Tag Archives: Anarcho-Capitalism

Dystopian Visions: Orwell vs. Huxley?

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Aldous Huxley and George Orwell were two of the great prognosticators of the last century. Both men feared dystopian tyranny, albeit via different methods. At this point in history, who looks more correct?

In Huxley’s dystopian novel Brave New World, citizens are controlled by placating them. In Orwell’s 1984, the government controls citizens via constant oppression and mass surveillance. Both dystopian visions are fearful and ring true in today’s world although I’d give the slight edge to Huxley. Here’s a good summary on the competing dystopian visions from Neil Postman’s book, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business:

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared we would become a captive audience. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared that we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy.

As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.” In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate would ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.

(Read the rest via Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business)

Police State Update: Do Police Officers Lie?

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Police officers are widely viewed as honest public servants. Unfortunately, it turns out they lie under oath, possibly on a massive scale. Yes indeed, the police state is alive and well in the United States. Why do some police officers lie you may ask? Simple. First, they can get away with it. And second, they’re rewarded for it. Here’s more on the rising American police state from the New York Times:

…Peter Keane, a former San Francisco Police commissioner, wrote an article in The San Francisco Chronicle decrying a police culture that treats lying as the norm: “Police officer perjury in court to justify illegal dope searches is commonplace. One of the dirty little not-so-secret secrets of the criminal justice system is undercover narcotics officers intentionally lying under oath. It is a perversion of the American justice system that strikes directly at the rule of law. Yet it is the routine way of doing business in courtrooms everywhere in America.”

The New York City Police Department is not exempt from this critique. In 2011, hundreds of drug cases were dismissed after several police officers were accused of mishandling evidence. That year, Justice Gustin L. Reichbach of the State Supreme Court in Brooklyn condemned a widespread culture of lying and corruption in the department’s drug enforcement units. “I thought I was not naïve,” he said when announcing a guilty verdict involving a police detective who had planted crack cocaine on a pair of suspects. “But even this court was shocked, not only by the seeming pervasive scope of misconduct but even more distressingly by the seeming casualness by which such conduct is employed.”

(See the rest at the New York Times)

War on the Federal Reserve?

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The Federal Reserve is no good. Its money monopoly has wrecked havoc for 100 years. So, I welcome currency competition from Virginia, although I’d prefer it came from the free market. That said, the Federal Reserve will continue to dominate as long as legal tender laws are in full effect. Here’s more on the war on the Federal Reserve from Fox News:

Virginia is one step closer to breaking ties with the country’s monetary system.

A proposal to study whether the state should adopt its own currency is gaining traction in the state legislature from a number of lawmakers as well as conservative economists. The state House voted 65-32 earlier this week to approve the measure, and it will now go to the Senate.

While it’s unlikely that Virginia will be printing its own money any time soon, the move sheds light on the growing distrust surrounding the nation’s central bank. Four other states are considering similar proposals. In 2011, Utah passed a law that recognizes gold and silver coins issued by the federal government as tender and requires a study on adopting other forms of legal currency.

Virginia Republican Del. Robert Marshall told FoxNews.com Tuesday that his bill calls for creation of a 10-member commission that would determine the “need, means and schedule for establishing a metallic-based monetary unit.” Essentially, he wants to spend $20,000 on a study that could call for the state to return to a gold standard…

(See the rest at Fox News)

The End of the U.S. Postal Service?

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And so Saturday mail comes to an end. Is anyone really that surprised? No competition = No reason to innovate or improve service. Where’s Lysander Spooner when you need him?

Here’s more on the U.S. Postal Service ending Saturday deliveries at Fox News:

The U.S. Postal Service plans to announce Wednesday that it will end Saturday mail delivery, in one of the most significant steps taken to date to cut costs at the struggling agency.

A source familiar with the decision confirmed the plan to Fox News.

Under the proposal, the Postal Service will continue to deliver packages six days a week. The plan, which is aimed at saving about $2 billion, would start to take effect in August.

(See the rest at Fox News)

The Anti-Conspiracy Conspiracy Theory

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The Internet has given a voice to millions of people, allowing for a Golden Age of information that is unprecedented in history. But not everyone likes an unregulated marketplace of ideas. Is there a conspiracy to control the Internet and thus, rid the world of conspiracy theories?

The Conspiracy to Control the Internet?

The answer, at least in certain quarters, is yes. For several years now, various high-profile academics, government employees, and reporters have called for the U.S. government to control the Internet by regulating or assuming control over its information. But how does one control the Internet? Some people call for indirect measures. For example, Cass Sunstein, the current Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, once recommended that government agents go undercover on the Internet and raise doubts about conspiracy theories and the like.

