Open Letter to DHS

Since you, Virginia, and Missouri have decided that my friends and I, who support Ron Paul, vote Libertarian, want to restore the Constitution, exercise our Second Amendment rights and generally disagree with the Government are terrorists, I wanted to make sure you spell my name right when you come to collect us.

It is Rich Paul. That's P-A-U-L.

I would just hate for all my friends to be rounded up and shipped off to Syria to be tortured -- that *is* what we do with "terrorists" in the new Bizarro-America, isn't it? -- and to be left here alone to endure the Socialist hell-hole which the Bush and Obama administrations are cooperating in creating.

Molon Labe!

Live Free or Die; Death is not the Worst of Evils

Just a quick note to let y'all know that I have abandoned my life, such as it was, in South Carolina, and am currently posting from Gettysburg, en-route to New Hampshire, the Free State.

Please have a look at the Free State Project at http://freestateproject.org/, if you don't know why.

As America's Second Great Depression bears down on us, again caused by the Federal Reserve, and again attributed to free markets which do not even exist, the time has come for those of us who love Liberty to concentrate ourselves somewhere where we can make some difference, where we can have an impact, where we can speak with the resonance of many voices raised together against the impending explosion in Federal power, and where we can -- should the Federal Government so overstep the bounds of reason, of decency, and of the laws of economics that is brings about it's own destruction -- be surrounded by like minded and well armed people, prepared to pick up the pieces and see that whatever Socialist monstrosity follows the collapse will not be able subsume the entirety of what was once the freest nation on the face of the earth.

Let the red states and the blue states fight each other to the death over whether their salvation lies in Fascism or in Communism. My salvation lies in Freedom, and if I must choose a hill upon which to die for it, I choose a hill in the Free State of New Hampshire.

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In Liberty

Rich Paul

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What do humanitarians eat?

The humanitarian wishes to be a prime mover in the lives of others. He cannot admit either the divine or the natural order, by which men have the power to help themselves. The humanitarian puts himself in the place of God.

But he is confronted by two awkward facts; first, that the competent do not need his assistance; and second, that the majority of people … positively do not want to be "done good" by the humanitarian…. Of course, what the humanitarian actually proposes is that he shall do what he thinks is good for everybody. It is at this point that the humanitarian sets up the guillotine.

--- Isabel Paterson, The God of the Machine (New York, 1943), p. 241.

Classic and true. Check out the "regarding" link for an analysis of the Great Society, one of the many chains by which we are bound.

For Schiff: We told you so, you RUDE rat bastards!

What pisses me off as I look back over these videos is how rude and condescending these rat bastards were to Peter Schiff, economic adviser to Ron Paul and one of the very few who warned us that the imaginary prosperity we were enjoying would come to tears, because it was a fiat money bubble which had to burst.

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So for all of you who laughed at our warnings then, here is a video. Enjoy it. Then go fuck yourselves. If you don't fuck yourselves to death, go read some Austrian Economics.

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Here is my prediction: the worst is still yet to come. I'm not sure what Peter is saying these days, he's never interviewed anymore, but it is mine.
If you want to patronize Peter's company, it's at http://europac.net/

Speculators and Oil Prices

In his recent tirade against the free market, Socialist senator Levin, of Michigan, gave birth to the following puff of rhetorical flatulance:

Much of this increase can be attributed to speculators, who buy and sell futures contracts for crude oil and leverage them just to make a profit, creating an artificial 'paper demand' that does not accurately reflect actual market conditions.

First off, it should be pointed out that *ALL* productive activity, including (of course) investing in commodities and anything else, is carried on "just to make a profit". The purpose of production is to provide an output which is more valuable than the inputs -- land, capital, raw materials, and labor -- required to produce it. This difference is called profit.

In the case of commodities traders, the principal is the same. The difference is that their 'input' is a commodity at one point in time, and their 'output' is the same commodity at another point in time. Like any entrepreneur, their business is prognostication, and they make money if -- and only if -- they reach the correct conclusions about the future.

The need for 'speculators'

The specter of 'speculators' is too frequently raised by the economically ignorant to be ignored. Most people do not understand their function, nor the service they provide, and they are therefore easily used as scapegoats, as Marx and Stalin used 'the bourgeois', and their spiritual brother Hitler used Jews. In their defense, I will therefore explain, in a simplified way, the service that 'speculators' provide to consumers.

