Government Laws Hurt the Environment

I was once made aware of this scientist named Guy Negre when visiting France back in 2004. This Frenchman created a technology nowhere else available at the time. He has created an engine that runs on pure air, the air we breathe. All that is required of this engine is the energy to recharge the engine, such as plugging it into the wall. Yet they are also creating a further technology that will allow the engine to recharge itself on-board without needing to plug it in, creating a cyclical recharging of the engine. Wow! Imagine that, no externalities, no pollution.



Here we are in America, with our safety standards imposing laws to keep people safe, and government laws finding ways to measure externalities (as if they can be measured somehow), and the technology to reduce pollution to nothing actually exists. Safety standards are intended to keep people safe on “the government's” public roads, yet safety standards prevent these inventions from being mass produced or entering the market. Moreover, if the roads were private, the rules would be left up to the private owner. This would mean that an air car could be driven on these roads. Furthermore, patents harm the lowering of prices by not allowing this technology to become ubiquitous, all for the benefit of the state and it's practice of crony capitalism.

With the array of government laws, the barriers to entry of these French men entering the US market has prevented this car from arriving here. From what has been seen is that Honda will be the first to now bring their air car into the US market. It seems the agreement between the corporate powers of Japan and the US will only allow the government to make way for their desired seller to enter the market. Even though Guy Negre created the air car concept, government has thoroughly displayed its only method of accessing new inventions, and that is through crony capitalism. On the free market, there are neither corporations nor any monopolies. Government creates these things. On a free market, an air car does not have to be so expensive or rare as is the case with the Honda air car, but it can be mass produced, cheap and a car everyone wants to drive for its economical existence. Government laws have hindered such progress, and will only further hinder it. Not only is there an air car that we are deprived of driving or seeing around, but there is also another car that runs on wood.



States like California should take a good look at this form of innovation and progress these inventions afford us. Especially since the state feels subsidizing green energy will lead to less externalities and less harm to the environment than would be the case with no government. Private competitors have the incentive to make profits, and this could mean mass producing cheap and environmentally safe cars as is the case with the air car. The state’s laws destroy the environment; they do not preserve or help the environment at all.

Secession: The Application of Anarcho-Capitalism

Many statists become perplexed at the idea of a stateless society. Not only are they fearful of a notion they lack knowledge on of its innerworkings, but they also expound naive platitudes of such a society of anarchy. Statists think anarchy (in the anarcho-capitalist form) is a society without laws or full of chaos as is stereotypically and incorrectly portrayed on television and in your every day fiction novel. They even many times go as far as suggesting anarchy is idealist, and a government or existence thereof, is realist and pragmatic. But the actual truth is that the existence of a government, whether large or small, is itself idealism. Governments are an idealized form of controlling the free-market and its spontaneous and efficient order. It also creates more distress and less harmony, since what government is is coercion. They create nothing, they exist on the grounds of force. Thus their extortion of tax dollars, and their monopolized law system (as well as all other systems they have monopolized by interfering in those markets, i.e. military and defense) is akin to slavery.

Under slavery, the master treats the slaves as he does his livestock, horses, and other animals, using them as factors of production to gratify his wants, and feeding, housing them, etc., just enough to enable them to con­tinue in the master's service. It is true that the slave agrees to this arrangement, but this agreement is the result of a choice be­tween working for the master and injury through violence. Labor under these conditions is qualitatively different from labor not under the threat of violence, and may be called compulsory labor as compared to free labor or voluntary labor. If a man agrees to continue working as a slave under the government's dictates, it does not mean that the man is an enthusiastic advocate of his own slavery. It simply means that the man does not believe that revolt against his master will better his condition, because of the costs of the revolt in terms of possible violence inflicted on him, the labor of preparing and fighting, etc.

