leftlibertarian.org

These are some thoughts that I posted at the Carnival of Anarchy

1. I am in total agreement that individual and small group acts of violence such as attentats, bombings and vandalism serve no purpose, either in advancing the cause of anarchism or social change. In fact, such actions only hold back social change, and anarchism, to this very moment, has to endure the caricature of the mad bomber, due to the actions of a tiny minority more than 100 years ago.

2. Ideally, social change would come about without violence, and our approach, whether one that encourages or discourages violence, does have an effect upon the amount of violence that occurs. But our responses are only one aspect of the situation. We do not control the playing field. History and culture are major determinants. A society with a long history of violence and little history of peaceful change will not be positive ground for a successful non-violent movement. How much support the ruling class has, how great the level of disintegration of the old order determines how peaceful change will be. Mass movements involving violence, but in a limited manner, such as mass insurrections, or dual power situations backed by armed groups, may be the inevitable form that social change takes in most situations. We have seen this recently in Mexico with the Zapatista Movement which began as an armed insurrection, and the Oaxaca Commune where a certain amount of defensive violence occurred. In both cases, they faced an opposition that would not hesitate to engage in massacre, yet the movements engaged in minimally violent response.

3. Hence, barring a situation like East Germany where even the ruling elite's supporters abandoned the state en-mass, it appears the most we can ask for is a minimization of violence during mass social change.

4. This does not mean that pacifists ought to be criticized for their total rejection of violence, or that they can not, and would not, play a significant role in a social revolution. Even a revolution entailing a great amount of violent conflict involves much action that is non-violent in nature. Think of the Cuban revolution where the Directorate engaged in urban guerilla warfare and the 26^th of July Movement fought in the mountains. General strikes – a non-violent method – were also used and were an important aspect in the overthrowing of the Batista dictatorship.

No issue is more contentious in labor relations than the Employee Free Choice Act. This bill, now pending in Congress, would require the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to recognize a union when "a majority of the employees in a unit appropriate for bargaining has signed valid authorizations." Under current federal law, an NLRB-supervised election must be held and a majority must vote by secret ballot for the union before it becomes government-certified. The union-backed EFCA would presumably make it easier to establish a union in a company, but opponents say worker intimidation would be encouraged with an open card-signing process versus a secret-ballot election. What should free-market advocates say about this controversy?

The rest of this week's TGIF column, "Labor's 'Right to a Free Market,'" is at the website of the Foundation for Economic Education.

Cross-posted at Liberty & Power.

The Economist magazine has joined most everyone else in at least partly blaming the Virginia Tech massacre on easy access to guns: "Had powerful guns not been available to him, the deranged Cho [Seung-hui] would have killed fewer people, and perhaps none at all." That sentiment is typical.

But it's flawed. If Cho had been unable to obtain handguns (doubtful given black-market sources), he might have bought shotguns and a hacksaw and produced far-more deadly sawed-off shotguns. Or he might have gone the Timothy McVeigh route and rigged up a bomb.

But let's assume Cho was not as determined to kill lots of people as he seems to have been. Let's say he could do no better than a knife or his fists. Let's say he was unable to kill anyone because guns were not easily available. Where does that leave us? It leaves us with a trail of dead bodies nonetheless.

Why? Because each year far more than 32 people save their own or other innocent lives with handguns. (See this.) So while the VT students might still be alive, many others might be dead who today are not.

I am not weighing one life against another, or saying that X lives are not as valuable as 2X lives. I am saying that when one does accounting, one should count everything.

The idea that one’s security can be ensured by an external authority underlies ridiculous ideas such as gun-free zones, which end up being free-crime zones. When the innocent have access to guns and take responsibility for security, things turn out differently — crime is stopped cold. In 2002 a suspended Appalachian School of Law student with a poor academic record entered the Virginia campus and opened fire, killing the dean, a professor, and a student. The gunman also wounded three others. When the shots rang out, two students, independently of each other, headed to their cars to retrieve their handguns. Those students confronted the killer, at which point he dropped his gun and was restrained by other students. Three deaths — not 32 killed.

Read the rest of this week's op-ed, "The Lesson of Virginia Tech," at The Future of Freedom Foundation website.

