While the plot of The Hurt Locker follows a U.S. Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) unit, Green Zone follows a Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) disposal unit. There are plenty of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) to be found in Iraq, which drives much of the action in The Hurt Locker. But no WMDs were ever found in Iraq after the US invasion, even though WMDs were proffered by the US government and parroted by the mainstream media as the primary justification for the Iraqi invasion. This is what drives the psychological action in Green Zone.

In Green Zone, Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller (Matt Damon) suspects foul play after being ordered to empty site after empty site to secure WMDs on supposedly rock-solid intelligence. After being given the run-around by Army higher-ups, Miller is approached by CIA operative Martin Brown (Brendan Gleeson), who knows that there is no WMD and knows what must be done to restore order in post-invasion Iraq. Miller joins Brown in gathering further intelligence using local sources and carrying out the CIA plan, which is at cross-purposes with the Army’s plan. As the viewer comes to find out, neither plan is a good one.

Green Zone is full of true-to-life moments. The Army soldiers grind an Iraqi into the dirt for the supposed offense of approaching Army soldiers to tell them something. An American soldier, working closely with an Iraqi, questions his intentions many times, causing the Iraqi to finally explode in rage and explain that he is helping the Americans not because of money, but because he loves his country and wants the life of his family and community and country to improve. Ultimately, as it should be, the actions of Iraqis drive the final outcome of the plot, revealing the American soldiers as pawns in a twisted game.

After the showing I sat through, the couple in front of my wife and I remarked, u201CWow, pretty interesting, huh?u201D It’s a rare movie that gets strangers talking after a show.

While The Hurt Locker’s political message might be summed up as u201Cterrorism is real and it is fought by special men at great personal sacrifice,u201D Green Zone’s political message is a much more reasonable one: u201Cpoliticians lie us into war, bureaucracies operate at cross-purposes, and real good comes from the ethics and action of individuals, not governments and armies.u201D

It’s not hard to predict that the lead actor responsible for such box-office winners as Good Will Hunting, The Bourne Identity franchise, and the Ocean’s Eleven franchise will lead movie-goers to give Green Zone a try. The revisionist political message will resonate with many viewers, and they will encourage others to see it.

In two weeks, Green Zone has already grossed an estimated $59 million. In 26 weeks, The Hurt Locker has grossed only $26 million. Hooray for Green Zone and the dollar-votes of the American people, who have already shown that their interests lie not with the social deviants that enjoy disarming bombs so much as to forsake their families, but with heroic people that try to do good despite the lies of politicians and the machinations of bureaucracies.

May Green Zone become the top political thriller of the year!

Gil Guillory [send him mail], P.E., PMP, is an engineer and project manager of petrochemical projects, libertarian writer and activist, and entrepreneur. He ran for Congress on the Libertarian Party ticket in 2000 and 2002. He worked in Iraq for 6 months in 2003 after the US invasion assessing damage and repairing chemical plants for KBR. He recently won the O P Alford III Prize in libertarian scholarship for a paper published in Libertarian Papers.

Gil Guillory Archives

What is Libertarian Entrepreneurship? It is the creation of new institutions with the goal of advancing the cause of liberty. Examples, tried and untried:

Galt’s Gulch. Once fiction, Werner K. Stiefel tried to make Galt’s Gulch a reality at sea in the 1970′s. The Seasteading Institute is now giving it another shot, following other related efforts, such as The Republic of Minerva and the Principality of Sealand.

The Free State Project operates on the idea of geographically concentrating freedom-lovers in the state of New Hampshire. It was and is one of many libertarian institutions to successfully leverage the power of the internet.

Monetary Entrepreneurship. Re-establishing commodity money — or at least making commodity money possible again — is a tricky problem. Bernard von Nothaus established a warehousing-and-money certificate company in 1998 whose face values mimic those of contemporary US currency. Douglas Jackson and Barry K. Downey founded e-gold in 1996. While e-gold’s effort has been impressive, it still hasn’t broken into the mainstream. The Free Lakota Bank combines secession with monetary entrepreneurship, and is partnered with the AOCS initiative to re-establish silver coinage. Of course, PayPal also began as an effort to create a digital currency.

Adjudication. Arbitration and mediation are thriving business sectors, but quite rare in the area of personal torts. Victim-offender mediation arose through the simple suggestion of a youth probation officer in the early 1970s, and has grown to considerable size, but it is far from ubiquitous and not yet a replacement — as it should be — for criminal proceedings.

Firefighting. In 1667, after the great fire of London, Nicholas Barbon set up a fire insurance business, and in 1680 set up a fire brigade. By the 1700′s, insurance companies in London maintained their own firefighting companies. These institutions passed away for bad reasons.

Crime Insurance and Patrol. My own pet project is subscription patrol and restitution, an attempt to bring restorative justice and accountable patrol to the masses.

Identification. The state crowds out production of personal identification. There is a crying need for good non-state identification methods.

Libertarian Entrepreneurship Society. Maybe there needs to be one. More than one person has mentioned it to me.

Much has been done, but there is also much to do.

Why Entrepreneurship?

As Patrick Tinsley and I noted in our article on Subscription Patrol and Restitution, there are several good reasons to advance libertarianism through entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurs already sculpt the institutions that create social change: Henry Ford and his motorcar, Fred Smith and overnight letter delivery, J. C. Fargo and travelers’ cheques, Akio Morita and the Sony Walkman. Some might fear that being a libertarian first and an entrepreneur second might be bad for business, but Collins and Porras have shown that companies who succeed in creating major social change while trouncing their competition and beating the returns of the general market all share the characteristic of having a core ideology beyond just making money that guides and inspires people throughout an organization and remains relatively fixed for long periods of time, and that their less successful rivals lack this characteristic. Consumers do not tend to be ideological in their purchases of goods and services: they purchase what works. (This is partially because few people are temperamentally ideological.) But, entrepreneurs are and must be ideological, for they are creating a better way: they must have a vision of the good.

What we libertarians cannot do is “leave to the market” the essential task of sculpting libertarian institutions. The reason that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world is that they are focusing on creating institutions. We have met the market, and the market is us.

So dust off your Napoleon Hill (I recommend this and this), start eating like a bird and pooping like an elephant, and let’s see some hustle out there!

Gil Guillory [send him mail] is a libertarian entrepreneur, professional engineer, and project manager in Houston, Texas.

Gil Guillory Archives

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This text is part of a lecture, sponsored by the Libertarian Longhorns, given on 8 September 2008 at the University of Texas.

Good evening. Tonight I’ll be talking about socialism: what it is, the problems it creates, and counterpoint of solutions that are offered by the free market. But I will be doing this for a line of production that most people take for granted should be managed by the state: internal security. I’ll get into the nuts and bolts of the problems of socialism, talk about the problems of power that are particular to the production of internal security, and I will discuss free market solutions and alternatives to the production of internal security.

The Struggle Between Socialism and Capitalism

The popular view of the struggle between socialism and capitalism is that it was the century-long struggle between socialist states and non-socialist states. In point of fact, the struggle between socialism and capitalism pre-dates the Communist Manifesto, and it continues to this day. In each country in the world, the twentieth century saw a slide toward socialism and only the smallest amount of reform to recover free markets has taken place. This slide toward socialism took place in our own country also at the state level, the county level, and down to the municipal level. We have, in our day, capitalism in name only across the globe. Rarely are the ideologies themselves spelled out and compared and understood.

So, it is to this struggle to establish free markets that this speech is dedicated. What are very difficult to overcome are the prejudices that people develop by living day to day with socialism. This institutional momentum of preferring that which is to that which could be, this unthinking conservatism, has been called the tyranny of the status quo. It leads to rationalization. One of my favorite examples of the rationalization of socialist policies occurred at the American Enterprise Institute in 1990.

First, remember the context. Whereas the classic Marxist formulation of socialism was "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need," Gorbachev, in his famous book Perestroika, had recast this as "from each according to his ability, to each according to his work." Socialism is classically defined as state ownership of the means of production, but socialist reforms in China and Russia had by this time relinquished to the private sector the freedom for all manner of lines of production to be privately owned, as is natural and right.

Now, the party in question was the late Anatoly Sobchak, first mayor of St. Petersburg after the Perestroika reforms. He was discussing economic issues of the post communist transition with Yuri Maltsev. Yuri Maltsev was a member of a senior team of Soviet economists that worked on President Gorbachev’s Perestroika reform package until 1989. He had, at that time, recently come to the US to be a professor of economics. So, there at lunch, Sobchak and Maltsev were discussing privatization of various lines of production. Sobchak told Maltsev, "bread is too important for people to leave it to private business."

Of course, the proper position is that bread is too important to allow it to be socialized. In the US, where there are free markets in bread production, we have supermarkets everywhere, open 24 hours a day. In the USSR, under socialized bread production, there were shortages and bread lines.

This brings to mind a great poem and a great book, both by R. W. Grant, The Incredible Bread Machine. I think I won’t spoil things for you by telling you that The Incredible Bread Machine is a metaphor for the free market.

Socialism and Policing

OK, so much for history and context. What I aim to explain now is what socialism is, what its problems are, and how policing, in particular, suffers from these problems.

The root problems are twofold. They are taxation and monopoly. Taxation means to take money from people without their consent. Monopoly means to prevent others from competing in a line of production. For instance, the delivery of first-class letters in the US is monopolized by the US Postal Service. No one can compete in that line of production. Similarly, the state by its very nature monopolizes the adjudication of disputes within its territory. You may choose a private arbiter for disputes, but your disputant can always force you to accept a government court, even when you have made a prior agreement with your disputant to the contrary. And, of course, disputes involving the government as a disputant are also heard in government courts.

I want to focus specifically on policing and patrols, but before we move to that subject, it is necessary to say a few words about the allied subjects of law, legislation, and adjudication. The production of law and policing are usually considered to be a unified line of production with one organization acting in concert, as portrayed in the TV show Law and Order. The reality is that they are related and they interact, but are distinct functions. Consider, first, adjudication.

A judge listens to the facts of a case and makes a determination about whether a disputant is culpable, and what form of redress is due to the victim. In the libertarian conception of justice, there is no such thing as a victimless crime — indeed, there are no crimes, only torts. As such, there is no need for criminal law, and no need for state prosecutors. For instance, if a murder or rape or theft or burglary is committed, then the victim or another party with standing seeks restitution from the perpetrator. There is no need for a prosecutor.

The libertarian does not recognize as unjust crimes such as prostitution, gambling, or drug use. Instead, we favor a traditional understanding of justice. Again, this lecture is not about justice. I encourage you to read Rothbard and de Jasay on justice. But it is clear that a libertarian conception of justice is consistent with a free market in adjudication of disputes. There is no reason for the field to be monopolized.

Let us now turn to policing. What are the functions of police? They are:

1. patrol for the purpose of catching tortfeasors in the act, stopping them, identifying them, and giving the relevant information to the courts
2. patrol for the purpose of deterring would-be tortfeasors from acting
3. investigation for the purpose of finding tortfeasors, and then identifying them and/or arresting them to conduct them to the courts

Now, modern police have a lot more to do, such as:

1. escorting funeral processions
2. conducting vice raids
3. writing tickets for traffic violations
4. rendering aid when called, from cats in trees to health emergencies
5. making public appearances for public relations purposes

What I argue here is that the first three functions — catching tortfeasors in the act, deterring would-be tortfeasors, and investigation — are the proper functions of internal security. The other functions are other lines of production that have been placed in the hands of modern police, but are not matters of internal security.

So, the question boils down to this: how does socialist provision of patrol services compare to capitalist provision of patrol services?

The Knowledge Problem

The first problem that socialism runs into is the problem of knowledge. This is not very important for the production of patrol, but I include it for completeness. Friedrich Hayek explained this problem in his famous article The Use of Knowledge in Society. To the extent that planning is done by a central planner, the less likely he is to have the requisite knowledge of particular, localized knowledge necessary to make good decisions. Hayek has in mind knowledge of this sort:

To know of and put to use a machine not fully employed, or somebody’s skill which could be better utilized, or to be aware of a surplus stock which can be drawn upon during an interruption of supplies, is socially quite as useful as the knowledge of better alternative techniques. The shipper who earns his living from using otherwise empty or half-filled journeys of tramp-steamers, or the estate agent whose whole knowledge is almost exclusively one of temporary opportunities, or the arbitrageur who gains from local differences of commodity prices — are all performing eminently useful functions based on special knowledge of circumstances of the fleeting moment not known to others.

In the US, police are generally deployed at the city or county level; and, we live in a relatively free market economy. Therefore, all of the inputs to the production of security — cars, uniforms, direct labor, guns, chemical mace, and so forth — are available upon the market at a market price. For this reason, price signals for these inputs already contain all requisite particular knowledge of time and place. The remaining knowledge problems for patrol (e.g., where to patrol within a neighborhood and the methods to employ) are technical problems, not knowledge problems in the Hayekian sense.

The Calculation Problem

The much more formidable problem is the calculation problem. In 1922, Ludwig von Mises wrote his pathbreaking essay Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth wherein he showed that because of the very important role that profit-and-loss accounting plays in decision-making in all lines of production, no fully socialist commonwealth could function with a complex economy. As this relates to policing, a Sheriff has no criteria to set a budget for his staffing. Even if he knows that increasing his staff by 25 patrolmen and putting them on patrol in neighborhoods A, B, and C is almost certain to reduce burglaries in those neighborhoods by 10%; because his services are not on a market, there is no way for him to know whether this is the best use of the marginal resources of neighborhoods A, B, and C. That is, if A, B, and C are to be taxed $100 more per year to reduce burglaries by 10%, is this a deal that A, B, and C would take?

Having read in the literature of patrol studies, I can tell you that knowledge of this sort of tradeoff is impossible to obtain, and so much so, that most theorists don’t even bother. They use arbitrary rules of thumb to set patrol staffing.

Literally speaking, those who deploy patrols have no idea how effective their patrols are. They may know how many miles they log, how many criminals they catch in the act, and what the rate of crime is in an area; but this is like knowing how many gigabytes are on a computer, and how many computation cycles can be done in its processor, but without any real idea of how these facts relate to consumer satisfaction.

If computers were supplied in a socialist mode of production, like policing is supplied, then you would get exactly the computer that hardware designers thought you needed. You would have no choice in how often you got a computer. Your sole feedback is that you, along with everyone in your neighborhood could vote once every four years for either a Democrat or Republican computer design lead. This gives you a clue into how far we are from a rational system of policing in the US.

Incentive Problems: Shirking, Quality, Investment

Of course, the incentive problems of socialism are well known. The police department personnel, from the patrolman to the dispatcher to the clerks to the 911 operators to the managers to the police chief, are paid without regard to how well they have satisfied the consumers of their services. For this reason, shirking of work is done. Without competition from another organization, if everyone shirks the same amount, then it appears that all are equally productive. And so police are famous for taking long lunches and loitering and talking on their cell phones while on duty. Compare their culture with, say, FedEx drivers. The difference is clear.

Without the market pressure to perform, the amount and quality of policing is lower than it would otherwise be. And, the cost of policing is higher. In an office of a business, office supplies are economized upon. Every item that a worker wishes to have — a hole punch, a laptop versus a desktop computer, flying business class instead of coach, etc. — these things are evaluated for the marginal contribution they will make to the satisfaction of the customer. They are weighed on the omnipresent scale of the bottom line. If the manager thinks these things will ultimately add value for the customer, then he will approve their purchase; otherwise, he will not. Of course, there are also items that are purchased as perquisites for employees, which are, ultimately, part of their compensation.

But with regard to tools of the trade, government patrolmen carry guns, chemical mace, tasers, batons, and many other tools. Their cost-effectiveness is never plumbed. Studies are made, reports are written, and recommendations are made on the use of new types of equipment, from night vision goggles to infrared cameras to even tanks. But these things are never measured against the satisfaction of the populace. Instead, just as with every line of socialist production, salaries are greater than in the free market for similar services; and, capital investment and operating costs are greater than in the free market for similar services. This happens in the production of schooling, postal services, adjudication, charity for the poor, and it also happens in policing.

So, production is of low quality, low quantity, high cost; and, at the same time, there is over-investment in the line of production. But that’s not all!

Distribution and Budgeting

For now let us examine the socialist mode of distribution. One of the worst mistakes of sloppy thinking that people sometimes make about the production of security is to think that the government "establishes order." Like there’s some big blob of order out there, somewhere. The fact is that murder, rape, robbery, theft, burglary, and assault have always happened and always will. We can reduce their frequency, their severity, and catch higher percentages of the tortfeasors, but to do so requires an investment in capital (cars and guns and such) and the hiring and deployment of officers to specific locations and beats and random patrols. The question facing a police chief is, given that I have X officers and a specific budget for gasoline and other expenditures, how do I deploy my officers?

