If we see growing costs and shrinking quality now, this indicates there is not a free market in healthcare. Free-market solutions could greatly reduce the cost and increase the supply of healthcare, at zero cost to the taxpayer. The key is to find existing state constraints on supply and remove them.

Here are just a few solutions to America’s costly healthcare situation (lawmakers out there, please feel free to swipe these ideas!):

1) A free market in drugs.

a. Allow the free importing of drugs from foreign countries. Some senior citizens have become drug smugglers, sneaking to Canada and back for the prescription drugs they need.

b. Make all drugs available over the counter. Not only would this reduce costly, time-consuming doctor visits, but it would eliminate the "War on Drugs" mindset that causes unnecessary patient suffering. If you’ve ever been in an emergency room or hospital, begging for pain medicine while the staff sneers and treats you like some kind of junkie, you know what I mean.

c. Abolish the FDA. The most common complaints about the FDA are that it either approves a drug with minimal testing or drags out the approval process for several years. Generally, we expect that drugs produced by large, politically-connected pharmaceutical firms will be quickly approved, while less-connected and foreign firms will have to wait a long time. This monopoly should be eliminated. Multiple, competing drug-certifying companies could take its place on the market, and they would need to rely entirely on their reputation for good testing, since they would not be backed by state power. Individual doctors, patients and insurers could decide which certifying agencies they trust and which they do not — the internet and medical journals will help them stay informed.

d. End the War on Drugs. This would reduce the amount of addiction and health problems associated with recreational drugs. During alcohol prohibition, the softer versions of alcohol — beer and wine — vanished from the market, since producers and smugglers only wanted to deal in the highest-profit product, liquor. In 19th-century America, when there was a free market in drugs, there were no epidemics of drug addiction. People drank small amounts of cocaine in soft drinks, rather than smoking crack; they smoked opium rather than injecting heroin. With softer version of recreational drugs available, experimenters are less likely to develop a deep addiction, and addicts are less likely to develop a high tolerance that drives them to take ever-larger quantities of the most dangerous version of their drugs. Additionally, if drug use is not criminal, addicts will be much more willing to admit to their problems and seek treatment, without fear of law enforcement issues.

2) Remove the state monopoly on medical licensing. Allow competing businesses or nonprofits to provide certification, so that doctors unhappy with the current system can break out and form their own organizations. Monopoly licensing can restrain doctors from giving what they know to be the best advice.

Consider basic but widespread problems, like stress, anxiety and depression. A regular practice of meditation, ten minutes a day, can go a long way towards reducing these problems, as well as the behaviors they drive, such as overeating, smoking, and excessive drinking — which themselves lead to numerous medical problems. Meditation costs nothing and can be done by anyone, without any health risk at all. How many doctors recommend meditation first, rather than Valium or Zoloft? How many might prefer to try some milder herbal or vitamin remedies before breaking out the Big Pharma? How far are they restrained by the threat of the state monopoly pulling their license to practice?

A free market in medical certification would allow doctors to try many different approaches to solving problems, not just the monopoly-approved practices. It would also make it easier for immigrant medical professionals to work in the United States, as well as clear the way for the next couple of improvements…

3) Allow independent nursing practices. An experienced nurse knows how to perform basic check-ups, treat typical ailments such as the common cold, and likely has other areas of expertise and experience. Consumers may at times decide that a nurse is sufficient for their needs, and thereby save money over seeing the doctor. (I picked this idea up at LRC or Mises.org, but now can’t find the source.)

4) Reduce the requirements for becoming a doctor. Does a general practitioner really need ten or twelve years of schooling? Of course, they must study anatomy and biology — but why all the calculus and physics requirements for a pre-med degree? Just in case doctors want to design rocket ships in their spare time? Advanced specialties, such as neurosurgery, certainly require additional education. In general, however, it would seem that the amount of required schooling could be reduced in favor of more apprenticeship, continuing education, and greater focus on the doctor’s particular specialty. Education should center on what the doctor is actually going to do in the course of a medical practice. This would reduce the cost of a medical education, and so increase the supply of doctors.

5) Shorten patent terms on drugs and medical technology. This would allow producers to learn from each other’s research much faster, allowing a greater supply of needed drugs and devices while accelerating the overall pace of research. Greater supply and rapid technological advances mean lower price and better products.

6) Deregulate health insurance and HMO’s. Heavy regulation restricts supply. Through the typical Iron Triangle process, the most politically influential companies will get to choose the rules and the regulators for their own industry — using state power to protect themselves while attacking competitors. As with medical licensing, independent third parties could rate the quality of different insurers, but without the arbitrary state power to create monopoly or oligopoly conditions in the industry. With the internet, it easier than ever for consumers to find and share important information when choosing an insurer — including complaints or recommendations from the insurer’s existing clients.

All of these reforms would cost the government (and therefore taxpayers) no money — just the kind of solutions needed in a recession. By simply removing constraints on supply, we can open up the floodgates to cheap medical care.

These are just a few obvious suggestions. If anyone has more (and I know from correspondence that a lot of medical professionals read LRC!), please let me know. If there are enough new suggestions, and Lew permitting, I’ll post a follow-up with more ways we can improve healthcare in America.

J. L. Bryan [send him mail] lives in Atlanta. His novel Dominion is free at his website.

Healthcare in America: Some Free-Market Solutions by JL Bryan is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.

The Best of J. L. Bryan

Consider the second term: treasure. Many popular stories, ancient and modern, concern the quest and competition for treasure. Encoded in such stories, intentionally or otherwise, are warnings about the nature of the state.

The word “treasure” might refer to any concentration of wealth, but in our popular stories, treasure plays a more specific role. A pirate’s plunder, an emperor’s vault, or a dragon’s horde of precious metals and jewels are considered treasure. However, if the identical materials are located in a bank, they are referred to as “reserves”; if in a coin store, they are “inventory”; if in a jeweler’s workshop, “raw materials.” Though the objects are the same, their nature is somehow different in the latter situations.

The difference is best explained by Franz Oppenheimer’s distinction between the two ways people can make a living: the economic means and the political means. An economic transaction is a peaceful, voluntary exchange of property between parties, such as buying groceries. A political transaction is coercive — one party takes the other’s property by force. Theft and taxation are examples of the political means.

Private companies have accounting and finance departments; states have treasuries. To fill these treasuries, the Greeks and Romans repeatedly looted the ancient cities of the Middle East to seize millennia of accumulated gold and silver. Later, Rome itself was looted by numerous tribes until it was stripped of this treasure. Viking raids on early Christian churches reduced precious religious art to mere treasure. Conquistadors enslaved and killed countless Native Americans in the search for silver, gold, and the mythical treasure-filled city of El Dorado.

In popular stories, we see several traits commonly associated with treasure:

1) Treasure is taken by force — and lost again the same way.

In Treasure Island, the pirates have amassed great wealth through plunder and hidden it on an island. The pirates continually betray and murder each other, first to keep the location of the treasure secret, and then out of competition for the treasure. Since no one has any recognizable, legitimate property claim to the stolen property (except the original victims), the question is settled through deception and force. In the absence of clear property rights, competition over resources can easily lead to violence rather than negotiation and division of labor.

2) Treasure is either hoarded or squandered, but not invested into productive use.

The Treasure Island pirates, except for Long John Silver, squander all of their plunder on their vices, and typically die sick and destitute. Since they did not gain their wealth through the economic means, they do not have the self-restraint learned from work, thrift, savings and investment. Like politicians, they spend it all today with no thought for tomorrow.

Treasure may also be hoarded, as with the cache on Treasure Island. The dragon Smaug in The Hobbit hoards his treasure on Lonely Mountain, having stolen both treasure and mountain from the dwarves. The dwarves make their living by the economic means; they are miners and smiths who trade their products with humans for food. The dwarves have a legitimate property claim. Since Smaug does not, he must jealously guard what he has stolen. If someone were to take the treasure, no one else would recognize or defend Smaug’s unjust claim to it, so Smaug must defend it alone, with only his own might.

Like the pirates, the dragon has no interest in using his wealth productively. He only wants to keep it, not invest it. States often hoard wealth this way. Teddy Roosevelt is remembered as a conservationist for nationalizing huge vistas of land in the American West, which would otherwise have been homesteaded. In Bully Boy, Jim Powell writes that “lobbying groups hoped to enrich themselves with . . . free dams, free waterway improvements, cheap water, cheap timber, cheap access to grazing lands, and other goodies, at somebody else’s expense.” Thomas DiLorenzo calls these policies “just another Republican party mercantilist scheme.”

Today, it seems plausible that the large oil interests themselves would oppose increased oil exploration in American territory — keeping the supply shorter, and thus the price higher. (I suppose it’s possible that Greenpeace really is a more powerful lobby than ExxonMobil, but I wouldn’t bet on it.)

3) Treasure often comes with a curse.

The danger of enchanted treasure in stories serves as a warning against seeking wealth through the political means. In The Hobbit, Bilbo Baggins finds an enchanted ring that allows him to turn invisible — but the One Ring is addictive, as evidenced by Gollum’s obsession, and drive its bearer to madness. In Pirates of the Caribbean, those who possess the cursed treasure become ghostly undead creatures…but they keep the treasure.

Similarly, those who benefit from the state, such as politicians and bureaucrats, must reconcile themselves to the fact that they are paid in money that is coercively taken from others, and that they serve a large war-making machine. Those who depend on the state must bend their consciences and sense of morality to accept this. Ideology can help soothe them, and even make them feel virtuous in their participation in aggression. Failing that, there are the benefits described by “Mr. X,” including high pay, low accountability, long vacations and generous pensions.

4) Desire for treasure can lead people into foolish, reckless, and violent behavior.

The Treasure Island pirates deceive and murder each other over treasure. In the story of Aladdin, the evil sorcerer deceives Aladdin into fetching the magic lamp from the enchanted, treasure-filled cave. King Midas gets his wish that all he touches turns to gold — including, unfortunately, his own daughter (and let’s not forget the ruinous Spanish Empire-style inflation that must have ensued…). In Lord of the Rings, armies clash over possession of the precious ring.

Beginning in January 2001, Dick Cheney and his secretive “Energy Task Force,” representing the major American oil companies, pored over maps of Iraq’s oil fields as intently as pirates studying a treasure map. They were ready to sweep in, plunder, and divide the loot. Nearly a decade later, the war drags on with no end in sight.

5) Only the humble can be trusted with treasure.

King Midas’ ambition for easy, unearned wealth leads him to destroy his own child. Aladdin, described as a lazy, unemployed boy without ambition, does no harm with his magic lamp — but he must keep it from the evil sorcerer’s hands. In Lord of the Rings, the ring’s power is corrupting to all. Only the humble, lazy, unambitious hobbit can be entrusted with the ring, and even hobbits are not entirely immune to its power. The only legitimate use of the ring is to destroy it so that no one may have it.

Stories depicting the lure and danger of treasure teach us that it is foolish, dangerous, and morally corrupting to pursue wealth by the political means, yet people are lured again and again.

When private individuals go treasure-hunting, they bear all the risks, costs, and consequences themselves. When states are used as tools of plunder, the profits go to the decision-makers and their allies, the risks fall on the soldiers and the invaded population, and the costs are passed on to taxpayers. From a politician’s viewpoint, it’s always tempting to turn the country into a plundering pirate ship — provided you can find a weak enemy with valuable resources. The political class can profit immensely from such a war, especially if it drags on for years and requires billions of dollars in contracts. They risk only the loss of their souls.

Finally, we discover the connection between blood and treasure. It is blood — coercion and aggression — that transforms private wealth into plunderer’s treasure.

For centuries, the role of treasure in stories has been to warn us against the danger and moral rot of the political means. When it comes to the state, it’s best to heed the warning of Pete Hogwallop from O Brother, Where Art Thou?: “Do not seek the treasure!”

