and which can be maintained only by men of the same type? I am familiar with the irritation and impatience with which remonstrances on this matter are received. Those who know just how the world ought to be reconstructed are, of course, angry when they are pushed aside as busybodies. A group of people who assail the legislature with a plan for regulating their neighbor's mode of living are enraged at the “dogma” of non-interference. The publicist who has been struck by some of the superficial roughnesses in the collision of interests which must occur in any time of great industrial activity, and who has therefore determined to waive the objections to State interference, if he can see it brought to bear on his pet reform, will object to absolute principles.

For my part, I have never seen that public or private principles were good for anything except when there seemed to be a motive for breaking them. Anyone who has studied a question as to which the solution is yet wanting may despair of the power of free contract to solve it. I have examined a great many cases of proposed interference with free contract, and the only alternative to free contract which I can find is “heads I win, tails you lose” in favor of one party or the other. I am familiar with the criticisms which some writers claim to make upon individualism, but the worst individualism I can find in history is that of the Jacobins, and I believe that it is logically sound that the anti-social vices should be most developed whenever the attempt is made to put socialistic theories in practice. The only question at this point is: Which may we better trust, the play of free social forces or legislative and administrative interferenceP This question is as pertinent for those who expect to win by interference as for others, for whenever we try to get paternalized we only succeed in getting policed.

Frank Chodorov on Class Struggles and Systematic Inequalities

"...the real struggle that disturbs the enjoyment of life is not between economic classes but between Society as a whole and the political power which imposes itself on Society. The class-struggle theory is a blind alley. True, people of like economic interests will gang up for the purpose of taking advantage of others. But within these classes there is as much rivalry as there is between the classes.When, however, you examine the advantage which one class obtains over another you find that the basis of it is political power. It is impossible for one person to exploit another, for one class to exploit another, without the aid of law and the force to back up the law. Examine any monopoly and you will find it resting on the State. So that the economic and social injustices we complain of are not due to economic inequalities, but to the political means that bring about these inequalities.If peace is to be brought into the social order it is not by accentuating a class struggle, but by restraining the basic cause of it; that is, the political power." -- Frank Chodorov

Agorist Class Theory

http://agorism.info/docs/AgoristClassTheory.pdf

The Origin of Property and State

The political left, including the anarcho-socialists, are very confused about the nature and origin of both property and the state as an institution. According to many left-wing anarchists, property is entirely a state created thing that wouldn't exist without it. While the standard socialist position is usually collective ownership of property, the anarcho-socialists may tend more towards the idea of abolition of all property, which is quite an absurd notion.

The individualist anarchists differ with the anarcho-socialists in that they aknowledge the fundamental principle of voluntary exchange of property and the application of labor to bring original ownership into being. However, many individualist anarchists tend to take a somewhat Georgist view on land ownership, and may also claim that profit and interest wouldn't exist without the state. This stems from a fundamental misunderstanding about economics. While the individualist anarchists were much more laizzes-faire than the collectivist and communist anarchists, they still lacked certain economic insights.

In a sense, the arguements of both the socialist anarchists and some individualist anarchists throw the statists a great big bone. That is, it provides the very framework for those who favor the state to turn around and claim that we need a state because without it, property ownership and all that it entails would not exist. Both the left-anarchists and statists are accepting the same flawed premise, namely, the idea that the state is where all property comes from sociologically and historically. The premise is economically and historically inaccurate.

While it is true that the state would not exist without property (which should be obvious, as the material resources that make it up constitute property), it is not true that property would not exist without the state. Any material resource or object that is in use by an individual is by definition property. To own something is by defacto to control it. Of course, this means that it is impossible to actually get rid of property altogether. At any given points in time, someone is quite likely in control of some sort of property.

You are your own property to begin with (self-ownership). Without self-ownership, it is impossible to act in the first place. Existance itself makes it so that inherently we live in a world made up of material. In order to live in the world, individual people are made up of this matter and must interact with matter that is external to them. Without using one's self-ownership to obtain property over things external to you, such as a home, and food, and clothing, you simply die. This is simply an evolutionary, economic and sociological fact.

Breaking this down more into the fundamentals: (1) first, you have the existance of the material world (2) secondly, you have the existance of individual human beings within this material world that possess conciousness and freedom of willpower (3) consequentially, you have self-control, and therefore "personal property" (4) consequentially, you have people exercising this self-control in conjunction with material resources that are external to them, from which derives "external property" (5) consequentially, you have people transforming this external property in a manner that increases output and persues new ends, and hence you have "capital" and "technology".

Property is the natural result of people applying their self-ownership to previously unused resources through labor and homesteading, people exchanging goods and services that they already have obtained ownership of, and people making improvements upon the methods of production in the process. Both labor and capital engage in the transformation of resources into something new. A "market" is nothing but the cumulative result of all of the production and exchange between individuals. A "market" of some sort is inevitable as a consequence of human action and the necessary requirements for survival itself. A world without property and with no "market" at all is a world without human beings.

Profit is not synonamous with theft, it is not the consequence of simply taking a chunk of a worker's labor. Profit is a consequence of time preferance. Profit is the result of a sucessful allocation of resources, in conjunction with supply and demand in an uncertain atmosphere. A voluntary employment contract is an agreement of exchange between an employer and employee. The employee gets paid a certain sum of money, in exchange for their production for a given period of time. The worker presumably would prefer recieving money in the present to keeping whatever it is that they produced (why would a worker in a factory that makes wood products want to keep all of the wood products they made? They are made to be sold, and the worker works for the money, not the wood products).

Profit does not come into play until long after this. The worker is paid long before the product may be sold, and the profit results from the proper appeasing of demand. A worker may be paid and the product they produce may never be sold, but the worker still gets to keep that money while the buisiness owner loses out by taking losses for not having enough sales. If a buisiness over-supplies or under-supplies something, they may take considerable losses. Profit is not a gaurantee for a buisiness. A buisiness cannot profit by simply jacking its prices up into the sky, for it would be diminishing the amount of possible buyers.

