leftlibertarian.org

The P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act and indefinite detentions of enemy combatants are two of the many “tools”the government claims it needs to combat terrorism. Maybe they should pass a law having something to do with another tool - e-mail:

An Arabic-speaking FBI agent had requested information about a Jan. 5, 2000, Al Qaeda meeting in Malaysia, but the CIA never turned it over, The New Yorker reported.

The ambitious FBI detective, Ali Soufan, was so upset when he eventually got the information - after 9/11 - that he vomited.

Let’s get one thing straight: 9/11 happened not due to a lack of laws but due to a CIA and FBI who fucked it up. They had everything they needed and they botched it. Suck it up, but don’t make the us citizens pay for your mistakes.

And don’t patronize us by calling expansions of unchecked governmental authority “tools”. We know who the tools are.

1. Billy Beck lays it down. (though Churchill was certainly a POS, no matter whether he got this or that point right) For people that haven't had family living under "communism", it's hard to understand probably just how fucked it was. And the "cold war" was the excuse for the West to expand state power. In truth the world elite were running Leninism over there as an experiment to see how

Good lord, people. You have no idea what you could have been, what you could have accomplished in a free world. You'd think it was utopia, but only because we live in dystopia right now, that is: A world that was rationally designed to be terrible for you. You think it's not so bad 'cause you're used to it. That's what the people in Indonesia think too. "Oh those 18 hour days in the factory

A while back, my friend Matt directed me to an article about managing geeks.   I postedsomecomments on the ensuing thread which reflected my recent reading of Studies in Mutualist Political Economy as well as other left libertarian and mutualist thinkers.  Kevin Carson, the author of the aforementioned book, saw fit to draw attention to the conversation surrounding the original post, and even got the original contributors to respond.

It’s nice when you get acknowledged for thoughts you’ve had outside the narrow scope of your personal blog.  Thanks Kevin and Alexander!  And I’d like to also note that I now appreciate much more Cityzen Jane’s points about intrinsic enjoyment and motivation involved with geek work.  I think that makes our domain of technical competency exceptional only in the sense that geeks have not yet been “deskilled”.  Once management thinks they’ve found the “formula” for doing IT work, though, we’re in the same boat as most humans, striving to preserve the product of our labor.

Tags: geeks, managment

Anarchy: A Hard Sell

In one of my earlier posts, I commented on the barriers to the wider popular acceptance of anarchy. Most people doubt it’s achievability or pragmatism. To a certain extent, I sympathize: it’s difficult to model a world free of privilege and rulers in our minds. I can’t disagree with their suspicion that such an experience would hardly be recognizable devoid of such overbearing features as police, taxes, corporations, nation states, etc. As manipulative and constricting as these institutions are, they at least provide a structure on which to rely. And most people just want to live their fucking lives.

As an alternative to the never-ending snake oil sales of mainstream statist politics, there’s little anarchy can provide to fill that gap save theories and predictions. We want humanity to self-manage, organize in an unencumbered manner, and come up with solutions in a decentralized fashion. That necessarily precludes having “one plan” to rule them all. Accordingly, anarchy is often criticized as having no standard to which it can be held and fairly compared with other statist systems.

When people want answers to questions about how anarchy would look, we can’t assume the disingenuous confidence of statists. We feel dirty rambling on wide-eyed about grand plans, complex schemes, and utopian goals - as if somehow this time our leaders will finally get it right somehow. Anarchy rejects top down management as a less efficient way of running things by definition, and people are so used to being sold this magic bullet that they’ve come to rely on it.

Instead, anarchists prefer honesty: we can guess and extrapolate on available history and sociological evidence, but we don’t have a single prescriptive standard to which we would hold the world. We just don’t know for certain. Part of the appeal of anarchy is seeing what people would do once given the freedom. But there are no guarantees, and this rubs most people the wrong way. Having become accustomed to believing the promises of the state to provide justice, security, material well-being, etc. they see no alternative that inspires the same stability, however illusory these promises actually are.

