fringeelements:

What is deeply distressing is how people continue to act as if there is any movement other than the movement against the state.

They continue to speak about variations in the fantasy structure of the state, as if there is some way to overcome the basic calculation problem and put forth a state action that will not create a fractal of new problems.

If you can think of some form of state, it has probably been tried. Dictatorships justified by religion, heredity or some secular ideology. Direct state management of the means of production, government-business partnerships (fascism, guildism or corporatism). Republicanism, direct democracy (prop 8, kill socrates, elect hitler), mixtures of direct democracy and republicanism (such as the US today). Parliaments with all types of electoral procedures have been tried.

And they all fail because they cannot overcome the calculation problem. When a firm is formed, they are making a prediction about the structure of production. Even if their prediction is “correct” and they create a product or service that is profitable, it is unlikely that they are completely correct, and so new firms will come along and create variations on the product or service that conform to the demands of society even further.

There was never “good government” in the “united states”. Following the war against Britain, there was a state with dubious legitimacy and no traditional means of taxation and a population of european emigrants who were suspicious of statism. The “founding fathers” were not saints, they simply lacked the means to carry out extortion. There was no age of miracles when government worked. That is why the urban areas of the early united states, despite being such a new place, had a standard of living that visibly superior to that of Britain.

But even in the early US, blacks were either slaves or had few economic opportunities, and women had few opportunities as well. Was this a product of “the constitution”? No, but it didn’t matter because “the constitution” never mattered, NOT EVEN ON DAY ONE.

There is no “returning to the constitution”. “The constitution” doesn’t sprout wings and vangs whenever it is “violated”, and it is such a vague and poorly written document that it can and has been interpreted to justify the psychosis we see today. The minimal statism and the concomitant prosperity of the past was not a result of magik paper but of a population self-selected to oppose the state. And the slavery and misoginy was a product of their racism and misoginy as well.

Libertarians today are just baffled at why there are so few black libertarians. And the answer is clear and obvious: the “founding fathers” either supported or dragged their feet on the slavery issue. Perhaps it could be forgiven as there needed to be a consensus of states to wage a war against Britain IF immediately following the war the “founding fathers” set to the task of ending slavery. But this did not happen.

As it happened, the worst possible course was taken. Blacks were enslaved long past the first generation of the US, then there was a civil war, and in order to prevent british intervention in the war on the side of the confederacy Lincoln declared the slaves would be freed in the states that seceded (though not in the states that remained in the union).

And so now you had a bunch of black people who were just slaves, in political jurisdictions which clearly did not endorse their freedom, and who (as former slaves) were not integrated into the mainline economy. And this former slave population has been the most reliably statist voting bloc.

If it’s pro-state, blacks are typically for it: pro-domestic spending, pro-domestic “regulation”, pro-war, pro-religious laws. In the past the republican party was more statist than the democrat party, and so the blacks voted republican. Today the democrat party is more statist, and so the blacks vote democrat, except that among democrats blacks tend to be more “socially conservative” and pro-war. The black voting bloc in the US is, on the aggregate, Bismarckian. They are NOT liberals.

Now the republican party is about what it was since Lincoln. But in those days there was less confusion as to the desires of big business. And so there was a clear divide: the conservatives vs. the liberals. The conservatives were pro-state and pro-big business. The liberals were pro-free market and for individual freedom in the social sphere. The “liberals” were what today are called “libertarians”.

Unfortunately the libertarians failed. They failed in the civil war, because with the “emancipation proclamation” Lincoln turned what was originally a war over secession into a war over slavery.

It is my opinion that there is a certain neurochemical type of “the liberal”. In the past I was confused as to how I got along with modern-day “liberals” - as in fans of the democrat party - better than with “conservatives”. Yet I had always been for roughly a free market, and that is the main issue.

It was the “progressive” movement that turned the libertarians into socialists. And that has led us to the split we have today. The neurochemical “liberal” doesn’t support freedom anymore, but an interventionist state that he believes can help the disadvantaged (spoiler: it can’t).

It has become fashionable to say that the republican and democrat party are equally statist, but that is not true. The defecits Bush ran pale in comparison to Obama’s deficits, and the republican party, in terms of total spending, is not as statist as the democrat party, and it’s visually obvious. And this makes sense theoretically: the GOP is the party of big business. And so they want big government to help the rent-seeking corporations, and in the past it was them vs. the libertarians. The GOP views the state as a means to an end: the enrichment of corporations. The democrats view the state as the enabler of positive change in itself.

Under George Bush, the GOP took a particularly sinister turn with the Iraq war, which benfited the oil producers by restricting oil supply, and obviously benefited the defense contractors.