This being established, it is true that there is an alternate method of obtaining property that differs from this. This is the method of theft, extortion and fraud. Franz P. Oppenheimer expressed this by separating the means towards property and wealth into the economic means (production and exchange) and the political means (expropriation and coercive usury). The method of parasitism represents a violation of the property rights of the original producer (and yes, workers count as producers), homesteader or capitalist. It is important to note that the predatory means of obtaining property requires no real production or any improvement upon the methods of production. This is the method of both private crime and the state.

In order for states to form, property that was previously aquired voluntarily had to be expropriated. The state did not invent property, as property pre-exists the state. The state feeds on property for its survival, like a leech. A state may very well start out as the equivolent of a small private gang; it becomes a state when such a gang obtains a coercive territorial monopoly. States do not form because of the methods of the market (I.E. peaceful exchange and production), they form because of a disruption of the methods of the market. They require land theft, systematic extortion and syndicate-baiting.

Now it is true that states, once they have expropriated property, always dole them out to special interests. But this is not a condemnation of property itself, it's a condemnation of the state. It is the state that has corrupted and abused property. All that it doles out, wether it be to banking elites and rich buisinessmen or the poor, sick and elderly, is stolen property. A state redistributes property away from original ownership and towards either its own members or to special interest groups that it colludes with. Thus, the state also corrupts people within the marketplace by buying them out and presenting an unproductive means towards property that they would not possess without the state's help.

Since a state confiscates and redistributes property by its nature as an institution, the only "market" that could be said to remain is a crippled and abused one at best. On the other hand, since there is no realistic way to stop all people from producing and exchanging property, people find ways to chug the economy along in spite of the barriers that the state may put in their way. This is the only thing that keeps the human race alive: the degree to which people engage in the economic means to wealth despite the existance of the state. It is frankly quite amazing how the American economy continues to produce despite all of the destructive regulations and redistribution that the state imposes on it.

The Goal is Freedom: No Substitute for History

by Sheldon Richman

The great economist Ludwig von Mises showed that economics can be deduced from the axiom that human beings act: individuals consciously select ends and apply scarce means to achieve them. By examining the logical implications of that undeniable fact, one can come to understand the concepts value, cost, time preference, supply, demand, money, price, profit, interest, and so on.

In light of this, it is noteworthy that Mises was also an accomplished historian. And more than that, he was an important historiographer; that is, he was interested in the why and how of history. This theorist who is so identified with the a priori method in economics (deduction from an axiom) is equally committed to the conviction that knowledge of history and its methods is indispensable to understanding the world.

Mises expounded on both matters in his underappreciated book Theory and History: An Interpretation of Social and Economic Evolution, first published in 1957. He was intent on showing that the method of economics had to be different from the method of the natural sciences because we have intimate knowledge of human action from the "inside." Molecules and planets have no motivation or discretion in how they move, so scientists can only observe, amass data from homogeneous events, look for regularities, test hypotheses, and formulate laws subject to the discovery of new evidence. But human beings do have motivation and discretion; they act on the basis of values, ideas, knowledge, and expectations -- none of which are rigidly determined the way a billiard ball's path is determined by its physical environment. Furthermore, social "scientists" know this -- because they are themselves acting individuals. So unlike in the natural sciences, anyone who studies economics has insider knowledge of the ultimate source of his subject: the acting individual. He brings to his discipline a familiarity no physicist can bring to his.

Where does history come in? The science of human action -- which Mises called praxeology -- describes the formal, logical structure of action: the implications of choosing A over B -- no matter what those may be -- and the dedication of means and time to its achievement. Economics is not directly concerned with the specific ends chosen by particular individuals. That's a subject for history and what Mises called "thymology," or psychology in its non-experimental sense. Economics takes these as given and proceeds to analyze the unintended consequences of human action in the marketplace, the effects on prices, supply, and so on.

But Mises acknowledged that there is much more to know about the world than abstract economic laws and the broad particulars of "the economy." We also need to understand certain details of our present social lives -- and to understand the present we must understand the past. Hence, the importance of studying history. Many people profess an interest in history, but they often make pronouncements about things, especially government activities, in a historical vacuum. When this is called to their attention, they may suddenly turn disdainful of history, as though it frustrates their wishful thinking. The best example of this occurred in 1979 during the Islamic revolution in Iran. You'll recall that the U.S. embassy was seized and the occupants were held hostage for a long while. When President Carter was asked if the event was related to the 1953 CIA-sponsored overthrow of Iran's elected secular prime minister in favor of the autocratic Shah, he scoffed, "That's ancient history."

Methodological Individualism

Mises's chapters on history in Theory and History are refreshing in their uncompromising methodological individualism. Much of what he says is self-evident once it's stated, but it needs saying because so much history looks like an account of disembodied actions performed by abstractions such as nations, societies, and governments. We all need reminding that only individuals act, and they act on the basis of (explicit or implicit) ideas. As philosopher Gilbert Ryle put it in The Concept of Mind, "Men are not machines, not even ghost-ridden machines. They are men -- a tautology which is sometimes worth remembering."

While individuals are each born into a specific context historically, culturally, and otherwise, their ideas are not determined mechanistically. Mises rejected the approach to history marked by environmental determinism. "Many ideas are the response elicited by the stimulus of a man's physical environment," Mises wrote "But the content of these ideas is not determined by the environment. To the same physical environment various individuals and groups of individuals respond in a different way." Likewise, he rejected Marx's economic determinism.

The ultimate reality for historians should be the acting individual. "The characteristics of individual men, their ideas and judgments of value as well as the actions guided by those ideas and judgments, cannot be traced back to something of which they would be derivatives. There is no answer to the question why Frederick II invaded Silesia except: because he was Frederick II. ...[T]he genuine history of mankind is the history of ideas. It is ideas that distinguish man from all other beings. Ideas engender social institutions, political changes, technological methods of product, and all that is called economic conditions. And in searching for their origin we inevitably come to a point at which all that can be asserted is that a man had an idea."

