NAP: The Non-Aggression Principle

First Principles

Open Question: why is it important to argue from first principles?

Game Theory, Utility, the State, and more

Today I had a stimulating conversation with a fellow student. We each see the world a little differently, but as he studies Engineering and Business (sorry, I believe there's probably a better translation, but I do think that name gets the idea across) and is interested in economics, we can have more informed discussions and debates than with other normal folks who don't spend as much thinking about such geeky things.

Let's start with the positive! We both agree money is a good thing! I know, it doesn't sound like much, but I'm amazed at the number of people I regularly meet who demonize money. They have absolutely no idea that our current wealth and civilization is only possible through a universal medium of exchange ( = money).

Now to the juicy part. First of all, the conversation never would have taken place, had I not quoted Bastiat on a Facebook event page for Flashmob "Rettungsschirm für die Bildung" about a month ago. It was an event to protest the reductions the Federal State of Brandenburg had made in higher education. Here's what I wrote:

‎"Der Staat ist die große Fiktion, nach der sich jedermann bemüht, auf Kosten jedermanns zu leben." - FRÉDÉRIC BASTIAT

Studenten, Bankiers, Renter, Autofahrer, Farmers, Politiker, Eltern und Kinder plündern sich alle gegenseitig aber wer gewinnt letztendlich? Schlimmer noch, unsere Generation hat leider die Arschkarte gezogen. Uns wird gewisse Leistungen versprochen, für die wir bezahlen aber nicht genießen werden, dank dem Sozialstaat und demographischen Wandel, ua.

Vlt wird es langsam Zeit, das alles neu durchzudenken, anstatt stets mehr Geld von unsren Mitmenschen zu fordern. Just a thought..

My fellow student made a somewhat flippant comment on FB, to which I also replied flippantly. No need to reprint that here.

Anywho, we happened to be talking today about some engineering related issue, and I asked if he was the one that had replied to me back then. We determined he was indeed, and we started a nice conversation. I really to enjoy a good talk. So what did we talk about today?

What I tried to get to the bottom of was how he justified taking people's money for use on "public goods," ie roads, schools, defense, etc. Though we must have talked for about 2.5 hours, I'm not sure how far we got. We spent more of the time arguing over the method, validity, and applicability of Game Theory. Here's how Wikipedia briefly describes Game Theory:

Game theory is a mathematical method for analyzing calculated circumstances, such as in games, where a person’s success is based upon the choices of others. More formally, it is "the study of mathematical models of conflict and cooperation between intelligent rational decision-makers."

One typical game is one participant (Andy) is given, say, 10 pieces of candy. According to the rules, Andy must decide on a number of pieces of candy which he will offer to a second participant (Bob). Bob then muss decide whether to accept or reject the offer. If Bob rejects the offer, both participants lose their candy. If Bob accepts, he must accept the number of candy pieces that was offered him. For example, if Andy wishes to offer Bob only one piece, keeping nine for himself, he has to reckon with the possibility that Bob might refuse the offer out of spite, even though that means that Bob will also lose his one piece of candy. So maybe Andy offers five pieces to Bob in order to ensure that Bob will most likely accept his offer, so that Andy will at least come away with some candy.

That's all very interesting and all, but if someone can explain to me how this game can improve our knowledge and understanding of the real world, I'd appreciate it. I don't mean that to be totally glib. I really just don't understand what it tells us.

Another game is a village of, say, ten people. They survive in part thanks to a stream, from which they laboriously fetch their water. The question arises as to whether a well should be built, so that all have easy access to water. Now of course different people could value such a well very differently. Maybe one person lives relatively close to the stream, and feels it wouldn't be worth the effort or money he would have to contribute to the building of this well. There are perhaps other who live quite far away from the stream, or who don't like taking early morning strolls to the stream.

The point is, all participants have various needs, values, wishes, etc. There are Games which claim to prove how, in the absence of compulsion and given certain restraints (boundary conditions), each person would individually chose an outcome that worse for him and worse for the community as a whole. This proof would further go on to show that if they could someone all ensure that the others would pay for such a well (say, with force), then the outcome will be better for each individual and better for the community at large.

