no third solution

Blogging about liberty, anarchy, economics and politics

Comments on Comments #21

July 20th, 2008

shiva left a comment on Violence and Vandalism are Not Solutions, I agreed with Mike Gogulski who said that vandalizing property is counterproductive to the cause of liberty. Mike said that it was possible that people were lawfully evicted from the properties to make way for condominium development, since de facto eviction occurs whenever a landlord simply refuses to extend or renew rental agreements.

And what if you believe that the only valid “ownership” of a house is living in it, and therefore that no one has the right to evict anyone?

Rentiers are parasites and oppressors just as much as government is. Rent is extortion with threats of violence just as much as tax is.

What I’m not saying is that the current situation is ideal, or necessarily legitimate. I imagine that a free market would provide vastly different alternatives than those which we currently enjoy. The market is perveted in the sense that there are (probably) more absentee owners enjoying greater market power than they would in a truly free market, I’m with you 100% on this, if I follow you correctly. But unless you can demonstrate how a free market would eliminate entirely the market for rental, I’d say your belief is not entirely well-thought out. Certainly we can imagine short- and medium-term rental agreements as valid and legitimate instances of non-owner tenancy, and of (somewhat) absentee ownership. At what point, then, does a rolling short-term rental agreement become ownership in-fact? The idea is preposterous.

Anyways, when did two wrongs start making things right? The facts remain the same: people associate these acts with lawlessness and disregard for the well-being of others (rightly or wrongly). As long as they think we’re a bunch of hooded hooligans and arsonists, throwing shit-bombs on people’s cars, they’ll never take the movement seriously.

We can play at this game a little: the tenants were arguably the (mostly) rightful owners. Except for the native Mexicans from whom the land was stolen to begin with, and probably a series of unfortunate thefts and misappropriations in between, in reality even their claim to ownership by tenancy is based on a seriously clouded title. About 90% of the status quo is entirely indefensible, and that includes any discussion of current property rights/ownership, since a great deal of such titles (or claims thereto) are necessarily clouded by prior government action, and/or dependent on the state for any semblance of validity.

Mike Gogulski responded late, that there are certainly many “claims of property today existing which are unjust and which should be rightly dissolved,” but that truth alone is not sufficient moral justification for vandalism.

I agree that landlords in many circumstances are parasites and oppressors, but so is just about everyone (to one degree or another) with whom we interact, on a daily basis: the librarian who checks out our books, the old lady across the street collecting social security without having paid a thin dime into it, labor unions in certain states that have pushed for (and gained) legislation that denies men the right to work, etc.None of these people are the problem, all these things are symptoms of the government disease. Strike the root, and the branches will die on their own.

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Jeff Molby left a comment on Why I’m Glad Player Piano is a Work of Fiction, it seems, taking Vonneguts dystopic assumptions to heart:

I asked about such a scenario recently. I don’t see much discussion about this, so I welcome the opportunity.

In the absence of a need for hard labor, would we toil nonetheless?

In the collective sense, there might not be a “need for hard labor”, but that’s not necessarily true in an individual sense. If the owners of the world’s capital have no incentive to satisfy the needs of the proletariat, — and aren’t charitable enough to do it anyway — the proletariat will have to find a way to satisfy its own needs, probably through hard labor.

Specifically, Jeff asks:

About a month ago, I wondered about the end game of robotics. Given the current direction of things, it seems apparent that we will eventually arrive at a time where there will be a market for only the very smartest of human beings. The cream of the cream of the crop, so to speak.

…Does that scenario not shoot a gaping hole in libertarian philosophy? In that case, would the means of efficient production rest in the hands of a relatively small group of people, thus necessitating either drastic socialism or mass starvation?

Jeff, this is an interesting topic for discussion. I think there are a lot of assumptions in these questions, and I fear I’d be doing you a disservice if I attempted to respond to you in this forum. If you’d like to do some brainstorming, send me an e-mail [ david AT nothirdsolution DOT com] discussing this in greater detail and I’d be happy to contribute.

