As a proponent of the market I fail to see how there can be very good ideas that no entrepreneurs eager to find and exploit a profit opportunity are interested in. If it was really a good idea, then people would pay for someone to provide them with it and there would be potential profits to be earned. So the solution would hardly be political u201Creformu201D but to simply let market actors sort things out.

But this is not often the case if you ask people such as the ones advocating public health care. Not only has the market failed to provide u201Caffordableu201D health care to people who cannot afford much, but the market in general does not always (if ever) work and this is, they claim, especially true in cases such as this. u201CJust look at the mess in health care!u201D

Profit is expensive. So it is better that government monopolizes such necessary services and makes sure everybody gets it. Health care, after all, should not be exclusive and expensive; it should be inclusive and inexpensive and available for everybody always.

To answer all the critics looking mainly at the costs of such government programs, advocates claim that there is no real cost. Actually, there are only savings: a coordinated system based on cooperation rather than competition should be cheaper since no money is spent on advertising or cut-throat tactics to subdue competitors, and no profit is paid but everything is reinvested into real care; healthy people work more, provide for society, and pay taxes; and, by the way, health and happiness cannot be measured in monetary terms anyway. It is simply a good idea.

I sometimes play with the thought of being completely ignorant of economics (you know, the science of understanding people’s choices and actions that, in aggregate, explain how society functions) and simply accept the arguments as they are presented. But even when doing so, I fail to understand how advocates of such u201Creformsu201D think. The reason is this: if the market is a poor way of supplying people with goods and services that they want and need, wouldn’t it then be a good idea to prove once and for all that the market is a bad idea?

So how would one, as e.g. a proponent of public health care, prove the market is a bad idea? The obvious solution would be to let both systems co-exist, i.e. live side by side, and then let people see for themselves that the market simply doesn’t work. This is why I don’t understand advocates of health care u201Creformu201D: they demand u201Cuniversalu201D health care while claiming it is not restrictive or expensive (some claim it is even u201Ccheaperu201D) but refuse to show anyone this is the case and they will not allow any alternative solutions. If government provision is truly a better system, then wouldn’t we all be better off to stop our ideological fighting and settle the matter?

It is easy to figure out how to do this. This is how to settle it: start a government program with free and voluntary entry/exit that is fully financed by its users (as any public health care system would be), and let it run for some years to show it is stable too. That would show me and everybody else that it is indeed better. I understand arguments and tend to believe what I see. I would be willing to reconsider my views if provided with some kind of proof that I am wrong; so you would have won the fight without even having to go to war.

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Also, this is a chance for all u201Creformu201D advocates to make things better while letting the ideological capitalists suffer a bit for their ancient beliefs. If the government program is better, then those not choosing to enter it would suffer until they choose to accept the relief government is offering. So nobody would have to suffer; anyone could choose whatever system they like and with time we will see for ourselves that one system is better than the other. How does that sound? Anyone truly interested in giving people what they want and need would take this opportunity.

Any advocate should easily foresee how everybody but the wealthy capitalists would flock to the government-run system. Since it is better, and perhaps even cheaper, they would all be better off, and capitalists would eventually give up on their old-fashioned world-view and join the rest of society. There would be no wasteful fight, only peaceful choice and we would end up with the best solution for everybody.

But my guess is this is an unacceptable solution to anyone advocating public health care. Why?

The reason is that this has nothing to do with quality or cost or accessibility concerns in health care. It has everything to do with envy of those who, at least so we imagine, could afford better health care for themselves and their families. Government u201Creformu201D is not a way to really make things better, but to make things worse for those we perceive are a little better off than we are. It is better if we all get equally bad health care than if someone gets better health care than I.

But do not forget the profit motive! Envy is surely part of the underlying rationale for reform advocates, but so is profit. Politicians have everything to gain from seizing another industry and putting it under their full control. But non-politicians also believe they will profit: if the rich are tied down and forced to pay for a system not requiring payment for use, then the non-rich may profit through using while the rich pay the bill.

My thoughts on the reasons for not showing the superiority of public health care set aside, my point should be clear. It should not be much of a challenge to all you advocates of public health care: all you need to do is establish your own system side by side with the existing system and prove it is better. And while you are at it, allow me and others to set up a market system to see if it is truly as bad as you believe. You choose your system, I choose mine and when we have had enough experience we can decide together on what system is superior. Fair enough?

Is there anybody out there who dares accept this challenge?

Per Bylund [send him mail] is a Ph.D. student in economics at the University of Missouri and the founder of Anarchism.net. Visit his website www.PerBylund.com or his blog where he comments on this article and more.

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Public goods are defined as goods or services that are both non-rivalrous and non-excludable, i.e. the u201Cexact oppositeu201D of private goods, which are both rivalrous and excludable, in the common two-by-two setup. Whatever is rivalrous is limited in terms of consumption, which means your use of the good reduces availability of it for others; whatever is excludable can be u201Cprotectedu201D from others through exclusion, i.e. if I have it and want to use it I can easily make sure you can’t have it. In other words, the rivalrous and excludable private goods are cakes that you cannot both eat and have. It follows that public goods, as the very opposite of private goods, are cakes we all can eat and have at the same time.

The setup has obvious political connotations in that private goods are like private property in the free market whereas public goods are of a rather communist character and require government regulation. Consequently, public goods are used as an argument against the free market and for a government.

However, the distinction between public and private goods and, especially, the conclusion drawn from it (that only the latter work well as private property) is fallacious. There are two reasons for this. In the first case, the structure of present government provision of the public good is taken as a given and the market, it is concluded, cannot provide this type of structure. In the second case, the current market structure is shown not to provide a good or service that is presumed to be wanted by consumers. Here the market is u201Cobviouslyu201D suboptimal since there exists demand but the market, through its very structure of bottom-up solutions based on private property, provides disincentives to satisfy the demand and therefore u201Cfails.u201D

Both arguments are wrong and for the same reason. I would like to say that they are obviously wrong, but since so many, even free-marketeers, seem to fall for them I guess they are not that obvious after all.

Taking Government Structure for Granted

The problem is that status quo is implicitly assumed. Where government is currently providing a service, such as national defense, it is concluded that the market could not provide that service holding the production structure, provision, and level of service constant. This is a common trick that many seem to fall for, but the conclusion does not make much sense: the free market cannot provide government defense. And even if the market could, why in the world would we assume market organization would be identical to government organization? Market organization is bottom-up subject to consumer wants through the profit-loss system; government organization is top-down political command with no incentive whatsoever to satisfy consumer wants (except, perhaps, to the degree that it keeps voters voting).

In the case of national defense, an issue that often seems to confuse advocates of the free market, the public goods argument bluntly states that the free market cannot supply national defense. Well, to be honest: I see no reason for private enterprise to provide national defense. u201CThe nationu201D is not a consumer and has no wants and also cannot pay for the service — it is but a collectivist illusion. The market would provide defense services for individuals and families and their property — to the degree they are willing and able to pay for the service. In what sense is protection of my life and property non-rivalrous and non-excludable?

A counter-argument claims that even if private life and property is protected, it is still the case that foreign nations constitute a threat and that we need to defend our nation. But this counter-argument is even worse than the original argument: not only is u201Cour nationu201D assumed as the starting point — but now we also seem to assume other u201Cnationsu201D have the ability to act and even have feelings (they’re u201Chostileu201D and therefore u201Ca threatu201D). Also, the argument seems to assume that u201Cweu201D — our u201Cnationu201D — must have pissed u201Cthemu201D off somehow to such a degree that u201Ctheyu201D not only want to but will attack u201Cus.u201D I doubt it is possible to get more collectivism than that into a single sentence.

So how would the free market provide u201Cnational defenseu201D? The question has been answered over and over to different levels of detail, but a good starting point is government. If one would want to u201Cdefeatu201D (occupy, take over, destroy, whatever…) the United States all that is necessary is to get the people on capitol hill on their knees and then they’ll wave the white flag of surrender and all Americans will instantaneously be subjected to another master. If someone would want to take over the area formerly known as the United States that someone would have to occupy and defeat every single individual and every single piece of private property. Furthermore, a free market society would not supply the aggressor with a fixed and ready structure of government, so the aggressor would need to both subject 300 million people to his will and build the controlling hierarchy of government to keep them all in check.

As an aggressor, which structure would you choose? Which suffers from a u201Cpublic goods problemu201D?

The Market’s Failure to Provide

The alternative version of the public goods anti-market rhetoric states that the market is unable to provide certain goods or services that are desired by [most or all] consumers. The obvious question to ask anyone claiming this is u201Chow do you know?u201D — how do you establish that there is sufficient market demand but not supply to satisfy those consumer wants? To me, this seems like a contradiction in terms: if there is sufficient demand there will be supply, and if there isn’t there won’t be.

Oftentimes market demand is assumed to be great because the good or service is u201Cimportantu201D or necessary in very general terms, such as a clean or protected environment and the supply of radio or television (and, lately, Internet). In the case of the environment, government u201Cneedsu201D to step in since the market doesn’t regulate e.g. emissions and therefore the market suffers from extensive externalities.

The description of the u201Cproblemu201D obviously assumes a distribution of property rights and a system for property protection — and regulation of the extent of property rights — that is identical to that provided by government, i.e. a political system based on force. The fallacy is here the assumption of a society with a free market based on private property existing side by side with (or, more likely, under) government. The truth is that any force-based system necessarily compromises private property rights: a system of power cannot guarantee property but can only guarantee property for as long as that power finds it beneficial. In other words, property exists subject to the whim of government leaders, which increases uncertainty and therefore creates disincentives to invest in risky projects.

Also, such a system provides the illusion of a universal u201Csafe pathu201D for business. As long as entrepreneurs follow the government-provided guidelines they are u201Csafeu201D (i.e., approved) and therefore they need not bother as much with market demand, since a market subjected to government is necessarily restricted in supply and has limited competition and artificial barriers to entry. This means that if consumers prefer reduced emissions they cannot rely fully on market instruments such as boycotts, since new market actors are hindered from entering, but find it more effective to organize in order to influence politicians who can then regulate business.

The problem of public goods is further increased by the fact that government does not enforce property rights to the degree necessary (i.e., to the degree they would be in the free market) and also that it prohibits property of certain assets (air, water, frequencies for radio, TV, cell phones). Where there are no allocated and enforced property rights there will be chaos. Chaos, in fact, is a perfectly understandable outcome of a lack of private property, but only where private property rights aren’t applicable or are prohibited. In fact, where there are no property rights but property rights can be established there will be no chaos — there will be property rights. Such rights spontaneously arise through market interaction everywhere possible. In other words, there is no need for government ownership of air waves for television and radio since frequencies can indeed be owned and traded in a market.

But what about exclusion of the use of air waves since they are freely available for anyone capable of picking them up? This seems to have been an issue in the public goods debate, but should not be. It is true that the broadcast of television can be received by anyone within reach — but it is equally true that the broadcaster can encrypt or encode the broadcast so that only those who buy the service get access, thereby creating excludability of non-excludable goods. The extent of the market is dependent on the overall level of division of labor which is in turn partly dependent on developments in communication and technology.

Conclusion

The conclusions should be fairly obvious: there is no public goods problem. In fact, we can say that there is either private property or chaos, and there is chaos to the degree that there is no private property. Our regulated market contains the level of chaos corresponding to the level of government meddling with the incentives and orders of the free market. That government would be the solution to the so-called public goods problem is nothing but preposterous.

The public goods problem exists in the mind of theoreticians for two reasons. One is due to their inability to imagine a way to satisfy consumer wants different from the one-size-fits-all service provided by government. The fact that the market works in very different ways than governments has not crossed their minds. The other is that they underestimate the destruction caused by government regulation in the existing market and that they fail to understand that markets successfully manage to provide all services that are worth providing. Making government provide a solution that the market u201Ccannotu201D simply means making a good or service available prematurely while forcing the costs on everybody through taxation. In either case, it is obvious that government is the problem and cause of the u201Cfailureu201D of markets.

The solution is more market, but that’s not the way public good theorists want to go. They want to go the other way; they want their own and nobody else’s values to shape the world. For that to happen more government is obviously the key; without it they cannot force any solution upon the rest of us.

Per Bylund [send him mail] is a Ph.D. student in economics at the University of Missouri and the founder of Anarchism.net. Visit his website www.PerBylund.com or his blog where he comments on this article and more.

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The "global warming" movement is now calling for enormous "investments" in certain public policies and new political institutions to supervise people’s and firms’ emissions of CO2. To most scientists in climatology this change in the movement’s agenda is most likely unexpected; if you are not used to the political game you are not prepared when your opponent makes his politically obvious (in normal situations denoted "irrational") move.

Of course, the debate is not primarily between scientists even though such debates do exist. The literature in peer-reviewed journals in the relevant scientific disciplines have since long disproved the politicized Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) scenarios. It has even been established that the global warming according to reliable data sources ended in 2001, despite the fact that CO2 emissions are greater than ever and continue to increase.

The AGW hypothesis with man-made climate change through emissions of CO2 and other "greenhouse" gasses lives on, however, as politicians and the media find in it an extremely powerful thesis that makes people feel both vulnerable and defenseless and desperate for "help." Politicians need a threat to increase their realm of power and make the masses cling to their belief in government, and the media needs disasters to attract readers and viewers (selling real news is a long-gone idea in mainstream media). To be honest, climate change is the perfect issue for the fascist state — it is a win-win game for powerful politicians, their buddies in the media, and big business.

Yet more people seem to realize that things don’t add up and that there is another side to the story, which is not generally allowed to be told. Even though most people still believe "we" are to blame, a thesis we are fed from cradle to grave by our all-too-mighty government through public schooling and media outlets, the number of people doubting the truthfulness of the theory is growing. This is why the mainstream posse needed to increase the level of blame in the overall blame game; people doubting man-made global warming were compared with holocaust deniers. People with no connection whatsoever with the study of weather and climate did not hesitate to join their fellow state worshipers, like the ignorant-of-economics-economist Professor Krugman.

Most of us laymen AGW skeptics have been dismissed with the proclaimed truth that "scientists all agree" (which really means "talking heads all agree"), but a lot of people are nevertheless beginning to doubt. We may be approaching a tipping point, at which politicians will be desperate to find another made-up disaster to rally support for their destructive policies. In other words, this may be an opportunity to not only get rid of the climate change scare — but also force the "noble" savages back to their Platonic caves.

One way of doing so is to be ready for and engage in the discussion — and do so wisely. This is the purpose, I believe, of Joanne Nova’s comic-book-style The Skeptic’s Handbook (PDF), in which she describes how to "[r]ise above the mud-slinging of the Global Warming debate." The book shows how to use the existing and scientific facts properly and how not to accept non-answers such as referring to authority or cheap ad hominems. It also supplies the facts and the only points that matter. It is a short manual for constructively pursuing debates with AGWers and in that sense it is truly a "skeptic’s handbook."

Perhaps Newton was right in that "for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction" and that this is applicable to public political discourse. There is just a slight delay between the action and the reaction, just like there is a proven time lapse between increase in temperature to increase in CO2.

Per Bylund [send him mail] is a Ph.D. student in economics at the University of Missouri and the founder of Anarchism.net. Visit his website www.PerBylund.com or his blog where he comments on this article and more.

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Nothing disturbs me as much as the minarchist argument that there is a need for a final arbiter and that this arbiter must be external to the market. Without a final arbiter there will be biases and problems of unjust rulings, and therefore there must be a State, goes the argument.

Ayn Rand utilized this argument, saying a market without a State would degenerate into "civil war." This is the "obvious" result of protection and "violence" services offered freely in the market place — when firms selling coercive services compete, they will use the resources at hand to stifle competition: violence.

Of course, seen in the light of Randolph Bourne’s famously stated truth that "war is the health of the state," Rand’s assessment of the market for protection services and the "need" for a State seems ridiculous.

Ridiculous or not, it is still a common argument used by minarchists that the market needs both rules and a ruler. The market sets its own standards and rules, and that is all well, but the enforcement of such rules is the problem. Minarchists cannot see the truth when someone points out that a market might need contract enforcement services and that as a last resort people might need to hire someone to protect their rights to property.

Of course, if people would hire the people known to have guns today (except for State thugs, of course) we would have a problem at our hands. The people with guns today, i.e., the people actually using guns on a daily basis as part of their "job," thrive off other people’s misery. They are either State-employed thugs making money forcing people to "obey" in their own "interest." Or they are hired guns working for competing criminal organizations such as the mafia. Both of them are known to kill people as they see fit without remorse and without any responsibility.

But in a free society there would be no State and no other criminal organizations; such organizations couldn’t possibly profit off their line of "business" without being able to hide behind the power of central government. So enforcement, protection, and arbitration services would have to be supplied by legit businesses, and as such they would be dependent on providing valuable services to their clients and their reputation.

Some minarchists might accept this as a valid argument, but they would still have a problem with the final arbiter in disputes. There needs to be someone to make a final decision; someone to make sure rules are followed and that property rights are fully protected in accordance to natural or market law. And that someone needs to be completely neutral to supply such services.

This last point, that the final arbiter needs to be completely neutral, seems to be what often confuses many minarchists. To them, for some reason, this implies that the judge or court needs to be external to the market. There is logic in this argument, but it is based on a false understanding or definition of the market.

As is the case today, when business firms cannot agree they turn to a third party to settle the conflict. This third party might be the State, and since the State doesn’t have much to do with business firms or other market actors (leaving aside the corporate nature of the state and the fascist regime for a moment) it is supposedly neutral and unbiased.

The problem with this is that it is not the nature of the third party that makes him or her unbiased — it is that party’s position with respect to the conflicting parties. Two disagreeing antelopes might ask a baboon to provide a solution to their disagreement, but it is not the fact that the third party is a baboon that makes the baboon unbiased — it is that this particular baboon has no prior relationships, ties or indebtedness to any of the disagreeing antelopes.