In one fell swoop Mises debunked all philosophies of history, which presume arbitrarily that mankind's activities are destined achieve a preset goal. He also dismissed the view that history passes through predetermined stages. All approaches to history that dispense with the purposeful individual are fatally flawed. But this does not mean that history is consciously designed by individuals. Mises wrote:

History is made by men. The conscious intentional actions of individuals, great and small, determine the course of events insofar as it is the result of the interaction of all men. But the historical process is not designed by individuals. It is the composite outcome of the intentional actions of all individuals. No man can plan history. All he can plan and try to put into effect is his own actions which, jointly with the actions of other men, constitute the historical process. The Pilgrim Fathers did not plan to found the United States.

There can be many reasons to study history, and one of them is to understand what's happening today. "There is no such thing as a nonhistorical analysis of the present state of affairs," Mises wrote. "The examination and description of the present are necessarily a historical account of the past ending with the instant just passed. The description of the present state of politics or of business is inevitably the narration of the events that have brought about the present state."
History and Economics

Do history and economics intersect? For Mises, one cannot understand history without understanding economics, or human action more generally.. Since studying actual human activity is not like studying the movement of molecules, one will end up in a hopeless morass if one tries to examine social phenomena without the theoretical lens provided by praxeology and economics. As Murray Rothbard wrote in his preface to Theory and History:

One example that Mises liked to use in his class to demonstrate the difference between two fundamental ways of approaching human behavior was in looking at Grand Central Station behavior during rush hour. The " objective" or "truly scientific" behaviorist, he pointed out, would observe the empirical events: e.g., people rushing back and forth, aimlessly at certain predictable times of day. And that is all he would know. But the true student of human action would start from the fact that all human behavior is purposive, and he would see the purpose is to get from home to the train to work in the morning, the opposite at night, etc. It is obvious which one would discover and know more about human behavior, and therefore which one would be the genuine “scientist.”

Unfortunately, few historians understand economics. And that's a shame, because, as Mises pointed out, "Books on history, especially those on the history of one's own country, appeal more to the general reader than do tracts on economic policy. ... Actually they [the historians] have merely popularized the teachings of pseudo economists.... The neo-mercantilist doctrines of the balance of payments and of the dollar shortage give an image of present-day world conditions very different from that provided by an examination of the situation from the point of view of modern subjectivist economics."

One cannot understand history without understanding economics, but one also cannot fully understand economic policy -- or government policy in general -- without understanding history. A proposal to set up a government bureau to, say, control the price of milk can be demolished by economic theory, but it can be demolished twice over by a historical perspective on the politician's and bureaucrat's penchant for expanding their power and for exploiting -- and even fabricating -- problems ("crises") to justify that expansion. (For details, see Robert Higgs's Crisis and Leviathan: Critical Episodes in the Growth of American Government.) A superficially benign government mission will look malignant in the light of the state's historical record. Even libertarians can go badly astray relying on pure a priori reasoning in judging government policy. While the a priori -- in Rothbard's broadly and qualitatively empirical sense -- is essential to economic understanding, when it comes to vigilance toward the state, the a priori is no substitute for historical knowledge.

As Mises wrote, "History looks backward into the past, but the lesson it teaches concerns things to come." One should avoid defending any government activity before consulting history.

Culture: The Missing Link

The standard one-dimensional left-right spectrum is incredibly fallacious. It represents a false dichotomy, and therefore a two-dimensional spectrum has to be introduced in order to resolve the contradictions of the one-dimensional spectrum. What is meant by this is that the one-dimensional spectrum has no reasonable way of being able to categorize anarchists and a whole host of specific political positions, and that it generalizes the matter to the point where people who differ very much are placed close together on the “left or “right” and people who aren’t that different are placed on opposite ends. Hitler is placed on the “far right” and Stalin on the “far left”, but in reality there is hardly a dime’s worth of difference between their political positions.

Thus, the two-dimensional spectrum corrects this problem by splitting things up into an economic and personal axis. Consequentially, it better distinguishes between different types of the political “left and right”. Two people can have similar economic views but differ on personal liberties issue, and two people can be identical about personal liberties issues while having very different economic views. For example, Ron Paul and Adolph Hitler are both on “the right” but differ considerably in both economic and personal liberties views. And Benjamin Tucker and Stalin are both on “the left” but differ radically in both economic and personal liberties views.

But the two-dimensional spectrum is also flawed, for theoretically one can have a very low personal position and a very high economic position, and be put on the “far right”, yet the political “far right” doesn’t consistently favor economic freedom. And vice versa, the political “far left” doesn’t consistently favor personal freedom. Thus, a third dimension is needed to resolve this conflict as well. The addition of a third dimension seems to clear a lot of things up. The third dimension is culture. Consequentially, the revised political spectrum looks something like this:

Axis A - Economic
Axis B – Personal
Axis C - Cultural

The economic axis represents questions such as government ownership vs. private ownership of the means of production, government regulation of material property and government redistribution of wealth. The personal axis represents questions such as war vs. peace, personal privacy, free expression and in general one's ability to control one's own person free from force. The cultural axis represents questions such as one's views on subjects such as the family, religion, ethnicity, art and one's consumer preferences.

Two people can be fairly identical on the economic and personal axises while differing radically between their cultural values. There can be two anarchists (Roderick Long vs. Hans Herman Hoppe, for example) or two totalitarians (Stalin vs. Hitler, for example) with virtually identical political positions, but different cultural values. At the same time, an anarchist can theoretically share a lot of cultural values with a totalitarian while simultaneously being at opposite ends of the political and economic axises.

Hans Herman Hoppe's cultural values are "conservative": separatism, traditionalism, religiosity and opposition to multiculturalism. Roderick Long's cultural values are "liberal": cosmopolitanism, opposition to racism and sympathy with some feminist elements. Yet their political and economic positions are virtually identical: they both favor a free market anarchist society. There's not a dime's worth of difference between them on non-cultural criteria. Where they differ is mainly on their cultural preferences and ideas as to what cultural values are most conductive to reaching the goal.

