PJC Journal – Original

by Obnoxio

Making a case for Libertarianism, Part 2

This is part of an ongoing series of posts outlining my understanding of Libertarianism and its benefits and consequences.

Bansturbation

Marijuana
never kicks down your door in the middle of the night. Marijuana never
locks up sick and dying people, does not suppress medical research,
does not peek in bedroom windows. Even if one takes every reefer
madness allegation of the prohibitionists at face value, marijuana
prohibition has done far more harm to far more people than marijuana
ever could.
— P.J. O'Rourke

One of the most egregious
failings of statism is the mantra: “something must be done.” And the
simplest, most dramatic gesture that the state can make, is to ban
something outright. Someone gets shot? Ban guns! Someone gets stabbed?
Ban people from carrying knives! Someone doesn't like gurning idiots at
trance raves? Ban drugs!

And of course, it always works, doesn't it? I mean, gun crime hasn't risen year on year since the banning of handguns, has it? Whoops! Knife crime isn't trending upwards all the time, is it? Whoops!
And, of course, the War on Drugs has been a raging success, hasn't it?
Because the street price of drugs has just sky-rocketed … er, whoops!

And there are other stupid consequences of this urge that the government has to tell us how to live our lives:

• it's
  illegal to practice a kind of particular Olympic sport in this country,
  technically, a number of Olympians are going to be breaking the law in
  the 2013 [sic] Olympics;
• people who have committed no crime are criminalised by the simple act of carrying a useful tool around;
• people who are enjoying something that only affects themselves are also criminalised.

I should, at this point, declare my own personal history in this regard:

• I've never owned a firearm myself, but all my friends and family who did treated them with absolute respect, as you would any
  potentially lethal tool. I've been hunting and target shooting. My dad
  owned a Luger clone when I was a (very young) kid, and I knew that it
  was definitely not a toy and I was never to point it at anyone, ever.
• I
  used to carry a knife around with me when I was a kid, two, in fact:
  one was a Swiss Army knife for the tools and one was a 6-inch “Bowie”
  knife. Until I read about all the bansturbation in the papers, it
  frankly never occurred to me that there was even the idea that this was
  anything but harmless.
• I have never smoked (tobacco or
  cannabis), I have never taken any drug other than on prescription from
  a doctor and, since I've met the current Mrs Clown, I binge drink on
  champagne and fine reds every weekend. Apart from that, I rarely drink.

By
any reasonable definition, I'd be considered (fairly) Puritanical, but
I can't see why my personal beliefs should dictate how everyone else
lives their lives. Banning stuff, making it illegal does nothing to
stop criminally-minded people, who believe themselves to be outside the
law anyway and merely imposes on the freedoms of people who have no bad
intentions from going about their lawful business.

Gun-mad Loonies

Libertarians
frequently get classed as gun-mad loonies. I think it's rather the case
that “gun-mad loonies” see Libertarians as the only people who
fundamentally support their right to do as they will, as long as they
don't harm others. Personally, I don't particularly want to own a
handgun, but I can see the case for handguns for self-defence and
target shooting. I can see the case for rifles for hunting and target
shooting. I can't really see the case for semi-automatic or automatic weapons. But:
unless there is a history of personality disorder or a criminal record,
particularly one that indicates a appetite for violent crime, then I can't really see why people should not spend their own, hard-earned money on these things.

There
is a generation of British people who have grown up without firearms.
You actually do not know what a pleasure you are missing out on, you
don't know the self-defence options they provide and you have been
brainwashed into believing that they are evil, when in fact, they are
just tools. Only the intent with which they can be used can be classed
as good or evil. If they are used in an evil manner, the perpetrators need to be punished swiftly and harshly. Punishing all
owners of firearms for the actions of a very small number of owners of
most probably illegally-acquired firearms is merely stupid.