Imagine two friends disagreeing to such a degree that they cannot get past this disagreement. Do they need to find a person to solve this conflict who is not anybody’s friend? No, they need to find someone who isn’t [secretly] a friend of one of them or has any other ties that would make him/her possibly unbiased.

So would two firms disagreeing on how to interpret a contract need to find a non-firm to solve their problem? No, they would probably be able to agree on any firm without ties to either of the parties — and that firm could still be perfectly unbiased and fair. It is not the nature of the arbiter that matters; it is the relations and interests of that specific arbiter that counts.

In the world of States this surely sounds strange. But this is the case simply because States know States — and they would never trust another State. Therefore they make alliances with whatever State is the strongest and establish "international organizations" to solve conflicts between States of equal strength. Even so, States usually don’t obey their own rules or rulings of such organizations they have themselves established.

Even ridiculously insignificant States such as Sweden, the State that claims to be my master, is repeatedly condemned by e.g. the European Court of Human Rights for crimes against humanity (torture, for instance — believe it or not). What is the result of such condemnations? Absolutely nothing, except for, maybe, a very short article in one or two newspapers; the people comprising the Swedish government couldn’t care less.

But the fact that States behave like villains (excuse me, are villains) should not be an argument against profit-maximizing businesses in a free society where there are no States.

The fact is that the final arbiter can be whoever as long as that person or organization is deemed unbiased and is approved by all disagreeing or conflicting parties. That particular person might even have guns without the situation necessarily degenerating into civil war. The fact is, there are profits to earn in this world, but only for those who serve one’s customers and show respect for potential customers. States don’t have to bother about such things because they have both guns and popular support to use them — including the support of mini-statists or minarchists.

Per Bylund [send him mail] is a Ph.D. student in economics at the University of Missouri and the founder of Anarchism.net. Visit his website www.PerBylund.com or his blog where he comments on this article and more.

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On June 18 a new law was passed in Sweden granting the national defense’s civilian agency National Defence Radio Establishment (FRA) the right to collect and analyze all communication data that in some way passes the borders of the Kingdom of Sweden. As a small country with extensive government and business collaboration with the other Nordic countries, most domestic communication such as Internet and phone services at some point passes the national border. The real effect of the law, which mandates that communication corporations deliver all their border-passing data directly to the FRA, is therefore mass surveillance of the whole Swedish populace.

The official lie offered as excuse for this horrid, uncivilized law is, like in all other countries, the threat of terrorism. It is unlikely anyone actually believes Sweden, an insignificant socialist country in the far north in moral, financial, and political decline, is on the terrorists’ list of future targets, yet the sense of a common external threat of a faceless enemy seems to be as effective in Sweden as elsewhere.

The law, which officially is called proposition 2006/07:63 — An Adapted Military Intelligence, was passed under rather strange circumstances that only make sense in a political world. The law was originally formulated a few years ago by the former social democratic government and was then strongly criticized by the four so-called non-socialist parties in parliament. It was, however, not brought to the floor of parliament for enactment by the social democratic party (for fear of losing the election?), but by the succeeding non-socialist four-party coalition government after the social democratic party lost power in the general elections in 2006. Also, the new coalition government parties voted in favor of the law while the social democrats and their lackey parties The Left Party (formerly known as the communist party) and The Environment Party voted against it.

The debate leading up to the passing of the law in June 2008 just before the parliament’s summer leave was quite hostile, especially after non-socialist bloggers started analyzing the effects of the law and bringing the truth to unknowing voters. The media kept their mouths shut for as long as possible, but as the bloggers wouldn’t stop they managed to create enormous public pressure on politicians. The prime minister and his government responded by forcing "their" members of parliament to shut up and vote in accordance with their government’s proposition even though it could be interpreted as conflicting with the parties’ political platforms, promises, and programs.

With their political careers literally on the line, only a handful of politicians had the courage to criticize the proposition beforehand even though all of the discussions took place behind locked doors. All but one agreed on voting in favor of the bill or being absent from this particular vote, while only four votes of the 349 in parliament would have been enough to throw the bill out.

As is common practice in Sweden a new law is referred for consideration to major government agencies, big business corporations and labor unions for comments before brought to a vote. Basically any organization has the right to comment on a law and the government has to register the comments in a publicly accessible archive of comments, which is often used by the media. The comments on this law were very skeptical and a number of agencies and departments, among them the Swedish security police (SÄPO), claimed the law shouldn’t be passed due to its total lack of restraints on FRA’s surveillance activities as well as safeguards for people’s personal integrity (!). Despite such devastating comments the bill was proposed to parliament by the non-socialist government while the media basically remained silent.

But a number of Swedish bloggers and free-lance writers, mainly libertarian or semi-libertarian such, continued online discussions on the "FRA Bill" (often referred to as "Lex Orwell") on blogs and elsewhere and during these discussions a number of interesting facts surfaced. The military agency FRA, which up to this point had only had the right to spy on radio communication crossing borders, with the main (but not explicitly stated) purpose to spy on Soviet Russia for the United States federal government, had already acted as a domestic surveillance agency despite it being illegal. The agency’s actions were reported to the police, but the attorney general almost immediately dismissed the case despite obvious and severe crimes.

After the bill was passed a number of politicians in the non-socialist parties reacted to the public pressure in the way politicians often do: a number of them publicly stated their opposition to the bill they had recently voted in favor of and created "anti-FRA" political networks to bring the bill to the floor again and this time make sure it doesn’t pass. And the social democrats, who were the ones writing the law in the first place, vowed to discard of the law if elected in the 2010 elections.

Despite these pathetic political attempts to benefit from the public awareness of the law, the discussions on blogs and in non-mainstream media go on. More strange circumstances and illegal acts by the agency are reported almost daily on numerous blogs while the main media corporations seem obviously afraid to touch this issue — despite the fact that this surveillance would severely affect news reporting as well as other businesses and individuals.

A list of 103 Swedish citizens that the FRA has previously reported to the security police was published by blogger Henrik Alexandersson (his English blog here) in an attempt to show that the FRA has not worked within the law historically and therefore will not do so in the future. Alexandersson, who is also the chairman of the libertarian activist network Frihetsfronten (Freedom Front) is now being investigated by the police for the crime of espionage (!) for publishing the list in conflict with freedom of speech laws. He was reported to the police by the director of the FRA, Ingvar Åkesson, and while the report includes a number of interesting pieces of information implying illegal activities by the FRA neither the media nor the police pretend to have noticed.

It seems despite the protests and the increasing public pressure the law will come into effect on October 1 this year. The law is however only one in a line of new laws calling for mass surveillance of ordinary people in Sweden and all over Europe. The European Union is calling for mass surveillance on the super-national level through national data retention laws; one such law, which calls for mandatory storage of all phone call, text message and email data (including people’s whereabouts, etc., but not contents of call or message) in Sweden will be brought to the floor of the Swedish parliament during the fall session of this year.

In addition to these laws the so-called ACTA treaty, following the lead from the Department of Homeland Security but to counter "illegal file-sharing," was approved by the EU member states in a session on agriculture and fishing policy (!) on May 14 and is currently negotiated by the European Commission. The treaty grants border security to confiscate any digital media carried by the traveler and outlaws certain digital equipment as well as file-sharing networks (even if legal).

Most of these Orwellian laws are part of a new "anti-terrorism" initiative in the European Union, where a new union-level situation center in Brussels, called SitCen, is proposed in order to coordinate the EU countries’ national security police, intelligence and surveillance efforts. With laws such as the "FRA Bill" and the proposed communications data storage law to be passed this fall it is easy to see that the European Union intends to be the first to establish a full-scale police state on the super-national level.

Decisions in the European Union are often made behind locked doors by EU-appointed officials to whom the national governments have "delegated" powers. In other words, it is impossible to know the true extent of the measures proposed and already enacted. Unpopular laws that rapidly increase the powers of member states are often pushed to the EU level in order to avoid public debate, and while national decisions are pushed to this higher level the EU officials in charge make sure the decisions benefit the political institutions on the super-national level as well.

This supposedly new EU initiative aiming "to tackle terrorism, organised crime, and legal and illegal immigration" is likely to be the result of such political tactics. Politicians in the member states don’t dare face voters and the media with such far-reaching surveillance propositions and therefore hide behind locked doors in Brussels. The reason this issue, first and foremost the FRA Bill, is pushed hard by the Swedish government, and primarily by prime minister Fredrik Reinfeldt (a spineless crook of whom I have personal experience), has been conjectured by Henrik Alexandersson: Sweden under Reinfeldt will be "chairman state" in the EU in the last six months of 2009 and obviously the prime minister wants to look good in the eyes of other European politicians.

And how do you look good in the eyes of politicians? Through pushing your own serfs harder than anyone else pushes theirs.

Per Bylund [send him mail] is a Ph.D. student in economics at the University of Missouri and the founder of Anarchism.net. Visit his website www.PerBylund.com or his blog where he comments on this article and more.

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There should be no surprise to readers of LewRockwell.com that the State statistics on inflation seek to cover up most of the problem. However, this article is not on government statistics (or propaganda, which is probably a better word for it) but on economics research on the phenomenon of inflation. Libertarians as well as Austrian economists would agree that inflation is a problem that needs to be dealt with (i.e., government needs to stop meddling with the economy), and we often tell the story of how inflation "eats up" wealth and creates imbalances in the market place while offering great opportunities for the State to increase its powers and further strengthen its hold on our society.

We often stress that the definition of inflation used by both the State and the economics profession is "incorrect" and that the "general increase in price levels" definition should be replaced by the Austrian "increase in money supply" definition. It is true that the latter is a whole lot more correct in both explaining and describing the problem while pinpointing what is really going on and how these problems could be overcome. However, it is not simply the fact that the generally accepted definition is "wrong" — it is also "evil" in that it includes quite a bit of propaganda for State control of the marketplace and the rest of society.

It should be clear to anyone with some knowledge in how the economy works that all the individuals in it work together like an invisible hand to produce goods and services and that they tend to do so ever more efficiently. This is true even in a regulated market, which is why even monstrous welfare states talk about the importance of and try to "encourage" economic growth. The concept is a bit confusing, though, since the economy doesn’t only grow — "it" strives to get increasingly efficient in the use of resources in order to produce goods and services of [even greater] value to consumers. Such increased efficiency is generally achieved by entrepreneurs, be they capital owners or labor workers, and innovators finding new ingenious ways of using the resources available.

In such a market the natural tendency is for prices to fall — anything else would be incomprehensible. Even in the world of neo-classical economics this is a fact despite the endless calculations on fixed cost functions and production technologies. Competition spurs cost-cutting and efficiency-increasing measures for the actors to gain advantages in the market through satisfying consumers’ wants by offering better products at lower cost. So how could prices ever increase in such a setting?

Yet the definition used for inflation is the general increase in prices. Of course, even those trained in mainstream neo-classical economics should realize such a phenomenon is a symptom of something being wrong. But what is commonly overlooked or not understood (or at least not mentioned) is that inflation is not something going wrong as shown in price increases — it is wrong because prices don’t fall. In other words, if inflation is taken as only the price increase the statistic necessarily and systematically overlooks the natural price fall that is also a part of inflation.

If prices in the market would naturally fall by 5% in a specific year but we instead experience a 5% increase in prices, the real "price increase inflation" isn’t the experienced 5% increase compared to the level of prices the previous year but the new level compared to what the level would have been, i.e. 105%/95% = 10.5%. In this simple example the official inflation statistic would only take into account less than half of the real price increase inflation.

The inflation statistic of 5% in the example doesn’t take into account that the market is never static; it simply compares the price level of one year with the price level of another year as if nothing has happened: the cost and production functions are the same (i.e., competition has no effect), the money supply is exogenous or unimportant (i.e., printing more money has no effect), and time has a "reverse" effect (it would obviously be better to always sell goods at a later time while producing as early as possible since all prices go up — the best thing you can do is horde and "never" sell).

It is true that such a world as the one implied by the inflation statistic is very neo-classical in that it is so oversimplified that it doesn’t make sense at all (but allows for taking nice derivatives to optimize abstract functions). It is also true that it is literally impossible to tell how much prices would have fallen, which means the inflation statistic is nowhere close to the real inflation rate and also that it is impossible to even guess how wrong it is.

For obvious reasons the State benefits quite a lot from using this definition of inflation. After all, it covers up most of the effects of its tampering with the market. But why in the world would anyone doing economic research use such a statistic that is so totally flawed? One possible answer to this question is that the economics profession (generally speaking) is not about economic truths, but aim to serve the State through providing research on how it can "optimize" its policies to best take advantage of the market processes. If this is the case, then the economics profession overall should know little about how the market really works — and what would cause it to fail.

Per Bylund [send him mail] is a Ph.D. student in economics at the University of Missouri and the founder of Anarchism.net. Visit his website www.PerBylund.com or his blog where he comments on this article and more.

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The common argument in the libertarian movement against public schools is that they fail to educate our children. Actually, according to this argument, public schooling is like any monopolized business: expensive, inefficient, and utterly unable to provide the services wanted and needed.

This is true, public schooling doesn’t work. But the proof of this is not the thousands of kids managing to go through nine or twelve years of schooling without even learning how to read and write. The proof of the failure of the whole schooling system, i.e. not only the public schools but also the private schools operating in a government controlled and licensed environment, is the small number of radicals managing to escape the brainwashing of centralized school plans.

This argument can much easier be dismissed by public school enthusiasts, but it is nevertheless the more important. Yes, public and state-controlled schools fail to educate our children and make them understand whatever it is "we" want them to understand. But the state school system is not solely intended to provide knowledge to the unknowing and ignorant, it is to provide a certain set of values and beliefs that benefit the ruling class.

The former is obviously failing, but does not provide a real argument against the political control of schooling and education. The problems and shortcomings, at least according to average Joe logic, can be solved and corrected through investing more tax money to increase the number of teachers educating in our schools. The logic isn’t that bad, even though it essentially disregards what we know of economic organization and production. If the problem can be attributed to not having a sufficient number of (fill in the blank) available, then more money should obviously be able to correct this "shortage."

It doesn’t make sense to say that the solution to something not being fully able to produce what we want, that there is a certain lack of resources to fulfill the aims, is to abolish the whole system. People generally don’t think this way — if something doesn’t work fully, then a little more effort/a little more money/one more chance can make it work. No one would take the car to the junkyard if it isn’t working — we first try to fix it.

It is true that this is what we have been doing with public schooling and the public schooling system for quite a while, but it still doesn’t work. But the system is not used by the same but different people — the people seeing the problems now are not the same as the ones who saw problems a decade ago. So we must be able to fix the problems of schooling, it is argued, by simply investing a little more money or provide yet another couple of laws. Just like a little more money was the solution to the problem for people a decade ago. The logic is not all that bad.

But look at it in another way: what about the students who do learn what the schools set out to teach them? Among those students it is safe to say that many of them were different, that they had different thoughts and values and experiences when they first went to school. Is that true when they nine or twelve years later have been educated? Too often the answer to this question is "no."

Ask anyone about democracy or rights or the state and it is obvious that something has happened to these people. Most of them, as I have argued in another article, blindly repeat the dogma of our era: democracy is superior, democracy is the only good system in a society, democracy works, democracy is every man and woman’s right. But what is democracy? Most people are unable to answer this question — "it has to do with voting."

The heterogeneous beliefs of kids going to school at the age of six or seven (or whatever) are literally untraceable when the same kids nine or twelve years later have been educated. Of course, there are differences in political views; but those differences are simply a matter of "how much more" state we "need," never the opposite and the question Why? is not asked and not even considered.

So the schooling system has essentially worked — this should be fairly obvious. But it hasn’t worked in full — there are some people who manage to go through the seemingly endless years of "education" only to end up almost the same except for having learned how to read and write. They somehow manage to keep their thoughts and values, and develop their own ideas on how the world should be without being heavily influenced by the state school system.

This is the true failure of the schooling system, and this failure is a reason politicians want to make public schooling "better." The radicals, if you will, are not only proof that the schooling system isn’t bulletproof; they are also, simply through existing, showing the horrors of public schooling: that most kids end up essentially the same when "educated."

The latter is the most important fact we can stress. "What about the radicals?" How come there is no middle ground between the big chunk of mainstream democracy hailers and the radicals? How come there isn’t more diversity in values and opinions? Why are there so very few people asking the so important question "Why"?

It is no doubt true that public schooling, be it schools run directly or indirectly by the state, throughout the western and other parts of the world has failed. But the failure is not only evident in the few people who do not want and do not need education, or in the few people who need more help to understand that which most people seem to think is "extremely important." The real failure is evident in the existence of radicals, and that existence is not only a threat to government — it is also an efficient means to make the public understand what government schools are all about.

All we need to do is pose the right questions.

Per Bylund [send him mail] is a Ph.D. student in economics at the University of Missouri—Columbia and the founder of Anarchism.net. Visit his website www.PerBylund.com or his blog where he comments on this article and more.

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To Swedish, and presumably many European libertarians, the United States equals freedom. This is by definition, and the truth of the thesis is so emotionally fixed that no arguments in the world can disaffirm it. America has a constitution that guarantees its people inalienable rights protected by its government; it was the only power that fought the immense threat of the Soviet Union; and it has traditionally been pro free markets whereas Europe has traditionally sought hierarchies, national economic planning, obedience and outright statism.

The difference between America, the new land, and Europe, the old and constrained, is clear. Judging from subjectively selected and interpreted events in history, the United States is the beacon of liberty illuminating the socialism-effectuated darkness in Europe and elsewhere.

