I’m trustworthy, but someone better keep an eye on that guy!

http://anarchyinyourhead.com/2009/06/24/top-10-causes-of-minarchism-8/

The guy who does this comic is a champion, check out his site

Single mother fined $2.4 million for ‘pirating’ 24 songs

Jammie Thomas-Rasset fined $2.4 million for pirating 24 songs in RIAA Kazaa case

Music pirate fined $2.4m

This is a clear example of rent seeking caused by state provision of intellectual property. I think those record companies are just using state provision of IP to try and hold on to their profit margins without actually doing innovative work to provide a service for their customers. Notice how the technology for creating music and producing the actual CD has become so much cheaper and more accessible over the last 10-15 years, but the prices haven’t dropped that much? That’s because the state grants monopoly protections to these record companies. It has the effect of restricting competition in the business, so that these record companies and associations have free rein to go and bully people. The legal system is set up in such a way that it is very expensive, which once again favours these corporations at the expense of average people.

A much better way to conduct business is where the company/artist tries to actually connect with the consumer and give them a reason to want to pay for a product. Look at Trent Reznor for example, the case study link is actually a very interesting video, I highly recommend watching it.

Michael Masnick The Trent Reznor case study
Trent Reznor To Fans: “Steal, Steal and Steal Some More”

Even if you do accept (I personally don’t) that Intellectual property is a valid form of property right, how is a fine of $2.4 million justified for ’stealing’ items that would sell in the store for about $50?

This is what a Police State looks like

“Damn Rich people and their Scrooge McDuck Vaults!”

One piece of ‘common wisdom’ that I’d like to dispel here is the idea that the rich need to be taxed heavily so that the rest of society can prosper. I think it’s missing the point. To understand the reasoning behind this, I think we have to look at where the money of the rich is invested. The money of the rich does not sit in a Scrooge McDuck vault somewhere, never to be seen again. It is overwhelmingly invested in capital goods and this money is also the source of income for many other people (it pays for their jobs). So it both supplies the goods they buy, and is where the demand for their labour comes from. Yes, economic inequality exists, but if it is the result of economic freedom, then it will be a positive overall because it is what allows real wages to rise and standard of living to improve.

But with this said, let me be clear about what I support and what I don’t support – I don’t support the idea that politically connected people can just get some type of sweetheart deal from the government to get rich or maintain their wealth in some type of fundamentally immoral way. Some examples of people who are only rich because of government violence include: people who just get rich from owning intellectual property, people who are only in business because of government subsidies, and people whose businesses only exist thanks to government regulation (many accounting/law firms will fit this description).

What I do support is people using their creativity, originality, motivation and leadership to create a product that other people voluntarily choose to purchase or support. These are the people who have gotten rich in an ‘honest’ fashion and they are to be commended and highly respected for this, not taxed into oblivion.

It’s not my debt

Here’s an interesting video concept:

I like the idea, although in a sense it is slightly misguided. In the video it seems as though they are suggesting that if you are over 18, it is your debt (because you can vote), which I don’t necessarily agree with. Those people who are over 18 still shouldn’t have to pay that debt because if you have the option to vote but choose not to, then you aren’t really obligated to pay the overwhelming debt. 

There’s also a more nitpicky sense in which it’s not entirely correct to suggest that “we are shifting the costs to our children” because the money is not spent in the future, it is spent by the state now and therefore stops somebody else spending that dollar. The myth of deficit financing–shifting costs to our children. 

What deficit financing does do is create a wealth transfer from future taxpayers to future government bondholders. When the bills come due, some of our children and grandchildren will, through higher taxes, have their income coercively transferred to others of our children, those who hold the debt.

Still, the point that it’s wrong to coercively take money from other people stands. What we have now, is a situation where the rich politically connected people are being subsidised by everybody else. They just say things to make us believe that these bailouts are necessary “otherwise the costs down the track will be even greater”, but that’s just either them lying or being misinformed – new companies sprout up where old ones died down, new uses for those resources and new jobs for the employees are found. That is, as long as you allow the process to happen.

