Pure Capitalism would lead to Armageddon: Startups/Funding

Banks, Funds and Starting Business

This is a series of objections, starting with the common misconception that capitalism and freedom would hurt everyone, especially the poor, creating unheardof poverty for all. See the initial post here and the entire category here.

One recent objection I had regarding AnCap societies were that banks would never lend to you, unless you have substantial amounts of capital or income already - which then would never occur, because only the rich would have access to these. That is, nobody could ever start a business, unless you were already rich or had a company.

This last part, I already showed in Pure Capitalism would lead to Armageddon: Salaries above, is false.

Neither is the conclusion ("You could never start a business") because of that, accurate:

Simple because bank lending is not the prime source of fund for start-ups or SMEs. 

The top three sources of funds for Business are given below (Martin Zwilling provides an extended list of more opportunities). Crowdfunding is an amazing tool, probably moving up the ranks of importance in the future as it becomes more viral and used. 

1. Current revenue (indeed, assuming a business or income already)
2. Equity, (either your own or acquired through venture capitals, family, investors, Business Angels, networks etc)
3. Obligation & credit (either from banks and financial institutions or straight through the financial credit markets).  

The argument is simply flawed in all of its parts. 

That's some initial responses to why an Anarcho-Capitalist society (or even a Minarchist society) would not lead to the destruction of large chunks of the population, not even the poor, as I showed in the case of Kenya some weeks back. And we havn't even gone into the exciting parts of Private Law and Private Defense. Murphy has a great piece on that, if you're interested

Pure Capitalism would lead to Armageddon: Health Care

Health Care

This is a series of objections, starting with the common misconception that capitalism and freedom would hurt everyone, especially the poor, creating unheardof poverty for all. See the initial post here and the entire category here.

Now things get tricker. I'd advise you to listen to Walter Blocks lecture on Health Economics for the full story. Free societies would probably organise health care as insurance schemes (which, technically, is what the State is doing, although mixing it up with other expenses); you pay a premium upfront, and when you're in need of certain health care measures, the insurance company will cover the costs according to the initial agreement. 

This normally unleashes a multitude of insults, mainly regarding how such systems won't work because they're not working in the U.S. 

False. The U.S health care system is not even remotely close to what a free society probably would create. It's completely jammed with government regulations, AMA (the most powerful Union in the U.S) restricting output and pushing prices up, and inflation/low-interest-environment killing the fixed-income business model of Insurance Companies. 

Another point that Walter Block addresses is what insurances cover. The comparison is Home Insurance; you only really use it for big things, such as earthquakes, heavy damages or in case your house should burn down. If a window breaks, you'd just hire someone to fix it rather than having an insurance policy covering that. But in health care, somehow the policy covers every singly visit to your physician (party, obviously, because prices are artificially jacked up) - obviously, such schemes are gonna need higher premiums. Which is why health insurance in the U.S. is so expensive. 

Rationale here being that if you would have an insurance policy that covered every tiny damage to your house, it'd be awfully expensive - just like health care is today. Thus, in a free society, probably, people would use health insurance for big things like cancer, broken limbs, having a baby etc rather then for catching the flue or regular check-ups. This would then consistute smaller premiums, being affordable to the average person (there's a great Mises Daily that deals with how people organised Welfare before the Welfare State)

Pure Capitalism would lead to Armageddon: Education

Education

This is a series of objections, starting with the common misconception that capitalism and freedom would hurt everyone, especially the poor, creating unheardof poverty for all. See the initial post here and the entire category here.

Without government providing and financing education, there would be no education. We'd all be stupid and illiterate, right? That's usually the normal claim, and it has some appeal to it - who would pay for all this expensive education? It's not like regular Joe-s on the street can pay thousands of pounds worth of education just like that. Better government do it?