The interpersonal relation under slavery is known as hege­monic. The relationship is one of command and obedience, the commands being enforced by threats of violence. The master uses the slaves as instruments, as factors of production, for grati­fying his wants. Thus, slavery, or hegemony, is defined as a system in which one must labor under the orders of another under the threat of violence. Under hegemony, the man who does the obey­ing-the "slave," "serf," "ward," or "subject"-makes only one choice among two alternatives: (1) to subject himself to the mas­ter or "dictator"; or (2) to revolt against the regime of violence by use of his own violence or by refusing to obey orders. If he chooses the first course, he submits himself to the hegemonic ruler, and all the other decisions and actions are made by that ruler. The subject chooses once in choosing to obey the ruler; the other choices are made by the ruler. The subject acts as a passive factor of production for use by the master. After that one act of (continual) choice made by the slave, he engages in co­erced or compulsory labor, and the dictator alone is free to choose and act.[i]

Thus the government impedes human action and it destroys the market, all for the sake of a fantasy of peace and equality. Yet the notion of equality is an objective fantasy as well. Indeed there is spiritual and philosophical equality, but this perspective is simply based upon a person's values.[ii] And a person's values are subjective. Yet equality imposed in the market, or in a central planning sense, exacerbates the notion of force, and allows for the scenario of slavery mentioned above. Equality imposed by a central planner, goes against economics, biology as well as the division of labor. For if one wishes to see all the inequities people apply to the free-market, eliminated, this does not require more government, it requires a removal of government. Governments create corporations with their statutes and laws, they create monopolies with these same laws, they create unemployment by distorting the market and banking system, the list goes on and on. When a statist is finally educated on these things (that is if they desire listening), they then ask how such a plan of complete privatization and its functions including law and defense services would be implemented.

In response to these questions, it is first necessary to remember that neither the original American Revolution nor the American Constitution was the result of the will of the majority of the population. A third of the American colonists were actually Tories, and another third were occupied with daily routines and did not care either way. No more than a third of the colonists were actually committed to and supportive of the revolution, yet they carried the day. And as far as the Constitution is concerned, the overwhelming majority of the American public was opposed to its adoption, and its ratification represented more of a coup d'état by a tiny minority than the general will. All revolutions, whether good or bad, are started by minorities; and the secessionist route toward social revolution, which necessarily involves the breaking-away of a smaller number of people from a larger one, takes explicit cognizance of this important fact.

Second, it is necessary to recognize that the ultimate power of every government — whether of kings or caretakers — rests solely on opinion and not on physical force. The agents of government are never more than a small proportion of the total population under their control. This implies that no government can possibly enforce its will upon the entire population unless it finds widespread support and voluntary cooperation within the nongovernmental public. It implies likewise that every government can be brought down by a mere change in public opinion, i.e., by the withdrawal of the public's consent and cooperation. While seeing things this way, government is ironically forceful and coercive in its existence. By people voluntarily submitting to the idea of central planners (or governments) they are essentially enforcing the will of a third party on the minority. The ramifications of seemingly benevolent ideas, result in the slavery and inequities aforementioned. Thus government is an idealist product of whimsical men lacking knowledge on economics and the free market, overall lacking knowledge on liberty and justice. Their imposition and existence, leads to force, robbery and mass murder. Surely by education and knowledge building this type of destructive mentality can be toppled.

And while it is undeniably true that, after more than two centuries of democracy, the American public has become so degenerate, morally and intellectually, that any such withdrawal must be considered impossible on a nationwide scale, it would not seem insurmountably difficult to win a secessionist-minded majority in sufficiently small districts or regions of the country. In fact, given an energetic minority of intellectual elites inspired by the vision of a free society in which law and order as well as defense services is provided by competitive insurers,[iii] and given furthermore that — certainly in the United States, which owes its very existence to a secessionist act — secession is still held to be legitimate and in accordance with the "original" democratic ideal of self-determination (rather than majority rule) by a substantial number of people, there seems to be nothing unrealistic about assuming that such secessionist majorities exist or can be created at hundreds of locations all over the country. This could occur by these knowledgeable individuals on anarcho-capitalism and its innerworkings, or simply those hungry for maximum liberty to share and exude these ideas anywhere and everywhere. The most effective manner these secessionist regions and areas can arise is by those educated people joining and forming pro-liberty groups and continuing the anarcho-capitalist movement they learn. The Mises Institute is the first and foremost bellwether in such a movement that is arising today. Many anarcho-capitalists are already beginning these very endeavors.

