Law is inherently violent

Finally, other people are catching up on libertarian ideas regarding law and government.

This short piece by Yale law professor Stephen L. Carter states clearly that all law is fundamentally based on violence, and that we as a society need to have a serious discussion whether all of the laws that we have on the books are worth killing your neighbor over.

Are you willing to kill your neighbor so that everyone in the country can have free health care?  Because if not, then free health care should not exist.

Something to think about.

Doug Casey on Cultural Marxism and Bioethicists

Doug Casey is a firebrand libertarian who loves to preach 'doom porn' as Kyle Rearden calls it.  I read Doug's words because he presents a vastly different -- in some ways -- view of the world than I have; and while I disagree with some of what he says, I believe his core ideas are both sound and true.

In this article, I wanted to highlight his view on how cultural marxism, which I agree with him, is a cancer upon our society.  It erodes individualistic thought and personal responsibility and foments class warfare and race-and-classcism by emphasizing groups rather than individuals.  Not only does it produce all of these toxic properties, but it also gives people a false philosophical basis upon which to attack other people, using the label-happy liberal terms such as homophobe, bigot, and racist.  These are toxic words and ideas that enable a secular form of self-righteousness that would put the Pharisees to shame.

When you are an individualist, those terms are meaningless and less than worthless.  When you culturally castrate the individual, you discourage free thought and scientific enterprise, and you erode the fundamental and key element of free society: personal responsibility.  When you, see yourself as a black, or a woman, or a white male Protestant, you enable yourself to lay blame for unpleasantness at the feet of the opposing groups who are 'oppressing' you.  This idea is as absurd as your feet crying out that they are oppressed by the rest of your body and your legs calling your nose a walkophobe for not doing its part in walking.  A society, much like a body, is made up of different and distinctly individual parts that each play a role.  When you try to make everyone into hands, your body ceases to function, because all roles are necessary for the healthy functioning of society.  Similarly, when you try to pigeonhole individuals into broad categories, you both grossly mischaracterize each individual, and you strip away the incentive for being personally responsible for your actions, both morally and economically.

In a cultural marxist world, a person who makes poor economic decisions and whittles their life away doing non-productive activities is considered 'oppressed' by those who actually work to make the world a quantitatively better place, which gives the violent State the right to steal from the productive in order to give to the lazy who choose not to produce.  In an individualist world, those who make poor economic decisions get to starve or suffer the indignity of begging from friends, family or society as a whole, and it also opens the door for people to be truly charitable to those in need as opposed to charity at gunpoint, as is current government welfare.

Similarly, in the moral realm, cultural marxism seeks to fill the void with an arbitrary and arbitrarily changing system of political correct morals that allow people to feel morally superior without requiring them to live according to any absolute moral standard.  It turns people into assholes for inclusivity and diversity and enables them to treat anyone who disagrees with them as poorly as white slavemasters in America in the 1800s treated their slaves.  While in an individualistic society, there is an implied absolute moral standard, by which all are held accountable -- governments included -- and all can then see cultural marxism for what it really is, a convenient excuse to be a self-righteous assholes to their neighbors who disagree with them.

However, with all of this said, I am not against all forms of welfare.  Voluntary welfare, or charity as it is more commonly called, is a right, good and necessary element of society.  When you espouse and live by the absolute moral standard that is laid out in the Bible, you will naturally gravitate toward charity on a personal level, and when everyone does this the entire society is transformed to actually care for the poor who are made poor by bad luck (or even those who are poor by choice, as charity is a free thing).

To conclude though, cultural marxism is cancer in society.  It has so many negative effects which are quite literally draining the life from our culture and society and will unquestionably result in the downfall of our civilization through economic collapse if we let it metastasize.

Do not be a cultural marxist!
Think for yourself.
Our society depends on it.

I have attached the entire article below, but you can read the original here:
http://www.internationalman.com/articles/doug-casey-on-the-plague-of-cultural-marxists
*WARNING: Auto-play video is on his site*

Thinking About Software Engineering

I found a video by a Canadian professor regarding software engineering, debugging, code quality, automated unit testing, critical thinking and standards of proof.

