Thursday 31 July 2014

A Scottish Constitution Will Not Make Us Free

In my talks with Scottish independence enthusiasts they can't wait to tell me about the Scottish constitution and how it's going to free us to have a better society. But will it? We should start by listing some previous examples of countries with constitutions.

You may be surprised to learn that the Soviet Union had a constitution and that North Korea still does. Now, while I think that many people in Scotland are socialists in denial I am not suggesting that an independent Scotland will turn into a hard-core totalitarian nightmare, so let's take another example of a constitution. How about in the US?
 
Ah the much argued about US constitution. We know it's been broken several times but who was first? It depends on who you ask, but a number of people will tell you it was George Washington himself although the debate rages to this day. Which brings us to our first problem with constitutions – they are open to interpretation. No matter what you write or how you word it people will interpret parts of any constitution differently. An example right now is the fight in the US over gun control. These disputes rarely get solved to satisfaction and it ends up being a judge (employed by the state) who interprets the thing in the end. Since we're talking about law we find ourselves at the next problem with written constitutions.

In 1870 the philosopher Lysander Spooner's classic work “No Treason – The Constitution of No Authority” was published. A trained lawyer himself Spooner showed how the US constitution applies to virtually no-one, chiefly because for it to be a legal contract among the people then all the people would actually have to sign it and this would be true for a Scottish constitution also. Because if we have not all signed it then you cannot claim it is a document of the Scottish people it is a document written and signed by a minority which they then impose over the majority of the people and by agreeing with that then you agree that a small minority of people have the right to rule over the majority. You see Scotland is just some imaginary lines drawn on a map, the Scottish nation is the people themselves. As Spooner himself says “two men have no more natural right to exercise any kind of authority over one, than one has to exercise the same authority over two. A man's natural rights are his own, against the whole world; and any infringement of them is equally a crime, whether committed by one man, or by millions; whether committed by one man, calling himself a robber, (or by any other name indicating his true character,) or by millions, calling themselves a government.”
 
A hilarious aspect of “Scotland’s Future: from the Referendum to Independence and a Written Constitution” which is the basic draft of a Scottish constitution is their mention of the US founding fathers. The SNP would do well to study those men and realise that they did not bow to the British monarchy when the going got tough as the SNP have. I knew many SNP members in my younger days and they were viscously anti-monarchy but now it's a different story altogether. You can measure people by how they stick to their moral and philosophical principles (don't be surprised if after independence the Scottish government bow down to their NATO masters and break their promise to get the nukes out of Scotland).

This is really the sticking point for me. I respect people who reason from first principles and stick to them. I have seen people on the left and the right who are in favour of an independent Scotland throw their principles aside to get what they want in the short term and this never works, it only ends in disastrous compromise and weak middle-of-the-road thinking. We can turn to that old socialist Aneurin Bevan here (the one thing we agree on) when he said “We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run down.”
 
Sure, people will say “Oh, you have to do things this way to get people on board.” Compromising principles is never the answer to anything and I am proudly against the state and I will not put that aside for short-term political gain. You can write all the constitutions you want, but I challenge you to prove that your constitution applies to me.

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Wednesday 30 July 2014

Want A Safe Independent Scotland? Legalize Guns And Slash The Military

One of the major debates we see during the Scottish independence referendum campaign is talk about what will happen to the military. This is an important question and many in Scotland (and other places) will disagree with my conclusion. The only way for an independent Scotland to be truly safe is to legalize guns and radically cut the military.

In my recent article “ Scottish Independence – A Critique of the Yes and No Campaign's Propaganda” I brought up the point in the Westminster government's propaganda pamphlet they stated that we would lose Britain's armed forces which “keep us safe at home and abroad”. Perhaps that would be true if there was a radically smaller defensive army but anyone can see that the British armed forces are anything but that. Due to a “do what we're told” attitude to American foreign policy the British armed forces have been drawn into pointless and disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in recent years. Sure, politicians love to pretend that “Our boys are over there keeping us safe.” but this is a lie. These wars are being fought over resources and to feed the already out-of-control military industrial complex.
 
When you violently invade someone's country and kill thousands of people all you do is radicalise the youth of that country. We saw it in Ireland over the years, when something horrific like Bloody Sunday happened many infuriated young men went straight to join the IRA and it is the same in any country. Want to stop actual domestic terrorism? Then don't give recruiters mountains of examples of brutality they can show to impressionable young people. I believe Ron Paul put it best when talking about this same issue in the US when he said “They're over here because we're over there.”
 
So what about an independent Scotland? Well a truly defensive army would be desirable, but if the SNP are as committed to peace as they say then we would get out of NATO for a start. NATO was supposed to be an organization to protect us from the Soviet Union – something that now doesn't even exist! Sure Russia is still demonised in the mainstream media but in reality poses no threat unless poked way too much (they're trying!).
 
So how does legalizing guns fit into this confused rambling? Well, there are numbers to support crime going down in states in the US where carrying concealed guns is legal but you can look at the statistics for yourself, personally I know statistics as these are open to wide interpretations so I'm just going to come from the pure reason argument. If you know that someone may be armed how much less likely are you to rob them? Or, if you rob someone and you know that a passer by may have a gun and shoot you, again how likely are you to rob them? Much less so than currently.

An acquaintance of mine who was from Texas said to me one night in the pub “In Texas people are much nicer to each other cause you never know who's carryin'” If people want to rob or murder you they'll do it anyway, you'll get stabbed or battered with a golf club so why shouldn't you be able to defend yourself with a firearm? What if your house is being broken into? How can you effectively protect yourself and your family? As the old saying goes “When seconds count the police are minutes away.”
 
The fact of the matter is that criminals can buy guns in this country illegally anyway. If I were to give you the short answer to why guns are illegal in this country I would first put on my tinfoil Jimmy hat and then tell you that they're illegal because (as usual) the government wants to enjoy a monopoly of violence. Put yourself in the shoes of the ruling elite for a moment. Would you want an armed population that could overthrow you? Hell no you wouldn't, why do you think they're trying their best to disarm the US population? And this point funnily enough could save us from invasion.
 
