Social contract, or theft?

Leftists sometimes "argue" for taxation by using the term "social contract". Democracy gets the same treatment.

But here's a nice little quote that puts things in perspective:

Suppose five robbers break into the home of a family of four. As the robbers are about to leave with the owners’ possessions, the owners object, on the grounds of private property rights. The criminals, being of a philosophical bent, are willing to engage in dialogue with their victims. Under the influence of Pipes, they are willing to hold a democratic referendum on the issue of whether or not it is justified for them to "take" the family’s household goods. The vote proves conclusive: five in favor (the thieves) and four against (the family members.) Would it make any difference if thereupon the gang stated that it was their intention to distribute their ill-gotten gains to the poor, and thus their motives were "benevolent"? Not at all. Theft is theft, and there need be no benevolence to it at all. (#)

I guess the "social contract" and democracy theory would say this: The family memebers in question happened to be in the same geographical are as the thieves, and have the bad luck of storing their the property in this area. When a number of voters greater than that of the property owners invaded the property, all discussions about who owns what and why came down to a vote, and like with democracy the winner takes all. Is that fair or just or just plain theft?

A few good reads on climate changes and related issues

"The International Union for the Conservation of Nature has just put the polar bear on the endangered species list because it is supposedly "facing extinction" -- mainly, it claims, as a result of global warming. But statistics show the polar bear is not facing extinction, not by a long shot."
The Bear Facts (TCS Daily)

"The money is in global warming because it’s being pushed by a political agenda that wants power. Power in Washington. Power on the international stage. Power over economic development. Power over international monetary decisions. Power over energy. In short, power over the motor of the world. It’s driven by literally thousands of large and small non-governmental organizations (NGOs) sanctioned by the United Nations, and implemented by a horde of bureaucrats, university academics and an ignorant but pliable news media."
Global Warming: The Other Side of the Story (Capitalism Magazine)

"In the end, a relentless campaign to extend political control over the world’s energy use is likely to fail, in part because, even if severe climate change is in our future, most people intuitively recognize that rhetoric about “the end of civilization as we know it” is inconsistent with human experience. Our distant ancestors survived an ice age with little more than animal skins, crude tools, and open fire pits. For all the talk of science and progress, the global-warming alarmists betray an astonishing lack of confidence in human creativity and resiliency. It’s almost as if the scientific community had abandoned the idea of evolution."
Acclimatizing: How to Think Sensibly, or Ridiculously, about Global Warming (AEI)

Red or green, or does it matter?

I can't resist posting this beautiful paragraph. Seperation of it into smaller sections is mine:

"In my judgment, the "green" movement of the environmentalists is merely the old "red" movement of the communists and socialists shorn of its veneer of science. The only difference I see between the greens and the reds is the superficial one of the specific reasons for which they want to violate individual liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

The reds claimed that the individual could not be left free because the result would be such things as "exploitation" and "monopoly." The greens claim that the individual cannot be left free because the result will be such things as destruction of the ozone layer and global warming.

Both claim that centralized government control over economic activity is essential. The reds wanted it for the alleged sake of achieving human prosperity. The greens want it for the alleged sake of avoiding environmental damage.

In my view, environmentalism and ecology are nothing but the intellectual death rattle of socialism in the West, the final convulsion of a movement that only a few decades ago eagerly looked forward to the results of paralyzing the actions of individuals by means of "social engineering" and now seeks to paralyze the actions of individuals by means of prohibiting engineering of any kind.

The greens, I think, may be a cut below the reds, if that is possible."
- George Reisman, The Toxicity of Environmentalism

Dissection of: Unions

Unions are probably one of the most over-estimated inventions ever. They are credited for improved working conditions, for higher wages of workers and a general rise in living standards. The fact is that the opposite is true. Living standards, higher wages of workers and improved working conditions are not the result of the hard work of unions, but something that has been accomplished despite the presence of unions. A simple dissection of unions now follows:

Unions gather workers of a particular company, industry - even country - together as a single negotiator of salaries and benefits. In most cases they use force - sometimes politicians and their law and police - to force employers to raise wages and benefits for a large number of workers.

The employers respond to the extra expenses by reducing the number of available jobs, changing the way they attract new workers (from offering different wages and benefits to different individuals, to offering the same base-level package for all), and hold back on all increase in benefits and wage during times of huge profits, knowing that they will only have to pay up when the next strike is threatened.

This reduces the overall competition among employers for new employees and reduces the number of available jobs, which in turn reduces the incentive (good) employees have to change jobs or ask for higher wages on an individual basis.

The reduced number of jobs, reduced competition among employers for employees and among employees for available jobs boils down to one thing: Fewer opportunities at a higher price. This will not harm those who are protected behind law-protected unions, but everyone else will hurt, and society as a whole will suffer the greatest loss with a (relative) reduction in productivity and less flexibility in all areas.

Unions today have mostly lost their status in the free societies. That is why they now turn their eyes towards the developing world, asking for "fair trade" instead of free trade, and pressure politicians and ask consumers to punish those employers who employ people but don't follow the guidelines suggested by rich Western union leaders.

What is a crime?

I recently had an interesting discussion about what should be considered a crime and what not. Lies - should they be illegal? I say no. What about fraud? I say yes. There is a significant difference in nature between a lie and fraud. If I call myself the most attractive, well-spoken man in the world, I could be telling a lie, and sure enough that would be easy to prove to some chosen jury of 12 people. But I have committed no crime. If I tell everyone my neighbor is a child-molester I have committed no crime although I could not back up my case with evidence. At best I have injured my own reputation among those who heard my accusations, asked for evidence and received none.