The crux of the matter is that you cannot trust credentialed people simply because they are credentialed.  You must weigh their arguments yourself.

That and the best way to debug code is to read it.

Greg Wilson - What We Actually Know About Software Development, and Why We Believe It’s True

The Divine Dance to Dethrone God

I recently had "The Divine Dance" brought to my attention as a new means of meditating on Christianity.  After studying it, I feel the need to publicly critique the theology and philosophy of "The Divine Dance," by Fr. Richard Rohr.

The core message of Fr. Rohr is the idea of Flow.  According to Rohr, the Flow is God's love and life going out from himself into creation, yielding a "bottom up" approach to theology.  Bottom up theology starts at mankind and the relationships between them and derives from these the idea of the Flow coming from God and flowing between men and back to God again.  As Rohr says, "The all-important thing is that the Three are formed and identified by the outpouring and uninhibited flow itself. The flow forms and protects the Three, and the Three distribute the flow. It’s precisely this same dynamic for a healthy society, isn’t it?"

These kinds of philosophies have appeared in the past, and they all have the same root: humanism.  The humanistic themes in Rohr's work permeate throughout his ideas of the Trinity and the role of humanity in Christianity.  As he says "Some mystics who were on real journeys of prayer took this message to its consistent conclusion: creation is thus 'the fourth person of the Blessed Trinity'! Once more, the divine dance isn’t a closed circle—we’re all invited!"  This fourth person is supposed to be nature and mankind, as humans and clearly shows that Rohr is attempting to elevate humanity to godhood and make humanity as the fourth member of the Trinity.  This has been the pursuit of philosophers from the Renaissance onward, to attempt to elevate humanity to godhood and in doing so, dethrone the true God and enable us to determine the rules of morality for ourselves with no interference from God.

This humanistic approach to Christianity has been tried before, even back in the time of Paul in the form of the Greek paganists who sought to emphasize the material over the spiritual, and Rohr himself borrows from their theology stating, "The energy in the universe is not in the planets, or in the protons or neutrons, but in the relationship between them."  This inordinate focus on the material world and the attempt to elevate the material world to the level of divinity is a definitive sign of a thoroughly humanistic approach.  As theologian Francis Schaeffer has said in A Christian Manifesto, "Humanism means that the man is the measure of all things. Man is the measure of all things. If this other final reality of material or energy shaped by pure chance is the final reality, it gives no meaning to life. It gives no value system. It gives no basis for law, and therefore, in this case, man must be the measure of all things."  When man is the measure of all things, anything can be accepted as doctrine.

The natural outcome of this philosophy is complete relativism in which anything can be acceptable as morally good.  Actions such as abortion and homosexuality can be readily accepted as good and right, when the Bible clearly speaks against such things.  In Rohr's attempt to elevate the natural world to divinity, he successfully dethrones God and relegates Him to the position of sourcing the Flow.  When you hold this position, you are consigning yourself to be set adrift in a sea of directionless doctrine and meaningless morality and a perpetual search for truth which invariably ends in nihilistic despair.

The Bible is very clear on the nature of God and man.  Isaiah 45:5 states unequivocally "I am the Lord, and there is no other; apart from me there is no God."  God is very clear on this matter.  There is no room for humanity in the Trinity.  He goes on to say "Woe to those who quarrel with their Maker, those who are nothing but potsherds among the potsherds on the ground.  Does the clay say to the potter, ‘What are you making?’ Does your work say, ‘The potter has no hands’?"  Here God condemns those who seek to dethrone him, saying Woe to those who quarrel with their maker.  Even Jesus, who Rohr is constantly seeking to humanize, stated very clearly that "I am the way, the truth and the life.  No man comes to the Father but by me."  Even the human Jesus clearly excluded all other paths to God.  In Colossians the relationship between man and God is also enunciated without confusion, "For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him."  Meaning the all of nature was created for God, without any room for nature to become God.  Even Paul in Romans argues "But who are you, a human being, to talk back to God? 'Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it, ‘Why did you make me like this?’' ²¹ Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for special purposes and some for common use?"  We are nothing before a holy and omnipotent God and to attempt to elevate lumps of clay to divinity is nothing less than humanistic heresy.

