Reverse sociology

They still exist, those who call themselves "communists" and "socialists". How to beat them - in a discussion - for good? At least argument for that they should shut up! Here's an idea.

First you ask the Socialist: "So you want to abolish private property?" This will be answered with a: "Yes. It is oppression and blah blah.."

Next is to ask: "Well, you are wearing some clothes and perhaps you have something to eat at home." The answer: "Yes, I have to own something in today's exploiting free-market society to keep up my strength to fight private property rights."

Then a question: "But in a society with no private property, you would still need to have clothes and food to eat. How will you keep your clothes on and swallow the food if it isn't your property, and yours to dispose of or use for your benefit?" The answer: "Society will provide all with sufficient clothing and food."

Then a question: "What if society will not be able to afford clothes and food for you and decides you are not worthy of such great gifts, perhaps because you offended the majority of the society?" The answer might become a clumsy, "they would never do that because Socialism will have transformed everybody into good persons", or the more realistic (and historically more accurate), "then so be it if I am to be killed with starvation and cold - I will obey the society and the majority of the people in a Socialistic society!"

This final answer will have proven than a person does not own one's body because society can, in not allowing any private property, take a person's live without direct physical aggression.

But since the Socialist is going for a social order which does not accept self-ownership, why in the hell is this person using his or her own body to express these opinions? Do the means justify the ends? Can an opponent of self-ownership, with good conscience, show up in an interview and use his or her body without asking "the society" for permission first?

I guess so. In the absence of reason and logic, no conscience can exist! However, without permission from "everyone", the Socialist should shut up! At least according to own logic!

How to win the war on the Left?

The following quote is a part of the second comment to this post on the Mises Institutes's blog:

The free-market advocates continually lose to the interventionists because the latter rely on a 'moral' position, namely that it is right to redistribute wealth. Until we compete with a different vision of what is right, they will continually win the war of ideas, which is primarily on the moral plane, and secondarily on the theory and facts of economics.

This comment should strike every libertarian-leaning mind in the very heart of his world-perspective. How is the public won? How can libertarians increase their ever diminishing influence in the public debate? Is the method really to leave logic and reason and attack the feelings and morals of the public? I would hate to see that happen!

How was the Soviet Union removed of its credibility?

The question of how to spread out the message of Liberty always haunts me. Most people just want to go to work, earn their pay and use it to improve their lives and do well by their family and friends. Not so many read economics and political theory. That is why the Left has gained too much ground. The Left understands that sound logic and reason and good economic theory is simply not interesting to the general public. That is why they use ever-shifting moral and emotional arguments - arguments of State intervention and soaking of "the rich" to benefit "the poor", which in the end only soaks everyone and keeps the poor poor!

It took a 50 year battle of intellectual persuasion to convince the leaders of the Soviet Union to reduce the stranglehold of the State. It took a little shorter time to start that process in China. Are libertarians wasting their energy by focusing on sound logic and reason, and by using a very slow-working instrument of economics and political theory? Should they reduce to the emotional simplifications of the Left?

I wonder, and I worry that this is the case.

History repeats itself - again!

Icelanders recently copied some Irish and Swedish laws which ban smoking in "public" places (private property open to the "public" for business activities). The arguments are well-known: Smoking is bad for your health, no-one should be able to work in a health-damaging environment (by choice or not), and the "public health" has to be protected (by the State) - probably because the State monopolizes the health care system.

The following quote is illustrating for the "discussion" about smoking-bans in "public" places:

And arguments that private property would be unjustly confiscated were also brushed aside with the contention that property injurious to the health, morals, and safety of the people had always been subject to confiscation without compensation. (#)

The interesting thing about this description of the attitude in the public debate is, I think, not that it sounds familiar. This quote has nothing to do with the smoking-ban discussion today. It is a description of the debate in the United States during the years before the prohibition - the public outlawing of alcohol which lasted from 1920 to 1933.

So what we have here is history repeating itself. Instead of a free market for free individuals we have laws that ban certain non-violent activities, sends them to the black market and at the same time makes sure that the paternal Left gets a good night sleep, "knowing" that the vices of men have been banned with the threat of punishment from the State.

I think everyone knows why the prohibition was ended in America. I hope everyone realized that history has a huge tendency to repeat itself, because people have a huge tendency to forget the effects of State-violence on free-minded individuals.

A new name on my reading-list?

When I see a piece of text like this, I cannot help but to add to my bookmarks-list in my browser:

McKitrick has effectively laid down the gauntlet for both skeptics and alarmists by offering them a public policy proposal they both should be able to endorse, since both are convinced it will go their way. Only those of us who have independent moral and practical reasons for opposing any form of tax or subsidy whatsoever should have a good reason for not accepting the challenge.

My new bookmark? ClimateAudit.org An article to be read in my nearest future? Call their tax My favorite non-personal blog? The Mises Institute's one It's blog post behind this post? The T3 Tax: Laying Down the Gauntlet

Is Democracy a friend or a foe?

The introduction to the Cato Institute´s latest Policy Analysis - "The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies" - includes the following words:

Economic policy is the primary activity of the modern state. And if there is one thing that the public deeply misunderstands, it is economics. People do not grasp the "invisible hand" of the market, with its ability to harmonize private greed and the public interest. I call this anti-market bias. They underestimate the benefits of interaction with foreigners. I call this anti-foreign bias. They equate prosperity not with production, but with employment. I call this make-work bias. Finally, they are overly prone to think that economic conditions are bad and getting worse. I call this pessimistic bias.

I must say this is a good start, and I will have read the whole analysis soon.

But why this criticism of the holy grail, Democracy? Isn't there a "consensus" among all free people to hail democracy as the final solution to wars, suffering and poverty? Isn't democracy the solution to the problems of corruption and State oppression? Perhaps not.

I am a little surprised that the Cato Institute releases an open criticism of democracy. I am used to such criticism from the camp of Anti-Statists, for example the Mises Institute, especially Hans-Hermann Hoppe's Democracy: The God That Failed. Democracy is in many ways not any "better" or "worse" than any other statist tool to use the State to favor some at the expense of another. It is better than many tools because it includes the public to some extent to its own oppression, but worse in the way it makes people believe that someone else is doing all the paying and doing.

Cato's analysis will soon enough be read by me. Perhaps others who read this will do the same.