J. L. Bryan [send him mail] lives in Atlanta. His novel Dominion is free at his website.

Blood and Treasure by JL Bryan is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.

The Best of J. L. Bryan

You walk into
the million-dollar cinderblock gymnasium, immediately dwarfed by
the size and sound of the crowd. The school’s thousands of students
have been herded together to cheer the glory that is “their” team
as it prepares for “the big game.” Teachers and students dress in
school colors, wave the school pennant, and join in the school fight
song.

All this is
a Very Big Deal, and woe unto he who questions any of it. There
may be a speech from the principal, or from that annoying kid who
successfully rode a wave of apathy into the student council presidency.
The cheerleaders dance and praise the team. The team members themselves
run out to thunderous applause, the crowd cheering for whatever
it is they presumably accomplish for the school community — and
never mind that the biggest jerks in the school are invariably found
within their ranks.

Here and there
you may notice small, dark clumps of the disaffected, those dour
punk/goth/whatever kids who don’t seem impressed by any of this.
They will be treated harshly by teachers for being negative, antisocial,
or — heaven forbid! — lacking in proper “school spirit.” There is
something wrong with them, most would agree, or they just want attention.
And these malcontents are all freshmen or sophomores. Upperclassmen
of their ilk have long since learned that such rallies are the perfect
time to sneak behind the school for a cigarette or a few bong rips.

Of special
significance is the rally against the major rival school down the
road, the archenemy who must be denounced, ridiculed, and defeated.
No one can tell you why that particular school is the big rival.
“Because they’re the Broncos (or whatever the rival mascot might
be)” is a typical, circular answer. Some don’t even bother moving
in a circle: “They just are,” such people say, probably convinced,
after a lifetime of learning to accept such answers from teachers,
that this would appropriately resolve the question.

In my experience,
one revealing answer came from my high school Latin teacher: “You
must support the home team. Support the home team. Support the home
team.” (Also, teaching Latin by rote had apparently programmed her
to repeat all statements three times. Not kidding.) She didn’t follow
up with any explanation of the virtues and benefits to accrue from
home-team-supporting behavior. It was just crazy to think that,
although the state forced us into this ridiculous institution, with
its ridiculous rules and overlords, we would ever consider the school
to be anything but our “home.” We were certainly intended to identify
it as such. The football team was there to defend our honor (against
what, nobody knows).

Having read
some Henry
David Thoreau and Thomas
Jefferson, I concluded that the entire culture and organization
of public schools must be a mistake. There were so many authoritarian
attributes, I thought, they weren’t teaching kids to be responsible
citizens of a republic, but subjects of a police state. Serious
reforms were clearly needed. (Years later, having studied John
Taylor Gatto and Austrian
economics, I realized that a) the state raises kids this way
deliberately, not by mistake, and b) a free market in education
would quickly find and disseminate the best methods for teaching
children.)

The whole weird
culture of government school still puzzled me when I graduated in
1996. A little more than five years later, starting on 9/11/2001,
I began to discover what all the weird ritualism and pressure to
conform had really accomplished for the state.

Flags went
up everywhere — you had flag bumper stickers, flag lapel pins, flag
t-shirts, flags draping homes and buildings, flag-colored bunting.
Across the South, people even traded their defiant Confederate flags
for Old Glory — swapping out their scrimmage jerseys for the team
colors. The Pledge of Allegiance took on a new, more sacred quality,
as did the drinking
game that is our national anthem (from the article: “If you
could sing a stanza
of the notoriously difficult melody and stay on key, you were sober
enough for another round”).

President
Bush, until then known for his questionable election, the Enron
scandal, and taking long vacations, suddenly became the great leader,
warrior, and protector. (Yes, the same guy who completely didn’t
protect anyone from the attacks was now going to keep us safe —
but let’s not digress into reason). We had Britney Spears and Ann
Coulter to cheerlead the Prez. Men and women in any sort of government-issued
uniform became hallowed saints. Our wise and noble leaders, all
in their matching lapel pins, sat down at their desks and led the
charge to war — war in Afghanistan, war in Iraq, and a hoped-for
war in Iran, if they could squeeze it in.

Sure, here
and there were clumps of the disaffected, those left-wingers and
libertarians who didn’t support the Patriot Act, the Iraq invasion,
or the general sense that our politicians and thinktankers would
kill anyone who stood between them and the oil supplies of the Middle
East and Central Asia. But these were not serious people, not people
who had TV talk shows and columns in the New York Times.
Not people who held high office. Thanks to public education, we
all knew that these were just that predictable handful of fringe
weirdos, who are probably even now sneaking out back for a cigarette
or a few bong rips. The serious, sober-minded folks were out buying
little flags to pin on themselves.

Question the
war in those days, and many people would just give you a puzzled
look, as if asking why they hated the Broncos. “Because they’re
our enemies!” According to whom? Had Iraq attacked us? “What are
you, on their side? You’re either with us or against us!” And the
countless innocents who would die from the invasion? Probably fans
of the other team, the jerks.

Even if you
didn’t support the war, you should of course “Support the Troops,”
preferably with a yellow magnet on your car (don’t use a sticker,
it could scuff the paint). Naturally, they’re fighting for us, and
it’s important to support the home team, don’t you know, even if
the game itself seems pointless to you. And support them only by
keeping them at war, no matter what, for years and years and years,
because quitters don’t win the championship ring. We need to bring
home the gold. For our country, our honor, etc.

And when it
comes to politics, the same logic applies. You can choose “your”
team — there are two big ones — and then cheer for them, wear their
t-shirts, wish harm upon the opposing team, and feel as if something’s
been accomplished when someone from your team wins a major office.
Between the shouting matches at bars and the flaming blog posts,
you’ll barely notice how truly powerless you are.

Gatto’s work
reveals many ways government schools are designed to break human
beings into mindless, obedient machines. There’s the common teacher
tactic of insulting and humiliating the kid who acts differently,
or asks too many questions. There’s the charming custom of begging
for permission to carry out basic bodily functions, which many a
teacher gleefully denies — and you must have that hall pass so you
can show your papers to the hall monitors, proving you have a right
to pee.

Possibly most
effective is the practice of age-ranked classes. Every child naturally
looks to older children and adults as role models. The school denies
us this, forcing kids to look to other kids their own age as role
models. Everybody strives to be like everybody else, the source
of the common teenage lament that “Everybody else dresses
this way!” or “Everybody else is going to the party!” After
more than a decade of this, we become adults desperate to prove
to everyone else that we are just like everyone else.
Much character development is also lost in the other direction —
older kids never learn the responsibility of looking out for younger
kids, the understanding of subject matter that comes from helping
to tutor them, or the fulfillment that comes from helping someone
smaller and weaker than yourself.

All of this
is useful for training obedient subjects who constantly adjust themselves
to whatever they are told. When it comes to the martial virtues,
however, there’s nothing quite like a properly managed team-sports
program. Kids can learn loyalty, teamwork, obedience, aggressiveness,
and an animosity toward the "enemy" that can be snapped
on at will. Some of these may sound virtuous by themselves — but
what about the German soldier who remains steadfastly loyal to Hitler,
or engages in teamwork by helping operate a concentration camp?
Those soldiers were several generations into the Prussian
school system on which the American system is based.

Clearly, the
individual needs an inner core of principles that he values more
highly than the approval of the team, the coaches, and the rest
of the school community. Such fierce individualism is at the heart
of what it means to be American, and what it means to be human,
and it is something government schools will never teach.

June
23, 2009

J.
L. Bryan
[send him mail] lives
in Atlanta. His novel Dominion
is free at his website.

A Novel Response to LRC by JL
Bryan is licensed under a Creative
Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.

Readers of
LewRockwell.com and Mises.org
will find nothing new in these ideas — they’ve been unfolding around
us for a long time, accelerating in recent years. The actions of
the state, and the effects of these actions, including the current
economic disaster, rarely surprise those who study Austrian economics.
As Albert
Jay Nock asked in response to reports of atrocities by world
powers: “What would you expect? — look at the record!”

Our current
course, from the PATRIOT Act, to the endless wars, to the blatant
control of the Treasury and Fed by Wall Street, could take us into
a total state on the scale of the Soviet Union. But it would not
be Soviet Russia, which took up the reins from the Czar. Nor would
it be Orwell’s 1984,
imagined from the viewpoint of postwar Britain.

I wrote my
novel Dominion
trying to envision a 21st-century totalitarian America,
built on a combination of history and current trends. There are
other dystopias, but I don’t know of any specifically built on Austro-libertarian
thought. In fact, I’m not aware of much fiction specifically built
on Austrian ideas, thought there are some good science fiction writers
who explore libertarian and anarcho-capitalist ideas (Neal
Stephenson is a personal favorite). The Mises Institute offers
wonderful free-market fiction by Garet
Garrett and Henry Hazlitt. (Please write if you know of more.)

$29
    $25

The society
portrayed in Dominion owes much to the insights offered by
LRC. Laurence Vance’s writings about relationship between religion
and war helped shape the state’s use of religion in the story. Linda
Schrock Taylor and Vin
Suprynowicz pointed me to the life-changing (and free) Underground
History of American Education, from which I learned to design
a crushingly oppressive school system. Paul
Craig Roberts charts the decline of civil liberties, while Michael
Gaddy looks at the state’s dark underbelly. William
Lind and Eric
Margolis give a better picture of foreign policy and war than
any 24-hour news network.

Crisis
and Leviathan makes it clear that a major national emergency,
real or manufactured, is the most expedient way for the state to
expand and grab new powers. In Dominion, a nuclear bomb destroys
a major American city a few years from today, and the state leaps
at the opportunity, seizing direct control of communications, opening
massive prison camps, launching a slew of wars, and generally putting
its boot everywhere. The story takes place twenty years after that
event.

The book focuses
on ideological control, thanks to Austrian insights like those expressed
by Lew Rockwell in his introduction to The
Left, the Right, and the State:

The reality
of the state is that it is a looting and killing machine. So why
do so many people cheer for its expansion?…The very idea of
the state is so implausible on its face that the state must wear
an ideological garb as means of compelling popular support. Ancient
states had one or two: they would protect you from enemies and/or
they were ordained by the gods.

Because a state
feeds off the market, it must consist of a minority of the society
or else grow too large to support financially. The state does not
rule only by force or threat of force, but also (and perhaps primarily)
through ideology.

For this reason,
I chose for the main character in Dominion a “news” reporter
who never knows whether he is reporting truth or not. While working
as a propaganda conduit, he suffers a growing obsession with finding
the truth, though any actual research will eventually land him in
prison, or worse.

In 1984,
Orwell leaves us with the impression that the Party system could
rule forever, breaking down any opposition through surveillance,
propaganda and brainwashing. Economic activity is planned by the
Ministry of Plenty.

However, Socialism
by Ludwig von Mises explains that a centrally planned economy cannot
last, but must collapse. The command economy is unable to coordinate
and calculate — only a market price system is capable of that. Mises
correctly predicted the economic collapse of the Soviet Union decades
in advance.

Because of
that, I realized the state portrayed in Dominion was on an
ultimately self-destructive course. Its aggression, domestic and
internationally, must be the desperate clawing of a giant beast
struggling to survive, even as it crushes the economy beneath it
with state control and runaway inflation. This led me to conclusions
different from those reached by Orwell.

Finally, Jeff
Tucker’s recent live
blogging of Against
Intellectual Monopoly inspired me to release the entire book
for free
under a Creative Commons license.

It is also
available on demand as an Amazon paperback
or Kindle
e-text — I guess I’m avoiding the “100-year
sentence” for now. I also felt a strong desire to get this one
out to people as quickly and easily as possible.

The runaway,
fiscally unsustainable growth of the state and its empire endangers
our future. I’ve attempted to find what that might look like down
the road, based on what I’ve learned from a few years of studying
Austrian economics (and a lifetime of being American). I thought
it was a subject worth exploring, and the results seemed worth sharing
with you.