There is also the history of anarchy to consider as well, not to mention a host of bad connotations. Anarchists have been dismissed or villified for precious little violence (think Haymarket and Seattle), Often people simply fill in the blanks we purposely leave empty, interpreting the philosphy to refer to “lawlessness” and “disorder”. I don’t consider such arguments from ignorance as necessarily bad faith, because anarchists should accept the quite minimal burden of declaring that for which we positively stand, rather than defining ourselves on purely negative terms.

Toward a Common Skepticism

That said, a need also exists to reframe the debate in such a way so that statism and anarchy are compared on fair and common principles. One part of our cultural struggle consists of convincing people to accept a new way of evaluating human organization. This places the value of the anarchist approach on its insights into the way humans behave socially in general, rather than comparing and contrasting only governments.

But anarchists have a lot of educating to do above beyond mere rhetorical precision. There’s no substitute for achieving the essential requirement of an open mind, responsive and considerate towards our proposals, assertions, and evidence, but we must have convincing proposals, assertions, and evidence. In a fairly constituted debate where the real questions are not buried under assumptions and prejudice, anarchists welcome the skeptical approach towards their theories.

A rational skepticism promotes the healthiest possible debate. Those who are skeptical towards anarchy do society a bigger favor than they realize: even if they’re not in favor of it, they’re engaging the question of what humans are like in the absence of management. This is the conversation that needs to be had, regardless of the terms or biases. How do humans innately organize? Is coercion in society avoidable?

I welcome skeptical approaches to politics. All parties concerned should be rigorous in bringing factual information to light and in being as explicit about their theoretical frameworks as possible. Skepticism and an evenhanded weighing of the evidence can be one common currency in exchanges between supporters and opponents of the state. Anarchists understand skepticism - it motivates our rejection of the state. We are skeptical of the state’s fundamental legitimacy as well as it’s pragmatic expediency.

Anarchists are skeptical towards the legitimacy of the state as an institution. Far from being opposed to law and order, anarchists simply seek a condition where states are held to the same moral and legal standards as individuals. While establishmentarians balk at the imagined violence and depravity of a world without government, anarchists point to the many wars states wage between themselves. If it is crime statists are worried about, anarchists point to the trillions of dollars the state siezes in taxes. I’ve heard anarchy decried as a “system” where the strong prey on the weak, but I hardly think you could institutionalize a better mechanism for that than our foreign policy.

Reaching a point of commonality on matters of principle is no easy task. Statists must contradict themselves often to maintain faith in government as a force for good, and so their principles will tend to be less unitary than the anarchists’. All this requires is a debate to be waged on an issue-by-issue basis, where an agreed upon social goal is identified and trends for and against state intervention are brought to bear.

Once a minimum set of commonly accepted axiomatic principles becomes clear, anarchists and statist can argue on purely pragmatic grounds, invoking evidence and appealing to inductive arguments. The key here is to properly isolate the criteria for accepting or rejecting a proposal. This requires charm. Reaching a point where good faith can be established in the conversation is crucial; supporters of goverment tend to self-identify with their nation-state, while opponents have a propensity for marginalization almost by definition.

Promoting Anarchy on Accessible Terms

So what’s the first step in initiating a fair and total discussion of the state? I believe in order to talk about abolishing politics, we need to find a metapolitics - some sort of organizational theory. This is similar to the guiding principles I talked about above, but it’s more fundamental to demonstrating the problem of the state.

Anarchism really does address these issues from a much more neutral stance, and we have something unique here to offer the typical government supporter. What is the natural condition of humans? Can they abolish coercion as a means for organizing socially? What parts of society work because of human nature, and what parts are created out of the threat of force?

Some sort of system articulating the range of human behavior and the dynamic forces within society is necessary. This will draw on history, psychology, and especially sociology. We must first establish that the human animal we are discussing is rational and has the capability for self rule. Then we can start to bring in evidence of successful anarchies. This evidence is not as plentiful as the evidence against (or for) states, but it can be used at the very least to cancel out typical defenses of government privlege and excess.

For instance, in a recent conversation in which my anarchic views were questioned, the conditions in Somalis were alleged to be evidence of the barbarism of anarchy. Instinctively I played defense against this assertion, pointing out how the violence we have heard of in the 90s was caused by the interference of outside states. However, once I actually looked into the conditions in Somalia, I was surprised to find evidence for my position:

Somalia is often cited as an example of a stateless society where chaos is the “rule” and warlords are aplenty.The BBC’s country profile of Somalia sums up this view as widely publicized by the mainstream media: “Somalia has been without an effective central government since President Siad Barre was overthrown in 1991. Fighting between rival warlords and an inability to deal with famine and disease led to the deaths of up to one million people.”

