Anarchoblogs

This video is very revealing, in a legal way. It’s from Marc Stevens, radio show host and dedicated legal researcher. He dissects the law in a very foundational way, without assumptions and without any undue reverence for it. Are you, as various governments claim, a taxpayer? Can the government legally prove this? You aren’t going to concede that point, are you?

No, the government can’t prove you’re a taxpayer, Stevens claims. Not unless you admit it, I suppose. And in this video he shows a California bureaucrat tickled pink by the idea that he needs evidence. Evidence to prove someone is a taxpayer? That’s ridiculous. Check out the above video and more over at Stevens’ website. Marc even has a fascinating book about his escapades researching the law in the courtroom called Adventures in Legal Land.

An interview with Alan Wilder and Martin Gore of Depeche Mode from 1990-ish. I've got it down as Rapido but it may be SnubTV, not sure.Depeche Mode - Rapidopwd: c4ctusm0uth

This is a great interview. It sheds light on why prisons are such a prominent feature of modern American culture. The fact that 1% of the US population is in prison and that they’re used as slaver labor is not well-known. And that’s why this interview also makes me sick. I didn’t want to watch it, but I did. The truth is too terrible not to be aware of it, no matter how much it hurts. Awareness is, after all, the first step towards change.

Prison is an anachronism. It solves nothing. It doesn’t help victims, it doesn’t improve society and it definitely doesn’t assist offenders in becoming peaceful members of society. In fact, today it is used to punish peaceful members of society as much or more so than the violent ones. Please come back tomorrow for more detailed thoughts on the advantages of restitution over punishment.

Over at C4SS’ Stateless U in ATP 102, I watched and critiqued Roderick Long’s talk “Foundations of Libertarian Ethics.” [See above.]

In “Foundations of Libertarian Ethics,” Roderick Long deftly refutes Lockean and Randian critiques of anarchy, using these same critiques against themselves in support of market anarchy. Long also evaluates strategies for achieving the stateless society, convincingly arguing the Spoonerite position that voting and running for office are not immoral. He also makes a convincing case that voting is not irrational.

Long first takes on Locke’s argument that without a central government, people will subscribe to different interpretations of justice. But Long points out that people have different interpretations of justice under government too. In fact, one can expect more legal uniformity under anarchy, not less, Long says. He cites the example of European merchant law that arose when state commercial law became outdated. Each national government had different laws, and they wouldn’t enforce each others’ decisions. So merchants formulated their own laws and applied them in a highly uniform way across the globe. The merchants enforced their law without the state via word of mouth, boycott, credit reports and ostracism.

While Long’s analysis wins outs, I don’t think legal uniformity across jurisdictions is particularly important. As long as individual property owners or legal jurisdictions post their laws and keep them understandable, there should be no problem.

Long next examines Locke’s claim that a generally known standard of law is required, and that anarchy would not produce this. But government produces too many laws, Long argues, since it is not restrained by market demand. And this is the same thing as there not being a generally known law code, because people simply can not know all the laws that congress and other law-making bodies churn out.

Long makes an insightful argument here, but Lockeans may see it as as a pyrrhic victory against a strawman. Locke didn’t argue for a large state such as the ones primarily in existence today. His ideal smaller state might not produce as much confusion in the realm of law.

Another defect of anarchy, Locke posits, is that individuals would be judges in their own cases, since everyone in a state of anarchy has the right to judge the law. They would be biased for themselves. Long argues that Locke is mistaken. There can be a third party judge under anarchy, it simply doesn’t have to be the same individual or institution for every single dispute. People can take turns being judges for others. Only anarchy allows this. Contrast this with the state: what if you have a dispute with them? Then the state gets to judge itself! What about if you sue the supreme court, Long asks. Who will be the final arbiter then?

Long’s argument doesn’t strike any vital organs. Inside the state there are many different individuals reigning as judges. When one of these judges is faced with a conflict of interest, he can recuse himself, and is often obligated to do so. Arguing that the state judges disputes that involve the state is a collectivization where Locke speaks of individuals. That’s a double standard. His argument about who will reign as judge if the supreme court is sued does stick, since the supreme court is the fixed final arbiter of disputes. Eventually the case could make its way to be heard in front of the supreme court. Given its unique position, it could theoretically hear a case against itself.