Some individuals call for more direct measures to control the Internet. The other day, Evgeny Morozov published an article on Slate complaining about sites that “undermine scientific consensus, overturn well-established facts, and promote conspiracy theories.” He wants browsers to mark “disputed information” in red (danger alert!). He also suggests Google manipulate search results so people won’t be able to find “sites run by pseudoscientists and conspiracy theorists.”

Guerrilla Explorer’s Analysis

Wow.

Whenever someone wants to limit your options on what to think, look out. At the core of Morozov’s paranoia is the collectivist idea that individuals are incapable of thinking for themselves since they might arrive at so-called wrong conclusions. Thus, we need a guiding hand (presumably, belonging to the government) to help us sort out right from wrong. And to do that, government must control the Internet.

Of course it’s all bunk. Sometimes consensus science gets overturned, well-established facts get called into question, and conspiracy theories are shown to be true. That’s the brilliance of the Internet. It’s the greatest marketplace of ideas ever invented. We would be wise to keep it free.

You can read Morozov’s bizarre thoughts on government’s so-called responsibility to control the Internet here:

[The Internet] has been tremendously useful, giving us Wikipedia and Twitter. But it has also spawned thousands of sites that undermine scientific consensus, overturn well-established facts, and promote conspiracy theories. Meanwhile, the move toward social search may further insulate regular visitors to such sites; discovering even more links found by their equally paranoid friends will hardly enlighten them. Is it time for some kind of a quality control system?

People who deny global warming, oppose the Darwinian account of evolution, refuse to see the causal link between HIV and AIDS, and think that 9/11 was an inside job have put the Internet to great use. Initially, the Internet helped them find and recruit like-minded individuals and promote events and petitions favorable to their causes. However, as so much of our public life has shifted online, they have branched out into manipulating search engines, editing Wikipedia entries, harassing scientists who oppose whatever pet theory they happen to believe in, and amassing digitized scraps of “evidence” that they proudly present to potential recruits…

(See more on government’s so-called responsibility to control the Internet here)

The Drug War’s Strange Origins?

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Today, the Drug War is a part of American life, just like the War on Terror, the War on Poverty, and any other number of “Wars on Concepts.” But how did the Drug War originate?

The Origin’s of America’s Drug War?

Few people realize the Drug War is a very new invention, launched in 1914 with the highly-questionable Harrison Narcotics Tax Act. Here’s more on the dubious and racist origins of the Drug War from Jacob H. Huebert over at Lew Rockwell…

Bigotry and xenophobia were another major factor leading to drug prohibition. Chinese immigrants were partly responsible for spreading opium use in America, so prohibitionists found a receptive audience among whites who feared the prospect of their daughters being lured into the Chinaman’s opium den. Early anti-opium laws in western states explicitly discriminated against Chinese immigrants.

Absurd fears about cocaine-crazed blacks fueled support for cocaine prohibition. Dr. Hamilton Wright, the leading anti-drug crusader during the Theodore Roosevelt Administration, told Congress that cocaine “is often the direct incentive to the crime of rape by the Negroes,” despite a lack of evidence for this or even for the proposition that blacks used cocaine more than whites. Still, Southern Senators especially bought into the widespread myth that black men on cocaine essentially became crazed zombies who were – yes, some people believed this – invulnerable to .32 caliber bullets.

Professional and industry groups, most notably the American Pharmacological Association, also helped enact drug prohibition. Big pharmaceutical companies did not like competition from patent medications, and pharmacists did not like it that people other than themselves could sell drugs. Regulation of drug distribution, even if it imposed costs on pharmaceutical companies and pharmacists to some extent, could be worthwhile to them if they could bear the costs while their smaller, less diversified competitors could not.

(See the rest on the Drug War and its strange origins at Lew Rockwell)

The U.S. Postal War?

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In 1844, Lysander Spooner launched the American Letter Mail Company, a private alternative to the government-owned U.S. Postal Service. His young firm took the country by storm, leading to dramatic improvements in delivery time and vast decreases in postage costs. But the U.S. Postal Service didn’t appreciate the competition and fought to regain its monopoly. What was the U.S. Postal War?

The U.S. Post Office Monopoly?

Until 1844, the U.S. Post Office held a monopoly on mail delivery. Service was slow and rates were high.