I would make the case that a stateless Scotland with no army whatsoever could be perfectly safe, but that is beyond the scope of this article. So I will say this, if we had a small army (for defence purposes only) and guns were legal then any country would have to bomb us into another dimension to take over Scotland. Think about it, if we didn't start wars with other countries over resources and feeding the military industrial complex monster then we would have less enemies who would want to do us harm. Now, add to that the fact that any would-be invaders or terrorists would know that most people own guns, would march an army into a foreign neighbourhood where almost everyone could shoot you? You would be making a mistake if you did.
 
So let's attempt to tie this together. I would be fine with a completely independent Scotland having a small defence-only army. The Swiss model is very interesting in this respect, every male is trained and given a gun and becomes part of the Swiss militia. This has allowed them to stay neutral in major wars and come out just fine. Now, it must be pointed out that most ordinary men don't have ammunition for their guns in their home (as of 2007) as many gun right activists miss this fact when referencing Switzerland. But it is still a fascinating look at how an armed forces could be.

What I am getting at is that if Scotland became independent and then we fell pray to the military industrial complex we would not get anywhere. We would continue to see fine young men dying in foreign war zones for the enrichment of a privileged few and that is wrong. We could be much safer with a (possibly voluntary) defence-only army that would not be dragged into unnecessary wars. I also don't feel that legalizing guns would destroy our social fabric and lead to chaos. If potential gun-owners had to undergo background checks and mandatory training then we could have guns not concentrated in the hands of power only and this would mean that if we the people were aggressed against (by government or foreign invasion) then we could defend ourselves more effectively.
 
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Sunday 27 July 2014

Scottish Independence – A Critique of the Yes and No Campaign's Propaganda

Like most other people in Scotland I've recently been hit with a lot of propaganda regarding the referendum on so-called Scottish independence in September. I see massive problems with the yes and no campaigns arguments and in this article I de-construct the recent anti-independence booklet from the UK government called “What staying in the united kingdom means for Scotland” and the “Your Choice” booklet issued by the Yes Scotland campaign propaganda booklets that have found their way into my mail box recently. Now before we go on I have to make it clear that I'm not going through every point in each booklet, I'm simply critiquing the problems that are glaring in each camps argument.

The No Campaign
 
One of the main reasons why the Scottish National Party (SNP) have done well in recent elections has largely been due to the tone of their message in recent years. They provided an optimistic vision for Scotland while Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives all spent their time scaremongering about how the world will end if the SNP get into power.
The anti-independence booklet sent out by the Westminster government doesn't disappoint and is basically full of scaremongering. They start by going into the economy and how Scotland couldn't keep the pound the way we have it now. Fair enough, no argument from me on that. However they talk about the 'strength' of the Bank of England and to anyone who knows anything about fractional reserve banking and fiat currency we know that that is nonsense. We are forced to pay an inflation tax because our money (issued by the Bank of England) is essentially worthless because it is backed by absolutely nothing. Central banking is a threat to true freedom worldwide and that fact needs to be recognised. It's funny because later on in the booklet they talk about how in 2008 they were able to provide Scottish banks with “support worth more than twice Scotland's national income” hmm, could they mean the Royal Bank of Scotland bailout? With taxpayer money? Which clearly sends a message to the bankers that they can pursue whatever ridiculous business model they like and daddy government will slap them on the wrists and make sure that everyone can walk away bonus-in-hand. In a truly free market without government providing this kind of corporate welfare these bankers wouldn't be able to act in such a manner unless they actually wanted to lose everything.
 
The financial scaremongering goes on with the claim that somehow an independent Scotland would slow down trade with the rest of the UK. Are you shitting me? In an era such as ours where we can trade and share information with ease like we've never known with the rest of the world is the UK government serious in this criticism? There isn't going to be some kind of lake of fire between Scotland and the rest of the UK.
 
It's also pretty funny when they begin to defend the public institutions that we couldn't bear to lose. Like the BBC, wouldn't it be terrible if we weren't forced to pay for a TV licence (regardless of whether you watch the BBC or not) for a state-controlled institution that has been declining in quality for years. Yes, that would be a tragedy. Or the passport office, we couldn't do without the passport office, wait is that the same passport office where there were massive delays and problems this year? Oh that passport office, yes then who would fuck up if we lost that?
Then we get to the part about how the armed forced “keep us safe” so we couldn't possibly lose that. Well if the British armed forces were there to keep us safe why are they fighting a losing war in Afghanistan (a country that poses no threat to us?) If the armed forces were purely there to keep us safe then they would be a defensive army which they blatantly are not.
Since we're talking foreign policy the booklet also informs us about how the UK is the second largest aid donor in the world. I am a big supporter of charity but private charity. Giving tax payers money to foreign countries when our own is going down the toilet makes no sense. We were even giving money to India when they were working on a space program! It sounds like some kind of sick joke and I wish it was.
The booklet starts to taper off with talk of how great the EU is (see my article a Spectre Is Haunting Europe... to see why it is a very dangerous thing) and the UN and the G7 and G8 and G20. Amusingly they claim that the UK can protect Scottish industries like agriculture and fisheries, we all know that those are EU policies and the only way to protect those industries is not to be the big man in the EU but to get out of it completely.
 
It then ends with a whimper about what a successful family of nations we are and the usual empty promise of 'more powers' for the Scottish parliament if we toe the line and behave ourselves and then it's all over and if you see through the statist lies and appeals to emotion and tradition you realise that there are many flaws in the argument and we haven't even got to the pro-independence mob yet.