All these games are very strictly circumscribed and each "player" is given certain very specific goals and constraints, just as if one were playing a board game. The problem is that life is not a board game. There are few such clear cut rules and every shade of grey between options. So let's go into where I think my friend goes wrong.

The premises my friends bases his arguments upon include the following:

• Utility is measurable and quantifiable.
• Knowledge regarding real-life interactions can be gained from certain Game Theory scenarios.
• The State acts in an idealized fashion, ie it strives to maximize the utility of its subjects.
• The State is above moral reproach. That is, it may morally undertake certain actions that would be considered immoral and criminal if undertaken by an individual. This seems to be justified as long as utility is being maximized.
• Our relationship is with the state is that of voluntary beings contracting with one another.
• When talking about the utility derived from a particular policy, it is unimportant to consider the corresponding loss of utility by others. 

#1 Utility

Each person has certain goals in life. Economics has precious little to say in regards to the goals themselves, which could be "I want to be happy," "I want to live a more healthy lifestyle," or "I want to go to heaven." The evaluation of the goals is a task better left to philosophy or psychology. Economics is the study of how humans make choices given that they have these goals. Economics studies the means applied to achieving the ends. Utility, then, is simply that psychological satisfaction that one derives from an action (say, that new computer purchase, going on a date with that pretty girl you've admired for a long time, or giving to charity). 

We prefer means that get us closer to achieving our goals. Everything in life is a choice. Do I wake up at 6am to go to class or do I sleep in? Do I spend my Euro on a bottle of Coke or do I save that Euro for another time? To I continue writing this essay or go study for the Turbines final I have in less than a week? The Austrian school of economics teaches us that preference is demonstrated through choice. How else does one answer the question whether we "prefer to sleep in or go to class?" If I sleep in one day and miss class, it's because at that one point in time/history, I preferred sleeping in to going to class. Most days, however, I prefer going to class. We know this, because if I did not prefer going to class today, I would not have gone to class. 

In this process of choosing, we are ranking various options. When I got up today at 6am, this indicated that at that time, waking up was higher on my value scale that was sleeping in. I cannot make a statement like the following: "I value waking up to go to class 2.7 times more than I value sleeping in." It's like trying to quantify how much you love someone. There's no way to do it! Value scales are purely ordinal (ie, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc) and not cardinal (1, 1.45, 100.2, etc). 

I felt the need to write those three paragraphs in order to make my points about the first bullet point clear. A choice delivers more Utility, the higher on our value scale it lies. Something that brings us more utility is something that delivers more psychic satisfaction, and as such lies higher on our value scale. I hope I have clearly demonstrated that because our value scales are purely ordinal, a value cannot be applied to them. Same for utility. Because of this, utilities cannot be added, substracted, etc. Here's an example:

• I love Grandma Audrey more than Aunt Betty.
• I love Aunt Betty more than Uncle Christopher.

Logically, we can also say that I love Grandma Audrey more than Uncle Christopher. I might also be able to colloquially say that I love Grandma Audrey a whole lot more than Aunt Betty, and that I only love Aunt Betty a little bit more than Uncle Christopher. They're both pretty close. But is it possible to say whether I love Grandma Audrey more than Aunt Better and Uncle Christopher put together? Would such a statement even make sense? Can I add the love I feel for Better and Christopher and compare it to that for Audrey? I don't think so! And even if that were possible, how could a third party (say, an economist interested in such matters) determine these relationships? He would have to ask me. I could lie. I might change my mind tomorrow. 

When I was a little shaver (a "little shaver" is a child according to my family's vernacular), my mother and brother and I sometimes played a good-night game. My brother would stretch out his arms and tell Ma "I love you this much!" I was a little older and so I spread my larger wingspan and said "And I love you this much!" Well, Ma had longer arms for the both of us. But then I would declare that I loved her from from our house to the neighbor's house. My brother would then have to out do me, and so on, til we're burned up by the sun. 

Now if I may be glib for a moment - the point is, we did that in good fun, but many economists continue to believe that love utility is a measurable concept. To those, I ask, show me a Util (the supposed unit of utility)! I wanna see one!

IMHO, this is enough to destroy his whole argument, but there's more!