Not really. Education greatly enhances ones productivity, that is what constitutes your wage rate (see post on Salaries above). People with engineering knowledge of how to build a house, would be a lot more valuable to a House Developing company than would an illiterate 25-year-old autarkic farmer - thus, his wages would be higher than said autarkic farmer (assuming such farm activities doesn't yield immense amounts of returns). 

So, if your future wages would be higher (and especially when that's a sure deal, such as the above example) there'd be people willing to supply that fund (eg: banks, financial institutions, the entire financial system..) because you'd be in a position to pay that back after completing your education. 

Essentially, the exact same reasoning that occurs in Student Loans for Higher Education today (students know that their productivity will be enhanced, thus their take-homepay compared to what McDonalds currently offers them would be substantially bigger, and they can then make simple calculations to find out that it is beneficial for them to take on these loans).

Education in a free society would simply be the same thing, even in primary and secondary schooling (even more so, because productivity increases from illiterate to literate are among the biggest increases of all).

Pure Capitalism would lead to Armageddon: Housing

Housing

This is a series of objections, starting with the common misconception that capitalism and freedom would hurt everyone, especially the poor, creating unheardof poverty for all. See the initial post here and the entire category here.

Housing is a commodity like any other. 

The reason we have messed up housing markets, and riddiculous prices are three-fold: 

1. Massive credit expansion fueled by fractional reserve banking, artificially low interest rates and money-printing by the central banks. 
2. Government restrictions on where to build, how to build, application process, regulations of size and price levels.
3. Price ceilings: Government says that for certain rentals, you cannot charge above a certain amount. Effect: fewer rentals will be a) constructed, b) put on the market. 

Essentially: we have crazy housing prices because (1) above pushes prices up, creates bubbles which we saw in the financial crisis and (2) because demand for housing outstrips supply, where potential supply has been strangled by government interventions, and (3) yet again supply being strangled by government interventions.

In a free society, none of the above would occur, housing would be constructed in accordance with consumer demand like any other product. Quality, size and prices would probably differentiate to a larger extent than today, increasing supply so that prices for housing would come down. 

Perfect example of Government Failure. Not even remotely an effect of markets or capitalism. 

Pure Capitalism would lead to Armageddon: Salaries

Salaries

This is a series of objections, starting with the common misconception that capitalism and freedom would hurt everyone, especially the poor, creating unheardof poverty for all. See the initial post here and the entire category here.

In AnCap, business would pay employees the minimal amount possible, just to make them stay alive, say 10p/hour - so we'd all be poor. Right?

Of course not. 

In a free society, salaries would be set according to the Discounted Marginal Value Product (DMVP); that is, every input in production (land, labour, capital) recieve payment according to their discounted marginal contribution to production. If, all things equal, an additional employee contributes to production £20/h, his salary would tend to equal the discounted value of this. 

In non-econ language: Let's say an employee produces value to your firm roughly equal to £20. If you pay him £25, you're making losses and would eventually fire him/go bankrupt yourself. If you're paying him £10, your competitors could offer him the very same job for £15, still reaping the benefits that employee provides - then some other competitor would offer him the same job for £18 etc. You get the hang of it - essentially the opposite of the old Marxian claim of "Race to the Bottom" applied on salaries. The effect is that salaries tend to be bid up to their value (ignoring the temporal effect and discounting for it). 

Conclusion: Salaries in a free society would equal what the employee contributes. That is, notions of "we would all work for essentially no wages" are rubbish predictions and are not features of a free society. 

Note: Today, large chunks of what employers pay for having employees are taken away in taxes - not only the visible income taxes, but also payroll taxes the employers has to pay the government simply for hiring you. In a free society, these costs would vanish and your salary would be the full amount instead of a government-reduced amount. Why? Because that's the firms' costs of hiring you, that's what you are "charging them" for your services, although the government reaps large chunks of that. 

Pure Capitalism would lead to Armageddon

Time to address one of the critiques laid against any promoter of freedom, any defender of capitalism, any advocate of free markets. We’ve all heard it:

What about the poor? The Sick?