This, at least, is how many libertarians in Sweden choose to see it. They gladly accept and defend the waged wars in Korea and Vietnam by interpreting them as "necessary" to fight the big monster not very far east from Sweden: the Soviet Union. Likewise, the wars on Afghanistan and Iraq are for the liberation of their peoples as much as they are for the protection of "us." The United States is grandly making sacrifices in order to make sure people in foreign countries can enjoy their god-given rights as defined in the U.S. Constitution. Isn’t that great?

After all, Saddam Hussein was a tyrant, and tyrants should always be overthrown. The cost of the people in Iraq under Hussein’s rule was immensely greater than the small cost of a few thousand American troops dying on foreign soil and Americans’ being forced to pay for having their "inalienable" rights violated — and literally abolished — in their own nation.

Imagine the enormous threat to the West and our way of life when/if Iran, or other countries with weird cultures and religions we don’t understand, develop nuclear weapons! Somebody ought to do something about that. The thought is horrible; imagine what they could do… Hey, Americans — do your thing!

And terrorism! It is not simply a criminal act and terrible tactic — it is an ideological war! We should collectively take the responsibility to fight it — wipe it out. After all, it is potentially a threat to our way of life and the values we hold dear. Whatever happens in Israel happens to us! We need to put an end to this.

These are essentially the arguments put forth in defense of the United States by Swedish libertarians. The sacrifices made are nothing but great if you look at what is called the "whole picture" (limited to a state-centered view of world politics), and whoever dies for the rights of another is a "patriot." Yet I see no Swedish libertarians signing up for a few years in the US Army or Navy.

Most of these arguments are based on the illusion that whatever the United States government does is always aligned with the quest for freedom. And this assumption is further strengthened by the fact that the European Left is knee-jerk anti-American — thus being pro America must be good.

Freedom needs to be aggressively protected from whatever threat (or potential threat) posed and whoever poses it. No matter what this will cost us — freedom is priceless and that means any cost by definition is smaller and thus could and should be an acceptable loss. It still means we’re making a profit, doesn’t it?

This kind of reasoning befuddles me, especially when advocated by self-proclaimed libertarians. What if protecting your freedoms comes at the cost of some other freedom?

No worries, they respond. TAANSTAFL — nothing is free of charge. We simply have to choose which freedom is more valuable to us. The threat is too great to not do anything about it. What are a few thousand lives now compared to the "inevitable deaths" of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, if tyrants in other countries wage a cultural war on us?

What?! Since when do libertarians harbor a utilitarian sense of freedom, where sacrificing a few freedoms for the greater good of some freedom years or decades down the line? And since when does freedom include taxing and killing for a "greater good"? And what about the rights and freedoms literally flushed down the toilet by our own Western governments in pursuit of protecting freedom (as they say) / increasing their powers (as they mean).

The selective memory, reaffirming subjective interpretations of world events, and utilitarian approach to world politics take care of all such questions. The argument enjoys all the benefits of a circular argument — it cannot be refuted unless the assumption is refuted, and the assumption has already been confirmed by the circular argument itself!

Establishing democracies in the Middle East is such a good thing that it doesn’t really matter what it costs — democratization and nation-building in these countries means they will not be a threat to us anymore. That is certainly a huge gain, right? We’re assuming, of course, the unchallengeable truth that all democracies would automatically adopt western values and a western way of life as soon as parliaments are established. And the "truth" that democracies never wage wars.

What disturbs me about the pro-war position of so-called libertarians, and their fierce defense of war itself as a legitimate means for a greater collective good, is that it is so contradictory it beats every available schoolbook example of what is a contradiction. Individual rights are sacrificed in order to save individual rights and our "way of life." They say "we" must do something "now," yet the persons arguing this point are certainly not going to do anything. They are so busy writing blog posts defending the killings in distant countries they simply don’t have time to do the killing themselves.

And, by the way, Swedish libertarians don’t really have to bear the costs of all this. At all. It is not their tax money being spent by waging a war on Iraq and it is not the lives of their loved ones mercilessly sacrificed as a guy with medals heavily breathes "Go! Go! Go!" into a microphone. They aren’t really affected by all this, except for the Swedish government following the United States government’s great example of abolishing the rights of citizens. So the war is really not beneficial to these individuals. Why this interest in people they don’t know dying for the sake of protecting rights that are already being abolished in every western nation?

I simply don’t see how anyone can claim to be a proponent of individual rights while advocating wars where the lives of some individuals are forcefully sacrificed for the collective good and freedom of others. It stands to reason — and in every sense contradicts the Non-Aggression Principle, no matter how you interpret it. Shouldn’t libertarians know this? Even if they are Swedish?

As a libertarian I cannot understand how it could ever be possible to contradict freedoms and choose a "greater freedom" at the expense of a conflicting "lesser" freedom. And I especially don’t understand how anyone can claim the right to make such decisions for everybody else.

Per Bylund [send him mail] is a PhD student in economics at the University of Missouri—Columbia and the founder of Anarchism.net. Visit his website www.PerBylund.com or his blog where he comments on this article and more.

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There are many stories of Sweden being a Utopia: a high-tax, massively regulated and politicized, anti-capitalism, egalitarian socialist society that not only works — it thrives. Each and every one of them is nothing but a lie, even though there are many Swedes who will tell you how wonderful it is — they refuse to see the truth even though they live it everyday.

Recently yet another myth of the Swedish socialist supremacy was revealed to be completely untrue: the exquisite quality of Swedish public education. "Preliminary" statistics of the current state of Swedish public schooling made available by the Swedish National Agency for Education show the continuing degeneration of the so-called Swedish Model — and that it is ever increasing. After having spent nine mandatory years in school, 11.4% of Swedish children don’t meet the requirements to go to high school.

Of course, in other countries this might not be such a big deal. But it is in Sweden — a country where an education and a university degree is a human right. Also, the requirements to go to high school are set on such an absurdly low level that no one should be able to not make it.

For starters, in the requirement only three subjects actually count: mathematics, Swedish, and English. These are the "core" subjects, and you need to get a "pass" in all three in order to be able to go to high school. One would think this is not too tough a requirement.

However, it is much easier than it would seem. The Swedish schooling system doesn’t really have grades — there are only three "grades": pass, pass with distinction, and pass with even more distinction. (The latter of the three is awarded some students, but it was originally designed in such a way that no one was supposed to get it — in the name of "equality" of course.) So the grading system in Swedish schools doesn’t allow anyone to fail, it simply isn’t possible to get anything less than "pass."

The only way to not meet the requirement is to get a "not pass," which is a last way out for teachers who really, really cannot award the "pass" grade. "Not pass" is, however, a non-grade, it doesn’t count if you get it, and it is intended for those youngsters who never bother to show up (which is only possible if you manage to stay away from your parents, school teachers, as well as the police, since not being in school is a crime).

The problem with the statistics released by the Swedish National Agency for Education is thus not that some pupils don’t work hard enough and therefore don’t get good enough grades to meet the requirements to go to high school. There is no big deal to this requirement — whatever grades you get is sufficient. The problem is there are 11.4% of the young people not even capable of getting a grade. Actually, they are not even capable in getting a grade at all in the only three subjects that count — three out of the ten on a normal ninth grader’s schedule.

And only the grades of the last semester of the ninth grade count, so even if you have managed to get a "not pass" in previous semesters you are still home free if you show up, even if only to do nothing, for the last semester…

There is still a lot of whitewash one can think of to make this situation seem less horrific than it really is. For instance, one could claim that Swedish schools try to teach Swedish youth too advanced theories making it impossible for a great number of them to grasp the concepts. This is attempted by the authorities, and I would guess a lot of Swedes actually believe it.

But the level of difficulty at Swedish schools is brought down to ever less advanced levels — it is now nowhere close to the level taught when I was myself in ninth grade (which would be little more than fifteen years ago). Also, even though the difficulty is constantly set to a lower level, the number of people not being able to meet the requirements grows at an ever increasing rate: according to official statistics from 8.6% in 1997 to 10.5% in 2006 — and now to 11.4% in 2007 (however a "preliminary" figure).

The problem goes much deeper than anyone in Sweden wants to realize, and it is spreading fast. There have been reports the last few years about the growing problem of high school graduates in Sweden not being able to either read or count properly. It is simply a matter of time until these problems spread to the colleges and universities.

What we are seeing here is nothing but the inevitable result of state socialism when the children of the welfare state behave in their own interest according to the logic of the nanny state. The welfare way to a good life is not to make it yourself, it is simply to need it and demand it. Let "the others" (whoever they are) do all the work.

But does it work? Not for long, as we will soon see.

Per Bylund [send him mail] is a PhD student in economics at the University of Missouri—Columbia and the founder of Anarchism.net. Visit his website www.PerBylund.com or his blog where he comments on this article and more.

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Recently another one of those stupid government policies, supported by even stupider arguments, was brought to my attention on a state-run, taxpayer-financed radio station.

I know very well that the Swedish government finances all education with what the government goons have looted from the working populace. And I know there is a general student financing program too, to cover any expenses for those poor people choosing to get a degree or two already paid for. Part of this financing scheme is loan (guaranteed by the government), part of it is a grant offered to anyone passing most (not all) of the classes taken.

Still the radio show made me aware of the magnitude of this system. It opened up my eyes for the reason so many students from abroad come to visit Swedish universities — and why they stay for so long. The reason? Our government forces Swedish taxpayers to give the same kind of financing to foreign students as well. Actually, it is illegal to ask foreigners to pay tuition, and it is illegal to deny foreigners the grants and subsidized loans. So why do foreign students go to Sweden to study? Well, who can blame them — this is kind of the free lunch Robert A. Heinlein claimed doesn’t exist.

For those of you not knowing what the very generous government education system in Sweden is about and what it covers, let me simply say it covers EVERYTHING. You won’t get rich from the grants and loans, but you certainly won’t get poor either. And you certainly don’t have to worry if you want to go to graduate school to get a master’s or doctorate; it is all paid for by the heavily taxed Swedish populace. Actually, if you’re aiming for a doctorate you will get a salary for the four or five years it will take you to earn that degree. There is no such thing as tuition at any of the universities.

You might think this is a way for politicians to find a way to spend more money than they "have to" and therefore they make this a secret. No, that’s not how it is — there’s a whole web site on the how’s and why’s of studying in Sweden, advertising the fact that it is all at Swedish taxpayers’ expense: www.studyinsweden.se.

This, I think, probably strikes at the core (well, one of them) of what modern socialism is all about: stop as many immigrants as possible at the border to keep the people inborn and ignorant of the world, but waste taxpayers’ money to advertise the glorious welfare state by subsidizing foreigners only temporarily in the country and thus never contributing to the welfare system. This is, actually, what most western states are doing and have been doing for quite a while. The U.S. government, for instance, issues visas to students who get their degrees at U.S. state-subsidized universities, but then forces them to leave the country as soon as they’ve earned their degrees. One would think it more rational to ask them to stay to work and pay taxes, but that is obviously not a valid conclusion in political reasoning.

Knowing about the educational dimension of the Swedish welfare state, the most pressing question on any rational person’s mind should be: why does the Swedish government offer free education to foreign students — and why does it even offer to pay them to study? The reason was briefly suggested in the same radio show, and it is a thoroughly political reason. The politicians want to show Sweden to the world as a generous and prosperous (well…) welfare state, while at the same time avoid confronting the people on the issues.

Apart from the state marketing scheme, it seems the socialists in government simply don’t want foreigners to pay tuition to Swedish taxpayers-financed universities, since that might make Swedes more prone to accept paying for education. If the issue is raised, the socialists would have to face the fact that foreigners pay for education in Sweden (and can afford to do so). That is simply too "costly" politically speaking.

But isn’t it more costly to let Swedish taxpayers pay for educating the whole world? Of course, but this kind of economic reasoning makes sense only to the non-political a.k.a. real world. In politics, benefit is defined as what can be bought at someone else’s expense, at gunpoint if necessary, and cost is only expressed in terms of loss of power and risk of people calling the political bluff. Thus: it is cheaper, politically speaking, to force the nine million Swedes to finance universities for whoever wants free education in a world of more than six billion people.

It never fails to amaze me, this political logic. I know everything about it — I’ve seen it from behind the scenes — yet I am truly surprised, almost on a daily basis, at the stupidity and ignorance of the political class. However could they, the stupid, ignorant, and moronic people unable to produce anything themselves, become our rulers?

Per Bylund [send him mail] works as a CIO/IT and Development Manager in Sweden, in preparation for PhD studies. He is the founder of Anarchism.net. Visit his website.

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We’re at the brink of the police state, the Orwellian 1984 surveillance and control society, and on top of this horror there seems to be an environmental disaster approaching. All kinds of bad things seem to be happening in the not so distant future.

The war on drugs seems to be losing, it might not work as good as we thought and if we don’t do anything about it, it might fail. The war on terrorism seems hopeless; no matter how much money is spent, how many laws are enacted, or how much controls are enforced, the terrorists might always be one step ahead of us. The war in (on) Iraq is not going too well; unless more troops are sent there and more money invested in stifling resistance and wiping out insurgents the war might be lost.

Government spending is increasing rapidly and the national debt is increasing even faster; unless things change we might end up a bankrupt nation. Public schools seem to be unable to educate our children; the number of people not learning how to read in our schools is increasing — if nothing is done things might become very, very bad. The quality of public health care might turn into a right-out nightmare if we don’t do anything.

There is one common denominator in the above paragraphs: they are all about horrors that might become real in the future. Not a single one of them discusses the outright and obvious failure of each and every one of these policies and issues — they all might fail, they are approaching failure, they could go wrong if nothing is done.

How come we as humans always tend to realize the real risk of horrors tomorrow, but not understanding the horrors that are already upon us? We are not at the brink of an Orwellian police state — it is already here. The wars on drugs, terrorism, poverty, and Iraq aren’t approaching failure — they have failed, and failed good.

People say we should learn from history or we might relive its horrors — history tends to repeat itself because we don’t know about it or consider our collective experience of sufficient importance. There is truth to these words, but why do we think people could learn from history when most of us regularly fail to identify the nature of the now? If we cannot even see what we’re in the midst of, then how can we expect to learn from the experience of previous years — or even previous generations?

The fact is we’re doomed to have history repeat itself simply because we always aim for the future — we never stop to bethink what we really have and what mess we’re in, our minds are fixed on what might be. This is a huge problem, not only because we as individuals might lose the greater part of our lives simply because we’re not living it — we’re living only in dreams of the future. The real problem is political.

In a world where people tend to forget the now and always aim for the dream of a possible future, political policies become very, very important. Of course, politics is short-term rather than long-term, but political decisions are made in the not too distant future and enforced soon thereafter — only after that do they have effect. Politics cements and reinforces the illusion of life being in the future rather than in the now — it forcefully teaches that the uncertainty of the future can only be managed by government.

It is in the interest of political power to keep people from seeing the horrors of today. Whatever is happening in the now can be settled in the future — a little more power granted government, and the future is safe. We do not really care about the thousands of dead American soldiers on foreign soil as long as we have our eyes fixed on the possibility of a future terrorist attack. We don’t really care about our rights going down the drain if we have our minds on possible horrors in the future. What are dead soldiers and rights anyway, if we believe someone we know could be killed or harmed in the future — especially if dead soldiers and annulled rights might establish control of the future?

This is the fact that makes the size of government expand — if people only think of the future, government plans bring order and control to a seemingly chaotic and uncertain existence. Most people would give up benefits of the now for profits of the future — we’re all investors. The problem is that we’re tricked to believe that the future is a threat and that government is the savior.

We’re not at the brink of a police state — habeas corpus is already gone. We’re not about to lose the wars on drugs and Iraq — they’re already lost, and were probably lost even before they started. We’re not, as a nation, about to get broke — we’re so deep in debt that it is already quite impossible "do something." We don’t see a school system becoming unable to educate our children — the system has already failed. The quality of health care and health care systems isn’t about to fall — it has already fallen.

Face it, we’re already there. It is time to see the now and its horrors — there’s no time to plan to do something; it is well past time to act.

Per Bylund [send him mail] works as a CIO/IT and Development Manager in Sweden, in preparation for PhD studies. He is the founder of Anarchism.net. Visit his website.

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Everybody knows what competition is: it is that "cut-throat" market process where some profit-seekers try to get ahead of other such in order to maximize their profits. Some say competition is good and that it effectuates an evolution in product design as well as distribution and marketing processes where better ideas beat inferior ones. Others say competition is a hostile state of affairs where everybody is forced to "beat others" — the market’s competitive and violent condition should be replaced by peaceful and superior cooperation.

Theoretically, any of these descriptions can be true. The sole goal of engaging in acts of competition, defined as "a business relation in which two [or more] parties compete to gain customers" according to the Princeton Wordnet, is to get ahead of one’s competitors. What is important in a competitive market, at least when leaving out the fact that producers aim primarily to satisfy customers’ needs in order to make profit, is to achieve advancement relative existing (and future) competitors.

This relative advancement can be done two different ways: either one advances one’s own position, or one makes sure all others’ positions are decreased. The alternatives are thus to work hard to move myself only into a better situation or to move everybody else into worse. Moving only some of my competitors into a worse situation than their current wouldn’t quite do it — there would still be competitors at status quo. So the alternatives have to be moving myself only or moving everybody but myself.

The costs for doing the latter should, economically speaking, be enormously higher than the costs of making me better (not to mention the benefits of actually getting better at what I do). It would thus be rational to assume competitors in the market place would choose to invest time, skill, and money into making themselves better rather than trying to undermine competitors’ businesses. Investing more than others in the game of competition would be a clear disadvantage, presumably an economic loss, and so there would be no actors in the market place, at least in the long run, trying to destroy others’ enterprises rather than build their own. This is one sound, rational argument for a free market — it is extremely productive and creates enormous wealth for everybody.

