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Forum Replies Created
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RE: Why I hate religion, but love Jesus (A plea)
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Why I Love Religion, and Love Jesus || Spoken Word (Response Video)
This guy looks like he's from the Catholic church, based on the statues behind him, and he is trying to encourage catholics to continue to go to church. I think everyone who puts out this kind of message ought to at least indicate their own relationship to the issue financially, just like political candidates running for office have to show their tax returns.
This guy in the red shirt is a priest of don Bosco. They are devoted to youth.
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SOURCE: http://arstechnica.c…uate-debate.ars
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Opponents protest signing of ACTA without adequate debate
By Timothy B. Lee | Published 1/27/2012
Over the vocal protests of opponents, 22 European nations signed the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) on Thursday. A statement by the Japanese foreign ministry, which hosted the signing ceremony, indicated that the remaining EU member states were expected to sign the agreement “on the completion of respective domestic procedures.” The United States, Canada, Japan, and several other nations signed the agreement in October.
The move sparked protests in Europe. Thousands of Poles took to the streets in protest, and more than a dozen members of the Polish parliament donned Guy Fawkes masks to express their displeasure at the signing.
Kader Arif, a French member of the European Parliament from the Socialist Party, had been assigned to be a rapporteur on ACTA, meaning that he was asked to study the issue and deliver a report on the subject. But he resigned in protest on Thursday.
”I want to denounce in the strongest possible manner the entire process that led to the signature of this agreement,” he said, according to one translation. “No inclusion of civil society organisations, a lack of transparency from the start of the negotiations, repeated postponing of the signature of the text without an explanation being ever given, exclusion of the EU Parliament's demands that were expressed on several occasions in our assembly.”
He denounced “never-before-seen maneuvers from the right wing of this Parliament to impose a rushed calendar before public opinion could be alerted. I want to send a strong signal and alert the public opinion about this unacceptable situation. I will not take part in this masquerade.”
The United States signed onto the agreement in October. Ordinarily, treaties need to be submitted to the US Senate for ratification, but the Obama administration has adopted the novel (and, some have argued, constitutionally dubious) approach of declaring ACTA an “executive agreement” that can be adopted unilaterally by the executive branch, as it ostensibly does not alter existing US law.
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) raised concerns about the constitutionality of this tactic back in October. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) joined the chorus of criticism this week when he called ACTA “more dangerous than SOPA” at a panel at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “It’s not coming to me for a vote,” he said. “It purports that it does not change existing laws. But once implemented, it creates a whole new enforcement system and will virtually tie the hands of Congress to undo it.”
The version of ACTA that ultimately got adopted is not nearly as bad is it could have been, though serious flaws remain. But regardless of the merits of the treaty itself, the non-transparent process by which ACTA has been pushed through the US and European political systems remains hard to defend.
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Ron Paul: We Live in a Dictatorship
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Sovereign Man
Notes from the Field
Date: January 24, 2012
Reporting From: Santiago, Chile
Yesterday, Kentucky senator Rand Paul was detained by the TSA in Nashville after refusing to be fondled by the airport agents.
Paul has been a vocal enemy of the TSA, blasting the agency last year after agents conducted an invasive search of a 6-year old girl despite her parents' objections. TSA Director John Pistole suggested that, because a young child in Afghanistan is capable of detonating a roadside bomb, all children should be considered potential threats.
Paul raised the issue again yesterday in an opinion piece. As usual, the Obama administration closed ranks around the TSA yesterday, defending the agency and insisting that “we take necessary actions to ensure that air travel is safe.” Such as treating 6-year old girls like criminal terrorists.
Air travel is never going to be safe. We're talking about a 500,000 pound flying building crammed with hundreds of strangers criss-crossing the skies nearly 100,000 times in a single day. There's a lot of room for things to go wrong.
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Criminalizing travel, which is the effective net result of the current passenger screening process, has minimal impact on weeding out the boogeyman. There are so many holes in the TSA procedures– medication, baby formula, pilot exceptions. Not to mention a whole world of softer targets. Who needs airplanes when you have shopping malls?
One of the first things I learned in the intelligence business years ago is that smart enemies will always adapt their tactics. It's not rocket science; Sun-Tzu wrote the same 2,500 years ago– focusing on a single approach (like airport security) is useless.
Thing is, TSA airport security has nothing to do with security, and everything to do with making sure that every human being who transits within or through a US commercial airport knows exactly who is in charge. We call it the Tip of the Spear.