#2 - Game Theory

I already touched on this. Someone needs to show me why we should base decisions of so-called public policy based on a board game. Maybe I'm being too harsh, but at this juncture, I don't get it. That may admittedly be ignorance on my part. But since the goal of our would-be social engineer is prove an increase in social utility (which, again, cannot be added, multiplied, derived, or integrated) as a result of a particular policy, I don't know if he'll have much success in persuading me. But I endeavor to keep an open mind!

#3 The Idealized State

Ah yes, the State. To put it bluntly, no politician gets into office and then summons his social scientists to advise him on what would increase social utility. Most get into office, with certain ideas of what they would like to accomplish, with certain ideals, and with a certain idea of what will get him reelected. It just seems to me incredibly naive to believe anything else. To be sure, the politician may talk about increasing social utility, but surely only because it is a "scientific" rationale for that which he's already decided upon.And that's even ignoring the measurement/comparison problem I keep harping on! 

Or maybe I'm missing something. Anyone care to put me right?

#4 Morality and the State

My number one question for my friend, which I've saved for last, is probably the most important. Why does he exclude the State from the morality that we demand from our fellow man in more personal situations? Why is one group of people allowed to steal from another? 

His answer, which he mentioned fleetingly, I believe amounted to justifying this transfer, this theft, in that it maximizes social utility. Well, you know how I already feel about utility. But even if we could somehow measure the increase in utility, how does that have any bearing on the morality of the action? The rapist gains in utility will each person he victimizes. We would never even dream of justifying his action based on his utility. Scheiß auf sein Nutzen! Well, what if the majority hates redheads, and wishes to kill all of them or take all their money or lock them all up in prisons or drive them all from their homes and out of the country? Even if that increased that phantom Utility, who would claim that as a justification? 

I think these people are cherry-picking their arguments. Because once they admit that it's immoral to kill all the redheads (despite the increase in social utility), then they've admitted that there's some moral limit to the state. But where is that line and who determines it? Well, my friend determines it I suppose. Everything he wants to do is moral and for those that don't like it - tough!! That segues into the next point:

#5 The Social Contract

So I got the standard social contract story today. I insisted that I don't recall signing any such contract, to which he replied that I'm free to leave the country. I don't find his argument particularly convincing. For after all, if you argue that the State can do as it wishes as long as its citizens have the ability to renounce their citizenship and leave the country, well then the crime against the Jews was probably ok. After all, they were given ample opportunity to leave the country. Since they didn't all leave, we can only conclude those remaining were OK with the fate meted out to them, and that the holocaust was moral. Now of course no one, save maybe for a few crazies, believe that it's moral to murder millions of people. But again, my friend has to either change his argument, or admit that the holocaust was just and justifiable. Sorry, you can't have your cake and eat it too. This is the No-Cherry-Picking-Zone.

#6 That Which is Unseen

Frederick Bastiat is perhaps most famous for his Broken Window parable, where he demonstrates that we have to look at the unseen if we want to be good economists or if we really want to understand the world. If the State builds a bridge, it is impossible to know what people would have spent their money on had it not been expropriated and spent on something that they didn't necessarily want. This unknown counter factual would have brought some measure of utility to those making those decisions, but we'll never know what it is! And so we can't compare building a bridge with its real alternative (and *again* , that's assuming we can even measure social utility!!!). Therefore, all this talk of increasing social utility through public works projects (and basically all government spending, for that matter) is just scientific sounding bunk used to justify taxation.

Last Thoughts

Stephan Molyneux puts it pretty well when he points out that people will spend hours skirting around the main issue: State violence and coercion. Even I devoted only three short paragraphs to it. I think that's because the argument is deceptively simple: I may not agress against my neighbor, lest I be punished. This is the Non-Aggression Axiom (NAA). Statists are willing to argue all the technicalities or utility and game theory and on and on, but they will bend over backwards to avoid talking about the NAA and its application to the State. My question to all those that I ever have these debates is: "Why to you except the State from the NAA? Why does the State have a different set of moral rules? Why is someone who dons a state uniform suddenly permitted to do things that he could never get away with were he not wearing that uniform.

I have yet to get a satisfactory answer. Either from friends, the internet, philosophers current and past. Maybe the reason is that it is in fact not possible to answer satisfactorily. Maybe there is no justification. And if you can't justify it, shouldn't you then, in the name of intellectual honesty, have to try to shrink the State or do any with it altogether? 