The Yes Campaign

The pro-independence people are indeed an optimistic and socialistic bunch. Their booklet is an altogether more personal affair with names and pictures of ordinary Scottish folks just like you telling their stories. On the second page we meet a mother who says that a yes vote would mean that her kids would be entitled to government money for her kids childcare so she can work. Sounds nice right? But wait, here I come to be a huge downer as usual. Why does she deserve tax payers money for having kids? But that aside for a moment, if we didn't have ludicrous government hurdles to jump over to start a childcare facility then costs would go down. I hear you now screaming about how then the kids will be left with psychopaths all day. Did you never have a teenage neighbour babysit your kids? My wife did that for years and shock horror not one child came to any harm. I myself was minded by a neighbour who watched local kids for a while and again the sheer shock that not one bad thing happened to me. Now to be mean in the eyes of my friends the socialists. Life is about personal responsibility, if you decide to have kids then you should plan how they will be cared for. Now, of course there are harsh an unforeseen circumstances and I have no problem with helping people who are genuinely in a bind but in the booklet it talks about every child being “entitled” to childcare. I can feel the taxes beginning to rise already and we're only on page two!
 
On the next page the socialism continues with the first of more than one of the English born people who are supposedly supporting independence. We meet Bob standing in a questionable area who campaigns for something abstract called “social justice”. Bob basically wants a welfare state (not good already, for the evils of the welfare state see my article “Against The Welfare State and It's Promoters”) that doesn't attack the vulnerable and poor whatever that actually means. He continues with his vague notion of everybody being equal. Well we know that's not true. I'm not equal in terms of playing football as, say Gareth Bale. Should we go down the road Kurt Vonnegut sketched out in his short story Harrison Bergeron where the government enforces equality so for example ballet dancers are weighed down and their faces covered to hide their beauty? It is an extreme example but there is a truth there about how egalitarianism drags people down instead of raising people up. We are not all equal, sorry to hit you with the truth but that's a fact every one of us is inferior and superior in some way to everyone else. Shocking. There is another fan of welfare we meet later called Scott funnily enough and the words put in his mouth are similar, vague notions of that “social justice” thing and something else called “democratic life”. He's also under the impression that with independence Scotland would be run by people that will do the best for the country. I would love to know about a government in the world that does things on behalf of the country and not the ruling elite and their friends. Separating from the UK government doesn't change the nature of government, politicians will still be in it for themselves and their donors and they always will be. Sorry Scott.
 
But across from Scott is the real appeal to emotion in the form of Mary. Mary is old and broke a bone in her leg and she's worried about the NHS being privatised. It is an uphill battle for us freedom lovers to try and convince people that we are not better off with the NHS. Socialised medicine keeps us down and limits treatment choice (see my article “Time For A Voluntary NHS?”) Mary talks about living abroad and seeing people “sell their homes to pay their health bills.” Well Mary if we didn't have institutions like the NHS and the BMA (British Medical Association) and had a totally free market in healthcare then let me tell you, there would be affordable healthcare the way you like it and nothing close to the ridiculous waiting lists that exist for procedures now. I know you may fear that any rogue could call themselves a doctor but with independent rating agencies the quacks would be out of business soon and with recent NHS scandals of improper treatment of patients we know that they are not whiter than white.

So when we get to the end of this booklet it takes a bizarre utopian turn where we are suddenly reading stories about Scotland in 2020 when everything is just fucking amazing for everybody with an accompanying graphic which reminds me of online social hell-hole Habbo Hotel the last time I saw it. Finally, the yes campaign have pulled out the crystal ball they've been hiding up their kilts and are letting us in on the future. It's amazing, in the future the government is awesome and everything they did just worked out. These fictional stories are full of praise for the state, even Barbara who is supposedly a business owner who runs the most popular pub in town is doing well because the minimum wage has been raised (see our podcast “Does The Minimum Wage Do More Harm Than Good?”) So now we can see that yes, there will be a tartan utopia finally!
 
Conclusion
 
So what have we learned from these little bits of propaganda? Well the no campaign are scaremongering as usual about how awful it would be if we don't have the Westminster daddy government and the yes campaign are talking about how amazing it would be if we don't have Westminster daddy government but how great it will be if we have Edinburgh daddy government. Either way it is all statist nonsense. It is a useless argument about which state is better. I would love Scotland to go independent with no government whatsoever but I am being discouraged by the socialist leanings of the yes campaign. Now I understand that Scotland is traditionally more left-wing than England and this is a problem. Stay in the UK and deal with the same shit or go independent the way the yes campaign want and deal with their shit.
 
Neither campaign addresses the issue of freedom or liberty, they just want to give us new state models and until we forget the notion of daddy government and grow up then a yes or no vote is meaningless, same shit different government.
 
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Thursday 17 July 2014

The Coming Anarcho-Capitalist 21st Century and How We Get There

I see the 20th century as the century of socialism & communism. Early on in 1917 we had the October Revolution in Russia and as the century went on the Soviet Union expanded and totalitarian state communism took root in China and Cuba among other places. Even in so called capitalist countries we have many socialistic institutions such as state welfare and socialised medicine. We already have seen the collapse of the Soviet Union and the collapse of increasingly unaffordable state socialised programs (such as have been mentioned) cannot be far off. Take the UK for example, the NHS has been in trouble for years with an ageing population and welfare payments continue to rise as the UK's 'benefit culture' has taken root and spawned a new social class. As idea's of stateless societies and anarcho-capitalism in particular begin to become more widespread this could be the century of anarchism! But we must think, how could such a thing come about?

Professor Walter Block talks about how when he first met Murray Rothbard in the 1960's they knew very few libertarians and now there are countless groups he's never even heard of. Anarcho-capitalism (as explained by Rothbard) is a new ideology that has grown from the roots of classical liberalism and a quick internet search will show you that this philosophy of (as it appears on lewrockwell.com) anti-state, anti-war, pro-market, is capturing the minds of many intelligent people young and old who are sick of state coercion, the military industrial complex and being told what to do with their own bodies.
 
