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"No one has the right, under any circumstances, to initiate force against another human being, nor to delegate its initiation."- L. Neil Smith
Ah, wisdom in these words.
Now, since none of us live in Shangra-La, how exactly do we ENFORCE this well thought out nugget of wisdom WITHOUT violating its very principle?
Tell em, "You shouldn't do that," to death?
Go back and read the Non-Aggression Principle again - it only prohibits the initiation of force or fraud - it says nothing about defensive or retaliatory force.
The ?Non-Aggression Principle,? would be anarchistic, not Libertarian in the right-libertarian sense. Appropriation goes completely against this Non-Aggression Principle.
Define "anarchistic" as opposed to "right-libertarian."
A few ideas. First, capitalism is by its very nature regulated by the federal government. If it were not regulated by the federal government, then it would simply be warlordism, because I could go over to my competitor, and, in a magnificent display of free market ingenuity, shoot him in the head. The "free market" would soon degrade into a system where powerful people, in admiriable displays of individual initiative, coerced everyone else into terrible suffering. Of couse, that's essentially what happens in more regulated versions of capitalism as well, but in a somewhat less brutal manner.
I'm guessing that Alexander is using the Marxian definition of capitalism here, not the Randian. Irrelevant, but then again, this mischaracterization of the free market is rather funny.
"Free markets" is a system where the most brutal forms of oppression at the hands of the greedy and powerful are barred by other forces (which must have roots in some level of popular support, I think), but otherwise, oppression is free to proceed underhindered, as the masters exploit everyone else in remarkable displays of "individual initiative", subjugating people for "the profit motive", alongside such admirable people as Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler, who had similar goals, although more potent means for achieving them. In our society, this is done by establishing control of the main institutions ; once such control is established, there is little for everyone else to do but bow down and be waiters.
So how is that Stalin, Hitler, Pol Polt, Mao, Idi Amin, Fidel Castro, and Saddam Hussein established control of "the main institutions" and then used those "main institutions" to kill millions? Hitler was democratically elected to power in 1933, using the legal apparatus of the Weimar Republic and the Reichstag. Didn't he have plenty of popular support?
And for Hitler and the others brought up here - how were any of them leaning towards free market economics in the slightest?
Taxation is not the fuel of war ; greed is the fuel of war. You want something that you cannot have, so you make war to take it. If taxation is something which is done by a few to increase their own power, then yes I would say this fuels war.
That's exactly what's happening - "the few" are using taxation to increase their own power and fatten their wallets. As far as "greed" goes, the term applies when someone wants something from someone else but isn't willing to deal with the other person on a consensual basis, so they resort to force to get what they want.
But if taxation is a process in which wealth and power is taken away from the few and given to the many, then this is something entirely different. Then you would be promoting individualism, if the word is to retain any meaning.
NO, this is NOT individualism. This is simply using the force of government to steal and plunder. The fact that it's being given to "the many" as opposed to "the few" is irrelevant. It's just a cop-out for those too cowardly to steal for themselves. Instead, they delegate the task to the IRS, state agencies, etc.
- Mike Blessing
THE LIBERTARIAN ENTERPRISE
Number 190, September 16, 2002
190 PROOF ISSUE
Mars Needs Saloons!
by L. Neil Smith
lneil@lneilsmith.com
Exclusive to TLE
It says here -- according to Reuters by way of the Associated Press and America On Line -- that "Mars could resemble the lawless Wild West if privately funded adventurers seeking to exploit the planet get there before governments, a leading British astronomer said Wednesday".
Ooooooooh ...
The "leading astronomer", somebody calling himself Sir Smugly Pinchbottom-Rabbitwarren -- or at least he should have been -- a net tax consumer wallowing in a plush gig at something calling itself the Institute of Astronomy, was addressing some sort of science conference in Leicester, England when he delivered his dire prognostication. I'm pretty sure that a cold shiver of goosefleshed apprehension traveled through the assembled nerdity, government-nourished one and all, as he did.
There could well be a permanent human presence on the Red Planet within a century, Sir Smugly boldly predicted (somehow completely unaware of predictions exactly like that having been made for more than a century). He warned his audience that if these settlers are privately funded adventurers of -- gasp! -- free-enterprise, or even anarchic disposition, the result could resemble the American Wild West.
Heaven forfend!
Doesn't everybody know that if humankind continues to insist on expanding outward from Earth, into the rest of the Solar System, that explorers and settlers must be preceded by bureaucrats who will set up offices for the IRS (make that "Inland Revenue for Sir Smugly), the EPA, and the ATF? It wouldn't be real civilization without them, would it?
The remainder of the article, which an old friend was kind enough to send me, confined itself pretty much to this telescope-jockey's antiquated views on "more efficient propulsion systems" and space elevators. Through the whole thing, though, I kept wondering why he cared.
What makes Sir Smugly interested enough in exploring the void and settling new worlds to make a speech about it? What golden vision of the future moves him besides more rules, more regimentation, more parking meters, more George Bush and more Tony Blair? If that's all Sir Smugly wants out of the future, he can stand on any streetcorner in London (Islington's nice; you can visit a quaint street market, buy tiny clams in a paper cone, and eat them raw with salt), breathe the pollution, and appreciate all of the scenic hundreds of DON'T DO THIS signs.
Me, ladies and gentlemen, I want that "lawless Wild West", he whimpered about, because -- in a way the 20th century has utterly failed to do -- it worked. A sociological study twenty years ago showed that in the third quarter of the 19th century in the "lawful mild East" -- Nantucket, I think it may have been (or is that just the limerick I'm remembering?). No, make it New Bedford, Mass. -- where hardly anybody had a gun and they suffered 140 murders in ten years and a proportionate number of other violent crimes. In Leadville, Colorado, by comparison, a town of similar size and composition, they had exactly zero murders because everyone had guns and knew how to use them.