Ahhh well, that's about it. I'm sure there are things I forgot. I'm no expert in making these arguments, though I think I understand them pretty well. I also hope I wasn't too harsh. If I'm making bad arguments here, I want someone to point them out to me. I'd like to think I'm in pursuit of the truth.

I very much enjoyed the conversation today and I sincerely look forward to our next meeting. Til next time..

Peace,

Fins

***

p.s. That Bastiat quote from the beginning of the essay reads as follows in English

The State is the great fiction by which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.

What a gem.

Liberty, Freedom, and Power

The following are reflections upon Murray N. Rothbard’s The Ethics of Liberty, which I am reading for the third time (and the second time in two weeks!).

On Liberty

What is Liberty? I very much like Rothbard’s definition: The absence of molestation or invasion of one’s person or just property. The word just is there to distinguish between property acquired through means in accordance with Natural Law, that is, through production, trade, or gift and that property acquired by violence or the threat thereof. That is, if I stole your watch, I’ve unjustly made it my property and it would be your right to invade my property and person to repossess your property.

On Power

One thing I do not care for in Rothbard’s argumentation is his use of the word power. He claims that in the free society, we would not have the “power” to invade another’s person or property, either because we would all refrain from doing so, or because other would prevent us from doing so.

“I don’t have the power to do something” seems to be equivalent to “I am prevented by (threat of) force from doing something.”

So…

1. Liberty is the ability to do anything within my power.
2. That which is  outside my power (see above) to bring about does not limit my freedom/liberty.
3. So if a law prevents me from, say, painting my house pink, then my freedom is not at all restricted because the act of painting my house pink is no longer within the range of my abilities/ power

It would seem that according to Rothbard, ability is power. That is, leaping the ocean in a single bound is impossible because it is

1. not within my power, nor
2. within the scope of my abilities, nor
3. in my human nature to do so.

I don’t know why he lets Power into the discussion. His definition of liberty seems to do well enough on its own. Now, I still need to go back and read the thing again to really be sure I’m understanding him right. As much as I like Rothbard’s style, argumentation, and depth of knowledge, he is still an imperfect human being and not beyond criticism. So I intend to delve further in an attempt to either reconcile the above comments on power, or reject it.

Open questions:

1. Is there a difference between liberty and freedom? This might be a silly semantic argument or it may have real teeth. Either way, it must be recognized that other languages may either have only one word (German springs to mind, as that language has only the word Freiheit) or even more than our two to describe these concepts.
2. Where do these words come from and what were their original meanings?W
3. What changes in connotation has it undergone? After all, it seems that one can use Freedom to describe virtually anything, including socialism, redistributism, and worse.

Musing #1: Word Debasement

The following is not finished. I haven't even proofread it yet, but I'm tired of getting halfway finished with an essay, and then putting it "temporarily" on the shelf to be perfected at a later date. So you'll have to deal with the mistakes and inaccuracies. Sorry!! I am of course always open to criticisms and suggestions.

This semester (Winter 2011/12), I have a course called Freedom is not for Free. Despite the name, it is actually conducted in German. One of the questions dealt with is the meaning of freedom. There are a plethora of possible meanings, including:

• the absence of power
• the ability to make one's own decisions
• wealth
• equality

and many more that are not coming to me right now. Basically, the debate seems to center around morality of holding a gun to someone's head to extort money, services, or anything else from him. That is of course what the State does in effect. There are naturally people on both sides of this issue and everywhere in between. But regardless of whether you believe this kind of action is moral or not, you cannot just wish it away. If your definition of freedom is the absence of such behavior you might be called a libertarian. If your definition of freedom is the use of such behavior to establish equality, then you might be called a liberal.

Here's the rub, how useless is a term such as Freedom if it can be applied to both viewpoints? Here's the power of language. 

