ataxiwardance

—Piotr Czerski (via azspot)

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Richard Dawkins (via philosophy-quotes)

ataxiwardance: Basically, yeah. 

—Verlyn Klinkenborg, The Folly of Big Agriculture: Why Nature Always Wins (via absurdlakefront)

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Fareed Zakaria

Like I said, universal health care has worked in many countries for decades. The evidence is overwhelming.  

(via prettayprettaygood)

LTMC: whatever do you mean?  Socialism has ravaged Scandinavian welfare countries.  Just look at this hellhole:

what a wretched monument to tyranny.

(via letterstomycountry)

ataxiwardance: I’ve constructed a few arguments for single payer universal healthcare in my days. Some economic and some moral. I’m a creative and fairly good critical thinker but no abstract argument ever seem to be as compelling as the (relatively undisputable) empirical evidence that their shit just works better.

Right wing scare mongering and the occasional horror story about NHS aside, I’d be happy to trade such spook stories for the constant nightmare of the US healthcare system.

—Robert Cox (via sociologic)

—Dorian Solot, I Love Female Orgasm: An Extraordinary Orgasm Guide. (via bbcity)

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L. A. Liberty (via logicallypositive)

Alright, I want to parse this statement, because there’s a ton of assumptions baked into it that aren’t obvious on its face.

I want to focus particularly on this sentence:

[S]aid bad guys are powerless to aggress with impunity without the protection of the state.

This implies that there is some alternative arrangement (and certainly we can conceive of a few) in which the protesters would not experience this type of aggression.  The two that come to mind are a) a stateless society, and b) a minarchal state, in which we’d have a neutered public sector with very little authority or resources to mobilize for the purpose of aggressing against private citizens.

Let’s consider these alternatives: those who subscribe to the school of Mises and Rothbard  (whom I know L.A. Liberty is a fan of) often call for the abolition of the state, or for a state so minimal it barely can do anything at all.  One of the way you can transition to such a society is by de-funding state apparatuses and out-sourcing current state functions to private parties.  By doing this you rob the state of influence over the myriad functions of society that allow it to justify forceful intervention in the lives of those who utilize those functions.  The ideal minarchal state, therefore, is one that protects private property rights, perhaps maintains a small military apparatus for defense purposes only, and participates in little else.  To do more would be to grant the state influence over the lives of citizens by giving it authority over services and resources that private citizens rely on.  

Indeed, one can take this a step further: you could argue that the only reason that Oakland’s PD had the pretense of authority to abuse OWS protesters is because the protesters were on public land; and as such, the powers-that-be had legal authority to order the PD to remove them from said land.  If the protesters were convened on private property, the rules would be quite different (although one can easily imagine the use of obscure regulations, like noise ordinances, to justify entering the property, which of course only goes to show further that governments inevitably abuse power they are given).

But why does it follow from any of this that, in the absence of our current robust state, private entities would not be able to participate in the same type of aggression against people who are attempting to publicly assemble for whatever purpose?  In an ideal Libertarian society, any property owner has the right to remove people from his land at any time for any reason, bad reason, or no reason.  That’s how strict property rights work.  So while the actions of the Oakland PD are despicable, in a minimalist state where we allow private actors to assume most of the duties and resources the state now has, protesters would be at the mercy of the property owners of whichever piece of land they happen to be standing on.  And you can be damn sure that there’d be some security firm ready to accept a fee from the owners of a private road or park to aggressively and violently remove these protesters from their property.  

So how is the private alternative any different from our current police state?  Wendy McElroy wrote a piece for Mises Institute in which she said the following:

A police state is more commonly described as a totalitarian government that exerts extreme social, political, and economic control. It maintains this control by a pervasive surveillance of its own citizenry, by draconian law enforcement, and by granting or withholding “privileges” such the ability to travel. Typically, there is a special police force, such as a Stasi, that operates with no transparency and few restraints. Unlike traditional policemen, who respond to crime, the purpose of such state police is to monitor and control society.

“[G]ranting and withholding privileges, such as the ability to travel.”  In a largely privatized society where the state owns little of its own, you are always standing on someone else’s property.  The owners of what we now view as “public” areas, like sidewalks, roads, parks, etc., would be at their convenience to forcibly remove anyone who was on their property at any time for any reason.  That sounds a whole hell of a lot like a “restriction on ability to travel.”  Only in this case, there’s no Bill of Rights to grant you relief should the property owner over-step his authority, which is effectively limitless within his domain.

And what about transparency?  You can forget about that too.  Why do you even need it?  In an ideal minimalist State, what private companies do is only your business if they decide to make it so.  And besides; at the end of the day, if you’re in a “public” space protesting, you’re on their property. You’re always on someone else’s property.  That makes you the aggressor.  So the future owners of the state’s liquidated “public” spaces will have every right to use force to remove you from those spaces if, say, they are “encouraged” to do so by a corporate sponsor.

In a minimalist state where this kind of state-sponsored aggression wouldn’t be possible, and where many of the functions that the state currently performs are given over to private parties, those private parties would simply assume the very role that the police currently play.  The difference here is that our corporatist overlords would no longer be paying off the police; they would simply pay off the private parties whose property the protesters were using as a public space.  That land-owner then pays off a “security” firm to come bust heads and break necks.  And that firm would be under no legal duty to use non-lethal force, either, since, once again, you’re technically the aggressor.  In public spaces, that’s not the case.

For all these reasons, I simply don’t buy the argument that the implied alternative, i.e. a minimalist state in which state functions and assets have largely been liquidated to private entities, would result in a society where this type of aggression against protesters wouldn’t exist.  Indeed, I think that mass privatization of state functions and assets would lead to far greater likelihood of oppression, because documents like the Constitution don’t reach private actors (you have no right to free-anything when you’re on other people’s property).  And while the Constitution’s been taking a beating recently, it can still save you when government tries to prevent you from exercising your rights in a public space, as the Westboro Baptist Church can tell you.  Not the case if you’re on private property.  And in a massly privatized society, “public spaces” will simply become someone else’s private property.  Whoever owns the property you’re standing on will therefore have the same leverage over you that the state has now over the OWS protesters, and without the theoretical legal recourse granted by the Constitution.  

Now admittedly, Qualified Immunity prevents many egregious examples of government malfeasance from being rectified.  But people can and do recover for the bad acts of the state.  It’s rarer than it should be, but it does happen.  In a minimal state with privatization of public spaces and strict property right enforcement, that recourse would not exist; you’re always at the whim of another private party’s property rights, and subject to forceful removal at their whim (perhaps encouraged by corporate donor who doesn’t like you being there).  And without a Constitution to save you.  You can’t claim that your rights have been violated when you’re always standing on someone else’s land.

There may be other good reasons for us to transition to a minarchal state.  But the idea that large private entities will not have the ability or incentive to encourage the use of force against peaceably-assembled protesters isn’t one of them.

(via letterstomycountry)

Excellent commentary from letterstomycountry above. Recommended read for anyone, like myself, trying to balance competing libertarian and social-democratic impulses.

- ataxiwardance