With the communist revolutions in the 20th century we saw many wars being fought. Violent revolution was considered by many the best way to affect change. But looking back we can all see the problems, for example after many such revolutions the thugs assume control of the new government and the intellectuals prominent at the start of the revolution are usually killed. But that aside, for the anarcho-capitalist such a violent revolution is not only against what we stand for (by being for peace and anti-war) but also it would be nigh on impossible for example if I amassed an army to take on the British army, even if my army were winning briefly then I would also have to face the might of the US and EU countries respective armies also. Basically a suicide mission from the start and you could bet that when my army was defeated it would give the government a great excuse to tighten control on the population at large. In this way we can see that violent revolution would actually take us further away from the goal.
 
We then stray into the argument that is political action. Many libertarians and anarchists are split on this matter. Some think that political action could dismantle government. We can see this with Adam Kokesh talking about running for US president in 2020 under the promise of an orderly dismantling of the government. I salute Adam for trying something audacious for freedom but I am sceptical that this type of action will produce the required effect. I personally think the best we can hope for by Kokesh standing in 2020 (if he does) is that more people are made aware of libertarianism and anarcho-capitalism.
 
My personal view is that we need a non-violent revolution and make no mistake, such revolutions have occurred. Like the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia or the peaceful revolution in the German Democratic Republic (there's an inaccurate name for you) that led to the fall of the Berlin wall. But unfortunately at this moment we are very far from such a revolution happening.
 
So what would it take for a peaceful, non-violent revolution to make us a stateless society? Well we need a shift in consciousness for a start. I am encouraged by the amount of people of various philosophies who have 'woken up' as we call it and the amount of people that we call awake is increasing rapidly. With the internet we are able to share ideas and develop philosophical, political and economic ideas in a way never seen on earth before – this is the first step. The second step is where I agree with Stefan Molyneux. Stefan has pointed out many times that by properly parenting our children we will give rise to the next generation who is unaffected by statist nonsense and can see through the psychological control of the mainstream media. Eventually, there will be a critical mass of people who are awake to the statist control and will simply not take it any longer.

By now you probably think “Well, dammit we won't see this in our lifetimes, why don't we just start throwing bombs?” My answer to that is that throwing bombs is what gave anarchists a bad name in the first place and that's why people like me and thousands of others are trying to reclaim the word. It also never got those people anywhere. I will not see a truly free and stateless society in my lifetime but I am not discouraged. The old statist elites have always thought in the long-term and many political ideologies crashed and burned because they wanted short-term success and failed to realise that the people in power are there because of long-term thinking on the part of their predecessors. Everyone in this movement (even if you just explain these ideas to friends or tweet relevant links) are building the foundation of the anarcho-capitalist 21st century and our grandchildren will thank god that there were people like us spreading the word while many of the short-sighted nowadays would see out work as hopeless. It is anything but hopeless, it is the future.
 
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Wednesday 16 July 2014

Social Media and The Control Grid

It is alarming to walk around any city in the UK (and in most of the world for that matter) these days and see the sheer amount of surveillance that is everywhere. Sure, CCTV has it's uses in businesses and private homes but the sheer amount of cameras that litter urban environments is worrying. You could say that if you've done nothing wrong then you have nothing to hide but that would imply that they are there purely to catch criminals. That may be the story but if I'm going to mug someone on a street with cameras then I'll just cover my face! There is also no guarantee that anyone is manning the cameras at any one time. Also why are there cameras going up in low crime areas? Do you really feel safer walking down a dark street with a menacing figure coming towards you knowing that a camera is going to film you being mugged or assaulted? The fact is that CCTV is expensive and ineffective for the aims the authorities claim it is there for.

What about smart meters? We will be told they're a good thing because you can monitor your energy usage. However with proposals of carbon taxes and the like they could be used to ration how much energy you use and that is saying nothing about the massive amounts of harmful radiation they emit or the reports of them catching fire and even exploding!

Anyone who has been on a social network such as Facebook can see how much personal information that is being shared by ordinary users. This is so common that I'm sure that many examples spring to every readers mind almost instantly. We also have the trend of 'after sex selfies' of people taking pictures of themselves right after sex (not to mention some during sex selfies). Also let us not forget the massive amounts of data that is being collected on every single one of us every time we use the internet!
 
It seems like young people in particular are being encouraged through the internet to abandon notions of privacy and put every detail of their lives out there for everyone to see. With my tinfoil hat cocked to one side it really does look planned. If you were an evil genius in a cape looking out of your sinister-looking tower wondering how to get the general public to accept a massive electronic control grid wouldn't it make sense to have people voluntarily sharing massive amounts of their privacy online? In this way as the grid gets larger former notions of privacy have already faded so the general public is less likely to ask why there's cameras on every street or why there is a council official in a uniform that looks like a child dressing up as a policeman watching you smoke a cigarette so that he can pounce on you with a fine if you drop the butt on the street (I have unfortunately witnessed just that).
 
So where could this lead? Well to Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon. For anyone unfamiliar with this, the 18th century philosopher Jeremy Bentham came up with an idea for an institutional building where a single watchman could observe all the inmates without the inmates being able to tell whether they are being watched or not. So the result is that all the inmates act as if they're being watched at all times so that they control their own behaviour. Now imagine that but instead of a building it's a city or even a country.
 
We can see that if we drop notions of privacy, even with something seemingly harmless like Facebook we will develop into a culture who are used to being under constant surveillance and will just accept a giant control grid. But just remember, once the grid is in place it's easy for the powers that be to strengthen it and very hard for normal people to break it. I will finish with a quote I have used before but it is by far the best quote on the topic and it comes from Benjamin Franklin “Those who sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither.”

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Tuesday 15 July 2014

Against The Welfare State and It's Promoters

Talk of even limiting the welfare state is considered madness in the UK and especially Scotland with it's peculiar socialist leanings. Despite the fact that politicians talk tough about it to get votes because at low-wage, unskilled jobs (such as mine) people are livid about the government hand-out's to people who basically do nothing and have no desire to. But when you dare to float the idea that we just abolish the welfare state then suddenly you're a heartless bastard who doesn't care about the poor. Let's start with the 'poor'. We call people on benefits in this country poor but the fact is that if they went somewhere like India they would know what poor is. Here so called poor people have flat-screen TV's and iPhones. The horror and degradation of it all! But that aside there is much more to this issue.