While it’s not a comprehensive answer in my opinion, we can find a good starting point in distinguishing agorism from anarcho-capitalism in this interview with SEK3:

Q: What are the main differences between left-libertarianism/agorism and anarcho-capitalism?

SEK3 - There are several ways of looking at this, from a theoretical view, from a strategic view, with left jargon, with right terminology, etc., but it’s a fair question.

In theory, those calling themselves anarcho-capitalists (I believe Jarrett Wollstein, in his defection from Objectivism, coined the term back in early 1968) do not differ drastically from agorists; both claim to want anarchy (statelessness, and we pretty much agree on the definition of the State as a monopoly of legitimized coercion, borrowed from Rand and reinforced by Rothbard). But the moment we apply the ideology to the real world (as the Marxoids say, “Actually Existing Capitalism” [2]) we diverge on several points immediately.

First and foremost, agorists stress the Entrepreneur, see non-statist Capitalists (in the sense of holders of capital, not necessary ideologically aware) as relatively neutral drone-like non-innovators, and pro-statist Capitalists as the main Evil in the political realm[3]. Hence our favorable outlook toward “conspiracy theory” fans, even when we think they’re misled or confused. As for the Workers and Peasants, we find them an embarrassing relic from a previous Age at best and look forward to the day that they will die out [1] from lack of market demand (hence my phrase, deliberately tweaking the Marxoids, “liquidation of the Proletariat”). One can sum that up in the vulgar phrase, “If the State had been abolished a century ago, we’d all have robots and summer homes in the Asteroid belt.”

The “Anarcho-capitalists” tend to conflate the Innovator (Entrepreneur) and Capitalist, much as the Marxoids and cruder collectivists do. (It’s interesting that the gradual victory of Austrian Economics, particularly in Europe, has led to some New Leftists at least to take our claim seriously that the Capitalist and Entrepreneur are very different classes requiring different analyses, and attempt to grapple with the problem [from their point of view] that creates for them.)

Agorists are strict Rothbardians, and, I would argue in this case, even more Rothbardian than Rothbard, who still had some of the older confusion in his thinking. But he was Misesian, and Mises made the original distinction between Innovators/Arbitrageurs and Capital-holders (i.e., mortgage-holders, coupon-clippers, financiers, worthless heirs, landlords, etc.). With the Market largely moving to the ‘net, it is becoming ever-more pure entrepreneurial, leaving the brick ‘n’ mortar “capitalist” behind.

But it is dealing with current politics and current defence where Agorists most strongly differ from “anarcho-capitalists.” A-caps generally (and they have lots of individual variation) believe in involvement with existing political parties (libertarian, Republican, even Democrat and Socialist, such as the Canadian NDP), and, in the extreme case, even support the Pentagon and U.S. Defense complex to fight communism (I wonder what their excuse is now?) until we somehow get to abolishing the State. Agorists, as you have undoubtedly picked up, are revolutionary; we don’t see the market triumphing without the collapse of the State and its ruling caste, and, as I point out in New Libertarian Manifesto, historically, they just don’t go without unleashing senseless violence on the usually peaceful revolutionaries who then defend themseelves.

My notes:
[1] It should be noted here that Konkin did not want workers themselves to literally die, but for the working class, in Marx’s words, to “abolish itself as a class”.
[2] For an excellent indictment of “actually existing capitalism” as a statist phenomenon (i.e. state tainted markets; property title fraudulently held by state allies, et cetera) rather than a free market , refer to Kevin Carson’s The Iron Fist Behind the Invisible Hand: Corporate Capitalism As a State-Guaranteed System of Privilege.
[3] Refer to New Left historian Gabriel Kolko’s work “The Triumph of Conservatism” and C. Wright Mills‘ work on power elite theory. Rothbard incorporated these into radical libertarian class theory deriving from the “industrial” or liberal class theory of Comte and Dunoyer. Konkin radically refined Rothbard’s work into agorist class theory.

Prediction: The biggest gains in the polls as a result of tonights Democratic debates will be made by Gravel over his relatively strong anti-war position, despite his marginalization by the mainstream media.

Courtesy of The Onion.

