I was scrolling on Facebook and saw a status by Rick Percoco claiming that without taxation, you wouldn’t be able to fund the government AKA the ***monopoly*** on the use of force. Obviously, we who rightfully claim that #taxationistheft realize this fact. I elaborate explaining just how come taxation is theft.
Another one of his statuses claimed that you need the ability to use force to act against those who act immorally. Again, I elaborate how you can have institution’s that are able to use force – even all individuals who own guns – that aren’t a monopoly on the use of force. Libertarians are not pacifists, and believe in the use of reactionary force only, after one violates another’s property. I break down why the market solution pertaining to the use of force would be superior to granting the most corrupt institution to ever exist a monopoly, as with any other good or service. As Rick seems to believe in liberty and the Constitution, I hope he hears this and it makes him change his mind.
Remember learning in school how government was the great protector of the people from the evil monopolization of businesses? You were taught that without government regulating monopolies, businesses could reduce prices dramatically to drive out all their competitors then they could gouge their prices at the expense of the consumers. Except they left out one tiny detail, this can only happen through the force of the state.
From an Austrian economic standpoint, it is stressed that ultimately, businesses have no control over their prices. Sure, they can raise their prices, but only at the expense of selling less goods. The price is determined by individuals acting in their own self-interest in the market. If Company A raises the price of apples by $.30 above the market price, people will eventually realize that Company B is selling apples at the market price, and will buy their apples from Company B.
If businesses don’t have the ability to raise prices at will, then this theory of monopolies simply cannot exist in the real world, unless the state gets involved.
The state has a monopoly on the legitimacy of the use of force. This means they can use force with little to no repercussions because most people grant them the legitimacy to do as they please. Only wielding this use of force, can monopolies actually exist.
Assume there’s a world with no state interference into the economy. Without getting into too much detail, we can say that consumers control the prices by voting with their dollars. Obviously, this allows any business to lower prices as much as they want, as long as they remain profitable.
As one business, say, BicycleTown, lowers their prices, others businesses selling bicycles are pressured to lower their prices, or they will go bankrupt. This will lower the general market price for bicycles. People will expect to be able to purchase bicycles at the new, lower price.
Assume further that BicycleTown was able to increase their economies of scale so much that they were able to drive all competitors bankrupt because they can’t compete at these new lower prices. There’s only one business selling bicycles left, yet the market price is lower than it has ever been.
As soon as BicycleTown tries to raise their prices from the current, low market price, they will be met with new entrepreneurs entering into the market. As more businesses enter, the price will have to fall back down to the market price.
In other words, they cannot gouge the price and expect to hold their “monopoly”.
However, when the state gets involved into the economy, a monopoly is attainable. The state can put arbitrary conditions (e.g. a minimum wage, expensive regulations, etc.) onto the market, which can force newcomers from entering a specific market. If no new businesses are allowed to enter the bicycle market, BicycleTown can then raise prices without fear of new competition.
We were sold a lie that the only way to prevent monopolies from forming was to have the biggest monopoly, the state, dictate certain rules and regulations. Bogus.
I’ve been in countless debates with my friends. Most of which already believe in the free market, yet they aren’t sold on the free market. They believe that the free market cannot function on its own after years of being indoctrinated by statism in schools.
They understand that the market is more efficient than government, yet they are scared by the idea of anarchy. They correctly believe the market is run by rules, but they think that the government is responsible for making those rules.
This is true to an extent, yet their logic makes them believe with the absence of government, rules would cease to exist as well. However, markets provide better rules than any bureaucrat could.
In the market, there is only one thing that matters – providing value to others. That is the basis for all the rules coordinating the market. If you don’t provide value, whether to employees or consumers, you go bankrupt.
In government, there is only one thing that matters – getting reelected. That is the basis for all the rules coordinating government. If you don’t get reelected, it’s akin to going bankrupt for the politician.
The government does create the rules today, but one of the most important lessons of economics is Bastiat’s idea of what is seen and what is not seen. This same lesson applies to the creator of the rules.
On the surface level, it is seen that the government creates the rules. Yet, if you dig deeper, you realize what is not seen is that the market creates the rules.
It makes sense that the market would be responsible for these shifts. They must provide value. Conversely, it makes sense that the government would take credit for it. It helps them get reelected.
The important aspect is to not conflate the two. Just because government will always try to take credit for the accomplishment’s of the market doesn’t mean they actually achieved the accomplishments. Like all governments, they are just stealing from private citizens.
Anarchy is not no rules, just no rulers. If the market works, the market works.
One of the most frustrating beliefs held by progressives is their belief that their media isn’t biased. I live in an area highly populated by democrats, so I have been able experience this firsthand.