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1955Design left a comment on All of Our Productivity is Wasted:

Although your point is well taken, I think that there is perhaps one intangible that you are not factoring in: boredom.

Even the most unusual behavior (i.e. leisure activity) becomes commonplace if repeated often enough. You can only shoot so many baskets, or drink so much coffee on the patio, or fly off to Lake Como so many times…before your leisure activity becomes commonplace. And boring.

Agreed, but I’m not sure I would conclude from this, that labor, for its own sake, is a part of the solution. Labor has always been primarily a means to an end, and not an end of itself. People don’t enjoy their leisure because the rest of their waking hours they’re stuck in a factory, although they are able to enjoy it, because of and in spite of that. As stupid as man can be, they can be equally creative. In the absence of a true need to work (in order to provide for sustenance and leisure) I’d sincerely hope that man’s creative side could come up with a better cure for boredom than sitting in a cube or rolling parts of an assembly line producing profits for someone else…

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Joe McHugh also left a comment on All of Our Productivity is Wasted:

I quit my 10k/mo job to trade currencies, stay at home and it’s working out great. There’s true value in what you’re talking about here.

Would that everyone could enjoy early retirement! And thanks for the compliment!

David Gross mentions it in his post, that he quit a $100K/year job and does contract work from home. Joe McHugh quit his $120K/year job to chill out max and relax all cool…

If you’re making that much money, even for a short amount of time, it is relatively easy to buy your way out with a fair amount of security. To the average person who’s making $30k or $40k, they simply don’t have (or can’t imagine having) the financial wherewithal to break out of the rut. If you’re making $100K and you’re not saving money, you’re an idiot. If you’re making $30K, you’re not saving money probably because there just isn’t any left over at the end of the month.

I don’t want this to be taken the wrong way, even reading this, no matter how carefully I try to word it, sounds like I’m saying “David and Joe are hypocrites.” Please accept that I’m not trying to say any such thing, because I mean no harm. If you’re making $100k+ you’re in a very, very small minority, but I’ve noticed this sort of comment elsewhere in the blogosphere, and just wanted to point out that anyone making that much money has opportunities that most people will never have.

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John Robb left a comment on Scrip Currency is a Recipe for Disaster:

The scrip solution is a way to ameliorate the impact of a debased/unabailable national currency. It catalyzes economic activity locally.

Also, it’s not forced but an alternative means of exchange. Participants can save in the national currency.

The problem with placing one’s savings in the national currency, as Robb unintentionally alluded to in the above passage, is that the currency is continually debased through inflation. But local scrip currency is continually debased further, through some other fiat. What’s the difference? Both types of currency lose value rapidly, and as such are ill-suited to be media of exchange in a free market.

If the currency is not “forced,” then how do we propose to start paying people in it, if they don’t want it. And why would they want it? What’s the point of an “alternative” currency that is both tied to the national currency you’re trying to avoid, and at the same time, objectively worse at providing the functions of money?

Here’s a way to ameliorate the impact of debased national currency: stop using it. I have no qualms about trying to catalyze local economic activity, but I think this needs to be done with a legitimate, specie-backed currency.

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In Comments #20, Jeff Molby says:

Close, but not quite. [The thrill of gambling is] based on the belief of a non-zero change (sic) at actually winning.

I say it’s based on a non-zero chance of winning; the game is otherwise rigged.

Jeff says “no, it’s based on the belief that one has a non-zero chance of winning.” I’m not sure there’s as sharp a distinction as Jeff would have us believe; the current system is set up in such a manner that encourages deception and borderline fraudulent behavior on behalf of those who issue lottery tickets, because they are a quasi-governmental agency and free from any meaningful competition. In any event, I think we’re largely debating semantics here, and I’d prefer not to get into a fight about something that’s really of little/no consequence, we seem to agree on the issue.