His answer, almost universally, is to preferentially deploy officers to areas of high crime. It does not take a genius to realize that high crime areas are also where property values are low. As a result, the socialist mode of production lives up to its promise of taking taxes according to ability to pay and giving out production according to need. This may sound nice, but there are several problems with this arrangement that I do not have time to cover in detail. But briefly, the patrols in high crime areas tend to be of the lowest productivity, since officers are more likely to be injured there, and therefore behave more timidly. The residents in high crime areas are more likely to engage in black market activities. This leads them to fear and distrust the government patrol. This results in a reinforcement mechanism, where the residents dislike the police, which leads to more police fear, which leads to less effective patrol.

Let us move on to the method of budget setting. Generally, budgets for police are set by bureaucratic rules of thumb (e.g., number of full-time patrols per 10,000 residences) or by reference to crime statistics such as the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports. Generally, you might think that if crime goes down, the police department is being more effective with its resources and therefore its budget can be reduced. This is not the case. Generally, when crime goes down, police chiefs push for more funding as a reward for doing a good job. Of course, if crime goes up, they also need more money, so that they can combat crime that is on the rise.

Pardoning me for belaboring this point. I have already shown that police departments have no rational method for deciding how to spend a given budget, but now we see that police departments do not have any rational means by which their budgets are set.

Duty, Enforcement Error, and Enforcement Abuse

The monopolization of policing combined with lack of incentive to produce well has caused a number of problems: lack of duty, high enforcement error, and high enforcement abuse.

Lack of duty is best explained by the court case of Warren v. District of Columbia, one of the leading cases of this type. As explained by Peter Kasler in an essay on the subject:

Two women were upstairs in a townhouse when they heard their roommate, a third woman, being attacked downstairs by intruders. They phoned the police several times and were assured that officers were on the way. After about 30 minutes, when their roommate’s screams had stopped, they assumed the police had finally arrived. When the two women went downstairs they saw that in fact the police never came, but the intruders were still there. As the Warren court graphically states in the opinion: “For the next fourteen hours the women were held captive, raped, robbed, beaten, forced to commit sexual acts upon each other, and made to submit to the sexual demands of their attackers.”

The three women sued the District of Columbia for failing to protect them, but D.C.’s highest court exonerated the District and its police, saying that it is a "fundamental principle of American law that a government and its agents are under no general duty to provide public services, such as police protection, to any individual citizen."

No such state of affairs would exist in a free market. Express and implicit guarantees are made with every service rendered. Just this past month, Netflix had a 3-day hiccup in their service. It didn’t take a customer to sue. It didn’t even take a customer to complain. They spontaneously gave a credit on their service to every affected customer.

But not only do police have no duty to protect you, they either have no duty to give you restitution when they do you harm, or restitution is very difficult to obtain. Radley Balko wrote a book on this: Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids in America. It’s published by the Cato Institute.

What is horrifying and sad is that high enforcement error is a necessary consequent of socializing this line of production. This higher enforcement error results in damage to property and loss of lives directly by the people charged with protecting them. According to Balko’s research, he was able to document 42 deaths of innocents due to botched raids from 1985 to 2008.

Enforcement abuse, Alienation, and "Professionalization"

Now, due to all the problems of enforcement error, low quantity, poor quality, maldistribution of resources, and high costs; police and the public are alienated from one another. This results in another negative phenomenon: enforcement abuse. By enforcement abuse, I mean selectively lax enforcement or selectively stringent enforcement. Many are familiar with the "thin blue line" and "brotherhood" mentality that police maintain. It means that police almost never give tickets to other police or members of their immediate family, and it means that those citizens that are most alienated from the police are most often ticketed rather than warned, and most often stopped or checked or detained.

The rise of tax-funded policing in the United States during the 20th century can be characterized in a sociological schema as having proceeded in three phases. In the first phase, tax-funded extraordinary patrol was assigned (at first in high-population-density, high-crime areas) to assist citizens in catching perpetrators in the act of violations of right. Increases in duties and powers of the tax-funded patrol, and decreases in service and efficiency that are a necessary consequent of socialization of any line of production, resulted in a rise in abuses which led to the second phase: "professionalization" of the tax-funded police. Professionalization is a term that encompasses diverse developments, from the procedural rules of Miranda and the Exclusionary Rule, to the rise of college curricula in Criminal Justice for patrolmen, to extensive empirical studies on patrol efficacy, to the scientism of endless statistical regressions on crime rates.

I do not mean to say that statistical regression cannot be a useful tool in understanding crime. In some cases, it can. For instance, the work of John Lott is excellent. Instead, I make an analogy from the work of Peter Bauer on development economics. The important factors about development cannot be put into mathematics (cultural traditions, attitudes, habits, customs, etc.). Similarly, the important factors about crime rates cannot be put into mathematics (awareness, behaviors, habits, attitudes, etc.). Broadly speaking, crime rates are related to factors over which patrol agents have no immediate control (employment opportunities, teen pregnancy, alcoholism, single parenting, demographics, etc.), and even those things over which they have control (e.g., patrol intensity) affect crime rates to such a small degree that the elasticity is not even measurable.

Professionalism has led to alienation of the community from the tax-funded, policing class and a concomitant alienation of the tax-paying community from its proper, primary role in the provision of defense.

In The Privatization of Policing (Georgetown University Press, 1999), Brian Forst writes:

The notion that police were the experts contributed to police arrogance and a sense among the police that members of the community were inferior. Effective use of technology and emphasis on efficiency need not interfere with a healthy relationship between the police and the public, but the leaders of the professional era managed to replace a friendly service attitude with a cool, detached one and thus to severely damage that relationship. Police in many jurisdictions further alienated the public by spending less and less time on the street.

This has led to a third phase, whereby tax-funded police attempt to address this alienation and redress their inefficiencies by means of the mode of patrol known as community policing.

Community policing does hold out great hope, because it simultaneously empowers communities to assert their authority in crime prevention activities, and addresses the at-risk conditions (see note 19, above) that have the greatest long-term impact on crime rates.

Unfortunately for tax-funded police, they are constitutionally unable to perform community policing.

Poulin and Nemeth cite several reasons for this fundamental contradiction in their book Private Security and Public Safety: A Community-Based Approach, in a section titled The Incompatibility of Public Police and Community-Based Policing Initiatives: vehicles vs. face-to-face patrols, reactive dynamics vs. integrative dynamics, "thin blue line" culture, police unions, and re-education of patrolmen, among many reasons.

This sociological schema is essential to understanding the value proposition that modern security companies offer to consumers. That value proposition centers on empowering the customer to effect his own security through the agency of the security company.

What Can Be Done?

So now, we come to the Solutions section, which is short and sweet.

Fundamentally, the producers of policing must embrace the principles of nonconfiscation and competition. That is, eschew the institutions of taxation and monopoly. But government will not just give up. It will have to be out-competed. It is for these reasons that I favor the establishment of patrol and restitution companies, that have the following business model:

Subscription services are rendered to residential subscribers against ~$35/mo. The services rendered are: patrol of premises and environs, first-response for home monitoring systems or other calls, monthly crime reports to the subscriber, crime resolution, and crime indemnification. By crime resolution is meant: should a crime occur, the business investigates, attempts to locate the perpetrator, and facilitates engaging the perpetrator in mediation or arbitration to obtain restitution for the victim-subscriber. By crime indemnification is meant that should crime resolution fail to make the subscriber whole, the business will pay the subscriber directly to make him chrematistically whole.

Making the victim whole means that the victim and the perpetrator come to a mutually agreed solution which could include payments of money, performance of services, and/or other arrangements. The key element is that the victim agrees to the arrangement as a suitable remedy for the tort. In the absence of a mediated agreement, making the victim whole is only a loose term, unless qualified.

Legally, the business stands as surety for the civil liability of the direct (special) damages caused by the perpetrator.

That is, it does not stand for surety for general damages. Examples of special damages include: extra costs, repair or replacement of damaged property, lost earnings (both historically and in the future), loss of irreplaceable items, and additional domestic costs. Examples of general damages include physical or emotional pain and suffering, loss of companionship, loss of consortium, disfigurement, loss of reputation, loss or impairment of mental or physical capacity, and loss of enjoyment of life.

Additionally, subscribers may pay for premium services: integrity check of home costs $2/day, bring in papers/mail costs $2/day, feed/water pets costs $4/day, outdoor escort $5 per 10 minutes.

OK, I’ve talked for a long time, but I haven’t nearly covered the topic. There are things to say about Restitution vs. Punishment, Law Enforcement vs. Incentives to Obey the Law, about the utility of prisons and their operation in a free market.

But I’ll leave off here for questions and discussion.

Bibliography

• Barnett, Randy (1998). The Structure of Liberty: Justice and the Rule of Law. Oxford University Press.
• Benson, Bruce (1990). The Enterprise of Law: Justice Without the State. Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy.
• Benson, Bruce (1998). To Serve and Protect: Privatization and Community in Criminal Justice. Independent Institute.
• de Jasay, Anthony (2002). Justice and Its Surroundings. Liberty Fund.
• Elliott, J. F. (1973). Interception Patrol: An Examination of the Theory of Random Patrol as a Municipal Police Tactic. Charles C. Thomas.
• Gorbachev, Mikhail (1987). Perestroika: New Thinking for Our Country and the World. Harper and Row.
• Grant, R.W. (1999). The Incredible Bread Machine. Fox and Wilkes.
• Hayek, Friedrich A. (1945). The Use of Knowledge in Society. American Economic Review, Vol. 35, No. 4, 519—530.
• Hoppe, Hans-Hermann (1989). A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism. Kluwer Academic Publishers.
• Hoppe, Hans-Hermann (1999). The Private Production of Defense. Journal of Libertarian Studies, Vol. 14, No. 1.
• Mises, Ludwig (1920). Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth (trans.). Ludwig von Mises Institute.
• Mises, Ludwig (1932). Socialism: A Sociological and Economic Analysis (trans.). Liberty Fund.
• Poulin, K.C. and Nemeth, Charles P. (2005). Private Security and Public Safety: A Community-Based Approach. Prentice Hall.
• Rothbard, Murray N. (1998). The Ethics of Liberty. New York University Press.
• Stringham, Edward P. (ed., 2007). Anarchy and the Law: The Political Economy of Public Choice. Independent Institute. Anthology of articles.

Gil Guillory [send him mail] is a chemical engineer by profession. He lives in The Woodlands with his wife and two daughters. He ran for US Congress (TX-8) on the Libertarian Party ticket in 2000 and 2002. He has written and presented five papers on the free-market provision of security: On the Viability of Subscription Patrol and Restitution Services, The Legal Landscape for Subscription Patrol and Restitution in Texas, An Actuarial Analysis of Crime Data with Applications to Subscription Patrol and Restitution, Patrol Study for the SPR Business Model, andThe Role of Subscription-based Patrol and Restitution in the Future of Liberty, the last of which is forthcoming in the Journal of Libertarian Studies.He has also written popular articles for anti-state.com, mises.org, lewrockwell.com, and strike-the-root.com. Visit his website.

Gil Guillory Archives

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What if there were a company that would patrol your neighborhood and be financially liable for losses due to crime on your property…would you be interested in subscribing? Could something like that actually work and be profitable, and would it be preferable to tax-funded patrol?

This idea has been suggested by a number of libertarians, from Molinari to Rothbard to Benson to Hoppe to Barnett. Some people think the insurance component of such a venture would completely swamp its viability.

So how much would it take to just cover the payouts for losses? My friends and I decided to find out. We took data from the FBI Uniform Crime Reports and the Department of Justice (sic) National Crime Victimization Surveys, picked a specific location in the US, did a little bit of math, and found out:

To insure against the peril of murder, assuming each victim’s estate would be given 1 million USD, it would cost about $8 a year per household.

To insure against the peril of rape, assuming each victim would be given 50,000 USD, it would cost about $21 a year per household.

To insure against the peril of battery/assault, assuming each victim would be made whole for monetary losses only, it would cost about $3 a year per household.

To insure against all property crimes (robbery, burglary, motor vehicle theft), assuming each victim would be made whole for monetary losses only, it would cost about $126 a year per household.

But wait — you already have car insurance and homeowner’s insurance! What if the payouts were capped at your homeowner’s insurance deductible, where your insurance company already starts picking up the tab?

Well, then, to insure against all property crimes, it would cost only about $25 a year per household.

Maybe the idea isn’t so crazy, after all.

Gil Guillory [send him mail] recently presented An Actuarial Analysis of Crime Data with Applications to Subscription Patrol and Restitution at the Southern Economic Association Annual Meeting in a session sponsored by the Society for the Development of Austrian Economics. He is an engineer living in The Woodlands, Texas, near Houston. Visit his website.

DIGG THIS

At every turn,
the state seeks to undermine our thrift. Without thrift, our liberty
and property are in jeopardy. We must struggle against the tide
of the state's institutions to embrace the age-old virtue of thrift.

First, a review
of the problem. Second, a suggested plan for the economist1
hopeful.

According
to Samuel Smiles
in his book Thrift,
Samuel Johnson called Thrift the daughter of Prudence, the sister
of Temperance, and the mother of Liberty. Pierre-Joseph
Proudhon famously declared that Liberty is the Mother, not the
daughter, of Order. So, we have a family tree of virtues: Prudence
begets Thrift which begets Liberty which begets Order. Of course,
from economics, we also know that Thrift begets Capital which begets
Prosperity. Smiles's book Self-Help
documents hundreds of cases of people improving their conditions
and the conditions of others through thrift. Alas, as far as I know,
there is no modern equivalent to the sweeping scope of Self-Help.

Also from Smiles's
Thrift: "Some of man’s best qualities depend upon the
right use of money — such as his generosity, benevolence, justice,
honesty, and forethought. Many of his worst qualities also originate
in the bad use of money — such as greed, miserliness, injustice,
extravagance, and improvidence." As we know from the doctrine
of the unity
of the virtues, individual virtue is necessarily connected to
political opinions, and so Smiles has perhaps shown us that a man
handling his own money well paves the path to political virtue as
well. So, this attack on thrift by the state is an attack on virtue
generally, and we can expect that it has spillover effects in the
adoption of ideologies that apologize for vices.

The state seeks
to usurp our liberty and take our property by appeals to disorder
and destitution. One way in which we know the state is evil is that
it attacks us in a pincer
maneuver, undermining our thrift, which results in disorder
and destitution, and then from the other flank, using these results
to further usurp our liberty and take our property. How does it
do this?

Money.
The state, having captured the free market institution of money,
having destroyed its link to gold and silver, and having centralized
and cartelized the supply of money, inflates the money supply to
monetize its growing debt and reward elites. This has two primary
effects for the individual. First, it has become virtually impossible
to use money as a store of value. Its value erodes away if kept
for years, so it is necessary to invest any money saved, just to
keep pace with inflation. Second, inflation causes investments to
be riskier, by causing business cycles. The best explication of
this is What
Has Government Done to Our Money by Murray Rothbard.

Taxes.
Not only is taxation perhaps the most evil institution left on earth,
now that chattel slavery is virtually extinct, taxation distorts
the individual's finances. We are all familiar with the social engineering
in the US Federal Income Tax, with credits and deductions for all
manner of activities the state officially encourages or discourages.
But much worse is the attack on capital which the tax system represents.
Consider: your wages are taxed, with what's left, you invest in
stocks of companies, the profits on the companies you invest in
are taxed, with what's left of that, the company pays you dividends
or increases retained earnings, and then those dividends or capital
gains are then taxed.

Social security
and "welfare." The cruel hoax of this system is well
known. Besides being financially unstable and subject to the whims
of Congress, this system encourages people to be dependent upon
the state for their financial security in old age, thereby disintegrating
traditional intergenerational familial obligations. In the US,
we call by the name welfare government programs such as Food
Stamps, WIC, and TANF. Again, these programs disintegrate familial
obligations and encourage dependence upon the state.

Credit cards.
An evil attending monetary expansion is that it often "pays"
to buy on credit, when the rate of fall in the purchasing power
of money outstrips the rate of interest charged on the credit account.
With interest rates artificially depressed by the monetary authorities
and banks forced into a fiat monetary regime, they attempt to "loan
up," seeking out many high-risk borrowers, which are the cash
cow of the credit industry. The otherwise good documentary Maxed
Out fails to account for the major role that the state plays
in these circumstances.