In an attempt to increase public support of whatever the fuck it is he thinks he’s doing, President Bush trotted out the same old whoop-de-do you’ve heard over and over at a solemn-yet-resolute speech attended by soldiers, or religious leaders, or firemen, or some mix of ethnic-looking people from one of those countries.

“We have to give this plan time to wop bop a loo bop, a wop bam boom, ah ah ting tang walla walla bing bang,” President Bush may as well have said. “May God [help/bless/save] the United States of America.”

LOL, and I actually did laugh out loud when I read that last part

Here's a two-part essay by Josiah Warren, from The Boston Investigator:

• Josiah Warren, On Mobs (Part 1 of 2)
• Josiah Warren, On Mobs (Part 2 of 2)

Other bits of interest from the Investigator in the early 1860s:

• Add labor activist John Farrel, of Pennsylvania and then Sonora, California, to the ranks of those promoting the work of Josiah Warren.
  
• And prepare yourself for more of Eliphalet Kimball (whose "Civilization—Anarchy" appears here and here.) Kimball turns out to have been fairly prolific, consistently entertaining, and, most significantly, he was unafraid to say that "Anarchy is a good word" in 1862, rather far ahead of the crowd. A New Hampshire physician, he seems to have had an organismic view of society, and as a result viewed the violence that would occur if all laws were eliminated as something like the expulsion from the body politic of "bad humors."
  

Once again, Brad Spangler puts into words what I think. This time he writes about impeachment and the (hopeful) end of empire (emphasis added by me):

Of course, it’s not just Bush and Cheney that need to go, but the whole damned government — any government. I see it as probably a necessary step, though, for events to play out this way. People have to bang their heads against the wall of impotent reformism until they’re too sore to do so any more. While those who aren’t anarchists will do what they believe they must, those of us who are need to keep making the point that Bush is not an aberration, but the culmination of the present system.

The Roman Empire had better and worse emperors at times also. It was doomed, though, because tyranny is fundamentally incompatible with our human nature as individuals. We can tolerate a large degree of it, but when it scales to larger and larger proportions, the cumulative social distortions eventually make the statist anthill non-viable.

First, an answer to Jim’s question on the last post. When a person files a petition for bankruptcy, he eventually must file an inventory of personal possessions and debts. It is from this inventory that the bankruptcy estate is created. The value of the estate is, in large part, whatever the petitioner says it is. The trustee’s main function is to ensure that the petitioner has not fudged the numbers too much. Creditors can also jump in to challenge really fraudulent assertions, but this is relatively rare as the cost of intervening outweigh the expected gains, and they just rely on the trustee to do their job for them.

In the specific case of a primary residence, the petitioner usually must present an appraisal by a certified appraiser. Of course, anyone who has ever dealt with a real estate appraiser understands just how much wiggle room there is in an appraised value (I’ve seen cases where one appraiser valued property at $70,000, while the opposing appraiser valued it at $7,000,000 – and both had plenty of evidence to back up their values!), so don’t think that there is some sort of exact science involved here. This is how the value of the house is added to the estate, not through an actual sale.

Now, the petitioner has some protections, in the form of exemptions up to certain amounts of equity in given types of assets. Some states, like Florida, have (or had, I’m not really up to date anymore, and since it’s tangential, I’m not going to hunt it down right now) massive exemptions for primary residences. Others have almost none. But the important thing to note is that only the equity a petitioner has in an asset is actually in the estate. If a house is worth $100,000, but there is a $99,000 mortgage on it, only $1,000 is considered as being in the estate. After that, the exemptions can be applied, and in most states, $1,000 equity in a primary residence will be exempted from the estate, leaving the homeowner in his house.

What happens is that any non-exempted value left in the bankruptcy estate will be liquidated for the benefit of the creditors. So, generally speaking, a petitioner will not file the bankruptcy unless he has an extremely low net worth in current assets.

All of which is a way of hopefully giving some context to the answer to the questions Jim asked. Hopefully, this context will help make sense out of my discussion regarding what will actually be the likely outcome in most of these cases: negotiation of a re-affirmation agreement with other creditors. Since the mortgage will no longer affect the net value of his residence, the exemptions will likely no longer kick in to keep the home out of the reach of the other creditors. So, the petitioner will enter into agreements with his other creditors to continue honoring these debts, which will mollify them into not pursuing remedies against the bankruptcy estate. This will allow the petitioner to retain his home, while providing some measure of relief to honest creditors at the same time.