God is serious about His nature, and about humanity's role in the universe.  To attempt to elevate humanity to divinity is heretical and will ruin all who ascribe to this belief, both in this life and in the life to come.

Edit: I had the wrong Greek cult as my example.
The Gnostics were the spiritualists, not materialists.  The paganists are the ones who carved gods for themselves from stone in the form of natural creatures.

Mauldin on Taxes

Mauldin brings another savage article on taxes and tax reform here with his Tax Reform: The Good, the Bad, and the Really Ugly -- Part Five.

There are some really important points in here that I want to highlight:

( 1 )
We are in far worse shape economically than most people realize.  Including only federal unfunded liabilities, federal, state, and local debt, EACH and EVERY one of us (U.S. citizens) owes around 1.2 million dollars in government debt.

1.2 million dollars EACH.

Didn't know you were 1.2 million dollars in debt?  Well, now you do.

As Mauldin says:

Break down that national and state and local debt by the number of US citizens, and we find that we each – every man, woman, and child – owe over $70,000. Worse yet, the total debt per taxpayer is over $190,000 and rising fast. If you include unfunded liabilities, the total debt per taxpayer rises to around $1.2 million, give or take. (There are some analysts who would make it somewhat less than a million and others who would make it more than $2 million. Whatever, it’s a huge number.) By the way, that number does not include the unfunded liabilities at the state and local level, including the pensions that are theoretically guaranteed by the states. Add another few hundred thousand or so per taxpayer, depending on the state you live in. Trigger warning: If you live in Illinois or California, do not attempt to estimate this number without alcohol or heart medication nearby.

( 2 )
We are completely contradictory and dysfunctional in what we expect from our government.

   * We expect our social benefits to increase (or at least not decrease).
   * We expect our taxes to decrease.
   * We expect our economy to grow and provide good, high paying jobs.

You cannot have all of those desires at once.  Debt loads over a certain size -- Reinhart, Reinhart, & Roghoff suggest 90% -- will slow down the growth of that country, making all of our lives and goals that much more difficult to achieve.

In a peer-reviewed study, Reinhart, Reinhart, and Rogoff demonstrated that when government debt rises above 90% it begins to have an effect on the growth of GDP. That conclusion is somewhat controversial in economic circles, as some say the critical level is higher or lower. Whatever – we’ve gone well past 90%.

Understand, RR&R are not examining some theoretical proposition; they are looking at actual debt levels and actual growth levels in scores of countries and situations over a long period of history and seeing that excess debt inhibits growth. We can argue about why that is true, but the fact is that debt at the level that has already been reached here in the US makes it far more difficult to even talk about 3% or 4% growth. So when politicians talk about growing the economy by 3% a year, they are facing very strong headwinds. That sort of growth is not impossible in our circumstances, but it would be abnormal given what we know of the history of debt and growth. To grow the economy at 3% today will require tax reform beyond anything that’s being suggested. It will require real tax reform, not just tinkering around the edges.

( 3 )
We must have real, serious tax reform if we want to have any hope of fixing our problems.  Enough so, that we have to be willing to consider the unthinkable.  For Republicans this means considering a VAT and carbon tax in exchange for significantly lowering the income and corporate taxes.

My liberal friends are going to fall off of their chairs here; but, after reading Mauldin's logic, I am now in support of both the VAT and the carbon taxes.

They are both a form of consumption taxes which are far superior in incentivization to income taxes, and thus would produce positive benefits.

If you want more income and jobs, tax them less. So if you can substitute a consumption tax for an income tax, even if the two generate the same revenue, the incentive structure you create is superior under the consumption tax regime. I am going to be walking into territory that is considered heretical for Republicans, but I’m going to argue that we need to radically reform taxes by going to much higher consumption taxes and much lower income taxes. If we want to avoid a recession and really boost the economy and jobs, then we need to get “medieval” on income taxes. Don’t take a scalpel to them. Bring out the axes and chainsaws.