In fact, under the rather realistic assumption that the US central government as well as the social-democratic states of the West in general are bound for economic bankruptcy (much like the socialist people's democracies of Eastern Europe collapsed economically some years ago), present tendencies toward political disintegration will likely be strengthened in the future. Accordingly, the number of potential secessionist regions will continue to rise, even beyond its current level. We should only encourage and uplift this vast movement of reform and freedom.[iv] It can finally be said that the statists that assume anarchy or statelessness as idealist, are themselves what they say to others. Anarchy and statelessness are pure realism. Thus it is important for people to get involved, to take part in learning about anarcho-capitalism, to accept other anarchist friends, and to learn about what true and maximum freedom really is. By doing so, the secessionist movement will gain its muster and the reform we all attempted within the political movement would actually come from without, and with great fortitude and effectiveness.

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[i] Man, Economy and State with Power and Market by Murray Rothbard: http://mises.org/rothbard/mes/chap2a.asp

[ii] Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature by Murray Rothbard: http://mises.org/daily/3071

[iii] State or Private-Law Society by Hans Herman Hoppe: http://mises.org/daily/5270/State-or-PrivateLaw-Society

[iv] Rollback by Thomas Woods: http://www.tomwoods.com/books/rollback/

On Repudiation of the National Debt

Rothbard was a strong opponent of the government and its existence, and with good reason. Seeing as though they have monopolized every sector of economy, the numbers they pump out are always distorted to a large degree. The CBO and all other entities estimating public policy numbers in DC, do so with the power to manipulate and eschew. Obviously any person with a rational sense of mind must be aware that they do this to pass their legislation, and to coerce us into supporting their fraudulent artifice.

The Budget is a mess, and not just because the government has overspent and taxed us to the bone to provide service on top of service, but because they have done so in a manner which has resulted in a huge ponzi and accounting scheme. They use mathematics to cheat us and manipulate us into voting in politicians that bombastically spew out excrements in the form of promises. Indeed politicians are only looking to keep their job and get reelected, for if they had any idea of how economics worked, they would quit their job or try to remove government altogether. Coercion is their game, and extortion is their tool of uplifting their role as a tyrant. They claim what they do is public service, yet that service has crowded out competition in the free market, slamming upon human choice the shackles of forced central planning.

Rothbard was adamant about rejecting any of the silliness coming out of the Directory of Coercion (Washington DC). He presented to us the simplest form by which our society could free itself up from the burden of debt. Rothbard proposed repudiation. His case went as follows:

To think sensibly about the public debt, we first have to go back to first principles and consider debt in general. Put simply, a credit transaction occurs when C, the creditor, transfers a sum of money (say $1,000) to D, the debtor, in exchange for a promise that D will repay C in a year's time the principal plus interest. If the agreed interest rate on the transaction is 10 percent, then the debtor obligates himself to pay in a year's time $1,100 to the creditor. This repayment completes the transaction, which in contrast to a regular sale, takes place over time.

Rothbard gave us the basics of usury here, and he details how it is that nobody should be concerned with how individuals spend their money. As with any private trade or exchange on the market, both parties to the exchange benefit, and no one loses. Individuals willing to overspend and get into debt are doing so out of their own rational self interest. This should only concern the debtor, and the bank to which the loan is due. Yet if it is his check he blows, it is only his business as to how he will feed his family. But there is one crucial difference: if a man gets in over his head and he can't pay, the creditor suffers too, because the debtor has failed to return the creditor's property. In a profound sense, the debtor who fails to repay the $1,100 owed to the creditor has stolen property that belongs to the creditor; we have here not simply a civil debt, but a tort, an aggression against another's property.