Culture is always the "zinger" that potentially produces tension with political and economic principles. It seems that left and right is just culture. It is not politics or economics so much. It is not easy to more or less maintain a "cultural centrist" position (I'm admitedly a wee bit to "the left" on such criteria, since I oppose racism and encourage voluntary multiculturalism). When culture is taken too far "left" or "right", a scenario arises in which one must choose between their cultural tenets and their political or economic principles. When the cultural tenets override the political or economic principles, then the individual has created tension or cognitive dissonance within a given movement.

Culture also obviously produces tension between groups of people. This is manifested every day in politics, by a multitude of interest groups warring over what should be taught in schools, how marriage should be defined, what specific class/group of people should be privileged, and so on. In short, these things are personal preferences, and when mere whimsical preferances are superimposed into the political and economic domain, one has the choice between exercising restraint or advocating some kind of government intervention. It is very hard for people to separate their cultural views from their politics. Consequentially, they often end up using politics as a means to their cultural ends, rather then persueing their cultural ends within a voluntaristic framework.

Two people can share cultural values while differing greatly over the means they persue to cultural ends. For example, I think that racial discrimination is a horrible thing and wish to combat it, but do not support political interventions such as affirmative action laws. Many modern liberals, however, think that such means are proper, and indeed that they are the only possible means to their end. For another example, many people on the "religious right" support government patronage with and subsidization of religious institutions, but the "voluntarist" religious person opposes such measures and quite likely views them as a corruption of their religion with the poison of politics.

In many ways, politics depends entirely on culture. Career politicians try their best to appeal to people's cultural values in order to get their support. People's cultural identifications with the overall territory (territorialism), concern for the poor and disabled, particular religious creeds and concern for the state of health are exploited by political power (and many people representing such views in turn use political power for their own gain at the expense of others). In this sense culture is a poison that provides the rationales given to the masses for political power.

Objective and Subjective Value and the Nature of Truth

There has always been tension within the libertarian movement in terms of methodology and philosophical foundations. On one hand, we have the field of praxeology constituting Austrian economics, represented by Ludwig Von Mises, which adheres to a subjective theory of value. On the other hand, we have the field of objective ethics as represented by Ayn Rand, and in many ways in Murray Rothbard's natural law position. There has also been a conflict between a utilitarian and deontological approach to libertarianism.

Ayn Rand, mistakenly in my view, rejected praxeology (or least some vital aspects of it) because of the subjective element within it. She also tried to expand objectivism into some areas that aren't really objective, more in the realm of preferance. On the other hand, Ludwig Von Mises's views, since they were rigidly restricted to the narrow confines of praxeology, could be said to over-emphasize subjectivism at the expense of other considerations. Mises was, in my view, too skeptical towards the idea of natural law and objective ethics.

Praxeology need not be in conflict with natural law/natural rights and objectivist ethics. Properly understood, they can be considered complimentary to eachother. They are two component parts of a larger system. The fact that some things are indeed subjective does not necessarily entail a contradiction of objective ethics, and the fact that objective reality exists and can be discovered through reason does not necessarily erode the factors of interpretation and error. Praxeology does not have to lead one towards ethical subjectivism, and objectivism and natural law theories do not have to lead one towards authoritarian moralism.

Precisely what is objective and what is subjective needs to be defined. Reality and existance are objective. Human judgement of reality and existance can be prone to error, but the existance of error does not mean that reality and existance are subjective or that it is impossible to discover truth about them. All attempts to argue against existance reaffirms existance by performative contradiction. Furthermore, the truth objectively exists no matter what people's judgements may be. Someone can be convinced that the sky is purple or that apples fall upwards, but that would not make it true, no matter how much they wish that it were so.

Thus, the radical subjectivist idea that reality is determined by our perceptions, that our minds create the material world around us or that "life is just an illusion", must be rejected. All philosophy and science, which is by definition the quest for knowledge, must implictly accept that truth exists and is capable of being discovered through reason, and it must implictly accept that reality is determined by natural phenomen that may very well be beyond our control. A philosophy that rejects such things can hardly be considered a philosophy at all, since a quest for knowledge or love of wisdom becomes utterly pointless.

On the other hand, the hard determinist position is troublesome. Hardcore determinists seem to think that nature, particularly psysiology, predetermines our actions in the absolute, and thus they conclude that there is no such thing as "free will". But people's deliberate and free choices do determine the course of reality, the future, in various ways. That is, the will does have an effect on reality to the extent that one chooses between means to a desired end. Since there are multiple possible means to any given end, the future is not pre-determined in terms of what means people will persue. Causality does not eliminate free choice. It merely means that choices have consequences.

How is truth discovered? Truth is discovered when a conflict between one's ideas and hard facts are resolved in favor of the hard facts, when one's ideas are modified as such. Noone is born with any specific knowledge of truth because life has not been experienced yet. This is not to say that every human is born as an absolutely blank slate so much as that their capacity to discover truth is considerably hampered in the early stages of life and is restricted mostly to mere biological functions. While people's mental and physical abilities are predetermined biologically, their application of those faculties are not. Truth is discovered through experience and the application of logic.

Since existance is an objective fact, it becomes necessary to define different things that exist. Different things have different properties. For example, a rock exists, and a rock has specific properties. Objective scientific truth is discovered when such properties are properly identified. Life entails specific properties that a rock does not possess (such as biological reproduction and conciousness). A human being is specific form of life, and thus also has specific properties. Each form of life shares some very basic properties, but they all also vary in their properties. In either case, truth about human nature is discoverable by properly identifying the properties that are common to all human beings.

A doctrine that Ludwig Von Mises often wrote in opposition to is scientism. Scientism is not to be confused with science itself. Scientism the notion that the only way to reach truth is through empiricism and statistical testing such as is commonplace in the natural sciences. But this is not so in the social sciences. That is, there is no rational way to predict and plan human behavior with absolute accuracy because there are so many variables and so much diversity. And there are many areas outside of human behavior that are also not exactly predictable. In either case, statistics compiled with respect to human behavior can be very misleading, particularly because it is impossible for the compiler of the data to really know the intentions or preferances of all of the people involved. This is because preferance is subjective.