The Nirvana fallacy

The Nirvana fallacy is a logical error committed by people who compare the actual world with ‘perfect’ alternatives. People who commit the fallacy often present a false dichotomy by suggesting unrealistic or even impossible ‘alternatives’. 

These days it is common to see people who say that more regulation is needed to combat the problem of imperfect markets. By having increased government regulation it is claimed that somehow the government bureaucrat will have the knowledge to see the problem ahead of time and know exactly what is going on. The problem with this is that having such perfect information is impossible. The way the market works is such that people who believe the company is not solvent should be inclined to take an action such as sell stocks, short sell stocks or purchase put options (these actions generally have the effect of depressing the stock price). So short selling regulations and restrictions are not a good idea, because they are effectively blocking the signals that markets give. 

We can’t even assume that the government is omnibenevolent, since it is very often open to corruption within, as well as being subject to undue influence from special interest groups. Individual departments can easily request more funds than they genuinely need, the best solution may be shunned in favour of political expediency, and government employment can be susceptible to nepotism. Insiders can often game the system anyway. Look at Bernard Madoff, who worked with the SEC, and managed to evade detection by the SEC for years and years – and he was running a multi billion dollar scam!

We don’t have the option of utopia (government that is omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent), we only have the option of real world solutions.

How could you be so heartless

In the words of Kanye West, “How could you be so heartless?”. A common misconception is that libertarian/market anarchist people are “cold-hearted” because they don’t believe in the idea of a welfare state (including but not limited to government provided unemployment benefits, socialised health care, aged pension). It would be more correct to say that I disagree with your method for helping people, I’m not necessarily saying we shouldn’t help people who are worse off than ourselves. 

It wouldn’t be fair to call it “generosity” when you’re just talking about what should be done with other people’s money against their will. Generosity is only relevant when looking at how much each individual person gives from their own property. The government wastes money/resources because it doesn’t have to compete for our taxation funds, it just coerces the money out of us. A privately run organisation is much more likely to direct the funds into better programs for those people who need assistance, because they are competing for donations. This allows market mechanisms such as price signalling  to operate, which helps determine whether resources are being used productively or not. 

Being against government welfare is not being heartless, it’s simply a matter of believing that there is a better solution.

Not that kind of anarchist

The word ‘anarchy’ has changed over time, so much so that people have come to associate it with lawlessness, and the lack of rules. It is not uncommon for people to think of anarchists as a bunch of wild young males all wearing black clothes, sporting spiky haircuts, spray painting the red anarchist symbol and throwing stones in windows. This is not the type of anarchist I am. I believe in the philosophy of having society based on voluntary interactions and agreements, as opposed to coercive measures. I’m not a “storm the government palace” type of person, I’m just looking to change the way people think in a civil fashion, by talking about things.

I reject the idea that might makes right, and I support living in a system with rules and laws in place. It’s just that there should be no people with the power to rule over other people and use coercive force to steal from them or make them behave in a certain fashion. To determine the rules, I support the idea of decentrally determined rules, which means polycentric law as opposed to government monopolistic law. 

It is because of the corruption of the word ‘anarchy’, that I sometimes opt for a less inflammatory term, such as “Voluntaryist”. Doing this allows me to explain the idea without the barrier of false preconceptions about what anarchy truly is. I identify with anarchism (in the peaceful sense) because of philosophical reasons, not out of some desire to rage against the establishment.

Intellectual Property doesn’t necessarily protect the artist

It seems to me that many people support the idea of IP (intellectual property) because they think it functions to protect the artist (including music and literary artists here) of the work, but I think this is actually not all that common. Generally when a person is unknown to the public, they often end up signing all their rights away to some type of company such as a publisher or record company. This artist ends up at the mercy of their recording company/publisher, and they don’t necessarily get paid all that well, unless they’re true superstars of their artform. If their recording company doesn’t want to promote their music, they’re not really able to do much about that.