There are two types of trade which an 'evil speculator' can engage in. These are called 'short' and 'long' trades.

A long trader believes that the current price of a good is lower than the future price of the same good. He therefore buys the good now (raising the current market price), and sells the good later (lowering the future market price). Assuming the 'speculator' is right, the consumers will pay a higher price now (when prices are relatively low), but will pay a lower price later (when prices will be relatively high).

A short trader believes that the current price of a good is higher than the future price of the same good. He therefore borrows and sells the good now (lowering the current market price), and later buys the good to repay the lender (raising the future market price). Assuming the 'speculator' is right, the consumer will pay a lower price now (when prices are relatively high), and will pay a higher price later (when prices will be relatively low).

The short trader cannot operate, of course, without long traders from whom to borrow the good. Also note that when I say 'short trader' and 'long trader', I am speaking about an individual's role in a given transaction. Traders execute both short and long trades.

In either of these cases, of course, the trader makes money if and only if he correctly predicts the market. Money is made by buying cheap and selling dear. If a long trader is wrong, he will be stuck with a good for which he paid dearly, and must either store indefinably (which costs money) or sell cheap. If a short trader is wrong, he will have to replace a borrowed good which he sold cheap with the same good, for which he must pay dearly.

This explanation of commodities trading is somewhat simplified, there are actually a great variety of contract types and terms, but it illustrates the principals behind commodities trading, the benifit which these 'evil speculators' provide to society, and why they must be permitted to continue to provide those benifits.

The alternative is a 'lobotomized market', in which people burn wheat instead of coal in the winter, since they can save money by doing so, and then starve -- or eat the seeds of their future havests -- in the summer, since the wheat which the 'evil speculators' would have saved for them has been -- quite literally -- thrown into the fire.

What Levin Should Do

If Levin truely belives that there are too many people trading long, and that the current price of oil is higher than the future price of oil, there is an action he can legitimately take in order to correct their error. He can sell oil short. As stated above, this will lower the current price of oil, and raise the future price of oil. Of course, if he is wrong, he will be doing harm, not good. The beauty of the free market is that he will automatically pay for any harm he does out of his own pocket, and if he is consistently wrong, he will blow through his considerable wealth, leaving him with nothing to harm us with in the future.

It is sad that politics does not have similar automatic and unavoidable penalties for being consistently wrong.

Comrade Mitt joins the fight against the Free Market

I guess I'm naive. I was surprised by Mitt Romney's abject economic ignorance at the debate last night. When asked about agricultural subsidies, he said that he didn't think that the Free Market could provide food reliably, and that central planning of the economy by the government was needed to guarantee our food supply.

Just on more reason to vote against Comrade Mitt.

Capitalism in a Free Society #1

There are criticisms of Capitalism which are so widespread and so plausible that they must be addressed, before we can hope to establish a Libertarian society. These criticisms generally come from the Left, but there are those on the Right who make similar arguments. This article will attempt to address some of these issues from a Libertarian perspective.

Q: Who coined the term Capitalism?

A: An excellent question. Who came up with the word "Capitalism"? It doesn't sound very nice. It sounds as if Capitalism is designed to benefit those who provide the capital. It sounds as if Capitalism might well be very bad for others who live under the system, for example workers and consumers. Why would the creators of Capitalism have chosen such an emotionally loaded word to describe their idea? The reason is simple: the word Capitalism was not coined by Capitalists. It was coined by socialists, and thus the emotional loading is purely intentional. Capitalists adopted the word Capitalism in much the same way that Americans adopted the phrase "Yankee Doodle", which was originally a British slur, and made it a term of honor.

Q: What is Capitalism?

Capitalism is a system with two essential characteristics: Private property, and free markets. Both of these characteristics are considered by most Libertarians to be expressions of natural rights. The right to exist, combined with the human need for material goods in order to live, implies a moral right to private property. It also implies a right to defend this private property from those who would confiscate it for their own ends, as otherwise, one would have to depend for survival on the hope that nobody would come and take from you those things which you need to live. Free markets are really merely an extension of private property. Since ownership of private property implies the sole right to dispose of that property, and since free markets are merely the sum of all voluntary exchanges in a society, the only way that a society could exist without free markets is to violate the right of private property by forbidding people to trade what they have created.