However, this is not exactly true in the contemporary markets — companies do invest both labor and capital into moving competitors into worse situations rather than making own advancements. The critics of the market do have a point here, companies tend to act in ways that, free market theoretically speaking, seems irrational and counter-productive. Not only do companies outrun by others try to bring down the more successful firms as a last attempt to survive as market players — market leaders invest their rightfully earned profits into keeping competitors far (or further) behind.

Now, why would actors in the market place do such a thing if it is utterly irrational and much more costly than investing in development? The answer is: free market thinking isn’t applicable. It isn’t possible to use free market logic to say such acts are rational or not in a market that isn’t free. The rationale for destroying competitors rather than advancement of self enters the market the same moment the State does.

We know a market that isn’t free is less efficient and less wealth-creating and less innovative than a free market. In a market under the weight of a regulatory, interventionist State the conditions fundamentally change and the logic is necessarily different from the logic of the free market. The not-so-free market logic includes parameters free market logic does not have to consider: coercive restrictions, favors and political pull, taxes, etc.

In the contemporary market it may not be rational to invest in and strive for advancement in order to create a distance to competitors simply because the cost of keeping competitors at bay is internalized in the State. The huge costs of moving competitors into a worse situation are kept artificially low through the State offering the "service" of crippling competition mainly at taxpayers’ expense. The costs of the coercive framework have already been covered — the coercive apparatus can be used for but a small fee (be it bribe, campaign contribution, patent fee…).

This not-so-free market logic isn’t applicable only in markets where the huge welfare-warfare state is a player; it is applicable in any market with a power monopoly. The reason for this is that it is not the State per se that changes the logic of the market — it is the very nature of power. Any power, even if somehow limited, has this kind of destructive influence on the market: even if the existing power doesn’t currently have the power or infrastructure to forcefully stifle competition, it may seize it and thus creates an artificial opportunity to use power as a means of competition.

Power, as we know, can be lobbied, bribed, bought and in many other ways used if one has the knowledge how to do it. A strictly limited power might not be used directly, but it is quite possible to successfully invest in the project to create a slight alleviation of these limits in order to gain return favors. Even if power is tightly leashed, and thus the cost of making use of it high, power itself necessarily attracts attention from those willing to use it. A market where such a power exists will thus never function as a free market.

Competition often tends to be ugly in contemporary markets simply because it is "cut-throat" in a very real sense. Companies act rationally in a profit-maximizing sense, and thus make use of State coercion where it exists in order to "cut the throats" of competitors with the State’s sword. So long as there is a State-like power directly or indirectly affecting the market there will be political favors, destruction, and fiddling in the market place rather than open, honorable business exchanges for mutual benefit.

Per Bylund [send him mail] works as a CIO/IT and Development Manager in Sweden, in preparation for PhD studies. He is the founder of Anarchism.net. Visit his website.

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The European Union is about peace, freedom, and greatness. At least according to the official statements of representatives of the union as well as the declarations made by the councils and parliament. It is about peace, originally, through offering a framework within which formerly warring European nations are made partners in a great project on which they are dependent. It is about freedom through the EU’s Four Freedoms: the ability of goods, services, capital, and labor to move freely within the internal market. It is about greatness because the EU, at least to many Europeans, is a way of making Europe a counter-weight to the only remaining super-power USA.

But as is always the case with political projects, the truth isn’t anything like the official story. The European Union is certainly not an exception to this rule.

Peace may be a real aim, but the effect of the bizarre pan-European political project is more likely a total breakdown and perhaps even a European "civil war." The reason is that the EU is trying to increase its powers "on behalf of" (but really "at the expense of") its member nations. This causes friction between the national level political assemblies and the union level dittos. Also, the EU programs cause hostility between neighboring countries simply because a program is interpreted as benefiting "them" while hurting "us," or vice versa. The political game, as we know, consists mostly of losers (only certain politicians win), and therefore it effectuates frictions, hostility, and conflicts.

Freedom has never been a real part of the EU — the so-called four freedoms might as well be called the Four Control Areas. The union is an enormous political entity handing out favors and privileges to whoever plays the political game best (which very seldom is the best actor in the marketplace). In the name of social justice, the environment, employment security, or whatever the EU regulates, taxes, and in any way possible tries to intimidate and destroy non-political actors.

I don’t even have to mention greatness, since the huge socialist machinery of the EU will not ever be able to get Europe anywhere.

So what is the European Union about if it isn’t about peace, freedom, or greatness? The answer should be fairly obvious: it is about power and control. Politicians in the most politicized part of the world (yes, Europe) simply must have felt they needed yet another level of political decision-making through which politicians’ power can be increased further.

Perhaps the politicians were afraid to be unemployed, like the millions of people suffering from the political regulations of the European markets. So why not use the power within reach to create another monster, at an even higher level, that can feed hundreds or even thousands of politicians and be fed by the coerced masses? Friends and family can get high-wage jobs turning papers in the huge bureaucracy (which of course is much larger than any national bureaucracy — it has to present all documents in all languages spoken in Europe) and effectuating the decisions made by the political assemblies.

Let’s take a look at a recent example of what the EU spends time and money doing. This example is not at all unique — it is but the most recent of hundreds of equally silly suggestions and proposals of the EU. And it shows clearly how much of the EU is really peace, freedom, and greatness — and how much is simply a quest for power and control.

March 9 the newspapers reported that members of the European Parliament are pushing for a pan-European ban of light bulbs. The reason is that lit light bulbs use too much electricity to illuminate our houses (and the parliament buildings too, I presume). This electricity is produced in coal-burning or nuclear power plants, both of which are harmful for the environment. The coal-burning kind of power plants, the most common kind in Europe, is the source of enormous carbon dioxide emissions which are believed (by some, at least) to cause global warming. So there seems to be a "real" threat in consuming too much electric power, however far-fetched.

The ban is supposed to come into force in 2010, so before then a few hundred million people in Europe would have to buy low-energy substitutes to the common light bulbs. This is, by the way, what the EU tries to obtain: if millions of Europeans change their old-fashioned (but cheap) light bulbs for low-energy high-tech alternatives the continent’s energy consumption will go down slightly. Yes, slightly. This large-scale change means only a difference in energy consumption on the margin. So why do it?

Well, three days after the news of the likely light bulb ban in 2010 the answer was spelled out by Swedish member of the European parliament Christofer Fjellner, one of the very few libertarians in Brussels, on his blog. On March 12 he wrote: "Imports of Chinese low-energy consuming light bulbs [the kind not affected by the ban] were in 2002 levied with a 66% tariff. The tariff was introduced in order to protect Siemens [German high-tech corporation], despite the fact that Siemens’ production is only 25% of the total European production." According to Fjellner, the "remaining" producers (the ones producing three times as much as Siemens) were opposed to the tariff, a fact that didn’t really bother the politicians.

So it would seem the old-fashioned and rather inefficient but huge corporation Siemens cannot compete with foreign companies. Instead of trying to streamline processes and increase efficiency, Siemens have obviously done what most big businesses do nowadays in the western corporate states (or, in the case of Europe, the corporate super-state): they bought favors from politicians. Siemens cannot have lost much of its former greatness due to foreign competition (yet), since it evidently can afford to buy both the favor of imposed tariffs and even a continent-wide ban of alternative products.

Peace, freedom, and greatness of course had nothing to do with any of this. And the environment was only, as "crises" so often are, used as a reason to increase political influence. Randolph Bourne wisely asserted that "war is the health of the state" — wars allow the state to grow unrestrained. If there is no war, and not even the possibility to start one, a media-driven hysteria or popular belief in an imminent crisis might just do the trick.

Per Bylund [send him mail] works as a CIO/IT and Development Manager in Sweden, in preparation for PhD studies. He is the founder of Anarchism.net. Visit his website.

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Piracy is becoming a real problem, not only for private enterprise but also — or perhaps first and foremost — for multinational mega-corporations and nation-states. The problem is discussed at international conferences and at political summits attended by great state leaders. But there is still no real solution in sight to this increasing problem.

The pirates seem to strike everywhere and they tend to always get away with it. They cause enormous damage (at least, according to the "right" sources) but the authorities are unable to aggressively seek a solution to this problem. The inefficiency of anti-piracy measures is partly due to vague and unclear legislation and partly due to legal and practical limitations to measures efficient and effective enough.

A recent report on piracy "specially mentions" the Kingdom of Sweden as a refuge for pirate groups, claiming they "have flourished … due to this country’s notoriety as a piracy safe haven." Pirates in Scandinavia in general, and especially in Sweden, it seems, are trying to live up to the ill-deserved reputation of their old-time (700—1200 AD) "pirating" Viking forbears.

Furthermore, the pirates seem to enjoy widespread support from the general public despite the claimed destruction of their actions. This popular support of piracy tends to cripple government and enforcement of The Law. While this causes enormous frustration among corporations dependent on government enforcement of protective laws, piracy is said to cause enormous costs and violate rights of producers of value.

For last year’s general election a new party, The Pirate Party, was formed around the issue of piracy: they called for abolishing all anti-piracy laws and bring government registration of pirates to an end. The party, formed only nine months before the elections in September, gained an impressive 0.63 % of the votes despite other parties feeling compelled to embrace piracy in their campaigns (they have all abandoned this issue by now).

Piracy in Sweden has no doubt become pervasive. A large part of the population is partaking in acts of piracy and is even said to be benefiting from it by gaining access to products and services without paying the required fees and taxes. The aforementioned report on piracy purposely mentions Sweden "due to [its] widespread internet piracy" and calls for a political solution to the problem.

Especially the state-supported guild of Hollywood intellectual rights-holders are putting enormous political pressure on governments all over the world, like Sweden’s, to reinforce existing laws for the protection of "intellectual" privilege and fortify government-sanctioned special rights.

Owing to the enormous resources spent by the Hollywood guild the Swedish government has managed to derogate the right to freedom of speech through enacting new laws and establishing a new praxis for fighting piracy. It is a matter of necessity. Infrastructure used for piracy, i.e. the private property of individuals who have not in any way committed crimes and thus cannot be (and haven’t been) convicted, has been temporarily stolen by goons with government hats in the name of "property rights."

In a recent raid against a Stockholm-based company Swedish government goons were explicitly (illegally) directed by representatives of the Hollywood guild, acting on the guild’s and US government’s mandate (official comments), ensuring everything on the premises was confiscated. Surveillance cameras, before being covered or destroyed by the government hat people and representatives of the guild, caught the anti-pirate mob on tape making sure no equipment was left behind.

This case was followed by the media worldwide, and especially in the so-called blogosphere, but its real effects are so far almost unnoticed to the general public. The pirates are still online and the number of pirates in the Swedish population is ever increasing. However, there have been quite a few restrictions made in the rights the Swedish government grants its people. The restrictions have been made exclusively to accommodate the Hollywood guild and its partner government.

In a not too distant future this cartel is very likely to put an end to piracy and through it increase its own powers. Rights have never been a core concept in Swedish legislation, and the encumbrance the few existing rights are to the government in exercising its important authority needs to be done away with. As always, the "threat" of new technology is used to boost government power, and ordinary people are the ones who end up paying the bill.

So one better choose side; either you’re with the government or you’re against it. Pirate or civilian alike.

Per Bylund [send him mail] works as a CIO/IT and Development Manager in Sweden, in preparation for PhD studies. He is the founder of Anarchism.net. Visit his website.

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Schumpeter’s "creative destruction" describes how the free market’s new and more efficient industries push out old ones, creating economic growth. The state’s perversion of this process we may call uncreative destruction. The state overtly subsidizes some industries and groups (including itself and its employees), while covertly it destroys society’s overall wealth and well-being, lowering economic growth and welfare.

The state’s magic act and trickery consists in attracting attention to the subsidies of its right-handed spending while obscuring the even greater destruction of its left-handed taxes and regulations. As French 19th century economist Bastiat wrote, in his essay That Which Is Seen, and That Which Is Not Seen, there are two effects of the state’s actions: the visible and the invisible. The state points to the economic activity of fixing real and imaginary broken windows (the subsidies), while avoiding all mention of the windows it breaks, the houses it bulldozes, and the people diverted from building new and better houses (the destruction.)

The state, for example, advertises the stimulative effect of wartime spending, which subsidizes all those businesses producing war matériel and supports all those working in war industries. But its taxes to pay for the war are extracted from a broad swath of the population who experience their wealth diverted and destroyed. The destruction does not end there. With lower wealth, people’s capacities to save and invest in human and physical capital are decreased. Innovation is stifled in the butter industries as production to meet demands is curtailed and shifted to waste. Economic growth declines.

All state spending is like spending on wars in diverting production away from what people want and value (the invisible) and into what people do not want and do not value. And all of it causes destruction in more ways than one. With more wealth going to guns and less to butter, people go unemployed in the butter industries. People’s lives and plans are disrupted. They must travel and seek different employment elsewhere. Social and family relations are disarranged, imposing heavy psychic costs on human beings. Meanwhile, the state’s takings make obsolete, divert, and destroy all forms of capital: physical, human, and social.

We know that the destruction effects exceed the subsidy effects simply because the taxes are coerced. And because the destruction includes not only the immediate diversion of wealth away from goods people favor (butter), but also the destruction of investment and innovation, the destruction of preferred social arrangements, and the imposition of psychic costs on those forced to alter their preferred living arrangements, we can be sure that the destruction far exceeds the subsidy benefit. We can be sure that the net effect of subsidy and destruction is net destruction.

All state programs have the same sorts of net negative impacts upon society. A Social Security program, for example, is highly destructive. In this case, a favored group of elderly is subsidized while an unfavored group of employed taxpayers foots the bill. Saving, investment, and innovation are stifled broadly throughout the entire society. Growth and progress diminish. The many and varied negative social and economic impacts on family, work, and attitude add to the negative total.

How large is the state’s uncreative destruction? Very large. Rothbard suggested that all of the state’s spending was waste. How can we get an idea of the extent of the net destruction? As a lower bound, we can consider the long-term changes in the efficiency of American industry, and we can consider the tax bite taken from taxpayers.

In the 1880′s, American industry (in real terms) produced a 7 percent rate of return on invested capital. Today, the figure is 4 percent. Suppose that firms retain all of this return and reinvest it. Then they will grow at a 7 percent rate in 1880 and at a 4 percent rate in 2007. Although industry does not retain all of its earnings, the large drop in profitability suggests that a vast slowdown in the growth rate has come about because of the state. Changes in taxes coincide with this slower growth and confirm it. Suppose that the tax rate in 1880 was nil, and that the tax rate today is 30 percent. Then the after-tax return of a 7 percent rate today is reduced to 4.9 percent. A 40 percent tax rate reduces the return to 4.2 percent. As the state absorbs returns and diverts that wealth to waste, both taxes and slower growth reflect that diversion.

Not being historians and not being centagenarians, great numbers of Americans are unaware that the American growth rate has slowed so noticeably. Even if they recognized the visible loss in the decreased growth rate, would they realize the tremendously huge wealth losses this entails? Probably not. As growth begins from any base amount, it compounds. With a 4 percent growth rate, the base grows more slowly and the increments are much smaller. With a 7 percent growth rate, not only is the growth rate higher but the increments are larger and larger. There is a substantial growth-upon-growth effect, which is exactly like an interest-upon-interest effect. One thousand dollars grows to $50,000 in 100 years at 4 percent. It grows to $868,000 in 100 years at 7 percent. Although the growth rate is 75 percent higher (7/4 = 1.75), the ending wealth is higher by a factor of over 17 or 1700 percent.

Add on to slower growth the less visible or invisible losses in terms of technical innovations, education, health care, population growth, longevity, and culture. Add to this the losses in quality of services provided by states when they replace free market services. Add to this the sheer waste when states force human activity into channels where it does not want to go. In total, the destruction must be even greater than a 75 percent drop in growth rate suggests. Below we assume that today’s rate of government destruction is greater by a factor of 125 percent than in 1880.

To view the two faces of government more concretely, we explicitly introduce the subsidies to some businesses (guns) and the destruction to others (butter.) Let the business product in 1880 be denoted BPAST. Suppose that in 1880, the effect of subsidies was to increase this by 20 percent or by 0.2BPAST, and suppose that the effect of destruction was to reduce this by 30 percent or by —0.3BPAST. The net effect on the 1880 economy is then —0.1BPAST. Taxes measure this, since in total at all levels of government, they were probably around 10 percent at that time. At 10 percent, the drag on the economy in 1880 was relatively small.

Fast forward to 2007. The state is far larger. Its subsidies are larger and its destruction is larger. Suppose that the subsidies have increased by 50 percent compared with 1880. That is, the effect on today’s product (called BNOW) is 0.2 x 1.5 = 0.3. Today’s subsidies are 30 percent of today’s product. Today’s destructions have also amplified, by an even greater factor; let us say by 125 percent. That means the destruction effect is now —.3 x 2.25 = —0.675 of BNOW.

The net destruction today on BNOW is then 0.3—0.675 = —0.375. This figure of 37.5 percent approximates the tax rate being paid to the state today. By supposing that the state’s destruction has gone up faster than its subsidies have (125 percent compared to 50 percent), we obtain a sensible numerical result that replicates several facts: (1) the reduction in business efficiency from 7 to 4 percent, and (2) the increase in taxes upon business (felt of course by individuals).

Suppose that the business sector in a free market can produce and grow at 7 percent, both in the past and today. Using the guesstimates, the real growth rate in 1880, after the state’s depredations, was 0.9 x 7 percent = 6.3 percent. Today, the real growth rate is 0.625 x 7 percent = 4.375 percent. These numbers are speculative, but their difference provides a sensible ballpark and lower bound estimate of the net effect of the state’s destructions over its subsidies. As taxes have jumped from low to high levels, the growth rate of the economy has dropped by about 30 percent, that is, the difference between 6.3 and 4.375 divided by 6.3.