Mauldin recommends we start by eviscerating the income taxes and introducing a 17% VAT and a significant and increasing yearly carbon tax on all energy inputs.  I think there is a good chance this would actually work and have very positive effects for our economy and potentially help save us from certain doom that is coming if we do nothing.

Mauldin ends by reviewing his five main points:

Let’s sum up the constraints and desires mentioned above as we set out on our quest for tax reform. Admittedly, these are my constraints and desires, but sharing them will help you understand what my ultimate goal is.

1. Since too much debt at the level we currently have creates a drag on growth, we have to control the growth of debt. That’s pretty much like the admonition that when you find yourself in a hole, stop digging. At some point, maybe we could repeat the Clinton/Gingrich experience of actually paying down the debt. (Let me have my dreams!)
2. My fellow Americans want two inconsistent things: They want their entitlements and benefits to continue, and they would like their taxes to be lower. Cutting benefits will quickly result in a return to a Democratic Party-led government, and no politician on either side of the aisle has any stomach for doing more than tinkering with Social Security or really cutting healthcare.

I think Republicans will seek to find efficiencies in the way health care is delivered and thereby maybe reduce total healthcare expenses somewhat, but benefits are going to stay roughly the same. Yet somehow we need to get a handle on how to reduce the constant cost increases. So we have to figure out how to fund those benefits. And while you could probably cut $50 billion from the discretionary parts of the budget – if you include defense spending as discretionary (which would elicit anguished screams and derogatory name-calling from everyone) – we must sadly acknowledge that cutting $50 billion gets you only about 10% of the way to balancing the budget.

3. What is the appropriate size of government in the US economy? Here I am conflicted. I am truly a small-government advocate. But I also want to balance the budget and actually reduce the debt, which means (and I can’t believe I’m using these words) that we’re going to have to find additional revenues unless we are willing to take a hatchet to entitlements, which we are not.

4. We really do have to create jobs, or the future is going to get pretty bleak pretty quick. Job creation means allowing small businesses and entrepreneurs to keep more of what they make and to increase their savings. It also means radical regulatory reform. It comes down to the most basic of identity equations in economics. GDP is the sum of Consumption (C), Investment (I), Government Spending (G), and Net Exports (X – M): GDP = C + I + G + (X – M), which reduces down to Savings = Investments.

It’s more complicated than that of course, but if you want investments that will create new jobs, the best thing you can do is to stop taxing savings and income and start taxing consumption. This country doesn’t need more consumption; it needs more income. That in turn will lead to increased consumption and more jobs. This is a basic Hayek versus Keynes argument, and I come down on the side of Hayek. Which means that the vast majority of academic economists believe I am wrong.

5. We have to change the corporate tax structure to put our businesses on an equal footing with their competitors around the globe. And while we’re at it, why not make them hypercompetitive? Why not take the corporate tax rate down to 15% of everything over $100,000, with no deductions other than to comply with normal GAAP accounting principles? Really want to jumpstart things? Then allow 100% write-offs of all business investments such as research and development, equipment, and buildings (but normal depreciation on the actual land).

6. There are several types of consumption-based taxes.
a. A sales tax (which would be too high – that’s why I dismissed the concept above)
b. A border adjustment tax, which would be challenged by Europe at the WTO, and we would lose because the vote is a political vote. Further, the BAT (I’m tempted to add “Out of Hell”) would set off immediate reactions by all of our trading partners, precipitating a round of tit-for-tat changes that would quickly deteriorate into something that looks like Smoot-Hawley. A BAT would cause a global recession. Further, it would pick winners and losers here in the US. Why is an export business better than an import business? They are equally valuable to the country. And they both create jobs.
c. A value-added tax (VAT) would easily withstand a challenge at the WTO, since nearly every other country in the world has a VAT.
d. We could introduce a carbon tax on petroleum products that would gradually increase, generating significant revenues over time. As noted above, a carbon tax is just another form of consumption tax, and it has the value of making progressive Democrats giddy about doing something for the environment and climate change, which makes them more likely to go along with the real Republican goals of job creation, income tax reform, and deficit reduction.