June
11, 2009

J.
L. Bryan
[send him mail] lives
in Atlanta. His novel Dominion
is free at his website.

A Novel Response to LRC by JL
Bryan is licensed under a Creative
Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.

Walt Disney’s
crazy cartoon-with-sound idea became a hit, and the rest is pop-culture
history. Disney, Inc. went on to make billions by retelling existing
stories through animation and music. While benefiting from a variety
of public-domain works, Disney has also lobbied to prevent
their own works — along with everyone else’s — from entering
the public domain.

In Against
Intellectual Monopoly, Boldrin and Levine demonstrate how
a range of innovations, from the “Watt” steam engine to the “Wright
brothers” airplane, were not created from whole cloth. They were
slight modifications built upon the work of many previous inventors.
Human culture evolves through copying, tinkering, remixing, and
improving on each other’s work.

Some
creators even provide free “fan kits” so fans can add images, logos
and other material to their own websites. Fan creations are a powerful
form of word-of-mouth advertising for the original creation, essentially
saying, “I loved this so much, I had to find ways to spend more
time with it.” Word of mouth is generally considered the best form
of advertising, yet it costs nothing to the original creator or
publisher (except the initial creation of a quality piece).

If word
of mouth is the best form of advertising, and derivative works are
a very powerful form of word-of-mouth, creators should want to encourage
derivative works as much as possible. In a market economy, the best
inducement is the profit motive. So why not encourage other people
to make derivative works, at their own risk and expense, that can
only promote your original work? And what better encouragement than
to allow them to sell derivative work for a profit?

Disney
has made fortunes turning the dark, bloody stories of the Brothers
Grimm into colorful children’s tales, with accompanying soundtrack
available on CD. Amazon lists multiple
collections of the Grimm’s fairy tales. How many of these sales
are driven by people who grew up watching Disney movies, then later
decided to purchase the originals? (Perhaps they are lured by rumors
of the horrific original stories.) Publishers clearly find it worthwhile
to keep several competing editions in print, though the stories
are available free
online. How many other 19th-century German folk-tale
collections are still published in such numbers?

If the
Brothers Grimm were alive today, they would benefit from tremendous
book sales because of Disney, even if Disney paid them no direct
royalties. Disney has invested colossal sums of money in indirectly
but powerfully promoting the Brothers’ writings, for its own benefit.
Increased sales of the Grimm Brothers’ books is an unintentional
side effect.

Disney
could have failed. All its classic movies could have flopped. If
they had, these hypothetical, still-living Brothers Grimm would
not have suffered at all.

But what
if NBC, the rights-holder, decided to release its old content under
a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license, allowing others
to make profitable derivative works? Then, you could publish a book
such as “B.”-er Than Ever. The writer could make money if
there are enough former A-Team viewers out there willing
to spend a few dollars to go on adventures with B.A. and crew.

Back to
the imaginary scenario: the derivative writer makes a little money,
the rights-holder of the original makes nothing. But how is this
likely to impact sales of A-Team
DVDs? It will not decrease sales. At worst, it will make no
impact on sales. However, isn’t it at least somewhat likely to increase
sales? After seeing a copy of “B.”-er Than Ever: The Further
Adventures of “B. A.” Baracus, isn’t a fan at least slightly
more likely to buy copies of the show, or other official merchandise
put out by the creator? The “B.”-er Than Ever author is reminding
consumers that they like the A-Team, and possibly introducing
a few younger people to the long-cancelled show.

The more successful
the derivative work, the better for the original creator. If “B.”-er
Than Ever became a bestseller or otherwise stirred up enough
interest — if Tom Clancy decides it would be fun to write his own
A-Team novel — it could even lead NBC to re-release the A-Team
DVDs with more features and updated commentary, put together an
A-Team movie, etc. to benefit from this freshly riled audience

Is it profitable
for a media company to fight against this only possible effect —
the increased sales of its products? How would Mr. T react to his
higher residuals? The book would be an advertisement for NBC’s product,
but it is produced and promoted at the expense of others. NBC receives
free marketing at others’ expense, regardless of whether “B.”-er
Than Ever flops or soars.

Sellers
of media want increased demand for their products, and that means
increased attention in today’s attention-deficient world. Anything
that brings interest to their products is valuable, and even more
so if they don’t have to pay for it themselves. “Remixers” selling
derivative products have an incentive to market their own work,
and so actively (if indirectly, even unintentionally) promote the
original work, as Disney has done for the Brothers Grimm.

Creating
and marketing a derivative work is still an entrepreneurial act.
Walt Disney may have pilfered generously from Steamboat Bill,
Jr., but he bore all the risk and cost of making his cartoon.
He faced the possibility of complete failure, but he believed in
his imagination.

What if
a derivative work is made of a product that is not back-catalog,
like A-Team episodes, but that is still being produced and
sold by the originators? This would still be free marketing for
the originators.

A rich ethic
governs the creation of doujinshi. It is not doujinshi
if it is just a copy; the artist must make a contribution
to the art he copies, by transforming it either subtly or significantly…There
is no formula for what makes the doujinshi sufficiently
"different." But they must be different if they are
to be considered true doujinshi.

It seems
plausible that doujinshi would help promote sales of the
manga they imitate by acting as an advertisement for them.
It is as if the manga creators have paid a viral-marketing
firm to attract attention to their manga, except the manga
creators do not have to pay anything. The doujinshi creators
bear the promotional cost.

This would
be like assigning a small marketing team to many of the items on
which the company is not focusing its own marketing attention, such
as back episodes of cancelled television programs or forgotten movies
and songs. It does not cost anything, and the “team” is made of
self-selected enthusiasts from around the world. In corporate jargon,
we might call it “maximizing long-tail revenue.”

By opening
old work up to new artists, the large corporate media company could
only see gains in sales of the original old work — sales are not
likely to fall as a result of promotion. It could also save money
on intellectual property lawyers.

Taken to the
extreme, this pure laissez-faire approach, represented by the Creative
Commons “Attribution” license, could generate entirely new kinds
of participatory culture. It could work in any genre, but it might
happen earliest in the science fiction subculture.

If a few
authors decided to write separate books set in the same “universe,”
agreeing on elements such as planets, species, politics, culture,
technology, etc. and release their books under the “Attribution-ShareAlike”
license, or even the super-permissive “Attribution” license, they
could start a new kind of franchise — one in which anyone could
participate, even profitably. Co-creators around the world could
offer books, art, animation, music, games, and other creations set
in or drawn from the “open-source” universe, as well as translations
into other languages, at their own trouble and expense, but for
their own profit.

If the
“franchise” were successful enough, it might need a wiki
to keep track of the “rules” and contents of the universe. Many
different creators could earn income from the universe, if others
considered their work worth purchasing. This would constitute a
kind of “creative co-op” with numerous creators collaborating, while
each provides for his own share of the income through his own efforts.
Each creation would enhance awareness of other works set in the
same universe, and so all artists would indirectly promote each
other through their own creations. There would be no central rights
holder to interfere with the creative process, and all would be
free to take their own initiative as they far as they wished.

The Grimm
brothers themselves did not originate their stories, but collected
oral folk tales from local storytellers and preserved them in printed
form. It was a collaborative effort that seeded generations of creative
and profitable media, supporting the livelihoods of thousands of
artists, writers, actors, and musicians, and entertaining millions
of people.

The Walt
Disneys of today and tomorrow have as their foundation all the media
ever created, and the technological power to sample, remix, or enhance
it. The more attitudes toward intellectual property are relaxed,
the more these creators will enjoy the same freedom that Walt Disney
had, enabling them to enrich the world through the power of their
imagination.

May
11, 2009

J.
L. Bryan
[send him mail] lives
in Atlanta. His novel Dominion
is free at his website.

Intellectual
Property ‘Theft’: Not Just for Disney Anymore by JL
Bryan is licensed under a Creative
Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.

It is often
argued that a constitution is the appropriate means for restraining
state power.

LRC readers
will be familiar with arguments that the federal state became unconstitutional
with the New Deal, or in 1913, or during the Civil War, or perhaps
the Louisiana Purchase or the War of 1812.

However, a
constitution does not in any way restrain the state. Empirical evidence,
including American and Soviet history, shows this clearly. Logically,
if a constitution exists to limit state power, this means it aims
to limit the power of those officials, bureaucrats and others within
the state. Therefore, it is in the self-interest of everyone in
the state to simply ignore constitutional limits in order to enhance
their own power.

The state is
always operated by individual human beings with their own private
self-interests to consider. Any constitution is, as President
George W. Bush said, "Just a [blasphemous expletive] piece
of paper" with no power at all to enforce the rules written
into it, as Bush himself worked so hard to prove.

If the constitution
does not restrain the state, perhaps the people restrain it through
voting. However, there is little evidence of this. To sell themselves
to voters, politicians promise benefits to voters during the election
campaign. They must then make a show of trying to provide these
benefits using the state, thereby enhancing the spending and activity
of the state.

The only way
voting could begin to restrain the state would be if a majority
of voters were dedicated to liberty above any other political issue.
Even then, the politician need only give lip service to liberty
at election time. Once in office, he will do as he chooses. Even
if a vigilant libertarian populace then votes him out at the next
election, he will have had time to do a little looting while he
wielded state powers, perhaps enough to secure a comfortable retirement.

Those who believe
the state should be nothing but a "night watchman" will
have nothing to do while in power, and so have little reason to
seek power in the first place, unless it is an attempt to shrink
the state. If they do seek and gain office, they will be tempted
by a host of potential bribes to wield their power on behalf of
special interests, usually in ways that involve increased state
spending and power. They must be principled enough to resist this.

Therefore,
voting is only a check on the growth of the state if 1) a majority
of voters care more about liberty than any other issue, and 2) a
majority of elected politicians are also dedicated to liberty, and
are morally strong enough to resist the many rewards available if
they will simply abuse their power.

Even if attained,
such a system would still not be a reliable protector of liberty.
It depends on an “ever-vigilant-ever-libertarian” majority of voters.
A simple shift in majority opinion would allow the state to grow
again. Popular sentiment helped Andrew Jackson abolish the Bank
of the United States, but the central bank later returned as the
Federal Reserve. Since there are always many people who desire to
use power for their own benefit, they would constantly push to change
public opinion about the proper role of government, to influence
politicians, and to promote politicians that will serve their interests.

Constitutions
and elected government have both failed to keep states within the
modest bounds of protecting life and property. If there is a state
anywhere in the world that limits itself solely to these functions,
we would be surprised to learn of it.

Hoppe
has written about how monarchical government was actually much more
limited than democratic government. The king saw the country as
the private property of himself and his descendants, and often thought
in terms of generational dynasties. It was not in his interest to
squander all of his country's resources, since he would be passing
them on to his heirs. The democratic politician, on the other hand,
can dispose of the nation's resources immediately but cannot pass
his control of them to his grandchildren. This encourages tremendous
waste and profligate spending by the elected politician, whose time
in power is limited.

However, monarchy
does not protect liberty. The king and nobility have special legal
privileges, including taxation and the use of force, simply because
they were born into the "right" families. We can hardly
fault our ancestors for fighting bloody revolutions to abolish this
caste system.

Monarchy does
not, democracies and republics do not, constitutions do not. By
definition, military dictatorship does not protect liberty. Neither
do fascism, socialism or communism, obviously, in which the state
owns or controls all property. (If the reader needs an argument
against these, we recommend the “Search” button at mises.org.)

A state claims
a monopoly on the use of force in its territory. Who, then, can
protect the other people in that territory against state aggression?
No one, to the extent the state has successfully imposed its “rule
of law.” The state, heavily armed and ruling defenseless people,
is perpetually tempted to use aggression to enforce its will, rather
than limit itself to merely responding to offenses against individuals
and property.