Why does the state’s destructiveness rise faster than the subsidies it provides? There are several reasons. Economically, when the state taxes, it first draws funds away from the lowest-valued projects that businesses wish to invest in. Later it draws funds away from more highly valued projects. As they seek to fund these, they run into capital costs rising at increasingly higher rates. Another reason is that the state’s regulations accompany its subsidies and taxing, and these add whole new layers of destructiveness by hindering innovation, forcing companies to divert resources to evasions, and driving companies overseas. Third, the state introduces political uncertainty into the business equation. Fourth, there are network effects. As destructiveness spreads, it deteriorates and disrupts business inter-relations among different industries. Fifth, as businesses learn that politics is influencing their production, they seek out political favors so that favoritism and the concurrent destruction grow. Sixth, the state is able to capture industries to which it provides subsidies.

The state’s only creativity is in designing its tricks and fooling the public. We who are on the receiving end experience massive uncreative destruction.

Per Bylund [send him mail] works as a CIO / IT and Development Manager in Sweden, in preparation for PhD studies. He is the founder of Anarchism.net. Visit his website.

Michael S. Rozeff [send him mail] is a retired Professor of Finance living in East Amherst, New York.

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My previous article on LRC discussed voting as an act of legitimating the State, and it generated a great number of extra e-mails in my inbox. Most of them politely told me I had overlooked the fact that a rather large part of the United States population is not eligible to vote. And so the effectiveness of my reasoning is undermined due to errors in the numbers.

It’s true that I didn’t mention the ineligible part of the population, but this I did on purpose. The reason is that the democratic principle is based on the people (or, the population) ruling themselves, but nowhere is "the people" clearly defined. In ancient Greece, most famously in the city-state of Athens, "the people" consisted only of male property-owners who had been born in Athens. All other people living there — males without property, women, children, immigrants, and slaves — could not take part in public affairs.

The same is true in the contemporary version of democratic states: the representative democracy. It still means the people ruling themselves, but through a number of representatives, yet still no one really knows who "the people" are. One would think that claiming the people should rule themselves means you already know who the people are, but no political scientist or politician will be able to answer such a question without reservation.

The truth is that in using the argument for democracy almost everybody simply takes for granted "the people" are anyone who either lives in or is a citizen of the specific organization with territorial monopoly of the use of aggressive violence, a.k.a. a State or government (I’m using the terms interchangeably here.) This is supposed to mean that everyone who has a real interest in how government is going about its business also has the right to choose representatives in that government, has control of government policy-making, and can hold representatives accountable.

This sounds a bit too good to be true, even though I’m no proponent of government, and it is: the argument for democracy is simply fiction. And as we know, there’s always a difference between fiction and fact. Democratic government is no exception to this rule.

In reality "the people" are not anyone with real interest in government, but only those people the government have already approved. Hence, there are rules for who are eligible voters. For instance, you have to be of a certain age, be a citizen or have lived within the borders of the State for a certain number of years, not be imprisoned, and you have to be "sane" in a way specified by the State. And you have to register to receive this right to be part of the people, with the effect that people supposedly representing you know exactly who you are and where to find you.

These rules are of course arbitrary. What’s there to say anyone aged 17 years and 11 months cannot vote for this or that reason, but for the same reasons someone about a month older can? Why does not a mother aged 17 have the right to vote, while a senile person of 71 does? And why do certain crimes take away your right as a part of "the people" so that you no longer can influence government?

Such rules make no sense. If democracy really means "the people" should rule, then why does the government, which supposedly represents the people, forcefully exclude large parts of the people from that democratic right? This question, striking at the root of what democracy supposedly is, is a perfectly good reason not to accept government’s arbitrary rules as a starting point for discussing voting and the legitimacy of the State.

My point of departure in the article mentioned was the fiction of democracy — the principles of the theory, not the facts. This is to say, I discussed the foundations for our modern-day democratic states as the argument usually goes: that "the people" elect representatives who in turn rule but are frequently held accountable. But even the argument for democracy fails to be convincing, and the fact about democracy is even worse. The democratic fiction is that "the people" rule themselves through appointing government representatives, but the fact is "the people" is defined by government.

Per Bylund [send him mail] works as a business consultant in Sweden, in preparation for PhD studies. He is the founder of Anarchism.net. Visit his website.

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The federal government of the United States is originally a republican government, but is safe to say it has evolved, or perhaps degenerated, into a representative democracy in many ways. It should be obvious the constitutional limits on power, and the separation of such, have not worked. The state is enormous and it has all the "qualities" of being democratic.

So let’s just stick to the fact that the federal government of the United States is as much democratic as the German or French governments. The people in Washington DC are, or so they claim, the representatives of the people and they have only the powers delegated to them by the citizenry. It is the social contract kind of thing, where the government is supposed to protect the people from each other as well as from foreign threats. That contract is the reason the people has originally instituted a government and that’s where the legitimacy of the state, as well as its powers, comes from.

This is also what underlies the basic human right to withdraw that very support if the government does not behave properly: the right to revolt against tyranny. I’m not saying the United States government is tyrannical, that’s not the point of this text. I simply wish to analyze the reasons for assuming legitimacy for the contemporary state.

If these theories were true, and I would say they essentially are, then government is for the people, by the people, and of the people, as Lincoln expressed it, or it is not. If the former, then there is, theoretically, no problem with it; if the latter, then its subjects have not granted it any legitimacy and so it is a violation of our basic right to selves and must go.

So let’s examine this legitimacy and where it comes from. It is impossible to, as the old philosophers did, simply assume this legitimacy is passed on from generation to generation. Also, whatever philosophical starting point you may think of, real legitimacy is either awarded now, at this very moment, or it is not. So either government is legitimate or it is not, it’s as simple as that.

But it is not serious to simply expect legitimacy to "be" there. It has to be expressed, and I’m sure you agree that support for something cannot be implicit or unnoticeable. So anyone supporting government thus has to actively grant it legitimacy. Is there a better way to do this than to take part in that great advance auction sale of stolen goods called elections? Probably not, since these elections make the very core of democratic government; it is so central to the idea of democratic government that politicians themselves claim legitimacy based on the ballots cast.

This means that people who really wish to grant legitimacy to government should take time to vote, while those who do not should not. It also means that government is legitimate only to the extent its subject population actively, through voting, supports it. So let’s look at the numbers.

Of the United States population of approximately 300 million, only 122 million voted in the presidential elections in 2004. President Bush was supported by 50.7% of voters, or 62,040,610 people.

But what does this mean? It means a terrifyingly large part of the population actually takes time to support government. But it also means that only about 40% of the population thinks it proper to grant government legitimacy — 60% didn’t care to vote. Also, it means less than 21% of the population voted for the president. That doesn’t make sense, now does it? 21% of the population, one in every five people, voted for the guy in the White House pretending to be a representative of that 21% and the other 79%.

It also means less than half of the population wanted to spend their precious time actively supporting government. So exactly how is the United States government legitimate?

In a recent poll made for CNN, the numbers above are confirmed: 54% said government was doing too much and that many of the decisions made should be made by businesses and individuals. Only 37% supported government growth.

Compare these 37% with the 40% of the population voting in 2004 to grant the growing government legitimacy. The numbers are almost the same. And 54% say government is doing too much, compared to 60% not voting. The numbers are approximately the same, so it would seem they are just about right. More than half of the United States population in fact does not support the government as it is, and these people do not want it to grow even more.

So the people in Washington DC may be the power elite in a representative democracy, dependent on "the people" granting them legitimacy. But the question we should ask is: who do they represent? It certainly isn’t the people.

Per Bylund [send him mail] works as a business consultant in Sweden, in preparation for PhD studies. He is the founder of Anarchism.net. Visit his website.

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On September 17 the voting sheep of Sweden made an end to a very long saga: the social democratic hegemony in Swedish politics. A center-right coalition of four parties gained a majority of votes and formed a new government in the beginning of October. The potential change in politics this may lead to, however at best marginal, is welcomed by many an entrepreneur. But the new government didn’t start out setting a powerful agenda; it is more like a farce.

Before the new government, lead by somewhat conservative party leader Mr. Reinfeldt, could even present a budget, two ministers had already had to resign. The minister of trade, Ms. Borelius, was forced to resign after only eight days as minister because of harassments in the media due to the nature of her personal finances. She had committed no crime, except for hiring a nanny for her children now and then (the crime being not having paid employers "fees" of 33%).

The real problem, as reported in the media, was the fact that she had consciously tried to avoid paying taxes through planning her deductions and investments carefully. This is no crime if you manage to comply with the thousands of rules in the tax code, but it is considered a deeply immoral thing to do by the general public. And it is an indication of the individual’s egotism and anti-solidarity, especially if rich.

Ms. Borelius, a famous science journalist, was brought down by her former colleagues through their detailed reports on her and her family’s financial status and behavior. It took only eight days to create a public demand for her resignation too strong to handle. She asked the Prime Minister, Mr. Reinfeldt, to be resigned and was so on October 14.

More ministers were of course investigated by the media, and they were especially tough on Ms. Cecilia Stegö Chilò, minister of culture and former CEO of libertarian-conservative think tank Timbro. She was very resolutely opposed as minister, long before the cultural politics of the new government was presented, by the left-wing intelligentsia and cultural elite. Part of the reason was her former opposition to public service television and radio — as well as her principled approach to state subsidies of culture.

The cultural establishment claimed Ms. Stegö Chilò was the end: her ministry would mean the "death of the humanities, the death of art." Some would not go as far but instead stated that it would take decades to revive culture when her time as minister had ended.

It was soon discovered that Ms. Stegö Chilò had not paid the "television license" for 16 years. The "license" is a special kind of tax levied on the ownership of devices with the capability to receive television broadcasts, a scheme intended to finance state television and radio channels. The illegality of not paying taxes was not the real issue here; it was overshadowed by the fact that the minister of culture consciously did not support public service programming neither theoretically nor financially.

Paying the license for all the 16 years just before accepting the position as minister did not save Ms. Stegö Chilò. She was forced to resign after only ten days.

This was not, however, the end of the scandals of this government. It was discovered by journalists that more ministers in the new government had not paid the license and that they had neglected to do so for many years. The minister of integration (of immigrants), Tobias Billström, had not paid it for ten years. He has so far managed to cling to his post after having quickly paid the license and publicly declared it was but a case of civil disobedience from his ignorant youth that had "lived on" without him noticing. Billström, along with 6,500 other people (among which were a large number of members of parliament and local politicians), registered for and paid the television license that week.

Billström was saved partly thanks to the Prime Minister stating his full support for the minister of integration, but also because the media found another and much more interesting scandal. The minister of finance, Anders E. Borg, had had his neighbor’s daughter baby-sit the children repeatedly. The former baby-sitter came forward in one of the largest newspapers, saying she was paid SEK11,500 (approximately $1,600) by Mr. Borg and his wife that one year. Borg claims he did not pay more than SEK10,000.

The SEK1,500 ($200) may seem unimportant, but isn’t. In fact, this amount is the core of this "scoop." The law states that you have to report any purchase of services, unless from a registered company, where the total amount of services exceeds SEK10,000 in one year. Since Mr. Borg did not report to the authorities, whether he paid SEK11,500 or SEK10,000 is most important (if you care about these things, that is).

It seems Borg, just like Billström, manages to stay put as minister. But who knows for how long? All this happened in just the first two weeks of this newly elected government. These are interesting times.

Per Bylund [send him mail] works as a business consultant in Sweden, in preparation for PhD studies. He is the founder of Anarchism.net. Visit his website.

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Every year we hear on TV about the United Nations sending observers to poor "third world" countries to oversee their election process. There is nothing strange with that — most of us expect not-so-civilized countries to be corrupt and not honor the democratic process. Of course we should send proud democratic people from our great democratic nations to oversee the elections in infant democratic countries. We could teach them a lot.

Actually, we Swedes are probably the most peaceful, successful, neutral and democratic people on earth (if you ask us). Everybody can learn from the Swedes. Just take a look at our extremely successful Swedish model "third way" politics — our welfare state is enormous, but it works splendidly and we get superb public services almost for free. Who wouldn’t want that?

The Swedish democracy is also probably the most democratic in the world. Sure, public funding is only available for the bigger parties and no parties will be represented in parliament unless they get at least four percent of the votes. But those are practical necessities — they don’t really harm our democracy in any way.

Oh, and we’ve stopped counting the "blank" votes. They are nowadays called "invalid" and are not to be counted. But that doesn’t really restrict our democracy since there are so many democratic welfare-embracing parties in parliament anyway. Anyone who is a true democrat can easily find a party representing one’s dearest, most important values. And why would you want to count such votes anyway — people not voting for a real, established party don’t know what’s best for them anyway.

Also, our election process is superb. It is based on equality, the rule of law, an effective and efficient welfare state, and everybody’s right to choose his representatives in parliament. Sure, you cannot really vote for the specific person, but why would you like to do that? The parties have lists with names already lined up for you in the order they think you like them most. That should do, and they know better who you should vote for anyway. And democracy is not only for the ordinary, voting population — it is for parties and politicians as well. That’s the beauty of it, isn’t it? We’re all in on it and we all have a say; it doesn’t really matter if we disagree, were still together — in the same boat.

It is strange most countries don’t send people to Sweden for every election to check out how we do these things. After all, we are the world champions in democracy, and we are a truly democratic people. You can all learn from us, and we’ll be glad to help if you want to learn how we have organized our superior state.

We’re also the best in the world in not really taking sides in conflicts; we love them both and thus want them both to win. They are both right — it is just a matter of perspective. After all, terrorists and dictators are humans too! That’s the beauty of being neutral — you get to be the one standing next to the mess pointing your finger at everybody. And we do it so well.

But we are a small country, however superior in many ways. So the United Nations is very important to us; that’s the greatest institution in the world. In the UN we get to hide behind diplomacy and never really have to take responsibility for our ideas and suggestions — we’re all in on it. And we really don’t have to take responsibility for our great neutral, cocky no-good better-knowing arrogant suggestions.

So why don’t you take a look at our superior elections process? You should start now, before we’re too far ahead of you. For example, we’ve just introduced a new progressive approach: for the elections this year, for the first time ever, we will actually check people’s identity before voting.

Per Bylund [send him mail] works as a business consultant in Sweden, in preparation for PhD studies. He is the founder of Anarchism.net. Visit his website.

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The problem anarchists have with minarchists isn’t really that they advocate a monopolized legal system with a monopoly police corps and monocentric law. Usually people think this is the reason anarchists and statists cannot go together. But it isn’t so. Anarchists can accept statists living next-door or a block down the road, and living the way they find most satisfying. No problem. And statists should be able to accept anarchists just the same way.

But this isn’t really what the seemingly never-ending and often very irascible discussion between anarchists and minarchists is about. The problem has to do with perspective and force, not really of whether the "proper functions" of government should be a community monopoly or not. And this is what makes it so confusing when libertarians discuss utopia — they appear to say almost the same things, yet seemingly hate each other more than "the enemy."

Anarchist and statist libertarians may agree on the supremacy of the free market, private schooling, abolishing the war on drugs, free trade, and even the right to secession. The problem lies in perspective and the use and meaning of force, and that is what makes it impossible to bridge the seemingly non-existent difference in political program.

The perspectives are totally different, and this is where anarchists and minarchists are on opposite sides vertically speaking. Anarchists generally see society from the bottom up, thereby demanding valid arguments for any structure above the level of the individual. It doesn’t really matter what good a structure may bring about or how promising it looks; if it isn’t voluntary and sprung out of the spontaneous order it should not be. The general conclusion is here that such a structure is oppressive and must be fought.

This also means that polycentric law comes naturally, just as the rights of the individual come before the rights of any abstraction of individuals (such as the family or the state). Whenever polycentric law tends to become oligocentric or monocentric anarchists get cold feet. It doesn’t really matter if it comes about voluntarily, spontaneously and on the market and thus legitimately — if it is centralized it is intimidating. Centralization inevitably means the risk for oppression and usury is increased.

Minarchists generally have a total lack of understanding for this fear. They speak about the superiority of a "minimalist" state preserving the natural rights they so generously have defined for everybody in order to give us all the freedom and liberty they say we need. The problem to them today is not that there is a state with monocentric law, monopolistic interpretation of it and how people are allowed to act, or the monopoly of the police. The problem is there is way too much state, too much monopoly.

Whereas anarchists to statists should seem much exaggerated about the risks and too nervous about power transferred to abstract organizations, statists to anarchists seem overly naïve about the threat and dangers of power.

The other anarchist libertarian—statist libertarian mismatch is horizontal rather than vertical. This has to do with the limits and extent of the application of utopia and how it is enforced. As we have already seen, anarchists and statists are often completely different in terms of perspectives, and adding force to the equation makes an unbridgeable ravine of this difference.

If each and every one of us was an [introvert] "state" in himself there would be no problem — even anarchists would be statists. Actually, anarchists have no problem accepting voluntary associations of people agreeing on monocentric law and the monopolized enforcement of such law. Polycentric doesn’t necessarily mean individualistic even though the choice must always be the individual’s. This is why I began this article by stating that anarchists generally do accept statists — and even state communities — next-door or down the road.

In such a community society statists should have no problem with anarchists either. Statists would obviously live in state communities and they would likely band together in nice hierarchies and super-community power structures. There is no reason to believe anarchists and statists would ever interact; they have no real reason to. Anarchists of course want nothing to do with the statists’ state, and statists should live happily ever after with their monopolies.

It does not even matter what perspective you have if you accept the view of a free society consisting of a multitude of communities with different laws and different ways of life. And since communities might merge into still greater communities, statists could even have a chance to enjoy (!) bureaucracy.