This is not
an exhaustive list of the ways that the state attacks our thrift.
Virtually everything the state does, from the FDA, to the War on
(some other) Drugs, to the War in Iraq, impoverishes us and makes
us less able to exercise our thrift. I only dealt here very briefly
with some of the directly relevant institutions.

Not an attack
on debt. Also, this is not an attack on debt per se. Gary North's
excellent
series on debt is well worth the time invested in reading them.
That said, every person should strive to reach a point in early
adulthood where he becomes free of all debt with a substantial portfolio
of assets. This kind of financial independence is a source of
strength that the individual, the family, the church, and other
institutions can use in their defense against the predations of
the state.

How to Acquire
the Virtue of Thrift

To acquire
a virtue, as Aristotle explained, is to acquire the habit of exercising
the virtue. Most of us know what is right. It's the doing that dogs
us. Comte-Sponville
is wrong when he says "I believe [virtue can be taught]"
and that the chief work to do is "to try to understand what
we should do, what we should be, and how we should live." No
— we mostly know what we should do. The best books for improving
your virtue are ones such as those by Benjamin
Franklin, Samuel Smiles, and Napoleon
Hill. They give us inspiration and practical advice. Here is
what I've learned about cultivating thrift:

Budgeting
as prudence. Contra personal finance writer David
Bach, a written budget is absolutely essential to thrift. It
is the beginning of the whole enterprise. Each month gets its budget.
To be clear, you will not have 12 budgets. You will have a budget
for every month you live from now on. It must be agreed to by your
spouse. You must not spend any money unless authorized by the budget
— if you need to spend money not on the budget, agree to change
the budget first, then spend the money. If you want to read a budgeting
book, I recommend this
one, though you probably don't need to. Once you have a written
budget, you must discipline yourself to live below your means. The
reason that a written budget helps you impose this discipline upon
yourself is that you can actually see where all your money goes,
instead of guessing; and, you can make considered choices about
trading money among budget categories. Also, a written budget helps
elucidate this reality: you tell your money where to go, it doesn't
tell you where it "needs" to go. This is a key psychological
change that is empowering and comforting.

So, if you
don't live by a written budget, get off your duff and go write one!
This will improve your thrift! Do it! A quick way to start is with
utilities. Go grab the last year's worth of utility bills and see
what the average payment is. Sign up for balanced billing for electricity
and gas. It will help.

Keep your old,
actual budgets for reference. Your budget should have an "actual"
column to show where you came in. You should also have a place on
your budget to list your major liquid assets (401-k, IRA, savings)
and debts. All this will show you where you've been, where you're
going, and provide guidance for future budgets. And, like Franklin's
virtue tally, they will serve as a reminder of what needs improvement.

The Latte
Factor. Both Smiles and Bach spend considerable time in their
books discussing what Bach calls the "latte factor." If
you don't think you can live beneath your means, or squeeze your
budget to pay down those debts faster, you're not looking hard enough!
Do you brown bag it to work every day? Do you ever buy anything
from Starbucks? Do you subscribe to cable or satellite TV or radio?
It's not that these luxuries should not be enjoyed — it's that when
your budget needs squeezing, be merciless. You will miss your beer
after work less than you think.

Use cash.
Suze Orman
has a technique she uses in her seminars. She has all the participants
rip a dollar and then report on their psychological reactions. They
report that it is a little painful. Try it yourself. Get a $1 bill
and rip it in half. Not at all like ripping a piece of paper, is
it? This psychological connection to "real money" is an
important reason to use cash as much as possible. Another reason
is that you can't overspend cash. A third reason is that having
cash on hand and exercising your will — resisting a purchase — builds
your ability to do so.

How to use
cash. The time-tested envelope
method is what to use. For each budgeted category, put cash
in an envelope when you get paid. Write the budget category on the
outside of the envelope. Keep track of expenses by writing on the
envelope and keeping receipts in the envelope. This will allow you
to improve your budgeting over time.

Giving or
tithing. Every personal finance author I've surveyed — David
Bach, Richard
Paul Evans, Suze Orman, Dave
Ramsey — recommend giving or tithing a portion of your income.
Christian scripture commands it. They all claim, with the weight
of their experience and the experience of others they have helped,
that giving or tithing paradoxically helps one's financial position.
I cannot subscribe to the notion of God showering blessings upon
the thrifty, but I think there is something to this. Periodic donations
develop the virtue of magnanimity, and build community relationships.
This impacts all of your virtues, and raises your self-esteem as
someone who is a benevolent and magnanimous person. It stretches
you to develop your virtues even more, and this often results in
a more productive home and business life. And the fact of giving
creates a psychological sense of abundance, which undoubtedly has
an influence upon your subconscious which can deeply influence your
behavior.

Single-mindedness.
TV, radio, and billboards are filled with exhortations to buy on
credit, go to the movies, go out to eat, order food in, and get
the latest electronic gadget. To steel yourself against this onslaught,
review your budget, talk to your spouse about how great it will
be to become debt free and financially secure, read or listen to
books on personal finance (check them out from the library!), and/or
listen to radio shows
like Dave Ramsey's. Share your financial goals with your extended
family. It may seem weird to them at first, but they will sense
the virtue in it and communicate that to you. It is family and community
that help you to be strong against temptations.

Affirmations.
Develop an affirmation such as I will be debt free by March 2011
by budgeting every month and living frugally. Repeat it to yourself
daily, aloud and loud, with emotion and conviction, at least 5 times
daily for 1 month. Develop within your mind a vision of what debt
free will look like, feel like. What will be some of the things
you'll do? Now, work these visions and the emotions they create
into your daily affirmation. The point of an affirmation is to convince
your subconscious that this will happen. The subconscious responds
well to emotion, visualization, and repetition. Once your subconscious
is "on your side," then it will be your greatest ally.

A detailed
plan. For specific guidance beyond this foundation of thrift,
I'm a fan of Dave Ramsey's baby
step plan, and I recommend his book The
Total Money Makeover (check it out from the library!). The
plan is simple and straightforward. It's nothing new. Our own Mark
Thornton's advice is quite similar.

But
what about everyone else? Let us follow Albert
Jay Nock's advice: "The only thing that the psychically
human being can do to improve society is to present society with
one improved unit."

Onward thrifty
libertarians!

1. I happily
   use the term "economist" as Samuel Smiles did in his
   book Thrift. Here, an economist is one who practices economy;
   one who is frugal, thrifty.

July
28, 2007

Gil
Guillory [send him mail]
is
an engineer in Houston.

DIGG THIS

In Built
to Last, Jim Collins and Jerry Porras describe the results
of their 6-year research project to identify and understand a slate
of visionary “gold-medal” companies. The criteria were:

• premier
  institution in its industry

• widely
  admired by knowledgeable businesspeople

• made an
  indelible imprint on the world in which we live

• had multiple
  generations of chief executives

• been through
  multiple product or service lifecycles

• founded
  before 1950

Against each
visionary company, they compared a silver- or bronze-medal caliber
company. Some of the visionary-comparison company pairs were:

visionary
company

comparison company

Ford

GM

GE

Westinghouse

Hewlett-Packard

Texas Instruments

Marriott

Howard Johnson

Among other
things, they compared the financial performance of the 18 visionary
companies with the 18 comparison companies and the general market.
For $1 invested 1 Jan 1926, it would have grown to, on 31 Dec
1990, $415 in the general market, $955 in the index of comparison
companies, or $6356 in the index of the visionary companies. This
financial performance is in addition to the criteria listed above.
Clearly, being a visionary company means changing the world while
also creating stellar returns. One of the visionary companies
profiled, Johnson and Johnson, has never had an unprofitable year!

Collins and
Porras and their team of researchers studied the entire history
of each visionary and comparison company. Among their findings,
they claim this:

Our
research showed that a fundamental element in the “ticking clock”
of a visionary company is a core ideology – core values and
sense of purpose beyond just making money – that guides and
inspires people throughout an organization and remains relatively
fixed for long periods of time.

They support
this claim with case study after case study of visionary companies
operating in accordance with an articulated ideology, sometimes
at the expense of short-term profits, as Merck did with Mectizan,
or in the absence of solid marketing data to support a product launch,
as Sony did again and again, with “the first magnetic tape recorder
in Japan (1950), the first all-transistor radio (1955), the first
pocket-sized radio (1957), the first home-use videotape recorder
(1964), and the Sony Walkman (1979).”

When examining
the service-oriented visionary companies, the ideological edge was
most prominent. Each company was rated on ideology on a scale running
from 4 to 12. Marriott bested Howard Johnson by 6 points, Nordstrom
bested Melville by 3 points, Wal-Mart bested Ames by 6 points, and
Disney bested Columbia by 7 points.

If we are
persuaded by the work of Collins and Porras, then we must conclude
that core ideology is an essential part of what it means to be a
visionary company. But must this ideology be something in particular?
Collins and Porras say no:

In a visionary
company, the core values need no rational or external justification.
Nor do they sway with the trends and fads of the day. Nor even
do they shift in response to changing market conditions.

Further, they
caution:

Core
ideology does not come from mimicking the values of other companies
– even highly visionary companies; it does not come from following
the dictates of outsiders; it does not come from reading management
books; and it does not come from a sterile intellectual exercise
of “calculating” what values would be most pragmatic, most popular,
or most profitable. When articulating and codifying core ideology,
the key step is to capture what is authentically believed, not what
other companies set as their values or what the outside world thinks
the ideology should be.
Let’s apply this
now to a libertarian security company.

Libertarian
Security

As I have
argued
before, trying a security business model as envisioned by libertarians
will likely require starting a new company. And so, while Securitas,
for example, may well be a visionary company in its own right (I
am not persuaded that it is), it likely does not have the entrepreneurial
vision to move in the direction of subscription-based patrol and
restitution for residences. Their work, and that of most security
companies in the US, continues to be focused on business, government,
and other large, institutional clients. I claim that a new security
company that has such libertarian models within its sights must
be independently launched for these security models ever to be tried.

When this
new security company is launched, it has the potential to be a visionary
security company. One essential element of such a company is that
it adopt an ideology. What should be the core ideology of a visionary
libertarian security company? Libertarian ideology, of course! But
what does that mean?

The Values

Nozick (in)famously
argued in Anarchy, State, and Utopia that a likely historical consequent
of free competition in the provision of security would be the establishment
of a geographic monopoly company that forced its “customers” to
pay whatever rate it chose. Murray Rothbard rightly ridiculed this
in the Journal of Libertarian Studies as the “immaculate conception
of the state." I have argued elsewhere
that the main flaw in Nozick’s argument is that he presumes that
the security and adjudication companies would be one and the same,
when it is clearly not in their interest to combine. But, this is
a good value to enshrine: we will not be judges in our own cases,
or in the cases of our clients.

Further, we
might worry that our company might not play well with others. Again,
I have argued here
that it is in the interest of such a company to cooperate with competitors,
including tax-funded patrol, in the capturing of data on crime,
patrol services rendered, share data with insurance companies, and
even establish a patrol-credit clearinghouse to fairly compete with
other companies in the same jurisdiction. So, another value to enshrine:
we will cheerfully cooperate with competing patrol and indemnification
providers.

One of the
dangers of being both a visionary company and a patrol-and-restitution
company is that visionary companies are often secretive about their
internal operations. However, it is in the best interest of a patrol-and-restitution
company to be transparent in its operations, procedures, and cases.
There are some areas (employee privacy, pending cases) that must
be confidential, but the goodwill and trust that transparency create
will be invaluable to the company. I do not mean revealing a little
more than other companies – I mean completely transparent.
As a value: our policies, procedures, operations, and finances will
be open to the public.

There are
many other values a visionary patrol and restitution company might
want to hold. Some of those are typical of a service industry, such
as: continuous improvement, excellence in reputation, hard work
and productivity, service to the customer, and running lean. These
are important considerations, but the most worthwhile value to uphold
in the security industry is one that Securitas works on constantly:
raising the status of security professionals. I have argued here
that the subscription patrol and restitution business model is particularly
well-suited to this worthwhile goal, since patrol work under this
business model is likely to be more demanding than patrol work by,
say, a Sheriff’s Deputy. As a value: our staff will continually
learn and improve, and be of the highest caliber in capability,
productivity, and integrity.

To recapitulate,
the values are:

1. Justice.
   We are not arbiters in our own cases, or in the cases of our clients.
2. Cooperation.
   We cheerfully cooperate with all providers of patrol, insurance,
   and adjudication.
3. Transparency.
   Our policies, procedures, operations, and finances are open to
   the public.
4. Personal
   Excellence. Our staff continually learn and improve, and are of
   the highest caliber in capability, productivity, and integrity.

Purpose

But an ideology
is more than values. To be compelling, there must be a purpose.
For Merck, it is victory against disease and help to humankind.
For Sony, it is applying advanced technology to the life of the
general public, and the elevation of the nation’s culture. Johnson
and Johnson has its Credo.
It is hard to follow acts such as these, but I offer this:

To improve
our community by reducing fear, reducing crime, reducing recidivism,
and building meaningful connections between neighbors and community
organizations of every type.

Defending
this purpose, I point out that patrol is a good itself, regardless
of its effects, so that reducing fear is an important goal. Reducing
crime is obvious. Reducing recidivism is less obvious. Since our
operating procedure will be to attempt to engage offenders in mediation
or arbitration, more restitutive justice will take place than in
our absence. Some
studies show that participation in mediation reduces recidivism,
and there are reasons to think that the same reduction would accrue
to arbitration. This reduction in recidivism seems to be partly
due to the creation of positive social bonds between victim and
offender.

But building
meaningful connections between people in a community can be accomplished
in other ways, and has a multitude of positive effects, among which
are the reduction of crime. This is an important element of the
purpose of a visionary patrol and restitution company. Just as in
the age of kings, outstanding men and families rose to the stature
of judge or king in a geographical area; so, the patrol and restitution
company must rise to prominence, but in a modern way that respects
liberty. A possible strategy for doing just that is to be a Gladwellian
connector
for the community, bringing together, for instance, the family that
has just had a reduction in income with the local Christmas charity.
As the eyes and ears of the community, the company would be well-positioned
to fill this essential role, which could benefit its customers and
the community at large.

January
8, 2007

Gil
Guillory [send him mail]
is
an engineer in Houston.

DIGG THIS

When I was
in high school, it was all the rage to make a mix
tape for a friend, especially a girlfriend or boyfriend. Today’s
high-schooler knows them as playlists.
Some of the unwritten rules of making a mix tape are:

• songs must
  be good
• tapes are
  limited to about 90 min running time
• try to pick
  songs that are unlikely to have been heard by the listener
• tell a story
  or pick a theme
• track sequencing
  is important — must have good flow
• the selections
  should reflect your personality

Doing
my best to adhere to these rules, I present my own libertarian mix
tape below. The point is to demonstrate and explain libertarian
ideas, so I will comment on or explain each song. All lyrics are
appended at the end of this article.

Economics

One could rightly
say that all of politics begins with production and distribution
– that is, economics.

1. The Boy
   Who Wouldn’t Hoe Corn (itunes/amazon,
   bluegrass, lyrics)
   is a short tale of lazy man who gets his just deserts.
2. Conversation
   with a Mule (amazon,
   country, lyrics) is a
   fun spoken song about who, between a mule and a man, does the
   work, and where the fruits of that labor go.
3. Pirate
   Radio (amazon,
   shanty, lyrics) rails against regulation
   by the FCC. Money quote: What we need is liberty, not no stinkin'
   laws / Freedom from the FCC and its money-grubbing paws!
4. Wabash
   Cannonball (amazon,
   country, lyrics) is an unabashed
   tribute to the majesty and triumph of modern engineering and business
   in its creation of the train and rail system.
5. Ammonia
   Avenue (itunes/amazon,
   pop, lyrics) Ammonia avenue is
   a metaphor for modern intellectual and industrial achievement.
   We are told to be humble in our approach to criticism of that
   which we do not understand. And who are we to justify the right
   in all we do? / Until we seek, until we find ammonia avenue

Fight the
Man

Libertarians
are not anti-war in the strict sense. Indeed, wars of political
independence are just causes, as some of these songs relate.