A thought worthy quote:

If I take but a single cent of a man's property, without his consent, the act is a crime. But if two men, who are compos mentis, possessed of reasonable discretion to judge of the nature and probable results of their act, sit down together, and each voluntarily stakes his money against the money of another, on the turn of a die, and one of them loses his whole estate (however large that may be), it is no crime, but only a vice. (#)

If there is any role for man-made laws, created by a man-made State, then it is to protect individuals from physical attacks and theft or manipulation of their physical property. A lie does not fall within these borders. A moral or ethical code of law has no place within the State-apparatus. If I tell you that a house is safe and you move into it without any further checking of its structural capacity, and the house falls to the ground one week later, I committed no crime. But if I bribe a house-inspector to give the house the thumbs up, and sell the house on the notion that it has been checked for faults against collapse, then the simple lie turns into fraud, and a crime has emerged. Yes, even if the house does stay up.

Gold

This is a wonderful little lecture by Walter Block, "Mr. Libertarian". The lecture is about the free-market gold standard, as opposed to the State-run central banking system, and makes a convincing case for the gold standard (or silver, for that matter).

State-supervised central banking is the "norm" in our minds, but a norm that should be disposed of. Central banking is a State-instrument to enable the State to spend more money than it can collect with taxes, creating inflation and sending wrong signals to borrowers and lenders of money (details on that issue). The sooner this can be made clear, the better.

Morally legalized theft

The following words are from this memo by Rothbard (some quotation marks omitted to clarify the text outside its full context):

Here is one example of centralized governmental operation: Paul wants some of Peter's property. For morel as well as legal reasons, Paul is unable personally to accomplish this desire. Paul therefore persuades the government to tax Peter in order to provide funds with which the government pays Paul a 'subsidy.' Paul now has what he wanted. His conscience is clear and he has proceeded 'according to law'.

The fact that there are millions of Pauls and Peters involved in such transactions does not change their essential and common characteristic. The Pauls have simply engaged the government to do for them that which they were unable to do for themselves. Had the Pauls done this individually and directly without the help of the government each of them would have been subject to fine and imprisonment. Furthermore, ninety-five percent of the Paula would have refused to do the job because the moral conscience of each Paul wou1d have hurt him if he did. However, where government does it for them, there is no prosecution and no pain in anybody's conscience. This encourages the unfortunate impression that by using the ballot instead of a blackjack we may take whatever we please to take from our neighbors.

What would happen to them in a free society?

An un-countable number of organizations fight the State every day to gain rights, funds or protection. These organizations are as diverse as they are many, and each of them has an agenda that must be sold to the politicians, for example those fighting for gay-rights, labor protection, gender equality, farm subsidies, abolishment of racial discrimination and so on and so forth. But what would happen to these organizations in a free society? The answer is short: They would shrink or disappear completely.

This is not a hard riddle to solve. The free society cares for one thing and one thing only: The freedom to use ones own body and property as ones sees fit. This will usually translate into a search for an increase in ones own physical well-being and/or an increase in ones property and material wealth. Companies want growth and higher profits, and if that means hiring a black or homosexual man, a man in a wheel-cheer or a man with a vagina then so be it, as long as the hired individual is a profitable employee.

The scenery today is somewhat different from that of a free society. A number of laws offer protection and privileges to certain groups relative to others. If a female employee becomes pregnant, she will drop out of work for several months but still receive pay. If a black man is hired and then fired, the company could face expensive law-suits and other expenses as a result. If a homosexual individual gets a job and finds out he didn't do as good in the salary-discussion as the next non-homosexual man, he will file a lawsuit and claim damages without much effort. The whole spectrum of "anti-discrimination" laws and "equal pay for same job-titles" propaganda has shifted the focus away from the individuals in question and towards some vague definitions of minority groups that have homogeneous individuals among them, apparently with the same needs, desires and talent.

The fact of the matter is that discrimination takes place, but in nature not on the basis of gender, race or number of legs. Discrimination takes place whenever two compete for something. The one who gets the job will usually be the one who can convince his would-be employer that he is the one for the job because of skills, talent, education or ability to work overtime and during weekends. If a statistic shows that one group, on the average, receives higher pay than another, it should not be taken as a reason to make new laws. It should encourage those who think they are under-paid to convince their employer of exactly that, and that is all.

Special-interest organizations in a free society would find better things to do with their time than sue the State and demand laws that apply for all individuals, regardless of individual preferences, talent, wants and needs.

Labor unions

A small quote to honor this day of the working man:

Labor unions do not even know how to raise real wages. All they are concerned with is raising the money wages and protecting the jobs of the members of their particular union. Since labor unions do not control the quantity of money or volume of spending in the economic system, the only way that they can raise the money wages of their members is by artificially reducing the supply of labor in their field. But the effect of this is to correspondingly increase the supply of labor and reduce wage rates in other fields. In other words the success of any given union is obtained at the expense of the loss of wage earners in the rest of the economic system. And the losses necessarily outweigh the gains, because an essential aspect of the process is workers being forced into jobs requiring less skill and ability than the jobs from which they are expelled. (#)

The French protests are the ultimate culmination of the power of the labor unions. All law protecting strikes and union power should be abolished immediately. No-one would miss them in the not-so-long long-run. No-one.