They have a blind trust for their progressive outlets, yet are the first ones to joke that “Fox News is Faux News”. For some peculiar reason, they don’t realize that Fox News is being more honest by being upfront about their biases instead of pretending not to have one.
It’s hard to blame the liberal media when they’re just capitalizing on their market. The media organizations know, quite frankly, that their audience is so tone-deaf on most issues that they can masquerade as being the unbiased truth.
Pretending not to have a bias is simply a marketing scheme for liberal media. There’s no merit or truth to it. They just want to capture the minds who are too vacuous to notice the bias.
Bias isn’t inherently wrong, actually quite the opposite. If you hold the beliefs that will raise the prosperity and wealth of everyone, your bias will crucial to inspiring others. Conversely, if you hold beliefs that will pit groups against other groups, lower the standard of living, and increase the hate between people, this bias could be devastating.
The tough part is if you have a bias, you believe it will help the most amount of people. Whether you are correct or incorrect, the bias is the drive that will at least help the rest of us decide.
Bias is only bad when you pretend you don’t have one. This lets you trick the masses who tune into your channel by dissimulating that you only care about the truth, when you’re really promoting your biased view on how you think society should act.
When you’re upfront about your bias, it allows people to think critically about the issues and decide for themselves. When you disguise your bias, and present it as the unbiased truth no matter how irrational (e.g. the Russian hacking), it further creates a bunch of useful idiots who will lash out at dissenters.
It trains people not to think, not to question, but to conform. Since they have the “truth” on their side, it makes debates nearly impossible. When humans cannot solve disputes with words, violence becomes the means which humans resort to.
This refusal to debate and empathize with others is a slippery slope we are already far along. The first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem: your source of news is biased.
Discrimination, which should be viewed in a positive light sometimes, has been morphed to always mean something vindictive. For some reason, if one is discriminating or being discriminated against, it is automatically assumed that this is done for reasons uncontrollable to the victim, such as race, gender, or age. While this is a form of discrimination, and it’s most vile form, there are many other ways we discriminate every day, and it’s only to benefit us and those around us.
The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines discrimination as the act of making or perceiving a difference; in psychology, the process by which two stimuli differing in some aspect are responded to differently; the quality or power of finely distinguishing; the act, practice, or an instance of discriminating categorically rather than individually; and lastly, prejudiced or prejudicial outlook, action, or treatment.
Only the last two definitions touch on the idea that discrimination is morally repulsive and should breed a negative connotation. However, the first three definitions speak on the merits of discrimination, which was an evolutionary tool.
Humans have always discriminated. From the beginning, humans would discriminate because it would keep them alive. For example, before we had much technology, humans would heavily discriminate against landlocked land in favor of land surrounding water. The reasons they did this should be obvious, yet it should be as equally as obvious that this is indeed a form of discrimination.
Likewise, you have discriminated against people your entire lives. Think back to your first few years of school. Surely, you didn’t befriend every single new person you met. By the law of diminishing marginal utility, to befriend everyone would be similar to befriending nobody. To solve this problem, you discriminated against most of your classmates in favor of a few of them you would call your friends.
Every time you pick your outfit or which pair of shoes you will wear for that given day is an act of discrimination. Do you need to wear business, casual, or lazy attire today? That’s discrimination. Which brand of milk, water, or any other product with close substitutes you ultimately choose is facilitated by discrimination. Whether the final decision was discriminatory because of price, marketing, or brand loyalty is irrelevant, it makes decisions easier.
Admittedly, these are all rather mundane or obvious examples of discrimination being a good thing, but discrimination can save lives today too. Imagine you own and manage a gun store. Let’s pretend there’s minimal state interference in selling firearms for simplicity’s sake. You’ve been in the business for around ten years, so you have learned to pick up on the subtleties of other people’s behaviors.
You notice when someone is breathing slightly harder than normal. You notice if they are sweating more than what would be subjectively considered average, by your own standards. You can tell if this person is, or recently was, consumed with anger and rage. Over the years and through experience, you can tell if they plan to use the weapon in a malicious manner.
If you have gained the skills to understand people’s behaviors, then you can use your intuition to discriminate against those showing warning signs of violence. Of course, you won’t always be right, but if you are skilled at discrimination, you will not sell any weapon to anyone who is showing telltale signs of using it in a vengeful way. In this instance, discrimination can save lives.
Wikileaks‘ newest data drop, Vault 7, released over 8,000 documents of different methods used to spy on American citizens. The CIA is able to hack smart phones, computers, cars, and even smart TV’s through various cyber attacks. The cyber weapons include malware, viruses, trojans, weaponized “zero day” exploits, malware associated documentation, and associated documentation.
