Wall Street Gets Dick Slapped!

Woohoo!

Unfortunately, it doesn't make any difference. We're still screwed, and the plutocrats will just come up with some other scam.

Silber: "Stupider Than Shit"

Arthur, as we all know, is brilliant.

(On a side note: one thing that amazes me is how similar his writing style is to mine. When I read his posts, I feel like I'm reading my own damn blog. Trippy, man.)

My Debate (Well, Sort Of) With SilentRadical

This is an older debate I had over left-anarchism and market anarchism, and I felt I'd post it just for the hell of it. Much of it takes place in the comment sections to these posts. (Obviously, I've dropped the left-Rothbardian label since, because I think it has been perverted.)

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

Enron: Small Beer Compared To The Latest Batch of Corporate Crooks

The upcoming bail-outs are corporate fascism at its very worst. At this point, I would stand up and cheer if the left-anarchists were to throw bricks and rocks at the "private property" of these tyrants. These robber barons fucking deserve it!

The corporate extortion this time is around a trillion dollars. You know what that means: we all get to take it in the ass. Without lube. The pitchers are the corporate oligarchs who have successfully enslaved this idiot country.

At least historians are probably happy. They finally get to see what the Weimar Republic was like!

In Defense of...Bob Barr!?

Anyone who follows third-party politics (I confess: it’s a guilty pleasure of mine) has already heard the news: Ron Paul has endorsed the theocratic whacko Chuck Baldwin to punish Barr for ditching his press conference.

First, regardless of what you think of Paul and his conference, it was a HUGE mistake (from a strategic standpoint) for Barr to skip the conference. He pissed off everyone for no good reason and the whole thing could have easily been avoided.

Nonetheless, I can understand why Barr decided to skip it after hearing the initial details. When I first heard of Paul’s press conference, I also thought it sounded extremely asinine. Like Barr, I got the impression that Paul was mindlessly endorsing four candidates (including Ralph Nader!?), stupidly diluting his following. It wasn’t until I actually watched Paul’s conference that I really understood what he was trying to do. “Aaahh, so that’s what the man is getting at.”

While I am a fan of Ron Paul (boo, hiss, not an anarchist, I know), his “endorsement” was clearly just an act of childish, petty revenge to get even with Barr. He came off as butthurt and unprincipled. “Oh yeah? Well now you can’t come over to my house after school!”

Baldwin is a grade A (or is that grade F?) nutter. The guy is all of the very worst elements of the Paul campaign rolled into one gigantic shit burrito: unhinged social conservatism, crackpot rightist populism, and fringe conspiracy theories out the ass. The Constitution Party’s platform of “family values” (ie, gays back in the closet, women back in the kitchen, Timmy back under daddy’s spiked belt) is quite open in its advocacy of theocracy. If you insist on voting and are torn between Chuck and Bob, you are better off with Bob.

Only one word can describe Paul’s endorsement of these creationist idiots:

YYEEEEEEEEEEEEEECCCCHHHHH!!!!

Is Walking Next On The State's List Of Things To Ban?

So I have this habit of going on long walks in the middle of the night--to clear my head and relax.

BIIIIIG mistake.

Not too long ago I was walking on a big-ass dirt trail late at night. My car was parked in a park near the beginning of a trail.

When I got back from my walk, I climbed in my car, and knew that I smelled bacon. Unsurprisingly, the cop car coming down the road turned on its lights while I rolled my eyes.

It took nearly ten minutes for the moron to get out of his car. First, he told me about my "crime": being parked in a "public park" that's closed. Whoop-de-friggin doo. Who follows those silly rules anyway?

Then he got all "tricky," thinking he's clever, asking me what I'm doing outside by myself out in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night.

I told him the exact truth--that I was out walking/jogging--and the pig didn't believe me. Every word out of my mouth he tried to 'turn back' on me ("Do you always jog in jeans? Blah blah"). It was rather laughable. He asked to see my license and registration, so I gave them to him. He asked why I had bedspread and a pillow in my backseat, thinking I was a drifter or something (I was actually going to wash them).