“It cost 18 3/4 cents to send a letter from Boston to New York and 25 cents to send one all the way to Washington DC. A letter sent from Boston to Albany, NY written on a 1/4-ounce sheet of paper and carried by the Western Railroad, cost 2/3 as much as the freight charge for carrying a barrel of flour the same distance.” ~ Lucille J. Goodyear, Spooner vs. U.S. Postal System

Lysander Spooner Launches the U.S. Postal War

Lysander Spooner knew an opportunity when he saw one. Spooner was an individualist anarchist hailing from Massachusetts. Although partly motivated by profit, his true purpose was to “challenge the constitutionality of the postal monopoly.”

While the Articles of Confederation had empowered Congress with “the sole and exclusive right and power” of “establishing or regulating post offices,” the Constitution was far more vague on the matter. Article I, Section 8, Clause 7 of the U.S. Constitution empowered Congress “To establish Post Offices and postal roads.” But the document was silent on the matter of private competition. With this loophole in mind, Spooner organized his own company, which he called The American Letter Mail Company. And he wasted no time in advertising his new venture, which attacked the idea of a governmental postal monopoly head-on. In effect, he launched the U.S. Postal War.

“The American Letter Mail Company has established post offices in New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Boston, and will deliver letter daily from each city to the others – twice a day between New York and Philadelphia. Postage 6 1/4 cents per each half-ounce, payable in advance always. Stamps 20 for a dollar. Their purpose is to carry letters by the most rapid conveyances, and at the cheapest rates and to extend their operations (as fast as patronage will justify) over the principal routes of the country, so as to give the public the most extensive facilities for correspondence that can be afforded at a uniform rate.

The Company design also (if sustained by the public) is to thoroughly agitate the questions, and test the Constitutional right of the competition in the business of carrying letters – the ground on which they assert this right are published and for sale at the post offices in pamphlet form.” ~ New York Daily Tribune Advertisement

Spooner’s company and the U.S. Postal War caused considerable angst among politicians. The U.S. Post Office earned gigantic profits, but often reported losses. That was because the profits were distributed by politicians via patronage to politically connected groups, namely: “(1) coach contractors, (2) rail and steamboat companies, (3) postmasters, (4) publishers of printed matter, (5) officials with the franking privilege, and (6) rural voters.”

The U.S. government fought back in the U.S. Postal War, initiating lawsuits against Spooner. They threatened to jail him and pressured railroad operators to stop delivering his mail. But this proved unsuccessful and by 1845, the Post Office found itself rapidly losing business. The Postmaster General appealed to Congress and received permission to lower postage rates. Undeterred, Spooner lowered his own rates even further, causing even greater distress for politicians.

Alas, Spooner’s efforts and those of others like him (most notably James W. Hale), were in vain. In 1851, Congress lowered the postal rate to three cents per half-ounce letter and enacted laws giving the U.S. Post Office an effective monopoly over mail distribution. The U.S. Postal War was over. Spooner’s company was forced out of business and by 1860, private mail delivery was virtually eliminated in the United States.

Guerrilla Explorer’s Analysis

On December 5, 2011, the U.S. Postal Service announced “major budget and service cuts.” First-Class mail will take a day or two longer to deliver and stamps will rise one cent to $0.45. Despite those changes, the U.S. Post Office is expected to rack up a loss of $14.1 billion next year.

While the rise of email is certainly a factor here, a bigger problem is the postal monopoly itself. Government-enforced monopolies have little reason to cut costs, lower prices, or improve service. Perhaps it’s time we take a page from history and allow true private competition in the mail industry. Between 1845 and 1851, the U.S. Postal War launched by fromSpooner, Hale, and others forced the U.S. Postal Service to cut postage rates by 79%. At the same time, the U.S. Postal War led to service innovations, such as stamp prepayment and small-town intracity delivery. Is there another Lysander Spooner out there, waiting to reignite the U.S. Postal War? We can only hope.

The Debate that Rocked the World?

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It was the most important debate of its time, maybe of all time. It single-handedly changed the world and led to a “war” of monumental importance. So, what was this debate of ideas? The Lincoln-Douglas Debate? The Scopes Monkey Trial? No…it was the Socialist Economic Calculation Debate led by the esteemed Ludwig von Mises.

Ludwig von Mises & Economic Calculation?

By 1920, even ardent admirers of socialism (defined as a society in which the government owns the means of production) knew they had “an incentive problem.” A society where man was supposed to produce “according to his ability” yet only consume “according to his needs,” left that man little reason to work hard or perform unpleasant tasks. Socialists attempted to sidestep that problem by declaring that a socialist society would somehow cause people to become less selfish and more willing to work for the “greater good.”

