Thoughts from the TCLP Chair

Today on WestAndClear, I was alerted to 'freedom bashing' being done by one Pete Wann, blogger (I blog extremely erratically, so I do not consider myself a blogger). It was early and I was heading out for work so I only had a chance to read his rant (a comment - not even an actual blog entry). It was filled with some signs of ignorance of our party/philosophy, so I'll take that as a 'my bad'.

When I got home, my wife arrived shortly thereafter... so dinner, a little TV and now on to type. Please forgive my careless typos. Trouble words for me - Coercion, License, negligence.

My comment has been awaiting moderation for hours now, so I'll post it below, warts/misspellings and all. Warning... do your eye-blinking exercises now. It's a long one as I address his rant, point by point. I white out coarse language that Pete uses... hope I got them all. If you have to read it - JUST HAVE TO - the highlight the blank field.

John Spivey
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
OK - back from earning money by working and spreading the wealth around by spending some time at dinner with the wife and -ahhhhh - watching the “The Office” on DVR. So, Pete, I’ll take on your commentary, point by point, to show you the libertarian take on each. Put your thinking cap on:

First of all, we have a philosophy. Unlike most of the other parties or movements, or other ‘isms’, we never change in our belief that: “You own yourself. You own your body, your life, and any property that you obtained without fraud or coersion. Since you don’t own me, or any fraction of me (and I don’t own any portion of you), we both, as individuals, should be able to do with ourselves and our properties as we choose, provided that you don’t interfere in the equal rights of others.” That’s the big one…

We DO believe in government, though. We’re not anarchist and believe that there is a place for government. For example, we believe that government should be in the business of the following: 1) Defending us from foreign attack; 2) Enforcing contracts and laws protecting the innocent from fraud, theft and coersion - like robbery; 3) Some infrastructure. Yes, Post Roads are allowable per the US Constitution, for example, laying the foundation for funding similar modern infrastructure (water, sewer, certain electric/communications commons. So, jumping ahead, that should answer your ‘who’ll maintain the roads that these PRIVATE BUSES would run on?’ question.
================================

“You know, the ones equating government to thinly veiled hostility, taxation to theft..”—-Generally, governing anyone, even our ‘acceptable version’, in order to provide those services mentioned above must utilize the use either force, or threat of force. Defending ourselves: Force needed, but not in a pre-emptive manner used these days. Enforcing contracts - well, if one side’s not living up to the terms of their contract, then force may be used.
==============================
— Regarding minimum wage. If you think about it on surface levels or or use an appeal to sympathy by creating the ’single mom with no car’ character (yes, I know there are single mom’s with kids)… the minimum wage seems necessary. However, and Pete, I took some economics courses at TCU (isn’t that where you work?) and can tell you that minimum wages HURT the truly needy, creates unemployment - but does help Unions, since that’s what they use as a basis for wage increases. BTW, wage increases mean dues increases means Union bosses’ bonus increases. Don’t believe me? Check out this…. I know it’s a wiki!! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._state_minimum_wages and then compare that to this: http://money.cnn.com/pf/features/lists/state_unemployment/index.html

I didn’t even have to pay tens of thousands of dollars to TCU to figure out that the map above that shows that the highest minimum wages correlate, not closely, but almost perfectly with the states with the highest minimum wages.

Back to, let’s call her Jane Dough, chances are slim that she’s working minimum wage. In fact, a 2000 Bureau of Labor report (best I could do) showed that 3.5% of household heads who worked more than 27 weeks of the year had minimum wage jobs. However, increases in minimum wage rates actually create job LOSSES for minority teens, people who you think might benefit from ‘minimum wages’.

If she didn’t live close enough to bike to work then she could take the privately run bus to work. By the way, I don’t see anything unlibertarian with regards to bikes having ‘claims to the road’, especially if there are bike lanes.
========================================

“While we’re at it — how much more are you willing to pay for water that’s guaranteed to be free of contaminates once we take government out of the “water business”? ”
—– I’m willing to pay market rates. However, since we’d have a contract with the water company who has won their contract by competitive bid for the business with stringent quality standards to maintain the contract, I’d get the highest quality water at the lowest prices. Thousands of communities already enjoy low priced, high quality water in the United States right now via this method.

“Is it fair that I can buy clean water from Whole Foods…”
—-Very GOOD! I guess you’re familiar with John Mackey - the founder of Whole Foods who is also a libertarian.