In a free market, good trumps evil and there is diminished capacity for lottery-holders to outright cheat their patrons. The goal of cheating customers is to earn super-normal profits, or to compensate for being a shitty businessperson. Arbitrage drives profit down to so-called normal rates of return and ensures that bad businessmen are driven from the market. Anyone who routinely sold lottery or raffled tickets with no chance of winning the prize (i.e., after the prize had been won) would find himself out of business rather quickly. In truth, I’m not convinced that lotteries are a profitable business model in a free market. Maybe lottery-like games, in Casino environments or something, and certainly lotteries in the charitable sense, but I’m having a hard time imagining Mega-Millions in a free market.

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Orville Seymer is back, commenting on What Could You Do With Allodial Title?

What “Allodial Title” means in my mind, is the state does not the right to regulate your private property. So in other words, all of the Zoning laws and other restrictions on your property are unconstitutional. Of course you would have to convince numerous Judges of this, which would be very difficult if not almost impossible and it would take bundles of money to pay the Attorneys.

Orville gave a nice little lesson in American History to boot. I’ve read more about Allodial title and its legal basis. Some people say that Allodial title is only granted by monarchs. If this is the case, then it’s as fraudulent as any other form of property ownership, except there are fewer bases to challenge it, and is therefore a more perfected title.

Mike Gogulski thinks that Allodial title is a dead end:

But wait… the state granted it? What the state granteth, surely the state can take away… and where does the state get the authority to issue title to land anyway?

If we’re to acquire just and legitimate freehold, it’ll have to be done some other way. Some way that doesn’t involve states. Unless I’m missing something essential here.

I’m inclined to agree. Really it comes down to, “what if the State grants an Allodium, and then later renegs on the deal. To whom do you turn for arbitration?” Good luck. You can’t fight City Hall, as they say. It’s a fun thought experiment, but like anything the State does, it can also do the opposite: it can protect your property, until it wants to sell it. It can protect you, until you’ve dissented too many times. It can feed you, or it can starve you.

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perlhaqr left a comment on an old post, If You Don’t Like it, Get the Fuck Out!

ut, usually the people I’m telling to get the fuck out are trying to take away some freedom of mine!

(Most recently, in “discussions” of the Heller ruling. People lamenting that it was so horrible and we were all going to die because of icky guns.)

And seriously. There’s well over a hundred other countries where the people can’t have guns. America is nearly unique in this regard. Leave me and my hobbies alone.

Well then, that’s an entirely different position altogether! Like I said, who are they to tell me to leave? If they’re so unhappy with my choices, or the choices I want to make, why don’t they find somewhere it’s easier to ignore/avoid me. And if you don’t like guns, like perlhaqr says, there are plenty of countries willing to accommodate your irrational fear of inanimate objects.

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Some people liked The Truth About What Anarchists Want, which was a response post to the generally propagandist criticism: anarchists just want to tear things apart.

Danielo says, “The ‘you’re just a nihilist’ argument is perhaps the most common assumption I run into, & your notes here are succinct and clear.”

Francois Tremblay comments, toungue-in-cheek, that “Anarchists don’t want to TEAR shit up, want to BURN shit up. Duh.” He also notes that, in his experience, far more Statists are nihilists than anarchists.

All of Our Productivity is Wasted

July 17th, 2008

There is some evidence that we’re making progress: working less, living longer, getting fatter. All this, to an extent and in certain context, appears true. I certainly won’t argue that the average life in 1870 was better than it is now (although none of us are really qualified to make that determination), and I think you really (and I mean really) have to go out on a limb to say that life was better in 1970 than it was in 2007. Reality just doesn’t play out that way. Most things we buy are better than they were then, many things we buy didn’t even exist a decade or so ago. All the stuff we have is better, or we have more of it. I often find myself reiterating: the true indicator of wealth in a society is an abundance of goods and services.

But are we that much better off with all these things? Do we really put the costs in perspective? I think we don’t.

Neglected, is the (mostly recent) prevalence of two principal income earners in a household. We might be working less, but there undoubtedly are more of us, doing more work.

