A = the right to rule one's self
B = the right to rule other people.

Where he gets confused is when he votes to delegate right 'A' to people in "government," thinking he is delegating his own right to rule himself. If Bob the statist wants George the Candidate to have the right to rule him, he votes for George to have Right 'A'. The problem is that George already has right 'A' -- the right to rule himself -- while Bob mistakenly thinks he is giving George right 'B' -- the right to rule others. Since Bob doesn't have Right 'B', he cannot delegate it to someone else. Can he delegate the right to kick you in the shins if he himself doesn't have that right? Of course not.

Bob might be able to delegate 'A', the specific right to rule himself (i.e., only Bob), in theory. Naturally, he would always have the right to take back his consent to be ruled, making that delegation null and void at Bob's discretion, which makes even that an absurdity. However, that is not the same as delegating the general right to rule others ('B'), with the resultant delegation (by voting) giving George the right to rule people that Bob has no right to rule. So, when Bob thinks he is delegating right 'A', while actually attempting to delegate right 'B', he is trying to delegate a right he does not have, which is impossible -- and since everyone (including George) already has right 'A', voting is just a meaningless and superstitious cult ritual.

One of the advantages to giving up any and all belief in "government" is the complete freedom from all arguments over what kind of "government" to have, or how much, or how to finance it, or what kind of economic theory, or what military or foreign policy to favor...




The Law by Bill Malloy

What about the “law”? Isn’t it at least a good idea to try and reach agreement with one another that certain basic rules of conduct with respect to each another ought to be commonly known, and understood? That is a tempting proposition that looks almost indisputable. First, let’s analyze what the “law” is. Briefly, the “law” is a threat or command backed by force.

    1) “If you do act A, we will do X. If you do not do B, we will do X,” where X is an act of force
    (arrest, and subsequent incarceration, trial, and punishment).

    2) “If you resist, we will escalate the force necessary to gain your compliance. We will continue
    to escalate the use of force up to and including killing you, if necessary.”

Now, at this point the distinction between who initiated force becomes difficult for most people to see. It is hidden by the very belief in “authority”, which implies the right-to-rule. If I have the right to order you around, and I issue you an order to stop doing something, then you are initiating force if you do not obey. However, if I do not have the right to order you around, and I tell you to stop doing something you want to do, and furthermore, if I threaten to act against you, up to and including lethal force, then I am initiating force against you by making that threat. The “law” is just such a threat. The law itself is an initiation of the use of force, just as any other threat to commit bodily harm is.

Now, it might look different to you if you start from the assumption that the law that is made as an attempt to enforce a universally accepted morality. The obvious example is, “Do not initiate deadly force against someone,” or don’t commit murder. “If you do, we are already committed to using force against you in retaliation.” It is easy to see how people might view that as an a priori justification for responding to the initiation of force. However, that is because the individual confuses his own judgment with that of the state.

It is one thing for an individual, charged by his own judgment with his own self-defense, to issue such a warning. That is honest, and forthright. When a group of people issue that threat, they imply that someone other than the individual has a right to pre-empt the individual’s judgment. They remove from the individual any discretion to retaliate or not, depending on his own judgment. In effect, they are superseding his judgment, and therefore negating it before he has a chance to use it. The group (state) is overriding his sovereignty. It is tempting to overlook that fact, especially when dealing with such a clear case when the “law” and popular morality are in agreement.

However, consider the victimless crime laws, such as the prohibition against self-medicating (the euphemism for using drugs), and we find wide latitude for disagreement, because people disagree on the morality of drug use. Yet the “law” makes no distinction between murder or smoking pot when it comes to the ultimate force it is prepared to use. The only difference is the initial reaction to breaking the “law.” For murder, it may well be the threat of death as the initial response: “If you kill someone, we are prepared to kill you in response.” For smoking pot, the initial punishment might be a citation (in California . . .). However, the ultimate punishment, should you disagree with the state and resist its attempt to arrest you, is to escalate the response up to and including killing you, if necessary, to gain your compliance.

Therefore, each “law,” to be honest, might as well state, “If you commit act A, we are prepared to kill you. If you do not do B, we are similarly prepared to kill you.” It sounds okay when that applies to murder. How does it sound when you consider that it also applies to a parking ticket? So, the “law” against smoking marijuana means, existentially, “If you smoke dope, we reserve the right to kill you.” The statist will say over and over, and with every law (especially the tax law), “That’s crazy. No one is killed for smoking marijuana (or, not paying taxes).” However, people are killed for resisting arrest, which would not have happened if the “law” had not given some thugs the illusion that they had the right to initiate force against someone simply because the politicians wrote it down on a piece of paper and voted on it.