“In your society the poor and weak would be exploited, forced to work for essentially no wages, have no health care, die of lung diseases at 35 because of crappy non-regulated air, and never get any education.”

Obviously, if that were the case – then yes, I finally understand the “YOU’RE A HORRIBLE PERSON” reaction to any mention of Freedom or Anarcho-Capitalism. And I’d agree: anyone who profes such a society is indeed an awful person.

Luckily, this isn’t the case. Far from it.

Just to start off with a few explanations; what happens in western Welfare States today harms the poor a lot more than the rich; inflation hurts their savings, reducing purchasing power and real value of their salaries (especially in third-world countries); VAT taxes, income taxes and payroll taxes (some 75% ofall tax sources where I come from) are predominantly payed by poor people; Corporate welfare, including bailouts, subsidies, kickbacks, regulations or tax breaks moves money from poor people to wealthy corporations and their leaders.

This is what we see today. And it hurts the poor. If you associate anything above with “Capitalism” or “Free Markets” you’re dead wrong and your hostility towards Capitalism is comprehensible. Inaccurate, of course, but comprehensible.

If you do, however - THIS IS YOUR LUCKY DAY!

All of the above are effects of government. Of Politicians. Yes, sometimes business leaders and lobbyist can distort the economy by influencing politicians enough to gain personal benefits at the expense of other groups in society - something economists call "Rent Seeking"; Luigi Zingales does a great job explaining this. But this can only occur if governments have power to do such things. In a minarchist state, for instance, such actions wouldn't have much effect - simply because the state isn't allowed to have influence over subsidies or particular regulations or tax breaks. 

This leads us to the ONE pre-requisite you’ll need to follow the reasoning below: The Broken Window Fallacy. You can ignore me, hate me, detest my ideology, horror my convictions and mock me all you want but if I can ask you one thing only, it would be to learn what the Broken Window Fallacy is. 

Explained a few hundred years ago by Federic Bastiat, it has followed economics since that day. Don’t be discouraged, though, most PhDs in Economics today are probably unfamiliar with it (Art Carden, 3 minute youtube explains the key element in terms of destruction - but it is equally applicable for any action).

"That which is seen - That which is unseen":

 Roughly explained: Whenever you do something (spend money, tax people, subsidise activities etc), we can perhaps see the effects of that. Say, if we subsidise farmers to grow crops, more crops might be grown by farmers. This we see. What we don't see (=the UNSEEN) is what that money would've done in the absense of such a subsidy: build house, buy books, produce shoes. These things we don't see, because they were never created.  Essentially, Bastiat points to the Opportunity Cost of any action.

This applies to all of the topics dealt with below: If the Government taxes some people in order to provide health care for others, we can see the health care provided but we cannot see the damage from taxation as vividly. What would have been done in the absense of such interventions? Maybe the taxed money would have gone into research, finding a cure to cancer. Maybe they'd set up a charity providing free health care to anyone... or maybe they'd produce amazing tools that reduced production costs of current health care by say 50%?

The point is that we don't know what we're losing out on. Because of taxation, regulation etc these things, inventions and productions never come into being. They constitute that which is unseen, just like the non-produced tailor services in the video above, or books or shoes in Bastiat's original example, which can be found at Bastiat.org.

(To be fair, any future description of economic realities lack for knowledge, in the very same way the spectators of ‘Broken Window Fallacy’ can’t see the unsold books, unproduced shoes etc; they simply never existed, thus cannot be seen. I cannot know exactly how people would react and organize their lives if I change major variables such as the composition of the State - but we can however make educated guesses and have a hunch.)

I have organised these to form part of a series, so every topic is dealt with in its own post. All of them can be found below and they will probably be extended whenever I find entertaining objections to other topics Enjoy!

Salaries

Housing

Education

Health Care
Banks, Funds and Starting Business

Most Views - and some nice videos!

Hi, everyone!