In these cases obviously allowing the debtor to repay the loan would be best suited for themselves and their own circumstance with the bank. Many times humans learn from making choices and from the ramifications, whether positive or negative. Pampering exacerbates the bad decisions. When someone doesn’t pay their loan, the bank takes necessary steps within their power to get back the money it was due. Obviously someone’s credit score takes a hit, and reputation mounts upon the back of the debtor. For businesses, they would dissolve and go out of business, something healthy in the process of creative destruction. This scenario is one where no government laws allow for businesses to out payments, as is the case today with their varied laws buttressing bad behavior.

As early as the 17th century, however, governments began sobbing about the plight of the unfortunate debtors, ignoring the fact that the insolvent debtors had gotten themselves into their own fix, and they began to subvert their own proclaimed function of enforcing contracts. Bankruptcy laws were passed which, increasingly, let the debtors off the hook and prevented the creditors from obtaining their own property. Theft was increasingly condoned, improvidence was subsidized, and thrift was hobbled. In fact, with the modern device of Chapter 11, instituted by the Bankruptcy Reform Act of 1978, inefficient and improvident managers and stockholders are not only let off the hook, but they often remain in positions of power, debt-free and still running their firms, and plaguing consumers and creditors with their inefficiencies. Modern utilitarian neoclassical economists see nothing wrong with any of this; the market, after all, "adjusts" to these changes in the law. It is true that the market can adjust to almost anything, but so what? Hobbling creditors means that interest rates rise permanently, to the sober and honest as well as the improvident; but why should the former be taxed to subsidize the latter? But there are deeper problems with this utilitarian attitude. It is the same amoral claim, from the same economists, that there is nothing wrong with rising crime against residents or storekeepers of the inner cities. The market, they assert, will adjust and discount for such high crime rates, and therefore rents and housing values will be lower in the inner-city areas. So everything will be taken care of. But what sort of consolation is that? And what sort of justification for aggression and crime?

Rothbard makes it clear the laws and legislation are like any law and legislation fed through the sluice of the tyrannical central planner; they hinder the economic acclivity and add to the boom bust cycles that disastrously occur. In a just society, then, only voluntary forgiveness by creditors would let debtors off the hook; otherwise, bankruptcy laws are an unjust invasion of the property rights of creditors. Therefore in a free market, the business goes out of business, where the creditor never receives its due on the loan. Also, the same applies to private debtors. The value of the loan would not be paid off completely, and indeed the bank would take a hit. Yet this is why market ordering works. Banks wishing to keep a good reputation would only give out loans to those it knows can pay the full value back. Competing banks would allow for even people with bad credit to receive loans, this is the result of competition.

In a free-market economy that respects property rights, the volume of private debt is self-policed by the necessity to repay the creditor, since no Papa Government is letting you off the hook. In addition, the interest rate a debtor must pay depends not only on the general rate of time preference but on the degree of risk he as a debtor poses to the creditor. A good credit risk will be a "prime borrower," who will pay relatively low interest; on the other hand, an improvident person or a transient who has been bankrupt before, will have to pay a much higher interest rate, commensurate with the degree of risk on the loan.

All of this being mentioned, there is of course a large difference between public and private debt. Most people, unfortunately, apply the same analysis to public debt as they do to private. The two forms of debt-transaction are totally different. If I borrow money from a mortgage bank, I have made a contract to transfer my money to a creditor at a future date; in a deep sense, he is the true owner of the money at that point, and if I don't pay I am robbing him of his just property. But when government borrows money, it does not pledge its own money; its own resources are not liable. Government commits not its own life, fortune, and sacred honor to repay the debt, but ours. This is a horse, and a transaction, of a very different color.

For unlike the rest of us, government sells no productive good or service and therefore earns nothing. It can only get money by looting our resources through taxes, or through the hidden tax of legalized counterfeiting known as "inflation." There are some exceptions, of course, such as when the government sells stamps to collectors or carries our mail with gross inefficiency, but the overwhelming bulk of government revenues is acquired through taxation or its monetary equivalent.