The idea is to desensitize people to government intrusion, generally with something shocking (like treating a 6-year old girl as a criminal terrorist). That's the tip of the spear. As the spear drives further and further into its target, subsequent intrusions seem less and less acute.
Psychologist Robert Cialdini, whose writings on influence and persuasion have been read by millions across the world in dozens of languages, discusses three key principles which apply to this 'Tip of the Spear' approach.
The first is called social proof. It's easy to understand– like lemmings, sheep, or milk cows, people standing in the security line watching everyone else get patted down and go through body scanners, will most likely comply with the social norm. Monkey see, monkey do.
The second is the principle of authority. Also easy to understand– people will obey authority figures even if it requires taking objectionable action. Uniforms establish an authority image, as do the training programs that teach intimidation tactics to government agents– voice projection, direct eye contact, use of professional vocabulary, etc.
The third is a bit more complex; Cialdini calls it the principle of commitment and consistency. Simply put, if people commit to an idea in word or deed, their future actions will be consistent with this idea because it becomes part of their own self-image.
In this context, people who submit to government intrusion the first time (e.g. watch their children receive pat-downs at TSA checkpoints) are more likely to continue acceding to further government intrusions down the road. It's a bit of a boiling frog approach.
When you step back and look at the big picture, 'security' is an utter farce. The moral argument for such measures is rooted in a silly myth that men in caves wish to do us harm. The legal argument is questionable at best. Many folks forget that the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution states:
“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated…”
Does anyone truly consider it reasonable to subject passengers to demeaning, invasive searches? Or to douse travelers in radiation from machines that cost over $100,000? Or to waste billions of dollars and man-hours each year on security procedures that are routinely proven to be ineffective?
If the answer is yes, then you obviously don't see eye-to-eye with your neighbors, hence you're probably living in the wrong country.
If the answer is no, then it should be obvious that your government has hijacked liberty… in which case you're probably living in the wrong country.
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The rest of the story:
SOURCE: http://news.cnet.com…-their-laptops/
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Judge: Americans can be forced to decrypt their laptops
by Declan McCullagh January 23, 2012 3:35 PM PST
American citizens can be ordered to decrypt their PGP-scrambled hard drives for police to peruse for incriminating files, a federal judge in Colorado ruled today in what could become a precedent-setting case.
Judge Robert Blackburn ordered a Peyton, Colo., woman to decrypt the hard drive of a Toshiba laptop computer no later than February 21–or face the consequences including contempt of court.
PGP Desktop: Even the FBI can't crack it!(Credit: Symantec)
Blackburn, a George W. Bush appointee, ruled that the Fifth Amendment posed no barrier to his decryption order. The Fifth Amendment says that nobody may be “compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself,” which has become known as the right to avoid self-incrimination.
“I find and conclude that the Fifth Amendment is not implicated by requiring production of the unencrypted contents of the Toshiba Satellite M305 laptop computer,” Blackburn wrote in a 10-page opinion today. He said the All Writs Act, which dates back to 1789 and has been used to require telephone companies to aid in surveillance, could be invoked in forcing decryption of hard drives as well.
Ramona Fricosu, who is accused of being involved in a mortgage scam, has declined to decrypt a laptop encrypted with Symantec's PGP Desktop that the FBI found in her bedroom during a raid of a home she shared with her mother and children (and whether she's even able to do so is not yet clear).
Colorado Springs attorney Phil Dubois, who once represented PGP creator Phil Zimmermann, now finds himself fighting the feds over encryption a second time.
“I hope to get a stay of execution of this order so we can file an appeal to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals,” Fricosu's attorney, Phil Dubois, said this afternoon. “I think it's a matter of national importance. It should not be treated as though it's just another day in Fourth Amendment litigation.” (See CNET's interview last year with Dubois, who once represented PGP creator Phil Zimmermann.)
Dubois said that, in addition, his client may not be able to decrypt the laptop for any number of reasons. “If that's the case, then we'll report that fact to the court, and the law is fairly clear that people cannot be punished for failure to do things they are unable to do,” he said.