I am also quite skeptical of the claim that the average person worked 700 hours more in 1970, than does the average person in 2007; that’s basically two full days of additional labor each week! Do the figures include commuting time? As we’ve become an increasingly suburban society, commute time has increased significantly. It’s not uncommon for people to spend an hour (or more) in the morning on the drive in to the office, and another hour (or more) in the evening, on the way home. This isn’t work, and it’s not a household chore, but it sure is a pain in the ass and it ought to count against something.

There is some crazy math going on here. Through technology and innovation, the average worker is several orders of magnitude more productive than he might’ve been a half-century hence, and a hundred times (or more) more productive than he was a century ago. We’ve got more more people doing more jobs, producing more things and still we’re working 40 or 50 or 60 hours a week.

And this doesn’t strike anybody as being just a little bit insane?

At The Picket Line, David Gross asks:

How does it make sense to spend extra hours at work to earn enough money to pay for a gym membership so you can lose the pounds you’ve put on from sitting in your desk chair all those extra hours at work? How does it make sense to work extra hours so you can afford a meal in a nice restaurant once in a while because you don’t have time after all those extra hours at work to shop and cook and do the dishes if you want to do it yourself?

…One measure of abundance is this: what percentage of your time and energy — what percentage of your life — are you spending on your own priorities and passions, and what percentage do you have to spend on priorities that contradict and oppose them. Now, by “your priorities” I don’t just mean “your own selfish interests” but your values, the things you think are worthwhile and important.

Has all of our stuff really made our leisure time so much more enjoyable than it was, that we’re willing to work more, for less? I doubt it. People work because they have to in order to enjoy their leisure (and to generally keep living). If they didn’t have to do it, it wouldn’t be called work. The “right” ratio is the smallest amount of work to the greatest amount of leisure. All else being equal, less work doesn’t make our lives less satisfying; the optimal amount of “work” is zero. As in none.

If you’re having difficulty following me here, (with apologies to “Fight Club”), repeat after me:

I am not my job. I am not how much money I have in the bank. I am not the car I drive. I am not the contents of my wallet. I am not my fucking khakis.

None of these things define us as a people, none of these things makes us better or worse human beings.

If money was no object, you’d be riding your horse somewhere, shooting hoops with your friends, hiking the Appalachian trail, reading poetry by a campfire, training for that marathon you’d always wanted to run but for which you could never find the time, learning how to play guitar, spending more time with your kids.

Even if you love your job, you’d never step foot in that fucking office again.

Discussing the concept of buying out at the bottom, Vinay Gupta gets to the heart of the matter:

The slack – the waste – in our old ways of life were consuming 90% of our productive labor to maintain.

A thousand dollar a month combined fuel bill is your life energy going down the drain because the place you live sucks your life way in waste heat, which is waste money, which is waste time. Your car, your house, the portion of your taxes which the Government spends on fuel, on electricity, on waste heat… all of the time you spent to earn that money is wasted…

Ninety-percent is probably a pretty accurate figure for most people, when you sum all the direct and indirect forms of taxes to which we’re subjected. Add up the State and Federal withholding. Add to that both “halves” of the OASDI/SS/Medicare. Don’t forget about property taxes. Literally, or figuratively, the rent that you pay to a landlord who took out a mortgage on your future. Gas taxes. Sin taxes. Telephone taxes. Add the invisible ones, too. Account for the inflation that destroys our savings, the costs of taxes and regulation borne by the businesses we patronize, passed on in the form of higher prices. There are a million fucking reasons why we’re working too hard, for too little.

For most people, 90% of their life is cannibalized by government. We can’t imagine living on just 10% or 20% of what we currently earn.

The irony is that we’re already doing it.

Comments #18

June 21st, 2008

Gilligans Corner has an interesting post: Gresham’s Law Only Works Because of State Violence. I like to see other people who recognize this as fact. I’ve been working on some comprehensive post(s) on money and banking in a free market, and I find that a lot of really smart people think that Gresham’s Law holds absolutely. The fact of the matter is that when exchange rates or not manufactured or manipulated by government, Gresham’s Law doesn’t come in to play. Gresham’s Law only applies in situations where people are legally obliged to accept the “bad money” on par with the “good money.”