The CIA can hack all these devices in a numerous amount of ways. Some can be remotely activated, such as convert microphones used to record everything you say. Covert microphones can be enabled on all Apple iPhone’s and OSx, Google’s Android, Microsoft’s Windows, and Samsung TV’s. For example, if you have a Samsung TV, and turn it off, it actually enters ‘Fake-Off’ mode, and activates the covert microphone, while the screen stays blank. Just think of what private matters could have been said or done in front of an audience of government bureaucrats.
There are various other methods in which the CIA can launch in attack. Just one other way, is through a program called Fine Diner. Wikileaks explains,
The attacker is provided with a USB containing malware developed for the CIA for this purpose, which is inserted into the targeted computer. The attacker then infects and exfiltrates data to removable media. For example, the CIA attack system Fine Dining, provides 24 decoy applications for CIA spies to use. To witnesses, the spy appears to be running a program showing videos (e.g VLC), presenting slides (Prezi), playing a computer game (Breakout2, 2048) or even running a fake virus scanner (Kaspersky, McAfee, Sophos). But while the decoy application is on the screen, the underlaying system is automatically infected and ransacked.
Image: Wikileaks/ CIA Organizational Chart
To make matters even worse, the CIA is not fully responsible for this as they have created several pet projects to be used in a turf war over their bureaucratic rivals in the NSA.
CIA malware and hacking tools are built by the EDG (Engineering Development Group), which is a software development group inside the CCI (Center for Cyber Intelligence), which is under another department, the DDI (Directorate for Digital Innovation), which ultimately all falls under the CIA. None of these groups even get into your smart TVs. That is the responsibility of the CIA’s EDB (Embedded Devices Branch); likewise, none of the aforementioned branches hack into your smart phone either, which is the responsibility of the CIA’s MDB (Mobile Devices Branch). If that wasn’t enough alphabet soup of agencies for you, check out the organizational chart to the right which includes all of them.
The main concern is all of these extensions of the CIA don’t have to deal with the same oversights as the CIA does. In 2016 alone, the CCI had over 5,000 registered users and created more than a thousand hacking systems. Their hackers utilized more code than is used to run on Facebook! Have you voted for any of these people? I doubt you even know one of their names.
Once a hacking ‘weapon’ is created, it exists in the digital world where anybody can steal it if they know how. This means that anyone with some knowledge of hacking, from a foreign government to a teenage kid, can steal these ‘weapons’ for no cost at all. Meanwhile, our government dishes out hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars on such programs.
Furthermore, the government has been trusted by companies such as Apple, Google, and etc. to share holes in their operating systems, so the companies can ensure the privacy of their consumers. Take one guess on if the government actually shares that information or not.
Image: Getty Images/ Hastings’s Car Accident Aftermath
Wikileaks has speculated that the CIA can hack cars too, which could be used for undetected assassinations. They can take control of a car, and for example, crash it into a tree and kill the driver. Only government can make assassinations so easy! What’s scary is back in 2013 an outspoken journalist, Michael Hastings, was killed in single car accident while writing an expose about the CIA director under Obama, John Brennan. His car exploded after it crashed into the tree.
To date, Wikileaks has only been able to track the CIA’s car hacking program back to October of 2014, but I wouldn’t be surprised if newer data drops confirm that the CIA was involved in Hastings death. In the weeks preceding his death, he grew increasingly wary that the government was following him. Helicopters would suspiciously fly around him, government officials were beginning to speak to people close to him, and he believed his car was being tampered with.
Wikileaks has proved that the CIA has rules which, when followed, will avoid their malware to have fingerprints implicating “the CIA, US government, or its witting partner companies” in “forensic review”. In other words, the CIA has the capability of disguising their malware as coming from another source. They could make malware and make it seem like Russia did it. John McAfee explained this to Larry King when the allegations that Russia hacked our election began to surface. Now do you still believe Russia hacked the election?
With all these revelations about the inner working of government, and the deep state, there’s one burning question I must ask: How can you believe we need even more government in our lives?
Take off all the pretty make-up, in the form of PR, and this is what you see. Evil. Corruption. Power. No matter how charming they make their rhetoric, government is an institution founded on theft, and if you believe they will ever act morally, or not in their own self-interest, naiveté is an understatement.
Bureaucracies, once created, almost never vanish. As Wikileaks accentuated with the expansion in the CIA, they, conversely, endlessly grow. This happens in every bureaucracy, with every expansion a chance for someone to immorally expand their career and their power. This is the nature of the beast.