Today's ruling from Blackburn sided with the U.S. Department of Justice, which argued, as CNET reported last summer, that Americans' Fifth Amendment right to remain silent doesn't apply to their encryption passphrases. Federal prosecutors, who did not immediately respond to a request for comment this afternoon, claimed in a brief that:
Quote:Public interests will be harmed absent requiring defendants to make available unencrypted contents in circumstances like these. Failing to compel Ms. Fricosu amounts to a concession to her and potential criminals (be it in child exploitation, national security, terrorism, financial crimes or drug trafficking cases) that encrypting all inculpatory digital evidence will serve to defeat the efforts of law enforcement officers to obtain such evidence through judicially authorized search warrants, and thus make their prosecution impossible.While the U.S. Supreme Court has not confronted the topic, a handful of lower courts have.
In March 2010, a federal judge in Michigan ruled that Thomas Kirschner, facing charges of receiving child pornography, would not have to give up his password. That's “protecting his invocation of his Fifth Amendment privilege against compelled self-incrimination,” the court ruled (PDF).
A year earlier, a Vermont federal judge concluded that Sebastien Boucher, who a border guard claims had child porn on his Alienware laptop, did not have a Fifth Amendment right to keep the files encrypted. Boucher eventually complied and was convicted.
Prosecutors in this case have stressed that they don't actually require the passphrase itself, and today's order appears to permit Fricosu to type it in and unlock the files without anyone looking over her shoulder. They say they want only the decrypted data and are not demanding “the password to the drive, either orally or in written form.”
Because this involves a Fifth Amendment claim, Colorado prosecutors took the unusual step of seeking approval from headquarters in Washington, D.C.: On May 5, Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer sent a letter to Colorado U.S. Attorney John Walsh saying “I hereby approve your request.”
The question of whether a criminal defendant can be legally compelled to cough up his encryption passphrase remains an unsettled one, with law review articles for at least the last 15 years arguing the merits of either approach. (A U.S. Justice Department attorney wrote an article in 1996, for instance, titled “Compelled Production of Plaintext and Keys.”)
Much of the discussion has been about what analogy comes closest. Prosecutors tend to view PGP passphrases as akin to someone possessing a key to a safe filled with incriminating documents. That person can, in general, be legally compelled to hand over the key. Other examples include the U.S. Supreme Court saying that defendants can be forced to provide fingerprints, blood samples, or voice recordings.
On the other hand are civil libertarians citing other Supreme Court cases that conclude Americans can't be forced to give “compelled testimonial communications” and extending the legal shield of the Fifth Amendment to encryption passphrases. Courts already have ruled that that such protection extends to the contents of a defendant's minds, the argument goes, so why shouldn't a passphrase be shielded as well?
Fricosu was born in 1974 and living in Peyton as of 2010. She was charged with bank fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering as part of an alleged attempt to use falsified court documents to illegally gain title to homes near Colorado Springs that were facing “imminent foreclosure” or whose owners were relocating outside the state. Some of the charges could yield up to 30 years in prison; she pleaded not guilty. Her husband, Scott Whatcott, was also charged.
Last updated at 4:30 p.m. PT
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What You Don't Know Won't Hurt You.
It's What You DO Know That's JUST NOT TRUE That Does All The Harm
(Plus a bonus– More Supreme Court acknowledgment of the truth about the tax!)
In a Dec. 26 column titled 'Gullible Americans', the great Walter Williams discusses routine lying by federal actors about costs or limits of measures they're promoting– and the naiveté of Americans who repeatedly fall for the lies. Among the examples presented are declarations by supporters of the 16th Amendment that it would not result in the income tax reaching anyone but the rich. Williams argues that while the initial legislation following the amendment DID confine the imposition of the tax to high levels of income, it was not too long before the tax applied to everyone.
Ironically, Dr. Williams' column is itself a product of gullibility. The good doctor has fallen prey to dis-information about the income tax. Even more ironically, his article serves as a transmitter of the very nonsense that makes possible the offense of which it complains. Let's (as the doctor would say) take a look at it…
To freely enjoy the rest of the article, navigate to losthorizons.com/Newsletter.htm.
(There's never any charge, registration, adware, etc. at losthorizons.com– I just want you to be informed.)
If you decide that you no longer wish to receive these, just say so.
On the other hand, if you know of others who cherish the Rule of Law, I'd be delighted if you would forward accordingly
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Here is what one member sent us about the above defendant:
Quote:I know Russell….He messed up with following the advice of Hendrickson
He filed one of Hendrickson's returns….
He just would not educate himself….
He was looking to move to Chile over 5 years ago….never did….and he is now in a real mess.