1. There exists a Worthy Ideal (in this case: the absence of the state of affairs of being bossed around, plundered, killed, etc)
2. This Worthy Ideal is assigned a name (in this case: Freedom)
3. This word comes to represent a Good Thing in the minds of most people (although perhaps not in the minds of those doing the plundering)
4. Along comes a second concept, diametrically opposed to the first worthy ideal (say, the Welfare State). Whatever its other benefits, this second concept is in direct contradiction with the first. But its proponents cannot admit that this new proposal would eliminate or reduce the availability of the first. So they undertake to convince people that they can have their cake and eat it too. Thus they apply to their concept that very same word that rings so true in the people's ears. Once they have convinced enough people of the new meaning of the word to have sufficiently muddied the debate, they are well on their way. For now, every time they describe their program, it is very difficult for the opposition to argue against it, for who, after all, can be against this Good Thing? Why, you must be heartless! And forever thereafter, people will argue over the meaning of Freedom.
5. Sometimes it becomes necessary for the original Worthy Ideal to take on a new name in order to re-establish the distinction between two polar opposites. (This happened in the case of modern terms "libertarian" or "classical liberal." People who today carry these titles would have simply been called a "liberal" right up until about a hundred years ago.)
6. Sometimes no new name is discovered and the blind debate rages on, each side laying claim to a word that denotes a Good Thing. This allows allows politicians to claim that we are fighting wars "for freedom." Well who could be against that? It allows demagogues to promise freedom from fear, hunger, want, and on and on. 

This would be essentially impossible, but what if we could just assign new names to these two concepts? From now on, we have to use the following two ridiculous words instead of the wrecked term Freedom:

• Clipwobble =  the absence of the state of affairs of being bossed around, plundered, killed, etc. In other words, it is immoral to hold a gun to someone's head in order to extort money, services, or anything else from him. It it moral to defend oneself against such behavior.
• Stribswop = the state of affairs of where one group of people is legally and morally allowed to boss around, plunder, etc in order to get what they want. In this state of affairs, it may of course be possible to all to plunder all, with no one having a good idea of who's actually coming out on top after it all.

It would be obvious from now on that one either supports Clipwobble or Stribswop. You can't support both. See how much clearer that is? This is a silly example, but it should illustrate an important point. 

Give it time though. Eventually, Stribswoppers will claim to be Clipwobblers, and the whole cycle will start again.

Fetish

Is a political fetish one that is not in some way deduced from first principles?

A fetish might be, for example, worship of the military. Do they really keep us safe? Are they to thank for our freedoms?

Maybe one could think of a fetish as a statement that isn't back up by anything and that is used by people to determine "who is on their side." See the above example.

Another one that comes to mind is Teachers. We have to worship teachers because they are the ones we rely on to achieve future greatness. Well, is that true? Does this view of the noble teacher really stand up in light of their organized union activities?

I don't really know the answers here. I just want to record the fact that I find this an interesting topic to delve into some day with more depth...

111026 Articles

We are an empire.
http://www.salon.com/2011/10/24/why_cant_we_say_empire/
He claims that Empire is a neutral term. I disagree.

Reponse to Occupy Wall Street supporter

The below is my response to a friend posting this video on facebook: http://front.moveon.org/this-powerful-clip-is-exactly-why-we-support-occupywallstreet/#.TqbvKhuY9mc.facebook

**********

Glass Steagal was only partially repealed. The two repealed provisions wouldn't not have stopped the banks from doing what they did had the provisions stayed on the books (See Woods, Rollback, p57).

Not only that, the video makes NO mention of Nixon's closing the gold window in the 70s. After that and now free of almost all restraint, the government printed money to its heart's content, precipitating such stated crises as Savings and Loan. People really ought to read some Austrian Business Cycle theory (http://mises.org/daily/606) if they want to stop being taken advantage of by bankers and politicians peddling their snake oil.

Yes, Audit the Fed. There should not be a government monopoly that powerful.

And what's with that anti-business stuff at the end? There's only two ways for a firm to be successful. The first is to secure monopoly privilege for themselves under the guise of regulation and plunder the citizenry.(case in point: Glass-Steagal was a move by the Rockefeller ambit to hobble Morgan interests [p.315:http://mises.org/books/historyofmoney.pdf. Or better yet, look to the New Left historians like Gabriel Kolko if you'd rather trust them) This is to be condemned and corrected by removing their monopoly privilege (ie. the Fed) but NOT by imposing more so-called regulation (after all, it's the financial industry who's going to write that regulation).

That's the one way to make money. The other way is to engage in voluntary, peaceful exchanges with people, in which both parties are made better off. How do we know they're better off? Because they wouldn't have made the exchange if they had believed ex-ante that the trade would make them worse off.