… “but the aforementioned single mom (who now makes less than $5/hr. because there’s no minimum wage — the free market at work!) can only afford to give her kids water from Haliburton Water & Fried Chicken (Looks like water, smells like mama’s cookin’!)?”
—-Weren’t you the one making the shamey-finger motion to somebody for playing to the ‘libertarian applause lines’? Then I shame you back for shamelessly pushing the “APPLAUSE” sign button that lights up at the Lake Woebegon Civic Center Auditorium by invoking Halliburton, fried chicken and particulate matter in drinking water in the same sentence.

Since you brought up Halliburton, that’s not our type of company either since it relies upon the sponsorship of our government’s pre-emptive wars of aggression to clean up what they paid to blow up. Of course, a little ad-hominem there myself, but we can probaby agree that Halliburton is generally not ‘our kinda place’. If they were simply an oil field services company, that’s one thing…
==============================================

—–Re: your comments of Fire Depts and Police Depts. As a libertarian, I don’t have a problem with a publicly funded Fire Dept. Since our Federal Government’s job one is to protect us from foreign invasion, a parallel can be drawn with the FD on the local level. Paying professionals to keep fire at bay and off my property is OK. Having paid professionals staffing my publicly funded Water Park isn’t. (Yes, there are several CITY Water Parks!!).

Also remember that we agree that enforcing laws protecting the innocent from things like murder, rape, robbery, fraud…. Police are instrumental there. So Cops are fine.
======================================

“Even if guns became so cheap thanks to the lack of regulations and taxes on the manufacturers, how quickly would the arms race in our neighborhoods escalate?”
—-True, the regulations do cause ‘hood arms races to escalate, but not in the way your describing. Due to our country’s century old ‘War on Drugs’, gangs build up their arsenal to defend their profitable turf. We libertarians don’t advocate drug usage obviously, but whenever you prohibit ANYTHING, whether booze, stag films, cigs or drugs; black markets ALWAYS pop up. Due to the very real risk of imprisonment or worse - murder by other dealers and gangs, the prices rise, profits rise and gun shot wounds rise.

If you can invoke Sweden in a later comment, I can invoke Switzerland now. Switzerland has an extremely high gun ownership rate. They also have decriminalized pot and medicalized harder drugs. Guess what their crime rates are. Yep. Low.
====================================

“Here’s the deal, and here’s why Libertarians are A. Stupid and B. Deluded:”
—–I’m not stupid. Again, I graduated from your employer and current school, so I’m probably bright enough to do that. I’m not deluded either.

“You might be able to slowly reign it in, and I’ll agree that there’s certainly a place for that, but human beings have pretty clearly demonstrated over the last 10,000 years that when given the opportunity they will gleefully fuck over anyone and everyone in pursuit of fame, fortune, or a nice piece of fried chicken”
—-There you go with the ‘fried chicken’ again (applause applause). And yes, I’d like to either slowly, or even more quickly, rein it in. Interesting how you used “reign” as in ‘to lord over someone’ vs. ‘rein’ like ‘to rein in a horse to make it go slower’. Just a Marxian slip, I’m sure.

And your ‘bird has flown’ argument basically says, “Since people have been cruel to each other to gain power or riches in the past, there’s NO reason to use reason, justice, unfettered freedom of choice in trade and personal freedom to ensure peace and prosperity for all (100 percent) citizens who would care to take initiative for their own benefit.” Another implication is since warring for profit and citizen’s ‘voting themselves the treasury’ is ‘out of the toothpaste tube - wulp, cain’t do nuttin’ bout that now.

It’s true, we’ve had caesars, pharaohs and tyrants who have terrorized their subjects for power and fortune. Marxist dictators who have killed tens of millions in the name of equality. We’ve had fascist dictators who have killed tens of millions in the name of ‘group unity’. Just because those birds have flown, doesn’t mean I can’t aim to shoot it down - now and in the future.
If you’re comment is more anti-capitalism, than a more macro take….

If a person screws somebody for profit or chicken, if they’ve used coersion, neglect, fraud, or just plain evil and caused harm by polluting, infringing my rights, lowering my home value, scamming me outta my hard earned cash money, then they should PAY TO CLEAN IT UP, PAY ME BACK and pay their debt to society in the pokey… but not lifting weights or watching TV, but by sewing shirts for The Gap or something that makes it less of an incentive to choose crime - AND allows those of lesser means a way to pay back their victims.
======================================

“Democratic (or hell, even a representative Republic) government is the only thing standing between civil society and the fucked theocracies and oppressive oligarchies of the world.”
—-A total democratic process frequently leads to a ‘tyranny of the majority’. Think Jim Crow Laws or why gays can’t marry in California. Representative Republic is much better, but sadly we keep sliding back to the tyranny of the majority. And before this gets thrown out there. We’re still not all that ‘Democratic’ - I KNOW. I mean, ultimately, our current POTUS was put there by an Electoral College and not direct vote.
===============================