More specifically, what is subjective is people's demand as consumers. Questions such as what brand of car or clothes to buy, which type of music is better, which industry to invest in, are utterly subjective to the individual. Happiness is subjective because different stimuli or economic ends happen to please some people while displeasing others. This does not mean that truth is subjective. It means that people's mere preferences and asthetics are diverse and subjective. Happiness and truth are two different concepts. It may bring you pleasure to do risky things. It would be preposterous to argue that the thing actually makes the person unhappy. It would be sensible, on the other hand, to argue that the risks are dangerous and may make you unhappy in the long-term, in the future.

Some followers of the philosophy of objectivism have jumped head first into absurdity by trying to argue for an objectivist asthetics and literally swallow Ayn Rand's opinions on everything from art to music as if it were objective fact. But such matters are within the realm of what makes people happy, not truth statements. There is a huge difference between a truth statement and a statement of what makes one happy. "I like capitalism" in itself is not a truth statement, it is a statement of preferance. "Minimum wage laws lead to unemployment for reasons X, Y and Z" would be a truth statement, since it is trying to logically argue that something is true. What brand of cigarettes is better, or wether or not to smoke them, is not based on any objective truth so much as what one's taste buds prefer and what one's budget is like. Since this varies from individual to individual, it is subjective.

This subjective aspect of human choice is an important thing to keep in mind. People should not be forced into making particular asthetic choices, let alone uniformly. When the preferences of the consumer have been replaced by the preferances of the central planner, then one particular asthetic judgement is being forced onto the masses at large at their own expense. It becomes impossible to calculate the preferances of the masses at large even if one wanted to try to emulate them. It is impossible to universalize consumer preference. The individual consumer is the person who can determine best what their preferences are. Attempts to statistically measure and control demand through central planning are in vein.

Ethical subjectivism is a separate thing from asthetic subjectivism. Ethical subjectivism should be rejected and asthetic subjectivism accepted. Objective ethics refers more to questions of the just and unjust use of force (the means), while mere preference has to do with desired ends. One can reject the means that someone chooses on the grounds of objective ethics, while maintaining that the person's desired ends are subjective and/or irrelevant to wether or not the means are justified, or maintaining that one agrees that the ends are good. On the other hand, one can support the means that someone chooses on the grounds of objective ethics, while maintaining that you disagree with their desired ends on asthetic grounds.

The problem with ethical subjectivism is that it inevitably leads in the direction of hedonism and narcissism. In practise, it means that there are no real guidelines for determining proper or improper human conduct. Consequentially, any conduct that most people would recognize as being wrong (such as murder, theft and rape) is implicitly "justified" by ethical subjectivism. An objective ethics of some sort is needed to fix this problem. Logical consistancy is a prerequisite for a political or economic position to even potentially be valid.

This is also true of utilitarianism. Murray Rothbard's criticism of utilitarianism is a very important contribution to the libertarian paradime. Utilitarianism tends to attempt to "justify" things that can easily be seen as unethical as if they were asthetics. But asthetics is a subjective preference for ends, while questions such as wether or not to use force have to do with the means to ends. My desired ends may be to obtain wealth, but that would not necessarily justify stealing to obtain it. Utilitarians often attempt to justify the means by pointing to the ends, particularly short-term ends. The mere fact that someone "preferred" to use force (I.E. found it to be in their utility) can be sufficient enough for a utilitarian to support such an action.

It is impossible to consistantly apply a principle using only utilitarianism as a methodology. Any principle can be overturned so long as a somewhat convincing arguement is made that it produces utility to someone in some way; and in a "conflict of utilities" the "winner" is arbitrarily decided by the utilitarian's own judgement. The "utility" of a murderer is to kill someone else, and the action of murdering is the means to that end. At best, utilitarianism can be somewhat useful in terms of demonstrating the negative or unintended consequences of certain actions (which Ludwig Von Mises's version of utilitarianism could be said to represent), but it is horrible as the basis for an ethical system.

While it is considered antiquated by many, natural law and natural rights theory, as well as the broader implications of evolutionary theory, provides a fairly valid fundamental framework for an ethical system. Guidelines for human conduct can be discovered through reason by properly identifying human nature and its relationship to the physical world. Man can make mistakes in the attempt to do this, but that does not mean that it is subjective or undiscoverable, it means that further adaptation is necessary. Natural law is a "process" of naturalization by which human behavior adapts to a mode that is necessitated by one's environment. "Natural order" emerges when people have adequately adaptated. On the other hand, the further people are from adapting to natural laws the harder survival becomes and the lower the quality of life is. This lack of success could be said to be an incentive to adapt further.

It is through such a process that objective values are discovered and accumulated over time. The human race has learned, through trial and error, that certain modes of conduct are necessary in order for both the individual's well being and "society" to flourish. In short, man has a natural incentive towards social cooperation because the consequences of not engaging in lead to a decrease in well-being, even to the point of poverty and death. An important factor in this adaptation process is empathy. An individual learns to abstain from harming others by knowing what it's like to be harmed, by being able to live mutually with others. The more that humans evolve socially, the more that they are able to overcome their primitive impulses and interact with others in a mutually beneficial manner.

The practical universal outlawry of murder, theft and rape in the vast majority of the world is the sign of an adaptation to what could be called the natural law. They represent, or rather are based on, objective ethics that have been made obvious to people over the course of many years. Most people, in their everyday lives, do not engage in these actions. The human race can be said to be mostly adapted in this particular case. However, these very same actions, on the political level, have not yet been considered unethical by the masses of people. To this extent the human race has not yet adapted and therefore has alot of work cut out for it. Ethics on the political level always lags behind ethics on the personal level. That is, for most people there is always an ethical double standard with respect to standards of conduct for the average person vs. people with political power.