Please note that these are the only two essential characteristics of Capitalism. Capitalism does not imply the existence of corporations, of democracy, of a government, of copyright, of patents, of large industrial facilities, or any of the other trappings which are frequently associated in the popular imagination with capitalism. If you strand two naked people on an island, and they trade with each other without violence, you have created a Capitalist society.

Q: Who "invented" Capitalism?

A: Capitalism was never invented. As illustrated above, it flowed naturally from the advantages people can gain by trading with each other. The person most referred to as the "father of Capitalism", Adam Smith, described capitalism (without ever using the word) in his 1776 classic "The Wealth of Nations". He was describing what he saw, and advancing arguments for dismantling the state controls of the economy which had characterized earlier economic systems, for example, Feudalism and Mercantilism. We have never, since the establishment of government, come close to the ideals which Smith described, although sometimes we have been closer than others.

Q: What are the classes of people in a Capitalist society?

A: People may play many roles in the economy of a Capitalist society. The three basic roles are:

Capitalist

One who owns capital, and manages it's use in the production of goods

Worker

One who produces goods or provides services

Landlord

One who receives income from the ownership of land

These are not, however, "classes" of people (except in the broadest sense of being classifications which can be attached to people). There are several reasons that these can really not be called classes:

1. These roles are not immutable. An individual in a capitalist society will more than likely play more than one of these roles in his lifetime. He may well start out as a worker, and choose to refraining from spending some of his income, and to invest it instead. Now he's a capitalist. He may choose to invest in land, rather than tools and equipment, in which case he's a landlord.
2. These roles are not exclusive. An individual may well play many of these roles simultaneously. Consider a carpenter who owns his own tools. When working, this carpenter is making money through his labor, which would make him a worker. He is also magnifying the effects of his labor, by using tools, which he owns. This, of course, increases his income, making him a capitalist as well. An even better example would be an family farm. Consider the owner of such a business:
   1. He works his own land, making him a worker.
   2. He owns his land, and receives income from it, therefore making him a landlord.
   3. He owns his tools, and thereby increases the income from his labor. This makes him a capitalist.
3. These roles do not imply different levels of wealth. It is a common misconception that a business owner makes more money then a worker. This misconception does not bear even casual scrutiny. It is quite possible that a business owner or landlord will lose money through error or while ramping up a new business. A worker, of course, runs no risk of losing money through his labors. The worst that could possibly happen would be for his employer to go bankrupt, and fail to pay his wages. Even in this case, though he has not been paid, and rightly feels he has been cheated, he has not actually lost anything he already had. He has failed to gain his rightful due. This is bad, but not nearly as bad as having built a business and then lost it.
4. These rules do not imply different levels of power. In a command economy, like socialism, the various roles imply a level of power over others. If a member of a subordinate class fails to obey his master, his master can have him killed, imprisoned, or otherwise punished. This creates a tremendous power differential. In a market economy, like capitalism, however, there is no difference in power. Any person can make whatever offer he chooses to any other person, but there is no way for him to punish those who refuse to obey his request. He can, of course, refuse to pay those who refuse to work for him, but he cannot take from them their lives, their liberty, or their ability to pursue happiness.

This is probably enough information to absorb in one sitting, and it is as much as I choose to write right now, so I will sign off, and return later to expound further on the joys of capitalism and freedom.

Gay Species: Naive Capitalism: Why I Am Not a Libertarain

I trust we remain vaguely familiar with the pernicious effects of child labor, market indenture (virtually "slave" labor), intolerable working conditions, exploitation for greed, etc., to realize not everyone's "self interest," in Adam Smith's famous phrase, is in our common interest. Unrestrained greed may manifest particular individuals' "liberty of free exchange," but if so, maybe "free exchange" as a principle is too high a price to pay for its adverse consequences? In other words, the principles of liberalism are not in themselves the objective, but the means to an objective. Libertarianism confuses the "means" for an "end."

I have to disagree with your criticisms of the Free Market. The "horrors" of the free market seem less horrible when you consider that for the people participating in such "horrors", the "horrors" were better than the alternative. The error you make is one of context dropping: judging their solutions to their problems against our opportunities, and finding that our opportunities are better then theirs were. This is true, of course, but they did not have our opportunities. For that matter, were it not for their hard work, and the Free Market which made it possible for them to prosper by it, we would not have these opportunities either.