You Don't Care About The Poor
 
This is what most readers will think. That I don't give a shit about the poor. But when you say to someone “If there was no welfare would you support the poor?” they usually say yes and so do I. If our tax money wasn't being wasted on welfare payments then people would have more free money to give to charities to support people who are genuinely struggling to find work.
I care about people who are genuinely having a hard time but the plain fact is that there is a benefit culture that has arisen in the UK where a class of society feel entitled for people who work to pay their way because they don't want to work. If we gave out-of-work people some money to tide them over for a fixed period of time then that would help them out while looking for or creating a job.
In regards to people who are genuinely ill and can't work then of course we should all help them and their carers, but those people are not my target. In this article I'm focusing on the class below what was called working class, I'm targeting the parasite class.
 
Welfare Hinders, Not helps
 
Welfare helps absolutely no-one. All it does is provide incentives not to work. Minimum wage laws keep many people out of the job market because the labour they perform simply isn't worth the minimum wage as it is. If employers were free to hire at whatever price then wages would naturally go up as labour was more plentiful and employers become forced to compete for it.
Then we have the issue of children. When the state pays people for having children then some people will have more just for the payments! When you subsidise something you get more of it. So we have the farce of people having kids for the increased benefit payments! That neither helps the child nor parent.
Without state welfare people would be forced to find work or even make their own job by starting a business for themselves.


But There'll Be More Crime!
 
Often people make out that if we abolish welfare there will be more crime. Maybe, initially that could be true as a dying class makes its last wriggles. But generations of parasitic thinking have bread a culture of entitlement and it will only get worse unless we break it now. Better to break this thinking before it becomes even worse and government dependency increases among the population.
 
Welfare Promoters
 
A fascinating aspect of this debate is the people who promote welfare. They stroll about with their hearts bleeding all over the floor for us all to see but the odd fact is that state welfare is a very socialist concept and it's strange to watch socialists who – on one hand – support workers as the 'producers' and the evil capitalists as 'parasites' who feed off the producers but how do they not recognise that people who claim welfare because they simply don't want to work are the real parasites, taking the average working man's money so they can do nothing. Not the capitalists who, shock horror, actually create wealth!

Conclusion

If I were to put on my tin foil hat and speak conspiratorially for a moment it would seem like the government actually want people dependent on them. Why?! I hear you cry out in sheer rage. Well, people dependent on you are people who are easier to control. Not really rocket science. We can see that despite governmental tough-talking on the issue they benefit from more control over the population. What the Attlee government wanted to do with the National Assistance Act in 1948 is completely alien to what we have now – a parasitic culture of entitlement that feeds off the public's wealth for it's own benefit and it's only a matter of time before it collapses.

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What "Trailer Park Boys" Can Teach Us About State Police

I was sitting with my wife watching the excellent Canadian sitcom “Trailer Park Boys” the other night and a particular story line really brought home the reality of state police to me. In the episode in question the drunk trailer park supervisor Jim Lahey (who was thrown out of the police force a few years previous) decides to wear his old police uniform and act like he's back on the force. He drives around drunk harassing the residents and even constructs a make-shift jail to contain those who don't submit to his demands. The episode is hilarious and quite slapstick but it is a good analogy for state police. Why? Because they too are people who adorn costumes and assume that the costume gives them some kind authority over ordinary people in some real way.

I start from the premise that the only valid interactions are voluntary ones. I have not given my consent to the laws imposed upon me by the state so I see no reason to recognise them. Now obviously I agree with things like don't kill and rape and steal but I don't need pages of written laws to know that. Those are covered by the non-aggression principle and respect for property rights. So I don't need people in costumes who call themselves police to enforce illegitimate laws like taxes (which is theft) or victimless crimes like smoking a joint.

The funny thing about the episode is that (we assume) that the trailer park residents have signed up to Jim Lahey being the park supervisor voluntarily. So it follows that he would actually have more authority than the state police because his authority would not be imposed on people without consent.

Sure, you could say that by living in this country then I consent to be policed. But that doesn't change the fact that non-voluntary interactions are by their nature coercive and furthermore where can I go to escape governmental goons in costumes? Am I supposed to buy my own island on my Postman's salary? Look, just because someone has on a costume given to them by an extremely organised crime gang calling themselves government doesn't give them the right to tell you what you can and can't do on your property, or tell you what you can and can't put in your own body. It doesn't give them the right to stop others from stealing but enforce theft by government and it certainly doesn't give them the right to kidnap you and lock you in a cage for asserting your right to voluntary interaction.
 
One only has to look at the great work done by Murray Rothbard or Stefan Molyneux (among many others) to see how private police would not only be more effective but wouldn't waste time and resources on victimless crimes such as drug use. Policing should be voluntary and their only function should be to deal with those who violate the non-aggression principle and property rights – nothing more.
 
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Monday 14 July 2014

Hate Crimes, Free Speech and Property Rights

Politicians in Britain love to swan about talking about how we have “freedom of speech” in Britain. That it's a right that we in these isles cherish. Disturbingly a great deal of the public believe in this myth – and let's be clear, free speech in Britain is a myth. But how could that be? Well I can give you two words that prove we have no free speech in Britain - 'hate crime'.

Before I go any further let's just be clear, I'm talking about hate crimes that only involve words and not actual violence. Initiating force for no reason against someone is inexcusable. I'm talking in this article about verbal or written abuse only.

For me freedom of speech means exactly that, the freedom to say whatever you like, regardless of who gets offended. In the distance I can hear you crying “But what about offending ethnic minorities and women and gay people and everyone else on the huge 'hate crime' list?” Well, free speech goes both ways don't cha know. If someone offends you with their free speech then your completely free to defend yourself and explain why they're a fucking idiot with your own free speech! There's no need to go crying to the authorities like some child in a playground, running to find a teacher because someone said mean things to you. But this becomes even more troubling when we find that property rights become affected by this also.
 