In summary, the following points stand clear:

1. Praxeology and objective ethics can be made compatible and harmonious.
2. Reality is real. Duh.
3. Truth is discovered, not pre-programed into our minds.
4. Statistical empiricism fails as a methedology in the social sciences.
5. Economic value and mere preferance for ends or happiness is subjective, and this does not have to conflict with objective ethics.
6. Ethical subjectivism ignores that our environment at least hints that we must adapt via particular modes of conduct, and it becomes bare hedonism in practise.
7. Utilitarianism ignores ethical considerations in the name of asthetics and subjective definitions of happiness, using "psychic utility" and "psychic harm" as the only standards of conduct.
8. Ethics and social organization are discovered and implemented in an evolutionary process and result from the universalization of principles to each individual.

Free Market Anarchism vs. Anarcho-Socialism

More video responses to a socialist by XOmniverse and Kbiomech.

Defining Poverty and Wealth

Some points to consider......

1. Wealth and poverty can be viewed in relative terms: wealthy or poor in comparison to what? A relatively "poor person" in modern-day America enjoys a standard of living that was unthinkable even for kings of ages past. And in terms of nationality, the "poor" in a modern developed economy is much better off than the "poor" in, say, Africa. Afterall, they have television sets, radios, nike shoes, and so on. They do not technically "need" these things; they are luxuries. The average person today enjoys luxuries that simply were not available to people in the past, because the technology did not exist. One point that this brings to surface is the fact that improvements in technology increases the capacity for wealth.

2. Income is not the only measure of wealth. Indeed, it can be very misleading. You can take two people with the same income and one will be rather poor and the other rather luxurious due to their consumption habits as individuals. Someone who consumes wrecklessly is going to impoverish themselves in the long-term. On the other hand, someone with a high time-preferance is going to save more and thus have more long-term economic security. Furthermore, the purchasing power of the monetary unit is perhaps even more vital than income statistics, for it determines what standard of living any given income can afford.

3. One way to determine wealth is in terms of what quantity and/or quality of property one owns. A person who lives in a upper-middle class home in a gated community is certainly wealthy in comparison to a person who lives in a mud-brick hut or teepee. A person who owns a car is certainly wealthy in comparison to a person who uses a horse and buggy or chariot to get around. In terms of quantity, if two people are interested in baseball cards, and one has a huge collection, while the other only has a few booster packs, the former is certainly wealthy in comparison to the latter.

4. If wealth is to be defined more generally in terms of what makes one happy, "psychic wealth", it becomes utterly subjective and asthetic. What one values asthetically is within the realm of subjective value. If someone genuinely finds happiness by living the life of a hermit in the woods, there is nothing we can do to tell that person what would make them more happy. They determine that, not us. What one values in terms of consumer preferances falls within the subjective realm, as only they can determine what makes them happy. In areas such as music, movies and comic books, the wealth of happiness has no objective definition.

5. The existance of scarcity of resources implies that it is not really possible for everyone to live the lives of billionaires because the resources in terms of land, labor and capital that is necessary for such a thing to happen does not exist. Furthermore, the inherently unequal distribution of those resources across the face of the planet combined with the inequality between people's abilities as individuals means that there will never be absolute equality in economic ends. That is, there will always be multiple tiers of wealth in any given society.

6. There can be said to be two kinds of poverty. The first kind of poverty is the unfortunate result of people's own bad decisions, excessive consumption, a lack of personal initiative, and so on. The second type of poverty is created by government interventions in the economy that hamper production or stimulate excessive consumption, or simply by theft, wether governmental or not. The first kind of poverty is worsened by the latter kind. If the 2nd type of poverty were removed, poverty in general would diminish considerably, even for those who are poor as a result of their own bad decisions.

Thoughts on Discrimination and Immigration

Discrimination (wether it be racial, religious, or based on sexual orientation) generally does not benefit the discriminator, it hurts all parties involved. In economic terms, discrimination is suicidal, because either (1) you're lowering the amount of customers or (2) you're hiring a less qualified worker over a more qualified one, and therefore are accepting lower productivity. Racial discrimination is a suicidal buisiness practise in a modern, multicultural society.

Racists do not benefit from being racists, unless the costs of being a racist are externalized via governmental means (a practise that should be opposed at all costs). As manifested economically, lessening the amount of people you sell to or hiring less qualified workers over more qualified ones, is suicide. In a relatively competitive atmosphere the heavy discriminators go out of buisiness by their own folly, and a boycott can help hasten their fall.

Let the discriminators shoot themselves in the foot. There is no need for affirmative action. The discriminators are imposing losses on themselves. Better yet, form one's own non-discriminatory buisiness in competition with them, and eventually watch as the people flock to your buisiness rather than theirs, since you are providing the service that the discriminators are refusing to yield to so many people. Hire all of the qualified workers that they refused, and watch as your firm's level of productivity outdoes theirs.

On the other hand, not all discrimination is a bad thing per se. What I mean by this is that we inherently must discriminate in terms of who we let into our own homes. If some random guy knocks on my door, and I don't let him into my home, I have "discriminated" against him, but obviously this is an entirely different thing than typical racial discrimination. Owning property inherently implies that you have discriminatory power over who you let use it; there is nothing inherently wrong with this.

Should it be illegal for me to refuse to allow someone into my home? I would hope not. Discrimination in itself is not a crime. Discrimination is an exclusionary judgement, and action taken based on such a judgement. Everyone has a right to discriminate all they like in terms of who they let use their own property. Even racists should be allowed to engage in the suicidal buisiness practises mentioned above. A valuable idea: all of us non-racists should band together and discriminate against them!

While discrimination in terms of one's own property cannot legitimately be illegalized, there is another type of discrimination, what I'll call institutional or external discrimination, that indeed should never be legal. That is, it is absolutely illegitimate for the law to require someone to discriminate in a particular manner, and it is illegitimate for the law to enforce discriminatory judgements over someone else's property. To decide who gets to use someone else's property is to make an illegitimate claim of control over that property.

