After watching yet another authoritarian be elected to the presidency of the United States of America, I have been turning my thinking towards how we can build a better society.
First, I should say that I define 'progressive' in a much different fashion than most liberal thinkers and non-thinkers. Specifically, I am using the 1b definition according of the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, "making use of or interested in new ideas, findings, or opportunities."
I have a very unique view of how I think that U.S. society should be run. My view is very heavily influenced, but not dominated, by the libertarian ideals laid out by Murray Rothbard in "A New Liberty," which conveniently you can download and read for free if you want to understand my sociopolitical base.
First and foremost, I believe firmly in the non-aggression axiom except in the upholding of individual property rights. When a person violates another person's right to life or property then violence must be used to restrain the aggressor. The government must exist to exert the sum total of individual violent force that any man is entitled to defend his life and property. The problem is that the government crosses this line and often exceeds the instances that individuals can use violence to protect life and property and thus becomes tyrannical by definition.
For example, if you were to go into your neighbors home and hold them up at gunpoint and demand they give you 30% of their income, it would be appropriately considered assault and robbery. However, when the Internal Revenue Service raids your neighbor's home with a SWAT team and holds your neighbor at gunpoint to demand remittance of 30% of their income in taxes, it is suddenly perfectly acceptable to most people. How is it that we consider the same action criminal if an individual does it and 'business as usual' when a government does it? That is a serious problem in our society today. A government that exceeds the limits of individual force is a tyrannical government.
So, the first step in freeing society from the grip of tyranny is to limit government to its role of exerting the sum of individual forces.
"But how will we collect taxes?" you say, and you are correct to ask the question. Taxation will be voluntary and earmarked by the taxpayer. This accomplishes three things, first it frees the taxpayer from the tyranny of government robbery. Next, it gives the taxpayer a sense of ownership and invests them in their programs. Lastly, it removes the budgeting debates from Congress and allows the budgeting process to be automatically handled by the taxpayers. Congress would only be responsible for creating and publishing programs that are available to be donated to. From there, the taxpayers would earmark their taxes to the programs which they believe in and want to see funded would be funded, and those which taxpayers believe are frivolous and wasteful would simply not be funded. This system would make all of the government beholden to the taxpayers and also force them to deliver on the services that they are supposed to, because no one will earmark money for programs that don't benefit them in some way.
"How would justice be maintained?" you might ask next. The judicial branch would be run by private individuals who operate on a fee system, much like the rest of the private sector. The BAR Association would be reduced to a legal standards organization, but their power to 'certify' lawyers and judges would be permanently revoked. As such, anyone would be allowed to serve as a judge, assuming anyone will agree to allow them to adjudicate their disputes. Judges would be chosen by both parties in a dispute, and both parties would pay the judge to adjudicate the dispute. In criminal cases, trials by jury would continue as they do now, except that juries would be voluntary and funded by a taxpayer judicial pot.
"How would we build roads?" All public projects could be funded at the state level by having a public works pot of money that is contracted out to private companies to build roads, bridges, etc. much like it is now. People who are unhappy with the state of the infrastructure would donate to this pot of money in their respective state.
"How would we defend ourselves?" The military would be separated along state lines and paradigms. The military would consist of one national research, development, and materiel command whose sole job it is to provide advanced equipment for all of the state fighting branches, a national space/intelligence command who would manage the information and intelligence for all states, and the national transport command who would facilitate global transportation of state fighting forces all of whom would be run by an elected civilian director on four year terms with a two-term limit. There would be no "Air Force", "Navy", "Army," etc. each state would possess a self-contained fighting force across air, sea, and land. When a war was declared by the Congress, they would appoint a supreme commander from one of the state commands whose state would respond first to the external threat. From there, states would rotate in and out of the combat zone once every three months to allow soldiers to recuperate and be ready to roll again. All of the national branches would be funded by one pot of money and all of the state fighting forces would be funded by each respective state.
The Congress would serve the same number of years as they do now, but would be limited to two terms for Senators and four terms for Congressmen. This would ensure that fresh ideas are enforced in the Congress and keep stagnant group think out of Washington. All Congressional health insurance and retirement programs would be dissolved and they would be forced to utilize the private market, as all of their constituents must.
The Federal Reserve, Treasury, and Federal Deposit Insurance Company (FDIC) would all be rolled into one department with a seven-member elected board each serving four year terms with two-term limits. This new Finance Department would be responsible for ensuring that the money supply is maintained and that all deposits in U.S. banks are insured and would be authorized to print and disperse money to reimburse all clients of U.S. banks. This way, when a bank fails, the Finance Department would print U.S. dollars up to the deposit balances of all customers of the failed bank and make those funds available to the customer to deposit in a new bank. That way, when banks fail, the bank will simply go bankrupt and the money will be dispersed by the Finance Department to a bank of the depositors choice. In this way, the depositors will be protected by the money-printing power of the Finance Department. The fractional reserve system that modern banks use would be backed up by the full faith and credit of the U.S. and printing money up to the depositors amount would fill out the slack in the fractional system without creating inflation since they are simply backing up money that is already in the system. The banks would create the money in the form of loans to individuals and businesses and the Finance Department would be the guarantor of all funds in the entire U.S. banking system regardless of which bank it is contained in. That way, banks in the U.S. become expendable middle men who are incentivized to manage their bank well.
All other government functions would be divided up into departments to which people would be free to earmark their taxes for. Each department would have an elected director on four years terms with a two-term limit and thus be wholly responsible to the taxpayers for making good on whatever service the department exists to provide.
This would be a far superior way to run our government and society, and thus will probably never happen because too many people's feathered beds would be turned upside down. But the point of this post is to get people thinking about how a libertarian society could run.
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