Carrying Knives

A
similar reasoning applies to knives. If I want to carry a knife, even a
machete, for the hell of it, what harm am I causing anyone? If I use it
to harm someone, then by all means throw the book at me, but until I've done something wrong, why should I be criminalised?

Drugs

And
as a Libertarian, I believe that everyone owns their own body. If you
want to get utterly off your tits on E, heroin or cocaine, go for it.
The negative consequences of most drugs stem from the petty crime
necessary to fund the habit.

And this is one of the few
justifications I have for the state to provide a service: I believe
that having the state provide sterile paraphernalia and high-quality
drugs of a suitable strength to highly dependent addicts free of charge
will provide an immediate reduction in petty crime and improve the
quality of the addicts' lives immeasurably. If they want to get off
drugs, I believe that the state should offer that option, but without
judgment or conditions.

People might argue that this contradicts
my arguments against the state, but I consider myself as a minarchist,
rather than an anarchist. I believe that there are going to be some
things that we cannot reliably expect people to reliably provide on a commercial or voluntary basis and this is definitely one of them.

The Consequences

I
fully expect there to be anomalies. I expect that some people will
accidentally or deliberately be killed by firearms, just as there are
now. I expect that some people will be stabbed, just as there are now.
I expect that there will still be individual instances of drug-addled
people committing crimes, just as there are now. Overall, however, I
expect that there will be a massive decline in consequent crime.

As
a Libertarian, I fully expect a strict but compassionate and
accountable justice system to offer therapy to those who commit crime
because of mental disorders and punishment to those who commit crime
because of a criminal inclination. In either case, I would generally
expect these people to be removed to facilities where they cannot harm
others until they have been treated or until they have been
rehabilitated.

And I believe that the rest of society will be
better off without a constant hectoring voice in our ears telling us
what we can and cannot own, carry, do or say.

Syndicated from Obnoxio the Clown and LPUK

by Obnoxio

Making a case for Libertarianism, Part 1

“There is only one basic
human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes
the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences.”
— P.J. O'Rourke

People
seem to have some peculiar perceptions about Libertarianism, so I
thought I'd offer my personal take on Libertarianism in a series of
posts: what it is, how it might work in practice, etc.

What is Libertarianism?

The
essence of Libertarianism is that you own your body and all the
consequences of your efforts. For example: if you till the soil, then
no-one has the right to deprive of the fruits of your labours. It also
completely opposes the idea of anybody using force to deprive you
thereof.

One of the most fundamental misconceptions is that the
philosophy is “do what you will.” It's more accurately, “do what you
will with yourself” or “do what you will, as long as it harms no-one
else.” So arguments that Libertarians would be soft on crime are
completely wrong: crimes such as mugging, murder, rape, burglary are
the very things that I or any Libertarian would be outraged by.
“Crimes” such as pensioners not paying council tax or someone being
offended by someone else's expression of free speech are somewhat lower
down on the list of things that I would worry about.

Are Libertarians just gun nuts and fruit loops?

It
is true that the liberties offered by the philosophy do attract people
with “interesting perspectives” and it's further true that the ideal of
Libertarianism has been debased by ludicrous adoptions of the word,
rather than the philosophy. “Libertarian Paternalism” is such an
oxymoron, and at the root of many extreme gun nut survivalists' beliefs
there is evidence of yet another “New World Order” variation of
socialism, where the strong will once again dictate the ways in which
the rest of us will live.

Even the arguments in favour of
anarchy are not nihilistic, true anarchists do not want an unruly
society in a permanent state of turmoil, they just believe that people,
left to themselves, will generally muddle along just fine, in the same
way they did for millennia before government was invented.

The
reality of Libertarianism is this: it is a broad church, with some
radical left-wing people espousing key aspects of the philosophy
alongside radical right-wing people and people everywhere else along
the political spectrum — it's not something to be derided as just a “right-wing fringe philosophy.”

OK, so why should I think about becoming a Libertarian?