While there is more potential for freedom among the democrats, the republicans are actually less bad at the moment. The republicans are cheats: they want enrichment and guaranteed profits without having to provide value to society. It is possible to live a decent life in the highly cartelized market that would result from GOP domination. It it NOT possible to live a decent life in a society with direct state management of the means of production.

And so the prime opponent today of the movement are the socialists. Now if you believe there are no socialists, lets take a look at the 10 planks of the communist manifesto:

1. Abolition of private property and the application of all rent to public purpose.

The 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution (1868), and various zoning, school & property taxes. Also the Bureau of Land Management.


2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.

The 16th amendment, The Social Security Act of 1936.; Joint House Resolution 192 of 1933; and various State “income” taxes.

3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.

We call it Federal & State estate Tax (1916); or reformed Probate Laws, and limited inheritance via arbitrary inheritance tax statutes.

4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.

We call in government seizures, tax liens, Public “law” 99-570 (1986); Executive order 11490, sections 1205, 2002 which gives private land to the Department of Urban Development; the imprisonment of “terrorists” and those who speak out or write against the “government” (1997 Crime/Terrorist Bill); or the IRS confiscation of property without due process.

5. Centralization of credit in the hands of the State, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.

We call it the Federal Reserve which is a credit/debt system nationally organized by the Federal Reserve act of 1913. All local banks are members of the Fed system, and are regulated by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC).

6. Centralization of the means of communication and transportation in the hands of the State.

We call it the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and Department of Transportation (DOT) madated through the ICC act of 1887, the Commissions Act of 1934, The Interstate Commerce Commission established in 1938, The Federal Aviation Administration, Federal Communications Commission, and Executive orders 11490, 10999, as well as State mandated driver’s licenses and Department of Transportation regulations.

7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State, the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.

We call it corporate capacity, The Desert Entry Act and The Department of Agriculture. As well as the Department of Commerce and Labor, Department of Interior, the Evironmental Protection Agency, Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Reclamation, Bureau of Mines, National Park Service, and the IRS control of business through corporate regulations.

8. Equal liability of all to labor. Establishment of Industrial armies, especially for agriculture.

We call it the Social Security Administration and The Department of Labor. The National debt and inflation caused by the communal bank has caused the need for a two “income” family. Woman in the workplace since the 1920s, the 19th amendment of the U.S. Constitution, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, assorted Socialist Unions, affirmative action, the Federal Public Works Program and of course Executive order 11000.

9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the population over the country.

We call it the Planning Reorganization act of 1949 , zoning (Title 17 1910-1990) and Super Corporate Farms, as well as Executive orders 11647, 11731 (ten regions) and Public “law” 89-136.

10. Free education for all children in government schools. Abolition of children’s factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, etc. etc.

People are being taxed to support what we call “public” schools, which train the young to work for the communal debt system. We also call it the Department of Education, the NEA and Outcome Based “Education”.

http://www.jesus-is-savior.com/Evils%20in%20Government/Communism/10_planks.htm

I actually copied this from a religious website that railed against “New World Order atheist governments”. But I do not feel the need to cite less loaded sources for what should be obvious. (The peculiar correlation of atheism with statism is the subject of another post. And in case this is the first thing of mine you’ve read, yes, I am an atheist.)

“Socialism” is such a broad term, but today the US would be considered a socialist state according to the old theoretical socialists. They may not have approved of much of the corporatism, but by and large “socialism” is already here.

There has been an unfortunate influx of conservatives into the libertarian fold. And so today the libertarian party is being seen as a mere extension of the republican party, with many people who call themselves libertarians supporting closed borders, national IDs and drug laws. This is boosting their numbers in the short run, but it is a recipe for long-run failure.

I would like to call myself a “left-libertarian”, but these people tend to be mutualists and “anarcho”-communists, and have attacked me personally for some of my mistakes in the past (even though I’m only 19) and have insinuated that I secretly only want a stateless society so I can live among the skinheads (a bizarre charge since I’m a faggot and a race-mixer and would probably be killed if I tried to live amongst them).

To sum up “left-libertarians” in three words: “hateful”, “slanderous” and “aggressive”. They offer no historical or economic insights, and cavalierly lie about the Austrians, caricaturing them as vulgar capitalists. They also moralize far more than your typical fundamentalist christian.

So what movement of note is there? Well it is depressingly small. We can rule out the republicans and democrats, the libertarians, communists and anarchists. What we are left with is a small cadre of people who oppose the state and support freedom. This is the movement, the only movement. All else is vacillation.

 Sure, why not?