Look at it this way: there were so few violent criminals in the American West that to this day we remember their individual names. Can you think of any famous eastern American criminals from the same period of history? If you can't, it isn't because they were so few of them.
As I write this, there's a big, heavy, large-caliber semiautomatic pistol lying on the desk beside my keyboard. (There's always a big, heavy, large-caliber semiautomatic pistol lying on my desk beside my keyboard.) I have a low-slung belt for it somewhere, and a western style holster. Why is it there, cluttering up my mouse-space? Partly I just love looking at the damned thing. Partly, it'll put a hole in an intruder I can throw a dog through. Partly, I know from experience that I can hit a man-sized target with it anywhere within a hundred yards.
If I live long enough to go to Mars, that heavy, large-caliber semiautomatic pistol, or something like it, is going with me, to slap my right thigh as I shuffle through the Martian desert looking for ... but that's another story, isn't it? One I'll write after I finish Ceres.
I'll be the crusty old-timer nobody can understand -- the oxygen helmet probably won't help -- who fills 'em full of bullets or laser holes or something whenever they try to set up an office for the Department of Agriculture or the Veteran's Administration. They won't hang me for it, though. I'll be backed up by other crusty old-timers who don't want to see the faintest trace of government besmirching the pristine surface of the Red Planet. A good thing, too, because getting hanged on Mars will be even more unpleasant than getting hanged on Earth, involving weights tied to your feet, or a big, complicated centrifuge, or a gallows three times as high and rope three times as long.
Somebody needs to tell Sir Smugly that individuals flock to a frontier because they want to get away from things like government. The great Freeman Dyson once observed that when we finally get out to the asteroids, the IRS will never be able to find us. It's true, sooner or later, the preachers and bankers and lawyers come along to spoil it all, but before that, our species gets to try out new ideas and reshape its way of life. Human progress gets made before the Roddy MacDowalls insinuate themselves and stifle it, and it's time to move on.
Finally there wasn't a place in the American West to move on to. But as Captain Kirk should have observed, space is the endless frontier. First the planets, then the stars, and eventually other galaxies. Which means perpetual human progress -- something that statists, authoritarians, and bureaucrats, suffering a sort of sociopolitical "motion sickness" Robert LeFevre first described, all fear.
But humanity needs to learn to live without government because it's killing them. Amnesty International tells us that, between war and other officially-sanctioned bloodlust, governments of every type possible murdered a quarter of a billion in the 20th century. It will be able, thanks to technology, to kill many more than that in the 21st century.
If I live that long, I plan on not being here.
How about you?
Three-time Prometheus Award-winner L. Neil Smith is the author of 23 books, including The American Zone, Forge of the Elders, Pallas, The Probability Broach, Hope (with Aaron Zelman), and his collection of articles and speeches, Lever Action, all of which may be purchased through his website "The Webley Page. Autographed copies may be had from the author at lneil@lneilsmith.com.
L. Neil Smith writes regular columns for The Libertarian Enterprise, Sierra Times RoadHouse, and for Rational Review
- Mike Blessing / Starship Trooper
The "Assault Weapons" Ban Must Die
Hi All -
I just joined this forum, and noticed this topic. I've been a Libertarian since Jan 1994. It seems as though a few of you here don't quite understand the libertarian gig. It's all based on what we call the Non-Aggression Principle (or Zero Aggression Principle, as some are calling it):
Consider how that applies to any social, political or economic issue to get the libertarian take on it.
And lines like these, well what can I say - I'll just keep on laughing:
"And the more people there are, the more laws, regulations, taboos and social structures that are needed to keep the most people free for the most amount of time. Both is important. Have either one or the other, and you're not really getting the point - like a modern republic or psuedo-democratic-monarchy."
"Basically, in order to generate maximum freedom for the maximum number of people, you need a partly-democratic, partly-autocratic, partly-socialist, partly-libertarianistic system. And capitalism can go to hell."
"The idea that you will "liberate" people by ending constraints on the power of the wealthy, what you will end with is an even more tyrannical system than we already have. Such an idea is like a toned down version of saying that we need to "liberate" the masses by making it legitimate to kill someone you don't like--and with almost all the guns in the hands of a few. The wealthy, with the end of social security, will be "liberated" from this "oppression", although the vast majority of the population may not feel quite as free. You might well get your wish, too--we've been generally on an economically "conservative" path for quite a while, ie, absurdly large military budgets, chipping away at social programs and civil liberties, probably at least since the Carter presidency. Of course, it accelerated under Reagan, but Carter was no liberal, either."
"What if through inaction, all are endangered?
The federal government cannot force anyone to do anything.
Fine, we are being threatened with imminent invasion, and all males 17-35 do not want to fight. What now?
I don't want to recycle my paint in an environmentaly sound way, I would rather dump it into the local water supply.
I like to yell fire in a crowded theater, what can you do legitamitley to stop me?
I don't like taxes, I ain't payin.
I like to drive on the left side of the road, against traffic. What are you going to do?
I think fire codes are silly. I am opening a chain of hotels, ignoring the fire codes, and building them out of straw. What are you going to do about it?"
__
- Mike Blessing / Starship Trooper
Socialism -> War
Free (Unregulated & Untaxed) Markets -> Peace
Taxation is the fuel of War
The "Assault Weapons" Ban Must Die
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