The problems enter when we start talking of the minimalist state or minarchism. Of course, having minarchist communities would be no problem; I bet there would be fewer problems within minarchist communities than within mammoth welfare-distributing bureaucratic communities. The latter would have greater incentive to seize the wealth of neighboring communities, since their money would continuously disappear in the black hole of bureaucracy and programs of redistribution.

But this isn’t the issue — the reason libertarians don’t go along well is minarchists insist minarchist society must encompass the whole nation-state. Secession is fine, but only by states from the federation or by counties from states. The basis of thinking is still the political system and its monopolist powers, and therefore there is no room for anyone wanting to live differently. Society under the minarchist state might offer a multitude of ways to live, but only within a "framework" of a state.

It is all about the application, and this is where perspective yet again becomes important. If you think of society as individuals spontaneously seeking other individuals in order to establish agreements or contracts for mutual benefit, there is no reason why you can’t accept other people with different values getting together and organizing in a completely different way than your preferred choice. But if you see society from above and wish to structure a society as you think it should be structured, then you cannot accept people organizing very differently. Such actions would ruin your plans — anarchists, communists, religious people or whoever would jeopardize the minarchist Great Plan for society!

This is the violence of The State anarchists are so fond of talking about and so terrified of. It does not really matter how small or "proper" the state is if it is all-encompassing and territorial. Such a state necessarily means someone’s (and most likely your own) freedom is compromised, and that cannot be accepted. This nature of the state means the difference in principle is necessarily between anarchist theories on the one hand and statist theories on the other — minarchists obviously belonging on the statist side. And this is why anarchists in reality cannot live their lives as they see fit next-door to minarchists: they are not allowed to.

Minarchists do claim they will allow a multitude of communities and accept a variety of lifestyles, but they are all subordinate to the rights-maintaining minarchist state. Minarchism means everybody enjoys the freedom to organize one’s life according to one’s own preferences — but only as far as the state can allow. Of course, if that was not the case they would in reality be anarchists.

Per Bylund [send him mail] works as a business consultant in Sweden, in preparation for PhD studies. He is the founder of Anarchism.net. Visit his website.

It should be
rather obvious that someone involved in politics should have a goal
and be satisfied when that goal is finally reached. If in power
for a very long time, wouldn't you say such a politician has had
a lot of opportunity to enact whatever laws he/she finds necessary
and change the state of the nation in whatever way preferable? Logically,
this should be true.

In Sweden the
social democratic party, really a socialist party, has been a hegemonic
power in Swedish politics for a century. In the parliamentary democracy
of Sweden they have sometimes had full power — over 50 % of the
seats in the parliament. (No, there is no declaration of rights
or constitution.) Still they are not satisfied and still they ask
people for their support. What is it that they could still have
to do that they have failed to do for a century in power? Or are
they so utterly incompetent that a century is not enough to bring
about the changes they felt necessary?

Maybe they
are. But I would say this is nothing special for the Swedish social
democrats. It is as applicable to the Democratic and Republican
parties in the US, or UK's New Labour and Germany's SDP and CDU.
Being eternally dissatisfied with one's accomplishments is something
inherent in politics. It is in the very nature of power never to
be satisfied with the results — there are always more things one
needs to do and more things to "improve."

The reason
could easily be said to be the dynamics of society. When one finally
has come as far as planned, society has changed and more politics
need to be done. This is a rather intuitive logic; surely one cannot
foresee exactly how things will be in the future, and therefore
one cannot ever get to utopia. We can only get close, at best.

But this conclusion
doesn't really fit when we take a closer look at it. If our society
was really that dynamic, then it would mean businessmen too would
never achieve their short or long term goals. But they do, and they
are sometimes even very satisfied with the result. Still businessmen
are not really in power — they are but actors in the marketplace
(however regulated). So it should actually be easier for politicians
to implement their utopia — they have the power to!

Power, I think,
is the most important piece of this puzzle. It is power that makes
politics eternally dissatisfying; power makes it impossible to create
the "good society." Why? It has to do with morality and
ethics — and morality and ethics have nothing to do with politics.

The reason
power is so dissatisfying really has nothing to do with the state
of the nation, or even with the utopia politicians with power are
trying to create. It has everything to do with the impossibility
of creating something good with means that are not. One cannot create
freedom using coercive means — it is impossible.

Of course,
a lot of politicians really don't want freedom — they want something
else. But they all have a vision of what society "should"
be like, they know — in one way or the other — what everything
should be like and in what kind of society their most beloved values
would be universally guiding. In that society, their utopia,
we would all prosper in the way they "know" is best.

Well, there
you go — that's the problem. What they are all wishing for is really
a society where people function the way they are supposed to function,
where people voluntarily choose to live by the values the politicians
hold dear. These people want a society structured in a certain way,
and they want people to peacefully and happily stay where they "fit"
in the social plan. Or they want a society in which people give
up everything that has to do with money, greed or profits — and
they wish for society to stay that way without having to establish
a caste of guardians controlling it.

What they really
want is a society of their dreams that is essentially voluntary
yet stable! But they are trying to establish this "voluntary"
society through pushing everybody in the "right" direction
and stealing their money. Are you really surprised they never manage
to create the society of their dreams?

Of course they
are never satisfied. What they really want is the society of their
dreams without having to rely on politics and the use of power —
yet they use politics and power in order to get there. It is pretty
obvious why we never hear politicians say they have established
utopia. It is mission impossible.

July
31, 2006

Per Bylund [send him mail]
works as a business consultant in Sweden, in preparation for PhD
studies. He is the founder of Anarchism.net.
Visit his website.

It seems to
me it doesn't really matter who you ask; the support is almost overwhelming.
But I've come to realize this mentality that often translates support
of the state is in no sense trust in the state.
Some do of course trust the state and see a coercive monopoly as
an ideal principle for society, but most people tend to distrust
the state and its officers.

This means
they should believe the state to be the lesser of two or more evils
and so it is beneficial to them personally or as a collective to
support this evil. Actually, it seems to me this is exactly the
case for very many people. They do not personally need the state
in the welfarist (or any other) sense, but they need it as protection
or leverage in order to stop "the others." People in general
are really anarchists who for some reason distrust most other people.
They cannot figure out how a society would function with so many
"weirdos" and potential enemies out there, so they tend
to favor coercive predictability over uncontrollable freedom.

In a way, this
is an economic choice. As businessmen, most people would probably
choose small but guaranteed annual profits rather than competitive
free market transactions with potentially enormous profits without
guarantees. Most people would like to know they are to live
long and healthy lives even though life would not be free in every
(or any) sense. Therefore, they prefer to choose not to live their
lives as free men and women — freedom offers no guarantees.

This
logic is applicable on all statists, it seems. Socialists and
liberals distrust entrepreneurs and capitalists as well as anyone
with money or the power to boss people around. This has [probably]
a rather natural basis in their faulty
theory of value and the analysis it supports regarding wealth
and the wealthy. People aren't to trust — they get wealthy through
using the industrious but uneducated and gullible working men and
women. Since some people "obviously" have no real sense
of morality and therefore use others as a means to simply get wealthy,
socialists cannot take the chance of letting people be free. There
are simply too many people seeking and creating inequalities.

Conservatives
tend to believe in a somewhat free economy, but have a hard time
with the choices people tend to make in their social lives. What
kind of society would there be if people did not believe in God
but instead turn to drugs use and other artificial stimuli? The
family as the strong and natural base unit might be undermined by
sacrilegious living and hedonism.

Greens simply
distrust everything about the economy and anyone taking part in
it — corporations, cooperatives and consumers alike. Abolishing
the state and its regulations and taxes on inefficient and unintelligent
use of the environment would simply make way for short-term profit
seekers and material interests.

It seems abolishing
the state, thereby releasing oneself from the chains of the state,
could cause a lot of problems and a lot of pain. Freeing everybody
means not only freeing oneself — it means also freeing everyone
and everything one dislikes. Therefore, distrust of what people
might do and not do evolves into a support for the state and all
it is about — simply because you cannot trust people. Just like
you cannot trust the state.

Even though
it may seem economic to stick to state society, at least in the
short term, there is more to life than just economic calculations.
The fundamental error these people make when supporting the state
because they do not trust everybody in the world is the identification
of society as an artificial unit: the nation-state. There is nothing
natural or eternal about the nation-state — it is not a point of
departure for any human society, but rather a result of state
society.

It seems to
me statists in general are really anarchists. It is just that they
cannot think out of the box — not regarding the nation-state and
not regarding "everybody else" or humankind. If they could
think of other bases for society than the nation-state they needn't
worry about how "everybody else" would choose to live
their lives. Just choose whatever friends and partners and live
with them according to the rules you support. That should do the
trick, shouldn't it?

The statists
I've talked to are really anarchists — they think they are fully
able to take care of themselves and their loved ones, but they are
afraid of the unknown "others" and how they would
choose to live. The underlying fallacy is of course the belief that
the choices of other people necessarily affect your life
and how you choose to live it. Does it? Necessarily? Of course not.

What is fascinating
is that these statist anarchists are so totally stuck in state thinking.
They cannot think in terms of individuals. What lives other people
choose to live only have a direct effect on your own life if society
is hierarchical and coercion-based and thus a forced unit, i.e.
a state society. So what most statists have against anarchism
is simply: the state.

July
25, 2006

Per Bylund [send him mail]
works as a business consultant in Sweden, in preparation for PhD
studies. He is the founder of Anarchism.net.
Visit his website.

Of course,
sometimes nature sneaks up on you and forces a change of plans.
But no matter what, nature is tamable, controllable, and I can use
it as I please. That's what I like about sailing: a sense of control
and freedom that cannot, as far as I know, be experienced on ground.

Sailing is
also a great teacher — it is necessary to learn how to take advantage
of whatever there is to take advantage of, and to use the powers
of nature in whatever form or shape they happen to be at the moment.
You have the destination clearly set, and whatever the current temper
of nature you have to use it to get there.

In this sense,
sailing is just like politics. Our destination is liberty, and we
need to get there no matter what forces are set against us. When
the wind blows our way, we need to set sail and ride as far possible
on the waves towards liberty. There is no time for detours and indirect
routes, just cruise along. Focus on the destination; hoist the biggest
sails you've got!

When the wind
blows heavily from the side, from the left or right, we're in for
a rough ride. Great waves may toss our boat back and forth and jeopardize
the whole mission. But it is nevertheless possible to go forward
without too much effort — if we know how to use the winds and waves
and turn the great forces to our advantage. Even though this kind
of weather is much tougher than sailing before the wind, it is far
from impossible to go forward.

Most of the
time, however, the wind seems to come straight at us. As libertarians,
we should know everything about sailing in head wind — we've had
quite some experience in the political waters for decades (if not
centuries). Yet it seems we are often taken by surprise and blown
off course whenever the wind once again rises. How many libertarian
sailors weren't blown ashore by the biting winds of the war on Iraq?
How many didn't find themselves and their boats stranded on the
shores of Patriot Act Island half a decade ago simply for relying
too much on the winds of security?

Any good sailor
knows one cannot rely on hope alone and simply drift along in head
wind. To get to the destination of your choice you need to act and
take command — it is necessary to take control of the situation,
even if storms are heading your way. As always, and even more so
in rough weather, one has to use the opposing forces to one's advantage.

In head wind
it is impossible to sail only with the wind coming in from one side,
and it is simply stupid to stubbornly try to sail straight against
the wind. It is vital to go right and then left, to crisscross and
gain little by little using both sides of the sail. It is hard work
and takes a lot of time, but it means one will eventually reach
the destination — without being blown off course.

That's also
what we, as libertarians, need to understand when the hostile, pro-war,
pro-government and anti-market winds are blowing and rising. We
need to keep working and take advantage of whatever there is that
can help us get ahead — a little help from the left, and a little
help from the right. A sailor committed to use winds coming from
the right (or left) only will never get anywhere; he will undoubtedly
be blown off course and end up a shipwreck on some hostile coast
somewhere.

What I'm proposing
is simply to learn the lesson from sailing. No wind is sacred and
no wind can be relied on; we libertarians need to learn how to tack.

May
30, 2006

Per Bylund [send him mail]
works as a business consultant in Sweden, in preparation for PhD
studies. He is the founder of Anarchism.net.
Visit his website.

Some libertarians
feel the adrenaline flowing when talking about the injustice caused
people by the State: about immigrants being forced back to torture
because they are not the "legal" kind; about poor people
kept out of the labor market by minimum wage laws; about small business
owners forced into bankruptcy because of totally unnecessary regulations
and restrictions; about average Joes being forced off their property
for the "common good"; about people literally being taxed
to death.

Yet others
can't help themselves discussing either of the two.

But there are
few of us who wish to discuss the strategy. We are usually stuck
in the "is" or "ought" — but wish to avoid the
"do." It is rather obvious that we need a good strategy
to get to there from here, i.e. to "ought" from "is."
Some of us get involved in political activism in established parties
or a libertarian such. But whatever we are doing doesn't seem to
work, does it? The Libertarian Party doesn't even get one percent
of the votes in Presidential elections and the libertarians involved
in the Republican or Democrat parties obviously cannot change the
set course of their parties.

To me, it seems
politics isn't the right way. Actually, most of the things we're
doing don't seem right — they aren't very efficient; they are at
least not efficient enough. Even though the numerous libertarian
clubs, societies, institutes, and organizations around the world
are very professional and seem very successful, they aren't successful
enough. Yes, the Soviet Union is gone, but that's not really thanks
to us. And in our own countries in Europe and North America we're
not really heading in the right direction.

So what can
we do? I believe we need to practice what we preach — we cannot
be "verbal libertarians" and expect people to trust we're
right. We need to show people it is the right way; we need to show
them that it is possible to break free and do it without much danger
to self and family. I've discussed this elsewhere (e.g. here,
here,
and here)
rather vaguely and theoretically, but there is great guidance from
great writings by great men. The problem is, it seems most people
don't know these treasures even though they are written by libertarians
for libertarians. (I'm sorry I didn't find these great texts much,
much sooner.)

What I'm proposing
is a mix of two somewhat known recipes that are really liberating
in two distinctly different ways. The first recipe provides instructions
for how to break free vertically through building a decentralized
infrastructure for free communities avoiding the State and its centralized
"solutions" altogether. The other recipe advocates breaking
free horizontally through making use of one's personal network
of friends and colleagues, and doing business out of the State's
reach. One might also call these recipes or strategies the introvert
and extrovert solutions to our methodological problem.

The basis for
both theories is the understanding of life at a micro level rather
than seeing the world only from above. It is not necessary to focus
on the federal government and how to force it back. You cannot win
taking the State on mano a mano so why even bother? But it
is quite possible to break free small-scale and doing it for yourself.
I have no idea why libertarians seem to wish to liberate "the
whole nation," instead of doing what's best for yourself and
your kin first. It isn't very individualistic and libertarian to
think of the collective population first, with the sole result being
you are yourself left in chains. (I usually refer to this as the
"Savior Complex" or "Messiah Complex," the strange
conviction that one has to liberate all of mankind in order to liberate
oneself.)

The Vertical
or Introvert Strategy

As has already
been briefly stated, this strategy consists of falling out of the
large structures of the State in order to at a much smaller scale
build infrastructures and technology to support one's community.
I'm calling this the vertical strategy since it literally means
stepping away from the centralized mode of the State in order to
supply for one's life and well-being in a decentralized, local manner.
It is in the same sense introvert in that it says we should be looking
at what is and not what is not, i.e. to use the resources available
rather than pursuing the unattainable.

What this means
in real terms is to create local or neighborhood networks for self-reliance,
where people in the vicinity get together to find ways to produce
whatever is necessary for survival and a good life. It means creating
local production facilities and markets with no effective State
regulations and without the State's knowledge.

Karl Hess discusses
the enormous possibilities of this approach in his excellent but
small book Community Technology. In the book, Hess discusses
his own experience in creating local networks for creating free
and independent neighborhoods through replacing State "services"
with community technology and voluntarily partaking in neighborhood
activities and projects producing vegetables on rooftops and breeding
fish in basements.

Hess's experience
is that one can provide for a whole neighborhood's demand for vegetables
through setting up greenhouses on a fraction of the available rooftops.
Also, through using the pumps from old washing machines and left-over
construction materials, the people in this neighborhood community
were able to set up a fish-breeding facility producing hundreds
of pounds of fish annually.

This might
not sound like your cup of tea, but these are just two examples
of the enormous possibilities of getting together to provide solutions
for the community. This specific Hessian project was carried out
in Washington D.C., which shows it is possible to create a somewhat
sovereign and independent community even in very urban areas. A
neighborhood not dependent on the State for supplies is a neighborhood
not easily subdued. Also, such a community is not as easily punished
by the government if its independence is discovered and the threat
considered real. A community does not suffer from government refusing
to supply its services if it isn't first wholly dependent on such
services.

The point I'm
trying to make here is not that we should all go rural, live like
cavemen, and grow our own vegetables. I'm saying we should stop
thinking in terms of centralization and large-scale production.
Hess stresses the fact that most, if not all important technology
is equally or better suited for small-scale use on a family or community
level. We do not need to rely on global corporations or the nation-state
to get our hands on what we treasure in life. Community Technology
shows just that.

The Horizontal
or Extrovert Strategy

The other strategy
simply means taking part in and actively creating networks and structures
for black markets. I call this the horizontal strategy because it
is simply the free market in action — individuals trading voluntarily
with each other. It is also an extrovert strategy in that it does
not necessarily focus on the neighborhood or community, but can
easily be stretched throughout a city or state and work in parallel
with the coercive structures of the State.

