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 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.