Our Enemy, Centralized Power

Before I knew I was a libertarian, I knew that I delighted in asking questions. Usually the questions that others left to the dust mite kingdoms. Liberalism is the pattern of thinking that questions the status quo. Do we need to be ruled by bosses at every level of society? Or is there room for me to be the boss of me? Do I need the State to tell me what food I can eat, and whose dietary recommendations I can pay for? Do I need the State to tell me which tour guide I can use? Do I need the State to tell me which hair braiding professional I can use? The scientists, political analysts, cable news anchors, environmental inspectors, licensing writers, corn and sugar lobbyists are all establishment thinkers. At its root, they say, there are no problems with this world. I say nay, the problems are legion.

When I was a young warthog, I loved studying George Orwell's 1984 and watching JRR Tolkien's Lord of The Rings trilogy. Their fiction novels have been fodder for the edacious readers of the English language, as well as the wide-scale consumption of the reading laity. Listening to revisionist historian Jeff Riggenbach's podcasts on Erik Blair (George Orwell) and J.R.R. Tolkien told me why I was a party to this feast. Authority and power are wielded by people, with the same flesh and blood as us, who believe us too incompetent or evil to manage our own affairs. The banner of Liberalism contains people who, at differing degrees, say "no, I want to manage my own affairs." For some this leads to opposition to State invasion of social affairs. For others this leads to opposition to State invasion of economic affairs. For the globally conscious, this leads to opposition to State invasion of international affairs. For the anarchist, this leads to opposition to State invasion in all affairs.

When I read 1984 and watched the Lord of the Rings trilogy, I was in the first and third platoons of Liberalism mentioned above. I opposed State invasion of social affairs, and international affairs. Now I am more consistently against State invasion. Orwell, were he alive, would stand with Eric Snowden's whistle-blowing of the NSA's global peeping Tom network. Orwell criticizes centralization of authority and power. The State's invasion could not occur without the centralization of power. Tolkien is also an enemy of centralized power. There are 19 rings, and one ring to rule them all. Whomever wields the one ring gains power over the rest of the world. Anyone who uses the ring will eventually become corrupt. If that is not a kritik of using the State, I don't know what is. I believe that my reasons for smiling through these stories were sundry. But, the struggle of the protagonists against centralized power was subconsciously pushing me to empathy, and I believe it did the same to you.

Please take the time to listen to the two podcasts highlighted in yellow above, and come to your own conclusions on these two literary behemoths.

Furthermore, we must end the State.


Post Scriptum:

Whatever theses authors' specific policy prescriptions may have been, they held their convictions through principled thought. Tom Woods Jr. recently wrote a piece on Sweetie-Pie Libertarians. Though Orwell and Tolkien may have never called themselves natural rights libertarians, their opposition to centralized power aligns them with the libertarians that believe in natural rights, and against the sweetie-pies. The sweetie-pie, or utilitarian, or pragmatic libertarians lack the passion of the natural rights variety. Murray Rothbard asks the question that is telling of where you stand, Do You Hate the State? An incendiary passion to change the world, because the world is engraved with centralized power, is a yes to this question. The beauty of Orwell and Tolkien lies in this passion. Do you have it?

The State is the Health of the Corporation

It had been awhile since I had ventured into the club scene. This Independence Day holiday weekend changed that. Some songs you hear have a classic ignorance about them summed in Aaron McGruder's The Boondocks series as "booty, butt, cheeks, booty butt, booty butt, booty butt cheeks". This brand was indubitably in attendance. But, the most wretchedly worldly brand of ignorance is corporate capitalism induced obsession, and nigh idolatry of, luxury items' names.

Listen to this song and be the judge.

Drake says Versace 12 times in his bars. Quavo chants Versace with an imagined bobbing head and Cheshire smile, 18 times on the hook. Quavo then says Versace 7 times in his verse portion. The hook plays again. Takeoff plays the moderate card and only glorifies Versace 5 times. Then you hear the Quavo 18 again. Offset then finishes the song with an even more humble 4 mentions of Versace.

Versace, Gucci, Nike, Ferrari, Lamborghini, Tesla, Louis Vuitton, Mercedes-Benz et cetera, would be atomized in a freed market. A freed market is incompatible with the status quo of corporate capitalism. There are key institutional privileges granted to corporations in the status quo that bar us from true freedom. One of these is the State harassment, threatening, bludgeoning, stealing, and kidnapping done to people selling products of their labor that emulate others' ideas. Corporations cower behind the State privileges of patents and copyrights. These two devils shield corporations from the free competition that would spread the wealth more evenly in society. Anarchist writer Jeremy Weiland says we should "Let the free market eat the rich!"