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I think I found another T-shirt phrase there: electile dysfunction. 😀
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And when those who understand the law as described on this website ask VERY pointed questions of the selective service website info email, they get evasive and deceptive answers:
http://famguardian.org/Subjects/Military/Draft/NotSubjectToDraft-Query.htm
For further information on this SCAM, see:
http://famguardian.org/Subjects/Military/Draft/NotSubjectToDraft.htm
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He also doesn't seem to realize the TWO types of “governing”: Civil and Criminal. Civil requires consent. Criminal DOES NOT. He has a debate with another viewer, and basically proposes that the government cannot regulate ANYTHING he does, including crimes he commits. That approach to complete lawlessness is impossible. As a bare minimum, CRIMINAL enforcement is needed. But let us not confuse the PENAL provisions of franchises with de jure criminal enforcement.
He is also described as an 861 adherent EVEN STILL, even though it got him nowhere and landed him in jail.
Unfortunately:
1. The vast majority of the people at the Libertopia conference are libertarian atheists. Combine atheism with anarchism toward both civil and criminal law, and you end up with complete lawlessness. We can't advocate that and it would never work. As a bare minimum, people need to recognize some moral law system that they didn't invent and can't change, which in our case is God's law found in the holy bible.
2. The conference costed $300 to attend, which is outside the reach of most people. It's much cheaper to view the speeches on youtube after the event for free.
That type of an approach can never garner the scale of support that is needed.
The main problem with the libertarian movement is that they are atheists who reject ALL law, which indirectly rejects ALL government. That simply won't work. Limited government is government that does not civilly regulate anyone or anything and only enforces criminal law and equity of all.
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FYI: Dave Miner's Criminal and Civil indictments.
You can read the motions to and from on his site.
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SOURCE: http://www.lewrockwe…/molyneux5.html
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The Stateless Society Fights Back
Life without a state? Really? Answers to common questions.
Earlier articles:
- The Stateless Society
- Caging the Devils: The Stateless Society and Violent Crime
- These Cages Are Only For Beasts
My recent articles on the stateless society have generated some fascinating feedback. Questions, issues and criticisms rained heavy on my inbox – here are some of the more challenging queries I received, and my responses.
Question #1: Mass Pollution
In my own discussions with friends and such about anarchy, there is one sticking point where I have had trouble finding the anarchic solution, so I wonder if you might have an idea about it. I guess you could call it distributed pollution. There are many examples of pollution where each polluter does not contribute much to the total, but there are enough polluters that the total pollution is a problem for everyone.
Cars are an obvious example here: it’s cheaper for everyone to pollute individually, but collectively we all suffer. There are two solutions to this problem; one economic and the other social.
The economic answer is that in a stateless society, people will take out insurance against ailments such as asthma, cancer and so on. Thus any air pollution which causes illness will increase the costs for insurers, since they will have to pay out for treatment and life insurance. If pollution-related health problems are projected to cost insurers $100 million over the next ten years, they can spend up to $99.9 million on reducing air pollution – in other words, they can pay car manufacturers/gasoline companies/road owners up to $99.9 million to reduce pollution and still come out ahead. (Of course, they can also refuse to pay out claims, which will put them out of business pretty quickly!)
The most logical approach would be to allocate the costs of reducing air pollution to those who generate it. DROs (Dispute Resolution Organizations; private insurance mediators) would likely charge drivers and manufacturers for the costs of reducing air pollution – and would structure the contracts so that it would be cheaper to simply reduce pollution than for the DRO to pay for its consequences. Also, remember that car pollution is currently high because road use is “free” to the user, which increases consumption. If car users have to pay for all the costs of driving (roads, pollution etc), use will decline.
If that answer doesn’t satisfy you, no problem – in the free market, there are as many solutions as there are interested parties! Here’s another. Let’s say that for some reason DROs didn’t care about the rising costs of air pollution. The first thing I would do is start a Clean Air Company, which would, for a fee, guarantee air quality in certain neighborhoods. How would I achieve this lofty end? Simple: emotional advertising and social pressure. First, I would start running ads showing kids and grandmothers keeling over from asthma. Then I would offer bright yellow “clean air” stickers to anyone who signed up for my program – and for cars which met certain low-pollution guidelines. That way, anyone in a neighborhood who didn’t sign up for my clean air program would be highly visible – all their neighbors would know, and social pressure would do the rest.