The first sentence is indeed true: when the president was driven out by opposing clans in 1991, the government disintegrated. The second sentence, however, depicts Somalia as a lawless country in disorder. As for disorder, Van Notten quotes authorities to the effect that Somalia’s telecommunications are the best in Africa, its herding economy is stronger than that of either of its neighbors, Kenya or Ethiopia, and that since the demise of the central government, the Somali shilling has become far more stable in world currency markets, while exports have quintupled.

The lesson here is to question statist framing of issues, and isolate the deeper questions at hand, such as “why do we assume Somalia is some sort of chaotic hellhole?” A similar issue is at play in Kevin Carson’s recent treatment of likely security conditions in an anarchy, where cooperative security is shown to be significantly more expensive than corporate protectorate hegemony when consumers are not held captive to the state. And a friend recently pointed to a study that people have a very difficult time making long term financial decisions about retirement, suggesting they are not sophisticated enough to organize themselves. However, if the public is not able to do this, what on earth makes anybody believe our governmental leaders can? And if you trust them, how the hell do you explain Social Security’s looming insolvency?

These issues on their typical statist terms involve important questions. They need to be addressed, but they’ve been composed to make certain assumptions about humans and reality. Our task is to decompose these questions so that the rightful skepticism of the rational thinker can be equally applied to both the way things are and the way things could be. Simply promoting thinking on a deeper level involves a creative, analytical process that informs our skepticism after all. Anarchists draw upon the best in humans - those qualities that justify self rule, even - when we attack statism on the deeper terms that are common to us all.

Tags: skepticism, somalia, security

Although I find it a great shame that the term "libertarianism" is virtually unknown in mainland Europe, this situation has some advantages too. Yesterday, I talked to this French guy who, after I told him that I'm a vegetarian, asked me if I was a leftist.

"Well, I guess that depends on what you mean by 'left', I'm a libertarian," was my answer.

"Oh, you're a liberal?"

"No, a libertarian."

"What's that?"

How was I going to answer this? I had a good shot at assuming that he's on the statist right because he goes to business school and a leftist who just found out that I'm a vegetarian would probably have reacted differently anyway.

"I want to reduce the size of the State in every regard," was finally my answer.

"Hey cool, me too!"

I then tried to find out how far I can take this.

"You know, I think many of today's problems result from people's ignorance of economics. It's all because of the triumph of state socialism."

"Cheers to that man, I like what you say!"

So, it turned out my assumptions about his politics were right. It also turned out that this guy believes Nicolas Sarkozy to be a real visionary but I wasn't in the mood to actually discuss libertarianism/anarchism anyway.

However, this got me thinking. If that guy weren't an über-statist, we could probably have discussed libertarianism in a very constructive and peaceful way. It usually happens that the people I talk to are aware of my antagonistic nature. As a result, they defend their completely wrong positions ad infinitum, just because they think discussing politics is a game they mustn't lose. So if I could communicate my antagonistic positions in a more sublte way, I could probably prevent open hostility towards my convictions for as much time as is needed to really hit their core belifes.

This, however, requires that I'm able to guess where other people stand politically. Once I can do that it is very easy to define my politics in such a way that they seem attractive to them, no matter if their politics are more on the left or more on the right, as long as they're not openly fascist.

Tell the rightist that you want to reduce the State's involvement in the economy, tell the leftist that you want to reduce poverty and you've already gained their respect.

Tags: Left, Right, Anarchism, Libertarianism

(Please note that my views have changed sinced this debate. While most of my points remain intact, I no longer believe in the power of government to solve a problem that is much bigger than what simple government programs can solve. Simply put, while most American liberals only want to treat the symptoms, I want to cure the disease).

Again, Brian's words are teal; mine are white.

Joey seems to think that spending more money of failed federal welfare programs is a solution to the social ills of society. In fact, he blames the failure of these programs on cutbacks by conservatives.... Many of these programs were failures before conservative cutbacks began with the election of a Republican Congress in 1994.