If “bad money” trades at a discount to “good money,” nobody has any incentive to spend only the former while hoarding only the latter.

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I love Decrease Your Demand For Oil (We Want It!), posted at RollingDoughnut.

If you’re meeting with representatives from another country for talks on “economic coordination”, it’s a bit embarrassing to be criticizing a country’s “economic coordination”. Central planning is as central planning does.

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I was going to write a piece about the supreme court decision earlier this month which affirmed the right of habeas corpus among the detainees at Gitmo. But time passes by so quickly, and others have done as good a job as I could have done (or better). So instead, read Mike’s snippet, as well as his commentary on the British equivalent of the MCA.

Kip offers insightful commentary, as usual:

Congress tried to pretend that it didn’t really suspend habeas corpus when it passed the Military Commissions Act and the Detainee Treatment Act. Today the Court made the uncontroversial observation that of course Congress suspended habeas corpus when it passed the MCA…

[T]he law’s most draconian provisions:

It immunizes government officials for past war crimes; it cuts the United States off from its obligations under the Geneva Conventions; and it all but eliminates access to civilian courts for non-citizens — including permanent residents whose children are citizens — that the government, in its nearly unreviewable discretion, determines to be unlawful enemy combatants.

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Orville Seymer left a comment on Why You Can’t Buy Allodial Title, he suggests a book by John Cobin, Ph.D. :

If anyone is interested in the concept of “Allodial Title” I would recommend a very good book titled. Building Regulation, Market Alternatives and Allodial Policy” it is written by John M. Cobin Ph.D.

I have read this book about 5 times and everytime that I look at it again, I find something new in there. Amazing!!!

I would also suggest that you check your state Constitution. For example, the Wisconsin Constitution, Article 1 Section 14 says very clearly that “All land within the state is declared to be allodial and feudal tenures are prohibited” Your state may have a similar clause. There are about a dozen states with that language in their Constitution.

I suppose it doesn’t come as a surprise that Cobin is a George Mason graduate. I found a link to purchase a PDF version of the book for $5.95.

Anyways, back to Seymer’s comments. I imagine that many states have a provision like that of Wisconsin, however I’ve heard of states (e.g., New York) which have rescinded that section in whole or in part, because they determined that Allodial title is an antiquated notion.

Any constitutional provision quickly becomes “antiquated” when the governnment unilaterally decides to stop respecting it. Allodial title is “antiquated” becaues the government stopped respecting it! According to the wikipedia entry on Allodial title,

[I]n the United States most lands are not allodial, as evidenced by the existence of property taxes

Fee simple is the highest form of ownership that any individual may generally attain in the United States. In the United States individuals cannot acquire Allodial title, because under what is essentially martial law, the Federal Government has declared itself owner of all lands, through the issuance of a Land Patent drafted and deemed sufficient by its own agents. The same Government which declares itself the rightful owner of all lands, is the arbiter who ultimately determines that you or I can’t own those lands.

I’ll have a more detailed post on the topic of Allodial title in the near future.

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In Reader Mail #56, FSK asks in regards to Comments #17:

David Z calculated that owning a car costs him $7k+ per year. Is he including just gas? Don’t forget depreciation of the car also! Also include the loss if you had invested that $7k elsewhere!

D’oh! I was including gasoline + insurance premiums + lease payment + regularly scheduled maintenance. I committed a serious error by overlooking opportunity cost, and to a lesser extent, depreciation, but since I lease the car, I’m not really worried about the latter. If the car depreciates more than anticipated, the dealer eats the loss. If it depreciates less, I can exercise my purchase option and trade it in for the higher value.

Right now, there is a lot of shake-up in the Auto industry because the sale prices of used trucks (especially trucks) is far lower than anyone anticipated, and this is making it harder to sell new trucks. I anticipated it, last summer in a discussion with a former Chrysler executive who shall remain nameless, I voiced the following concern:

Manufacturers have been flooding the market with deeply-discounted trucks, or promo-rates on leases with little or nothing down. When those leases all begin to expire at about the same time, there will be a glut of used trucks in relatively good condition on the market, this glut should tend to force prices downward.