Consider child labor. Obviously, in a society as affluent as ours, child labor would be extremely rare with or without laws forbidding it. It is safe to say that the number of working children even when child labor was first outlawed was quite small, or those who chose to engage in it (or their parents) would have shouted down any attempt to outlaw the choices they made. Today, nearly all parents are ready, willing, and able to provide better alternatives to their children. But it is a common error in "political economics" to say that if most people can afford a thing, all people should be required to purchase that thing. If (and only if) working is the best option for the child, then forbidding child labor is forcing them into something worse. For example, there are third world nations that have forbidden child labor, only to see 14 year old factory workers becoming 14 year old prostitutes. This is not a step in the right direction. People should always be free to pursue the options that they, themselves, find to be in their best interests. This is not always what some arrogant, rich, white, liberal academic thinks would be in their best interests.

I'm not sure what you mean by market indenture, unless you are referring to the system of indenture under which many of our (extremely) early immigrants escaped from the mercentilist economy of England to the freer economy of America. This turned out to be a very good deal for some. It turned out to be a very bad deal for others. Eventually, it became unpopular, and involuntary servitude was instituted in America in order to force people to come under less humane conditions. Of course if the government had not intervened by sanctioning and enforcing the practice of slavery, the employers would have been left with only one option: make conditions better for those who traveled under indentures to America. This would have probably meant shorter terms of service, greater compensations, and addressing whatever complaints previous indents had had with the system. Even so, the deal offered to indents would probably only have been marginally better then the lives they lived in England. But "marginally better" beats the hell out of "trapped in England". This is evidenced by the fact that 6 out of 7 early immigrants to America in the 1600's died, but yet they continued to come. England, and her "regulated, fettered markets" were that bad.

Providing a working environment with "intolerable working conditions", of course, suffers from the same problem. If a thing is intolerable, people do not tolerate it. Now of course what we consider to be intolerable now that we have been enriched by capitalism should not be confused with what was considered intolerable by those who had been impoverished by the "reasonable, common sense" interventions of Feudalism and Mercantilism. Why would somebody work in an intolerably unsafe factory, when they could, for example, start a service mowing lawns or running to the store to buy people groceries? Well, obviously, in order to entice people into unsafe factories when they had other alternatives would become more and more expensive, and in order to attract workers, employers would have to make their factories safer. It would become cheaper to do so then to pay the workers more to enter unsafe factories. Thus the problem is resolved, without the arbitrary intervention of government, and all the costs to human flourishing which that entails. The solutions arrived at by the market, of course, would have tremendous advantages over the arbitrary dictates of the Government: this is because the issues addressed would be those that mattered to the workers themselves, not those chosen by bureaucrats bought and paid for by the industries that benefit by the extra costs they generated.

Exploitation for greed is a lovely emotional phrase. Sadly, it lacks any rational definition, when applied to a free market. One can only exploit by force, and in a free market, you can apply no force: the only way you can attract workers is to offer them a better deal. If offering me a better deal then the one I have right now is exploitation, then exploit me early and exploit me often.

The upshot is that a "fettered, regulated market" can never improve upon the results gained in "unfettered, unregulated markets". The weapons which we have so carefully fashioned to cut the wealthy down to the size our envy dictates will turn like boomerangs, mid-flight, and return to cut us to ribbons. This is because the laws will always be controlled by those who can buy them to exactly the extent that they can trick the rest of us. The more byzantine the law becomes, the more the area of incomprehension grows, and the more we will be exploited by the forces we ourselves have empowered by chipping away the risks (and rewards) of limited government. The only solution is to take responsibility for our own lives, to consider the costs, the benefits, the risks, and the rewards of our actions, and to live our lives to the best of our ability. If I refuse to take a risk there is a chance that someone who needs the reward more then I will risk what I would not, in order to receive it. That is his right. To take that right from him is the most inhumane thing that I could do.

Stupid in America

An excellent expose of why public education is the best way to promote universal ignorance in our lifetime.

The Corporation

The Corporation, by Joel Bakan, is a left liberal rant with some interesting substance beneath it. It discusses the nature and history of corporations, the odd if not absurd rulings that made them, in America, "people" under the law, and therefore entitled to rights under the 14th Amendment, and provides a litany of corporate misdeeds (in my opinion, some real and some imagined) throughout the years. It discusses the very real problem of "regulatory capture", where regulatory agencies that are created to "protect people from industry" end up serving the established interests in that industry to the detriment of consumers, potential competitors, and everyone else, but falsely concludes that more regulation is the solution to this problem. This error is repeated throughout the book, with government recommended as the solution to each and every failure of government stated or implied in the text.