Actually, I specifically stated that the cutbacks began shortly after the programs were instituted, and have largely been executive, not legislative! President Johnson himself originally limited the scope of the War on Poverty programs to fund the Vietnam War (which, as I said, was his greatest failure). Still, they accomplished a lot during the approximately six years of his presidency. Then, more cutbacks were instituted during the Nixon and Ford administrations, with the Office of Economic Opportunity being abolished along with many of its programs to help people become financially independent and self-sufficient. The “Reaganomics” of the 80’s limited social uplift programs even more, coupled with their starving for the benefit of military buildup. George Bush Sr. actually did alright (for a Republican), and Clinton accomplished a lot for what he had to work with in Congress. By the time Republicans took over Congress with their counterfeit “Contract with America,” the War on Poverty had already been pushed to the side for three decades.

There are indeed plenty of success stories [from Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid]. Every day I'm around people who are walking and breathing and manipulating and enjoying everyday life because of their Medicare benefits. But, the perception is that there should be more. Many of the people where I work have worked hard all their lives and have earned their benefits. They are thankful for them. They are available to them, so they use them.

Good! I’m glad you agree.

The issue here isn't really the success of the program as much as it is the government's role in them. The Medicare ship is sinking. For someone my age, the age of recieving benefits is already moved back to 67 and may be as late as 69 by the time I'm ready to retire. This is not the result of the government conservative holding down spending. It's from the fact that the government can't afford to keep up the spending at its current levels.

It’s that the government can’t afford to keep spending in the current way--i.e., in war and all manner of defense excess, and kickbacks to defense contractors, for one. I acknowledge that the Medicare and Social Security systems are in need of revision--even Democrats know that (and I believe better personal health practices and medical advancements hold much of the answer). There are many factors in the age of benefits and the pool of potential recipients that have changed since the programs were instituted; the world is not static, and it is changing faster now than it ever has before. Average lifespan and healthy working age has increased. Baby boomers, the largest aging generation ever, are nearing retirement age and will live significantly longer than their parents. And, with the dynamic, democratic system we have by and for the benefit of all citizens, we can meet those challenges and transformations as they come; they may take creative solutions. People should be provided adequate health insurance by their employers, or pay for it themselves if they can afford it. But we should not entrust the health and very lives of American people, not just the elderly but the poor and the children of poor families, over to companies that have more interest in money than human life.

Over and again it has been demonstrated that if individuals had control of the money that the government takes through taxation, individuals would be further ahead, with greater funds available. This holds true for Social Security benefits also.

It has been demonstrated? When, and by whom? Does their money somehow multiply beyond what it is in the hands of the government for their benefit? Perhaps, for wealthy investors utilizing tax shelters and loopholes.

The solution is not to allow more money to go into government hands. It is to let people keep their money so they may better control their own health care and retirements.

How can people control their own health care and retirements when they can hardly even afford to live while they’re working?

I have to think that if people were given the opportunity to manage their own money all along, rather than the 15% picked from wage-earners' pockets for Social Security, and the additional filched through income taxes, even many of those needs would be greatly reduced.

How? How would I (a poor person) be better off keeping all of my as-of-yet insufficient income than giving, along with everyone else, to Social Security and income tax what comes back to me (with more) through the way those taxes are spent to ensure my welfare and increase my opportunities?

The issue comes down to who is responsible for me and my family and our care. In short, I am responsible for me and my family. Not Joey, Not George W. Bush, not Senator Lugar, not anyone but me.

So if we consider, say, a below-poverty-level inner-city child with a bleak future, you and I and all other Americans have nothing to do with him or her and no responsibilities towards his or her welfare and education, even though his or her parents can’t sufficiently provide for either? What about the fact that we are all in an interdependent web of social interaction and existence?

The track record is simple: socialism requires dictatorship. Whenever a free person is required to surrender what is his/hers, freely and legally earned, whether he wants to or not, it is either theft or dictatorship.

That is simply incorrect! I have given numerous examples of democratic socialism.

Places where socialism has been chosen democratically have also been places where it has been democratically rejected later - whether it is the U.K., Germany, and (by some counts) even Mexico.