Said Chrysler exec dismissed my objection as folly. This is exactly what’s happening right now. What the hell did I know? I was a 26-year old attending the new-employee orientation program; I wasn’t trying to show him up, but I get the feeling that he took my question personally.

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I received a handful of comments on Trial by Jury. My previous posts on jury nullification have been popular.

Kip says, responding more to Lysander Spooner (or my endorsement thereof) than to me, directly:

Well, I enjoy a flamboyant line as much as the next writer, but I can quite frankly think of several “clearer principles of English or American constitutional law” than jury nullification.

And if one is going to go back to 1215, then let’s, um, go back to 1215: Laws from unelected monarchs, no lifetime-appointment of judges, no right to free counsel, no concept of judicial review, no appellate court structure to speak of, etc.

Times change.

To a point, I agree. Spooner’s argument is well-thought and appears well-researched. It is not necessarily a clear principle, although as Spooner demonstrates, can be derived from man’s natural rights, which are unaffected by the changing times.

The principle is not necessarily “jury nullification,” but rather the idea that individual jurors have the moral right to determine not only the facts of the case, but also the propriety (or impropriety) of the law. Spooner’s thesis is pretty strong: the idea of jury trials goes back to the “laws from unelected monarchs” against which the Magna Carta was implemented.

Perhaps we should review Spooner’s argument:

Many of these bills of rights also assert the natural right of all men to protect their property — that is, to protect it against the government. It would be unnecessary and silly indeed to assert, in a constitution of government, the natural right of individuals to protect their property against thieves and robbers.

The idea of a jury trial as set forth in the Magna Carta, one would assume, rests on a jury of peers and not a jury of the king’s men, since the latter having been the status quo, would’ve been a pointless addendum. It’s unlikely that those trying to factually depose an unelected monarch would’ve allowed him to retain his judge & jury robes.

On this note, Franc comments:

I am reading a book about the English justice system. Interestingly, juries were first started by the English kings, and they were mostly composed of the king’s men. People were so scared of juries that they would rather die than go on a trial with jury (if they died, their estate would go to their family: if they were executed, as juries always found you guilty, your estate would go to the king).

Mike says that the idea behind jury nullification is to

prevent the government’s constituting a jury of its own partisans or friends; in other words, to prevent the government’s packing a jury, with a view to maintain its own laws, and accomplish its own purposes.

Spooner, astonishingly enough, agrees:

…If the government may decide who may, and who may not, be jurors, it will of course select only its partisans, and those friendly to its measures. It may not only prescribe who may, and who may not, be eligible to be drawn as jurors; but it may also question each person drawn as a juror, as to his sentiments in regard to the particular law involved in each trial, before suffering him to be sworn on the panel; and exclude him if he be found unfavorable to the maintenance of such a law.

This brings us full circle to the Magna Carta.

Really the idea behind jury nullification is that the whole jury will return a “not guilty” verdict. This is a daunting task, primarily because most people are idiots, and they are at least initially and outwardly, perfectly willing to apply an unjust law, despite the fact that this may eventually be the cause of some emotional distress. People return verdicts because they want to get the hell out of the courtroom, and back to their normal routines, or because they don’t want to keep 11 other people away from their normal routines. In doing so, they cut corners, they rationalize the arguments pro or con, in short, the verdicts are returned based not entirely on the facts of the case. People do a great many things which they would not otherwise do, when the State is pointing a gun at them.

As a principle, jury nullification per Spooner (and to a lesser extent, Balko) depends on a panel of learned jurors willing to defy an unjust law in a corrupt system. Returning a null verdict is a daunting task, because it requires that at least one juror have the intellectual and moral fortitude to sway the rest of the jurors. In practice, the result of an attempt to nullify is usually a single juror who won’t partake in a mockery of justice, and the net result is that the accused winds up going before another jury, none of whom are willing to defy the system.

I read most of Spooner’s Trial by Jury in the last few days, there is a lot of material there to mull over, and I anticipate another full-length post on the topic some time in the future.

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