Synopsis: yes, hating the bankers is good. They've been ripping us off for a century. But banking and business are good, as long as they don't use government to rip us, the 99%, off.

Peace

Memory of the Day

Today I listened to a podcast of a Tom Woods lecture from 1998 on Teddy Roosevelt. A crazy man, that one. (Teddy, I mean)

Anyway, it just reminded me of being at the dentist when I was little (maybe 10-ish?). The dentist said I had nice big teeth like Teddy Roosevelt. I was horrified, because that man had HUGE teeth!! My parents said it was no big deal, and I don't find my teeth so big these days, but I was a little out of sorts for a couple days back then!

current song: Jillian (by Within Temptation)

Penmanship

Developing good penmanship is really not that easy. Ever since going back to school a year ago and having to take a ton of notes as a result, I've been going through a lot of ink. Contrast this to four years of working in industry where one barely ever picks up a pen.

Anyway, a year ago this time I was watching a bunch of how-to's on youtube, trying to figure out how to improve. I don't remember any of them being incredibly helpful, but it did get me thinking on the basics: posture, grip, rhythm, etc.

To this day I have bouts of great penmanship, and days where I just can't seem to get it past high school quality. On those on-days, I really feel the rhythm in my writing. You can see it too.

Learning has been similar to my learning process on the bass guitar: long periods of wood shedding on the current paradigm, broken up by quantum leaps forward.

Anywho. My lessons learned:

• Posture: support the elbow, but don't lean on it. Corollary: The wrist also lightly rests on the table.
• keep the hand straight in line with the arm. None of this pained, contorted wrist action I see all over the place. To move the pen to the right during writing, the whole arm moves. The wrist stays straight the whole time. 
• Hold the pen with index, thumb, and middle finger just like Momma always said, but DON'T hold it in some death grip as she insisted (or as I remember her insisting. Maybe the years have tainted my memory)
• Finally, my biggest Eureka momemt: guide the pen with the index finger, which should also be applying pressure to the pen onto the paper.

I'm still no expert, but hey. Practice, practice, practice. I know someone who still practices writing the first letter of her first name after some 40 years!

The Guilty Party?

I want to thank my Mother, with whom I talked about this subject a few days ago. She often provides me with clarity, tempers my harsher, judgmental side, and is perhaps the best Muse I have in my life. The following ramblings, however, represent my viewpoint alone. Any mistakes I make are my own.

My question of the day is the following: Who is at fault for a particular government bungle? Clearly the government at least sometimes does things which are not "in the best interest of the people." Take Social Security, to which my generation is certainly holding the short end of the stick. Or Medicare: same story. What about Greece's failure? War in Iraq, or the War on Terror, for that matter? What if the Euro implodes - who's at fault there?

The list of suspects:

• Politicians
• Bankers
• Ignorant voters
• Well informed voters
• Do-gooders
• Selfish people
• The economically illiterate
• Myself

So let's look first at Greece.

I tend to view politicians with what I consider to be a healthy dose of scepticism and distrust sadly lacking in most of my fellow man. These are the men who are best able to demagogue their way to the top. There are exceptions to every rule, but it usually takes a cynical person comfortable with bending the truth and compromising

The climb to the top almost always requires the bending of the truth and the sacrifice of morals and ethics to the point at which the only goal is to retain power or gain even more of it. I find it interesting that most people take Lord Acton's statement that "power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absoutely" to be basically true, but then don't extrapolate the indications of it or apply it to their own political class. Regardless, one of the tried and true methods of staying in power is to concede just enough goodies (as in Bismarck's case in Imperial Germany) or give as many goodies as at all possible (today's method) in order to will political allies so one can stay in power. To do this the politician needs money, which must come from the productive citizenry. This can take the form of explicit taxes or implicit taxes. This latter form includes rolling over the state credit card debt at the central bank. All European governments  as well as the United States does this. The citizenry doesn't like explicit taxes because here the expropriation is staring them in the face. Implicit taxation is must more conducive to politics. It enables the politician to take from the citizenry without them noticing, then give the money back to them, appearing to all as Lord and Savior. This is why central banks are so dangerous. It allows the growth of government while hardly anyone notices.