Many people in Britain will remember the case of the Christian couple in 2012 who owned a B&B in Berkshire. They refused a gay couple a double room in their establishment and what happened? Well the gay couple were awarded £1,800 each in court for “injury to feelings”. This hasn't happened just once either the Bull's who ran a B&B in Cornwall also had a similar experience and even lost a supreme court battle and had their lives ruined. Now, anyone who has read my writing (fiction and non-fiction) will find it strange that I'm defending Christians because I make no secret of the fact that I am not a Christian whatsoever. I also have no problem with homosexuality, I personally don't care what consenting adults do as long as it doesn't hurt anyone. What disturbs me when thinking about this is that the B&B owners in question's property rights were being trampled on by the state. The state should respect property rights – end of story. Those owners have the right to have whoever they want under their terms in their own property. Look, if my wife and I went to a B&B run by a gay couple who said we couldn't have a double room because we're straight and they don't like that then I would be like fine, fuck you then, if you're going to be intolerant of my lifestyle I'll go stay somewhere else where I'm wanted. I wouldn't feel the need to go crying to Daddy government to make it all better in the form of a cash payment. That's what bothers me, if the gay couples had like posted online or whatever (using their free speech) about how bullshit it was that they weren't wanted as guests just because they're gay then I would say that there's nothing wrong with that. It's the fact that they had to go to the state whining that gets me.

Those B&B owners are ignorant in my opinion. I don't see how it's their business how other people live, however property rights are important and must be respected. We've become accustomed to the state wading in and telling people what they can and can't do on their own property – like the smoking ban. It's none of the states business if people smoke or not in someone's establishment, that should be up to the owner.

This is becoming very dangerous. The state has no business telling you what you can and can't say and what you can and can't do on your property – that's freedom folks (not enough British people understand that tricky freedom word). Unless of course we want Britain to descend into an Orwellian shit-hole because whether you think I'm overreacting or not the facts are the facts. Submit to state control over your words and property or grow the fuck up and try freedom because some of us don't want to be controlled.

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Links

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/11/27/christian-bnb-gay-couple_n_4348385.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-19991266
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2424983/Christian-B-B-owners-refused-gay-couple-close-business.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-25119158


Friday 11 July 2014

Creationists, Apes and Aliens

It's the question humanity is forever asking and arguing about. We've long heard the arguments between creationists and evolutionists. Even recently with the interesting work of the late Lloyd Pye and his intervention theory we have been offered a third possibility of humanities origins, that we are the product of alien intervention – but this possibility (fascinating as it is) is not the purpose of this article. The purpose of this article is the interesting way in which creationists think.

Personally I am not 100% convinced by any of these theories of humanities origins. However the one I reject completely is the creationist who takes the Bible literally. Leaving aside the fact of the evidence we have to support the fact that the earth is much older than the creationists would have us believe, it is not my intention to disprove creationism. It's more their mental attitude that interests me

I have always wondered why if creationists think that god is all-knowing and all-powerful he could not have set evolution in place like some kind of grand plan? Surely if he is the most intelligent being imaginable then this would be no mean feat for him? Another aspect that interests me is that many creationists – when you mention evolution – immediately say things like “I didn't come from no stinkin' ape!” and “Do I look like a monkey to you?”. As I stated earlier I'm not fully convinced by Darwinian evolution either, it's plain to see that it has holes in the theory, however if it was proven to be true to me then I wouldn't really care if I was evolved from an ape. They're incredible animals and if one was an extremely distant ancestor of mine I simply wouldn't care. It would have no effect on me whatsoever. It seems to me like many of these creationists want to believe that they are divine and somehow special as if they're not an animal walking the earth. Almost as if every other animal apart from the human animal is somehow below the divine human in some bizarre way. True we are king of the animals but as a biology teacher I once had (in a Catholic school no less) said “There are two types of things that are alive on the earth, plants and animals.” So I have no problem in describing myself as an extremely advanced animal.

But this makes me think further, I have personally yet to discuss Lloyd Pye's theory of alien intervention in humanity with creationists but I wonder if I would get “I didn't come from no filthy intergalactic entity!”

I suppose what I'm getting at is that I don't understand the creationist view at all. God could have started evolution if he wanted. He could have created the aliens that created humanity as we know it, who knows? But I take issue with the idea that we can find complete truth within the pages of one book. To take the Bible literally misses the fascinating esoteric knowledge encoded in it and for me reduces the true weight and meaning of a text that scholars are still trying (and will be for some time) to understand fully.

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Lloyd Pye and Intervention Theory

Thursday 10 July 2014

Arthur Schopenhauer and The Absurd Crime That Is Suicide

The assisted suicide debate has gone a little quiet as of late. But to me it has always seemed a little strange that there was even any debate at all? If we start from a place of property rights (if you think there is no such thing and I steal your car then you may change your mind just a little bit) then the only conclusion is that we own our own body and if we voluntarily wish to kill ourselves then who can -with any real authority – say nay?

I understand the argument that it would be dangerous if we could just kill people who are disabled or who are mentally ill, but if we apply libertarian principles such as the non-aggression principle (don't initiate violence against another for no reason) then those people who kill someone who is not within their 'right' mind will be violating that principle. So now you're thinking that not everyone thinks like me. True, but I don't think it would be hard to say that the person who wants to commit suicide must declare that and be assessed to be what we accept as being sane.
 
Who do the so-called authorities think they are telling people what they can and can't do with their own body? The great philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer in his “On Suicide” essay (not to leave out my fellow Scot David Hume but I'm more familiar with Schopenhauer's thought) makes the point that if you find out that someone who you know murders someone then you feel “a lively sense of indignation and extreme resentment” whereas when you find out that someone you know has committed suicide then (in Schopenhauer's words) “you will be moved to grief and sympathy; and mingled with your thoughts will be admiration for his courage, rather than the moral disapproval which follows upon a wicked action.”
 