6. Bright
   Sunny South (itunes/amazon,
   bluegrass, lyrics) tells the
   story of a boy leaving home to fight for the Southern cause in
   the War
   to Prevent Southern Independence. It’s historically representative
   of why
   men fought on the Southern side. I especially like the advice
   his father gives him: Son, be brave but show mercy whenever
   you can.
7. Bonnie
   Blue Flag (amazon,
   traditional, lyrics) is a marching
   song from the War to Prevent Southern Independence. Its popularity
   rivaled that of Dixie, and its performance was banned during Reconstruction.
   See wikipedia for
   more. As with many songs older than ~50 years, there is a
   lyrics controversy.
8. Jesse
   James (amazon,
   country, lyrics) was a folk hero of
   sorts, as this song attests. To understand why, you might read
   wikipedia’s entry,
   as well as articles by Ryan
   McMaken and Scott
   Trask.
9. The Foggy
   Dew (itunes/amazon,
   traditional, lyrics) chronicles
   the Easter
   Uprising of 1916 in Ireland, where Irish separatism was combined
   with anti-conscription sentiment in a failed attempt at independence.
   This traditional song, with libertarian consistency, calls conscription
   and political subjugation what they are: slavery. The lyrics were
   written by Peadar Kearney, and are exceptionally poetic.

Omnipotent
Government

10. Red Right
    Hand (itunes/amazon,
    alternative, lyrics) could be an
    allegory for the lure and diabolical nature of the modern all-embracing
    state. As the lyrics state, some would say of the modern state,
    he’s a god, he’s a man, he’s a ghost, he’s a guru. The
    red right hand is the bloody, coercive nature of government. You're
    one microscopic cog in his catastrophic plan, designed and directed
    by his red right hand.
11. Everybody
    Loves Me, Baby (itunes/amazon,
    pop, lyrics) is a fun
    number sung from the viewpoint of a totalitarian leader who just
    can’t understand dissent. And, it explicitly mentions anarchists
    — how cool!
12. The Grave
    (itunes/amazon,
    pop, lyrics) is the story of a young
    man who volunteers for the Vietnam war.
13. Reĝoj
    de Cindro (musicexpress/vinilkosmo,
    pop, lyrics) is one of two Esperanto
    songs on this mix tape. I have translated the lyrics into English
    below. This song addresses a warrior, asking him to put away
    [his] thirsty sword and not serve those kings of ashes.
14. La Bonaj
    Vortoj (musicexpress/vinilkosmo,
    hard rock, lyrics) is an angry
    song about the death, broken promises, deceit, and end of freedom
    that come with war and occupation.

The Promise
of Freedom

15. Right
    Here, Right Now (amazon,
    pop, lyrics) is a song that
    came out a couple of years after, and in response to, the spontaneous
    destruction of the Berlin
    Wall that started in Nov 1989. It is stunning that the
    world could change at the blink of an eye through the power
    of ideas, and he proclaims there is no other place [in history]
    I want to be. Right Here, Right Now. What an optimistic
    message for all times! Beautiful.
16. America
    (itunes/amazon)
    (folk, lyrics) is about the promise and
    reality of freedom that America was and still is for immigrants
    that only want to be free. In conversations over the years
    with immigrants to the US from Uzbekistan, Russia, China, even
    the UK, and other countries, the same theme has come up time and
    again: they can just "smell the freedom" here.
17. Philadelphia
    Freedom (itunes/amazon,
    pop, lyrics) brings to my
    mind Benjamin Franklin. I will never forget the passage in his
    Autobiography where he describes coming to Philadelphia for the
    first time, and experiencing the wonder of a huge city and the
    promise of finding his fortune.
18. Kilted
    Yaksmen Anthem (amazon,
    parody, lyrics) is set to
    the tune of My Country u2018Tis of Thee. I rather like My
    Country u2018Tis of Thee as far as patriotic songs go, but I also
    love the fact that parodying a patriotic song is both legal and
    socially acceptable. It's an expression of freedom, and subtly
    undermines state legitimacy. But mainly, it's a silly song. I
    love silly songs.

Lyrics

The
Boy Who Wouldn’t Hoe Corn

Tell You
a little story and it won’t take long,
‘Bout a lazy farmer who wouldn’t hoe his corn.
The reason why I never could tell,
For that young man was always well.

He planted his corn in the month of June,
And by July it was up to his eye.
Come September, there came a big frost,
And all the young man’s corn was lost.

His courtship had just begun.
Said: “Young man, have you hoed some corn?”
“Well I tried and I tried, and I tried in vain,
“But I don’t believe I raised one grain.”

He went down town to his neighbor’s door,
Where he had often been before.
Sayin’: “Pretty little miss, will you marry me?”
“Little miss what do you say?”

“Why do you come for me to wed?
“You can’t even make your own corn grain.
“Single I am, and will remain.
“A lazy man I won’t maintain.”

He turned his back and walked away.
Sayin’: “Little miss, you’ll rue the day.
“You’ll rue the day that you were born
“For givin’ me the devil ‘cos I wouldn’t hoe corn.”

Conversation
with a Mule

Old Mule,
you’re the son of a donkey, and I’m in the image of God,
Yet here we work, hitched together, toilin’ and tillin’ in the
sod.
I wonder if you work for me, or I work for you, old Mule –
At times I think it’s a partnership between a mule and a doggone
fool.

When plowing,
we go the same distance, but I work harder than you.
You skim the ground on four good legs, and I hobble along on two.
So, Mule, mathematic’ly speaking, your four legs ‘gainst my two,
I do twice the work per leg; I do twice as much as you.

Now soon
we’ll be making the corn crop: that crop will be split three ways:
A third for you, a third for me, and a third for the landlord’s
pay.
You take your third and eat it. You’re getting the best, and how;
I split my third amongst a wife and eight kids, a banker, six
hens, and a cow!

And right
here, Mule, I might mention, that you only plow the ground.
I shuck the corn and husk it, while you’re hee-hawin’ around.
All fall and part of the winter, old Mule, you know it’s true,
I break my back with a cotton-sack, tryin’ to pay off the mortgage
on you.

The only
time I’m your better is when elections come.
A man can vote, and a mule can not, but that don’t worry you none.
Because you’re a wise old donkey; you know what to worry about.
You knew politics wouldn’t help you none, and I’m just finding
it out.

So, Mule,
confidentially speaking, would you change places with me?
Would you take up all my worries, and still contented be?
Would you swap places, I’m asking; of course you know we couldn’t,
But would you if you could – now tell the truth – you’re doggone
right you wouldn’t!

Pirate
Radio

The pirate
ship’s a-sailin’ along the stormy seas
There’s radio free america, just for you and me
The big radio stations are stinkin’ up the air
Their pusillanimous plot: it’s a real nightmare

Sing:
Aye-aye mateys, ho! Come on the pirate radio
Land of the free and home of the brave
FCC crawl in your grave.

The Coast
Guard’s a-comin’ to shut the pirates down
They don’t believe in free speech: the FCC’s in town
Their hacksaws and their hammers: they’re smashing all the beds
They won a little battle, but the war’s not over yet.

Sing:
Aye-aye mateys, ho! Come on the pirate radio
Land of the free and home of the brave
FCC crawl in your grave.

I want a
????? of freedom that we might tell the truth
We might play something good, and it wouldn’t be a goof.
What we need is liberty, not no stinkin’ laws!
Freedom from the FCC and their money-grubbing paws!

Sing:
Aye-aye mateys, ho! Come on the pirate radio
Land of the free and home of the brave
FCC crawl in your grave.

(spoken)
Crawl in there you perverts!

The pirate
flag’s a-waving, to fight the FCC!
Lilly-livered scalawags for the mendacity!
It’s fifty on the airways, we’re sculling lots of rum
We’ll make them walk the plank!
We’re havin’ lot’s of fun.

Sing:
Aye-aye mateys, ho! Come on the pirate radio
Land of the free and home of the brave
FCC crawl in your grave.

Aye-aye mateys,
ho! Come on the pirate radio
Land of the free and home of the brave
FCC crawl in your grave.

Sing:
Aye-aye mateys, ho! Come on the pirate radio
Land of the free and home of the brave
FCC crawl in your grave.

(spoken:)

Crawl in
there, you stinking, slimy swogs!

Aye, keel
haul them!

Make them
walk the plank!

Forty lashes!

Gouge their
eyes out!

Chop their
legs off!

(etc.)

Wabash
Cannonball

From the
great Atlantic Ocean to the wide Pacific shore,
from the green ol’ flowering mountains to ice-bound Labrador,
oh, she’s mighty tall and handsome
and, oh, quite loved by all
she’s the modern combination known as the Wabash Cannonball.

Now listen
to the jingle, the rumble, and the roar
as she glides along the woodlands, through the hills, and by the
shore.
Hear the mighty rush of the engines, hear that lonesome hobo’s
call,
As she travels through the jungles on the Wabash Cannonball

Now here’s
to daddy Claxton may your name forever stand
And always be remembered in our courts throughout our land
His earthly race is over and the curtains round him fall
We’ll carry him home to Dixie on the Wabash Cannonball

Now listen
to the jingle, the rumble, and the roar
as she glides along the woodlands, through the hills, and by the
shore.
Hear the mighty rush of the engines, hear that lonesome hobo’s
call,
As she travels through the jungles on the Wabash Cannonball

Well she
came down from Birmingham one cold December day
As she pulled into the station you could hear all the people say
She’s from Tennessee she’s long and she’s tall
She came down from Birmingham on the Wabash Cannonball

Now listen
to the jingle, the rumble, and the roar
as she glides along the woodlands, through the hills, and by the
shore.
Hear the mighty rush of the engines, hear that lonesome hobo’s
call,
As she travels through the jungles on the Wabash Cannonball

Ammonia
Avenue

Is there
no sign of light as we stand in the darkness
Watching the sun arise?
Is there no sign of life as we gaze at the waters
Into the strangers eyes?

And who are
we to criticize or scorn the things that they do?
For we shall seek and we shall find ammonia avenue

If we call
for the proof and we question the answers
Only the doubt will grow
Are we blind to the truth or a sign to believe in?
Only the wise will know

And word
by word they handed down the light that shines today
And those who came at first to scoff, remained behind to pray
And those who came at first to scoff, remained behind to pray

When you
can’t hear the rhyme and you can’t see the reason
Why should the hope remain?
For a man will be tired and his soul will grow weary
Living his life in vain

And who are
we to justify the right in all we do,
Until we seek until we find ammonia avenue?

Through all
the doubt somehow they knew
And stone by stone they built it high
Until the sun broke through
A ray of hope, a shining light: ammonia avenue.

Bright
Sunny South

From the
bright sunny south to the war I was sent,
Ere the days of my boyhood, I scarcely had spent.
From it’s cool shady forests and deep flowing streams,
Ever fond in my memory and sweet in my dreams.

Oh, my dear
little sister: I still see her tears.
When I had to leave home in our tender years.
And my sweet gentle mother, so dear to my heart,
It grieved me sincerely when we had to part.

Said my kind-hearted
father as he took my hand:
"As you go in defence of our dear native land,
"Son, be brave but show mercy whenever you can.
"Our hearts will be with you, ’til you return again."

In my bag
there’s a bible to show me the way,
Through my trials here on earth and to Heaven some day.
I will shoulder my musket and brandish my sword,
In defence of this land and the word of the Lord.

Bonnie
Blue Flag

We are a
band of brothers,
And native to the soil
Fighting for our property
We gained by honest toil.
And when our rights were threatened,
The cry rose near and far;
Hurrah for the Bonnie Blue Flag
That bears a single star!

Hurrah! Hurrah!
For Southern rights, Hurrah!
Hurrah for the Bonnie Blue Flag
That carries a single star!

As long as
the Union
Was faithful to her trust,
Like friends and brothers,
kind were we, and just;
But now, when Northern treachery
Attempts our rights to mar,
We hoist on high the Bonnie Blue flag
That bears a single star.

Hurrah! Hurrah!
For Southern rights, Hurrah!
Hurrah for the Bonnie Blue Flag
That carries a single star!

Jesse
James

Jesse James
was a man
Who killed many a man
He robbed the Glendale train
And he stole from the rich
And he gave to the poor
With a hand and a heart and a brain

Oh Jessie
had a wife, to mourn for his life
Three children they were brave
But that dirty little coward
Who shot Mr. Howard
Has laid poor Jesse in his grave

It was brother
Frank who robbed the Galton bank
and carried the money from the town
it was in the very place
that they had a little race
for they shot Captain Sheets to the ground.

Poor Jesse
had a wife to mourn for his life
Three children they were brave
But that dirty little coward
Who shot Mr. Howard
Has laid poor Jesse in his grave

Oh Jessie
had a wife, to mourn for his life
Three children they were so brave
But that dirty little coward
That shot Mr. Howard
Has laid (poor) Jesse James in his grave

The
Foggy Dew

As down the
glen one Easter morn
To a city fair rode I.
There armed lines of marching men
In squadrons passed me by.

No pipe did
hum,
no battle drum
did sound its loud tattoo.
But the Angelus Bells
o’er the Liffey swells
rang out in the foggy dew.

Right proudly
high in Dublin town
Hung they out a flag of war.
‘Twas better to die ‘neath that Irish sky
than at Sulva or Sud el Bar.

And from
the plains of Royal Meath
strong men came hurrying through
While Brittania’s huns
with their long range guns
sailed in through the foggy dew.

Their bravest
fell
and the requiem bell
rang mournfully and clear
For those who died
that Eastertide
in the springing of the year.

While the
world did gaze
with deep amaze
at those fearless men but few.
Who bore the fight
that freedom’s light
Might shine through the foggy dew.

And back
through the glen
I rode again.
And my heart with grief was sore.
For I parted then
with valiant men
Whom I never shall see more.

But to and
fro
in my dreams I go
And I kneel and pray for you.
For slavery fled
our glorious dead
when you fell in the foggy dew

Red
Right Hand

Take a little
walk to the edge of town
and go across the tracks
Where the viaduct looms,
like a bird of doom
As it shifts and cracks
Where secrets lie in the border fires,
in the humming wires
Hey man, you know
you’re never coming back
Past the square, past the bridge,
past the mills, past the stacks
On a gathering storm comes
a tall handsome man
In a dusty black coat with
a red right hand

He’ll wrap
you in his arms,
tell you that you’ve been a good boy
He’ll rekindle all the dreams
it took you a lifetime to destroy
He’ll reach deep into the hole,
heal your shrinking soul
But there won’t be a single thing that you can do
He’s a god, he’s a man,
he’s a ghost, he’s a guru
They’re whispering his name through this disappearing land
but hidden in his coat is a red right hand.

You don’t
have no money – he’ll get you some.
You don’t have no car – he’ll get you one.
You don’t have no self respect, you feel like an insect,
well don’t you worry buddy, ’cause here he comes
through the gallows and the barrio and the valley and the slums.
His shadow is cast wherever he stands,
stacks of green paper in his red right hand.

You’ll see
him in your nightmares,
you’ll see him in your dreams,
He’ll appear out of nowhere,
but he ain’t what he seems.
You’ll see him in your head,
on the TV screen,
hey, buddy, I’m warning you to turn it off.
he’s a ghost, he’s a god,
he’s a man, he’s a guru
You’re one microscopic cog in his catastrophic plan
designed and directed by his red right hand.

Everybody
Loves Me, Baby

<SPOKEN>:
One, two, three, four!

Fortune has
me well in hand, armies wait at my command
My gold lies in a foreign land buried deep beneath the sand
The angels guide my ev’ry prayer, my enemies are sick or dead
But all the victories I’ve led haven’t brought you to my bed

You see,
everybody loves me, baby, what’s the matter with you?
Won’tcha tell me what did I do to offend you?

Now the purest
race I’ve bred for thee to live in my democracy
And the highest human pedigree awaits your first-born boy, baby
And my face on ev’ry coin engraved, the anarchists are all enslaved
My own flag is forever waved by the grateful people I have saved

You see,
everybody loves me, baby, what’s the matter with you?
Won’tcha tell me what did I do to offend you?

Now, no man
is beyond my claim when land is seized in the people’s name
By evil men who rob and maim, if war is hell, I’m not to blame!
Why, you can’t blame me, I’m Heaven’s child, I’m the second son
of Mary mild
And I’m twice removed from Oscar Wilde, but he didn’t mind, why,
he just smiled

Yes, and
the ocean parts when I walk through, and the clouds dissolve and
the sky turns blue
I’m held in very great value by everyone I meet but you
’cause I’ve used my talents as I could, I’ve done some bad, I’ve
done some good
I did a whole lot better than they thought I would so, c’mon and
treat me like you should!

Because everybody
loves me, baby, what’s the matter with you?
Won’tcha tell me what did I do to offend you? <whoo, yeah!>

Everybody
loves me, baby, what’s the matter with you?
Won’tcha tell me what did I do to offend you?