Then in 1920, Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises published Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth. In the process he dropped a bomb on the heretofore unchallenged socialists and thus, launched the Socialist Economic Calculation Debate. As Murray Rothbard put it in The End of Socialism and the Calculation Debate Revisited:

“Mises in effect said: All right, suppose that the socialists have been able to create a mighty army of citizens all eager to do the bidding of their masters, the socialist planners. What exactly would those planners tell this army to do?” ~ Murray Rothbard

Ludwig von Mises didn’t bother with socialism’s problematic incentive issues. Instead, he argued that “rational economic calculation” couldn’t exist in a socialist economy. Since the government owned all productive resources, there were no market-generated prices. And without prices, it was impossible to know the best use for a piece of land or machinery. That made it impossible for central planners to make rational economic decisions.

The Socialists Strike Back

The socialists knew they had a problem. In fact, the problem was so serious that it vexed them for almost two decades. However, 16 years later, the so-called definitive response was published by the neoclassical economist Oskar Lange. Although he, along with Abba Lerner, acknowledged that prices were essential, Lange argued that they didn’t have to come from free markets. A Central Planning Board could tell “managers” of socialist companies to fix prices. These prices could then be adjusted by the managers via complicated equations and trial and error. Lange’s reply was widely applauded by his fellow Neoclassical economists and considered a damning refutation of Ludwig von Mises.

Around this time, Friedrich Hayek, a pupil of Ludwig von Mises, joined the debate. Hayek essentially conceded that Lange was correct in theory. However, he argued that the scheme was impossibly complicated and based on a “perfect world” that looked nothing like the real one. There was just too much information and too many equations that would need to be solved on a continuous basis. But Hayek’s arguments were largely dismissed by mainstream neoclassical economists as mere practical problems. And with that, the Austrian economists were considered defeated…at least for the moment.

“…there can hardly be any room for debate: of course, socialism can work. On this, Lange certainly is convincing. If this is the sole issue, however, one wonders whether at this stage such an elaborate theoretic demonstration is in order. After all, the Soviet planned economy has been operating for thirty years. Whatever else may be said of it, it has not broken down.” ~ Professor Abram Bergson, Socialist Economics

The Soviet Union Problem?

In 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed. And afterward, the grim reality of the situation in that country became apparent to the world. The Soviet Union had falsified its GNP and production numbers for decades. Its citizens lived in abject poverty. Black markets and bribery were rampant and indeed, these markets were often the only reason that basic needs were met.

So, who won the debate between the socialists and the Austrians? Well, Hayek’s criticisms of Lange’s theories were valid. But if these problems could be overcome, perhaps through computers, then it stands to reason that “market socialism” could work. However, if that’s the case, then why did the Soviet Union collapse?

Guerrilla Explorer’s Analysis

I would argue that neither Lange nor Hayek really won the debate. Instead, I’d give the honor to the economist who started it…Ludwig von Mises. Lange and his supporters were focused on proving that they could duplicate prices for consumer goods. Hayek agreed this was possible, at least on a theoretical level. But that was never Mises’s key problem with socialism.

The real problem with socialism isn’t finding prices for consumer goods. The real problem is finding prices for land, machinery, and other means of production. In a socialist economy there will be endless transactions of capital goods in which the government is both the buyer and the seller. Without real markets, there’s no way to determine the value of these things. This is, as Murray Rothbard put it, “where calculational chaos…reigns.”

Ironically, the only reason the Soviet Union lasted as long as it did was because of free markets. The Soviet Union wasn’t a pure socialist economy. Instead, it “borrowed” prices for its capital goods from nations with free economies. Without those prices, it would’ve never lasted as long as it did.

In the end, Ludwig von Mises won the debate. In fact, no one ever successfully challenged his original position. Instead, the Socialists seized on Hayek’s contention that market socialism was feasible, focused their attacks on him, and ignored the arguments posed by Ludwig von Mises. Today, the ideological battle between the Austrians and the socialists continues. While neither side has conceded, its difficult to imagine the socialists ever being able to counter the problems posed by the brilliant Ludwig von Mises.

How Wild was the Wild West?

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The “Wild West” is an expression used to refer to life in the western United States during the late 1800s. For decades, films and books have depicted the Wild West as a place of gunfights, outlaws, and mass disorder. But recent scholarship shows otherwise. It turns out that the Wild West may not have been so wild after all.

Was the Wild West a Powder Keg waiting to Explode?

The Wild West has long been a staple of American culture. Immortalized in dime novels and Hollywood movies, it has long been depicted as lawless, violent, and chaotic. And a cursory look at trends taking place in the American west during the 1800s would seem to confirm that image.