Don’t believe me? I have two proofs. The first is the fact that waiters are almost always tipped – despite the fact that everyone who doesn’t tip is a “free rider.” If you think the “tipping” example requires face-to-face contact, what about tsunami charities? Billions raised, and almost none of those who gave will ever meet the recipients of their generosity.
Finally, governments don’t deal effectively with pollution anyway. The Canadian government eradicated the Newfoundland cod population through subsidized over-fishing. The most polluted lands in the US are owned by the government. Logging is a problem because the government won’t sell the land outright, just the timber harvesting rights, which provides little incentive for renewal. If global warming is occurring, Kyoto barely slows it down; if it isn’t, Kyoto is a huge waste of time and money – the worst of both worlds. Public property is always taken care of badly – and in the stateless society, there is no such thing as public property, since there is no such thing as a government.
So – DROs would pay to reduce pollution, drivers would pay the full costs of driving, and a clean air company would use powerful and proven social pressures to make sure money was available for pollution reduction. Is it ideal? Perhaps. Could it be better? Sure – those are just my ideas. In a free market, thousands of the best minds will be working to solve the problem of “free rider” pollution. If the problem can be solved, it will be. If it can’t, let’s stop using the government to pretend that it can!
To sum up: if people care about mass pollution, it will be solved. If they don’t, then those uncaring people will also be running the government – and so it won’t be solved by the state either.
Question #2: Invasion
I liked your article, but the practical reality is that under anarchy, the few “evil” men would band together and plunder the “good” majority. How many well-armed, coordinated thugs would it take to ravage an unprotected populace – a few thousand? The good people simply go about their business, then one day, 2,000 armed evildoers sweep into an area, and have their way with it. Even if the general populace were armed, they could hardly stand up to a trained group like this. (BTW, this is what the gun lobby doesn't seem to understand – if the government goes after them with 10,000 soldiers, a “well-armed militia” has not the ghost of a chance.)
Eventually the good group might eliminate the evil group through sheer weight of numbers, but the former would probably lose men at a ratio of 10 to 1, since they will always be caught by surprise and fighting is not their stock-in-trade. This would be repeated constantly and is obviously unacceptable. Isn't this what Genghis Khan, and the Vikings, etc. were – essentially wandering thugs who plundered “good” civilizations?
A private security force would be irresistibly tempted to assume the “evil group” role, I'm sure, so this is no solution.
Believe me, I detest all governments; I just feel that there is one valid role for government to play, and that is to protect its citizens.
The idea that roving bands of thugs will successfully “take over” a stateless society is a surprisingly durable notion, given the disasters we see every day in Iraq. The simple fact is that invasions are never profitable unless subsidized by the taxpayers of the invading army’s government. From a mere financial standpoint, Iraq is a fiscal disaster – which proves that even invading one of the most oil-rich countries in the world doesn’t pay! Iraq was invaded only because the costs of the invasion are entirely borne by taxpayers – which allows billions to be siphoned off to the military, state agencies and private corporations. The same is true for all occupations in history, from the Roman, British and French Empires to the Eastern Bloc to the Iraq occupation. Taxpayers are forced to pay with money and blood, while billions are stolen through subsidies and contracts. The real target in any war is not foreign troops, but domestic taxpayers. War is a means to an end: the end being the pillaging of the public purse.
Free trade is profitable; in the absence of a state, war is not. This means that peaceful citizens will always have more money and resources than violent criminals. In a stateless society, DROs will constantly work to defuse and exclude the criminal element and ensure that crime does not pay – and it won’t, since an honest income will be so much higher than it is now! Thus the argument that bands of thugs can successfully take over a free society has no basis in economics, logic or history. The worst possible case in a stateless society is that a band of thugs will set up shop locally and demand cash “protection” from honest citizens, like the Mafia. However, even that situation is preferable to the current system, since the Mafia need to ensure that their citizens remain relatively happy in the long run – unlike governments, which drive entire societies into war, bankruptcy and dictatorship.
All right, but what about foreign governments, whose armies are subsidized by taxpayers?
Foreign governments are even easier to deal with than internal gangs, due to one basic fact: political leaders only invade other countries if they themselves are in no danger. If a politician can stay far behind the lines, make stirring speeches, strike noble poses, hand out contracts and watch his popularity soar, war seems like a pretty good deal. If, however, declaring war threatens him personally, suddenly it doesn’t seem so attractive. The simple proof of this thesis is that no country possessing WMDs has ever been directly threatened with war. (In fact, the best way to logically deduce that Iraq had no WMDs was that the US was prepared to invade it!)