A state uses
this monopoly to finance itself through coercive taxation. As long
as people are forced to fund the state, the state is free to do
anything it chooses. Taxpayers cannot stop funding the state if
they object to its actions, as they would with a private business,
charity, or other voluntary organization. Once the state has established
its power to tax, it can continue increasing taxes. The only check
on its actions is the population's desire and ability to resist,
but again, no one is permitted to defend himself or anyone else
against state aggression. Even violent revolution always leads to
another, often more tyrannical, state.

The only system
that seems possibly capable of securing every individual's person
and property is one in which every individual is free to choose
among competing providers of protection, in a free market. The competing
providers must not be territorial monopolists, but must be at peace
with the fact that there are other security providers in the area.
They must be willing to settle disputes between their customers
in a peaceful manner.

This situation
is already found in the private security market, where many companies
operate in the same territorial area but do not get into violent
conflicts with each other. They are hired only for defensive purposes,
to protect person and property. They are the true "night watchman,"
a term that itself seems to imply a private security guard rather
than a state law enforcer.

If customers
can choose among providers, the providers have every incentive to
provide better protection at a lower cost, to beat the competition.
They have no incentive to carry out aggressive actions that will
raise their costs, damage their reputation among customers and potential
customers, and get them into dangerous and expensive conflict with
other security agencies. In the event of a rogue, aggressive firm,
the other, peaceful security firms would have every incentive to
protect their clients and even share costs by banding together against
the aggressor.

Market competition,
with security offered by multiple private firms, would provide the
incentives to keep the peace (lower cost, higher profits) and the
checks and balances necessary to restrict the power of any one firm
(consumers can choose to withdraw funding and seek protection from
other firms; firms can fight back against aggressors).

Despite the
presence of numerous private security companies in today's market,
we observe no tendency for these companies to get into any sort
of conflict with each other, violent or otherwise. Each company
wants to appear efficient and professional to attract customers.
They do not tend towards becoming roving bands of thugs in the streets.

We also observe
no tendency toward territorial monopoly in the private security
industry. A single customer, such as a large office building, may
have multiple security suppliers: one to provide security officers,
another to install and maintain video surveillance, a third to install
and maintain a keycard access system, a fourth to monitor burglar
alarms, etc. These different, specialized firms must collaborate
in the service of their common client. Different companies within
the office building might have their own, additional security providers,
who would at times interact with building security. While states
compete violently with other states for territory, private security
firms compete peacefully for customers. They may even operate on
the same physical territory.

A society built
on a free market in protection could last indefinitely, invulnerable
to the problems that eventually destroy all states. There would
be no apparatus of aggression to build empires (doomed to overextend
and collapse, and potentially bring foreign retaliation), enforce
arbitrary laws and regulations (hampering the market, inhibiting
innovation, reducing living standards, attacking civil liberties),
or cause the boom-and-bust business cycle through its central bank
and legal tender monopolies.

Some people
might still wish to wield power, but there would be no coercive
institutions for such people to manipulate, no politicians to bribe,
no legislative authority. Nor could anyone push the costs of their
actions onto others through taxation. Law would be established through
an ongoing process of security contracts and private arbitration,
all of it centered on protecting customers and their property against
aggression.

A free market
in security is the only way to arrive at a situation where person
and property are protected, without the ever-present threat of the
state itself becoming aggressive against people or property. (This
is usually not a threat, but an ongoing condition.) The freedom
to defend one's person and property against aggression, and by extension
to choose one's own protectors to assist with that defense, is the
one and only condition that can bring about an enduring free society.

April
30, 2009

J.
L. Bryan
[send him mail] lives
in Atlanta. His novel Dominion
is free at his website.

In our current
political climate, such a system can seem distant and utopian, an
idea to be quietly developed by economists and philosophers until
people's attitudes and beliefs drastically change.

However, activities
like the Free State Project
raise another possibility. What if a small, libertarian-minded town
or county, perhaps in New Hampshire or Montana, passed a law decreeing
that town police and judicial services would, beginning on a certain
date, be supplied entirely by the private market?

Naturally,
the state (or the federal state) might oppose such action, but we
shall suppose that the effort to pass the law has been successfully
carried out.

Entrepreneurs
would begin creating police firms, advertising their services, and
signing up customers. Existing local police could seek employment
among the new firms, or start their own firms (or even get going
on that fishing-guide business they've always secretly dreamed about).

Private mediation
and arbitration firms, if not already present, will spring up in
anticipation of the closing of the town court. They will begin talking
to the new police agencies, the agencies' customers, and each other,
to sort out some initial contracts and agreements about how they
will work together.

The people
of the town, knowing of the situation (having themselves pushed
heavily to establish it), would study their options and decide which
protectors they will choose for when the police go out of business.
The smart police agencies will include a "Fines and Penalties"
section in their contract stating that, if a customer commits crimes
against others, the customer will be subject to fines and other
specific penalties. Violent crime might lead to imprisonment. (We
may as well assume that the state police would claim jurisdiction
over major crimes like murder).

Other firms
might experiment with other kinds of agreements. However, in order
for the firm to provide full protection to all its customers, the
protection must be reversible — if you want protection against theft,
you must agree not to steal. If you want protection against violence,
you must agree not to initiate violence.

On the appointed
day, the town police, court and jail will close for business and
their assets will be sold off, possibly to the new police and arbitration
agencies. The town will no longer collect taxes to pay for these
services, either.

HOW IT MIGHT
WORK

From then on,
whenever a person in town was a victim of a crime, he would contact
his police service. They would be responsible for identifying the
criminal and filing an arbitration claim against him.

If the accused
criminal has a contract with a police company, then his police company
will respond to the claim. They will face the victim's police company
in arbitration. If the accused is found guilty, he will be contractually
obligated to suffer penalties.

If both parties
subscribe to the same police agency, the situation might be handled
by internal investigation and arbitration, or the agency might find
it preferable to submit such conflicts to the expert third-party
arbitrators.

In cases of
theft or destruction of property, the most likely arbitration finding
would be financial compensation paid by the criminal to the victim.
After studying numerous examples of voluntary legal systems, Bruce
L. Benson finds that in such systems:

If the accused
offender is found guilty, the “punishment” tends to be economic
in nature: restitution in the form of a fine or indemnity to be
paid to the plaintiff. Liability, intent, the value of the damages,
and the status of the offended person all may be considered in
determining the indemnity. Every invasion of person or property
is generally valued in terms of property.

Imprisonment
would rarely benefit anyone in property crime situations, and imprisonment
would likely require interaction with the state (unless the town
jail is remade into a long-term prison, which we won't assume).

The state would
probably still claim jurisdiction over serious violent crime like
murder, rather than allow private companies to handle the outcome.
In local, minor cases of violence, the situation could be handled
according to police contract. In these minor cases, the victim might
prefer some restitution from the criminal, rather than the nothing
he would receive from the state.

A completely
free-market legal system could certainly handle cases of serious
violent crime like murder, if needed, but that is beyond the scope
of discussing a small free-market town inside a monopoly state.
Town police companies would likely capture such offenders, hold
them at the town jail, collect evidence, and turn it over to the
state.

PEACE OFFICERS

Because of
the costs of arbitration, police agencies would seek to avoid it
when possible. They would train security officers to diminish conflict
and keep the peace rather than escalate any conflict. These "peace
officers" could also be trained to adjudicate disputes and
propose solutions and restitution on the spot.

LOCAL ROADS

Any roads owned
by the town could be managed by a remnant of town government, by
the chamber of commerce or other voluntary association, or otherwise
sold off to private owners. (This could give new meaning to the
Adopt-A-Highway program.) Someone will own the roads. The road owners
will need to provide security, which can be purchased from the private
police companies, some of which might even specialize in managing
and securing roads.

THE TOWN
JAIL

We will consider
the "town jail" as a local, short-term holding facility.
Violent criminals would be held there until they were turned over
to the state. The police companies might fund the jail through joint
contributions, or the jail might be an independent business, selling
its services to the police agencies through fees or subscriptions.
Any nonprofit, "volunteer" neighborhood protection groups
might also subscribe to the jail, so they would have a place to
put violent offenders.

The customer's
contract will stipulate under what conditions he can be jailed by
his own police company (and other police companies with which his
company has mutuality). This might include acting violent, being
destructive to others' property, being publicly drunk and/or naked,
etc.

Police companies
would want to avoid unnecessarily jailing their customers, or any
potential customer, because of the fear of losing business (or potential
business), and because of the cost. They would need this option
as a last resort, however, to fully protect the rest of their customers
from violent criminals (unless the market devises a better means).

In the case
of unlawful imprisonment, the victim would be able to file a kidnapping
claim against those who imprisoned him. Arbitration would reveal
whether the police company's choice to jail was reasonable under
the circumstances. This would also deter police companies from excessive,
unnecessary jailing.

THE UNINSURED

Those who are
very poor and have trouble affording police services might join
mutual-defense groups and contribute their own labor, instead of
subscribing to a service, along with others who prefer this volunteer-organizing
approach for their own reasons.

If someone
does not subscribe to police protection, nor join a mutual-defense
group, and is the victim of a crime, he still has a claim against
the criminal. Thomas Whiston
writes about the stateless legal order of medieval Iceland:

The poor
were at no disadvantage. The poor could sell their right
to justice to someone, such as a chieftain or another respected
peer, who could collect or make right upon the victim.
In this respect, the right to transfer restitution acted as an
equalizer for the poor. In cases where the victim did not want
restitution, the guilty parties had no obligations imposed on
them.

The unprotected
victim can sell his claim to a police company, who can then profit
by pursuing restitution from the criminal party. The police companies
might also do this in the interest of stopping a criminal before
he aggresses against their own customers.

If someone
is a serial offender, and persists in committing crimes, it might
be that no police company wants to protect him at any price. Protecting
someone who repeatedly provokes conflict can become very expensive.
It would be in the interest of police companies to make the identity
of such criminals known to the community, so that everyone could
keep watch on the criminals and avoid putting any trust in them.
Such a criminal might find it hard to get a job or do business in
the community, and so would have economic incentives to move away.

He will also
not enjoy any police protection in this town. Every police company
could ban him from each of its protected properties, essentially
exiling him from anywhere in town but his own private property.
(And this might include those local roads!) If others commit crimes
against him, he will find the police companies and arbitrators unhelpful.

NON-SUBSCRIBERS

There may be
people who live in town and refuse to recognize the free market
system as legitimate. If charged with a crime, they may refuse to
arbitrate, and will not be contractually bound to do so. In this
case, the victim or his police company could pursue a civil suit
against the offender, or file charges with the state authorities.
In a state-controlled society, it will sometimes be necessary for
police companies and victims to interact with the state to obtain
justice.

(In a completely
free-market world, "refusal to arbitrate" would carry
much heavier implications, possibly turning the refuser into an
"outlaw." No police company will want to provide service
to an "outlaw," even if he is later the victim of a crime.
No arbitration company will recognize his claims. No one would suffer
any legal penalties for committing crimes against him.

In such a free
market world, refusal to arbitrate would be a dangerous choice,
potentially sacrificing all of one's present and future legal protections
and claims. It would be in the self-interest of every police company
to avoid taking on such a person as a customer, since it will only
lead to trouble and expense.

But we digress.)

OUT-OF-TOWNERS

Out-of-towners
accused of a crime might have the option of signing a contract to
work within the local arbitration system, or they might insist on
being handed over to the state for their crimes. In this case, the
local police company involved would be happy to assist with the
prosecution. Those who are victims while visiting might have the
same option: the local market system, or the state.

POLICE BRUTALITY

Private police
companies would have a strong incentive to treat everyone in town
with courtesy and respect, unless caught in the act of a crime.
Everyone is either a customer or potential customer. Abusing customers
(or even non-customers) would cause people to hate the company,
destroy its reputation, and lead to lost customers, lost revenue,
and ultimately bankruptcy. A police-abuse victim could switch police
companies and file a claim against the abusive company. The other
police companies would be eager to bankrupt a rough competitor with
claims, and would always be ready to use force in the defense of
their customers.