There is, however, some merit from a capitalist and libertarian point of view to some of the arguments made within this book. For example, there is the fact that one of the defining attributes of corporations is the limitation of liability they provide for shareholders. The owner of an ordinary proprietorship, for example, is personally liable for his acts and the acts of his company, just as he would be liable for the same acts were they carried out in his non-working hours. The same is true of a partnership. This is not true of corporations. The liability of investors in corporations is limited to to the value of their investment. This is not much of a problem for companies and people who do business with the corporation. They know about this limitation, and that their potential recovery in suing a corporation are limited to the value of that corporation. This is why corporations are required to put the ubiquitous "Inc" after their name on contracts, for example. But there are people effected by the acts of corporation who do not have any choice. A corporation's externalities, for example, are different from the externalities of a person or an ordinary business, in that even if you sue the corporation, your recovery is limited to the value of that corporation. And since externalities are, by definition, "effects of an act on non-consenting third parties", you cannot choose to have externalities imposed on you only by people and ordinary businesses. If corporations exist, and if they produce externalities, as everyone does, they can impose externalities on you, and there is no way to opt out. This can be considered an initiation of force.

Mr. Bakan goes to great length to point out that corporations, in their single minded pursuit of profit, are inhuman. This is, of course, true. Corporations, legal fictions aside, are not people. He fails to point out that your car, your house, and your dishwasher suffer from the same failing. Corporations are more like machines then like people. His assertion that they are psychopathic, however, does not hold water. Psychopaths are people, and it is reasonable to expect a conscience from people. If they fail to display such, they are defective people, and therefore may be termed psychopaths. However, hammers and bulldozers are rarely described as psychopaths, despite their notable lack of conscience. However, there is a grain of truth in this argument as well. Corporate directors frequently act as if their limited financial responsibility for the acts of their corporation is also a limited moral responsibility. This is false.

So what can we do about the real problems concerning corporations? How would they be handled in my perfect world? Here I differ with Mr. Bakan. In my perfect Libertarian world, there would be no limited liability for corporate shareholders. Instead, there would be insurance companies which served to protect shareholders from liability from the actions of the corporations in which they invested. This insurance could either be purchased by the shareholders themselves, or could be purchased by the corporation itself on their behalf. Thus, those exposed to externalities by corporations would be able to recover their losses from the owners of the corporation or it's insurance company, even if it exceeded the value of the corporation. And stockholders would bear the cost of liability for their corporations, just as they do for their homes and cars. The insurance companies would vary their rates, on a case by case basis, for the shareholders of the various corporations, based on the behavior of those corporations.

I would also return to some of the older rules regarding corporations. For example, I would not permit corporations to own stock in other companies. This is a human right, but it is just that: a human right. There is no reason that companies must own each other, except for the purpose of obfuscation. And obfuscation is the bane of any market economy. Rather than merging companies, there is no reason that a corporation cannot sell it's assets to another, pay off it's shareholders, and cease to exist, rather than selling itself to another company. The main difference would be that the name of the company would cease to exist along with the company, and contracts would not be transferable. It really annoyed me, for example, when Cingular Wireless bought AT&T wireless, and without my consent, I became a customer of Cingular. I did not choose to do business with Cingular, and did not like the way they treated me.

And I would strongly consider returning to the rule that corporations could be created only for a narrowly defined purpose and a limited time. This might entail some loss of economies of scale, but would allow much greater flexibility to investors in choosing which things in which he wanted to invest.

What would the results of these changes be? In my opinion, they would reduce the number and size of corporations by removing one of the primary reasons (if not the primary reason) for incorporating, and by limiting corporations to a single purpose. The only time when it would be to the advantage of investors to incorporate would be when they needed to in order to raise the requisite capital in order to pursue the limited objectives they pursued. Transparency would be increased, as I suspect that insurance companies would be reluctant to insure shareholders of companies which were not forthcoming about their business practices, and willing to submit to inspections by the representatives of the insurers.

The problem that would not be solved by these changes is the problem of externalities. This problem is not specific to corporations, but merely exacerbated by their limited liability. The only solution I can see here is a more complete definition of property rights, and for more things to be privately held. But I will return to that subject in a forthcoming article on externalities.