I waited forever while his incompetent ass sat in his car. Then he finally came back and started taking down my name, number, and so on. I didn't get in any trouble, but this fool wasted about 30 minutes of my time while god-knows how many people were being raped, murdered, molested, and mugged.

What a great reward for being a law-abiding citizen! It's now illegal to go on a walk!

I keep hearing that we need to "respect cops" and "pay them more," but I don't see the point. I've never met a cop who wasn't a complete asshole. They do nothing but harass those of us who follow the rules while the crooks go free.

Screw the cops.

Ack! I Want To Write, But Can't!

This week is so busy for me, it's ridiculous. Not even enough time to finish this po

Kinsella On Left-wing Idiocy

Echoing some of my own recent comments, Stephan Kinsella takes out the trash over at Austro-Athenian Empire.

For some reason these disaffected “anti-corporate” types, who appear to largely be stuck in dismoded Marxian economics and social analysis, have no comprehension of the way real enterprise works. It’s as if a bunch of Che-teeshirt wearing grad students whose Republican daddies paid for their scholarships to Princeton and never worked a day in their lives were railing against “Wal-Mart.” They have some inexplicable, useless, and self-destructive (in the Darwinian sense; would that we had not short-circuited Darwinism with our modern capitalist largesse) animus against commerce and market life.

Hey, to each his own–but it’s not libertarian (IMHO), and it certainly doesn’t justify breaking the windows of merchants. They may feel “alienated” (though how pampered grad students and trust-fund babies can be alienated from labor you don’t actually perform with your own hands is a mystery), but to assume, Marx-like, that this is a natural condition of actors on the market is antiquated, to say the least.

So I would of course as a libertarian favor a rule whereby non-state actors having some color of title to property have a presumptive right to use it as owners until someone else can establish a better claim thereto. Pocahantas’s great—–grandniece can establish a better claim to the property than you? Fine. Hand it over. Such cases would be rare; and covered by title insurance. In the meantime: the world is for the living. Rand was not wrong about everything.

We as libertarians must–we must–support productive achievement, commerce, the market, freedom, free enterprise, the division of labor, economies of scale, individualism, and, above all, as Nozick said, capitalist acts between consenting adults–which these ignorant savages rail against.

Enough. Yes, we can appreciate the caution against vulgar libertarianism. But it is too much. Give me George Reisman’s “vulgar” libertarianism any day over the rock-throwing–and condoning–NON-libertarian misfits.

Bravo!

Anyone thirsty for even more trashing of these worthless degenerates should click the Anti-Left tag at the bottom of this post.

It is best to think of the Left as one gigantic drain on society.

OT: Fuck Vista

God, I hate this fucking thing sooooo much.

Not only do I have to update the POS a thousand times every day, but the stupid thing just completely killed my sound! My reward for updating, I suppose.

When I put my mouse over the volume, I get some ri-goddamn-diculous "no audio output device is installed" message. I swear to Christ, I'm going to strangle someone over this.

The entire goal of Vista is to make it humanly IMPOSSIBLE to sit down for five minutes and just relax and surf the web. The nonstop updates are annoying as fuck, and these screwups do nothing but drain away my life.

I'm not alone in hating this worthless OS, either.

Market anarchism mentioned; Social anarchist wimps not happy

A brief article on market anarchists attending the RNC was recently posted at Infoshop. If you want a good laugh, scroll down and read the responses.

One commentor writes:

The sooner so-called "market anarchists" totally distance themselves from "anarcho"-capitalism and people like Molinari, Rothbard and other supporters of "pure" capitalism the better. It would also help if they called themselves, say, mutualists -- assuming, of course, that they are genuine anarchists...

Hahaha yeah, if only we would see the light and embrace mutualism. *Raspberry* That'll happen soon!

And what is the argument? That defenders of capitalism and hierarchy like Molinari and Rothbard are actually "market anarchists"? If they are, then "market anarchism" is simply "anarcho"-capitalism with a more clued up PR campaign. If they are not, then why link to a site which includes "anarcho"-capitalism in "market anarchism"?

Hey, they caught on surprisingly quick on that one! Usually they're easier to fool (not exactly the sharpest tools in the shed, after all).

Another dullard leaves a series of questions. My insightful, respectful answers are after them.