CONCLUSION

A town that
relinquished its police and court functions to the market would
benefit from efficient protection and conflict resolution. The greatest
share of costs would fall on offenders. Victims would be the center
of the legal process. The private institutions would still need
to interact with the larger state environment around them, but at
least town matters could be handled by the police and arbitration
companies. As long as consumers are free to choose their own protection,
and entrepreneurs are free to start protection agencies and arbitration
firms, an anarchist town would be a very free and safe place to
live.

Low taxes and
low crime rates would attract new residents and businesses, helping
the town prosper. If one community could successfully establish
a free protection and arbitration market, it would provide a model
that could be imitated in communities across the country and around
the world.

April
4, 2009

J.
L. Bryan
[send him mail] is a freelance
writer.

DIGG THIS

There was once
an island where three people lived. The fisherman lived on the coast,
where he caught fish every day. The farmer lived on a flat part
of the island and grew wheat. The shepherd lived on the mountain
and produced wool from his sheep.

For a long
time they lived in peace. The fisherman traded his fish for wheat
and wool, while the farmer and shepherd traded wheat and wool with
each other.

One day the
farmer decided he was tired of farming. "It's hard work, dawn
to dusk," he complained to himself. "There must be an
easier way of making a living."

Instead of
working in his field, he took his harvesting scythe and went down
to the coast. When the fisherman arrived at the end of the day,
the farmer threatened him with the scythe.

"Give
me half your fish," the farmer demanded.

"Why?"
the fisherman asked.

"If you
don't, I'll cut you with this blade," the farmer said. The
fisherman was scared, and gave half his fish to the farmer. The
farmer then left with the fish, providing the fisherman no wheat
in return.

The fisherman
then went to see the shepherd.

"I can
only give you a couple of fish today," the fisherman said.

The shepherd
normally traded him a pound of wool for five fish. Today, he offered
a smaller portion of wool in exchange for the two fish, and the
fisherman accepted. The shepherd received fewer fish than usual,
and the fisherman received less wool than usual.

"Why do
you have so few fish?" the shepherd asked.

The fisherman
told him of the farmer's robbery. Shocked, the shepherd went to
see the farmer, to make their usual trade of wool for wheat.

"I have
no wheat today," the farmer said. "Can I interest you
in a few fish instead?"

"I have
to ask," the shepherd said, "Is it true you robbed the
fisherman of half his fish?"

The question
scared the farmer. If the shepherd and the fisherman worked together,
they could stop the farmer from robbing either of them. Then the
farmer would have to go back to growing wheat.

"Listen,"
the farmer said. "I'll give you one fish every day, if you
promise not to make a big deal out of this whole robbery thing."

"Really?"
the shepherd asked. "I get one free fish a day?"

"But you
have to defend my right to tax the fisherman," the farmer told
him.

The shepherd
thought it over, then agreed to the arrangement. He liked the idea
of getting a free fish every day.

The next day,
the farmer again robbed the fisherman of half his catch. The fisherman
again complained to the shepherd. He was shocked to find the shepherd's
attitude had completely changed.

"We ought
to pay taxes to the farmer," the shepherd said. "For the
common good."

"What
common good?" the fisherman asked. "I'm losing half my
income here!"

"Well,"
the shepherd said. "The farmer can now spend more time protecting
the island. Remember how hard he fought against those pirates that
attacked us last year?"

"But all
three of us worked together to fight off the pirates," the
fisherman said. "It wasn't just the farmer. Defending the island
is everybody's responsibility. He couldn't do it alone if he tried."

But no matter
what the fisherman said, the shepherd insisted it was a good idea
for the farmer to collect half the fisherman's catch every day.
(The fisherman did not know that the shepherd was also getting one
of the stolen fish every day.)

The farmer
enjoyed his new work very much. He would steal half the fisherman's
catch, then trade some of the fish to the shepherd for wool. He
only had to work an hour or so each day, and it was much easier
work than farming. He also found that he enjoyed feeling powerful
over the fisherman.

The shepherd
also enjoyed the new arrangement. He received a free fish a day.
Also, he found that the farmer was willing to pay more fish for
wool than the fisherman paid. Since the fish represented little
work on the farmer's part, the farmer was happy to pay six or seven
fish for a pound of wool. The fisherman only paid five fish per
pound of wool. The shepherd now defended the fish-tax system even
more than he had before.

The fisherman
found his situation much worse. Not only did he lose half his catch,
but the price of wool had gone up. Now that he had to surrender
every second fish to the farmer, each fish he was allowed to keep
represented twice as much work as it had before. As a result, he
was only able to pay three or four fish for a pound of wool. He
could no longer afford to pay five fish, much less the new, higher
price of six or seven fish. And there was no wheat available at
any price.

The fisherman
decided he would work harder and catch more fish, so that he could
afford the higher price of wool. He spent longer hours on the ocean,
and doubled the amount of fish he caught. Of course, this meant
he paid the farmer twice as much fish at the end of each day.

The fisherman
returned to the shepherd, ready to pay seven fish for a pound of
wool. The shepherd refused this price, though. The farmer was now
paying him ten fish for a pound of wool, and the shepherd just didn't
need any more fish.

The fisherman
saw that, no matter how hard he worked, or how many fish he caught,
he would always be paying more and more to the farmer. The farmer,
eager to maintain his alliance with the shepherd, would then pay
more and more fish to the shepherd. The harder the fisherman worked,
the higher the price of wool would climb.

The shepherd
rarely visited the fisherman anymore, since the farmer was willing
to pay him more fish for his wool. The shepherd saw that he could
cut back his production of wool, since he only needed to provide
enough for himself and the farmer, now that the fisherman couldn't
afford it. He let some of his herd run wild, leaving them vulnerable
to predators. With the sheep he kept, he didn't clip nearly so much
wool. Why bother with the extra work, when there was nothing else
for which he could exchange it?

The fisherman,
too, cut back on his production. He decided he could get by on three
fish a day. He didn't need to catch any fish for trading, since
there was no longer anything for which he could trade them. That
meant he had to catch six a day, in order to pay the farmer three
and keep three for himself.

The farmer
was alarmed when his income from the fisherman dropped to three
fish a day. He still had to pay one to the shepherd, leaving hmself
with only two fish per day. This left him with almost nothing to
trade to the shepherd for wool.

The farmer
tried increasing the tax rate, claiming first 60% of the fisherman's
catch, then 70%. But the more the farmer took, the less the fisherman
produced.

The shepherd
found that neither the fisherman nor the farmer could afford to
pay him much for the wool anymore, so he cut his production until
he was only making enough wool for himself. There was no point in
working so hard to clip all those sheep, only to get one measly
fish in return. Besides, he already got a free fish a day from the
farmer.

Then the farmer
told the shepherd that there might be no more free fish.

"It's
that lazy fisherman's fault," the farmer explained. "He
just isn't catching as much as he used to."

The shepherd
agreed that the fisherman had gotten quite lazy, and on top of that
hadn't offered a decent price for the shepherd's wool in some time.

"I bet
he's eating some of the fish before he comes back to shore,"
the farmer said. "I'll keep a closer watch on him."

The farmer
began sailing out with the fisherman every morning. All day, he
would stand with his blade at the fisherman's back, and count each
fish over the fisherman's shoulder.

"Why are
you just standing around all day?" the fisherman finally asked
him. "Things used to be so much better. There was plenty of
wheat, fish and wool for everyone. Why don't you go back and work
on your farm?"

"Because
I'm king of the island now," the farmer proclaimed. "Kings
don't work in the dirt."

Then a storm
rose, and they sailed into choppy waters. The farmer lost his balance,
so the fisherman pushed him over the side, and the farmer was lost
at sea.

The fisherman
went back to catching all the fish he could. There was, once again,
plenty of extra fish to trade to the shepherd. The shepherd started
working harder to produce extra wool to trade to the fisherman.
The shepherd also apologized for collaborating with the farmer.

"It just
seemed like such a good deal," the shepherd explained to the
fisherman. "Free fish every day, and a higher price for my
wool. I didn't realize how hard it made life for you."

From then on,
they referred to the farmer's reign of terror as "the bad times,"
and vowed never to let anything like it happen again.

December
31, 2008

J.
L. Bryan
[send him mail] is a freelance
writer.

DIGG THIS

The service
provided by the U.S. military, and probably most of the world’s
militaries, is commonly described as “national defense” or “protecting
freedom.” The Department of War changed its name to the Department
of Defense decades ago. From this, we might infer that what the
public wants is not a globe-spanning empire, but insurance against
war and terrorism. We want to be secure from aggression.

As Rothbard
points out:

A supply
of defense services on the free market would mean maintaining
the axiom of the free society, namely, that there be no use of
physical force except in defense against those using force
to invade person or property.

A free market
in defense and military services could lead to some strangely familiar
institutions, but such institutions would be turned to entirely
different purposes than in today’s world. Following are some ways
in which a free market in defense might function, and some of the
institutions that would likely form. For simplicity, we assume that
both war insurance and security services are provided by the same
company, though in actuality the security work itself could be outsourced
to third parties.

FINANCING

Because war
insurance companies would be financed by voluntary payments rather
than taxation and inflation, they would have to operate within the
market constraints of profit and loss. The cost of war would be
a loss. This is just the opposite of politicians and defense contractors
today, who grow rich from war precisely because it provides an opportunity
to milk the taxpayer, who is forced to pay the bill regardless of
whether he supports the war policy or not. Tax-funded public
relations efforts often help to sell the need for the war.

In a system
of freely competing war insurance companies, the major producers
of war would profit more from peace than war, a reversal of the
current incentive structure. Soldiers for insurance companies would
always have a single clear mission: put down aggression and protect
the innocent.

Because providing
protection against war is a specialized, capital-intensive job,
potentially requiring anything from tanks to aircraft carriers,
war insurance might be purchased primarily as reinsurance by other
property insurance companies. These “retail-level” insurance companies
would then be free to focus on protecting their clients from crimes
like theft and violence, as well as natural disaster. Because of
the expense, an entire continent might support only a few companies
focused on war, but these could also reinsure themselves through
each other and through other war insurance companies located elsewhere.

Some private
property owners might find it worthwhile to purchase war insurance
directly. Those engaged in shipping would need naval insurance.
This might be provided by a company specializing in ocean security,
providing defenses ranging from marines posted onboard commercial
vessels to missiles, submarines, or aircraft for attacking hostile
ships. The naval insurer would also monitor the ocean, probably
by satellite, and keep watch on suspicious ships that could threaten
their policyholders. They would be prepared to deal with pirates
as well as state navies.

FREE RIDERS

While millions
of people may not purchase war insurance, this would not differ
from today’s situation. Currently, millions of Americans make too
little money to pay federal taxes. Millions more are net consumers
of tax money, whether they are government employees, contractors,
officials, or entitlement recipients. None of these contribute to
the cost of defense, yet the American military still manages to
be the largest in history.

We envision
war insurance as one part of a property insurance policy that would
protect against natural disasters and crime, including the provision
of security and emergency services, as described by Rothbard (linked
above). Those who rent their homes might contribute and be protected
by way of the landlord’s insurance.

To save costs,
some insurance carriers might decide not to subscribe to war insurance,
and some customers might prefer not to purchase it. They will have
to bear the risk of war alone, but they may see war as unlikely.
The level of available defense spending would ultimately be set
by the level of war risk, as determined by the market.

INTELLIGENCE

War insurance
companies would need to identify, study, and minimize sources of
war risk affecting their customers. For this purpose, they would
likely form or hire private intelligence agencies for risk assessment.