As can be seen, the issue isn't really discrimination itself so much as property rights. The real question is who the legitimate owner of a given piece of property is. People can discriminate on their own property as they please, and it is not inherently wrong per se. It is important, however, to keep in mind that to discriminate too liberally in terms of economic relations with others will be to deny oneself the benefits of society. What people cannot legitimately do is (1) discriminate over someone else's property or (2) make discrimination mandatory.

In my opinion, immigration restrictions count as both of these follies. That is, laws attempting to limit immigration, crack down on employers hiring them and illegalize selling homes or other products to immigrants, falls under the category of mandatory and external discrimination. Indeed, laws illegalizing the hiring of immigrants and laws requiring landlords to evict immigrants constitute external and mandatory discrimination, and therefore they are violations of property rights (of both immigrants and citezens associating with them).

Furthermore, the economics that shows that racial discrimination is suicidal as a buisiness practise also has some implications in the area of immigration. For one thing, to turn down droves of willing workers from abroad is disadvantageous to local buisiness, who could very well use such employees. And to limit the amount of people in the country is simultaneously to limit the amount of potential internal consumers. Thus, if anything it is in the best interests of enterprenuers to have a steady flow of immigrant labor, and there's nothing inherently wrong with this.

Without resorting to such laws, a community that bars all immigration into it and refuses to sell products to immigrating people is engaging in a massive economic suicide. If there are other, more intregrated communities, and if communities are considered as being in economic competition with eachother, it is clear that the more integrated communities will out-compete the more separatist ones. While it would be legitimate for separatists to discriminate on their own property, if they try to do so on a large scale they will harm themselves in the long-run.

It seems to me that the incentives under liberty inevitably make way for a relatively integrated, not segregrated, society. Therefore, I am convinced that in an atmosphere of freedom separatism would be an uncommon practise, and to the extent that it is practised it would be at a considerable loss in comparison to integrated institutions and communities, and would therefore have an inevitable incentive to allow some degree of integration.

While my views on discrimination can be misconstrued by those on the left as being apologia for racists, I believe that to eliminate all mandatory and external discrimination, while allowing the separatist types to discriminate so long as it's on their own property, is the surest path towards an integrated society and quite a strong blow against racists because of the economics and incentives of the matter. On the margin, the separatists would effectively be forced to stop discriminating, or at least discriminate less.

Ultimately, separatists are trying to accomplish something that is impossible. It is impossible to manage to stop immigration in its tracks, and it is impossible to economically benefit while persueing a large-scale discriminatory buisiness practise. The movement of people of different ethnicities and nationalities across land masses is inevitable, and will only intensify over time. The integration of people, done on a voluntary basis, is a good thing that should be encouraged. On the other hand, discrimination on one's own property is legitimate. However, when it is done by buisinesses it is generally an anti-competitive buisiness practise, and thus there is every incentive in the world to not discriminate in such a manner.

America: Free Market or Right-wing Socialism?

It is generally assumed without proof that the status quo, the current economic system in America, is capitalism. In the current political climate, the political left accepts this assumption and concludes that capitalism is bad because they see some negative things going on in the current system, some real and some entirely imagined. The political right accepts this assumption and concludes that the current system is good, that it is a free market economy, and they tend to have high confidence in the state of the economy because they see some good things going on in the current system, some real and some entirely imagined.

The trouble is, both of them are wrong. The left is under the illusion that the system they're attacking is capitalism. The right is under the illusion that the system they're supporting is capitalism. But the economic system of America is not free market capitalism, and argueably never was. If capitalism could be said to have ever existed as a system in America, it was roughly between 1750 and 1850, and it was never fully implemented, so we couldn't even say that the free market has ever really been implemented in full. That's because in order to get to the point of a pure free market, the state cannot exist.

This is important to point out. To the extent that there is a state, to the extent that there it has power over the individual, is the extent that the market is not free. To the extent that the government taxes, borrows, inflates, spends, legislates, subsidizes, prohibits, colludes, etc., is the extent to which the market is not free. To the extent that the government confiscates, claims ownership of or regulates property is the extent to which the market is not free. Every service that the government tries to provide, and monopolistically so, is a disruption of the voluntary economy. The enterprise of law and arbitration itself is a scarce resource like all others, and the existance of a government represents a disruption of a free market in this area.

So how can economic and governmental systems be evaluated? Boiling everything down to capitalism vs. communism is a bit oversimplistic. There certainly are systems that are somewhere in between the two. And it's not wise to red-bait people who are not necessarily red. However, it also must be emphasized that there is no such thing as a static equilibrium. Because no system is completely static, it is impossible to genuinely be "perfectly in the middle" of a political or economic spectrum. The advocation of such a position is contradictary and most certainly disingenuous.

One way to classify systems of economic organization would be to use a general spectrum of more vs. less economic control. A sensible interpretation may look as follows, in the order of the least economic control to the most:

The Free Market - No Economic Control. The free market is a system in which there is no government control of the economy. It is an economy based entirely on the voluntary decisions of those taking part in it. The free market is based primarily on private ownership of property, obtained through homesteading and voluntary exchange between property titles. To be carried out in practise, there can be no government in the commonly understood sense of the word.

Laizzes-Faire - Very Little Economic Control. Laizzes-faire is a system in which the government has strictly limited control over the economy. In it's most pure form, the only government services allowed is police, courts and defense. A laizzes-faire system largely has private ownership of the means of production and minimal if not negligable regulation.

Interventionism - Moderate Economic Control. Interventionism is essentially the process that leads towards socialism. It is not a permanent, static system perfectly in the middle, but rather a transatory system.

Socialism - Heavy Economic Control. Socialism is a system in which the government has considerable control over the economy. The government may own a significant portion of the means of production and it tries to centrally plan the economy.

Totalitarianism - Total Economic Control. There is no economic freedom in totalitarianism. The entire "economy" is completely determined, owned and regulated by the government. The state, in essence, replaces the economy entirely. There can be no "economy", in the commonly understood sense, to speak of.

But there are also various types of economic control. Economic control can be split up into government ownership and government regulation. Communism specifically involves government ownership, while Fascism specifically is based more on government regulation and collusion between private interests and the government. There are also various types of economic organization that are more specific than socialism or interventionism, which are forms of socialism or interventionism, or alternate forms of economic organization for stateless societies.