Now, I recommend the reading of Schopenhauer's full essay but even from these quotes we can see that to treat suicide as a crime is simply absurd! People have extremely different emotional reactions to a murderer or one who commits suicide. Now, I will go one step further than Schopenhauer and say that we should also legally protect people who willingly help someone who wants to commit suicide but can't for whatever reason.
 
Another fascinating point that Schopenhauer makes us aware of us that Christians are very much against suicide but did Jesus not voluntarily commit suicide himself? He was put to death but he knew it was coming and welcomed it. Also what about the many martyred Christians who knew they would be killed for their beliefs but somehow martyrdom and suicide aren't quite the same thing. Many people who kill themselves do so for their own philosophical beliefs just like the Christian martyrs. We should also not forget how the ancients thought of suicide, who can not be moved by the portrait of Socrates surrounded by his friends about to heroically drink the hemlock?

I would like to finish by again quoting the great philosopher who inspired this article Schopenhauer. He goes on to say in 'On Suicide' where he tackles the religious and legal issued surrounding our topic: “I am rather of opinion that the clergy should be challenged to explain what right they have to go into the pulpit, or take up their pens, and stamp as a crime an action which many men whom we hold in affection and honor have committed; and to refuse an honorable burial to those who relinquish this world voluntarily. They have no Biblical authority to boast of, as justifying their condemnation of suicide; nay, not even any philosophical arguments that will hold water; and it must be understood that it is arguments we want, and that we will not be put off with mere phrases or words of abuse. If the criminal law forbids suicide, that is not an argument valid in the Church; and besides, the prohibition is ridiculous; for what penalty can frighten a man who is not afraid of death itself? If the law punishes people for trying to commit suicide, it is punishing the want of skill that makes the attempt a failure.”


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The Catholic Church, Authoritarianism and Property Rights

In my many conversations, recent and historical with the many Catholics I know one thing that has struck me is that most of them (the more devout ones) seem to be under the impression that the whole world is obsessed with sex. Well, okay maybe it is but they seem to leave out the fact that they themselves are also obsessed with sex, just in a different way.

So what do I mean? Well every time you see representative of the Catholic Church on some god awful talk show (hilarious, right?) they are always trying to tell everyone what to do with their own bodies. Don't masturbate, don't have sex before marriage, don't use birth control, don't have abortions and their all time favourite don't have sex with someone of the same gender as you. I believe everyone has heard such ranting's from the church but why do they feel the need to impose their own morality on the rest of us?

Well the Catholic Church is an extremely authoritarian organization. So when some seemingly celibate bishop or priest begins telling women what to do with their own bodies then the faithful will listen. Here is our first problem, you have to be extremely authoritarian if you as a celibate man think that somehow you have the authority to tell thousands of women what to do with their property and by that I mean their bodies. But you see this idea only seems bizarre to people who have either broke away for the Catholic Church or people who have never been involved in it in the first place. Because the foundation of the Catholic Church is authoritarianism and control.

Now before I go on I'm only picking on the Catholics here because it's what I know, I was brought up Catholic so I can only go by my own experience. That said we can now return to our topic, the authoritarianism within Catholic thinking goes right up. God is total authority, then the pope, then the cardinals, then the bishops, then the priests. Like each one is each others boss and they're all your bosses. So we can easily see that the whole institution rests on authoritarian thinking.

This is why Libertarian minded people like me float away from the church. A Catholic would say that god owns my body outright so I have to do what he wants me to do with it and just in case I don't he has sent loads of people who will tell me to my face what to do with my body because somehow god being the top man in the organization he's above speaking to me personally. But the problem is that I feel differently. I feel that if we accept there is such a thing as property rights (if you think there isn't and I steal your phone you may then suddenly think differently) then logically (and with the absence of some metaphysical being talking to me directly) then you must own your own body therefore no-one regardless of what costume they wear and how many people call them 'your grace' or whatever can tell you what to do and what not to do with it.

If Catholics want to play out their little hierarchy system within their own group then fine, I believe in complete freedom of religion, but to all the Catholics I say think twice when telling the rest of the world how to treat their own property. Even if you are right and sinners like me are going straight to hell without passing go or collecting a communion wafer. Well then did god not give me the free will to choose that? It seems to me like it's done of your business. You may enjoy telling others what to do but less people than you think enjoy hearing it.

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Wednesday 9 July 2014

Embracing Artificiality - A Philosophical Look At RuPaul

Many people whom we refer to as 'awake' (and myself included) have been railing for years about the sheer artificiality of modern mainstream culture. You can imagine the stereotype I'm thinking of, unneeded plastic surgery, no sense of real purpose or appreciation of real art of natural beauty. It does seem like we've been cast into a hyper real hell of material distraction for which we can safely blame the mainstream media. There seems to be less of a place for philosophy or real beauty in our modern world. But something has hit me recently which is making me question my position slightly.

I was watching a show with my wife called RuPaul's Drag Race. For those unfamiliar RuPaul is a famous American drag queen and he hosts a reality TV show where aspiring drag queens compete to be the next big thing in the drag world. I watched this show with curiosity as this is a world I am unaccustomed to personally and after a while something really struck me. Everything about RuPaul seems artificial, when he is in drag he sports outrageous wigs and gowns. Even his music features heavily in the show and let me tell you it has a bland disco pop feel with his voice so auto-tuned it's almost unbelievable.
 
So what am I actually getting at here? Well, RuPaul seems like an intelligent and savvy individual who is wholeheartedly embracing artificiality by choice. He embraces it to such a degree that his artificiality is simply larger than life. This led me to revise my opinion about the whole matter. When I see deluded mainstream masses who live their artificial existences unaware of the fact that their lives are artificial I see lost people who don't seem to have any awareness, they just go along with the culture because that's normal and people like me are weird. But when I look at RuPaul I see someone who had consciously embraced artificiality and to his great success and I can't see anything wrong with it.
 