This is why Greece is in trouble. The Eurozone allowed them to continue rolling over their credit card debt. In the process, the funds Greece obtained in order to play Santa Klaus came in large part not from their own citizens but from all of Europe. Now with borrowers less willing to take on that new debt, Greece may not be able to roll over that debt anymore, thereby sticking it to those who lent to the Greek state in the expectation that they would get their money back with interest. Greek politicians certainly carry a large part of the blame here.

But what of the citizens who elected them? Here's where I haven't made my mind up yet. On the one hand, they have been living high on the hog for a long time at the expence of the rest of Europe and they deserve what's coming to them. They wanted the policies that their politicians were more than willing to offer. The voters of yesterday voted themselves goodies and debt, sticking today's and tomorrow's voters with the bill. This intergenerational theft is occuring in every western nation, the US being no exception. It is abhorant and I believe my generation is become more aware of it with every passing year. A part of me despises that Baby Boom generation for taking from ME to make THEIR lives peachy. What right did they have to sell me into bondage? For that is what has essentially happened. Parents bought social security, medical care, a military state, and lots more on the credit card, then popped some kids out, handed them the bill. I can't help hearing Mitch Hedberg's voice at the end of his complicated payments skit: "Good luck, F***ker!" There has been a minority of people for years pointing out this inevitable train wreck. Were they not heard or listened to, or simply not heeded? People have heard talk of social security unavoidably becoming in solvent in the future. The topic even comes up during elections. Yet the political process cannot solve the problem. it's much easier to put it off until the day come when it cannot be put off any more.

On the other hand, most people are utterly ignorant of economics and the political process. The Greeks are no different. They are unaware that the Government takes unseen with one hand only to give it back with the other. They have also been brought up in a society that at least implicitly (when not outright explicitly) informs them since birth that there are wise overlords in government who will look after them. In trying to express to someone the gravity of a given problem with state and government, the question that I almost certainly get goes along the following lines: "Surely if the problem was as dire as you're claiming, someone would have done something about it." It's the typical belief that government if fundamentally good that leads the average person to accept this. Well it seems to me that if government was fundamentally good, "it" would do something about the oncoming crisis. The state would not have allowed the Greek credit crisis to occur. It would not 3 wars at one time as our State is currently doing. And even if it did these things, they would be an anomoly, which the following administration would correct. But that isn't the case. It just goes on and on.

Do I share some of the guilt for the Iraq War? Surely some. I did support it, as did most Americans. "But," it might be offered, "regardless of whether you had voted for Bush or not, there's nothing you can do to stop him from pursuing the wrong policies. He's already in office." I disagree. If I had been more critical and less childlike in my absolute belief and trust in my Führer, and if every one of my countrymen had done the same and demanded that we not go to war, I do not believe Bush would have gone to war. See my previous comments on the politician's desire to maintain and gain power. With so few exceptions as to be negligable, a politician will not commit himself to a policy that alienates his entire electorate. And so in this way, I contributed to our committed war against Iraq, a country that had previously been our ally and who never aggressed against us, yet us against it twice.

But I was ignorant. I didn't have the fortune back then of even once in my life being exposed to the ideas of real liberty and sound economics, ala the Austrian School and Rothbardian Libertarianism. If I am to hate or despise my fellow man who likewise has never been exposed to these ideas, can I really blame him? Most of us just aren't creative or imaginative enough to simply arrive at conclusions of liberty on their own, especially when we've been indoctrinated our entire lives into believing that the state looks after our well being. Hitler understood what many a demagogue and modern politician also understands: The Big Lie. If the lie you tell if big enough, people will automatically assume it to be the truth, because "surely no one could tell that big a lie, right?" 

In conclusion, I will say with certainty that I do despise the majority of the ruling class. For there is no excuse to be in the position of power and knowledge, as they are, and not to fix the glaring problems of the day in exchange for another term in office. What I cannot say with certainty if how much blame I afix to the every-day man. For although he may not realize what he is doing (and that is highly debatable in this context), can he truly be fully innocent in his support for murder and plunder? Here's a starting point for beginning to answer the question: If I were to have a respectful and reasonable discourse with someone regarding, say, the morallity of our military involvements, and if at the end, when there was nothing left to say without repeated oneself for the n-th time, the person was still fully convinced that our foreign wars are Right and Good, then perhaps he is as guilty as my initial intuition led me to believe. For he has at the point been exposed to those moral arguments and still holds to his evil beliefs.