Personal threats against warlike foreign leaders always dissuades invasion – so, what is the best way to threaten the lives of such criminals? So far, the only answer has been the proliferation of WMDs. In a free society, cheaper and less dangerous methods will surely be discovered – and here are some possibilities.
Suppose Canada decides to invade a government-free US. The Canadian PM starts making threatening speeches and massing troops along the border.
How could the stateless society respond? Well, DROs are the agencies most threatened by invasion, because if the Canadian government takes over, they will be the first to go. So let’s put ourselves in the shoes of a group of worried DRO leaders. What would we do?
First, we would get to the root of the problem, which is that the Canadian PM is the person responsible for fermenting war. Given this fact, we would avoid threatening Canada’s troops or its general population, who are not the problem, and have no power to prevent the invasion. If we threaten the troops, we’ll make them more belligerent – and if we threaten the general population, we’ll make them more supportive of the war.
So how can we defuse the situation? Here are some ideas (in escalating order):
- Declare that, if the troops are not disbanded, no offensive action will be taken against soldiers or civilians, but instead political leaders will be targeted.
- Arm everyone along the US side of the border with any weapons they liked – for free (In Switzerland, for instance, every household has to have a gun – and the Swiss have not been involved in a war in 800 years, despite being right in the middle of Europe!).
- Offer the foreign troops sanctuary, property and jobs if they lay down their arms, desert and cross the border peacefully.
- If the threat continues to escalate, offer $100 million in gold to anyone who can convince the Canadian PM to demobilize his troops (using whatever methods work the best).
- Drive all politicians underground by putting massive bounties on their heads.
- Kidnap the PM’s family and hold them hostage until the troops are demobilized.
Naturally, things can escalate from the above in ways that are easy to imagine – although I am sure that the problem would be dealt by the first one or two items.
Why are these approaches so effective? For one thing, in a stateless society, there is no single target such as the White House or the Pentagon. Authority is diffused, decentralized, like the Internet, and so cannot be struck at directly. Thus DROs can target foreign leaders, but foreign leaders cannot target DROs – and so the advantage lies with DROs.
Let’s suppose, though, that none of the above works, and foreign troops end up invading the stateless society. What will they face? A combination of determined DROs, private security forces and well-armed civilians. Remember: in a stateless society, there are no legal limits on the weapons that private citizens can possess. (It is likely that DROs, though, would refuse to represent those who possessed certain weapons – a limit that would doubtless be lifted in the case of imminent invasion!)
Thus the invading army cannot tell which citizens have which weapons. This raises a significant “fog of war” problem. The US felt safe invading Iraq because the Iraqi government had been largely disarmed by 14 years of sanctions, and so could not retaliate. Even now, when they are nominally in charge of the country, they face constant attrition from guerilla fighters. Now that the Iraqi population has access to arms, they have the upper hand even in the face of overwhelming US military power. (The main reason for this is that the US military has developed the capacity to blow away armies standing out in the open – with the inevitable result that no army ever opposes the US by standing out in the open, but instead uses guerilla tactics and a war of attrition. It’s as if Vietnam never happened! But that’s inevitable – state armies are not designed to protect citizens, but to create conflict and spend money, and “big thump” weapons are far more expensive than guerilla training.)
Last but not least, if the threat of invasion grows, DROs will hire mercenaries to repel the invaders. In the unlikely event that DRO combatants do actually engage government troops, it will be a case of private incentives versus government inefficiencies – FedEx versus the Post Office. Does anyone believe that a government-run army – which is just the Post Office in fatigues – can beat a private army? The military is just another government program, subject to all the same irrational stupidities as every other government program. So far, we have only seen the agonizing waste of governments fighting other governments – the spectacle of a government army fighting a private army will be brief, efficient and highly instructive.
Finally, can anyone out there show me any examples of a government successfully defending its population from violence? France in 1789? Russia in 1917? Germany in 1933? Poland in 1939? France in 1940? England which, after winning the war against national socialism, imposed socialism on its own population? America, which subsidizes and arms dictatorships and currently has more than 200 troop bases around the world stirring up anti-US rage? What about the Civil War, which murdered 600,000 Americans without even effectively freeing the slaves? The First World War, which caused the Second? Did America emerge from the Cold War more free or less free? (Hint: taxes, debt and regulations!) Did Korea or Vietnam end the Soviet regime? Of course not – the inefficiency of central planning did. What about World War Two? In 1950, more people were enslaved by dictatorships than in 1939 – despite 40 million murdered! So how can anyone say that governments protect their citizens? Violence begets violence. All states do is wage wars, raise taxes and enslave their populations with debts and regulation. Knowing that governments murdered 170 million people during the 20th century, we can all be forgiven for a little skepticism when we hear the argument that governments protect their citizens. It is blind, dangerous nonsense!