Peaceful Socialism

Somebody asked me, once upon a time, if there was any characteristic of Libertarianism which made it indisputably the most just form of government. There is. That characteristic is that it is so open, so free, that nearly any form of social organization is possible within the Libertarian framework. The converse is not true. One cannot set up a Libertarian society within a Socialist society, as having everything allocated by government would make private property impossible. But it is possible, to the extent that a Socialist society is possible at all, to set up a Socialist society within a Libertarian society, given three conditions.

Remember that in a Libertarian society, the only function of government is to protect individual rights from attack, either from inside society, as in criminal activity, or from outside society, as in invasion. This is truly a least common denominator government. So how can Socialism, which requires complete centralization of all types of economic activity, possibly be achieved within a Libertarian society? Quite easily. The proviso that a Libertarian society forbids the initiation of force implies the following three conditions:

1. That members of the Socialist subgroup not be coerced into joining that subgroup. For the subgroup to kidnap members of the society at large, or to otherwise force them to participate, would obviously be an initiation of force. This cannot be permitted. But so long as subgroup members were willing participants, force would not be involved, and therefore there would be no conflict between the Socialist subgroup and the group at large. By the same token, the group at large would have no right, and no desire, to forcibly prevent those who chose a Socialist lifestyle from enjoying that which they have chosen.
2. That members of the Socialist subgroup not be forcibly prevented from leaving their subgroup. That is, if and when members of the subgroup chose to leave, Libertarian principals would require that the group at large intervene were we to discover that he was forcibly prevented from leaving the subgroup. Just as group marriage would require a contract that specified the terms for divorce, a Socialist subgroup would require (or at least would be well advised to have) a contract with each of it's members specifying, for example, what sorts of property the member would be permitted to retain if and when he left the group, and whether a member whom had received investment in the form of education would owe the subgroup compensation if he immediately left the subgroup upon completion of this education. The only requirement which a Libertarian government would impose on this contract would be that he be permitted to take is body with him, and that he not be subjected to a debtor's prison in order to repay whatever was required by the subgroup's contract. All other contract terms would be purely private matters between the subgroup and it's members.
3. That members of the Socialist subgroup not confiscate property from non-members in establishing or expanding their holdings. That is, they could not initiate force against their neighbors in order to gain more land on which to live and/or work, they could not take factories by force. They could, however, buy any property they desired, in order to expand their operations.

These simple conditions would make it perfectly possible to form several different kinds of Socialist organizations that could exist at peace within a Libertarian society. Since there would be no pesky tax collectors coming around, the subgroup would not be forced to trade with members of the group at large in order to get hard currency to pay taxes. But there would be nothing to prevent them from trading with the outside if they so chose. They could either trade in kind, and preserve the purity of their moneyless system, or they could trade goods for cash, and maintain a collective store of cash for future trade. They could even, if they so chose, invest their collective wealth in the stock market of the outside world, in order to have their operation partially financed by the outside economy. No Libertarian society would object to any of these arrangements.

There are several collective arrangements that could be supported in this way.

1. A Kibbutz, a form of collective farm in which the inhabitants of the farm share equally in the proceeds thereof. They could be either self-sufficient, or trade externally (as a socialist nation likely would), or any combination thereof. They would be free to structure their operation as they saw fit. All they would need to do is to assure themselves that they were able to produce as much as their members consumed. And that, of course, is also a requirement of a Socialist government. It is an inescapable law of nature.
2. A collective business, or coop, in which the employees of a business, or other like-minded individuals, buy or build a business and operate it for themselves. There are innumerable ways to structure such a business, and I am no expert on what they are. But surely anyone who was interested in this form of organization would be able to come up with an arrangement that would suit them.
3. Many others, limited only by your imagination.

Why would any Socialist prefer such an arrangement to revolution or gradual socialization of an economy by successive interventions? There are several reasons. Perhaps the individuals in question truly do not want to do harm to anyone. My biggest problem with Socialism is that in a Socialist society, I would have to either be killed or tortured/starved into submission. This is something that I would take rather personally. My preferred social organization makes no such requirement of you.

Or perhaps one might be committed to Socialism, but unsure of what organization might work. In a Libertarian society, I predict that their would be thousands of groups who wanted to try different types of communal arrangements. If they were to carry out a revolution, and impose their first choice on a nation by force and law, they would find it difficult to change from that first organization to another if the first did not work well for them. And since it was on a national scale, they would only be able to try one form of Socialism at a time. But under a Libertarian governments, hundreds or thousands of organizational structures could be tried, limited only the members who desired to make the attempt.