Locke’s final objection to anarchy is that everyone could be his own police officer. Long argues that Locke simply thinks that if there are organized threats under anarchy, a lone individual will be at a disadvantage. An organized defense, in other words, is necessary. But, Long argues that an organized defense doesn’t necessarily presuppose or require state involvement. He is convincing here. His killer critique of Locke on this point is that if you are worried about organized threats being hard to defend against, you don’t actually want to go and create one in the form of government!

A Randian objection Long addresses is the claim that no market is possible without a government legal order. But the opposite is also true, argues Long. How can a government come to exist without some kind of trade to finance its creation? It is indeed difficult to imagine a government preceding the marketplace. Governments produce nothing, they only consume. Thus there must be something to consume in the first place. A legal order, on the other hand, can arise spontaneously as individuals need it and by mutual agreement in a primitive analogue to what Murphy describes in chapter one of “Chaos Theory.”

Long also critiques the Randian idea that under anarchy, there would be no final arbiter, and therefore no legal finality. Long questions the claim that government actually provides any legal finality. For example, government has made many guarantees of help to the poor, but people remain in poverty. Also, government legal decisions don’t always result in restitution, Long notes. It’s not a question of a guarantees, he argues, but that certain incentives are more reliable. Government, being a monopoly, it is insulated from feedback and thus the right incentives are not in place

Finally, Long considers how to achieve a stateless society. There are two strategies, he says, the takeover strategy and the bypass strategy. Like Spooner, he thinks there is nothing really wrong with voting or running for office. It shouldn’t be the primary focus of one’s activism, he thinks, but neither should one abstain entirely. If, by voting, libertarians could change the outcome of a state’s actions from horrible to merely bad, wouldn’t it be worth it?

Long’s analysis is measured and strong. He is absolutely right. At some point, agorists and other libertarian (r)evolutionaries will be toe-to-toe with the state. Wouldn’t the outcome be more favorable if some of our own were on the inside and able to moderate the government response? This is a compelling argument.

Is voting irrational because it will most likely have little or no effect, Long asks. What about writing a libertarian blog post? Is that irrational, since it may have little to no effect as well? Long makes a striking point here. I must say that I feel my 250+ blog posts here have been considerably more effective than my two votes for Ross Perot in the 90’s. I get enormous personal satisfaction from the brain work required to research and write these posts. And the reactions I get are highly rewarding as well. That said, I think voting in state elections has its place. If we have even a slight hope of moderating the state’s evil, it may be worth it to vote (and run for office).

In this talk, Roderick Long persuasively rebuts both Lockean and Randian arguments against anarchy while navigating a shrewd path through the voluntaryist-partyarch debate minefield. His analysis is insightful and refreshing, if sometimes less than entirely pertinent.

Marc Emery is a Canadian man who is now in (US) federal prison for 5 years over his business of selling cannabis seeds to the public. It breaks my heart to see this man in prison. He has harmed no one. There is no victim for the crime he is accused of. In Canada, his offenses are punishable by fines. So how did he end up across the border in a cage for five years? Watch this short video from Liberty on Tour to find out.

Apart from the victimless crime issues and the cruel and unusual punishment angle, consider the fact that Marc was practicing agorism. Maybe he was doing it openly and publicly, instead of secretly as many agorists claim it should be done. Maybe he was paying some taxes. Nevertheless, he is an agorist and is currently under the thumb of the federal government. There is a lesson here for other (prospective) agorists. Agorism is a form of civil disobedience or peaceful non-compliance. As an agorist, you may someday be caught, caged and prosecuted. When this happens, what will you do? How will you get out of this terrible situation? This is a question that needs to be addressed in order for the agoristic strategy of building the new world inside the shell of the old to succeed.

As Roderick Long has noted, when the government is about to do something terrible, wouldn’t it be better if it did something just bad instead? Can we moderate the government’s actions by participating in it through voting, running for office, lobbying, letter-writing and other more traditional forms of activism? And if we can, isn’t that worth the ameliorative effect that could result? What do you think? Once you or another practicing agorist you know is facing time in a cage, how will we get them out? How will we protect our fledgling economies from state aggression?

Have you heard about the sovereignty movement? This is what I call the people who rally around the ideas expressed very briefly in this video. There are many lines of thought present in the movement. Some think that all unconstitutional government tyranny arises from our voluntary consent. Others think there is a second, secret constitution. I have heard the idea that there are two governments, one based on the constitution and one borne from the federal governance of Washington, DC. Some argue that the 14th amendment, instead of freeing the slaves, enslaved us all, morphing us from sovereigns to citizens. Others look for hidden meanings in words, and tend to take symbolism literally.