This should end the stupid deception that government is “of the people, by the people, for the people”. This release alone should make it clear that we are not the government, we are the slaves trapped inside George Orwell’s dystopian magnum opus, 1984.
I woke up today to learn that I was zucc’d from my political Facebook account. I’m not too entirely sure on what the reason of my zuccing was, but it happened: I’m in Facebook jail. My best guest is that someone was offended because I shared a picture of the #BasedStickman. Facebook jail sucks, because I cannot reach nearly as many people by just sharing posts on my page due to Facebook’s algorithm. And I have a suspicion that conservatives and libertarians end up in Facebook jail much more frequently than liberals. I get into the importance of that subtle issue.
Also, I dive into a great Wall Street Journal article, that was published yesterday by Shelby Steele, called “The Exhaustion of American Liberalism“. I expand on how liberals are being attacked from both inside and outside their party, and how bleak their future seems. I also touch on how liberals don’t have any values themselves, just to oppose yours.
Lastly, a bit of good news for the end: Gary Johnson has vowed that he will not run for president in 2020.
Don’t you just love clickbait? Well, since I have you here, instead of inundating you with ad spam, I figured I should let you in on the secret life hack that I’ve been using to boost my productivity this past week. I know, I haven’t had the longest test run, but I am already seeing improvements in my life. The secret is meditation.
It’s true, not everything from this new age mentality is hogwash. Don’t get me wrong, I won’t know a thing about you from your horoscope, but meditation is a powerful mental exercise that has boosted my energy, productivity, and drive the past week.
I have two main daily goals in the month of March, the first is to blog every day (if you haven’t noticed), the second is to meditate every day. The problem with meditation is it is often written off as some form of drivel, especially by people on the right, and that there is no way it can do anything productive for your mind, body, or spirit.
However, from my experience this past week, waking up every day and meditating has been a great service to my productivity. After meditating, I feel more energetic, more at ease with my emotions, and better equipped to have a productive day.
My sessions don’t last long, usually only 10 minutes, but sometimes up to 20 minutes. I have been using a couple guided meditation podcasts, such as Meditation Oasis and Your Daily 10 Minute Meditation Podcast with Adrian Cooke. I would highly recommend using some form of guided meditations, as it helps you transition into the meditation mindset.
You’re probably wondering right now, this blog is usually about Liberty, what in the world does meditation have to do with Liberty? It actually has quite a bit to do with Liberty, if you get past the surface level of what meditation is. You can’t have Liberty without emotional Liberty.
Meditation is a way to deal with your emotions. The political climate we have right now is based entirely off of emotion, mostly from progressives, but conservatives and libertarians fall victim to this too. They feel a certain way, such as there are as many genders as they feel actually exist, or that anyone who even slightly disagrees with them is evil and needs to be silenced. The theme of both of these extreme positions is one entirely based in emotion, and conversely, not reason or logic. This is why many progressives will refuse to debate your actual stances, and instead launch an onslaught of ad hominem attacks on your character.
I suggest they meditate more. Meditation allows you to feel and embrace your emotions, so you can begin to understand them. If you are unable to understand your emotions, you have no ability in controlling them. This could lead to dangerous emotions such as anger and outrage, or sadness and depression, engulfing you. If you don’t want to be a slave to your own emotions, you must understand them.
Furthermore, when you aren’t being consumed by your emotions, you are able to focus on your life goals. You are in control of your emotions rather than the other way around. It funnels your harmful emotions to the back of your brain and allows you to focus on the things that really matter.
Meditation gives you mental clarity. It helps you battle Resistance, your own worst enemy, who is always there telling you that you aren’t good enough. Resistance is always creating ways for you to justify your own procrastination of your life goals. Capturing you in an emotional paralysis.
Meditation alleviates all of this, grants you emotional freedom, and allows you to become the best version of yourself.
You know what grinds my gears? People who don’t truly understand money and its purpose. I hate hearing someone say with contempt that “the world runs on money”. Or hearing other people talk about how money is somehow the root of all evil. Or that when you don’t do something for profit, it’s some form of nobility.
Money is nothing but a medium of exchange. The creation of money, in times of barter, allowed everyone to trade more of the goods they didn’t need and receive more of the goods they did need. Without money, arbitration, a time-consuming act in itself, would’ve been the go to. If arbitration could not work, fraud, theft, and possibly even wars would break out. Money prevents all this from happening.
Of course, these were simpler days, the final days of bartering without a common commodity and the first days with it. These were the days before the enormous amounts of wealth were created that the government would later endlessly try to siphon for themselves disguised as helping the greater good. Of course, money is responsible for all the wealth too.