What it basically
proposes is to trade with people you know and people who are recommended
to you. This can all be done at whatever scale one finds appropriate,
using available technology such as the Internet and e.g. E-bay for
communication and money transactions. A first step could be to hire
the children next-door to mow the lawn or baby-sit. It does not
have to be very sophisticated at first.

This approach
should come naturally to libertarians, since it simply means exercising
trade without bothering with State regulations or paying taxes.
Most people are willing to exchange goods and services without registering
the sales tax, which is a good start. Some of them will also find
it in their interest to do this on a larger scale, producing and
distributing goods and services without ever paying taxes or following
unnecessary government regulations and controls. And most people
don't really care about government standards if they trust their
supplier.

There are probably
a few libertarians in every town who are interested in starting
a private network for free trade. This network can grow and find
other networks to trade with and thus cover a multitude of goods
and services and large areas and perhaps whole continents. The beauty
of it is that it all comes naturally, it is intuitive for people
to exchange favors, goods, and services without first asking the
State's permission.

This strategy
was originally proposed by agorist Samuel Edward Konkin III, author
of The New Libertarian Manifesto (online here),
in which he elaborates the strategy of counter-economics. Konkin's
strategy supposedly starts locally and evolves into regional, state,
and national inter-networks of free trade. When big enough, which
isn't necessarily very big at all, a demand is created in these
networks of free traders for protection and contract enforcement
services. Thus, eventually this strategy would, through the spontaneous
and voluntary mechanisms of the market provide services competing
with the State's "core" functions and services. This undermines
the power of the State and could easily replace it.

It is easy
to see the beauty and power of Konkin's idea of counter-economics
as a means for revolutionary change, especially because of its simplicity
and its intuitiveness for libertarians. It puts the libertarian
principles into practice through individual action and while doing
so it undermines the powers of the State.

Combining
the Two

Even though
Konkin's idea is simple, powerful and principally superior to the
alternatives, it is not necessarily applicable to everybody and
always. For some people it would perhaps be advantageous to not
take active part in trading in the so-called counter-economy (i.e.
all human action not sanctioned by State), perhaps because
they have certain personal convictions or to a too great degree
rely on products dependent on State services. In this case, it would
beneficial to begin with community technology.

Even though
Konkin's concept encompasses such actions and local networks for
self-reliance, it does not stress their importance. While the community
technology approach is applicable to a certain area in which people
live and work, counter-economic action is not necessarily geographically
bound; and while a strong local community does not need to trade
with the "outer" world, there is no assurance that the
practice of counter-economics would identify the advantages of providing
important services locally.

Counter-economic
networks would grow much stronger if combined with the insight of
Karl Hess that people are able to and benefit from taking over the
production of essential goods and services locally. Imagine the
web of counter-economic actors combined with sovereign communities
with production of foodstuffs and technology exceeding their internal
demand. That combined counter-State movement for personal benefit
and profit would provide a powerful adversary to the State.

It would also
benefit from the great advantages of libertarian, non-hierarchical
organization (i.e. the horizontal web through market transactions).
States function only as centralized structures of power and rule
and cannot fight an enemy as diverse and individually motivated
as such a counter-economic movement based partly on community technology
and sovereignty.

What this combined
strategy all boils down to is a decentralized, voluntary, spontaneous,
and for-profit web of actors doing what they perceive as beneficial
and thereby replacing most or all of the State's functions. It provides
also a solution to the problem of discussing only what's wrong and
what should be — through doing right where the State does wrong.
It means action where it is most important and where it is most
beneficial.

It does not
really matter if we as libertarians advocate the total abolishment
of the State or to radically cut back on its powers; the solution
seems the same. We are all pretty sure individually of what we want
to do and how things should work out were it not for the State,
and we are sure what is wrong with the world of today: State coercion.

The only problem
we're having is how to get there and how to get along with whatever
we end up with. The solution actually solves both issues through
providing a base for personal profit and creating whatever solution
you want — while undermining State power. So what are we waiting
for? Just do it.

May
9, 2006

Per Bylund [send him mail]
works as a business consultant in Sweden, in preparation for PhD
studies. He is the founder of Anarchism.net.
Visit his website.

The big
industrial corporation now owning the property seemed to have a
never-ending stack of cash. It simply wasn't possible to outbid
them; they had easily paid a lot more than Mr. Marcks and his fellow
small-scale entrepreneurs in the Multiple Business Syndicate could
ever accumulate, and "won" the site. Now the corporation
had employed a hundred construction workers building another factory-in-a-shop
facility.

Should it
really be this way, he wondered. Don't I have an equal right to
put my business at an attractive site, shouldn't I have a right
to the same opportunity Mr. Bucks, the owner of the corporation,
once had had. I deserve a break, Mr. Marcks concluded, we all do.

To anyone in
the statist left, this story would be a typical example of the injustices
of the market. Mr. Marcks and his fellow syndicate entrepreneurs
are obviously "forced" to locate somewhere else since
they cannot compete financially with the big, immoral business of
Mr. Bucks. This is, they would say, how capitalism works: they richest
takes it all, while all others are left behind and have to play
by the wealthy's rules.

(The statist
right, on the other hand, would probably take an opposite position
and demand laws to protect Mr. Bucks's "right" to be wealthy,
and call for subsidies to make sure he stays that way. At taxpayers'
expense, of course.)

The thing is
Mr. Marcks, despite his name, doesn't necessarily have to be a leftist.
He could be anyone who has been "outbid" — anyone wanting
something they cannot purchase simply because someone else had more
money to offer. The conclusion people generally make from a situation
like this, just like Mr. Marcks, is that it is unfair and cannot
be right. Everybody intuitively feel they should have an equal right,
and so they feel stepped upon by anyone with more money — and perhaps
treated unfairly.

I know a lot
of people who would rather not think about buying a scarce commodity,
or the perfect property for a beautiful summer cottage, than take
part in a bidding together with people with a lot more money. They
gather they would stand no chance — that they would lose no matter
what. But the thing is, their logic is limited in the same way leftists'
logic is. They prefer thinking in one step only, instead of seeing
things in a context.

Leftists prefer
the "snapshot" view of society, where they anytime can
stop the course of time and compare people's wealth in order to
conclude it is "unfair" (meaning unequal). They prefer
not looking at things the way they happen and are brought about,
i.e. as processes. There is no one making investments for the sake
of investing, but rather for the sake of expected returns and profits.
Leftists enjoy analyzing their snapshot view when someone has worked
hard all his life and managed to satisfy a lot of people's needs
through providing employment and products and so become wealthy.

When thinking
about it, what is unfair is really the way they see things and how
they analyze the "unfair" state of affairs. How can you
judge someone for his temporary wealth without taking into account
his achievements the passed decades? I am not saying all wealthy
people have earned it. Contrarily, I think a lot of people have
become wealthy through gaining political privileges. But that certainly
does not apply to all of them.

The reason
people can get wealthy is that resources are scarce, and that's
the reason we have an economy in the first place. In a free market
the people creating most value for others receive most value in
return. That's why Murray Rothbard stated "[t]he greater a
man's income, the greater has been his service to others" (Power
& Market, p. 224–225). The natural conclusion from
this, at least from a utilitarian perspective, would be that he
who can produce most value for others should have a right to the
resource.

That's obviously
not the way leftists think — to them, it is more important to have
equal wealth than to have more wealth. People are obviously
thought better off equally poor than unequally wealthy.

But that doesn't
change the fact of things: resources are scarce and people in general
are better off if they are used creating a maximum of output. It
is, to humanity (but not necessarily to the individual), better
to use a property for productive industry than for private leisure.
Since leftists are collectivist, they should therefore advocate
the "best use" in terms of wealth creation, i.e. the free
market.

The reason
Mr. Marcks does not find it worth the cost to outbid Mr. Bucks'
corporation in the story above is not necessarily that he has less
money. The main reason is he and his fellows in the syndicate do
not find it profitable to pay such an amount for the property
— they cannot use it efficiently enough to cover that initial investment
cost. Obviously Mr. Bucks can, and therefore he "wins"
the bidding process.

This should
not be interpreted as if the wealthiest always outbids the not so
wealthy. That is a leftist illusion, which can only be proved if
considering nothing but snapshots of society. If things are seen
as part of a process, i.e. in a context, it should be clear that
a free market "gives" a resource to the person(s) able
to create the most value out of it. If someone can create more value
than anyone using a certain resource, and is able to prove it, there
is always enough capital available in a free market to outbid any
competitor. (This does of course require some kind of ownership
rights, since without such nobody would ever dare invest in any
venture.)

A free market
is therefore not mainly for the wealthy, but for the productive,
and it always brings the most out of the limited resources nature
gives us. Eventually, through trade, the values created are made
available for the masses at minimum cost, i.e. to maximum net benefit.
Any leftist should embrace such a "system" as an ideal.
That is, if they cared about the level of prosperity in society
at all, instead of snapshot equality.

Actually, Mr.
Marcks should be happy he lost to Mr. Bucks's corporation. This
only means the most is created from the resource, and that means
Mr. Marcks does not have to bear the comparable loss of producing
less efficiently. Also, he will personally (as will all of us) gain
from the values created by the corporation when they are distributed
on the market.

Perhaps Mr.
Marcks should even thank Mr. Bucks for showing him there are more
efficient ways of using the resource — and that Mr. Marcks's assets
could be better used somewhere else.

April
14, 2006

Per Bylund [send him mail]
works as a business consultant in Sweden, in preparation for PhD
studies. He is the founder of Anarchism.net.
Visit his website.

Looking to
the history books will not help. History, as we know, is written
by the victors, not by the people carrying society on their backs.
But through looking at historical events from a non-statist point
of view we can easily see how we came to this. Let's recapitulate
the last hundred years or so, and see where all this madness comes
from.

In the 19th
century the Western world experienced enormous economic growth.
The reason was partly due to the changes in Europe from dictatorial
rule by monarchs to a less easily controlled, and thus less regulated,
society through the development of technology, but also in part
because of the great opportunities for "ordinary" people
west of the Atlantic Ocean. Parliaments were ordained to attend
to the revealed political shortcomings of monarchs, resulting only
in limited monarchical powers and ineffective parliaments. Progress
in the areas of science and technology combined with decreasing
State power called for enormous economic growth.

The majority
of the European and American populations were lifted from poverty
to prosperity thanks to this. Of course, such an enormous change
did not come about without problems; when society changes from a
stable and stagnant rural order to industrial mass production with
rapid economic growth, some people lack the courage, opportunity
or means to seize the promising prospects. So the first real noticeable
change of this mammoth growth in the economy was inequality.

This first
effect, where some quickly became very rich while others stayed
very poor, made people call for the centralist power of the State
to redistribute the newly created wealth, i.e. to steal from some
in order to flatten the wealth hierarchy. It is safe to say there
were quite a few people being exploited back in those days, but
it was most likely a temporary problem. In a society under the strain
of rapid change, some people find themselves unwanted and unfit
(before finding their new role in society) whereas others find great
opportunities. Some people surrender to their greed and cross the
natural border lines of ethics and natural rights.

One would think
the State, seen through minarchist eyes, would protect those whose
rights have been violated and then stay out of people's business.
That is exactly the opposite of what the State is about, and it
is exactly the opposite of what the State did. Politicians have
no sense of morality or ethics; they are always worse than any greedy
industrialist. After all, industrialists seize opportunities to
create wealth (even if they sometimes exploit workers to get there),
but politicians seize only opportunities to destroy wealth through
appropriating it from the people creating it. Politicians are unable
to create.

So the most
progressive politicians of the State responded to the inequalities
following the enormous economic growth through creating alliances
with some of the great industrialists, dismissing others. This system
of politics destroyed whatever innovation was available in the marketplace,
in order to protect industrial allies, and used appropriated wealth
to set up enormous systems to bribe voters, while proclaiming these
systems a "safety net" for those vulnerable.

The monarchs
were criticized for being remnants of old times, and were eventually
dismissed or their powers removed. Parliaments of politicians took
it on themselves to be the leaders of the State and society, and
the only source of authority and progressive policies. A system
of rewards is set up in order to keep the masses in check and provide
a basis for power. The people is used as a source of legitimacy
through letting it decide who (rather than whether) should rule
it.

We are now
some years into the 20th century, and to keep this reward
system, i.e. the machinery of buying votes going, it has to be constantly
growing. To keep the illusion of a common need for a centralized
power alive, more rewards have to be handed out and more people
made into believing they, as a people, have ultimate power. Thus,
whatever free market there was was bit by bit eliminated by state
regulations, rules, laws, taxes, and subsidies — under the guise
of being for the public good. Regulations and taxes were imposed
to counteract inequality and injustice.

While living
happily with their industrial allies, politicians could control
their voting populations and benefit greatly personally: how many
politicians have not accomplished to be thought of as "great
men" and the "fathers" of nations? Politicians are
a class of unable, unwanted, unproductive, indecent, dishonest people,
who try to remedy their inferiority through oppressing those morally
superior. Nothing pleases them more than being the center of attention,
to be called upon as the pious providers of mercy.

So the State
increases in size and gives room for more politicians, the friends
and allies of the formerly very limited political class are rewarded
for their loyalty and bought off to ensure friendships. The number
of power hungry grows at the expense of the poor people leading
decent, hard-working lives. The First World War marks the end of
monarchical rule in Europe, and the beginning of the age of parliamentarian
political parasites. The grip tightens at the same speed as economic
growth is stifled. More problems occur that need to be fixed. Political
rule stands unchallenged and unquestioned. "War is the health
of the state."

President Woodrow
Wilson is appalled by the States' dedication to destroy each other
during the war. He believes States' governments should be able to
coexist and thrive in union, they should not tear each other apart
and while doing so leaving the back door open for potential opposition.
The Fourteen Points are presented and an organization founded with
the purpose to see to the interest of States and mediate when political
interests collide.

The Western
States back each other up in times of need, or so the newly instated
League of Nations was supposed to work. The international peace
during the years after the First World War lets the political bodies
of all nations concentrate undisturbed on national issues such as
regulation, taxation, and border controls. To keep the illusion
of politically provided public goods alive — and to pay for the
warfare — the parasitic class goes further in their quest to find
ways of satisfying the "public need" for reforms and alms.
They start meddling with the value base of currency, which quickly
devastates the financial system and results in a depression.

The Great Depression
is not a real problem for the political class, even though the history
books discuss it in terms of despair and misery. There is a reason
it is called "great," and it is not because it was a period
of very difficult years (even though it was). To the political establishment,
the depression was truly "great" in many ways: it was
a perfect catastrophe to be blamed on political enemies and used
as a foundation for increased power. "The market" was
said to be the problem, and only more politics would be able to
solve the problems the market had caused. The depression acted as
a catalyst for political power-grabbing all over the world.

Some countries
were affected more than others, and in Germany a certain power-hungry
fellow managed to inspire the population with hope through providing
both scapegoats and a strategy to restore ancient glory.
This mustached little man aspired to real and eternal greatness
through trying to create a Third Empire of Europe, and made a pact
with an equally successful and mustached man to split half a continent
between them.

As things are
in politics, you cannot for sure trust anyone. Politicians tend
to make alliances with anyone who can increase their personal influence
or power, and break any agreements for a seemingly better deal.
Russia's mustached ruler thus broke the pact and became allied with
the little man's enemies, which eventually caused the downfall of
the little German and his State.

The end of
the Second World War called for more propaganda: yet again "evil"
was defeated and "good" (i.e. our kind of State) was victorious.
Now all people needed to do was trust their governments to organize
the restructuring and rebuilding of their States and societies.
The immense destruction of the war created a great need for construction
workers and engineers, as well as for a political leadership generously
supporting the remaking of order and infrastructure.

These times
called for a political focus on domestic organizing and weeding
out political opponents; this great effort to rebuild society could
not be allowed to be jeopardized by the selfish concerns of the
few unsympathetic towards our great civilization. The Bretton Woods
system of fixed currency exchange rates was established in order
to direct attention from the worthlessness of fiat currency to problems
suiting the power elite. The States needed to focus on more important
problems, such as regulating and taxing the restructuring of society.
Bretton Woods supplied a great illusion of stability to provide
for economic growth and enough prosperity for the populations to
tolerate and unquestioningly accept more fundamental contradictions
in political society.

The League
of Nations was reestablished as the United Nations to provide for
national sovereignty and protect the interests of modern princes.
A time of fictitious economic growth and the illusion of inherent
peacefulness of "democratic" States followed. Power was
secured as the masses were kept under control through a belief in
the promises of future opportunities.

At the same
time, the former allies of the East and West played a game of mutually
reinforcing political power. Through portraying "the other"
as the greatest threat to "our" way of life, support was
gained for further increases in political power. The establishing
of a "Cold War" made sure opponents to political rule
could easily be done away with.

This time period
is characterized not by war, but by unwar — unlimited State spending
on military and intelligence in order to make sure there would be
no war. The State is yet again declaring society's need for strong
leadership and rule, and the point is proved to the masses through
pointing to the obvious threat of "the other side."

After more
than eighty years of a too tight grip on society, the eastern power
finally collapses under its own weight in 1991. It seems too much
control, too much harassment of the people, too much regulation,
too much taxation — i.e. too much political power — causes too many
problems for power to survive. This is a real threat, and the fall
of the Soviet Empire was not welcome news for the political leaders
of the "West."

Of course,
the public statements say differently, but the power elite had to
continue the lie. The collapse of the "evil empire" meant
but one thing to politicians of the "West": now they had
to figure out how to continue the lie without relying on the obvious
communist "threat." And the powers of the State had to
be salvaged and reinforced.

The lesson
of the Soviet People's Republic was quickly learned by the powers
of the western hemisphere, where a greater degree of unregulated
markets were allowed and some markets were even opened up in order
to avoid a possible collapse. As a direct result of the collapse
of the eastern threat to "our" way of life, and thus as
a result of the threat of not being able to threaten the masses
with "the other," more markets were partly deregulated
as a drastic measure to avoid the End of Power.