A patent is a State gifted privilege of dominion over a combination of preexisting quarks, neutrons, and protons. A person asks the State, the monopoly of goons with guns, to steal from or incarcerate competitors emulating her combination of preexisting particles. A copyright is a State gifted privilege of dominion over a combination of words, beats, software et cetera. A person asks the State, the monopoly of goons with guns, to steal from or incarcerate competitors emulating her combination of ideas.* Who wins? The State and the corporation. The State wins whenever demand for it is either increasing or staying the same. To end the State, we must reduce demand for the State. Godwilling, to zero. The corporation wins whenever it is permitted its artificial reign by the State. The current reign of the corporation is impossible without the violence of the State against decentralized local producers emulating ideas. The corporation, as we know it, would collapse if we abolished patents and copyrights. Who would arise? At the expense of the corporate capitalists, the proletariat and bourgeoisie would arise. The countless jobless would find gainful employment, and use their numbers to shred the corporations whose life support of the State vanished. Long live the rEVOLution.

Furthermore, we must end the State.

Post Scriptum:

*If I am being repetitive, it is because the blunders of the State are repetitive. And I want you to feel that.

Who is the Bandit?

William Rouse, of Los Angeles Yellow Cab, is a liar.

I have values which I would change for no one. The first immovable value is to have immovable values. Cornell West identifies the passion youth have for him and Ron Paul, two outliers of the philosophical spectrum, as being rooted in constancy and integrity. Both West and Paul have moral codes that they strive to apply consistently to sundry issues they speak about. Kudos. There are unjust and just views when it comes to politics. Not all dogs go to heaven. I won't spite you for holding an unjust view, if you are putting in rigorous effort to apply it consistently.* Lies however, are inexcusable. If it smells like a duck, quacks like a duck, and a panel of scientists identify it as a duck, I'm going to call it a duck.

William Duck, uh... William Rouse is a liar.

I don't have enough fingers and toes to count how many industries the State invades at each level of its  cleptocratic hierarchy. Let's zoom in to the State's branch in Los Angeles, CA. Uber, Lyft, and Sidecar want to serve consumers looking for alternatives to the taxi cabs granted the State privileges of licenses, bureaucratic guidelines, and monopoly. These companies dared to help consumers with the State's privileges intact. God bless them. In response, William Rouse and his ilk, are calling for the State to prevent these companies from helping consumers. Unfortunately for these companies and their consumers, the State has more goons and more guns.

This is a small taste of what the State does every moment of its existence. It cannot exist without feeding. It feeds on funds collected at gun point, it feeds on the desires of groups seeking State privilege, and it feeds on invading the voluntary exchanges of humans. I have known this for awhile. And yet, I still get ornery when I read the words of a man beseeching the State to steal accusing his victims of theft.

William Rouse is a liar.

He says

Not only are these high-tech bandit cabs unsafe, they are breaking regulatory standards and disenfranchising safe, legal drivers.  

I won't lose sleep if you see the State as omnibenevolent, and think it should be the sole provider of taxi permits. I won't lose sleep if you deem Uber, Lyft, and Sidecar unsafe. I won't lose sleep if you feel suburban security in the State privileged taxi cabs. I won't lose sleep if regulatory standards titillate you to the point of losing sleep and standing on street corners passing them out for free, so that we the people can read them. But, a thief calling a victim a thief is an injustice worth opening the window and screaming for.

Uber, Lyft, and Sidecar are NOT bandits. They don't use guns to coerce consumers to purchase their services. Their consumers volunteer their funds in exchange for these companies' services. William Rouse, and anyone like him or with him, is a bandit. He asks people with guns to threaten producers into halting production of their services. Why? He has a monopoly, and monopolists hate free competition. Free competition decimates oversized, overcharging, hierarchical corporations. Free competition favors decentralized and localized production, because the costs of production gets reduced. Small businesses would chomp the State-made big businesses in a freed market.

William Rouse is a liar and a bandit.

Furthermore, we must end the State.


Post Scriptum:
here is the article from which LA Weekly exposed this to me

shoutout to my fellow Rugger and Libertarian Amir for showing me this article

*On this point, I would like to direct you to one of my favorite quotes by the late revisionist historian, Austrian Economist, and State iconoclast Murray Rothbard.