This is a solid plan and I think it has real potential to work to help us reverse this hole we have dug for ourselves.

Trade, Debt, Deficits and the Border Adjustment Tax

I am slowly arriving at a more full understanding of the relationship between international trade, sovereign debt, and government deficits.

While dear friends of mine have been encouraging me to look at gerrymandering, which is a serious political issue and needs to be fixed, the effects of the implementation of Trump's Border Adjustment Tax (BAT) have much more grievous consequences.

First, let me address the gerrymandering issue though, since it has been on my mind lately.  Having a Goofy Kicking Donald Duck district in Pennsylvania and a Latin Earmuffs district (below) in Illinois is absurd.

This kind of gerrymandering is ridiculous and should be outlawed.  We need to take a nice square grid system and overlay it on each state and have that set the districts.  Nothing is fairer than a square grid.  The only places people can quarrel on is the grid size and the grid origin.

But a BAT disrupting global trade, currency exchange rates, and foreign sovereign debt is a far more immediate threat that risks setting off a global contagion that would eventually engulf the U.S.

The root problem in this BAT idea is that the world is not a static system.  It is a dynamic equilibrium.  If we make changes to our tax system in such a way as to affect other countries trade balances, they will respond to counteract those changes.  This BAT issue is the sole reason why I refused to vote for Donald Trump as president.

The currently certain effect of implementing a BAT is that the U.S. dollar would rise sharply in value, being predicted by both economists on the right and left.  This rise would occur due to the flow of U.S. dollars across our borders being slowed, causing lower supply of U.S. dollars circulating in the world compared to a stable demand.

John Mauldin, who I generally consider to be a right-leaning economist predicted that the dollar would rise by as much as 20% in value with respect to other nation's currencies.

As the trade deficit shrinks, fewer dollars will flow from the US to the rest of the world. That trend will make the dollar rise against other currencies, thereby nullifying the higher prices we will pay for imported goods.

Paul Krugman, who is definitely a left-leaning economist, likewise predicts a rise in the value of the U.S. dollar exchange rates.

But of course wages and/or the exchange rate would, in fact, change. If the US went to a DBCFT, we should expect the dollar to rise by enough to wipe out any competitive advantage. After the currency adjustment, the trade effect should once again be nil. But there might be a lot of short-to-medium term financial consequences from a stronger dollar.

I am all for a strong dollar, but I need to nuance this view.  I am strongly in favor of an organically strong dollar, not a forced stronger dollar.  I am beginning to think that forcing the dollar stronger may have equally deleterious effects as forcing the dollar lower.  The effects are simply different and the genesis is not in the U.S.

If we force the dollar value higher, we will immediately cause a direct increase in the servicing costs of the $10 trillion in emerging market dollar-denominated sovereign debt.  This increase has the potential to sink those emerging market economies, much of whose debt is held by Western investors.  The contagion will wrap back around the world and setup a sub-prime debt crisis in sovereign emerging market debt which will inevitably result in a global recession at best or a global depression at worst.

We need to stop considering tariffs and border taxes as a means of solving our globalization woes.  These measures are not helpful in a dynamically volatile system in which other players will respond in kind of changes in the competitive advantage equilibrium currently in place.  We need to enact changes to the tax system that do not disrupt global trade or threaten the stability of emerging markets to the point of collapse.

Bannon: The Sociopath of the Right

I found an excellently written article that gave a lot of information without attempting to push an opinion on readers.  This article is "What Bannon Really Wants" published by Quartz and written by Gwynn Guilford and Nikhil Sonnad.

The article addresses what Steve Bannon, who is the Assistant to the President and Chief Strategist, worldview is and how it influences and guides Trump's administration.

As far as the article is concerned, there are a few curious points.  First, the authors point out that Bannon believes in the "great civilizational showdown" between Islamic Mideast and the Christian West.  What Bannon fails to realize is that Islam is not a unified or centralized force, any more than modern Protestant Christianity.