As far as using bankruptcy petitioners as assets, I don’t think it will be a problem, given this context. The only people who can directly profit off of the liquidation of a bankruptcy estate are the creditors, and only to the amount of the debt outstanding. Now, there always exists an opportunity for slick dealing in a forced sale, but I’m not sure how to avoid that anymore than what we currently do. And, hopefully, it doesn’t go that far in most cases, given the re-affirmation agreements.

Now, to the part about securitization. The process itself consists of bundling mortgages together into a “pool”, and then selling off interests in the income stream generated by the loan payments received. The seller of these interests generally assumes the risks involved in collecting the loan payments: in other words, the buyer of the security receives his income regardless of whether the seller actually receives the loan payments.

First, some history. Mortgage securitization markets were a dream of Washington central planners following WW II. To this end, “a group of government and quasi-government agencies was created,” including Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, and Ginny Mae. Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are private corporations operating under government privilege (they are exempted from certain regulations that private banks are subjected to, among other things). Ginnie Mae is an actual government entity.

“At first, these agencies tried to buy and sell mortgages directly, but they succeeded primarily in buying mortgages, not selling them.” It wasn’t until the 1970s when Ginny Mae started securitizing federally guaranteed FHA and VA mortgages that the secondary market really formed. Thereafter, in 1981, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae jumped into the game (there is some confusion here, as it appears to me that Freddie Mac actually was a player, though relatively minor compared to Ginny Mae, before this).

By 1989, Ginny Mae accounted for 42 percent of the mortgage security market, Freddie Mac, 29 percent, and Fannie Mae, 25 percent, leaving only 4 percent for nominally private (not quasi(heh)-government) institutions. Since 1990, Freddie Mac’s and Fannie Mae’s outstanding guarantees have quadrupled. Currently, Freddie Mac indirectly provides financing for more than one in six homes in the U.S., while Fannie Mae provide indirect financing for better than one in five homes.

With that bit of history out of the way, what does all this mean for our little proposal? Well, first off, both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac explicitly disclaim any guarantee by the federal government when they sell their securities. And since these beneficiaries of government privilege are ultimately guaranteeing these securities themselves, we need do nothing but keep the government from doing anything to bail them out.

Ginny Mae, on the other hand, is an arm of the Federal government, but that’s just the beginning. Since they deal exclusively with federally guaranteed loans in the first place, I think this is a knot that’s probably best left ignored. It’s a minor part of the problem, and the fix will require changing myriad pieces of legislation and regulation. It’s unlikely to be a major part of the practical application of our proposal.

Which leaves us with the small percentage of mortgage backed securities that are created and sold by private entities. To the extent that they are merely securitizing loans that they themselves originated, there is no problem. They will only be in trouble if they were engaged in fractional reserve banking when they originated the loan.

The purchasers of these securities will likely get a bit of the short end of the stick through these processes. However, they entered into their transactions knowing (or should have known) that default risks are real. And the actual amount that they will lose that can be directly tied to our proposal is likely to be relatively minimal: they’re going to lose the vast majority of the value of their purchase when the market bellies up anyway. To put some concrete numbers on it, they’re likely to get 50 cents on the dollar, or less, under current bankruptcy schemes absent a bailout. Under our proposal, they’ll get anywhere from 0 to 49 cents on the dollar, depending on how much of the pool was originated from FRBs and how many homeowners in their pools go the route of bankruptcy. Regardless, the largest amount of their loss is likely to be directly attributable to the bubble created by the FRBs, not to our proposal. And, as I’ve said, from a purely utilitarian standpoint, I’d rather the holders of these securities lose their excess savings (which, according to Austrian Business Cycle Theory are likely to be the result of the increase in the money supply in the first place) than all these people lose their homes.

If I had a magic wand and could make all the losses fall on the FRBs, I would. But such is the nature of business cycles engendered by inflationary monetary policy that the losses will be so massive and pervasive that that is just not possible.

(please note, this post will be updated soon with links. For some reason my Word file that contained all the links I wanted to hyper-text is not opening right now)