Today, insurance
companies jointly finance research through nonprofit institutions
like the Insurance Research Council
and share information through CLUE
reports, produced by a private company. This allows them to have
the full benefit of data while paying only a fraction of the research
cost.

War insurance
companies might create joint intelligence centers to study war risk.
There would be no incentive to distort intelligence to fit a political
agenda or protect a state’s image, since these intelligence agencies
would serve the interests of millions of customers, rather than
a few politicians. The insurance companies would focus on preventing
loss, not starting wars.

The intelligence
center would likely rate a nation’s war risk according to its military
strength, history, and the current ideology and practices of its
policymakers, as well as any covertly gathered information. Specialist
teams could be formed to study each state or terror group that poses
a risk.

A few such
intelligence organizations could potentially serve the entire insurance
industry, and they would also be motivated to share information
with one another, to cut their own research costs. These joint risk
assessment centers would do the job that the public currently expects
of state intelligence agencies: rationally study and report risk
in an unbiased manner, for the sole purpose of protecting life and
property.

COMMON DEFENSE

War insurance
companies would likely purchase reinsurance from one another in
case of outside aggression. Should war break out, the insurance
companies would then pool their resources to stop the aggressor.
Hoppe
(p. 347) notes:

all insurance
companies are connected through a network of contractual agreements
of mutual assistance and arbitration as well as a system of international
reinsurance agencies, representing a combined economic power which
dwarfs that of most existing governments.

States claim
a monopoly on the use of violence in a territorial area. To expand
their power, states invade territory beyond their borders to capture
resources and gain control over new territory.

However, if
a state invaded a free territory protected by insurance, this might
threaten clients of several different companies at once, since insurance
companies would not have territorial monopolies. Several companies
might be represented within a single neighborhood. These companies
would band together to fight the aggressor, along with their reinsurance
providers.

Because of
the interwoven nature of the insurance business, most of the world’s
large war insurance firms would tend to work together in case of
any major state aggression. Even those companies whose customers
are not injured in the initial aggression will want to stop the
invading party before it has a chance to harm the companies’ own
customers.

Hoppe also
explains that insurance companies would generally oppose any aggression
anywhere because “they operate on a nationwide and even an international
scale, and they own large property holdings dispersed over wide
territories and beyond single state boundaries.” (p.346) They have
tremendous diversified investments to protect, providing further
incentive to keep the peace and end wars quickly.

War insurance
companies would keep military assets ready in case of aggression,
from planes to tanks to professional soldiers. As with common intelligence-sharing,
some companies might pay a subscription fee to have forces on call,
while sharing the costs of training and support. They might even
co-sponsor war colleges to train officers in strategy and tactics.

Because of
reinsurance, and the fact that multiple companies can provide defense
services to the same territorial area, war insurance companies might
train their people for joint defensive action. War games would be
developed around the most likely war risks, as determined by the
joint risk assessment centers. Training would center on bringing
the conflict to a rapid, cost-effective close to avoid losses and
claims.

If the likely
enemy or enemies have a strong air force, the war insurance companies
would focus on anti-aircraft weapons. If not, they would shift resources
into other areas as needed. There would be no incentive to persist
in manufacturing unnecessary or obsolete weapons. The desire of
politicians to provide military-related money and jobs to their
campaign donors and congressional districts would not be a factor.
Spending programs would not become entrenched for political reasons,
but would be eliminated the moment they became unnecessary.

By providing
a common international defense against rogue states, the global
network of war insurance companies would play a role that the United
Nations is alleged to play today. It would constantly monitor war
risk and put down state aggression.

DIPLOMACY

War insurance
companies would avoid violent conflict with each other by contracting
to settle disputes through private arbitration. Since war would
damage the bottom line of every company, it would be extremely rare
between insurance companies, if it ever happened at all.

A company that
violated such an arbitration finding would automatically suffer
damage to its credit rating, increasing its cost of doing business.
Its own insurance risk rating would suffer, and it would likely
lose its war reinsurance protection from other companies. Customers
would tend to switch providers upon learning their current insurance
company is dishonest or aggressive, or that it has lost its defense
allies and is therefore less able to protect customers.

Each company
would need expert negotiators to resolve conflicts. Negotiations
among insurance companies would be routine and follow contractually
specified rules and standards.

The wild card
would be negotiations with states, because states would not necessarily
share the insurance company motives of reducing risk, minimizing
cost and avoiding loss. States actually increase their revenue and
power through war (see Higgs, Crisis
and Leviathan). States would be the primary source of war risk,
requiring a different approach to negotiation.

The risk assessment
center analysts focused on the nation in question could provide
the negotiators with a deep understanding of the particular state’s
interests, motives, policy makers, culture, and constituencies.
These specialized researchers and negotiators would play the role
of the State Department: addressing threats and minimizing conflict
through diplomacy.

NON-AGGRESSION

A war insurance
company, however well-armed, would have little incentive to start
a war, and every reason to end one. First, it must pay the cost
of war out of its own pocket. Second, it would have to indemnify
any of its policyholders whose person or property is damaged by
the war. Additionally, war could threaten the value of the insurance
company’s investments, which might even be targeted by the enemy
as a means of economic warfare.

The cost of
war would naturally lead to higher premiums, pushing customers away
to cheaper providers, if the policyholders do not support the company’s
war. This is the ultimate market check that is unavailable in our
current system – the ability to refuse to fund any war we oppose.

Gustave
de Molinari, the first to propose that individuals purchase
defense services through voluntary association rather than live
under state monopoly, noted that the private security provider must
“establish certain penalties against the offenders of persons and
the violators of property, and that the consumers agree to submit
to these penalties, in case they themselves commit offenses.”

The reinsurance
companies could specify that an insurance company pursuing an aggressive
policy would forfeit all war reinsurance. This would prevent the
industry from being dragged into an unnecessary conflict by a rogue
company. The companies would only pull together in situations of
defense, like a confederation.

Any aggressor
company would act alone, and would draw the wrath of the entire
war insurance industry down on it the moment it aggressed, since
they would all have customers and property to protect.

DEFENSIVE
WAR

There could
be cases of a justified, defensive war, such as when a state aggresses
against insured territory. The major potential weakness in an insurance
company waging war against a state is the state’s ability to finance
its efforts through taxation, debt and inflation.

War insurance
contracts might provide for the possibility of supplementary premiums
in times of defensive war, which would be similar to a temporary
tax hike to raise revenue. However, this would likely be avoided
if possible, since customers might resent the use of it, as people
resent tax increases today.

The company
would also have emergency insurance as well as credit facilities
prepared in advance. Those who are being defended, as well as people
around the world, could be asked to buy stocks or bonds of the war
insurance company to help support the war effort, similar to the
war bond campaigns of World War II. Additionally, charities might
contribute to those fighting the war, as today they give CARE packages
and other relief to soldiers in wartime.

The war insurance
company could mirror the state in the areas of taxation and borrowing.
The private company could not raise revenue by printing currency,
however, unlike states with central banks. The question remains
whether the international network of insurance providers, with all
their resources, could withstand a prolonged war against an inflationary
government.

An insurance
company would, however, have the option of selling some of its investment
assets to raise money if needed – paying for war out of savings.
Few states have any savings, and they prefer not to sell off their
assets, since this represents a loss of power and prestige.

There is another
way in which insurance companies could use their investments when
confronting war. If the Ruritanian Army invades an area protected
by Walldavia Insurance (a charter member of the International Defense
Network), Walldavia, Inc. and its allies might wage economic war
by selling off their investments in Ruritania, as well as any Ruritanian
government bonds they may be holding. This approach allows them
to turn their savings into cash for war funding, while financially
damaging the enemy at the same time.

The insurance
companies might discourage war by buying the debt of governments
they see as war risks. They would have plenty of opportunity, since
bellicose governments with large militaries would tend to incur
more debt than peaceful ones. Owning the state’s debt would give
the insurance companies more leverage over the state’s policy. If
the state aggresses anyway, the insurance companies would then punish
the rogue state by dumping the bonds – and, as mentioned, use
the proceeds to strike back against the state.

Bribing politicians
could also be an effective method to encourage peace. Also, Walldavia
Insurance could spend millions of dollars on an advertising campaign
promoting peace among the Ruritanian public, who might pressure
their aggressive politicians toward peace – making it that
much easier, incidentally, to bribe the Ruritanian politicians toward
that policy.

SELF-DEFENSE

In the essay
linked above, Hoppe also indicates that security insurance providers
would encourage gun ownership and self-defense measures, because
these would decrease the cost of claims to the insurance company.
Today, one might receive a discount on homeowner’s insurance by
installing a burglar alarm and security monitoring system.

War insurance
companies would encourage all forms of self-defense, from security
systems to gun ownership. Security insurance companies would probably
encourage, and even help organize, “neighborhood watch” groups to
reduce crime. In case of foreign invasion, these neighborhood watch
groups could serve as guerilla units against the invaders. Membership
in such voluntary groups might come to be seen as a matter of civic
or patriotic responsibility, as well as a way to save on insurance.

PROPAGANDA

Since insurance
companies would only fight defensive wars against aggressors, they
would tend to have public opinion on their side in every conflict,
which is a great advantage in war.

A war insurance
company would naturally have a media division to advertise itself
to consumers. A company would need to portray itself as strong and
reliable, “Like A
Rock.”

States use
media and propaganda to advertise their side of the story, and build
support for their policies at home, abroad, and often among the
population controlled by the enemy state.

War insurance
companies might also spend millions or more on propaganda efforts,
including the purchase of media companies through their investing
arms. Their interest would be in portraying themselves as strong
protectors to potential customers, but also in spreading support
for peace, not war. This could be part of a strategic effort to
reduce war risk worldwide, whether pursued independently or coordinated
with other war insurance providers.

They might
even offer programs teaching children about the many benefits of
peace. It would be in the interest of war insurance providers to
sponsor any educational, cultural, religious or entertainment programs
that promote peace and teach about the evils of war. This could
have a strong impact on popular and academic culture across the
world.

ARMS CONTROL

So long as
war insurance companies face the threat of states armed with weapons
of mass destruction, they will need to be able to respond appropriately.
This may include keeping stores of vaccine to protect insureds against
bioweapons, or even maintaining nuclear weapons for deterrence.

However, every
insurance company would view every nuclear bomb and bioweapon, whether
owned by itself, a state, or another company, as a source of extreme
risk, potentially leading to unthinkable loss of life and property.
Every such weapon eliminated reduces risk for the entire insurance
community. Should war insurance companies grow to replace states
entirely, total nuclear disarmament would likely follow.

THE COST

It is naturally
impossible to calculate what our property insurance rates would
be if the cost of military defense were carried by insurance providers.
We could start with the price we currently pay in taxes and inflation
for our current defense providers. In the United States, the cost
of our current military establishment, wars, veterans’ care, and
interest on war debt is easily more than a trillion dollars per
year.

Subtract out
any unnecessary wars and interventions. Subtract out any wasteful
spending in the current budget. Subtract out any spending that does
not directly serve to protect the life and property of American
taxpayers. What remains might be a rough estimate of what it would
cost the insurance industry to provide the exact level of defense
we now enjoy. It could be even cheaper because of price competition
in a free market.

However, should
the whole world adopt this system, the defense budgets of the rest
of the world would also, in a sense, be available, since insurance
providers would work together to prevent loss, reduce risk, and
seek peace. As they successfully eliminate threats and promote peace
over time, their costs of supplying services would fall, and their
premiums would follow. In the long term, war insurance could be
quite cheap – and we wouldn’t be paying taxes, either.

FROM HERE
TO THERE

In a stateless,
insured world, the defense industry would continue to exist, but
it would no longer be subsidized by the state. Instead, companies
would sell their services in a competitive marketplace.