I'm currently in Vienna, enjoying sunshine and praising the busts and names of Menger and Böhm-Bawerk at the University.

Meanwhile, here's the most popular posts since I started blogging - as well as some nice inspirational videos!:)

Have a look at the Keynes vs Hayek rap video below, for a quick 7m rap version of economic disputes since the 1930s.

Enjoy!

#1: University Unions on Strike Again
#2: Feminist Economics
#3: A Word on UK Immigration
#4: Socialists' Objections
#5: Swedish Union presents its demands: Citizens' fee + Increase all taxes


But my personal favourite is probably this one, very useful for most contemporary debaters, politicians and ideologues: You are Entitled to your own Opinion - Not your own Facts.

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"Stop calling me Socialist! I'm actually a Social Liberal"

Hey, everyone!

If you're new to this blog, you might not have realized that I tend to refer to my political opponents or non-AnCap people as "Socialists", "Leftists", "Statists" or other adequate names. It is, however, a feature that makes people unconfortable to say the least; perhaps 'upset' and 'frustrated' are better ways to coin it. From time to time, I'm also told off by some "proper marxists" that I'm misusing the term, that the ones I'm calling socialists really are not - thus, I must be mistaking in my view of socialism.

There are many aspects of Marx's writing, many ideas prevalent in Engels' work and tons of more throughout history since their time. I could focus on Marxism, the Method, relations of Power, or Alienation to define Marxism. But I'll stick with a common theme for now.

If asked to define Socialism in a few words, what you'll most likely get is something like below:

"[...] based on the collective ownership of the means of production". 

Not everything, not the essence, but neither an unreasonable description of Socialism.

Now, Socialists and Marxists have since the time of Marx always struggled with definitions, clear-cut lines. They were constantly fighting between themselves over who's actually part of the Proletariat, who's a capitalist and who isn't. The 19th century French Socialists, refusing women to enter the workforce is a great example. Independent artists, painters and so on, seemed to upset the entire dichotomy of "Workers vs Capitalists", as they were neither exploited workers nor exploiting capitalists.

The Marxist story always falls apart once you start disaggregating their claims and ask for clear-cut definitions.

Let's return to the means of production. What is a "mean of production"?
Superficially, a marxist might tell you that any machine, raw material, labour etc that capitalists use in their exploitation of labour, i.e their production constitute 'mean of production'. The problem arises when you realize that anything can be used in production; if I'm running a Taxi Company, my cars become means of production; If I'm having a restaurant forks, plate and glasses become means of production; if I'm selling newly-picked strawberries to commuters, the table where I have the strawberries become a mean of production.

So here's the scale that confuses Socialists, Social Democrats, Social Liberals, modern-day Liberal, Conservatives and the rest of the lot:

They all argue for some collective ownership of the means of production. 

Socialists say: 100% (sometimes, though, they allow people to have personal belongings)
Social Democrats say: mje, maybe 50% taxation + heavy regulations of labour relations
Social Liberals say: Perhaps 30%, enough to help the poor and sustain a Welfare State
Liberals say: Whenever market failures arise (pollution, insurance, central banks, the poor)
Conservatives: Military, police, courts, immigration and all things related to moral virtue!

My point here:
Collective ownership of the means of production is not cathegorically different in one ideology compared to the others; it is quantitatively different. It's only a question of HOW MUCH collective ownership they'd want.

From that point of view, anyone but a proper AnCap is rightfully deemed a socialist. They all want collective ownership of the means of production - albeit to a different degree, but nevertheless collective ownership of the means of production.

_____________


Tomorrow, I'm off to Vienna for a few days, so LibertarianUni will be silent for a bit. Will post some favourite posts and videos on the blog. Enjoy!