What I have concluded is that it's not an artificial versus an authentic lifestyle. It's the level of consciousness a person brings to their lifestyle and if someone freely chooses to live such a life then I say good luck to them. I think we have to get away from how a person lives and what their tastes are and look deeper to see if they bring a high level of consciousness to what they do and (I don't know RuPaul personally you'll be shocked to learn) but to my eye that's what he seems to be doing and to him I say condragulations!

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Tuesday 8 July 2014

Legalize All Drugs!

We have all heard about the so called 'war on drugs' and other such schemes that governments tell us are for our own good. We are told that if these dangerous substances were to be legal then everyone, their gran and their dog would be lying on the streets with needles sticking out of their arms and the entire fabric of society would collapse! However, anyone who thinks about the problem logically and from a perspective of personal freedom can only come to one conclusion – to legalize all drugs immediately.


Keeping Drugs Off The Street? Impossible

When thinking about the topic of drug prohibition the first thing that springs to mind is the sheer impossibility of the task. No matter how inventive law enforcement become in detecting smugglers or growers or drug lab's only a fraction of what is either produced or brought into the country is actually seized. Drug's aren't terribly difficult to find on the streets. The only measure that could stand a chance of keeping so-called illegal drugs out of the market would be to lock down the entire country with a massive police state but I still don't feel that that would work either. Why not? Well let's think of prisons, supposedly the most locked down place in society. Well guess what, the prisons are full of drugs! If they can't keep them out of locked down buildings then what chance do they have of taking them off the street completely? Absolutely none.
 
Vices and Crimes

One has only to look at the great Lysander Spooner's 1875 work 'Vices Are Not Crimes: A Vindication of Moral Liberty' to see what seems obvious. That vices and crimes are two separate things. We have to understand that for a crime to be committed we must have a victim. For example if I walk down the street and decide to punch you in the face for no reason then I have committed a crime, I have assaulted you – you are the victim. Now, if I walk past you on the street smoking a joint (which is considered a 'crime') then who is the victim? There isn't one, however some disagree.

Some people when thinking of the above scenario would say “Well there is a victim. You yourself are the victim because you're damaging your body.” Fair enough, although if we are to pursue that logic then we must arrest anyone who drinks alcohol, smokes a cigarette, drinks a soft drink or eats a cheese burger. This should not seem ludicrous because it is using the exact same logic. If you accept that each individual person owns their own body then if they're only hurting themselves then it's none of your damn business.

You might say that the victim of a drug user is their family. For a start not all drug users are hopeless junkie's. But that aside we have to pursue the same logic again, there are thousands of alcoholic's in Britain, many people die of smoking related illnesses and even certain morbidly obese people are a great burden on friends and family. But we're not all clambering to outlaw any of these things. The other argument I will mention here is that a small minority steal from people to pay for their drugs, this argument I will tackle later in the article.
 
What I am getting at here is simply that we have to draw a line between vices and crimes. A vice is something which may seem morally repugnant to some such as using drugs or visiting a willing prostitute but ultimately has no victim. Whereas a crime has a victim who has been wronged by the act.


Crimes Caused By Prohibition
 
Organised Crime
We only have to look at the disaster of alcohol prohibition in the US which lasted from 1920 to 1933 to see how gangsters like Al Capone can profit from prohibition of various drugs. If drugs were legalized tomorrow then every drug dealer, smuggler and cartel would go out of business. When drugs are prohibited then organised gangs are able to corner the market through violence and intimidation. Also one of the ways prices of the drugs are pushed up is by the cost drug gangs pay to bribe police and customs officials and as we shall see high prices lead to genuine crime.

'Junkie' Crime
I mentioned earlier that when I say that using drugs is a victimless crime some will say that people are more likely to rob people to pay for their drugs, so those people are the victims. Fair enough, but if you read Professor Walter Block's 'Defending The Undefendable' you start to see the picture a little differently. If drugs were legal then the prices would be much lower than they are now. More people would be producing them and they wouldn't have the overhead costs of bribes and revenue lost through seized merchandise. It follows then that there would be more drugs available which would drive down the price so people would have less need to steal to feed their habit.
 
Another aspect to this is the fact that every time that drugs are seized by the authorities then the supply is lower so (this is basic economics) the price will go up. Now, when the price of drugs goes up then drug addicts don't simply say “Well, darn it I guess I'll just have to give up now.” That's not how it works, of course then they're going to turn to crime to pay the inflated price. Granted some people will commit crimes to pay for drugs anyway but I would argue that a lot less people would feel the need to steal if drugs were plentiful on the market.
 
Drug Safety
 
It is immensely upsetting to hear of young people dying from bad drugs which have been cut with all sorts of chemicals and god-knows-what. The reason this happens is because these drugs are illegal. Producers are free to mix whatever they like with their drugs so they can double the amount and the profit. If drugs were legal though this would be a very different matter altogether. If I ran a company that made ecstasy and people began to die from my product then you can bet that not only would someone analyse my tablets to find out what I had been cutting the tablets with but I would go out of business very quickly not to mention the fact that I'd be arrested (and maybe even lynched). In this way we can see that if drugs were manufactured above board by reputable companies then they would be immensely safer than they are now and we could avoid many needless deaths.

Conclusion
 
I think it's clear to see that the case for drug legalization is a strong one when looked at from this angle. We tolerate certain drugs in society like alcohol, tobacco and let's not forget caffeine. But somehow we think that they're okay but other drugs are somehow evil and more dangerous. Marijuana remains illegal despite the fact that no-one has ever died from using it whereas thousands die world-wide from alcohol and tobacco related illnesses. We have to change our perception of drugs entirely. If drugs were made legal society would not collapse, we would be able to put many violent criminals out of business and since people are going to use drugs anyway they would be a lot safer.

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