There is one final response that, in my view, disposes of the “armed gang” objection. If large numbers of people do want to impose their will on others through force, then armed gangs do pose a risk to a stateless society. However, they are still less of a risk than a centralized state! If an armed gang runs roughshod through your neighbourhood, you can choose to fight, pay tribute, or flee to a freer locale. No such choices exist with a government. In other words, if people are generally peaceful, we don’t need a state – and if they are generally violent, we can’t allow a state to exist, because giving violent people a monopoly always results in the utter destruction of civil society.
Question #3: Inertia
People often prefer the evil they know to the evil they don't know. Even though being ruled by the state is awful, it is possible that the alternative is worse. Even if the probability that alternative is worse is small, people do not want to risk what they have for something else, at least not until what they have is so bad as to be unendurable. This is a facet of human nature that the evil in our world exploit on a daily basis. They continue to make things worse slowly in the hopes that people will simply go along with it because they do not wish to risk the alternatives. I know this is bad logically, but most people are ruled by emotions rather than reason and act accordingly. The fear of the unknown is one of the most powerful emotions. Fear is why people continue to support the state even though they acknowledge that it is evil.
I agree with the above – it is usually easier to live with a tolerable (and well-armed!) evil than risk opposing it. However, I have two arguments against this kind of passivity. First of all, government power grows continually, becoming more and more brutal, until it utterly destroys the host society. This was the case in Ancient Greece and Italy, in Germany, England and France after the Middle Ages, in Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and China in the 20th century – and is currently the case with all Western governments. In every single historical case, governments grow until they destroy society. In most cases, governments run out of money, which causes violence to erupt from those dependent on state handouts – resulting in martial law and a general dictatorship. Thus the idea of “living with a tolerable evil” is like “living with a tolerable hunger” – it is only tolerable in the short run. In the long run, the growth of state power murders millions and destroys everything that makes life worth living.
Secondly, there is absolutely no reason to risk one’s life or remaining liberties opposing state power. The state survives on propaganda, and thus can only be opposed in the realm of ideas. Writing, reading and arguing are the most powerful activities in the service of freedom, since all general social decisions are made on the basis of perceived virtue (i.e. state welfare is “good” because it “helps the poor”). Change the perceived virtues, and you change the world.
Question #4: No Gun Control At All?
You can’t have everyone having any weapon they want! People would just nuke each other!
Naturally, most people are disturbed by the idea that anyone can have any weapon he wants – does that mean that my neighbor can build a nuke in his basement?
Those who are getting the hang of the stateless society already know the answer to this objection: if enough people are troubled by this problem, someone will find a solution for it!
Here’s an example: I buy a tract of land and build a community on it. I then only lease the houses to people who are willing to sign a contract that they will not build nukes in their basement. (This could extend to any sort of weapon ownership, and is an extension of standard condo agreements.) Presto, I have a completely voluntary society with no nukes in the basement – or no handguns at all if I choose. No need for a government, policemen or the NRA. This way, everyone gets to live with the social rules they want – and the most efficient societies will flourish, just as companies in the free market do now. There is absolutely no reason why social rules should not be subject to the same market forces as everything else in the economy – everyone benefits through a multiplicity of choice and the principles of efficiency!
Question #5: How Do We Win?
This question, of course, came up a lot, and requires a separate article, which I am working on. I won’t mention any details here, except to say that we can win, and it requires no violence – but you’re probably not going to like the answer!
November 15, 2005
Stefan Molyneux email=”s.molyneux@rogers.com”]send him mail[/email has been an actor, comedian, gold-panner, graduate student, and software entrepreneur. His first novel, Revolutions was published in 2004, and he maintains a blog.
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Versions older than those posted on the GPO online website:
1. Are available as part of Westlaw, if you have an account. It will be EXPENSIVE though.
2. If you don't have a Westlaw account, can only be obtained from federal depository libraries in paper form.
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Additional information on Christian socialism:
http://www.boundaries-for-effective-ministry.org/christian-socialism.html