Money, and later wealth, is created precisely by the producers of society. The Crusoe who decided to build a net to catch fish rather than hand-pick them. The farmer who invested his time into irrigating his crops. Aren’t these people the ones who are supposed to run the world, the ones who are the antithesis of evil?
The ones that add more to society than anyone else are incentivized by the desire to make a profit. Making a profit means that you are actively providing value to another’s life. You improve their standards of living by making a profit. How is that evil? Continue reading “Money is the Root of All Good”
Libertarians, in many cases, hold the true answer for many of today’s socio-economic problems. Despite being painted by the culture and academia as callous, simply letting the market work would go a long way to making everyone wealthier and more prosperous. Yes, even the poor because when rich people get to keep more of their money, they aren’t coerced to pay for healthcare for employees, and other problems only created by the government’s best intentions, they will create more jobs and hire more poor people.
This message is a tough one to sell because the government currently redistributes that money to the poor people through various government programs. They get hooked on free money, and forget what it’s like to actually provide value for money. Democrats take the faux moral high ground and will fire ad hominem attacks on you if you disagree with taking from Peter to give to Paul. Arguments based on logos – on logic and reason – get thrown into the trash can in favor of ethos and pathos.
Furthermore, our culture today, from reality TV shows to movies to music you see a similar path. All these forms of entertainment are focused around ethos and pathos, at the expense of logos. The culture inspires the citizenry, and as a result, we live in an illogical time.
Today you can change your gender daily, on a whim, and you’re celebrated. The president can drop any number of bombs on third-world countries, and you are only a bigot if you want to stop the bombings and don’t want to let in refugees. The current president is criticized for every thing under the sun, yet people truly believe he is literally Hitler. Trying to reason with a leftist, is like trying to convince a wall on your message.
Libertarians, while we hold the truth, have had such a hard time spreading this message because many times we are at complete odds with the culture. Politics is downstream from culture.
One band is out to change that, and if you aren’t helping them then you really aren’t a real libertarian!
Okay, I’m not one of these guys who just wants to prove how much more libertarian I am compared to everyone else. Those people help nobody. But I wanted to express the gratitude of helping a band like Backwordz, who are actively pursuing changing the culture.
The more preorders they sell of their new album, Veracity, the better they will look to different medias.
Since the core of all their music is extremely political and libertarian, these medias will be forced to ask them questions about libertarianism. Leftists are overrepresented in today’s music culture.
I have met a lot of people who probably would have described their ideologies as libertarianism, if only they had heard the word before. Most people do believe that stealing is wrong, as is violating anyone else’s property, including their body. Infiltrating the culture, like Backwordz is doing, will make young people familiar with the word.
The best part about music as a medium is that, similarly to our culture today, it focuses heavily on ethos and pathos at the expense of logos. The same is true with Backwordz, who often feature their front man, Eric July, hardcore screaming and filling the listener with rage, ambition, and vigor to abolish the state… peacefully. Rather than reasoning with leftists, Backwordz attempts to take the battle to the leftist’s stadium – emotional appeals.
Backwordz is doing what needed to be done for a long time now. The timing couldn’t be more perfect either. Historically, we had two of the most unpopular candidates for president ever and one of the hottest blockbuster films last year, Captain America: Civil War, had an extremely libertarian bend. The people want to hear more about libertarianism, from an ethos or pathos standpoint, rather than a logos one.
The time to support Backwordz is now. They are trying to get to 2,000 preorders before their March 31st release. The album is stacked with 18 songs, which is unheard of these days, for $10. Also, once 1,000 preorders are sold, Eric July will be dropping a rap mixtape to help push them to their goal of 2,000. If you haven’t listened to any of Eric’s raps, I am sorry. Eric is seriously one of my favorite rappers, not just for his content but for his skill – I will attach a video of him rapping, as well as a Backwordz video at the end.
By clicking the link in the first sentence of the previous paragraph, you will be sent to the Backwordz bundle page. If you preorder the physical album using that link, you will get either T-shirts, hoodies, and stickers as well. Only capitalists know how to provide value like that!
If you just want the album, you can preorder it on Amazon or iTunes too (Amazon is $.50 cheaper).
Order their music, jam their stuff with your friends, and finally have a chance to spread the message of Liberty through culture. Even if you aren’t a fan of their music, appreciate the psychic profits you will enjoy knowing that they are providing much-needed value to the culture wars that libertarians keep losing. With songs like “Self Ownership”, “Statism”, “Praxeology”, and other explicitly libertarian themed songs, you’ll never have another opportunity to be one of the first people to help this band get their feet off the ground, and spread the beautiful message of Liberty to people who have never even heard the term libertarianism before.