Defense spending
would fall or rise to a level appropriate to existing risk, as determined
by the market, with the help of specialized researchers and actuaries.
The military-industrial-congressional complex as we know it would
vanish. The media would provide a pro-peace bias. There would be
no pro-war propaganda, because no one would benefit from war. (Actually,
third-party suppliers of defense services, such as mercenary armies
or air forces, might benefit. But their paying customers –
the insurance companies – would always seek to minimize conflict
and cost.)

The basic elements
for an insured, stateless society are already in place. The multibillion-dollar
private security industry is rapidly
growing, as is the private
arbitration profession. The world’s insurance industry is already
vast, and their resources would swell as they began receiving the
money that once funded police, intelligence and military agencies.
Many companies already sell war and terrorism insurance.

If you have
a policy with Bellwood
Prestbury, and are kidnapped and ransomed, the insurance carrier
covers the “cost of experts negotiating with kidnappers and reimburses
the ransom.” Perhaps they will send in Risks
Incorporated, who offer such services as hostage negotiation,
extraction, and repatriation.

Evolution from
a “state” to an “insurance” system depends primarily on public opinion,
or market demand. Molinari speculated that one day, people might
“agitate for the freedom of government, as they have already…on
behalf of the freedom of commerce.” Rather than supporting one party
or another’s desire to control the state, people might eventually
reject the idea that any group should hold a monopoly on defense
services.

Once, it was
believed that freedom of religion would tear society apart, because
different faiths could not possibly exist peacefully in the same
territory. Instead, freedom of religion put an end to centuries
of religious warfare. It seems possible that freedom of government,
the liberty to choose our own protectors – or to choose none
– could put an end to war altogether.

November
25, 2008

J.
L. Bryan
[send him mail] is a freelance
writer.

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Dedicated
to Dr. Ron Paul and R3volutionaries Everywhere

We were not
ready.

He offered
us an empty hand.
An open and honest hand, concealing nothing.
No blade behind the fingers.
No magic, no artful coin tricks,
To dazzle and distract us.
We were not ready.

His words, plain and spare as Texas flatland.
The one who does not lie
Has no need of honey
To sweeten a viper tongue.
He promised all he could give,
And all that we needed,
Which was nothing.
We were not ready.

He stood amid
the crashing towers
Of a falling empire,
And suggested we stand aside
And let them fall.
He told us we have no need
Of playing gods, kings or conquerors.
We are only men and women,
Like all men and women,
And that is enough.
We were not ready.

He would have
led us nowhere,
Our nonsavior, our uncrusading anti-emperor,
Freeing us at last from this weary, aimless march.
Emptying the prisons and the battlefields,
Leaving each man to his own life.
We were not ready.

His fight was
for peace.
His revolution was for love.
His doctrine was free humanity.
His highest law was liberty.

By following
his nature,
He exposed the hordes of liars.
False priests of all factions
Have lost their flocks.

The heart knows
the truth,
Though it roils the mind.
Now that we have heard, how could we forget?
How could we accept the old familiar lies?

He awoke a
hunger
No illusion can quench.
He did not need us,
But we needed him.

We are not
gods or kings or conquerors,
Only men and women, like all men and women.
What has begun cannot be stopped.
The truth, once heard, cannot be unheard.

The newborn
Revolution, decentralized and protean,
Shifts form, grows stronger, spreads its wings.
We have played the game their way.
Now, we begin to play it ours.

One day, we
will be ready.

May
17, 2008

J.
L. Bryan
[send him mail] is a freelance
writer.

1953: Coup
in America

Dwight D. Eisenhower
is elected President of the United States, a country that receives
most of its income from oilfields in Pennsylvania and Texas. The
oil is pumped and distributed by the Persian-American Oil Company,
owned by Iran. 

Fulfilling
a major campaign promise, Eisenhower reviews the oil production-sharing
agreements between Iran and the USA.  As Iran is taking more
than 90% of American oil revenues, Eisenhower attempts to renegotiate
this arrangement on more even terms for his country.

Prime Minister
Mossadegh of Iran is outraged at this show of “American greed.” 
Instead of negotiating, Iran sends its intelligence agents to carry
out a policy
of regime change.  They hire an assortment of American
street gangs to do the grunt work.

Bombs destroy
churches and community centers across the United States. Fliers
and pamphlets appear everywhere, claiming that Eisenhower is a member
of Communist Party USA.  The Communists, according to the fliers,
are destroying churches for Eisenhower to help liberate Americans
from the “opiate of the masses.” Local newspapers, covertly funded
by Iran, echo these ideas.  American public opinion is inflamed
against President Eisenhower.

The Iranians
bribe unpatriotic generals like L.L.
Limnitzer to lead the coup against Eisenhower.  The Iranians
want an authoritarian, fiercely anti-Communist dictator who will
never attempt anything resembling nationalization of the American
oilfields.  After carefully weighing the options, Iran installs
Senator Joseph McCarthy as their puppet king to rule the USA.

1953–1979:
The McCarthy Era

King Joe McCarthy
rules with an iron fist for 26 years.  Though initially reluctant
to obey a foreign government, King Joe soon embraces his sweeping
new powers, as well as the constant flow of Iranian aid and weapons
that makes it all possible.  Iranian intelligence agents create,
for McCarthy’s regime, the Department to Surveil and Vet Americans
for the King (SAVAK).

Hundreds of
thousands of “suspected Communists” disappear from American society,
in a general purge of teachers, newspaper reporters, and numerous
government officials.  It is rumored they are vanishing into
a gulag of secret prisons in northern Alaska built by Brown
& Root.

1978–1979:
The Christianist Revolution

Under SAVAK
rules, large groups of Americans can only congregate in two places:
pre-arranged, pro-McCarthy rallies, and houses of worship. 
As a result, revolutionary tendencies sprout and grow in churches,
led by radical clerics Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and Jim Bakker. 
With other evangelical leaders, they form the Supreme Council for
the Christian Revolution in America (SCCRA), or the “Christian Coalition.”

Anger at King
Joe McCarthy, and the Iranians who control him, reaches a fever
pitch in 1979.  Millions of young Americans throw their support
behind the SCCRA.  The young people may not agree with all
of the radical clerics’ goals, but they cannot abide the brutal
McCarthy era any longer.  They overthrow the oppressive dictatorship
of King Joe.

In the course
of this, American revolutionaries seize control of the Iranian embassy
in Washington, from which the puppet McCarthy government was controlled. 
Iranian TV manages to feature this “American hostage crisis” night
after night for 444 days without mentioning that America had suffered
for decades under a puppet regime installed by Iran. 

Eventually,
a secret deal is reached between the Christian Coalition — now the
rulers of America — and Iran, and the hostages are released.

1980–1988:
The America-Mexico War

The Iranians
have previously maneuvered one of their long-time Mexican intelligence
assets, whom we’ll call “José Husseino,” into the position
of dictator of Mexico.  Now they provide their pet dictator
with arms, aid and intelligence, and launch Mexico into an invasion
of the United States.

Ideally, this
policy will topple the revolutionary Christianist government in
Washington.  Failing that, the Iranian leadership hopes Mexico
will seize the oil-rich
province of Texas, denying revenue to the new Washington government,
while keeping Texas oil within the Iranian “sphere of influence.”

1988: Oops

As it turns
out, Americans are not about to surrender their country to the Mexican
army.  They fight hard to repel the foreign invader. 
Millions die on in each country, and infrastructure along both sides
of the border is bombed into rubble. 

Iran provides
the Mexican regime with chemical
and biological weapons, which the Mexican dictator Husseino
wields against American soldiers and civilians alike.  The
war wounded and maimed number in the millions.  Long trenches
are dug to bury the American dead. The USA must cope with a generation
of chemically-burned war orphans.

Husseino also
uses these chemical weapons to crush an uprising in Chihuahua, earning
himself the nickname ‘Murderer of Mexico City.’  The Iranian
regime shows no concern about this humanitarian catastrophe, and
continues supplying weapons of mass destruction to Husseino.

The war is
fought to a draw.  Husseino claims victory while his soldiers
beat a hasty retreat back to Mexico.

1991: Oops
again

Iranian politicians
realize they have inadvertently built Mexico into one of the world’s
most powerful militaries.  Mexico now threatens Iranian interests
in the Caribbean, as well as Central and South America.  When
Husseino shows interest in invading the small neighboring country
of Guatemala, the Iranian government decides to encourage him. 
The Iranian ambassador
allegedly told Husseino:

We have no
opinion on your American-American conflicts, such as your dispute
with Guatemala. Secretary of State Mohammed Mossadegh III has
directed me to emphasize the instruction, first given to Mexico
in the 1960s, that the Guatemala issue is not associated with
Iran.

The Rendon
Group is hired to cook up anti-Mexican propaganda.  A teenage
girl relates a sobbing story of the brutality of Mexican soldiers
against innocent Guatemalan babies.  The story is reported
and repeated through every news outlet in Iran. (Years later, it
will be revealed as propaganda. 
This, however, is never widely reported to the Iranian public, nor
referenced by major journalists when the next round of wartime propaganda
rolls out.)

Iran invades
Guatemala and Mexico, destroying most of Husseino’s military. 
They leave their formerly-favored dictator in power, however. 
The Iranian State Department advises that removing Husseino will
lead to turmoil and civil war in Mexico, bogging down Iranian troops
for an unknown number of years.  Also, the removal of Husseino
could only empower the hated Americans. Tehran decides not to go
there.

Guatemala is
now home to several new Iranian bases, which keep a close eye on
events in Mexico, the United States, and other Iranian interests
in the region.

1991–2001:
The Interbellum Years

The destitute
people of the United States struggle to recover from the massive
loss of life and property during the America-Mexico War of the 1980s. 
We watch as Iran enforces a “no-fly” zone over Mexico, and we hope
our troubles with those two countries are over.  Perhaps they
will finally leave us alone.

Still, Iran
wields its enormous international influence to impose economic sanctions
on both Mexico and the United States.  Half
a million children die from malnutrition, while depleted
uranium left over from the “Gulf Coast War” of 1991 sows an
epidemic of cancer throughout Mexico and the southern half of the
United States.

Iran covertly
funnels millions of dollars to any and every dissatisfied group
in America.  The KKK, the Black Panthers, the John Birch Society,
and even the Vermont Secessionists
experience a surge in anonymous foreign donations.

9/11/2001:
23 Jumada al-Akhar

An airplane
crashes into Azadi
Tower (or, interestingly, “Freedom Tower”) in Iran.  Within
minutes, “counterterrorism experts” emerge from the woodwork to
blame a relatively obscure terrorist group in Cuba.  No other
suspects, not even obvious contenders like Russian intelligence,
are ever mentioned.  A Latin American passport
is found in the rubble of Azadi Square, and this apparently
proves the first guessers correct.

Iranians are
stunned to learn, via their news media, that the West is full of
murderous killers driven by an extreme, violent religion. 
Apparently, these “Christofascists” are everywhere, and they hate
Muslims for their way of life, especially Iranians.  Iranians
learn the West is full of groups that would kill and die for the
chance to remake the Middle East in their own image.

(Hold on, I
lost track of which was the real timeline and which was imaginary…OK,
I’m back.)

October
2001: Iran Invades Cuba

Iran invades
Cuba and topples the Castro regime, in spite of their previously
close alliance.  The United States offers
its help to Iran, an attempt at friendship and solidarity against
a common enemy after the horrific 23 Jumada attack, but Iran rebuffs
America.

1/29/2002:
Axis of Evil

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
(we’ll say) pronounces that the United States, Mexico and Venezuela
constitute an “Axis of Evil” that threatens the world.  He
cites America’s history of genocide, slavery, and segregation, its
wars against the Philippines and Vietnam.

American citizens
are puzzled.  Our president and Venezuela’s have been threatening
each other for some time.  And didn’t we just fight a bloody,
protracted eight-year war against the invading Mexicans?  How
can anyone believe we are three allied nations?