Furthermore, repudiation basically removes the existence of debt held in government bonds by other federal agencies. There are vast amounts of debt held in government bonds, one very renowned part of this debt is Social Security. This ponzi scheme is filled with these tricky methods of pretense for tax extortion. It is manifest in the difference between the two measures of the national debt the government tabulates. The "gross debt" is the total of Treasury bonds outstanding. But some of those are bonds that represent lending from one pocket of the Treasury — the Social Security, Medicare and transportation trust funds— to another, the general Treasury. The "debt held by the public" is the amount owed to everyone outside the Treasury. This is the figure most commonly reported as the "national debt." The difference between the "gross debt" and the "debt held by the public" is called "intragovernmental holdings." (Trust funds are federal debt that the government owes to itself, but there also are some minor "revolving accounts" and other details in intragovernmental holdings). Treasuries are spread out by various buyers of them, like China which has a large portion of treasuries (IOUs that amount to the debt).

The public debt transaction, then, is very different from private debt. Instead of a low-time preference creditor exchanging money for an IOU from a high-time preference debtor, the government now receives money from creditors, both parties realizing that the money will be paid back not out of the pockets or the hides of the politicians and bureaucrats, but out of the looted wallets and purses of the hapless taxpayers, the subjects of the state. The government gets the money by tax-coercion; and the public creditors, far from being innocents, know full well that their proceeds will come out of that selfsame coercion. In short, public creditors are willing to hand over money to the government now in order to receive a share of tax loot in the future. This is the opposite of a free market, or a genuinely voluntary transaction. Both parties are immorally contracting to participate in the violation of the property rights of citizens in the future. Both parties, therefore, are making agreements about other people's property, and both deserve the back of our hand. The public credit transaction is not a genuine contract that need be considered sacrosanct, any more than robbers parceling out their shares of loot in advance should be treated as some sort of sanctified contract.

Government is a system by which leaders coerce the populace, and subject them to whims which they randomly concoct. They create nothing, only prevent production and the free market ordering society spontaneously. They live on the grounds of extortion, and build their lives on further extortion after again, miscalculating the allocation of resources, in a world of unlimited wants, but limited means. Never has there been the existence of true justice or freedom with the existence of any government, large or small. Anarcho-Capitalism can provide this, government clearly cannot. It is merely a question of how much a person wants to coerce others, not whether or not they love their country or these hoax beliefs of nationalism.

Apart from the moral, or sanctity-of-contract argument against repudiation that we have already discussed, the standard economic argument is that such repudiation is disastrous, because who, in his right mind, would lend again to a repudiating government? But the effective counterargument has rarely been considered: why should more private capital be poured down government rat holes? It is precisely the drying up of future public credit that constitutes one of the main arguments for repudiation, for it means beneficially drying up a major channel for the wasteful destruction of the savings of the public. What we want is abundant savings and investment in private enterprises, and an absence of government. The people and the economy can only wax fat and prosperous when their government is starved and dissolved.

It would not be a bad thing for the government to not pay itself back, but now that the debt is largely owned by other countries, the method of extorting tax dollars will increase with Fed buybacks like QE2 as well as more government innerworkings of creating entitlements and extortion methods to collect tax dollars. Overall, these problems largely arise because of central banks like the Treasury and the Fed (largely a result of the existence of government). Their schemes add to the conundrum (mainly due to fractional reserve banking). Repudiation is not a new thing, it was performed in the 1800s during deflation periods; and one must remember, there was a government yet this method worked. If repudiation took effect, the country could and should automatically move to free banking and forget the need for even paying back the debt. Yet the smartest move for saving people’s savings and personal dignity, by not promoting slavery with taxation, is to remove government outright. The predicament looks to only get worse in the future, thus it is important to heed Anarcho-Capitalism now. That is unless of course one desires perpetuating artificially large booms and busts in the business cycle as time progresses. It is rationally only preferable to finally dissolve the government.

The quotes in italics were taken from Murray Rothbard’s Repudiating the National Debt