The decade
following the collapse of the "East" included a few wars
to direct attention from domestic failures, but was at large characterized
by politicians desperately seeking ways to reinforce the illusion
of a public need for structure, order, and rule. In Europe this
post Cold War decade of political desperation had effects even among
people in the masses. This caused breaks to long-term party majorities
in many national parliaments — even the seventy years suite of socialist
rule in Sweden was temporarily broken — and a chance for former
oppositions to enjoy the sweeter side of the political power struggle.

This politically
rather unnatural state of affairs in a time without obvious enemies
to combat, forced the political elite to look further away and consider
new strategies to provide for a solution to the "problem."
On both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, the political classes considered
unconventional methods as a way to force society back to "normality."

In Europe,
a union was created from a formerly inter-State community for the
mutual benefit of economic growth. The union was quickly maneuvered
so that formerly national parliaments bit by bit transferred their
powers to a centralized European Parliament and government. Through
stressing inequalities on a pan-European level rather than nationally,
politicians found they could still prove society's need for their
existence.

A constitution
was drafted in which all rights of Europeans were ultimately revoked
in exchange for unlimited power for the new Brussels- and Strasbourg-based
political center of the United People's States of Europe. Aiming
for regaining ancient glory, the European Union strives to establish
a Third Empire through domestic control and integration of political
powers rather than waging war on foreign States. Diplomacy and "peaceful"
political means — not wars.

America tried
that other strategy never considered by the rather cowardly laid-back
Europeans: war. The power elite of the United States launched a
number of military campaigns abroad in order to direct the people's
and media's attention to non-domestic issues. Being a super power,
the federal government claimed the provoking role of World Police,
and set out to command leaders of other States as well as the Organization
for Securing State Supremacy (more known by its new-speak name,
the United Nations).

A Gulf War
was launched by George Bush I as a great policing effort to restore
justice in the Middle East and show the Iraqi prince Saddam Hussein
he wasn't allowed to continue doing what the Americans had taught
him to do. American troops were also sent to Somalia in a "humanitarian
campaign" where they mercilessly mowed down innocent Somalis
in the recently declared independent north-western part of the country.
The Somalis, anxious to defend their homeland and newly regained
state of statelessness, were publicly identified as "war lords"
and "militias."

In 2001 an
attack, possibly a provoked counterstrike, was launched on
the States of America by religious fundamentalists, making quite
a few things easier for the people in Washington DC. This first
attack ever on American soil (well, except for the civil war) proved
in a political sense the existence of a nation-wide need of the
people for the State to aggressively fight back on terrorism in
an attempt to bring safety to the people and justice to those responsible.
Wars were waged on Afghanistan and Iraq and the State could thereby
accelerate in its attempt to continue growing.

Through a number
of reforms called the Patriot Acts, centuries-old rights of the
people were abolished or "modified" to simplify further
growth of political power and control of the opposition. The Patriot
Acts had the same effect on American society as the harmonization
efforts in the European Union had on Europe and thus political powers
on both shores of the Atlantic were enforced and strengthened, however
different in appearance.

The police
state on the western shore grows rapidly in terms of public welfare
and domestic control and surveillance, whereas the socialist state
on the eastern shore leads the way in welfare spending but is quickening
its pace regarding policing and surveillance.

This is where
we stand today.

March
31, 2006

Per Bylund [send him mail]
works as a business consultant in Sweden, in preparation for PhD
studies. He is the founder of Anarchism.net.
Visit his website.

No, I'm not
nervous because humankind is beating up the environment causing
our own destruction. That, I am sure, is not really true. I am nervous
because all this talk of nature, and this planet for that matter,
means two things: first, that people are ignorant and gullible,
and second, that technology-hating progress-wanna-stopper environmentalists
will get even more influential.

That people
are ignorant and gullible is perhaps no news, but that a lie can
so firmly get rooted among people all over the world as this greenhouse
effect thing is certainly terrifying. Everybody "knows"
something very bad is going on and that it is the market's and the
corporations' fault. The newspapers and TV and radio stations are
packed with reports of yet another "natural disaster"
and journalists never seem to miss the opportunity to make it seem
more government is needed to fix it all. The global and domestic
markets are way too free of government intervention, they say.

Of course all
the ignorants out there eventually will believe this massive propaganda.
People in general like to be fed with information rather than get
off their butts and try to find it themselves (a single Google search
would lead them to the unbiased facts on Marshall.org).
It does not really matter what the united media and politics front
claims when they do it so persistently and on a global scale; as
we know, you just have to repeat one lie over and over again to
make people believe it is true. It is the same whether corporations
are said to cause a global meltdown of nature or saying the earth
is flat and the center of the universe.

Sooner or later
someone will, by mistake or not, find the truth and be brave and
strong enough to claim everybody's wrong even though he or she will
be persecuted. Like Copernicus and Galileo claimed everybody was
wrong about the world and the universe. It is impossible to know
who will be the one who finally makes the big crack in the wall
of lies, but someone will. Sooner or later.

The problem
comes with the thing that makes me nervous: the environmentalists.
These people seem to have a Rousseauean "noble savage"
ideal and want us all to live in the jungle like apes. At least,
they are doing whatever they can to stop everything that is civilized
and increase everything that is not. They seem to want to abolish
technology, science, and everything about the economy, but they
really, really want to increase the size of government and they
would probably not hesitate to use it to force urban people into
body labor at some distant farm or preserve somewhere.

When you combine
the two, the gullible and truth-avoiding masses with the increasing
influence of anti-civilizationists, you make me real nervous.

It should be
no surprise statists in general welcome the judgment day prophesies
of the environmentalists. Even if they do not share the same end
goal, they do have a common interest in increasing the size of government.
And if lying is all it takes to realize that, then why the hell
wait?

But I fail
to realize how they could ever get this far, even though power seems
to be an enormous incentive for people to actually do something.
It is easy to understand that they can just continue to play their
game now when the ball is already in play. But it takes a lot of
skill to get it rolling in the first place. How do they do it? In
spite of everything, all the facts show the exact opposite of what
these people say.

These guys
are real pros. Based on data collected only for the last one hundred
years (collection of climate data began in the early 20th
century), out of earth's total estimated lifetime of five billion
or so years, the environmentalists claim everything we know and
hold dear is going down the drain. And they can do it pretty much
unquestioned too. They must be doing something right or they have
hired the world's very best communication experts to work 24/7 on
creating this mass hysteria.

After all,
the findings in the old ice buried deep down on the poles show the
climate is always changing and that throughout history the temperature
has been frequently bouncing up and down. There's a reason the Vikings
called that big island northeast of Canada "Greenland"
when they discovered it in the 9th century, don't you
think?

The truth,
it seems, is that we have not screwed nature even though we are
not always as loving and caring as we perhaps should be. We've been
screwed by environmentalists.

January
25, 2006

Per Bylund [send him mail]
works as a business consultant in Sweden, in preparation for PhD
studies. He is the founder of Anarchism.net.
Visit his website.

 
The
Vinland map, uncovered in the 1960's is claimed to prove the
Vikings were in America 1000 years ago.

We all know
that story, and future generations will probably also learn that
story in school even though it seems he was not the first guy to
set his foot on American soil. People will continue to be amazed
by this guy's courage, and Hollywood will continue to make films
about the fantastic journey across the Atlantic.

Some things
simply seem to stick in people's minds and stay "true"
for generations no matter what other facts are available or if new
facts are discovered. Just like people believe the computer was
invented in the 1950's, while it was in many important ways a copy
of Charles Babbage's Analytical
Engine from the 1830's. Some things stick, other things don't.

A new map,
recently
discovered in Shanghai, PRC, suggests the Chinese could have
discovered and mapped the Americas decades or perhaps centuries
before Columbus is news in 2006. It is exciting to think of the
Chinese having crossed the Pacific or rounded Cape Horn to investigate
and map out the Americas a century before Columbus or even before
that. And it is fascinating that such achievements were not discovered
until now.

However interesting,
neither Columbus nor the Chinese were the first ones to discover
the Americas. It is a well-known and documented fact that North
America was discovered by the Vikings already in the 9th
century. The Vikings were great sailors and their vessels, the "long
boats," were superb for exploration and trade. Setting out
from Scandinavia they investigated both rivers and oceans, frequently
trading with people in the Mediterranean and Middle East as well
as with Russians, the French and the Irish.

To
the east, the Vikings went as far as Iran and Kazakhstan. To the
west, Iceland was discovered in the year 860 and Erik “the Red"
discovered Greenland in 982. Mainland North America was discovered
by mistake by the not so impressed merchant-ship owner Bjarni Herjolfsson
in 986, who immediately went back north to trade according to plan
with the people in Greenland. He probably never even bothered to
get ashore.

Erik the Red's
son Leif Eriksson ten years later led an expedition to discover
trading opportunities in North America and probably went as far
south as Nova Scotia. After returning to the Viking settlements
on Greenland a great many ships crews set out to further explore
Leif's findings.

Considering
the theories of Norwegian marine biologist Thor Heyerdahl, the Vikings
may very well not be the first to discover the American continent.
According to Heyerdahl, there is reason to believe the Ancient Egyptians
could have communicated with the Americas already some four thousand
years ago. (To verify his theory could be true, he set sail from
Morocco on a small papyrus boat to sail across the Atlantic ocean
in 1970. He actually made it all the way to Barbados – 4000
miles in only 57 days.)

So from a European
perspective, the Americas should have been a well-known fact for
a thousand years, if not more. Even though being at least five centuries
too late, I am sure our grandchildren will also learn about the
great explorer Columbus setting out for that great journey to discover
America. Some great stories are worth telling, even though they
may be just that: great stories.

January
18, 2006

Per Bylund [send him mail]
works as a business consultant in Sweden, in preparation for PhD
studies. He is the founder of Anarchism.net.
Visit his website.

One
reason is one that the 17th century English philosopher
Thomas Hobbes never realized. He proclaimed that free men in their
natural state, i.e. without government or rule, cannot achieve a
lasting social order. It is bound to inevitably degenerate into
war, terror, and chaos. Man is inherently evil or would at least
choose to forcefully take what can be taken from others rather than
work for it if he has the chance. Thus the only possible state of
free men would be a state of eternal war where the strong will eventually
conquer or kill the weak.

From
this Hobbes drew the conclusion that men would have (or really had)
chosen to come together in societies for protection, security and
order. In order to enjoy protection of their rights men would have
to first surrender both their rights and their freedoms. This collective
act created a government organization with the power to forcefully
withdraw society from the state of war, and thereby create the security
and order necessary for man to enjoy rights. Thus government is
something good created from the chaos and war of the natural state.

It
is easy to see how this idea in essence is corrupt. If man is inherently
evil or at least frequently degenerates into thievery, fraud, violence
and murder, how can people rely on a government created and run
by men? The simple answer is they can not. Bad people cannot be
trusted if they are alone, and the same must still be true if they
create a government through which to rule other people.

As
Lord Acton pointed out, "power corrupts" and the corrupt
people are the ones most likely to seek power. (Other people don't
need to rule others in order to achieve their dreams or lead their
lives as they see fit.) Government is therefore never to the good
of the ruled, but is always, sooner or later, being turned to protect
and maximize the good of the rulers — at the cost of the ruled.

Since
government is inherently evil, libertarians strive to either limit
its size and power or abolish it completely. As I will show, the
concept of limiting the powers of government is corrupt in one or
many ways. There are really only two alternatives compatible with
reality: government or no government. (And as we will see the former
is as controllable by a few men as the latter.)

The
theories of limited government usually revolve around the idea of
a constitution or contract between the people and the government,
or rather: the ruled and the rulers. The idea of such a contract
is sound and has a long history in political philosophy (see e.g.
John Locke and Jean Jacques Rousseau about the "social contract").
But the very nature of contract speaks against its use in political
philosophy as legitimization for or limitation of the state.

The
essence of contract is the voluntary agreement between two equal
parties. This voluntary nature makes the contract the foundation
and essential part of the marketplace, where people come together
to exchange values. The voluntary nature guarantees (because it
rationally leads to) that all parties are better off from every
single contract — or they would choose not to be part of it.

The
most fundamental part of contract is thus its voluntary nature.
Both parties have to be equal in the face of the contract for it
to be considered a contract. It is not possible to establish contracts
in this sense between unequal parties. (If one party can easily
escape the obligations stated in the contract, or simply annul it,
through the use of coercion or violence against the other party
the contract will be meaningless.) Is it possible to establish a
contract between a government and its subjects? Obviously not, since
the government claims the right to enforce the contract according
to its own interpretations. If there has been a breach of
contract is generally (sooner or later) established in state courts.

Even
under state law it is not considered a valid contract if one of
the parties is coerced against by the other party. "Your signature
or your life" is not how contracts are established in the marketplace.
"Sign this [social] contract or get out of my sight (but leave
your property behind)" is also not a valid contract since it
is based on coercion.

But
in a Hobbesian sense it is possible to establish a contract between
equal and free men to create a government (when there is
none). Giving up your rights in return for something else, if done
voluntarily, is as valid as any other contract in the marketplace.
The problem arises with the next generation of people living in
the area, who most likely are subject to the same government's laws
but never signed the contract. Either they are forced to subjection
by the government (no contract) or they are free to choose whether
to subject to its rule, which means you can contractually opt in
to (but never opt out of) government rule.

As
we can see there is a fundamental flaw to the theory of limited
government. Such an agreement between the people and government
cannot be contractual unless every individual is born outside
the realms of government (i.e., in anarchy) and then freely chooses
to "opt in." This is however seldom the case in limited
government theories, where the possibility to escape the guns of
government at best is a theoretical possibility to "opt out,"
which means you are automatically subjected to government rule when
born. There can thus be no contractual limitation to government
according to the nature of contract.

But
let's look at the practical arguments for limited government. Statist
libertarians do not always claim there needs to be an explicit [voluntary]
contract between the people and government. The purpose of "proper"
government is only to protect everybody's natural rights from being
violated, to uphold justice, to be the final arbiter in conflicts.
According to this argument there is no need for government to establish
individual contracts with everybody subjected to its rule, since
it only protects their rights. No rights are ever violated by this
monopolistic justice services organization (unless you try to supply
the same kind of service), which powers are strictly limited to
acting as agency of [automatically] delegated self-defense and arbiter
in conflicts.

The
problem of this approach to social engineering in the practical
dimension we are here examining lies in the distinction between
contract and government. The limitations of government
and its powers (constitution) are not limitations in reality, since
there is nothing in reality itself (i.e., without human action)
to limit these powers. And we cannot rely on a god to decide what
government can and cannot do. Government is the creation of men
to protect people from abusive actions of men, and its powers are
and necessarily have to be defined, enforced, and limited by men.

This
leaves only two alternatives for the supervision and control of
government. Either the powers of government are controlled and interpreted
by government itself or by some power to which government is subjected.
We have already established that government is a structure relying
on force, which is why there can be no contractual basis for its
limitations. There can be no [voluntary] contracts between unequal
parties (in the sense: equal parties of the contract).

If
government is to interpret its own limitations and protect its subjects
from its own actions (where not within the limits stated) the potential
threat or problem is obvious. As the example of the United States
shows, such a constitutional structure is likely to be used as a
sanction for expanding, not binding, the powers of government.

Given
that a government of men created by men can only be limited through
the actions of men, the actions of government will always be the
actions of the men in government. The reasons for such men not
to increase their own (i.e., government's) power are not many and
not obvious. Even if the founders of government were to be relied
on, it is most likely that corrupt men will aim for and become part
of government at some time in the future.

Government
will in time tend to serve the people acting as government rather
than the people subject to government. Since government is the ultimate
power in society (which, in a sense, is the purpose of government
to begin with), there will be no one having the power to object
to such development. And there will be no one with the power to
force the unleashed government back into its limited shape.

Some
call for democracy and the "will of the people" to serve
as such a power to control the guns of government. This is a version
of the second alternative, where someone or something theoretically
and practically is to monitor the actions and powers of government
so that it will not be allowed to run riot. Such a structure where
a monitor of government is to control that the latter's actions
correspond to the constitution (the restraints) leads to an immediate
problem: who is to monitor the monitors? And then: who is to monitor
the monitors of the monitors? And so on ad infinitum.

The
solution to this problem, at least in theory, is to create a circle
of monitoring where the monitor monitors power, and power in turn
monitors the monitor. Such a scheme, where the people are subjected
to, but at the same time the monitors of government (usually through
the system of democracy), has been tried in multiple societies through
history.

The
most sophisticated examples of this approach have realized the vast
powers of the guns of government and tried to divide government
into multiple separate and separated parts to make the people and
government closer to equal parties. Such a scheme is of course more
likely to succeed in restraining government from growing, but history
shows that it is not enough. The United States is again a good example
of how a sophisticated attempt to delimit the powers of government
through a power-dividing scheme has eventually failed. The "perfect"
state of the Roman Empire, as described by Cicero, is another great
failure.

No
matter what scheme is used to make government less powerful compared
to the voting public, the guns of government cannot be stopped from
growing and apprehending roles it was not intended for. The most
important reason for this is in the very nature of government: it
is an organization based upon the use of force and with the sole
purpose to use that force. When force is institutionalized and legitimized
there is no limiting its reach. What one can do is to stay out of
its way or become part of the elite which controls it. Either way
liberty is lost. The alternatives for society compatible with reality
are only: government or no government.

February
11, 2005

Per Bylund [send him mail]
is a master’s student in political science at Lund University in
southern Sweden. He is the founding editor of The
Swedish Libertarian Forum and runs Anarchism.net.