Yeah, everybody
loves me, baby, what’s the matter with you?
Won’tcha tell me what did I do to offend you?

The
Grave

The grave
that they dug him had flowers
Gathered from the hillsides in bright summer colors,
And the brown earth bleached white at the edge of his gravestone.
He’s gone.

When the
wars of our nation did beckon,
A man barely twenty did answer the calling.
Proud of the trust that he placed in our nation,
He’s gone,
But eternity knows him, and it knows what we’ve done.

And the rain
fell like pearls on the leaves of the flowers
Leaving brown, muddy clay where the earth had been dry.
And deep in the trench he waited for hours,
As he held to his rifle and prayed not to die.

But the silence
of night was shattered by fire
As guns and grenades blasted sharp through the air.
And one after another his comrades were slaughtered.
In morgue of marines, alone standing there.

He crouched
ever lower, ever lower with fear.
"they can’t let me die! the can’t let me die here!
I’ll cover myself with the mud and the earth.
I’ll cover myself! I know I’m not brave!
The earth! the earth! the earth is my grave."

The grave
that they dug him had flowers
Gathered from the hillsides in bright summer colors,
And the brown earth bleached white at the edge of his gravestone.
He’s gone.

Reĝoj
de Cindro

Marŝas
glora armeo,

estas
la Eternulo kun vi.

Subkalkane
krakasiĝas la ostoj

de via
malamik’.

Ĉar
vi amas la landon,

vin ĝin
savas per mort’ kaj teror’,

forbruligas
vilaĝojn kaj urbojn.

Sed mi
petas vin:

Ho, demetu
la glavon soifan.

Ĝi
jam tiris vin multe tro for.

Vi ne
servu la reĝojn de cindro

kaj de
plor’.

Ĉu
vi sentas fieron

kreinta
dezerton sen viv’?

Ĉu
vi certas ke la historio

vere
dankos al vi?

Via koro
krias por sangxo kaj por venĝ'.

Sentoj
kaj instinktoj vin pelas al batal’.

Kie estas
nun viaj pensoj kaj prudent’?

Ĉu
ili ne aǔdeblas tra la bruo de la ŝtal’?

A glorious
army marches,

God is
with you.

Underfoot
are broken the bones of your enemy.

Because
you love the land,

You save
it by means of death and terrorism, you burn villages and
cities to the ground.

But I
ask you:

Oh, put
away your thirsty sword.

It has
already pulled you much too far.

Don't
serve the kings of ashes and of crys.

Do you
feel pride having created deserts devoid of life?

Are you
sure that history will truly thank you?

Your
heart cries for blood and for vengance. Feelings and instincts
impel you to battle.

Where
now are your reason and your prudence?

Are they
not able to hear through the sound of the steel?

La
Bonaj Vortoj

La bonaj
vortoj ne revenigos la filojn,

la bonaj
vortoj ne plenumigos viajn promesojn,

la bonaj
vortoj, tiuj de militestro via,

sanon
ne donos al mia popol’,

grundon
nek donos al mia popolo.

Nun,
malamas mi bonajn vortojn, kaj

freneziĝas
mia koro pro tiomaj promesaj rompitaj.

Troaj
la vortoj de l’homoj sen la parolrajt’,

troa
trompado, troaj miskomprenoj.

Vi povas
esperi retrofluon de ĉiuj riveroj,

kvazaŭ
libernaskito ekŝati povus vivi en malliberejo.

Nice
words will not bring back my sons,

Nice
words will not fulfill your promises,

Nice
words, those of your military leader,

Will
not restore health to my people.

Now I
hate nice words, and my heart launches into a frenzy over
those broken promises.

Too many
words by people with no right to speak, too much deceit, too
much misunderstanding.

You can
hope for all rivers to reverse their course, as well as you
can hope that a freeborn person would become happy to live
in a prison.

Right
Here, Right Now

A woman on
the radio talked about revolution
When it’s already passed her by
Bob Dylan didn’t have this to sing about you
You know it feels good to be alive

I was alive
and I waited, waited
I was alive and I waited for this
Right here, right now
There is no other place I want to be
Right here, right now
Watching the world wake up from history

I saw the
decade in, when it seemed
The world could change at the blink of an eye
And if anything
Then there’s your sign… of the times

I was alive
and I waited, waited
I was alive and I waited for this
Right here, right now

I was alive
and I waited, waited
I was alive and I waited for this
Right here, right now
There is no other place I want to be
Right here, right now
Watching the world wake up from history

Right here,
right now
There is no other place I want to be
Right here, right now
Watching the world wake up from history

Right here,
right now
There is no other place I want to be
Right here, right now
Watching the world wake up…

America

Far
We’ve been traveling far
Without a home
But not without a star

Free
Only want to be free
We huddle close
Hang on to a dream

On the boats
and on the planes
They’re coming to America
Never looking back again
They’re coming to America

Home, don’t
it seem so far away
Oh, we’re traveling light today
In the eye of the storm
In the eye of the storm

Home, to
a new and a shiny place
Make our bed, and we’ll say our grace
Freedom’s light burning warm
Freedom’s light burning warm

Everywhere
around the world
They’re coming to America
Every time that flag’s unfurled
They’re coming to America

Got a dream
to take them there
They’re coming to America
Got a dream they’ve come to share
They’re coming to America

They’re coming
to America
They’re coming to America
They’re coming to America
They’re coming to America

Today, today,
today, today, today
My country ’tis of thee
Today
Sweet land of liberty
Today
Of thee I sing
Today
Of thee I sing
Today

Philadelphia
Freedom

I used to
be a rolling stone
You know if the cause was right
I’d leave to find the answer on the road
I used to be a heart beating for someone
But the times have changed
The less I say the more my work gets done

`Cause I
live and breathe this Philadelphia freedom
From the day that I was born I’ve waved the flag
Philadelphia freedom took me knee-high to a man
Yeah gave me peace of mind my daddy never had

Oh Philadelphia
freedom shine on me, I love you
Shine a light through the eyes of the ones left behind
Shine a light shine a light
Shine a light won’t you shine a light
Philadelphia freedom I love you, yes I do

If you choose
to you can live your life alone
Some people choose the city
Some others choose the good old family home
I like living easy without family ties
Till the whippoorwill of freedom zapped me
Right between the eyes

Kilted
Yaksmen Anthem

Our country
reeks of trees
Our Yaks are really large
And they smell like rotting beef carcasses

And we have
to clean up after them
And our saddle sores are the best
We proudly wear women’s clothing
And searing sand blows up our skirts

And the buzzards,
they soar overhead
And poisonous snakes will devour us whole
And our bones will bleach in the sun

And we will
probably go to (loud farting noise)
And that is our great reward
For being the-uh Royal Canadian Kilted Yaksmen!

January
6, 2007

Gil
Guillory [send him mail]
is
an engineer in Houston.

~
Henry M. Robert (1837–1923)

When I was
in high school, I was exposed to Robert's
Rules of Order. Daunting to master at first, I found that the
Rules of Order paid dividends in my ability to participate in and
run meetings — Drama Club, Chess Club, Science Club, etc. I joined
and formed other clubs as I went through college and into adult
life: college fraternity, reading and discussion groups, language
learning, political parties, professional societies, homeowners'
association, etc. I continued to reap the benefits time and again.

As my friend
NSK pointed out, "Without Robert's Rules of Order, how can
you possibly pick a DM
equitably?"

Civil Society

The acid test
of Robert's Rules of Order is their utility, but they can be useful
only where there are societies and clubs. Tocqueville, in his Democracy
in America, noted:

The Americans
make associations to give entertainments, to found seminaries,
to build inns, to construct churches, to diffuse books, to send
missionaries to the antipodes; in this manner they found hospitals,
prisons, and schools. If it is proposed to inculcate some truth
or to foster some feeling by the encouragement of a great example,
they form a society. Wherever at the head of some new undertaking
you see the government in France, or a man of rank in England,
in the United States you will be sure to find an association.

But rights
violations and encroachments by governments batter the institutions
of civil society. There is a tendency for civil society to shrink
when the power and scope of the state is enlarged. David Beito's
From
Mutual Aid to the Welfare State: Fraternal Societies and Social
Services, 1890–1967 is illustrative of the point. He
shows that as the welfare state grew, fraternal societies shrank.

The modern
rise of homeschooling is a hopeful counterpoint to this theme. And
there still exist wonderful community groups of long tenure, such
as Sertoma International and Rotary International, not to mention
church groups, community associations, sports clubs, and even bunko
circles and dinner circles. The libertarian individualist might
say, "well, I'm not a joiner". I once received an email
from a prominent anarcho-capitalist theorist saying that he never
joined clubs of any sort because he didn't want to be pigeon-holed.
Scandalous!

It is these
institutions that protect us against the state. They are the intermediating
institutions that can, with their size and resources, effectively
lobby against ill-conceived plans and render unnecessary the tax-and-regulate
"solutions" promulgated by "planners" in myriad
ways: by holding out real-world examples of the alternatives; by
providing informal venues for political debate among citizens; and
by connecting people in the community with a web of relationships
that lowers transactions costs for working together on projects
where the establishment of a full society would not obtain. These
institutions are the "little platoons" that Burke wrote
about.

Mr or Ms Libertarian,
it is not enough to be anti-state: you must be pro- civil society.

Robert's
Rules, Where are You?

But from my
vantage point, Robert's Rules are on the decline. My wife tells
me of the chaos in her Writer's Guild. I have witnessed the demise
of a homeschool coop and support group. I have seen a community
association lose its vitality. I have seen the magic of a dads-and-kids
program wane. I have even heard of an international society of great
promise that seems to have no clear direction. Why? In large part,
because of ignorance of Robert's Rules of Order.

Ignorance (or
ignoring) the Rules of Order means:

• meetings
  go nowhere
• meetings
  degrade into chat sessions where nothing is decided
• important
  items aren't discussed
• people become
  bored
• volunteer
  opportunities are unclear or absent
• attendance
  drops
• the group
  becomes ineffective
• the vitality
  of the group is enervated

Proving this
assertion — that Robert's Rules of Order are a necessary part of
a society or club — is beyond the scope of a short article. But
let us marvel at some insights that will lend credence to the claim.

Spontaneous,
Evolved Rules

It was not
Mr. Robert
that originated the rules that bear his name. Having fumbled a bit
at a church meeting, Robert undertook study of parliamentary procedure
to improve his skills. He studied how the English Parliament and
other deliberative assemblies handled their meetings. There was,
in the accumulated traditions of the Parliament, an excellent system
of rules that was the result of centuries of trial and error.

These rules
were (and are) an example of spontaneous order. Like law, language,
and money, the institution of parliamentary procedure was the result
of human action, but not of human design.

But that's
not the whole story. Just like law, language, and money, once these
evolved systems are understood, they can be systematically studied
and improved.

Logical
System

Robert was
an engineer. This may have made him particularly well-suited to
understand the internal logic of, explicate, and extend the system
of parliamentary procedure. What is usually not well appreciated
is that most of Robert's Rules of Order are not merely one way
to lead a deliberative assembly — the rules describe the best
way. From a social
rationalist perspective, one can appreciate that the Rules of
Order, once comprehended, can be thought of as a logical system,
similar to geometry, but having much more in common with praxeology.

Praxeology
starts with the fundamental proposition "man acts", then
teases out the implied categories of action — means, ends, valuation,
time, etc. The Rules of Order are implied in the concept of a deliberative
assembly: the notion of a deliberative assembly gives rise to the
categories of motion, debate, amendment, decision, rescission, etc.

There is a
good deal of empirical content to Robert's Rules, but every rule
has a logical justification. The clearest instance of this might
be the codification of order
of precedence of motions. If a main motion is before an assembly,
other motions may be brought that can interrupt the main motion.

But what should
be able to interrupt the main motion?

Another matter
later on the agenda?

No, it
is expedient to deal with the matter at hand before proceeding.

An amendment
to the main motion?

Yes, the
assembly could agree on a better formulation of the motion.

Now, if an
amendment is being considered, what could interrupt that?

A motion
to postpone indefinitely?

No, amendment
might change the answer to that question, so the amendment must
be resolved first.

A motion
to limit the time of debate?

Yes, since
time constraints are a necessary concern in all decisions to
be made.

In an interminable
meeting you may have heard someone quip, "a motion to adjourn
is always in order". That's almost true: the only pending business
that a motion to adjourn cannot interrupt is the consideration of
a motion to set a specific time of adjournment.

Every possible
category of (non-incidental) motion has been identified and arranged
along a scale of order of precedence. The logic and brilliance,
and indeed, the exhaustiveness and impenetrable logic of the system
are beautiful to comprehend. If you have never studied Robert's
Rules of Order, it is worth study if only as an intellectual system.

But, as I mean
to emphasize, its worth is far greater.

Civil Society
Again

Perhaps my
perception of a decline in the familiarity and use of the Rules
of Order are an indication of a shrinking civil society. In preparing
this article, I talked to many people who are members of no societies
or clubs, and have only attended meetings at work, where clear lines
of authority, alignment of interests (serving clients' wishes),
and small meeting sizes obviate the use of Robert's Rules of Order.

Aren't people
involved in civil society any more? Or are my perceptions in error?
Please let it be the latter. There is something we all can do:

Defend civil
society!

Learn Robert's
Rules of Order, practice them, and teach them where you have to!

Online sources:

Parliamentary
Procedure Online — This is an online version of the Fourth
Edition of Robert's Rules of Order, now in the public domain

Robert's
Rules of Order Online — Companion site to the one listed above

RobertsRules.org
— Another online version of the Fourth Edition, with some enhancements
— hosted by the same people that bring us constitution.org

RobertsRules.com
— The Official Site

Cagle's
Summary of Parliamentary Procedure — A nice overview by a
Professor of Communication at California State University, Fresno

Offline sources:

The best
is still Robert's
Rules of Order. If you are new to the system, or need to teach
someone who is new to the system, get the official In
Brief guide — in my opinion it's better than the Dummies guide,
the Idiot's guide, and others that you may have seen.

June
17, 2006

Gil
Guillory [send him mail]
was
recently elected Parliamentarian of the San Jacinto Expedition of
the YMCA Adventure Guides in The Woodlands, Texas.

The
Market for Liberty by Linda and Morris Tannehill

Power
and Market by Murray Rothbard

The
Enterprise of Law: Justice without the State by Bruce Benson

The
Private Production of Defense by Hans-Hermann Hoppe

(there are
many more)

And you're
thinking, "Hey, when is some security company going to call
me so I can sign up with their service, and let me put my money
where my mouth is?"

I know I've
been waiting for that call — but it hasn't come. Why not?

There are three
types of companies that we might expect to expand into this line
of work: insurance companies, home monitoring companies, and patrol/guard
companies.

Insurance
companies are often mentioned by anarchist authors. The current
state of homeowner lines was summarized in the ad copy of a panel
held at the 2002 Casualty Actuary Society meeting:

Homeowners
insurance has become the second largest line of business in the
property/casualty product portfolio. Nevertheless, profitability
in this line has long been elusive, with the industry operating
ratio being less than 100 percent only four times in the past
20 years. Adding to the dismal picture, recent results have been
battered once again by the growth of claims related to mold and
catastrophes. The possibility of catastrophic losses due to terrorist
activities has generated an additional level of concern.

Where in this
discussion is burglary and vandalism? It turns out that there are
much bigger fish to fry. Burglary and vandalism only account for
a small portion of the exposure of homeowner's policies — the big
pieces are fire and storm – ever since the innovation of the homeowner's
policy in the 1950's. This is not to say that rising crime rates
in the 1960's and 1970's did not affect insurance companies' bottom
lines — they did. But, the response was better modeling and increased
premiums. Further, with the move away from direct verification of
burglary to high deductibles to combat fraud, homeowners were no
longer covered by most of the chrematistic losses that crime engenders.
If your house was burglarized today, and losses amounted to $1500,
you may not have even met your deductible!

Insurance companies
are not likely to return to direct verification of burglaries to
control fraud. The current arrangement is more profitable, and has
much to do with economy of scale. As such, they will likely never
innovate in the direction of offering the anarchist vision of zero-deductible
policies.

Home monitoring
companies such as ADT might be good candidates. But, the more
one looks, the more one finds out why such an expansion is not in
the cards. The residential market segment of home monitoring companies
comprises only 15% of their business, and the major drivers in the
rest of the business are technology as a replacement for labor in
the security of governmental and corporate clients. Indeed, the
rsums of the board of directors of Tyco (parent company of ADT)
as presented in its 2005 Annual Report show that they have careers
from companies such as Motorola, Verizon, Rohm and Haas, du Pont,
and MicroWarehouse. The organization is dedicated to technological
solutions, so I suggest that employing patrol labor is the farthest
thing from their minds, and not part of either their core competency
or their business strategy.