[Another One] of the Inherent Contradiction(s) of the Left

I previously wrote a piece on how Lefties are contradictory when they simuntaneously protect women's right to their bodies in Abortion debates, while refrain from the same protection in Labour Market debates. Here's another amusing contradiction:

A few months ago, during my heavy rampaging at those poor Lefties at People & Planet, I made a post about feminist economics. Since there's a major wave of socialist and feminist ideas tumbling across both my native country of Sweden and my current home, Scotland, I thought to re-introduce a special feature of the Feminist argument. Here's what I wrote about the Wage Gap:

"Wage gap. All kinds of numbers are generally presented to support this idea; women make 15% less than men, £5000 less in a year; higher in private sector (19%) than public (13%) etc, etc. What does this mean? How is this measured? The simplest of comparisons are made through dividing all income by women by the amount of women to the same ratio for men. Clearly inaccurate, because that would compare the pay of a female working minimum wage at tesco with a handsomely payed lawyer. Most studies then controll for other factors, most obviously what profession you're in. But even then, same questions arise; differences in productivity, experiences, in certain education etc. Some studies controll for more factors than others, but very few of them are conclusive in the sense that they add such tiny things as choices or personal adequacy.
Truth to be told, when more factors are accounted for (education, experience, career choice or even negotiation skills) the gap narrows into virtually nothing. There is no wage gap, there's only choices. More extensive reading here."

Libertarian Uni March 8, 2014.

Also, yesterday I shared the picture below on facebook, resulting in some pretty decent discussions about related issued. Now, I'm still looking for the sources to some of these claims, such as more likely do die at work or how the 14% "more time at work" is calculated. If anyone knows, please give me a shout!

Let's Get Down to Business!

Literally, actually. So, feminists claim women earn a percentage of what men earn (77%, 95%, 85%, whatever the specific number might be, but you get the idea - it's below 1). To a superficial reader that's accurate, and nobody is actually disputing that the following calculation gives us a number less than 1: 

<Total Wages Earned by Women>

<Total Wages Earned by Men>

After giving it a moments thought, though, you realize that this calculation compares people on minimum wage with Wall Street Excecutives. Or Steve Jobs, or J.K Rowling. The rest of us are not refuting this calculation - we're just laughing at its sillyness and the conclusions drawn from it ("OMG, DISCRIMINATION IN THE WORKPLACE").

There's more to the story. You have to control for things such as location, education, productivity, presentational skills, perhaps humour, fashion or whatnot a feature employers might value in any given employee. Studies that do, generally get a smaller "Gap". As Ellen Fishbein greatly points out, though, most studies never claim that this "gap" is discrimination - their authors say it is due to measures they didn't take into consideration.

Ok, so where's the contradition here?

If, as the Lefties say, women 

a) are just as good as men at a particular task in a particular field, and 

b) are payed less on average because of gender discrimination, 

another one of their favorite claims would come into question: Profit-Maximization. 

If a firm, simply by substituting women for men, could save 10%, 15%, 23% on their labour costs without loosing out on productivity or output (because of a above), AND they're constantly seeking to max out profits - Why wouldn't all firms stop hiring men and substitute women for men?

They could pocket a decent profit and still lose out on nothing. 

So, if we add Profit-Maximizing to the equation, our contradiction is complete:

A) women are just as good as men at a particular task

B) women are payed less on average because of gender discrimination

C) Firms are profit-maximizing entities

The only conclusion that follows is: Women would be prefered/have higher employment in doing such a task. 

Since that is not the case, illustrated by our friends on the left, one of these premises have to go. As I explained above: if firms could have double-digit returns on substituting women for men (without losing output), and we're not seeing that happening - one of our premises are incorrent. One has to go. 

Which one is it gonna be, Lefties?

The Benevolent Agenda - Case study: Kenya

Today I had a big hectic discussion at one of our great family dinners. We're all quite decent idealistic people, who care about the poor and generally try to be as good and decent people we can, improving our lives and the lives of others.

What originated largely as a generational dispute over disciplinary rules in schools ended in a state-versus-markets and economic development debate. This, however, tells us very interesting things about the Benelovent Agenda.