It is no crime to be ignorant of economics, which is, after all, a specialized discipline and one that most people consider to be a 'dismal science.' But it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in this state of ignorance.

Equalize Unequal Contracts

Let's say you have an AK-47 aimed and loaded at my gray matter. I am seated at a blank white table, in a blank white room without windows. You are standing on both feet, and the nosel of your piece is giving me an Eskimo kiss. Your comrade slides 50 sheets of paper and a red pen my way. "Sign here, there, and yonder" you say. I stab my scribblings in the allotted areas with the madness of Mikami from Death Note. Is this an equal contract?

Kevin Carson sees many

credit card agreements, telephone service plans, website terms of service

as being neutered mirrors of my example above. He calls us to first rid our minds of the notion that these contracts, and the authority behind them, in the current corporatist statist quo should be respected. The next step is to put on a wildact unionist hat, and have at it. If there are any ordinances or obligations you were coerced into accepting on paper, do your best to be a guerrilla against them. If you can disobey them outright, do so. If you must do so behind an overlord's back, do so. If you disagree with a rule, but deem it dangerous to defy, then begin an anonymous online protest or petition.

Don't sleep. Be free.

Furthermore, we must end the State.


Post Scriptum:

Here is Kevin Carson's writing
Here is James Tuttle reading aloud Kevin Carson's writing

A small anecdote. I once had a job that required me not to spit. There was no way I was bound to respect that preposterous bureaucratic hoop. Along with friends, and even alone, I would delight in spitting to and fro. It is not to be a contrarian that I did this. It was because I generate a lot of saliva, and the rule was totalitarian to the root. Radicals beget radicals.

Eschew Evil, Vote on Measures

"I chose her as the lesser of two evils". "I prefer the devil I know to the devil that I don't know". These mantras are morally bereft, overapplied, and reveal the layers of sloth wrapping Maria Doe's grey matter. Don't be caught in emulation.

If both candidates are evil, select neither. You are duty bound to role play Paul Revere, and reveal the malice the candidates would commit if granted the monopoly on force. The second one has a more simple solution. Don't deal with devils. Ron Paul, Rand Paul, Justin Amash, and Dennis Kucinich are the only statesmen today that I could even think about voting for. Kucinich folded when Obama asked him to vote yay on the Affordable Care Act. Rand and Amash, have folded on the issue of Israel. Ron Paul never folded. Now that he has left the game, it is unconscionable to vote for candidates. I vote for measures.

Local politics is a drag show of Republicrats deciding what to do with funds they have stolen, and plan to steal. There is no politician of worth in my perenially lusted after habitat of Los Angeles. I will leave their kind's bubbles as blank as works without faith. Let the ratiocination continue.

City of Los Angeles Measures
C) RESOLUTION TO SUPPORT CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT REGARDING LIMITS ON POLITICAL CAMPAIGN SPENDING AND RIGHTS OF CORPORATIONS.

I vote no. I hate corporations. They are subsidized by our sovietized roads, disparate theft collection, and gun-point-prohibition of small scale producers. This is unjust. Our stomachs shouldn't churdle, because corporations lobby the State. Our stomach's should churdle, because the State has fresh pickings to offer corporations. The State produces nothing. We are its pickings.

D) MEDICAL MARIJUANA REGULATION AND TAXATION. LIMIT NUMBER OF BUSINESSES TO APPROXIMATELY 135 THAT OPERATED SINCE SEPTEMBER 2007 AND REGISTERED, IF THEY MEET OTHER REQUIREMENTS AND OPERATIONAL STANDARDS. EXEMPT DWELLINGS OF THREE OR FEWER PATIENTS/CAREGIVERS CULTIVATING MEDICAL MARIJUANA FOR THEIR PATIENTS OR THEMSELVES FROM REGULATION. INCREASE TAXES ON MEDICAL MARIJUANA BUSINESSES.

I vote no. Do the scales of justice balance perfectly on September of 2007 A.D., or the number 135? Does the State have one perfect software program for adminstrating marijuana in the mutual aid sector of the economy? Has taxation suddenly stopped being theft?

Measures E & F are reformulations of Measure D. Trust me, or do your own research. I vote no on both. Voting, and saying why on the internets, are a part of the just darg.

Furthermore, we must end the State.