Not recognizing the true enemy, which is fundamentalist Islam, is a severe mistake that will have far-reaching -- both in time and space -- consequences that will be as severe as Obama's misstep of not recognizing this subset of Islam as the threat.  There are plenty of Islamic sects who do not hold the authority of the Koran as absolute and thus are more secular as a result.  Bannon's error of labeling all of Islam as the enemy is equally as mistaken as Obama's error of labeling none of Islam as the enemy.  Misconstruing this as a grand struggle between civilizations, while sensational, is also wrong.  The fight with Islam is jihadi Islam versus the world (moderate Muslims included).  From the jihadi Islamist perspective anyone who does not believe in their strict interpretation of the Koran and Islam is a legitimate target and should be killed or enslaved.

Where Bannon's worldview takes a wrong turn is in his view of utilitarianism as the ultimate form for moral authority.  This is where Bannon departs from true Christianity and truly Judeo-Christian values.  This basically establishes Bannon, and by extension Trump, as an authoritarian who seeks to use his power to enforce a specific view of the world, rather than enforcing the minimum necessary law for society to exist.  The very fact that he actually broad-banned people from specific nations shows that he is not interested in a free or individualistic society, merely his vision of a free society.

Bannon's idea that society disintigrates without Christianity or Judeo-Christian values is not entirely wrong, but also not correct.  When you remove Biblical Judeo-Christian values from society, you get authoritarianism.  Might makes right is all that is left when you remove the Christian framework from beneath society, and it is becoming increasingly clear that Bannon and Trump have no desire to rule the nation with Biblical Christian values.  They are strongmen who want to impose their version of right on everyone else, and are thus as criminal as Obama, except on the other end of the spectrum of sociopaths.

Trump Bans Muslims from the U.S.

What?  This is madness.

Trump banned Muslims traveling from seven predominantly Muslim countries today, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.

What he fails to remember is that most of the terrorists that attacked us in 2001 were from Saudi Arabia.  I don't see that country on 'the list'.

All of this skirts the fact that a broad ban like this is not going to help.  This mass banning of Muslims does not make America more secure.  Terrorists will always find another way in, regardless of bans like this.

All this ban does is make us look like assholes to the rest of the world.  Is that really what we want?

Robots, Automation and Their Effect on Economics

This is a short repost of a hugely significant comment that John Mauldin made in his latest letter.

Like it or not, we have entered an era in which machines are learning how to do much of the work that now provides our incomes and, in many cases, our self-worth. This is a topic we will explore in depth in future letters. But a brief summary needs to be interjected here.

The US is manufacturing more materials and goods than ever. Manufacturing is increasing at a fairly serious rate, well over 2% a year. The problem is, manufacturing jobs are not. A Ball State University study calculated that it would take more than 8 million additional jobs to produce what we currently produce today if we were merely at the productivity levels of 15 years ago.

Investment in automation and software has doubled the output per U.S. manufacturing worker over the past two decades. Robots are replacing workers, regardless of trade, at an accelerating pace. “The real robotics revolution is ready to begin” writes BCG and predicts that “the share of tasks that are performed by robots will rise from a global average of around 10% across all manufacturing industries today to around 25% by 2025.” (Source: fortune.com/2016/11/08/china-automation-jobs/)
This is a simplification, but robots and their associated machinery have been somewhere in the neighborhood of four times more important in the loss of manufacturing jobs than off-shoring of jobs has been. But it is hard to protest against increased automation and easier to point a finger at China or Mexico.

The real challenge the US and the rest of the developed world face is how to create new jobs in the face of this automation challenge. The problem is not one we can walk away from. The best estimates that I have read suggest that Korea may be 15–20% more productive than we are in terms of costs, because they are pushing further and faster into the automation process. That trend will leave US manufacturers and exporters – or those in Germany or Italy or any other developed country – behind in the global business contest. Think Japan is not seeing the same thing?
If we don’t automate faster, we lose jobs by being uncompetitive. If we do automate, then we see jobs go away. What we have to do is figure out how to make sure that new jobs are created, and that these jobs are simply not make-work but are rather meaningful and fulfilling. Tall order. For whatever it’s worth, we are programmed in our evolutionary DNA to value what we contribute to the community through our work. Simply getting welfare without a way to eventually make it on your own does not help personal self-esteem or your community. (italics mine)

This is the single greatest challenge facing our world today is how we will adjust as a society as robots unemploy huge swaths of our population.  "We are programmed in our evolutionary DNA to value what we contribute to the community through our work. Simply getting welfare without a way to eventually make it on your own does not help personal self-esteem or your community."  This innate state is not going to change as robots produce more and more of the goods and services that we consume. 