We've
seen centuries of political interference in society. Governments,
whether well-meaning (such as Attlee's post-war government) or
not-so-well-meaning (like Stalin or Mao Zedong) have been composed of
people who believed that they knew better what people should do, than
those people did themselves. The failing is always this: the bigger a
problem is, the more difficult it is to solve it. Something with as
many variables as an entire nation's economy is never going to be
planned successfully, which invariably leads to a failure at some
point. The Russians, for instance, had complete and utter control over
their economy, with huge resources at their disposal and yet the life
of the average Russian was miserable. Although everybody had enough
“money” to live on, they had nothing more than a drab existence. They
had everything they needed to survive (mostly), but nothing that they needed to live.

People
always forget about unintended consequences when they reach for the law
books, as well. There is a famous (but probably apocryphal) story about
a Russian nail factory being tasked with a target of producing ten tons
of nails before the end of the month. Even with the machinery working
at full capacity 24 hours a day, with no breakdowns and no problems,
the manager of the factory knew that the objective was entirely
impossible. So instead of even having a stab at making the requisite
number of nails, they made a single ten ton nail. They met their
centrally planned objective perfectly, but the value to society was
very limited.

So, you might argue, complete central planning
doesn't work — but what about a social democracy, where business is
given ancillary objectives which work towards achieving “social
benefits” and the state provides more of the same. Well, for me, the
problems are:

1. Your social benefits and mine may differ. I,
   for instance, believe that the state should provide good roads;
   frequent rubbish collection; a strong, independent police force; a
   strong, independent military and little else. You, on the other hand,
   may feel that the state should provide a “safety net” for people who
   become unemployed through no fault of their own, and a nationalised
   health service, and and and … So which one of us has chosen the right
   level of social benefits? And why should people who do not believe in a
   higher level of social benefits pay for those who do?
2. The state is an inefficient means of providing anything. For ample evidence of this, see here.
   The problem is that the state is inherently inefficient because of the
   size of the “problem” it's trying to “solve”. The other thing is that
   because it's all “funny money” to the state, and there are no real
   negative consequences of doing things wrong, people just don't take
   things as seriously as they might. There are certainly any number of
   individuals in the state who take their jobs seriously and try to
   provide a good, value-for-money service, but there are many more who
   don't. Just ask any civil servant — they will either rant about the
   incompetence or bad attitude of their colleagues, or they will prove to
   be part of the problem themselves.

So, given that the state is
a poor choice of service provider, why should we rely on the state to
provide services for us? Historically, there would have been hundreds
of local “friendly societies” providing social benefits to their
members on the basis of their contributions and their needs. They got
driven out of business by the welfare state, because they could not
compete with an organisation that was not dependent on its own nous
and capabilities for survival — no-one can. If the government decided
to get into the grocery business, Tesco, ASDA and Sainsbury would be
stone dead within a decade, because they could never hope to compete
with an organisation that didn't need to make a profit, that could give
their groceries away without appearing to charge their customers at
all. Never mind that in reality those groceries might be costing ten
times what Tesco charged. You could never make a direct comparison,
because of all the other “services” the state provides.

The other side of government is that it, like many organisations, is populated by people of a political inclination. “Politics,” as P.J. O' Rourke famously said, “is
the business of getting power and privilege without possessing merit. A
politician is anyone who asks individuals to surrender part of their
liberty – their power and privilege – to State, Masses, Mankind, Planet
Earth, or whatever. This state, those masses, that mankind, and the
planet will then be run by … politicians.“

So they're
always trying to make something. And when they start, they may be
making something good. But once they've accomplished that something
good, they don't just walk away. They have to justify their existence
and the continued growth of their “empire”. And this is inevitably
where it all goes wrong. Because even if they've got a perfect
whatever-they-were-trying-to-do, they now have to make it better. So
they fiddle, and they add stuff, and they monitor and set targets and
… just look at the consequences of a decade of New Labour: insane
amounts of money ploughed into schools, hospitals and every other
aspect of our lives and all we have is more micromanagement of
everything, nothing is actually any better.