That is highly inaccurate. Those countries have never been socialist. You’re merely observing the cultural ebb and flow of general liberalism vs. general conservativism--of center-left vs. center-right--that has taken place in those countries, as it has in our own. The U.K. government has now shifted to more to the left since the days of Margaret Thatcher, and the Germans’ popular opinion is back in favor of the Social Democratic Party.

The places you mentioned, "Norway, Sweden Denmark, Canada," have a mixed track record. They are certainly prosperous economically, but Canada just elected a right wing government.

How is economic prosperity and a high general standard of living a mixed track record? Canada did elect a conservative president; we’ll see how that plays out.

I admit that Stalinism is an extreme, but it is the natural outgrowth of Leninism, which is the largest manifestation of Marxism....[Stalinist dictatorial regimes].... These economic systems, in order to function as 'socialist states' have had to rely on dictatorship. It's not a red herring. It's the natural course of big government.

Marxism in its historical context was about the rise of the people to throw off the shackles of industrial overlords, which was part of the reason for the Russian Bolshevik Revolution. Lenin had some ideas which were at odds with Trotsky’s democratic ones, which were based on the writings of Marx, and Stalin later hijacked the whole Revolution. Stalinism is not equivalent with democratic socialism! I’ve given several examples of democratic socialist countries, which are by definition the antithesis of dictatorial countries.

I've been to many places where people work many hours and pull themselves out of the welfare trap. However, more often I've seen people who see their welfare benefits as their 'pay check'. I have taken food to homes and families where there lottery tickets and beer cans sitting on the coffee table. Just this past Sunday I was asked by a woman for assistance with food who had the audacity to ask for milk for her dog. I got food for her and her live-in boyfriend, but no milk for the dog.

But she, like so many others, is a victim of the trap. She has become dependent on assistance, with little or no incentive to get off the program.

First, conservatives aren’t the only ones to fight to make welfare more effective and efficient. Second, I believe that your idea of the welfare trap and lack of incentive to work is misguided. People don’t want to be on welfare; welfare is not a very good way to live and is not glamorous. Most people want more than that--they want more than just the needs of food and shelter and medicine (which is what welfare gives); they want to have an enjoyable life, to be able to buy the things they want, and, most importantly, to engage in something meaningful and contribute to society. Laziness is not created by welfare.

I’m intrigued by the idea of a living wage. The idea is that a small wage for simple living expenses is given to everyone. Everyone pays into it who makes wages, and everyone draws from it. Those who are well-off pay into it and get back from it regardless. But those who are unemployed and in lowing paying jobs and actually get more back than they pay into it have basic needs met, and opportunities provided to have and do and become more if they pursue it. We could also focus on whole communities and community programs. Top priorities would be affordable housing, better schools and social programs for the benefit of youth and adults to lift them out of the self-perpetuating system of ignorance and poverty.

You are correct instating there is a need for Head Start-type programs. But again, I have to ask if this is the government's job. Wouldn't the private sector be a much better avenue for this? Let free enterprise do it's thing. Even here in my little town of Roann we have two day care centers operated privately - no Head Start needed.

This is the debate between public and private education. If public education were to be abolished, who would pay for the education of poor children whose families can’t afford private school tuition? Should they simply not have access to education? It’s the same for a working-class or student single-mother who can’t afford day care. I’ve known mothers who were practically working just for their children to go to day care.

Regardless of the best method of social welfare, which is debatable, I believe the key in opportunity is education--with access to the right education, almost all people will want to be successful and find their place in human society.

Let me end with two quotes by an American from whom I draw a great deal of spiritual, political and personal insight, and whom you have said you admire as well:

“You can't talk about solving the economic problem of the Negro [or in this case, any of the very poor] without talking about billions of dollars. You can't talk about ending the slums without first saying profit must be taken out of slums. You're really tampering and getting on dangerous ground because you are messing with folk then. You are messing with captains of industry… Now this means that we are treading in difficult water, because it really means that we are saying that something is wrong…with capitalism… There must be a better distribution of wealth and maybe America must move toward a Democratic Socialism.”

