Market Anarchist Carnival: March edition

Welcome to the carnival! Every month, market anarchist blogs contribute a collection of thoughts and ideas about how much the government sucks and how much better markets are. I’m hosting it this month, so let’s get started:

Leveraging Activism by Dave from No Third Solution

This submission makes an observation about the way that activists go about pursuing their goals. Most of them tend to try to preserve the environment via government, when government is actually a barrier to the preservation of nature. If they could be shown the inherently violent nature of government based solutions, perhaps they’ll start using other means of preservation, such as market based mechanisms.

“But you support the State by your own actions!” By Francois from Check Your Premises

Francois fights back at the people who say “if you don’t like it, leave”, by arguing that anarchists not only have nowhere else to go, but they want to stay and change the societies they live in. He correctly points out that it is not hypocritical to speak out against an evil while refusing to leave its place of origin.

It’s almost like we’re expected to accept the state of things and never to push for real change. I’m sure most people understand that as time goes by, better ways of doing things are discovered, so obviously there must be room for change!

The Nature of the Beasts By Eric Sundwall

Eric points out the stupidity of “public utility” ideas, where supposedly anything that provides an ‘everyday necessity’ to the public at large can be a public utility. So even though many people don’t use public water services, public cable TV channels, public landline telecommunications, they ‘should’ still pay the government to do it anyway.

All we seem to hear are irrelevant arguments about how much money the “big evil corporations” are making, with little care for the greedy tax mongers who just create an increased taxation burden for everybody. He also links to some interesting Mises articles about price gouging and ‘proper regulation’.

Finally, my own submission  is just below this post: There is a difference between society and government

I believe the next edition will be over at The Radical Libertarian, so that concludes this months market anarchist carnival and I hope you found it interesting.

There is a difference between society and government

When I see people arguing about what they think the government should do, I often see them talking about how “society should do x”. In this post, I’d like to just point out that society is not the same as government. I often see people saying stuff like “WE should help the poor”, but then go and propose more government taxes on everybody else.

This is not really any different to somebody saying ”I want to have a drink”, but then going and robbing the corner store. Nobody is going to dispute the fact that you want a drink, but they are going to dispute the fact that you are now allowed to go and steal a drink.  Likewise, the fact that you claim to care about the plight of the poor does not justify your subsequent theft of other people’s money.

My main opposition to socialised programs is the use of force. I think that if we want to help people, we should be doing this for the right reasons. We should help other people because we want to, not because we’ll get shot if we don’t. Call me weird, but I think there can be such a thing as a society that doesn’t have a government.

So what are red light cameras supposed to save again?

Ok it’s been ages since my last post, just thought I’d relay on an interesting article: So What If No Lives are Saved? At Least Revenue is Increased! by Wilt Alston

So, red-light running was not a growing problem in Florida and they account for a tiny percentage of Florida’s annual traffic fatalities. Yet, the commission thinks cameras will help, well, something, and furthermore has the unmitigated gall to suggest that if the cameras don’t “work” they’ll just take them down. Call me crazy, but I bet that somewhere in the minutes of the Commission’s meeting, someone presented an estimate of the revenue from one of these cameras. There is one and only one condition under which these cameras and/or the ordinance that supports them will be rescinded: if there’s no money flowing in as a result.

How much chance is there of that?