With regard
to Guard/Patrol companies, this is a more problematic question.
In personal communications with guard companies large and small,
I have never found one that does not operate on a cost-plus basis.
When these companies' representatives were asked about the patrol-and-restitution
model, they explained that such a direction did not appeal to them,
since it was not congruent with their business model. Also, with
their typically low profit margins — due to intense competition
— undertaking a subscription-based model and its inherent uncertainty
is too risky. Furthermore, guard/patrol companies are started up
and staffed primarily by former government patrol officers. As such,
it is postulated that their experience establishes a mindset that
government patrol is fundamental and private patrol is merely supplemental.
When these companies' representatives were told about the anarchist
business model, they were curious and had never even considered
such a thing.

The experience
of Fred
Smith teaches a lesson about business and entrepreneurship.
His combination of three distinct ideas — hub-and-spoke distribution,
overnight delivery, and delivery by air — into one business plan
was a sensational success. Companies such as UPS and Airborne Express
could have innovated the way that he did, but they didn't. Only
after FedEx
was successful did UPS and Airborne Express copy it. Even Delta
Airlines, a leader in the hub-and-spoke method of transporting passengers,
did not innovate the way that Fred Smith did.

The lesson
is this: a step-out business model will only be tried by a new firm.
Established firms will modify their operations a bit, but not radically
change their business model.

We can bypass
for the moment what events like this teach us about the efficient
markets hypothesis, market failure, and entrepreneurship. OK, just
one question: Was there market failure with regard to overnight
package delivery the day before FedEx began operations?

The Fred
Smith's of Anarchism?

I have defended
the notion that subscription-based patrol and restitution services
are not going to magically appear, especially from the likes of
AIG, ADT, or Guardsmark. What we need are the Fred Smith's of subscription-based
patrol and restitution services.

Napoleon
Hill might say that what is needed is a Master Mind: a coming
together of energetic minds for a common purpose. Rob
Adams would say that what is needed most is an execution team.
Pretty much the same thing: a complementary, competent team is needed.

Such a company
needs knowledgeable and experienced innovators in the fields of:

• Patrol
• Investigation
• Adjusting
• Insurance
• Law
• Management
• Marketing

Where are these
people?

May
26, 2006

Gil
Guillory [send him mail]
recently
presented a paper On
the viability of subscription-based patrol and restitution services
at APEE. He lives near Houston in
The Woodlands, Texas.

• How
  to Think Straight by Antony Flew (book)
• WFF'n'Proof
  (game)
• The
  Essence of Political Persuasion by Michael Cloud (lectures)
• The
  Philosopher's Toolkit by Julian Baggini and Peter Fosl (book)
• Argumentation:
  The Study of Effective Reasoning by David Zarefsky (lectures)

It is this
last resource that drew my attention to van Eemeren and Gootendorst's
pragma-dialectical theory of argumentation, which demonstrates an
interesting tension between rhetoric and logic that should be kept
in mind by those who wish to deploy and critique arguments.

As Hayek and
Popper stressed, we are always in a position of imperfect knowledge,
and social institutions often evolve to economize on the transmission
of knowledge. A favorite foil of the neoclassical economist is the
application of Bayes's theorem to general problems of knowledge
and certainty. While this analogy is sometimes overdrawn (much as
the second law of thermodynamics and the statistical thermodynamic
interpretation of entropy as "disorder" are overdrawn
on occasion), there is truth to the proposition that there exists
in the mind of a target audience member a good number of "priors".
Priors are commonly incomplete pictures of reality with some degree
of truth content. Working against this backdrop, rhetorical work
must often employ strong tactics to persuade.

Many of the
strong rhetorical moves are logical fallacies, and so are avoided
by some writers. In this Hayekian/Bayesian framework, this strategy
must be rethought. Sometimes it is useful and even valid to use
an ad hominem attack, or an appeal to authority, or other moves
that are, strictly speaking, logical fallacies. I will demonstrate
this surprising method.

Ad Hominem

Does it matter
whether a person advocating the observance of the 7th Commandment
cheats on his wife regularly? Here, we can invoke the charge of
performative contradiction.

Does it matter
whether a person takes his funding from a party in whose cause he
has enlisted? Yes. We know that the lure of money can sometimes
cloud judgment and blind one to the pursuit of truth. Virtually
no man will change his mind in public, but the pressure brought
to bear on a man not to abandon falsehoods even in private due to
a pecuniary tie can be strong.

What is important
to see here is that ad hominem, while a logical fallacy, can convey
useful information to the audience about the possible prejudices,
commitments, and motivations of a disputant. While not decisive,
such information can, and perhaps should, condition the audience's
reception of claims.

There are a
multitude of people in the world that attempt to persuade us. Given
constraints on resources, any sort of information about someone
can inform our decision of whether or not to give someone the benefit
of the doubt, or to listen with skepticism, or to reject someone's
opinion as not worthy of even entertaining. This bleeds into the
next topic.

Appeal to
Authority

An authority
is someone in a position to know, or likely to know, and who is
immersed in an incentive structure that tends not to bias answers.
So, without even knowing anyone on the Code Committee of the American
Society of Mechanical Engineers, I readily pick up ASME B31.3–2004
and look up that the allowable yield stress of A106 carbon steel
at 300F is 20,000 psi. If a mechanical engineering colleague were
to show me a lab book of his own yield tests that were at odds with
the value in the ASME code, I would still be more persuaded by the
ASME number. I fully realize that he may be right, and that they
may be wrong; and yet, this appeal to authority is proper.

If two professors
are arguing an empirical point, and you haven't the time to invest
to run the issue to ground, whom do you believe? The professor with
the most authority, as you perceive him to be. In my case, that
might be someone with better free-market credentials, or someone
whose main area of research is the subject of the dispute, or someone
that I personally know and regard to be of high integrity. These
are not wrong ways of deciding questions — rather, they are appropriate
to the human condition.

The Upshot

There are other
"exceptions" to virtually every logical fallacy. We should
not revel in these rhetorical flourishes. They should be used with
care, in the right circumstances. Generally, context will show where
a particular logical misdemeanor is both rhetorically persuasive
and morally acceptable.

There are innumerable
rhetorical strategies well-covered by Cloud, Zarefsky, and others.
One can get hide-bound in restricting one's rhetorical playing ground.
Don't do it. If there's one paramount lesson from Cloud, it is this:
when the rhetoric you employ does not persuade, do something different.
Change it and change it and change it, until it works — that is,
it persuades.

Rhetoric and
logic are best learned by practice. Read arguments. Critique the
bad ones and imitate the good ones. Try them on people, then return
to your texts on logic and rhetoric. Where did you go wrong? How
can you alter your approach? Rinse and repeat. Have fun!

January
24, 2006

Gil
Guillory [send him mail]
is a chemical engineer in Houston.

On
Credentials

By
training and profession, I am a chemical engineer. What audacity
I have to make pronouncements regarding culture, sociology, development
economics, and political economy! Logic provides us a simple solution,
though. Attack the arguments and the facts, not the man.

For
those who care to know, I have read a few books on these matters,
and my job has required me to travel to foreign countries and stay
for short visits (1–6 months), which has given me a bit of
practical education. I have always had an interest in languages
and cultures, and speak and read a little Japanese, Spanish, French,
and Arabic, and I'm fluent in Esperanto.
This latter fact may disarm those critics who might think of me
as "ethnocentric." On the contrary, I'm a cosmopolitan,
readily accepting the good in other cultures.

Test
Cricket

By
lunchtime in Melbourne on the day the original article appeared,
my mailbox was bulging with exhortations on the virtues of Test
Cricket. Some noted that the performance of Test Cricket is
demonstrative of low time-preference activity. Since it is a leisure
activity, I cannot agree. Nonetheless, it is a sport that neither
Americans, nor, as I found out, Iraqis, have much use for. Bully
for many of those in the former
British Empire — it's just not my cup of tea.

Southerners

I
mentioned in my piece that I am culturally Southern,
and that those with whom I shared and compared my experiences in
Iraq were also Southern. Some have read into this disclosure an
agenda of sorts. This is not the case. I merely recorded it so that
readers would have a clearer understanding of my experience and
any "cultural filters" attendant to my account.

I
was told by some emailers that high time-preference behavior can
be found in the South. This is certainly the case. Indeed, some
of the highest time-preference behavior in the US can be found among
the lowest stratum of West Virginian society. (Some may insist that
West Virginia be counted on the Union side, but this is a cultural
matter, not a political one.) However, the time preferences of Southerners
at large is not appreciably different from Northerners. And, no,
just because you speak faster does not mean you're smarter. Shallow
waters and all that.

Time
Preferences in the United Arab Emirates

Many
correspondents wrote to confirm my observations of Arab culture
and the Third World, generally. One writer provided quite a bit
of detail on the UAE. He wishes to remain anonymous, but has allowed
me to quote him. His unedited words:

Given
our PC world you have shown a good deal of courage going public
with this stuff. I am an Australian working in the ME, and have
taught in the area for some years. The high time-preference thing
is manifested in my experience here in the following ways:

• The
  moronic and homicidal driving, which amazes and angers me
  still after several years of enduring it.
• The
  appalling littering, which occurs openly and without shame.
• Slaughtering
  animals at home and throwing the carcasses in the street bin,
  with the obvious health and odour problems.
• The
  students (aged roughly 18–23) not showing up at pre-arranged
  times, including times of their choosing.
• Rude,
  unruly behaviour in class (not by everyone, of course) which
  often takes the form of over-talking the teacher.
• The
  difficulty of getting students to complete individual assignments
  and homework that do not count for grades.
• The
  walking speed of the students around the campus (a snail would
  show more vigour)
• Shocking
  levels of obesity, and these are young adults.
• Young
  children running amok in public (in shopping centres, etc.)
  in the presence of their parents who condone and ignore it.
• The
  awful neglect of feral animals, including some dogs, but mainly
  diseased and starving cats which are everywhere in the city
  that I live in. My wife and I find this most distressing,
  and unforgivable in a country that is far from poor.
• The
  general impression of irrationality that pervades every aspect
  of life from shopping, to paying bills, to registering your
  car, to getting repairs done. Try directing a deliveryman
  in a city where the concept of an address has not taken off,
  and there are no street directories. What do you do? You talk
  him in on a mobile phone of course, or you go with him in
  the truck.

My
impression is (I can’t prove it) that high time-preference in
general is most prevalent among peoples that have not created
a high-level of civilization. It is partly cultural but mainly
a function of intelligence (peoples that have not created a high-level
of culture on their own tend not to be very intelligent). This
is supported by the fact that the brighter members of any population
show less of it, and the unintelligent show more of it, including
in Western countries. The highest time-preference people are stone-age
people, like the Australian aborigines, to whom no group on earth
can hold a candle when it comes to high time-preference behaviour.

For
all their faults the students (and people) I deal with can be
quite likeable. They appear to have a genuine regard for Westerners,
which regrettably is being squandered by the hideous catastrophe
in Iraq.

As
a closing to observations in the non-war-torn Middle East, I offer
another anecdote. This one I had while driving in downtown Kuwait
City. A mother allowed her child to be without car seat or seatbelt
in the front seat as they cruised at 50 km/h. The child decided
to stand, and then the mother opened the sunroof to allow her child
to enjoy the wind in his hair. I snapped a picture mostly for the
comedic value — the car was a Volvo.

Why
High Time Preferences in the UAE?

However,
the high time-preference behaviors in Kuwait and the UAE may also
have culturally exogenous roots. In Qatar, Kuwait, and the UAE,
massive welfare states for nationals are funded from a portion of
the proceeds of the state-owned petroleum companies.

In
Kuwait, Qatar, and the UAE, the nationals get free healthcare for
life, free education all the way through the university level, an
outright grant to male nationals upon first marriage to another
national, a land grant for a house, and either a generous interest-free
loan with which to build the house, or another outright grant.

The
nationals of these countries that do find work almost always find
it in a government institution like the military, the police, or
a civil government outfit. They like government service because
it pays well, they are not required to do much actual work, and
there is no competition either with their labor or its products.
Private enterprise employs very few of them (why would it when the
private sector can get an Indian who will work twice as hard for
a third of the cost?).

You
hardly ever see a national doing physical work, except maybe the
odd aging farmer who has not known anything else. The younger generation
is disgustingly spoiled. One cringes at the thought of them inheriting
their country.

My
anonymous emailer adds:

I
have yet to meet [an Emirati] student who does not have a maid
from the subcontinent or Indonesia or the Philippines. Very
often the family has an assortment of maids, cooks, drivers,
or gardeners all working 6 and 7 days a week, 12 hours a day,
for the princely sum of US$150 a month plus board, and a paid
trip home every 2 years.

This
paints a picture in contrast to Iraq. In Iraq, there was not and
is not such an all-embracing welfare state as found in Kuwait, Qatar,
or the UAE, it being intermediate between the welfare-statism of
Europe and the US. Therefore, the attendant infantilization of Iraq's
culture is much less pronounced. So, the conclusion that Iraqi time
preferences will fall with increases in security, trade, and friendship
is stronger.

Time
Preferences in Trinidad, Fiji

High
time-preference behaviors of a lesser magnitude are seen in Trinidad,
which I have observed and mentioned in the first
article. Mr. Vince Daliessio shares his corroborating view:

I
worked on the Amoco LNG project in Trinidad in 1998 (my company
dredged the shore approach of the pipeline to Guayaguayare,
and laid the pull cable to the McDermott laybarge), and found
that indeed there is often a high relative time preference among
the Trinis. However, this varies considerably. East Indian Trinis
are long reputed to be much more low time preference than Afro
Trinis. But there is considerable variation within the two groups,
and for every Lennox Prasad there is another East Indian whose
time preferences are indistinguishable from his Afro co-workers.
This means, it seems to me, that the differences are mostly
cultural, and therefore are amenable to change. This is not
to say that any individual needs to change, nor to take anything
away from any individual in that society. Indeed, most of the
Afro Trinis I worked with were highly motivated and very literate,
many of them extremely hard workers and great good company aboard
ship.

The
other major relevant observation I made about time preference
in Trinidad is that there are relatively few consequences for
high time preference in a tropical country like Trinidad compared
with say the northeastern US.  In the former, no matter
how little you save to provide for yourself, you are never really
in danger of starving or freezing. There is government-provided
clean water in all inhabited areas, and there is abundant food
such as fish, wildfowl, and edible plants such that even abject
poverty is no obstacle to living fairly well. Conversely, if
you do not make some attempt at economic planning in, say, New
York City, you will find yourself sleeping on a steam grate
(if you are lucky) and eating out of dumpsters.

An
account from Mr. Randy Palmer on Fijian time preferences reads:

I
am an American who lived for 3 years in Fiji, islands in the South
Pacific. I am an only parent, male, I am a widower. When I arrived
it was quite a thing to them to see a man caring for 2 small children.

One
day my 2 children were playing out back with some Fijian children
and my boy, who was 4.5 years at the time, was throwing some rocks
with about 4 other children younger than him present. I rushed
over to him saying, "No, no, no! Don’t throw rocks someone
is going to get hurt." Immediately the Fijian aunt of some
of the other children started telling me. "No here in Fiji
we let the children do what they want, they are so free."
I was distracted and said, "But someone is going to get hurt."
Just then one of the kids started crying and I turned around and
sure enough, my son had hit them with a rock. I started for my
son and the woman started saying, "Its ok, it was an accident,
he didn’t mean to hit him with a rock."

I
was dumbfounded…It was like there was no connection between
the behavior and the result. I learned then that to many Fijians
"Tomorrow is a long long way aways…" I learned to
live with it and now we have been living in Mexico, for 8 years.
They are much less like the Fijians but still less than like my
culture, the US, in this respect.

A
Fijian once told me that "Europeans (white people), are too
concerned about the future and Fijians not enough."

I
quote these at length to underscore the fact that time preferences
are indeed higher in other locales, and this is not always due to
"external" factors such as war and want.

More
on Oral Hygiene

By
way of explanation of Arab dental hygiene, George (last name withheld)
writes:

As
you know, in Moslem countries males and females do not kiss
in public, and most of the times neither in private. Females
are only sexual objects for guy to get their way with them,
without thinking of pleasing them. In other words, in our culture,
guys are being RATED by their female lovers on their hygiene.
In their culture, women cannot talk back to guys. Actually,
if you look back at our culture only about 30 years ago, you
will remember that smoking was not a bad thing then, and lots
of people reeked of smoke, and their mouth stunk to high heaven.
It is only now that smokers are very mindful of chewing gum
to cover up their stink.