1. Do market anarchists believe in inherited wealth?

Yessiree Bob.

2. Do market anarchists believe that individuals who accumulate more wealth have the right to purchase for private use large areas of property and enjoy them and the products of this land?

Damn straight!

Or do they subscribe by Tucker's late idea that whoever has the most force to possess the land has the right to take it?

Nah, that's a bunch of tree-hugging hippie crap.

3. Do market anarchists believe that they can use wage labour and that using employees is a consensual act?

Hells yeah, we dig that stuff.

Or to [sic] they only believe in individual labour or cooperative labour?

A hahahahaha!!! *Catching breath* No seriously..."cooperative labor"...a hahahahah!

Where do they come up with this stuff?

4. What is this "market" if not the instrument which determines, among other things, the value of exchange for goods and labour? (At least Warren wanted to make time equal to time.)

BWA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Oh my god, I feel like I'm going to pass out. What's next, worship of the pagan gods?

6. Why are the market anarchist pages full of anarchocapitalist texts?

Because we are anarcho-capitalists, you dummy.

Thanks for the chuckles, geniuses.

(Note: this post was written with a lot of Smirnoff in me. Don't take it too seriously.)

Palin "Proud" Of Her Idiot Son Who Will Die For Nothing

From her Dayton speech (hat tip to LRC):

Our oldest son, Track, though, he'll be following the presidential campaign from afar. On Sept. 11 of last year, our son enlisted in the United States Army.

Wow, what a dumbfuck. Anyone who signed up on September 11, 2001 was enough of a gullible sheeple moron. But Sept. 11 of last year?!

Frankly, I would admire this leech more if he was the jizz-mopper at a nudie booth. At least then he would perform some kind of service to society.

And on Sept. 11, Track will deploy to Iraq in the service of his country.

He'll slaughter women and children so the US plutokkkracy can end freedom in Iraq just like it is succeeding in doing over here.

So in a way, Palin is right. Track is fighting for his country.

And Todd and I are so proud of him and of all the fine men and women serving the country in uniform.

Just like those brave Nazi soldiers who fought in Poland!

U-S-A! U-S-A!

Proudhon At His Best

Thanks to Libertarian Labyrinth, here is a quote of Proudhon at his best. The man would definitely be banned at RevLeft.com today!

I am, as you are well aware, citizens, the man who wrote these words: Property is theft!

I do not come to retract them, heaven forbid! I persist in regarding this provocative definition as the greatest truth of the century. I have no desire to insult your convictions either: all that I ask, is to say to you how, partisan of the family and of the household, adversary of communism, I understand that the negation of property is necessary for the abolition of misery, for the emancipation of the proletariat. It is by its fruits that one must judge a doctrine: judge then my theory by my practice.

When I say, Property is theft! I do not propose a principle; I do nothing but express one conclusion. You will understand the enormous difference presently.

However, if the definition of property which I state is only the conclusion, or rather the general formula of the economic system, what is the principle of that system, what is its practice, and what are its forms?

My principle, which will appear astonishing to you, citizens, my principle is yours; it is property itself.

I have no other symbol, no other principle than those of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen: Liberty, equality, security, property.

Like the Declaration of Rights, I define liberty as the right to do anything that does not harm others.

Again, like the Declaration of Rights, I define property, provisionally, as the right to dispose freely of one's income, the fruits of one's labor and industry.

Here is the entirety of my system: liberty of conscience, liberty of the press, liberty of labor, free trade, liberty in education, free competition, free disposition of the fruits of labor and industry, liberty ad infinitum, absolute liberty, liberty for all and always?

It is the system of '89 and '93; the system of Quesnay, of Turgot, of J.-B. Say; the system that is always professed, with more or less intelligence and good faith, by the various organs of the political parties, the system of the Débats, of the Presse, of the Constitutionnel, of the Siècle, of the Nationale, of the Rèforme, of the Gazette; in the end it is your system, voters.