I find this movement fascinating and complex while also tending towards the ridiculous and unbelievable. There is a surreal kind of logic to their work. The foundation for their most useful work is solid. Proponents test their hypotheses in the courts. Sometimes they succeed, sometimes they don’t. It’s this solid foundation of experimentation which, when actually used, most impresses me about the sovereignty movement. Here is some additional work on how these methods and ideas can be used to hold government agents accountable. Don’t write it off without looking into it! You never know when you might be hauled in front of a state judge and forced to fend for your life, liberty and property.

1215.org’s Law Notes is foundational, reasonably rational and more connected to reality than some other sources. There are even 8 hours of lectures available.

Marc Stevens is on the fringe of this movement as far as I can tell (by which I mean he sounds reasonable). His research is reliable and his conclusions tested by hard experience. He has a book and a weekly radio show.

Robert Arthur Menard is a Canadian proponent of sovereignty theory who has apparently met with great real-world success. He has tons of videos on YouTube. And I believe he is associated with thinkfree.ca.

What do you think of these ideas? Let me know in the comments.

This gorgeous pro-marijuana-legalization video will only take three and a half minutes of your time. It succinctly and passionately makes the case for ending marijuana prohibition. You’ll want to pass it on to your social network.

Let’s face it, marijuana is natural. It is a plant, a very valuable one. It is the source of many, very useful, things. There is no reason to ban (or tax) it. It is not even like cocaine, which comes from the coca plant but is concentrated and mixed with nasty substances such as gasoline and cement. It is simply a plant and is usually consumed in its natural state.

Sure, legalized profits from marijuana sales could be used to fund hospitals, playgrounds and schools as depicted in the video, but not via taxation. Taxation is theft; it’s just like in the video where violent people roll into town and destroy all the goodness enabled by the flower. In real life, as well, government agents drop bombs on marijuana crops and otherwise violently impede its voluntary use by consenting individuals. But that’s what taxation is, too: violent people making threats if you don’t comply, and using your property against you and other innocents if you do.

The video is dead on when it shows state violence morphing hospitals into prisons, marijuana patrons into jittery caffeine addicts and drunk alcoholics, pot self-medicators into frustrated pharmaceutical users and peaceful free markets into violent black markets. If this is so obviously the result of state intervention into the marijuana market, is it such a stretch to realize that it’s also the result of state intervention into any other marketplace?

This video is one big can of State FAIL, on too many levels to name. First, the newscaster frames the issues for us in a way that de-emphasizes the overwhelming power and brutality of the state. This is a clash between the needs of immigrants and the need of a state to maintain order, we’re told. What does it matter that they are immigrants? This is a way to prejudice the audience against the victims. These people are not like you, nothing to see here. What does it mean to maintain order? This video clearly shows state goons destroying spontaneous order. How can the needs of an aggressive gang be balanced against those of mothers and babies? As the video shows, they can’t. The families that are ruthlessly attacked get nothing – less than nothing, since they are harmed – and the state gets a housing development. Where is the balance?

The footage itself is disgusting. How dare these thugs drag babies around like this? And the footage only survived after police forced one photographer out, another’s camera was taken and finally the one that recorded this footage was severely damaged by these thugs. They probably didn’t think any previously recorded images would remain on the camera. How stupid of them.

"I never meant for you to get hurt""You smile and think how much you've changed""I put up with all the scenes"

How is it that, 7 years into the Iraq War and 8 years into the Afghanistan War, a lone high school teacher can be treated with such contempt as seen in this video for taking a stand against war? Did student anti-war movements take this long to develop in response to the Vietnam War? Why is she the only one? Why are no students with her? What is so wrong with our country that opposition to war is this impotent, isolated and disrespected? Why are children still volunteering for military service? Did no teacher assign them to read Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States” (now available for free online)? Why on earth are they being sent off with such glee to self-destruction? Why are police officers handing out diplomas? Has George Orwell’s world of “1984″ finally arrived?

Notice in the local media coverage how creating controversy is mocked under color of journalistic objectivity. At the end, the reporter claims that the children are going to war in order to protect the teacher’s right to dissent. In fact, these children are being sacrificed to extend the imperial ambitions of a power-hungry gang of murderers enabled by millions whose illusions of freedom and prosperity are sustained by the thin thread of cheap oil and cheap imports which these wars buttress.

The local news station even admits that a former student was killed in one of the wars but is unable to enunciate the next logical step of questioning whether the cause justified a young man’s life. Hopefully, some truth, empathy and thought-provoking questions will soon reach those involved in this incident.