Now, what do I mean by this?
What I'd like to call the Benevolent Agenda, is the notion that if there exists a problem, the solution is the immediate alleviation of that problem. If people are starving - send them food. If we have poor people - give them money. If these poor people lack education - tax others to provide education-free-of-charge for them.
If rich people have "too much money" - tax the hell out of them. And so on.

This all has a superficial appeal to it. I mean, if people are starving, they obviously need food - let's just give it to them! Problem here is the lack of an adequate answer to the question why? (This critique can be applied to a lot of things, from financial crisis 2008 to the Welfare State).

This brings me to the case study of Kenya. My mother recently visited Kenya and among other things were witness to the immense poverty of Kibera, a big slum area of Nairobi. This, she gently pointed out, was reason enough to introduce a welfare state, state-funded education and jobs for these poor people so that they can advance from their poverty. Again, superficial appeal to such arguments.

After a deeper scrutiny, however, it falls apart. I'm gonna show three things that hinder these poor from advancing, improving their lives and making enough money to sustain themselves and their family. And more importantly how these three things are State-generated. State Failures as opposed to market failures.

#1)  Inflation
Inflation, contrary to common knowledge, is created by state interventions in the market place by artificially increasing the amount of money in the economy. Secondly, the poor are the peple most harmed by this. Why? Because in an inflationary environment, the purchasing power (=what you can actually buy for that £10 note) of your salary is steadily reduced. So, if there's inflation, you'd rather spend your money today than save some of it for tomorrow (because tomorrow it'll buy me less stuff). Conclusion: you can't save.

(Note on this: wealthier people, however, can save in such environments because they have access to financial products or investments that gives them above-inflation-rate returns. This opportunity is generally not there for the poor. Inflation rates in Kenya over the last decade have bounced between 5%-35%).

#2) Property rights to their dwellings or things
Hernando de Soto vividly explained to us how large parts of the world's poorest people live their lives predominantly in the Informal Economy. That is, they have houses and property and businesses (he calls them 'Dead Capital') but these items are not registered or accepted as Valid Claims to property largely because of #3 below. This has the effect that expanding your business, taking out loans on your house or having sufficient safety to plan over larger periods of time become essentially impossible. Conclusion: you can't raise funds to expand business, plan ahead or take advantage of the property you actually own. 

Just a quick note here. Notice how the two BIGGEST ways to acquire funds (#1 + #2) so that you can expand your cloth-weaving or production of recycled glass (as are the examples from Kenya my mother brings to the table), are closed off for these poor people. They can't take out mortgages and invest in new, bigger machines for your weaving and they can't save money on their own to buy such machines later on.

#3) Red Tape
Red tape is usually explained as bureacracy, regulations, riddiculous and difficult rules that make life hard for people. This is generally pointed out as a growing ground for corruption. It inclused restrictions on what you can lawfully do, processes to get property rights to housing, creating a business, legal protection and so on. Starting a business in Kenya takes around 32 days (not that bad, actually), but carries a charge equal to 38% of income/capita (even harder, because poor people earn even less than average income/capita).  Conclusion: regulation, bureaucracy creates obstacles for everyone, but especially the poor. It's expensive, and creates a third obstacle to the poor's prosperity.

The Benevolent Agenda

What my friends and family around the table claims is that such problems as Kenyan poverty needs to be alliviated by State Interventions; education so the poor can get better-payed jobs, Health Care so that they'll live better, and redistribution so that they won't be poor. Their intentions are good (=help the poor), but their solutions to do this are horrifically unsuited for alleviation of such problems. 

As I pointed out above, the REASON these people are poor have nothing to do with these measures my family would like to include. They are addressing symptoms rather than causes. The reason they remain poor are largely covered by what I've stated above. But all that gets lost within the solutions provided by The Benevolent Agenda. 

Swedish newspaper runs Washington Monument Syndrome spinoff

"Not enough money for sick people in end-of-life care"
Sub-article reading: "Most people want to talk about life". 