And the other side
of it is something we're all familiar with: why be in power if you
can't make people behave in a way that you think is better for society?
“You believe in recycling? Fine, you recycle.” “But I'm the Secretary
of State for the Environment, and therefore because I believe in recycling, everybody will recycle.” Etc.

I
believe that the state should focus on doing only things that no-one
else wants to do, but are necessary for the common good, like roads; or
in very exceptional cases where independence from financial incentives
are essential, such as the judiciary or the military. These things
should be done well, and professionally and with an absolute minimum of
intervention.

Everything else should take the form of
transactions between informed, consenting and responsible adults. For
example: if you want to provide for the possibility of being out of
work, there will be a variety of organisations ranging from the
commercial insurer to the more egalitarian friendly society who will
take your money and help you provide for a rainy day. The state will
butt out of this completely. Don't want to make the provision? Fine …
but it's your arse in a sling if you lose your job! Because providers
will be competing for your money, they will either be cheaper than the
portion of your tax that currently funds this Ponzi scheme, or they
will provide better benefits, or both.

What's wrong with other forms of government?

Nothing,
other than their inefficiency and their need to grow. I've spent a lot
of time in Islamic monarchies, fascist one-party states, social
democracies and African kleptocracies. They all had individual aspects
to commend to them, but every single one of them was astonishingly
wasteful, and they all tended to grow out of the “providing social
goods for the common good” mindset into the “how can I screw up your
life today” mindset. As an aside, I can quite honestly say that from
South Africa in the 80's to Kuwait in the 90's to Zimbabwe in the 00's,
I have never seen a government as keen to stick their nose into every
aspect of my life; as keen to tell me what to do and how to do it; to
monitor everything I say, think or do, everywhere I go and to just
plain be in my face, as Britain under New Labour. This government is
more invasive, more nosey, more nannying, more hectoring and more
irritating than the government of any other country I've ever spent any
time in.

One of the key tenets of Libertarianism is that the
state should interfere with your life as little as possible, that
you're big and ugly enough to know what the consequences of your
actions are and you should enjoy the freedom to live your life as you
choose, provided you do no harm to others. This, above all else, was
the aspect of Libertarianism that converted me from being a sheep
herded by the Tory party into really thinking about my politics for the
first time. Because we already know that when the Tories sweep to power
some time between now and 2010, there will be relief that the Gorgon is
gone and that a decade of vacuous New Labour blathering without any
action will finally be over, but nothing will really change.

Differences
between Labour, Lib-Dem and Conservative do not fundamentally exist, if
Labour can steal policies from both their rivals and dress the same
policy up in different words and claim them as their own. All three
parties believe that the state is the machine that delivers better
social goods, all three parties are beholden to the EU, all three
parties are squabbling over the same tiny patch of worn-out, fallow
ground.

The broad thrust of all their policies are the same:
“give us your money and some of your liberty, and we will give you some
things back.” The overlap between how much money they want to take, the
number of liberties they want to take and what they're going to give
back is enormous. Tories claim they will take a bit less and give back
a bit less, Labour say they will take a bit more and give back a bit
more, Lib-Dems say they will mix and match and take a bit more here and
a bit less there and give back a bit more here and a bit less there. If
you put them in a dark room, you'd be hard pressed to tell them apart.

Only
a completely different type of politics can change the landscape.
Politics that defines the individual as the most important political
entity, and the state as a necessary evil that needs to be kept in
check and needs to do as few things as possible, only do them well.

You
may not agree with the approach, but you can't deny that it's a truly
revolutionary political ideal, vastly different from the various
versions of “tax and spend” that have achieved so little result for so
very much money.

More will follow

I'll
be diving into these and other aspects of Libertarianism in more detail
in future. If you're interested in Libertarianism in the UK, there is a
Libertarian Party UK forum where you can ask questions here.

Syndicated from Obnoxio the Clown and LPUK