This is where I think computer games will help, as it will allow people to 'work' without needing to produce anything.  I have already seen this as people pursue fictive goals and seek to cultivate skills in a virtual realm that fills this work and community requirement for our psyches.  The Matrix is closer than we might think, but we will live in a myriad of worlds all of our own creation with the freedom to jump from virtual reality to virtual reality at our choice.  I definitely foresee a large and growing interest in computer games in the future, and I am staking my life on it, literally.

You can read his entire article here.

50 Things You Can Do Now

I follow a libertarian/anarchist at The Last Bastille, whose views go considerably further into the realm of hope than I do.  This week, however, he reposted a list from Anarplex, which I will repost below, because it is wholesome and well worth republishing.

1. Become a part-time entrepreneur, garage-market-dealer, urban farmer, welder, whatever. Just be productive under your own command. It doesn’t matter what it is; just be directly productive, and directly deal with suppliers and clients. You’ll find it awesomely liberating and it will be highly useful for the free underground market.
2. Switch off the TV. Read books!
3. Socialize with people that share your ethics and that are productive and respectful. Eat together, discuss, challenge each other, help each other, have a good time.
4. Get a safe or safe deposit box. Start moving all the cash you can get in there, convert at least 30% of your cash to silver and/or gold coins.
5. Invest in trust. Do minor deals for people on a trust basis. Taking others at their word, and let yourself be challenged by yours.
6. Start looking for matches. When you talk with people, memorize what they do, and if an opportunity comes up, connect them with someone else for a minor finders fee (a burger, a few beers, whatever).
7. Join your local LIMA house (We’ll explain this in a future post.)
8. Travel, but don’t go sight-seeing – spend your time getting to know the people there. Think about business opportunities with them.
9. Start using aliases and pseudonyms. Get comfortable using them in real-life situations.
10. Learn to use cryptography.
11. Learn ethics and law (not the government law!).
12. Study logic, especially the fallacies.
13. Put more cash aside. Use your part-time job as the source of saved cash.
14. Start to invest cash with people you know, in off the books projects. Start making micro-loans to people or buy shares in their operations.
15. Learn basic double-entry book-keeping. Don’t waste effort on the account-numbers they teach you – under the concept and use it.
16. Learn to write in code. We all have to use recording, bookkeeping, contact books, transaction notes etc. These should be hard to decipher for someone taking a quick glimpse, and even hard for someone taking time to analyze them. Use tricks like date-shifting, shorthand, making up your own terms, etc. Or, if you want to spend a little more effort, learn to use memorized ciphers, such as memorizing some longer text, then apply it as a simple shifting-key to what you write, with the page number or marker as a keypart.
17. Tell other producers, entrepreneurs, traders etc that you appreciate what they do.
18. Buy primarily from others like you, stay away from the on-the-books market as much as you can.
19. When in conflict, ask someone to mediate. Solve conflicts yourself wherever you can. Use a mutually respected and trusted third party when necessary. Stay away from state ‘justice’ whenever you can.
20. Start respecting secrets. Secrets are good most of the time; transparency is bad most of the time. Detox yourself from the ‘everything should be in the open’ propaganda.
21. Slowly make your part-time, off-the-books business, your main line of income. Things like underground dental hygiene are very cool.
22. Learn that ‘off-the-books’ means that you really have to excel in what you do. You have to provide quality.
23. Don’t invest in single deals; invest in relationships with the market.
24. Get over it; Voting doesn’t help at all.
25. Work with friends to create buying associations and selling associations. This will give you and others lots of money to save and lots of money to hide.
26. Harbor a fugitive (Good ones, obviously).
27. Help someone cross a border without documents.
28. Offer small merchants silver or gold rather than fiat currency.
29. Sell your products in silver or gold.
30. Accept and use digital gold, such as Pecunix or C-gold.
31. Start a community currency in your town.
32. Use digital cash, such as eCache.
33. Use Loom, Truebanc.
34. Get serious about protecting your Internet traffic.
35. Get comfortable working your will in the world.
36. Learn how to work your will beneficially. This is not about being ‘right,’ it is about causing benefit.
37. Fix your mistakes (you will make them). Learn not to repeat them.
38. Learn how to communicate effectively. Again, this is not about proving that you are right – this is about getting true ideas into other minds effectively.
39. Stop obeying the State in some new way. Tell your friends about your success doing so.
40. Get comfortable with the term ‘Economic Civil Disobedience.’
41. Spread the idea that the State is not magic – it is nothing more than a collection of your neighbors – no more ethical and noble than the lamer next door.
42. Learn how to find the false assumptions in arguments. Most public lies sound okay if you don’t find their unspoken assumptions. If they pass too quickly, find their written version and search for the lie it contains.
43. Learn how to disagree with kindness.
44. Accept the fact that most people are confused are just barely hanging on to their last shreds of self-esteem. Understand that State intellectuals like this condition, as it makes people easier to keep in line – a little shame goes a long way.
45. Don’t waste your energy on the political crisis de jour. Busy your mind with more substantial things. Daily political dramas are a time-sink, and the statists like it. Stop following their script.
46. Use jurisdictional arbitrage to deprive the State of your money. Work with friends if the setup costs are too large for you.
47. Learn to defend yourself, your family, your neighbors and your town. No State means no military. Until you take this upon yourself, your plans will always have a gaping hole in their middle. There is no free lunch here either. Get weapons and be mentally prepared to use them. Decide in advance how and when you would use them – do not leave it to the emotion of the moment – that will make a shipwreck of the whole venture. Learn how to use them safely.
48. Do something nice for your neighbor. The people who live near you are a far more important part of your environment than any other.
49. Help people who suffer undeservedly. No State means you are responsible for charity. Sure, it will be much easier when the State isn’t stealing all your extra money (or chasing you in hope of theft), but do what you can now and get used to the process.
50. Watch over your friends. Notice when they are having a bad day, show some kindness and concern. If they are overloaded, carry some of their burden. We all have bad times, and your bad day may come too. Help one another. Restore one another.