One month before general elections, you're bound to face some intense marketing, from the parties themselves as well as media (as I posted on Instagram some weeks ago when my local newspaper started interviewing people about how important voting is). The entire political class and its distributers have gone into a pre-election Frenzy. Yey!

That, another fairly common newspaper (Metro) decided was the perfect moment to prop up an old classic Washington Monument Syndrome. And I get to ramble about how useless and inefficient Government is.

WM Syndrome in two sentences: whenever governments' budgets are sqeezed, they cut back whatever activity would hurt the general public the most, and ultimately upset them a lot. This, then, has the brilliant effect that citizens become more susceptible to/likely to accept tax increases. Normal examples: Police services, fire department or in the case that gave name to the Syndrome: the Washington Monument.

In the article above, Metro describes how 25% of all deceased patients in healthcare died alone, because there wasn't enough funding so that a nurse could hold them company at the end of their lives. Funny, I think, as the World Bank says we spend north of $5000/capita on health care each year. 

I wonder...

Couldn't they get rid of a few bureacrats in all political levels?
Sell of some old desks or fire some staff at one of the 468 Swedish National Agencies, governing our lives and consuming our tax money?
Or simply not wasting the money in any of the countless examples given to us by Martin Borgs?

Not to mention, obviously, the 45% of GDP the Government steals from Swedish citizens each year. Since we lost the Global Gold Medal here a few years ago, since tax rates came down from 48% when the Social Democrats were in power, most leftist have drawn the undeniable conclusion that All Misery Comes From the Recent Reduction of Taxes.

I mean, even if I disagree with them in terms of _everything_, it doesn't it make sense at face value. It is undeniable that if you consume 45% of what your economy produces in a year, you should be able to reallocate some of those resources into Healthcare, seeing how that's the primary rationale for these taxes in the first place.

I bet we'll see some more examples of Washington Monument Syndrome over the next 31 days.


_________
Funny note about this election: The opposition, blaming Government for All Misery Imaginable, essentially accepts most tax cuts made over the last eight years on the pretense that you can't keep changing everything (from 48%->45%, MY GOSH, SUCH CHANGES!). Still, in Power, they promise us that they'll change everything into Utopia. 
Funny how tiny differences we have between our political parties: arguying over 6-8% of the entire tax burden. 

I, Extremist!

Every once so often the 'Extremist' comes to town!

You've all met him. He's this horrible, somewhat politically awkward person who refuses to conform to a slim worldview given by the politically correct, the media and the Government. It's somewhat dubious as to what he actually believes, but everyone else agrees that generally, whatever he says can safely be disregarded because we all know he's an extremist!

Now, what's so bad with being extreme? And what does it even mean? To have ideas somewhat outside of a tiny-weenie political space of opinions currently in charge of most countries, doesn't seem too bad. I mean, diversity and all.

I'll have a look at some things I believe, and we'll establish whether or not that's extreme.

I believe...

- ...theft is wrong
- ...initiating violence is wrong
- ...using threats of violence against other people is wrong
- ...fraudulent behaviour is wrong
- ...that individuals can make decisions about their own lives
- ...that individuals can make decisions about what to eat or what substances to put into their bodies!

Apparently, if you agree to any of this, you're also an extremist! We, the club of extremists, salute you!

___________________________

Some examples of theft: income taxes, VATs, bank robbery, pickpocketing.

Some examples of initiating violence: U.S Interventions in foreign countries, assault, rape, police violence.

Some examples of threats: Tax Agencies ("if you don't pay, we throw you in jail"), Government Police force, a horse's head on your pillow, promises to hurt/kill someone.

Some examples of fraudulent behaviour: paper money*, artificial credit expansion, central banks, Bernard Madoff, Ponzi Schemes, mails-to-your-inbox-telling-you-you've-just-won-$1million

Some examples of individual decision-making: what to construct, what sexual services to sell, where to live, whom to marry (including sex of that person), what salary you offer your potential employees.