Or perhaps you aren't entirely sure that Socialism will work, but want to make the attempt. A Libertarian society would allow a Socialist society that did not work to disband or reorganize, should Socialism, or the brand of Socialism they chose not work. This could be done without violence, and without the seventy years of hell that the Soviets endured, simply by unanimously choosing to disband. Or if part of the group wanted to disband, and the others did not, those who wanted to leave would always be free to do so.

So although I do not think that Socialism is workable on a large scale, I invite non-violent Socialists everywhere to join the Libertarians in attempting to establish a framework in which everyone's dreams, Capitalist and Socialist alike, can be pursued. I even have a suggested slogan for you:

We are the collective. You will not, unless you so choose, be assimilated.

Capital to the People!

The Mystery of Capital, by Hernando de Soto, is a must read for anyone who studies or debates free market economics. Capitalism is the most powerful engine for allowing people to lift themselves out of poverty and empowering anyone willing to make the effort to reach their dreams. But in some developing countries, Capitalism is not reaching these goals. This is not because of "market failure", but rather because of government failure. De Soto demonstrates effectively how much damage a government which fails to provide simple, easy, inexpensive and effective registration of property and is therefore unable to enforce property rights can do. Through studies performed in his native Peru and throughout the third world, he illustrates again and again how the entrepreneurship of poor people is thwarted by the governments that are supposed to be protecting their rights.

Consider the Philippines, where it takes 168 steps and 13-25 years to formalize informal urban property. Or Egypt, where the procedure to gain access to desert land for construction and to register these property rights takes 6-14 years and 77 steps. Or Lima, Peru, where 728 bureaucratic steps must be braved, in order to obtain legal title to a home in a validated housing settlement.

The result of this madness? People build concrete and cinder block homes on land they do not own. People are forced to run their businesses illegally because running a legal business is impossible. And under those conditions, although these people have assets, they have no way of turning these assets into capital. Who would write a mortgage on a home built on land whose ownership cannot be determined? Who will finance the expansion of a business which exists only because the authorities have not yet gotten around to shutting it down? How can people escape from poverty, if access to the very basic legal system that capitalism requires is beyond their means.

Please click the link adjacent to the title, in order to order this fine work, and to finally put to rest the illusions of those Socialists who claim that the countries where many are unable to experience the benefits of capitalism is "proof" that capitalism creates wealth only for the few at expense of the many.

Why socialism doesn't work (part 1)

First off, let's imagine Marxism as Marx imagined it. Everyone has become the "New Socialist Man", and is no longer interested in their own life, wants, needs, dreams, or aspirations, but cares only about the almighty State and what they can do for their government. There is no money. There is no market. There is just whatever amount of stuff happens to have either been stolen from the bourgeois (capital) and the land itself. The running-dog capitalist exploiters of the noble workers and virtuous peasants and their itching-and-scratching-dog lackeys have been heroically tortured into submission or justly executed along with their families. It is time to celebrate our glorious revolution and to proceed to enjoy our new workers' paradise.

There is a problem, however. We have abolished money! We have abolished the market! We have no way of determining if anything is more or less valuable than anything else! So how do we decide what to produce? The answer is that in the absence of a free market, we have no way of determining whether ten tons of iron ore (about two tons of iron), 200 pounds of rubber and plastic, 50 pounds of glass and the labor, equipment and facilities required to turn the forgoing into an automobile are worth more or less than the automobile we could produce from them. Moreover, we have no way of comparing the value of ten of those potential automobiles to the value of one railroad engine. Or of five tractors. Or a refrigerator (which requires some different materials, and some of the same materials). Or a computer program (which requires almost none of the same materials and a totally different type of labor). We have no idea what we can do to serve our fellow man, which we want oh-so-badly to do, because we have no idea what he values.

So, with heavy hearts, we have to return to the drawing board. But do not lose faith, comrades! Just because Marx's dream of a moneyless and marketless economy does not stand up to even casual scrutiny, that doesn't mean that he was wrong. He just wasn't right. And logic, right and wrong are concepts of the bourgeois mind anyway. Our superior proletarian minds will find a way to overcome these temporary setbacks on our glorious revolutionary road to freedom, democracy, and the mass murders of all those who disagree with us.