I
do not completely agree with George's assessment of the Arab attitude
toward women, but it is indeed worthwhile to note that with the
progress of wealth in the US, dental hygiene has improved. Not only
was this a comedic point in the recent movie Austin
Powers, but there has been an explosion of oral hygienic
goods, from gum to mints to strips to whitening agents to brush-ups.

Thus,
we can see in even a small area the operation of the process
of civilization which Hoppe elucidated.

Can't
We All Just Get Along?

Cultural
criticism often draws charges of racism, ethnocentrism, and even
materialism. On the charges of racism and ethnocentrism, one cannot
do better than to quote from the Preface to Thomas Sowell's Migrations
and Cultures:

History
can be cruel to theories, as it has been cruel to peoples. Examples
of both should be apparent in the chapters that follow. But
history is what happened, not what we wish had happened, or
what a theory says should have happened. History cannot be prettified
in the interests of promoting "acceptance" or "mutual
respect" among peoples and cultures. There is much in the
history of every people that does not deserve respect. Whether
with individuals or with groups, respect is something earned,
not a door prize handed out to all. It cannot be prescribed
by third parties, for what is to be respected depends on each
individual's own values or the social values accepted by that
individual — and "equal respect" is an internally
contradictory evasion. If everything is to be respected equally,
then the term respect has lost its meaning.

What
Sowell writes, though, seems too generous. There are some values
(such as material economic progress) which are universally recognized
as good. If there are cultural values, such as high time preference,
that prevent or retard the realization of that good, then such a
value is rightly to be condemned, universally.

Relatedly,
one correspondent recommended that I read The
Silent Language by Edward T. Hall. While I have not
read any of Hall's books, one thesis that I glean from reviews of
his books on Amazon.com, interviews with Hall, and other commentary
on the Internet can be summed up thusly: Time (and space) is perceived
differently in different cultures. A reviewer notes that Hall documents
in his books that Latin Americans and Arabs don't have cultural
strictures against showing up late for meetings. My concern is confirmed
by another reviewer on Amazon.com:

Hall
tries to keep value judgments out of his comparisons, but fails
at the task. Over and again he slips and lets us see his disregard
for American culture. Americans are too conscious of time compared
to more laid-back cultures. Americans are too strict in their
concept of personal space. And so on. Whenever he slips and
lets his opinions show, he invariably finds American culture
lacking, no matter what it is being compared to.

Cultural
relativism is bad enough, but a prejudice in favor of high time
preferences is appalling.

Now,
on to the charge of materialism. One correspondent wrote:

Greg
Fisher from Sydney, Australia ‘ere! …I lived in Mexico for a
year, on a Rotary Youth Exchange scholarship, in 1979. Yes,
they are more laid back than “us” uptight, anglo workaholics
howsomever their lifestyle includes a deeper and more spiritual
side than our materialism will ever appreciate. They live, we
work. Making Iraqis into capitalist drones smacks of a blinding
cultural arrogance.

I
reply that it is not I that demands material prosperity for
Iraqis. It is they who clamor to have all of the comforts
so common in the West. But, further, as
Rothbard explained, and as codified in Maslow's
Hierarchy of Needs, the law of marginal utility informs us that
greater material wealth allows people to have greater amounts of
leisure to devote to spiritual and other "non-materialist"
concerns. And so, he who favors greater spiritual devotion should
support greater material abundance.

It
is true that greater abundance does not necessarily lead to people
consuming greater amounts of leisure. However, greater abundance
is what makes it possible, and the history of the 20th
century shows that most people do indeed opt for more leisure. Whether
they spend it on worthy endeavors is another matter.

Say
It Isn't So!

Randy
Holcombe speaks with the voice of many, when he admits a common
assumption in personal email correspondence:

In
economics, we like to assume that underneath, everybody is the
same, and their different behaviors are a result of different
constraints they face. This may or may not be true. But as an
economist, my inclination is to look at the constraints Iraqis
face that are different from those faced by people in developed
nations.

Part
of the culture in which I was raised, and struggled to reject, was
this assumption of sameness. If the entire legacy of Thomas Sowell's
scholarship on culture
could be summed up in a few words, they might be: Culture matters
with regard to material progress, and it is far more persistent
through time and space than we are accustomed to thinking.

My
own quest to improve my life has been to learn from foreign cultures
what I can. Some elements of virtually every culture are worthy
of praise and emulation, while other elements are worthy of disdain.

Why
Are Some Countries Poor?

I
was the recipient of many suggestions regarding the reasons for
poverty in the Third World. One reader recommended the book I.Q.
and the Wealth of Nations by Lynn and Vanhanen. Another suggests
The
Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism by sociologist
Max Weber. Yet another merely stated: "The third world is poor
because the population is underpaid."

I
cannot proceed without swatting down the fallacy in that last comment.
If the economy were free, then workers would tend to get their "discounted
marginal value product" — get paid what they’re worth, given
the supply for their type of labor and the supply and demand for
what their labor produces. If a third world worker is not paid what
he is worth, then the culprit is taxes, trade restrictions, or other
interventions.

The
field of development economics is large, and I cannot here do justice
to the many contributors, both good and bad, so I will not try.
Instead, I will redirect attention to the main thrust of the original
article: time preference.

What
Can Be Done?

Low
time preference is both a prerequisite to and an outcome of economic
progress.

One
correspondent wondered whether Iraq can be transformed into a democracy.
I don't think democracy is necessarily related to economic development.
Further, I think most Iraqis are willing to forgo some degree of
economic progress and security for freedom from what they perceive
to be hegemonic control of their country — in this way, democracy
as the US government envisions or attempts to sculpt in Iraq is
actually a drag on economic progress.

I
remain committed to the solutions I advanced in my original article
on this topic. To help Iraqis achieve economic progress, security,
and liberty, we should:

• Trade
  with Iraqis
• Befriend
  Iraqis

Simple,
yet powerful. And again, due to the lack of an all-embracing welfare
state in Iraq, the prospects for economic development there are
better than those of its neighbors, such as Kuwait.

November
24, 2004

Gil
Guillory [send him mail]
is a chemical engineer in Houston.

One
of the startling cultural differences that I experienced as a Texan
working in Iraq between June and November 2003 was the profoundly
high relative time preference of the Iraqis. Why is it this way
and how can it be changed?

Time
preference is the propensity to trade or not to trade present goods
for claims to future goods. High time preference is a reluctance
to make such trades, and low time preference is a willingness to
make such trades. Examples of such trades are: saving money for
your child's education (present good = money, future good = education),
buying a dishwasher (present good = money, future good = no manual
dishwashing), working overtime (present good = leisure, future good
= money income), and oral hygiene (present good = leisure, money
for toothbrush, etc., future good = complete set of teeth).

Time
preference is a ubiquitous element of human action, as provided
by the examples above, and as discussed by Mises.
As explicated by Mises,
and later, Hoppe,
this trading of present goods for future goods is the engine of
improvement of material well-being. Hoppe has
shown that the very process of trading present goods for future
goods results in lowering the time preferences of both oneself and
others, resulting in a double spiral: a spiraling down of time preferences,
and a spiraling up of wealth — a process he rightly calls "civilization."

High
time preference behavior decivilizes, and low time preference behavior
civilizes, the society in which it is practiced. Instances of high
time preference behavior are to be condemned, for they hinder, halt,
or reverse the growth of the wealth of a nation. High time preference
behavior is an "excessive" valuing of present goods over
future goods, indicating a "gratification now" mindset,
a discounting of future goods and bads.

Some
Examples

My
experience in Iraq is limited to a window of 6 months, but I have
the advantage of having compared my experience with many fellow
Southrons.1 I was involved in the US government-sponsored
rebuilding efforts as an employee of a major American contractor.
I worked as a chemical engineer, helping to rebuild plants in an
LPG production chain in southern Iraq. Here are some high time preference
behaviors that were commonly observed:

The
inability or unwillingness to plan and schedule. At many plant
sites, Iraqis have been asked to help construct schedules so that
material deliveries can be scheduled, labor needs can be coordinated
among plants, and projects can be cost-controlled. I know of no
instance in which a schedule has been produced by an Iraqi. There
has been no difference in propensity for schedule generation at
plants where good Iraqi-American relations exist and those where
less favorable relations exist (relations run the gamut from labor
riots and rock throwing to the giving of gifts, sharing of dinner,
and invitations to Iftar).

The
inability or unwillingness to promptly attend planned meetings.
On one occasion, I suggested a meeting to some of my Iraqi colleagues.
They agreed that we should meet to review the proposed location
of some new pumps, and that all relevant disciplines be represented
from the Iraqi side and the American side, a complement of about
15 people. I prepared a notice for the meeting, and asked the lead
Iraqi to set the time and place of the meeting. I gave each one
of the attendees a copy of the meeting notice. On the appointed
day, at the appointed time, three Iraqis showed up. They were unconcerned
that their colleagues were late. Within one hour, all attendees
finally arrived, and the meeting was begun. For the skeptical reader,
I must underscore my judgment that this instance, and many like
it, have nothing to do with passive resistance to an American presence,
but are an element of Iraqi culture also present in Iraqi-only meetings.

Poor
driving habits. There are decidedly fewer cars in Iraq than
Kuwait, but their driving habits are quite similar. Excessive speed,
weaving in and out of lanes, straddling lane dividing lines, non-use
of seat belts and child restraints, and following closely are all
prevalent. The worst American teenage boy drivers behave better
than many Iraqi (and Kuwaiti) drivers.

Poor
dental hygiene. While low Iraqi income (most Iraqi plant workers
earn between $60 and $120 per month) has been offered by some of
my colleagues as a reason for poor dental hygiene, I don't think
that claim holds. Some of the worst dental hygiene (visible food
particles, yellow matter, and tartar between and on teeth) has been
observed on the higher-paid Iraqis, who have cell phones and wristwatches
and other luxuries.

Poor
Safety Practices. My environmental engineer roommate nearly
passed out when he learned of an Iraqi innovation: oil divers. These
intrepid (and stupid) men don scuba gear and swim in lakes or pools
of oil, working in the complete darkness of that fluid, fixing leaks
or recovering items. Lesser evils include the non-use of hardhats,
gloves, grinding shields, steel-toed boots, and safety glasses (new
sets of all of these sit a few hundred meters away in the plant
warehouse, dutifully requisitioned months ago by the likes of yours
truly); as well as dubious practices such as draining diesel, lube
oil, gasoline, propane, and other hydrocarbons directly onto the
ground. Again, for the skeptic, you might protest that Iraq is a
desert — there's no groundwater to contaminate, so what's the problem?
The problem is that there is groundwater, and most of the
refineries and chemical plants are on sabkha
geography, with nearby farms that use well-water for irrigation,
watering animals, and drinking. The engineers in these plants are
aware of the effects of their actions, but choose to discount the
long-term effects.

Some
Counter-Examples

While
all of these are true, there are also examples that countervail.

Islamic
Observances. Islam is a religion of orthopraxy more than orthodoxy.
As such, the so-called Five Pillars of Islam are mainly actions.2
Prayers are performed daily five times, and most Iraqis cleave to
strict observance. The sacrifice of daylight fasting during Ramadan
is quite harsh in the desert climate — no drinking of water is allowed
— and this is also observed quite strictly by Iraqis. These and
other religious actions are indeed low time preference behaviors.
Unfortunately, these observances do not contribute to material well-being.
The future goods the actors seek are for the afterlife, while the
present goods they forgo are material. Hence, these practices, while
they may increase the spiritual wealth of Iraq, they do so at the
expense of its material wealth.

Shia
Khums. Many Iraqis are Shia Muslims, and therefore submit to
an annual charitable tithe of 20% over and above the Zakat. This
is indeed a low time-preference behavior, to the extent that it
is practiced. I have been told by a few Iraqis that the Khums is
not widely observed in Iraq, but this may be due to current economic
circumstances, where excess wealth is rare.

Why
High Time Preferences?

The
most likely answers are the confluence of recent rule by an oppressive
dictator, the decade-long blockade of the country, and the uncertainties
associated with invasion and occupation by the US military.

Several
Iraqi friends of mine told tales of slowly selling all of their
appliances (first the microwave, then the dishwasher, finally the
refrigerator) and then the barest luxuries, like doors from their
homes. These sales were necessary to keep food on the table in the
face of stagnant nominal wages and skyrocketing consumer good prices.

Sabah
Noori, one of my best Iraqi friends, lamented that much of his life
was taken from him by conscription in the Iraqi army, instead of
applying and building his knowledge of chemical engineering.

Another
Iraqi friend had bittersweet feelings about the US invasion. He
detested Saddam Hussein, and was now happy to be able to complain
without fear of retaliation. He considered himself already an old
man, being 35, but he felt there was much hope for his children.

The
ongoing uncertainties of the political future of the country may
result in continuingly high time preferences, but the changes also
generated a feeling of hope among Iraqis. I fear that recent developments
in Iraq show that this hope is wearing thin, revealing impatience
and frustration with the US government and the US-appointed interim
government.

Are
Time Preferences Important?

It
has been suggested by colleagues and reviewers of this article that
there are many examples of cultures that, notwithstanding their
cultural backwardness (from our perspective), they get the job done.
And so it is that in, for instance, Trinidad and Mexico, I have
observed that chemical plant personnel "get on," and are
able to carry out their work despite their limin' and mañana
attitudes, respectively. However, they do so less ably than
their counterparts in countries whose work ethic is more capitalistic,
for lack of a better word, such as those I have observed in Japan,
Germany, Korea, and China.

High
time preference does not doom a society, but it does make economic
growth slower than otherwise. And, to the extent that growth can
influence ideology, there may be a sort of ideology
trap whose escape depends, in part, on growth. Of course, ideology
is not entirely endogenous, and so there are other
ways. Nonetheless, lowering
time preferences is important.

Solutions

One
of the hopes for the growth of material wealth in Iraq is the adoption
of a lower time preference. How can this be accomplished? Security,
commerce, and friendship.

I
will not address security here. However, it is quite clear that
security of property and person result in fewer uncertainties, which
result in lower time preferences.

Commerce
will lower time preferences in many ways. First, the division of
labor will immediately increase wealth due to the Ricardian (or
should it be Millian?3) Law
of Association. An increase of wealth, ceteris paribus, will
result in a lower time preference. Second, the emergence of new
businesses in Iraq means the emergence of new cost accounting, which
substitutes for collectivist plans that do not allow for rational
economic calculation, such as the UN Oil-for-Food Program.4
Third, these new businesses become constrained by business necessities,
such as creating and adhering to schedules. So, profit will provide
incentives to engage in low time preference behaviors. Fourth, commerce
includes goods such as satellite dishes (banned under the last regime),
VCD players, and the television programs that play on them. One
can hope that Muslim mores will help to act as a filter for the
worst that Hollywood has to offer, as it seems to do in Kuwait,
based on my 6 months of watching Kuwaiti television.

Friendship
with those in the West is just as important. It took lots of persuasion
to convince my colleague Abdul Khalik that not every single woman
in America sleeps around, but he finally believed me. Discussing
politics and religion and sports and family really builds bridges
(for instance, we can all agree that Test Cricket is absolutely
ridiculous). More friendship between Iraqis and Americans means
a lower likelihood that they will fear or distrust one another.
This means lower uncertainty, which means lower time preference.

To
the extent that culturally-ingrained practices of high time preference
can be overcome with better conditions and the ideology of liberalism,
I remain guardedly optimistic about the prospects for economic progress
in Iraq.

Notes

1. My fellow
   workers hailed almost exclusively from the industry of the US
   Gulf Coast: Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia.
   Whatever effect this may have on our collective judgment may be
   left to the discernment of the reader.
2. They are:
   the declaration of faith, Salat (praying 5 times per day), Zakat
   (purification through alms-giving in the amount of 2.5%), Ramadan
   (the month of daylight fasting), and the Hajj (once-in-a-lifetime
   pilgrimage to Mecca).
3. See Concepts
   of the Role of Intellectuals In Social Change Toward Laissez Faire,
   page 59.
4. Many who
   are not familiar with the economy of Iraq are not aware that the
   natural abundance of arable land and low labor costs should make
   Iraq a net exporter of food as well as oil, and that one reason
   for the underproduction of food in Iraq during the 1990′s was
   the lack of farm-related equipment. Indeed, the poor state of
   the farm equipment is matched by the poor state of all capital
   goods, including oil refinery and chemical plant equipment. This
   capital either fell into disrepair because new bearings or tires
   or bushings or other spare parts could not be bought, or replacements
   could not be bought, both due to the blockade. As an example,
   the ammonia-urea complex (in case you don’t know, urea is fertilizer,
   an important complementary good to farming) near Khor Az Zubair
   was having its compressor rotors refurbished in a Japanese shop
   when the blockade hit, and the rotors have been rusting in a warehouse
   at a wharf in Japan ever since, limiting the plant’s production
   considerably.