Simple as unity, vast as infinity, this system serves for itself and for others as a criterion. In a word it is understood and compels adhesion; nobody wants a system in which liberty is the least bit undermined. One word identifies and wards off all errors: what could be easier than to say what is or is not liberty? Liberty then, nothing more, nothing less. Laissez faire, laissez passer, in the broadest and most literal sense; consequently property, as it rises legitimately from this freedom, is my principle. No other solidarity between the citizens than that accidents resulting from chance.

"Why are you so obsessed with economics? Isn't there more to life?"

The question is one that social anarchists commonly hurl at market anarchists: "Isn't there more to life than economics? Why do you care so much about it?"

The fact of the matter is that human beings cannot survive without a viable economic system. It is a life or death matter. What are some of the possible consequences of having a flawed economic system? Mass starvation, waste of resources, bread lines, unemployment, worthless money, fear, panic, chaos, and even civil warfare.

Economics determines nearly everything, including whether you get to put food in your mouth tomorrow. It is not something that can be toyed with at whim, or sculpted according to one's delusions or "feelings." A system that is not based on sensible economics is not one that will last. It is VERY dangerous to not take economics seriously.

Social "anarchists" can sneer all they want. They can revolt against reality all they want. But they have no idea how good they really have it. Most of them are spoiled brats and know-nothings who will never have to know the horrors of living under a system without some degree of capitalism. They take it for granted that they're able to make a quick drive to the store when they need something, instead of having to plan it out months in advance in some anarcho-syndickalips council.

Sometimes starvation and suffering are the only ways to change the minds of people who are willfully ignorant. But in my opinion, few people become radical lefties because they actually give a rat's ass about the poor or working class. (In fact, they mock and viciously ridicule them on a regular basis, calling them "rednecks," "retards," "hicks," "small town scum," "trailer trash," and so on.)

They want to be in the Cool Club so they can pretend to be smarter than the rest of us. This is common in social "anarchist" circles. They want to hold esoteric beliefs and act like they know something the rest of us don't (when they don't). They think they're awfully clever and enjoy watching us try to figure out what the hell is going their heads. "A bunch of vacuous drivel" is the answer, most of the time. As long as they can feel wise for knowing The Truth, that's all that matters to them.

They are starved for attention, and want to get "street cred" for being in the Cool Club (the leftist club). They have the need to be part of the protestors, academics, and critics of "big business." Because it's hip as fuck!

Or at least they think it's hip. It's really just lame, cliched, and idiotic. Their whole crusade is just so obvious and childish that it's laughable. I don't think any more highly of someone because he or she is a radical leftist. In fact, I tend to think such a person is either delusional or going through some stupid phase he'll be embarrassed about when he gets older.

So they aren't interested in "what works" or "what's sane." They just want to be left-wing because it "feels good." And who would want to worry about reality when they can just believe a bunch of horseshit that makes them feel good?

Minarchism OBLITERATED

In my previous post, I said that I would work on a refutation of the totalitarian doctrine called "minarchism." No need! John Hasna's The Obviousness of Anarchy has to be the single greatest assault on minarchy ever seen. This guy addresses and utterly shreds all of the very best arguments minarchists have ever come up with.

Another great article debunking minarchism can be found here.

Justification For Minarchism? Not Likely.

I plan to do a longer post some time in the future refuting minarchism, but for now you should read Gordon on the subject.

One part particularly stands out:

Why should one believe such a thing? Suppose people for the most part accept a libertarian scheme of rights — this, by the way, was the only circumstance in which Murray Rothbard considered viable an anarchist polity — would they not have, contrary to Lee, contract law without a state? (The issue, once more, is for now not whether this is likely but whether it is possible.)

This is exactly what the minarchists don't understand. Market anarchists aren't interested in what's "likely" or practical. We're interested in what could work, given the right circumstances.

So long as market anarchism is theoretically possible, the state is not justified.

Green Party Out-libertarians the "Libertarian" Party

While I'm obviously opposed to any political party gaining power, Cynthia McKinney and the Green Party are probably the least evil choice for this election cycle. Every market anarchist should be in agreement most of their recent press release, especially the parts about prosecuting our current state "leaders" and their corporate lackeys for war crimes.

The Green Party's hardline anti-war and anti-police-state stances far surpass any of the phony-ass "anti-state" material put out by Bob Barr and the chickenshit "Libertarian" Party. Sure, the US may be turning into the next Nazi Germany, but let's work on cutting that pork-barrel spending! Great priorities, morons.