Consensual Exchange Breeds Empathy

The antiwar, or positively pro-peace, movement is still alive. The Old Left, the Old Right, and the Libertarian writers at antiwar.com help stoke brushfires of peace in the minds of men. Last Sunday, after church, I had the supreme delight of attending an antiwar event. It was hosted by downtown L.A.'s ever vibrant The Last Book Store. The Last Book Store is a bastion of words, radical authors, and local artists. If I may digress, their upstairs area alone has over 100,000 books each for the price of 1 Federal Reserve Note. Go there, and buy books. The Nation Institute writing fellow, prolific peacenik, and documentarian Jeremy Scahill was giving a talk on his new book Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield. Also, the subsequent documentary similarly entitled Dirty Wars.

His work illuminates the darkness that Obama, and his administration, would like to shroud our eyes in. Scahill's flashlight on the State reveals an indiscriminate murderer of women and children. He shows that the so-called cleanly and targeted assassinations of Al-Qaeda "leaders", are verily dirty and international-treaty-breaking cluster bombs of unknown tribesmen. His qualitative research is legion. He tells us stories of people who had never even heard of America or the Pacific Ocean, but now want to see its decimation. This is the sad conflation of country and the State. The actions of the State bear blowback on the people in our country. The entirety of many Yemeni experiences are summed in the wanton explosion and dismemberment of neighbors, parents, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, siblings, and grandparents. Imagine if Chinese troops severed the heads of your family members in broad daylight. Then imagine that these forces claim to be the victims, when you retaliate. Please, let the word empathy hover in your mind. How would you feel?

I am reminded of the pejorative use of the term isolationist. Often against, the greatest statesman that has ever lived, Doctor Ronald Paul. Warmongers slam their war drums with the grace of an inebriated Tasmanian Devil. The terms they propagate are inconsistent. What does left mean? What does right mean? Especially, when both survive by ceding power to perennial warfare and State cheese. Early 20th century writer Randolph Bourne tells no lie when he says

war is the health of the State.

An isolationist would prevent, prohibit, encumber, restrict, hamper, impede, or invade the consensual exchange betwixt people from sundry global neighborhoods. Republicrats promulgate policies of this flair all the time. The peacenik should promulgate more consensual exchange, never less. We don't want to be insulated or isolated from our sistren in Yemen. We want to get to know our sister, and see what mutual aid she may join us in. Ron Paul calls this position noninterventionism. That is a slimsy, flaccid, and disemboweled symbol for this idea. If we must use negation, we should call it noninvasionism. When the State hampers consensual exchange, the State is committing an invasion. When speaking affirmatively of our foreign policy concerns, we should say we want peace and prosperity.

Furthermore, we must end the State.


Post Scriptum:

Radio host Scott Horton has lovely discussions with guests on this subject often. Check out this interview with Jeremy Scahill. Peep his whole archive.

Alabaman Land Theft

If you hear the phrase "for the public interest", or "common good", scram immediately. These are euphemisms that aggressive people use to mask their theft, or propose theft. Eminent domain is the confiscation of land for supposedly public good. The privileged corporate goons that thrive of this theft never have the gumption to take it outright. Instead they hire a middleman, whom retains the monopoly of security production within arbitrarily drawn borders. Our enemy, the State.

The Institute for Justice dares to enter the home of the State, and spit at its face.They oft defend land theft victims, in monopolized dispute resolution centers (courts).  IJ writer Nick Sibilla tells us that Alabama legislators had actually reduced the legal privilege to steal land. No one who cares about justice should ever be lukewarm on the issue of land theft. For though they reduced the privilege temporarily, now they have given the State license to

ensure the location and expansion of automotive, automotive-industry related, aviation, aviation-industry related, medical, pharmaceutical, semiconductor, computer, electronics, energy conservation, cyber technology, and biomedical industry manufacturing facilities 

These are sectors of the economy littered with State monopolies of patent, copyright, and licensing. Three tools used daily to discriminate against the poor. Patent and copyright prohibit the sale of a gal's own property to whomever she wants. Licensing bars entry to lower income professionals that cannot afford the cost of schooling, or regulatory paperwork. In addition to this lack of free competition, Alabama legislators are now burdening the poor with the potential to have their land legally stolen.

My opponents may say, that there is no theft afoot. Their evidence would be the recompense given to victims of land theft. The subjective theory of value disproves this claim. There is no objective price to land. If a land owner wants to exchange her land with someone else, that is her right. She may peacefully trade it for free, for services, or for currency. Eminent domain users choose a price for their victims, and their price is backed by the authority of a gun in the victim's face.

Everywhere and always, eminent domain use is abuse. Furthermore, we must end the State.


Post Scriptum:

extra reading from Reason