The Wild West was populated with strangers from various backgrounds, countries, and nationalities who wanted to get their hands on gold. For the most part, they didn’t intend to stay in the area – they wanted to get rich and get back home. Most individuals carried guns. And to top things off, there wasn’t much in the way of official government to keep the peace. At first glance, the Wild West appears to be a power keg filled with a toxic mixture of greed, racism, and unregulated firearms. To top it off, the area exhibited little in the way of long-term community or government law enforcement.

How Wild was the Wild West?

One might expect such a situation to lead to violence and daily gunfights. But a growing body of research suggests the opposite – that the Wild West may have actually been quite peaceful and prosperous. Let’s take a look at some of the strange truths we now know about the Wild West.

  • Bank robberies were rare: According to historian Larry Schweikart, bank robberies were almost non-existent in the Wild West. From 1859-1900, there were only about a dozen or so robberies. In fact, such crimes only became a problem during the 1920s when automobiles allowed for easy escapes and physical security became less important to a bank’s success due to the Federal Reserve assuming responsibility for the system.
  • Private agencies provided law and order: According to Terry Anderson and P.J. Hill’s book, An American Experiment in Anarcho-Capitalism: The Not So Wild, Wild West, “private agencies provided the necessary basis for an orderly society in which property was protected and conflicts were resolved.” Such agencies included land clubs, cattlemen’s associations, mining camps, and wagon trains.
  • Homicides were also relatively rare: In his book Cattle Towns, Robert Dykstra examined five major cattle towns between 1870 and 1885. He found that only forty-five murders took place over the fifteen years.

All this is not to say that hatred, violence, and murder didn’t exist during the Wild West but merely to say that the amounts of it that occurred were far less than has been portrayed in the popular media.

Why was the Wild West relatively Tame?

This can be partly credited to the establishment of private organizations. According to historian Tom Woods, private land clubs created their own laws to “define and protect property rights in land.” Wagon trains that transported people to the west had their own constitutions and judicial systems. Mining camps formed contracts to restrain their own behavior and developed their own legal systems. Those who didn’t approve were free to leave and mine elsewhere. Cattlemen’s associations also wrote constitutions and “hired private ‘protection agencies’ to deter cattle rustling.”

The result was peace…a peace that only began to deteriorate once formal government was introduced into the region…a peace that astounded observers of the time:

“Appeals were taken from one to the other, papers certified up or down and over, and recognized, criminals delivered and judgments accepted from one court by another, with a happy informality which it is pleasant to read of. And here we are confronted by an awkward fact: there was undoubtedly much less crime in the two years this arrangement lasted than in the two which followed the territorial organization and regular government.” ~ J.H. Beadle, Western Wilds (1860)

What about Violence toward the Plains Indians?

Now of course, this just covers the settlers themselves. Treatment of the Plains Indians was marked with violence right? Well, according to Woods, the first half of the 19th century was notable for relatively peaceful trading between the Indians and the settlers. It wasn’t until the second half of the century that violence became the norm. And much of that violence “sprang from…U.S. government policies” rather than civil society. More specifically, at the end of the Civil War, “white settlers and railroad corporations were able to socialize the costs of stealing Indian lands by using violence supplied by the U.S. Army.” In other words, rather than paying for land, politicians beginning with Abraham Lincoln were determined to seize it on behalf of the Union Pacific Railroad. In the process, they enriched themselves as well as numerous prominent American families.

Unfortunately, that seizure came at a high cost…the vicious and deliberate extermination of the Plains Indians by forces led by former Civil War generals. General William Sherman sometimes referred to the affair as “the final solution of the Indian problem.” As many as 45,000 Indians, including women and children, died between 1862-1890 as a result of this government-initiated campaign.

Guerrilla Explorer’s Analysis

So, it would appear that civil society in the Wild West was actually rather tame. The “wild” was supplied by the U.S. government’s so-called Indian Wars, which served to permanently alter the settlers’ once-friendly trading relationships with the Plains Indians.

But why does popular culture continue to portray the typical Wild West city as being full of death and violence? It turns out that the problem begins at the academic level.

“The ‘frontier-was-violent’ authors are not, for the most part, attempting to prove that the frontier was violent. Rather, they assume that it was violent and then proffer explanations for that alleged violence.” ~ Roger McGrath, Gunfighters, Highwaymen, and Vigilantes: Violence on the Frontier

Anarcho-capitalists often use the Wild West as an example of how individuals can foster a peaceful existence in the absence of government. Essentially, settlers created their own institutions in order to deal with the very specific problems they faced. Violence was relatively minimal in civil society. But the arrival of formal government brought with it a culture of violence as well as a wave of violent genocide that haunts us to this day.

 

Guerrilla Explorer’s Wild West Coverage