Through Thick and Thin

So it turns out that Charles Johnson has written a very good article on thick and thin libertarians. For the record, I agree with most of Johnson's personal views, but think he fails to make a case that libertarians should battle all of these other things along with statism.

He argues for a thick libertarianism that opposes

authoritarianism, not only as enforced by governments
but also as expressed in culture, business, the family, and
civil society.

His argument is basically that libertarians should oppose all forms of authoritarianism, even those based on voluntary association, because they encourage statism.

Whatever reasons you may have for
rejecting the arrogant claims of power-hungry politicians
and bureaucrats—say, for example, the Jeffersonian
notion that all men and women are born equal in political
authority and that no one has a natural right to rule
or dominate other people’s affairs—probably serve just
as well for reasons to reject other kinds of authoritarian
pretension, even if they are not expressed by means of
coercive government action.

The problem I have with Johnson's argument is that without the use of threat or coercion, nobody really is being "ruled" or "dominated." If your "submission" to an authority figure is voluntary, then it ceases to be domination.

Should libertarians battle S&M sex games, along with the state? How about asshole football coaches (some of the most authoritarian people on the planet)? Should libertarians fight against teachers, parents, and sports referees? Should we lead the fight against online message board moderators?

Every job in a free market economy involves "submission" to a consumer or client. Should we battle that too, along with the state? Where does it end?

Even in a completely free
society, everyone could, in principle, still voluntarily
agree to bow and scrape and speak only when spoken
to in the presence of the (mutually agreed-on) town
chief, or unthinkingly agree to obey
whatever restrictions and regulations
he tells them to follow in their own
business or personal lives, or agree to
give him as much in voluntary “taxes”
on their income or property as he
might ask. So long as the expectation
of submission and the demands for
wealth to be rendered were backed
up only by verbal harangues, cultural
glorifications of the wise and virtuous
authorities, social ostracism of
“unruly” dissenters, and so on, these
demands would violate no one’s individual
rights to liberty or property.

He's right. They wouldn't (in fact, it sounds a lot like any arrangement with a landlord). So why does it matter? I'm an atheist, but I don't have any problem not going to church, despite the level of social pressure that exists. If you're not forced to participate, what's it to ya?

Will it make people more likely to accept statism/coercion? I don't see why it would, unless there is coercion involved. One can accept submission to someone else without accepting coercion (as Johnson himself admits). So why would it necessarily make people accept statism?

He asks us to

think of the feminist criticism of the traditional division
between the “private” and the “political” sphere, and of
those who divide the spheres in such a way that pervasive,
systemic violence and coercion within families turn
out to be justified, or excused, or simply ignored as
something “private” and therefore less than a serious
form of violent oppression.

Of course, no libertarian believes that violence in families is a "private" matter. It is aggression, obviously. So what's Johnson's point? Is this supposed to make thick libertarianism somehow different from ordinary libertarianism? Because it sounds a lot like plain libertarianism to me.

Now, I'm not against the idea that the non-aggression principle itself is insufficient to run society. For instance, I think that if everyone in a libertarian society decided to shoot heroin, throw orgies, and perform Satanic rituals with voluntary victims all day long, the society would become chaotic. It would also encourage people to create a nanny state to preserve order.

But without coercion as a guide, it is awfully vague what counts as an "authoritarian" institution, and Johnson's article seems to lead to the "modal libertarian" type of thinking discussed by Rothbard, in which one just blindly revolts against everyone and everything, while the state becomes less and less of a concern. This type of thinking is prevalent at sites like Infoshop and RevLeft.

Another problem is the more "thick" you make your libertarianism, the less people will come on board. Hell, just look at Objectivism. It's very thick, and it's a freakin' death cult as a result. 'Nuff said? You run the risk of alienating more people than you convert, which defeats the entire point of having a 'thick' libertarianism in the first place.

If it gets less people to accept libertarianism, how can it be a boon to libertarianism?

I am a big fan of Charles Johnson's work but ambivalent about this whole thick-libertarianism thing..