Iran accuses
all three countries of developing nuclear weapons.  This, too,
puzzles the Americans.  Iran has tens of thousands of nukes,
and is the only country that ever actually used them. (Through baroque
circumstances too complex to describe here, Iran obliterated two
Argentinean cities in the 1940s).

America is
a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which allows us to
create nuclear power plants for peaceful energy.  America needs
nuclear power –the Pennsylvania oil is long gone, and even the rich
Texas fields are playing out.  We will need alternative sources
of energy to survive as a civilization.

However, this
sort of logic is denounced as “pro-American propaganda” in the halls
of Tehran.

March 2003

After endless
harassment, Mexico’s José Husseino fails to divest himself
of the weapons of mass destruction he does not possess.  Iran
invades and occupies Mexico.  No WMD are found, though it takes
the Iranian government a year or two to gradually acknowledge this. 
No matter.  Mexicans suffered horrendously under the Husseino
dictatorship.  Remember how he gassed the poor Chihuahuans? 
(Forget the context, or where he got the weapons, just remember
that it happened.)  They should welcome Iranian occupation,
even if the number of violent deaths soars!

2003–2005

After a quick
victory over the Husseino government, Iran begins hurling threats
at America and Venezuela, the other “Axis” members.  However,
Iran fails to neutralize the fierce Mexican resistance, and the
situation devolves into factional fighting as various interests
compete for power.

Iran responds
by stepping up the threats against America.

August 6,
2005: America Radicalizes

In response
to the drumbeat of threats from Iran, Americans vote out the somewhat-less-hawkish
Bill Clinton (serving his, er, third term) and we elect a new, “tougher”
prime minister to protect us: militant religious fanatic George
W. Bush.

Iranian newspapers
tell the world that “W,” as his brainwashed followers call him,
believes in a crazed End
Times cult that expects God to destroy the world at any moment. 
Iranian politicians argue that such a fanatical extremist, with
a head full of Armageddon and the Second Coming, can never be trusted
with even one nuclear weapon.

The new Bush
regime immediately cracks down on dissent and any sign of “Easternization”
among Americans.  Body piercings, tattoos, and belly shirts
are immediately outlawed.  Websites, from LewRockwell.com,
to the American Conservative,
to the Huffington Post,
plus thousands of others, vanish without explanation overnight.

Congressmen
Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich disappear into the Alaskan gulag. 
Filmmakers Michael Moore and Alex Jones are forced to share a prison
cell, to their deep mutual annoyance.  Fortunately, the prison
was built by Halliburton.  All of them escape in a general
riot, in which the prisoners simply kick the walls until they topple
over.

The New Jersey
Department of Education sends Max
Raskin to re-education camp.  He stands accused of chanting
“Death to the state!” rather than the legally mandated “Death to
Iran!” at a football pep rally.  Naturally, there will be no
hearing to determine if the accusation is true. (It is.)

October
9, 2006: Boom.

The world is
stunned when Hugo Chavez of Venezuela detonates a small nuclear
bomb.  Now that Venezuela is a nuclear power, Iranian leaders
no longer speak of an “Axis of Evil.”  Iran dispatches ambassadors
to Caracas to find a “reasonable solution” to Venezuela’s entrance
into the nuclear club.

This sets off
high-level discussion between Ayatollahs Robertson and Dobson. (Ayatollah
Bakker has been disgraced and removed from power, while Ayatollah
Falwell is away having frosted-doughnut-related surgery, and is
not long for this world.)  Maybe, their thinking goes, America
should develop a nuclear bomb to deter Iran, considering Iran’s
long history of aggression and subterfuge against America. 
They recognize the difference between Iran’s treatment of nuclear
Venezuela versus non-nuclear Mexico.

2007

Some level
of trade across the USA-Mexico border continues, as it always has. 
However, Mexican society has disintegrated into endless conflict,
and tens of millions of war refugees pour into the United States. 
The American government sends agents to monitor the situation in
Mexico and search for solutions to the instability along the southern
border.

Iran cites
this involvement as proof that the USA is secretly behind the Mexican
insurgency.  The idea that the Mexicans themselves want to
resist the foreign, Iranian occupation is still not allowed on Iranian
television.

Iran steps
up its threats against the United States, claiming that America
is “very close” to building a nuclear weapon. (Iranian intelligence
disagrees, but this is not exactly emphasized by Iranian media.) 
Iranian aircraft carriers and warships appear in the Gulf of Mexico
and along the coast of New England.  American children stand
on piers in Maine and Florida to watch the Iranian war games.

The Iranian
people, meanwhile, are weary of the prolonged, apparently endless
wars in Cuba and Mexico.  They have no desire for war with
America, but neither do they control their government.

Ahmadinejad
claims Bush is threatening to “wipe Canada off the map,” though
this has long been revealed as an inaccurate
translation.  (Bush’s actual words: “Where the heck is
Canada?  I can’t find it on the map.”)

The world holds
its breath, wondering if Iran will hit America with bombs, or even
a pre-emptive nuclear strike, and ignite World War III, which will
likely engulf the Americas.  The future of civilization depends
on the restraint and rationality of a foreign power whose leadership,
so far, has displayed no evidence of possessing either trait.

July
5, 2007

J.
L. Bryan
[send him mail] is a freelance
writer.

DIGG THIS

Long before
Mises and Rothbard, Lao-Tzu introduced libertarian ideas to China
with the Tao Te Ching.
Selections from that ancient book of philosophy illustrate the wisdom
that would shape American policy under the administration of President
Ron Paul.

From Chapter
17 of the Tao Te Ching: “In the highest antiquity, the people
did not know that there were rulers. In the next age they loved
them and praised them. In the next they feared them; in the next
they despised them.”

Since 9/11,
George W. Bush has run the gamut. Just after 9/11, he was loved
and praised (by a country desperate for leadership); later he was
feared (by Americans concerned about tyranny, not to mention the
people of Iraq); and today he is despised by most of the world and
the majority of his country. Lao-Tzu describes this process of degeneration
over vast ages of history — for Dubya, it took about three or four
years.

Chapter 17
continues: “How irresolute did those (earliest rulers) appear, showing
(by their reticence) the importance which they set upon their words!
Their work was done and their undertakings were successful, while
the people all said, ‘We are as we are, of ourselves!’”

Ron Paul believes
in liberty, letting people be as they are. One consequence of liberty
is the free market, in which every individual is permitted to make
his or her own choices. Free people will find better solutions than
even a “beloved” ruler can impose, and Congressman Paul knows it.
Every vote he casts in Congress proves the depth of his belief in
this principle.

Chapter 30:
“He who would assist a lord of men in harmony with the Tao will
not assert his mastery in the kingdom by force of arms. Such a course
is sure to meet with its proper return.”

This immediately
evokes the famous Ron Paul–Rudy Giuliani confrontation over
the motives for the 9/11 attack. If Giuliani has no time (or stomach)
to read Blowback,
or the 9/11 Commission Report, perhaps he could at least be persuaded
to look over these short verses. America’s decades of attempting
to “assert its mastery” over the Middle East “by force of arms,”
at least as
far back as 1953, brought the inevitable “return” on 9/11.

Or, to put
it in Sir Isaac Newton’s terms, every action has an equal and opposite
reaction. This is as true in politics as in physics.

Chapter 30
continues: “Wherever a host is stationed, briars and thorns spring
up. In the sequence of great armies there are sure to be bad years.”
Congressman Paul wants to see an end to the policy of maintaining
bases in more than a hundred countries around the world, which has
yielded “briars and thorns” in the form of resentment and hostility
against America. Ironically, a remarkable number of American citizens
seem unaware that their own country possesses this empire of foreign
bases, which sometimes prop up oppressive local regimes.

However, if
we were attacked by a foreign nation or entity during a President
Paul administration, what might the consequences be? Verse 30 continues:
“A skilful commander strikes a decisive blow, and stops. He does
not dare (by continuing his operations) to assert and complete his
mastery. He will strike the blow, but will be on his guard against
being vain or boastful or arrogant in consequence of it. He strikes
it as a matter of necessity; he strikes it, but not from a wish
for mastery.”

This reflects
the military policy of a Paul administration: Use all force necessary
to protect the country, but not more. Do not attempt to intimidate
or dominate the world. Congressman Paul takes the value of human
life, and therefore the wastefulness of war, very seriously. Besides,
haven’t we suffered enough vanity, boastfulness and arrogance from
the White House in recent years?

Chapter 57:
“A state may be ruled by (measures of) correction; weapons of war
may be used with crafty dexterity; (but) the kingdom is made one’s
own (only) by freedom from action and purpose.

How do I know that it is so? By these facts: In the kingdom the
multiplication of prohibitive enactments increases the poverty of
the people; the more implements to add to their profit that the
people have, the greater disorder is there in the state and clan;
the more acts of crafty dexterity that men possess, the more do
strange contrivances appear; the more display there is of legislation,
the more thieves and robbers there are.”

Probably unique
among American politicians, “Dr. No” has a long history of resisting
the temptation to intervene and regulate. Students of Austrian
economics already well understand that government intervention
rarely achieves its ostensible ends, while inflicting a host of
damaging side effects and unintended consequences. Government schools
are consciously
designed to suppress learning and thinking ability. FEMA not
only didn’t help Katrina survivors, it worked hard to prohibit
local workers and private charity from mounting an effective
relief effort. Drug prohibition increases
violent crime (without reducing drug use) and enriches criminals.
And so on, and on, and on.

This is further
addressed in Chapter 58: “The government that seems the most unwise,
Oft goodness to the people best supplies; That which is meddling,
touching everything, Will work but ill, and disappointment bring.”
(I am personally annoyed at this translator’s occasional attempts
at rhyme). It continues: “The (method of) correction shall by a
turn become distortion, and the good in it shall by a turn become
evil. The delusion of the people (on this point) has indeed subsisted
for a long time.”

Congressman
Paul, a scholar in the area of economics, understands that attempts
at public good rapidly become public evil. It is simply impossible
for a president or a legislature to decide what is best for every
single member of the population — far better to let individuals
decide for themselves. Even if successful centralized decisions
were possible, how many politicians would actually choose public
interest over lobbyist money? I can name one.

However, many
people continue to call for state regulation as the first and only
method to address any problem that arises. The “delusion” that the
government is here to help “has indeed subsisted for a long time”
— and continues to subsist millennia after those words were written.

Then there
is the famous Chapter 60: “Governing a great state is like cooking
a small fish.” One must take care with a small fish; a little too
much heat will burn it, a little too much poking will destroy it.
Again, Lao-Tzu and Congressman Paul agree on matters of government
policy (although I’m not sure how Dr. Paul cooks his fish).

Chapter 61:
“What makes a great state is its being (like) a low-lying, down-flowing
(stream); it becomes the centre to which tend (all the small states)
under heaven.”

(Apparently
I’m using a British translation.)

Dr. Paul prescribes
a humble foreign policy, in which we do not attempt to coerce other
nations to obey our will. He endorses the approach of Thomas Jefferson:
“Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling
alliances with none.” This policy would both increase America’s
number of friends and enhance its standing in the world, while removing
the motives for anti-American hostility. Furthermore, a noninterventionist
foreign policy would save taxpayers many trillions of dollars, money
that is sorely needed here at home.

Finally, Chapter
75: “The people suffer from famine because of the multitude of taxes
consumed by their superiors. It is through this that they suffer
famine.”

Ron Paul is
the only candidate who consistently points out that Americans suffer
not only direct taxation, but indirect taxation through debt and
inflation. As a longtime public opponent of the Federal Reserve,
he stands for sound monetary and fiscal policy.

And that’s
the Tao of Ron Paul. For those who doubt a principled man who tells
the truth can reach the White House, just remember Chapter 78: “There
is nothing in the world more soft and weak than water, and yet for
attacking things that are firm and strong, there is nothing that
can take precedence of it.”

June
27, 2007

J.
L. Bryan
[send him mail] is a freelance
writer.