The Dangers of Collectivism

I read a very wide variety of articles from across the political and economic spectrum, and I read Doug Casey's stuff with a grain of salt.  However, this article from him is spot on.  It is an incomplete but poignant review of near-history results of collectivist (both socialist and fascist; both authoritarian in nature) outcomes in countries.

There is a very clear pattern that the author identifies that I am going to repost here.

In each of the above countries, the pattern has been roughly the same.

• A formerly prosperous country experiences a period in which the standard of living for the majority of citizens drops significantly.
  
• The voters react by electing a new leader who promises a chicken in every pot (in essence, collectivism, although it is not always called that at the time of the election).
  
• The new leader begins to rob the producers of wealth to provide largesse for those with less. This has a direct positive benefit for those with less, resulting in an increase in voters supporting collectivist promises over a period of years.
  
• Over time, the free market experiences a permanent loss of wealth, resulting in diminished largesse for those who are now dependent upon it.
  
• The government imposes increasing capital controls and other regulations, which deteriorate the free market more severely, causing inflation, shortages of goods, loss of jobs, and eventually starvation and systemic collapse.
  
• The voters choose a new leader who promises fiscal responsibility.
  
• With a return to a freer market, prosperity slowly reappears.

I have zero doubt that the U.S. will follow this path exactly if we do not recognize the dangers of the false siren call of socialism and reject it soundly.  The timeframe for a full socialist collapse in the U.S., assuming we run full speed ahead into socialism is maybe ten to twenty years.  The U.S. has a lot of wealth for parasites to consume.

 The link to the original article is here: http://www.internationalman.com/articles/a-chicken-in-every-pot
Or you can read it below, for people who don't like auto-play videos...

A more progressive and libertarian society

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.