Some examples of substances and food: raw milk, non-FDA-approved drugs, marihuana, smoothies or fruits.

*with no claims/not 100% claim to real money or underlying asset. 

[One of] The Inherent Contradiction(s) of the Left

Welcome back to a fresh start! My apologies for not keeping this blog up to date - there will be changes to this.

Today I'd like to show you a very interesting feature of the lefties' reasoning.

Let's start off with the all-too-familiar political discussion about rape and/or abortion.

Leftists, rightly in my opinion, say that the woman's right to her body is inalienable. If she doesn't want Person A to do Action X to her body, she is in her right to decline Person A from performing such an action. Should Person A however proceed against her will, he is considered to aggress against her, violating her right to her body, thus can be sentenced to whatever punishment is appropriate for Person A's crime. So far so good.

I did some tiny amounts of research among friends, facebook and the Swedish Socialist party to see what they'd say. I asked where this right comes from, what's the rationale behind it? Surprisingly, most answers were along libertarian lines: She owns her body, she decides what to do with it (and some allusions to the UN, saying the same thing). Also, some allusions to freedom (="if she didn't, there'd be no freedom").

But to be precise, it is not simply a right to someone's body, it also entails what happens in that body and what the body is doing, as my friends rightly pointed out. This is illustrated by the abortion example, where Leftists also are generally quite good. If a fetus growths within a woman, she has the rightful decision about what to do with such a fetus - abort pregnancy if she chooses, continue if she'd prefer to - and nobody else can rightfully decide for her, against her will.
Point: The inalienable right to your body also extends to decisions about what's going on with that body and what that body does.

Similarly, Person A in our example above, with an equally inalienable right to his body, is responsible for the actions this body might engage in. In this case, aggressing against our woman, for which he must bear the punishment.
Point: Person A, in control of his body, made a decision to violate someone else's inalienable right and has to bear the consequences.

This is all non-controversial stuff, even for Leftists.

It gets interesting when you continue this rationale. If you are responsible for the consequences of your action, if you are in control of your body and if your right to that body (and the actions coming from it) are inalienable, what happens when the action involves agreement with another person? Person A now exchanges his labour for payment by Person B, in accordance with their mutual agreement. The rationale still applies; Person A is responsible for the consequences of his actions (loss of leisure, monetary gain), and Person B is equally responsible for the consequences of his actions (monetary loss, gained access to extra labour).

This is where Leftists lose it. All of a sudden, such relationships are to be regulated by Unions, protected by State institutions and overseen by third parties, the Lefties say. Not to mention that it is generally looked upon as exploitation, in accordance with Marx's incorrect value theory of labour. This, however, was not present in our first example where the woman's right to her body was inalienable - not subject to regulation, oversight or state intervention. When that very same woman decides to engage her body in a different activity - trade, offering her labour services in exchange for monetary gains - this inalienable right the Leftists spoke of is nowhere to be seen. Despite the fact that the essense of the transactions, the features of the participants have not changed a bit: she is still in control, her body is still inalienable and she can still rightfully make whatever decision she wants to.

The Point of an inalienable right is that it is inalienable. That means it cannot be violated. It is incoherent to arbitrarily apply such an inalienable right only sometimes (=whenever it serves your own purposes), but not at other times (=when you'd rather that other values took precedence).

Furthermore, if the rationale behind pro-choice and illegalized rape is that the woman has inalienable rights to her body, it follows that compulsory union actions, state institutions, state intervention in trade or employment etc, neither can be in a position to violate those rights.

Essentially, the Lefties' position is incoherent when it argues for state intervention in trade or voluntary employment AND simultaneously to protect women's inalienable rights over their bodies. One has to go.

Solution: either Leftists stop calling for state intervention (at which point they probably cease to be Leftists), or they refrain from protecting women's inalienable rights to their bodies.