So is this suggesting that good artists should not be rewarded for their efforts? Not at all, good artists are rewarded in the marketplace by people who want to ensure that they keep producing more. Many bands and singers make lots of their money from live performances, and they don’t actually make all that much out of CD sales because of the recording company’s cut as well as other costs involved. There are even artists who take a “screw the record labels” position and tell their fans to download their music, such as Trent Reznor of NIN. Here’s a really interesting article about how there are some artists who are now embracing the internet as a way of cutting out the middleman: Trent Reznor: Take my music, please. In the past, it would have been much harder to promote your band/music as a nobody, but now with the internet and websites like youtube, if you produce something that people like, it’s very easy to distribute your music and promote yourself as an artist. Here’s another related blog post at mises.org: Authors: Beware of Copyright.

All of this IP monopolising is only possible with the state’s violent imposition on people who don’t have contractual agreements with each other to not reproduce ideas or use ideas. Compare this with the open source and free market method of computer software, which promotes scientific growth. Plenty of the technology used to access the internet is open source in some way, or IP was not sought over it, and we are much better off for it. The guys behind one of the first popular types of web browser (NCSA Mosaic) could well have changed history if they had instead tried to patent the concept of “a web browser”, and forced everyone else to pay through the nose everytime they used the internet? Where would the world be now if they had the money and desire to use the state ‘protections’ for monopolising intellectual concepts? 

In the true free market, artists will find many ways to be rewarded for their efforts, whether that is through voluntary donations, being the first one out with a product, live shows or something else. IP isn’t necessary for artists to make a living, IP is only necessary for entertainment industry middlemen to make cash at society’s expense.

Politics is a game

Democracy and politics are nothing but a game played by politicians, most of them don’t actually have underlying core values, they just pretend that they do. This is evident in the lack of consistency in the application of their ideas, the constant flip-flopping of positions, as well as the over emphasis on public image and appearance. 

Just look at the billions of dollars being handed out as “bailout money” to firms that are politically connected. They are not more deserving of this money than the people who are paying for it via taxation. But then suddenly, once AIG started paying out some of the bonuses it was contracted to pay out, this made people unhappy because now the people who were partly responsible for the crisis were getting rewarded handsomely for it. Never mind the fact that as a percentage of the overall bailout money, the bonuses make up a tiny percentage.

So now the politicians are all running around trying to look “angry at AIG” for paying out the money it was contracted to pay, and looking at ways to just tax that specific money back. The politicians are crying nothing but crocodile tears, it was the politicians who gave them this money in the first place. The politicians were the ones who made this possible, via the sick game called democracy. No wonder individuals and businesses are reluctant to carry out any major investments, it’s because they don’t know who it will become politically expedient to persecute. The politicians, in their impartial and farsighted wisdom may decide to come after anyone by either nationalising a business, or passing unfavourable and restrictive regulation.

I’m sure there are many politicians who don’t actually believe that drugs should be illegal, they just hold this as their political opinion to score points with the voters for looking “tough on crime”. They’re perfectly happy to see millions of dollars poured into “The War on Drugs”, and for thousands of people to sit in jails for victimless crime, so long as it is politically expedient.  Do they spare a thought for the many families that get ruined or the people who lose their livelihoods? Or what about the people who get caught up in an endless cycle of jail and recidivism because nobody will hire them thanks to their criminal record? 

You could look at the way Obama ran for US President by being deliberately ambiguous and relying heavily on positive imagery and uplifting rhetoric to carry the day. He had millions eating out of the palm of his hand, as if somehow the hopes and dreams of millions could overturn immutable laws of nature and economics (eg. scarcity, the fact that we have finite resources on Earth). Obama ran a campaign of “change”, but exactly how much has changed since he got into office? The US government is still running massive deficits, the empire is still expanding and pursuing it’s foreign interventionist policy, the federal reserve continues to devalue the USD, as well as Wall st firms and other related financial insiders still receiving bailout money. So, you tell me, where’s the ‘change’ ? 

The underlying problem here is not just the individual politicians responsible for bailouts and so on, it is with democracy. I think too many people just give democracy a free pass and believe that “democracy is more stable”, when really, it isn’t. There is no such thing as “stability under democracy”, only the illusion of it.