I'm no Church Scholar, so perhaps someone more familiar with the subject could correct me if I err in the following paragraph. I do imagine that the above is similar to back in the day when Christianity was still a new thing. God's judgment of a given individual's breaking of any one of the Ten Commandments would depend on whether the perpetrator was already Christian or still pagan. The pagan, I imagine, would be given more leeway, because the Gospel was not yet revealed to him. Yet the Christian, who ought to know better, would certainly be more guilty in God's eyes. 

"The Free Market" vs. "markets"

Language can sometimes blind us to reality. Sometimes this can be used as a weapon to deceive people. I think of the word "liberal" as currently used in America today. When one is liberal, this means one believes in liberty. The word liberal still has that meaning in Europe today. European-type liberals are called libertarians in America nowadays. But let's jump to a word that causes lots of confusion and damage to the cause of liberty: Market.

When libertarians talk about The Market or The Free Market, or The Voluntary Market, we're talking about the network of voluntary interactions between all human beings. This is everything from buying a fruit at the grocery store to buying shares of stock in a company to lending my neighbor a ladder so he can work on his roof.

Our understanding of human nature and human action leads us to believe that two people engaging in exchange only do so because they believe it will make them better off. How do we know this? Well, if it were the case that one or both parties didn't believe they would be made better off, they wouldn't have entered into the exchange in the first place. That is the essence of The Free Market.

Well what about Health Care? That's a market, too, isn't it? Same goes for the carbon credit market, right? Well, no. Though indeed it is a market, i.e., there's buying and selling going on, it's anything but a Free Market. All that amounts to is a highly regulated sector of the economy where the government uses the mechanics of a market to acheive a certain outcome. When this system fails, or has poor results, people then blame "markets," which leads people into thinking that The Free Market is also a failure.

Political Compass

My roommate from last year sent me this link today:
http://www.politicalcompass.org/index


One answers a list of perhaps 60 questions with either 1) Strongly Disagree, 2) Disagree, 3) Agree, or 4) Strongly Agree.


One is then placed on a typical two-dimensional chart. Mine is below:

The problem with many questions, however, is that they ask about things that have nothing to do with what I think government's involvement in my life should be. For example:

1. People are ultimately divided more by class than by nationality.
2. "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need" is a fundamentally good idea.
3. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.
4. Schools should not make classroom attendance compulsory.
5. All people have their rights, but it is better for all of us that different sorts of people should keep to their own kind.
6. Good parents sometimes have to spank their children.
7. It's natural for children to keep some secrets from their parents.
8. The prime function of schooling should be to equip the future generation to find jobs.
9. The most important thing for children to learn is to accept discipline.
10. There are no savage and civilised peoples; there are only different cultures.
11. Those who are able to work, and refuse the opportunity, should not expect society's support.
12. When you are troubled, it's better not to think about it, but to keep busy with more cheerful things.
13. First-generation immigrants can never be fully integrated within their new country.
14. In a civilised society, one must always have people above to be obeyed and people below to be commanded.
15. Abstract art that doesn't represent anything shouldn't be considered art at all.
16. The businessperson and the manufacturer are more important than the writer and the artist.
17. Mothers may have careers, but their first duty is to be homemakers.
18. Making peace with the establishment is an important aspect of maturity.
19. Astrology accurately explains many things.
20. You cannot be moral without being religious.
21. Some people are naturally unlucky.
22. It is important that my child's school instills religious values.
23. Sex outside marriage is usually immoral.No one can feel naturally homosexual.
24. These days openness about sex has gone too far.

...And I'm sure there's a few I missed. So out of 60-some questions (62 if I counted correctly), some 24 or 30 of them are simply personal preferences that have absolutely nothing to do with the state. And this is supposed to determine where I am on the political scale? Please. Now, I'm not going to take the time to do the experiment, but I'm sure if I answered the above questions in a wholely different manner, my political results would also be quite different. This wouldn't make sense however, as one's political beliefs are simply  of which areas of human interaction the state has the right to insert itself. The people who put this little survey together really are statists who just don't understand what libertarianism is all about.