“Communism forgets that life is individual. Capitalism forgets that life is social, and the kingdom of brotherhood is found neither in the thesis of communism nor the antithesis of capitalism but in a higher synthesis. It is found in a higher synthesis that combines the truths of both.”

-Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

I believe that it is towards the truths of both our personal drives and meaning and our interaction and mutuality as a human society that we will find the way for humanity to move forward to solve these problems. It will be a better society, not just for some people, but for everyone.

More of our discussion, and I believe it is getting deeper now to some of the underlying issues of both sides of the debate. Brian’s words are teal; mine are white.

I want to make one thing clear, which I think may be murky at this point. I am a Libertarian voter. I happen to vote Republican most of the time because of the lack of Libertarian candidates and (traditionally), Republicans have been advocates of a smaller/limited Federal government. The Libertarian Party's primary issue is that of very limited government and the freedom of persons to make decisions and govern themselves on their own. I am a social conservative on many issues (like abortion and gun control), I am also more liberal on others: I oppose the war in Iraq and I oppose capital punishment.

Just started a new project at work, and it looks pretty intense. I may not be blogging as regularly. I’ll try and write on the weekends at the very least.

On the upside, this will give me a great first hand look at organizational behavior in business. I don’t plan on drawing any immediate conclusions, but in particular I’m interested in the problems of large scale, centralized business operations. I’m hoping that this will give me a fair glimpse into a dynamic and powerful market player from which I can draw conclusions in the future. But in addition to on the job experience I want to consult some literature on the subject in order to better articulate the mechanisms in play.

The RSS feed for Radley Balko’s blog The Agitator is receiving the coveted 1st_priority tag in my Feedlounge.  He consistently cranks out some thoughtful writing - most often about vice crimes and paramilitary police activities, but he does venture into some other interesting areas.  For instance, he has been covering the sad and disturbing case of Cory Maye, and he reflects on why the mainstream media never got it:

The Associated Press wrote the story up the day happened, and again on the day of Maye’s conviction. Nobody thought to follow-up. And Prentiss, Mississippi actually made the front page of the New York Times in 2004. Part of that article touched on the Maye case, too. But the reporter who wrote it had come to the story from a decidedly different angle than I had, and I’d argue consequently missed the story because of it. That’s because the reporter, Fox Butterfield, found the Maye case while writing a larger story on how the drug trade was ravaging America’s rural communities. When that’s your angle, it isn’t suprising to see how you might fail to look skeptically at a story about a poor black kid on Death Row for shooting a white cop during a drug raid.I, on the other hand, came to the Maye case from a completely different perspective. I’m far more advocate than journalist. I was researching a paper critical of drug policing. I’m naturally skeptical of the drug war, and of drug policing in general. I’m less likely to take what cops and prosecutors say at face value. From that perspective, the case lept off the page at me, and practically begged me to do a bit more digging.

My point is that there’s nothing inherently wrong with coming at the news with a different perspective, or even with an agenda. In many cases, it can help get stories and trends that would otherwise be neglected some needed exposure. Blogs left and right — and soon, hopefully, the mainstream media — picked up the Maye case because it’s a great story, and it’s a horrible injustice. It doesn’t — and shouldn’t — matter that it first took a crazy-ass libertarian to recognize it as such.

I’m also excited about his new white paper on paramilitary police raids, which I’ve eagerly anticipated.  In his concurring opinion on Hudson v. Michigan, Justice Kennedy writes:

Today’s decision does not address any demonstrated pattern of knock-and-announce violations. If a widespread pattern of violations were shown, and particularly if those violations were committed against persons who lacked the means or voice to mount an effective protest, there would be reason for grave concern.

I believe Balko’s study will provide this evidence, but I also agree with him that the issue of knocking is only the tip of the iceberg.  The problem is the militarization of police in general, spurred on by the drug war.

If you don’t have time to read the paper (and if your name is Gon F.) then at least take a look at the map Balko has compiled, plotting incidents of botched police raids nationwide.  He includes details and groups by deaths, non-violent crimes, and more.  My heartfelt thanks to Mr. Balko for making this important issue a priority!  His work certainly boosts my opinion of Cato overall.

Tags: cory maye, cato, radley balko, paramilitary, police, mainstream media, supreme court