Syndicalism, for example, is a system based heavily or entirely on unions and worker-directed communes. Some anarchists believe that they can set up syndicalist and communist economic systems without a state. Pure free marketers tend to disagree, pointing out that both systems require force and confiscation, wether through a state or not, in order to be brought about. On the other hand, communist or socialist anarchists tend to make the claim that the free market is inherently coercive, and will lead to dictatorship. But in reality the free market is simply whatever the outcome is of people's voluntary labor and exchanges.

It should be clear that, no matter how totalitarian the government is, some degree of voluntary economic activity is going to take place, even if it is illegal. This is particularly obvious when we look at the case of prohibitions. It is illegal to voluntarily buy or sell certain drugs, but people find ways to do it anyways. It is impossible to completely stamp out free economic activity. On the other hand, illegal economic activity cannot be considered a true free market, because it is the consequence of government intervening to prohibit and/or limit the supply of a good or service. It becomes a free market as soon as the government ends the prohibition, and abstains for regulating it or claiming ownership over it.

There are many ways in which a government can erode the free market. To begin with, it's very existance disrupts it, because it's very existance and the continuation of that existance is dependant first and foremost on taxation, which siphons money away from the private sector, away from the original owner of the property. There are all sorts of different taxes. There are income taxes, property taxes, sales taxes, land-value taxes, inheritance taxes, capital gains taxes, and so on. There are also alternative ways for the government to accrue revenue, all of which disrupt the free market. It can borrow credit from foreign governments or banks, which also siphons money away from its private use. It can monopolize banking and print new money. It can also impose tariffs, which are essentially a tax on imports.

How the government spends this money disrupts the free economy, as it determines how the money will be redistributed away from its original owner and use towards new owners and uses. In short, government's revenue devices and it's spending of that revenue inherently creates a network of redistribution of resources. Government spending represents a reallocation of labor and goods and services other than would have voluntarily been chosen. First and foremost, this money goes to the primary functions of government such as police, courts and the military. Beyond this, it also goes to a whole host of other services such as public education, healthcare and roads. As the power of a government increases, it starts taking control of things that blatantly aren't really "necessities", such as space exploration and the arts.

Government services tends to be monopolized over time. The most obviously monopolized of these services would be the police. The government outlaws the private competition to the services that it provides. Furthermore, even if a degree of competition to a particular service is allowed, it is eroded by the spending of tax money on the public sector, which inherently erodes the capital of the private competition and warps the incentive structure. People often try to justify public services with the claim that there is no profitability in it, but they have it backwards. It is the public services that erode the profitability of the competition. If the public services were privatized, they would quickly become vastly more profitable, as well as vastly cheaper and more available to the masses.

Government spending for goods and services comes in all types. There is foreign aid, which transfers money and weapons from government to government. There is personal welfare, which gaurantees a direct redistribution of wealth between citezens. Modern warfare, of course, requires a whole lot of spending that goes to machinery, and to pay those in the army. It comes in the form of subsidies to agriculture, energy and various industries. It comes in the form of government contracts and bail-outs that go to buisinesses. As a piece of the pie, the money for all of this shows up in the paychecks of government bereaucrats. All of this involves a massive redistribution of resources, contrary how they would have been otherwise used and away from original ownership.

There seems to be no area that the government doesn't want to spend some money on, no matter how frivolous the cause in question is and regaurdless of wether or not it is necessary. It funds science, it funds the arts, it funds broadcasting, it funds sporting events. There is almost no special interest that the government does not collude with and redistribute resources to. Internally, the government expands the amount of people working for it, to run all of the departments and agencies, and mega-becreaucracies such as the department of homeland security. It all adds up.

There are many ways in which the government controls the economy without spending money. It can prohibit goods and services outright, or set a limit on their supply. It can impose wage and price controls. It can set minimum and maximim prices and wages. It can set quotas on imports and exports. It can use licensing to bestow the privilege of being allowed to legally work in certain fields. It can set up all sorts of regulations and requirements for goods and services. It can deliberately organize cartels. It can trust-bust buisinesses for having "predatory pricing", which can be defined subjectively however one desires, wether it's super lower prices or high ones. It can impose penalties and give out special rewards. It can control the rate of interest. It can force employers to hire certain people.

Governments can use conscription to either force people to work for it directly or for some other, private group. They can institutionalize and legalize involuntary servitude. They can control the hours of the workday. They can make union membership compulsory. They can impose compulsory consumption. They can restrict immigration, I.E. the amount of people and willing labor coming into and out of the territory. They can monopolize technology and intellectual property through the selective and privileged use of patent laws. They can use eminent domain on one's land and home property to either transfer ownership to the state or to some private lobbying interest and/or buisiness. They can put up barriers to unused resources and claim ownership of unused land. They can try to direct private investment.

America? A laizzes-faire haven? Give me a break. The American state, to varying degrees, engages in all of the kinds of intervention that's been mentioned. At best, it's an interventionist system quickly headed towards right-wing socialism. Perhaps a more sober examination reveals it already to be a right-wing socialist, fascist type of system. While the government in America does not own the means of production to the extent that a communist country would, it heavily redistributes, regulates and controls the economy in all kinds of ways. It has a long history of government-buisiness collusion and protectionism.

It's as if the left doesn't like right-wing socialism, but they think that right-wing socialism is the free market, so they want left-wing socialism or communism. And it's as if the right doesn't like left-wing socialism and communism, but they think that right-wing socialism is the free market, so they want right-wing socialism or fascism. The cliche idea that Republicans are die-hard free marketers hasn't had any truth to it for decades, since the 1950's at least, and even when the cliche had some truth to it, those weren't really the people who were running the party and in the mainstream of it. And the cliche idea that the Democrats are a bunch of commies doesn't necessarily hold up either, as they've historically been quite sympathetic to fascism and conservative brands of socialism.

It's time for people to understand what a free market actually is, in comparison to the current system, and that the current system is far from it.