November
16, 2004

Gil
Guillory [send him mail]
is a chemical engineer in Houston.

He
fills his pot full of good clean drinking water which he bought
from Ozarka, because the local government monopoly of water supply
bears the comforting designation of "accepted" and also
tastes funny.

He
thinks back to going to church on Sunday. He is happy to have a
community where he can participate with other like-minded people
in ceremony. This was made possible by the long struggle to disentangle
church and state, and his church enjoys the absence of taxation.
He wishes other aspects of his life could be so free.

He
takes his daily medication with his first swallow of coffee, and
then he takes a long drag on a cigarette. He bought his medication
while on a trip to Mexico, where, thanks to less regulation and
looser enforcement of IP laws, they were much cheaper. His medications
are safe to take because he bought them from a reputable dealer.
He can still afford cigarettes and can still legally purchase them,
because of those who continue to fight for his rights, even if his
exercise of those rights might harm him or his family.

Joe
takes his morning shower reaching for his shampoo; it is fragranced
with some sort of exotic flower and there are strange chemicals
in it — god knows what — and he bought it, well, because he liked
the picture of the kangaroo on the bottle. He luxuriates in his
bourgeois moment in the shower, a luxury unavailable to even the
most wealthy of only 200 years ago. He is able to have many of such
seemingly simple luxuries because some greedy businessmen sought
enormous profits in the only way they could: satisfying consumer
demand.

Joe
begins his work day; he has a good job with excellent pay, medicals
benefits, retirement, paid holidays and vacation because the accumulation
of capital over centuries has now brought the discounted marginal
value product of a schmuck like Joe to unimaginable heights. Joe
doesn't know anything about economics because he doesn't have to.
He is no smarter than his forbears, and he works less. Nonetheless,
because he participates in a world-embracing division of labor where
his specialized work on a growing capital base is greatly valued,
he is richer.

Joe’s
employer pays these standards because if they don't, his employer's
competitors will.

It's
noon time. Joe doesn't need to make a Bank Deposit so he can pay
some bills — he uses online banking and direct deposit. He has no
idea how these systems work, or what a banking clearinghouse is,
but he is able to use these services at the lowest cost practicable
because banks compete for his business. Notwithstanding the massive
interventions to the business of banking, such as the creation of
central banking and the Federal Reserve system and the repudiation
of the gold standard, he is able to weather the government-induced
business cycles and inflation by investing in mutual funds, annuities,
stocks, bonds, REITs, real estate, precious metals, and other investment
vehicles. He is able to do this because of greedy entrepreneurs
and libertarians who fought against usury laws.

The
online banking leaves him free to take a moment to browse amazon.com
for his favorite books, movies, and music.

Joe
is home from work. He plans to visit his father this evening at
his farm home in the country. He gets in his car for the drive to
dad's; his car is not among the safest in the world because he chose
not to buy a Volvo. His brother has a Volvo, but he has a gas-guzzling
muscle car. He has this choice because nationalization of the auto
industry was prevented.

He
arrives at his rural boyhood home. The house didn’t have any good
programming choices until DirecTV offered an array of programming
and high-speed Internet, too. His dad uses a VCR, which only became
affordable to him after lots of rich people bought the early, expensive
versions and the manufacturers improved the designs and cut costs.
In fact, his dad has a cell phone, TiVo, refrigerator, microwave
oven, and a CD player — all of which became affordable to him because
they were first the toys of the super-rich, and the crackpot schemes
financed by the wealthy entrepreneurs willing and able to risk their
money in such endeavors.

He
is happy to see his dad who is now retired. His dad lives on a reverse
mortgage — a recent market innovation. After his visit with dad
he gets back in his car for the ride home. He turns on a radio talk
show. The host keeps saying that libertarians are kooks and anarchists
and thank God for continual market intervention and government protection.
Government intervention and taxation improves and will continue
to improve the standards of living of Americans. (He doesn’t tell
Joe that his beloved Democrats/Republicans have fought to destroy
every protection and benefit Joe enjoys throughout his day.)

Joe
agrees, and puts his support behind protectionism, taxation, monopolies,
interventionism, and war: these are obviously the things upon which
civilization is built.

Notes

1. On the title,
   libertarians oppose both Republican and Democratic ideologies,
   whom they group as "statists." On the term, see
   Mises (here called étatism).
2. I have
   focused on a positive libertarian vision, rather than criticizing
   the original, which I could easily have done.
3. Conservative
   Joe is the sometime title of a recently widely circulating
   email. It was forwarded to me by a friend first back in July,
   and then by others twice since then. The full text of the version
   I received is:

   u201CJoe gets
   up at 6:00am to prepare his morning coffee. He fills his pot
   full of good clean drinking water because some liberal fought
   for minimum water quality standards. He takes his daily medication
   with his first swallow of coffee. His medications are safe to
   take because some liberal fought to insure their safety and
   work as advertised.

   u201CAll but
   $10.00 of his medications are paid for by his employers medical
   plan because some liberal union workers fought their employers
   for paid medical insurance, now Joe gets it too. He prepares
   his morning breakfast, bacon and eggs this day. Joe’s bacon
   is safe to eat because some liberal fought for laws to regulate
   the meat packing industry.

   u201CJoe takes
   his morning shower reaching for his shampoo; His bottle is properly
   labeled with every ingredient and the amount of its contents
   because some liberal fought for his right to know what he was
   putting on his body and how much it contained. Joe dresses,
   walks outside and takes a deep breath. The air he breathes is
   clean because some tree hugging liberal fought for laws to stop
   industries from polluting our air. He walks to the subway station
   for his government subsidized ride to work; it saves him considerable
   money in parking and transportation fees. You see, some liberal
   fought for affordable public transportation, which gives everyone
   the opportunity to be a contributor.

   u201CJoe begins
   his work day; he has a good job with excellent pay, medicals
   benefits, retirement, paid holidays and vacation because some
   liberal union members fought and died for these working standards.
   Joe’s employer pays these standards because Joe’s employer doesn’t
   want his employees to call the union. If Joe is hurt on the
   job or becomes unemployed he’ll get a worker compensation or
   unemployment check because some liberal didn’t think he should
   loose his home because of his temporary misfortune.

   u201CIts noon
   time, Joe needs to make a Bank Deposit so he can pay some bills.
   Joe’s deposit is federally insured by the FSLIC because some
   liberal wanted to protect Joe’s money from unscrupulous bankers
   who ruined the banking system before the depression.

   u201CJoe has
   to pay his Fannie Mae underwritten Mortgage and his below market
   federal student loan because some stupid liberal decided that
   Joe and the government would be better off if he was educated
   and earned more money over his life-time.

   u201CJoe is
   home from work, he plans to visit his father this evening at
   his farm home in the country. He gets in his car for the drive
   to dads; his car is among the safest in the world because some
   liberal fought for car safety standards. He arrives at his boyhood
   home. He was the third generation to live in the house financed
   by Farmers Home Administration because bankers didn’t want to
   make rural loans. The house didn’t have electric until some
   big government liberal stuck his nose where it didn’t belong
   and demanded rural electrification. (Those rural Republican’s
   would still be sitting in the dark.)

   u201CHe is
   happy to see his dad who is now retired. His dad lives on Social
   Security and his union pension because some liberal made sure
   he could take care of himself so Joe wouldn’t have to. After
   his visit with dad he gets back in his car for the ride home.
   He turns on a radio talk show, the host’s keeps saying that
   liberals are bad and conservatives are good. (He doesn’t tell
   Joe that his beloved Republicans have fought against every protection
   and benefit Joe enjoys throughout his day) Joe agrees, u2018We don’t
   need those big government liberals ruining our lives; after
   all, I’m a self made man who believes everyone should take care
   of themselves, just like I have'.u201D

October
1, 2004

Gil
Guillory [send him
mail] is an engineer in Houston.

Brink
Lindsey, a scholar at the Cato
Institute, has had some
reservations about this libertarian
combination, most notably the non-interventionism
(never mind that he's not
sure he's a libertarian). He thinks that state intervention
for the purpose of liberation, which I will refer to here as humanitarian
intervention, can be justified in some cases. My understanding is
that this is one motivation for his calling the Libertarian Party
"a
cringe-inducing embarrassment."

I
intend to show here that contrary to Lindsey's claim there is a
principled case for state non-interventionism and non-aid. He needs
no lecturing on free
trade, to be sure. And I will not engage in historical
debates over whether the waging of the Civil War could be or
was actually either justified by the abolition of slavery in the
South or waged for that end. I will only make the principled case
against humanitarian intervention.

The
Welfare Argument

Humanitarian
intervention is a type of foreign aid. It is an in-kind donation
from one government to the people under another government. As such,
it is a type of "welfare" program, whereby one body of
persons (taxpayers) is forced to help another body of persons (the
liberated).

Since
libertarians hold a deontological principled
stand against forcing one person to help another, the
case for state non-interventionism obviously follows (not a deontologist?
Roderick Long has raised some interesting questions regarding
deontology and consequentialism). What makes a libertarian unique
is his endorsement
of negative rights and rejection of positive rights. I will
not here make the case for such a principled stand against welfare
programs, but if Mr. Lindsey denies a principled case against state
non-interventionism abroad, he certainly concedes much to the social
democrats domestically. If people are to be helped by taxpayers,
why not choose the domestic poor or disadvantaged?

Just
because humanitarian intervention might be a good does not imply
that it should be tax-funded.

The
Constitutional Argument

The
Cato Institute is well known for its excellent Center
for Constitutional Studies; scholars in the latter have underscored
the connection between the Constitution and Locke's Second Treatise
via the Declaration of Independence, and have been instrumental
in reviving the doctrine of enumerated powers.

The
doctrine
of enumerated powers is that "the power the people give
to government, to exercise on their behalf, is strictly limited"
(quoted from the preface of this
booklet) and in the Constitution, they are listed in Article
I, Section 8. Nowhere in this section is a power granted to conduct
humanitarian interventions. Certainly, the power to declare war
is granted; but declaring war is quite different than conducting
a humanitarian intervention.

And,
if we are to take the enumerated powers doctrine seriously, then
we must construe all clauses of section 8 as non-elastic and delimiting.
The opening line of section 8 is, "The Congress shall have
Power to…collect taxes…[in order to] provide for the common Defense
and general Welfare of the United States." This clause, under
the enumerated powers doctrine, means that all expenditures of the
Congress must be appropriated either for the defense of the United
States, or for its welfare — not the welfare of those outside the
United States. On the fact that there is a comma, not a semi-colon,
after the word "Excises" in the opening line of section
8, how there almost was one, and how it would have radically altered
the meaning of this passage, refer to tape set 6 here.

This
is congruent with the Declaration of Independence. If "to secure
[their] rights, governments are instituted among men" then
this social compact is among those people so contracting, not among
all people of the world. Therefore, you also cannot extend the government's
duty to protect the rights of people beyond its geographic borders.

In
the concrete, it is clear that this was exactly the intent of the
founders. As Charles Adams pointed out in his book Those
Dirty Rotten Taxes: The Tax Revolts that Built America:

[Historically,
r]estricting taxes was…achieved by restricting spending. In
early modern England, a tax was illegal if the expenditure was
illegal. For example, in 1497, Henry VII got Parliament to approve
a tax for a military expedition against the Scots. A revolt erupted
in Cornwall (southwest England) when collectors were lynched en
masse. The Cornish people argued that the tax was illegal because
the expenditure was illegal. No tax was justified for military
purposes — except for defense. This view…found expression in the
U.S. Constitution…The framers realized that taxing and spending
are inextricably tied together, so you have to control both sides
of the public purse – the spenders and the taxers. They would
put clear-cut provisions in the Constitution to get the job done.

I
think Roger Pilon
is right about the enumerated
powers doctrine. Of course, I also think Spooner
was correct about the Constitution.

The
International Law Argument

I
will grant that this sub-argument is nuanced, and perhaps the weakest.

A
towering figure in the libertarian tradition is Hugo Grotius. He
is widely regarded as the father of international law. His writings
had, as their goal, the promotion of peace among nations, by deducing
the natural code of justice that states should adopt, vis–vis
one another.

The
core concept of a state is the notion of sovereignty. In many ways,
the corpus of classical international law theory mimics the topology
of libertarian rights theory. Libertarian rights theory describes
a sphere of inviolable sovereignty for the individual, typically
his person and his naturally acquired physical property; and specifies
that all other interactions among individuals should be voluntary;
and specifies that any breach of the sovereignty of A by B without
A's consent is a violation of rights.

Similarly,
classical international law describes a sphere of inviolable sovereignty
for the state, typically its historic geographic borders and its
possessions, such as boats, in otherwise unowned areas (such as
international waters and outer space); and specifies that all other
interactions among states should be voluntary; and specifies that
any breach of the sovereignty of A by B without A's consent is a
violation of international law.

Libertarians
deny the sovereignty of the state, but I will leave that to one
side for now.

In
the case of Iraq and the US, Iraq is a sovereign state, and it is
a violation of international law for the US to conduct an invasion
or other breach of Iraq's borders without proof that Iraq has or
intends to attack the US. And, as Charley Reese has recently underscored,
no
proof of this sort has been offered.

Libertarian
rights are the side constraints which individuals face. Similarly,
international law(s) are the side constraints which states face,
if they proclaim their sovereignty. Here, I am drawing on Stephan
Kinsella's estoppel
approach, insisting that states not act in ways that are self-contradictory.

The
triumph of international law theory was to use the state's own logic
to restrain its predations. To deny international law theory is
to remove a constraint to state power. My argument is of the slippery-slope
type. If we do not insist upon the canons of international law,
then we deny the external constraints that all states face. If states
may, for causes they deem appropriate, conduct humanitarian interventions;
then, it follows that stronger states will face one less barrier
to imperial "benevolent
hegemonic" expansion.

Robert
Nozick opined in Anarchy,
State, and Utopia that a dominant private defense association,
thinking its procedures to be the most just, and having the best-equipped
forces, would be able to shut down all of its competitors by force,
and that this would be the necessary result of anarcho-capitalism.
Rothbard rightly ridiculed this as the "immaculate
conception of the state" but one can rightly imagine states
with the power to tax, no longer constrained by the doctrine of
international law, expanding their benevolent empires (and the tax
revenue and power they deliver to the hands of the political elites)
thus tending toward the establishment
of a one-world government.

This
is a direction for future history that I, for one, would like to
ensure does not happen. My two girls should live to see the end
of taxation, not the triumph of the empire.

The
Anarchist Argument

Now,
there are some libertarian anarchists who have suggested that, all
of this said, we should still trust the state with humanitarian
intervention. After all, if our life were threatened by a home intruder,
we would call the state police or no one. If there's a fire, we
call the tax-funded fire department (not
all of us do) or do without. We live in a statist world, and
must use the state for those functions which it has monopolized.

This
is an appealing argument, but I think it is wrong. Even if none
of the other arguments above applied (which they do, don't get me
wrong), we are still faced with a band
of robbers who are willing to do our personal bidding.

We
should demand repeal of all so-called neutrality and anti-piracy
laws that prevent funding and participation in foreign wars by private
citizens.

We
should, perhaps, fund businesses whose intent is to make a profit
by humanitarian intervention. The businesses might send agents into
the territory of the state in question and get contracts by the
subjects of that state which say, "If company X overthrows
the government, then I will pay $Y to company X." Illegal?
Yes. Immoral? No. And, I should point out, it is only illegal according
to states; it is not forbidden by international law. The Iraq interventionist
wants to break laws too: those of international law and of Iraq,
and, as I argue above, the laws of the US. Neither side in this
debate is advocating strictly legal activities.

We
should not encourage the state to spend taxpayer money on
our behalf. Our houses are not on fire, and our lives are not being
immediately threatened by a home intruder: lifeboat
ethics do not apply. Instead, we are coolly considering how,
in accordance with the non-aggression axiom, we can help some people
who are being oppressed by a state.

The
answer is not statism.

December
27, 2002

Gil
Guillory [send him
mail] is an engineer in Houston.