“In summary: I would welcome those who wish to “do with their money what they want” to find a place on the planet where they can do just that and go there as soon as is feasible. Let me know how that works out for you.”
— Well, again, I’ll go back to Switzerland as an ‘OK’ idea of a kinda-libertarian place. They know that your right to privacy is a right, after all, and they’re fairly protective of their citizens’ right to privacy. Like I said, every house almost has a gun. That’s libertarian. Keeps crime LOW. How everybody gets their gun is less libertarian. A draft. Everyone is drafted (akin to slavery in my estimation), you go through a several month training camp. Taught how to use your weapon. At the end, you can either re-enlist or not. Either way, you keep your gun. Also, their currency - although not as much recently - has gold to back a measurable portion of it. They didn’t join in the EU fun and as a result, they’ve enjoyed a better economy than their neighbors who’s economies are backed in Euros. You remember what I said about their drug policies. Gays get to marry or not (why is that even a state function??)…. Also, the skiing is awesome.

Here’s the real test. Recently, in Central America, countries who are frustrated with their governments have recently elected numerous officials in Costa Rica AND ELECTED A NEW LIBETARIAN PRESIDENT of Panama!! This will be interesting over the next few years to see if our little petrie dishes to the South will produce some positive results and hopefully kill off the remaining bacteria of socialism.

” I’ll bet you’ll be missing the no-additional-usage charge roads, the nearly free water, gasoline, natural gas, garbage collection, wastewater collection and treatment, education, police services, fire protection, building code enforcement, military protection, etc. etc”
—-With the exception of ‘additional usage charge’ roads, and the fact that water isn’t close to free nor gas… everything else could be provided by government in a libertarian society.
==================================

“If you’d close your mouths and open your brains for more than a minute, you’d realize that you don’t pay ANYWHERE NEAR the actual cost of those services — the REAL cost is spread out across all taxpayers, even those that don’t use them”
—–The actual cost for me to build (or rent time on) a private highway, hire an army, build a sewage pipeline, true it’s beyond my abilities. However, AGAIN - We’re MINI-ARCHISTS not anarchists. But in case you live in Marine Creek and “summer in Haltom City”, then you shouldn’t be paying for those services. Those towns’ citizens pay for their own fire and crime protection. If you’re a Fort Wortherner, and set yourself on fire at a protest in Marine Creek, true you do receive a positive externality if they put you out. If you’re mugged there, Haltom’s Finest should be there to assist you, find the culprit and bring them to justice. Again, an externality even I, a cold hearted Libertarian, could live with.

“The Libertarian ideal sounds great in theory”… thank you!============================

“… naievity…”—–OK, true. Folks have been sucklling on the teats of Uncle Sam (ewww) for so loong, that we all make little piggy noises when a new improved Uncle promises more slop. However, I truly think that we are honest about our beliefs and would not be surprised at all if WHEN we take a cue from our little neighbors to the South, that we find our general tide rising to meet all of the millions of individual boats that are actually levitating against the predictions of shipwrecks thrown out by those who ‘know better’.

“frothy mouthed, Laissez-Faire Capitalism…”
—-True. We haven’t had free markets forever. Since the advent of the ‘Corporation as Individual’, we’ve had governments hand in our affairs causing every bubble and burst…. However, snide commentary aside, it is truly because I care for those who are poor and economically crippled by their government - that I do what I’m doing. Because, I care about those folks, I really want help to get to those who truly need help the most, and I want the help to get to them as quickly, effectively, and efficiently as possible. Putting the ‘invisible reins’ on private charities and throwing our money by the pitchfork-full into the furnaces of ‘multi-million employee bureaucracies’ is the wrong way to do it. I’m going to do everything in my ability to make sure that resources aren’t taken from the productive to reward the unproductive, whether ’slacker’ or General Motors; to make sure that corporate criminals who harm others by neglegance, go to prison for a long time and are disgorged of profits and given to the victims of their crimes (I read ahead about Bhopal); I want people to be able to live their lives as they please and not infringing upon the equal rights of other. I’m going to do it and I’d love any of your readers to send me an email to chair@tarrantlp.org to ask me how.

Like I said, I read below and saw you wrote more… Ugh. I don’t type as fast as you. This ’screed’ took me about an hour and a half to give verifiable and substantive retorts to your strawman/ad-hominem attacks from earlier. So, I likely won’t do much replying back on this post.

Lastly, using coarse language in this forum is your right, but ech… coarse. They call it an F-Bomb for a reason. Like an A-Bomb or H-Bomb, you need to use them judiciously… that’s when people know your serious about something.
May 7th, 2009
1