There is no way around it: the “law” itself represents the initiation of force, and the inevitable result of escalating resistance to that threat is death. Most people do not trace the premises of the “law” back to the base assumptions that make that truth obvious. Instead, they operate under the assumption that the “law” is just, and righteous; that it has “authority.” The widespread acceptance of that belief is quite literally a form of mass hypnosis, a condition that allows people to believe they are necessarily acting morally if they only obey the “law.” Years of behaving under that delusion and having it reinforced by cops, others, the fact that they believe they are acting in accordance with the “law,” and the apparent absence of negative consequences for doing so, conspire to harden that acceptance into the illusion of reality.

--Bill Malloy




The Devil's Right Hand by Larken Rose

What does the Devil's right hand look like? I don't mean  this to be particularly religious or biblical; I just want to  know, whatever "evil" is, what is the main mechanism by  which it is served?

Adolph Hitler? Stalin? Charles Manson? Jeffrey Dahmer?  The Columbine shooters?

Nope. Not even close. Let's get out the score card.

How many people did Manson, Dahmer, and the Columbine  shooters kill? A few dozen, at most. I don't mean to downplay  the horrible nature of their atrocities, but on a purely statistical  level, they hardly register on the big scheme of things.

  "Oooo, oooo, I know! Stalin, Mao, and Hitler!"

Actually, no. How many people actually died at the hands  of those individuals? Not very many (again, in the big scheme  of things). "Well, maybe they didn't do the actual killing, but  they orchestrated mass murder!" True. And what was their  primary tool?

The true threat to humanity are not the Hitlers, the Dahmers,  and the Mansons. Those who have a view of reality that  twisted--those who have no regard for human life, or even  delight in the suffering or death of others--are few and  far between. They are outnumbered (and perhaps more  importantly, out-gunned) at least a million to one.

No, as disturbing as the occasional psychotic, sadistic murderer  is, that is not what society needs to worry about. Let's look  at the other column on the score card. The grand total is in the  hundreds of millions of human beings tortured and murdered.  And who is responsible? Who accomplished atrocities way  beyond what the famous mass-murders accomplished?

Average, generally decent human beings, who did the wrong  thing because someone in "AUTHORITY" told them to. They  are the Devil's Right Hand. Remove that blind obedience to  imagined "authority"--just getting those people to use their  OWN judgment instead of following someone else's--and you  remove 99% of murder from the earth.

Unfortunately, that's easier said than done.

(Check out "Death by Government," by Mr. Rummel.)

It's easier for us to imagine a nasty, malicious, "insane" villain  as our enemy. How many Hollywood movies spend all the  movie making the top bad guy so evil that you can't wait until  he dies at the end (in the most gruesome manner that special  effects can buy)?

Trouble is, those are NOT the implementers of evil in the  real world. Your neighbor is the implementer of evil. Yeah,  that nice guy who helped you jump-start your car last week.  Yeah, the one with the three kids, who is such a great dad.  That's the one. That's the Devil's right hand.

What that "nice guy" would have been doing at this age, had  he been born in 1910 in Germany, would be driving a truck  with those canisters of gas on board. Mind you, he doesn't   make the gas, or set up the gas chambers, or push the people  in, or open the valve, or burn the bodies. No, he just drives   the truck. That's all. He's just doing his job, and serving his  country.

Well, that's what the "nice guy" WOULD have been doing,  had he been born in Germany in 1910. But he wasn't. He  was born in America, the land of the free and the home of  the brave, in 1960. He now works as a Revenue Agent for the Internal Revenue Service. Mind you, he doesn't arrest anyone, or seize anyone's property. He just does the paperwork the way his bosses tell him to. That's all. He's just doing his job, and serving his country.

Know your enemy. Your enemy is not Darth Vader, or Sauron, or Dr. Evil. Your enemy is that "nice guy" next door. If you want to see just how scary he really is, I highly recommend a book titled "Obedience to Authority," which is a detailed psychological study by Stanley Milgram (done back in the 1960's). I'll let the book give you all the gruesome details, but the punch line is this: the vast majority of your neighbors will knowingly inflict pain and suffering on you, if someone they perceive as "authority" tells them to. If that were not the case, there would be no IRS.

For any who have tried to reason with an IRS agent, tried to show them the law, tried to get "justice" out of a judge, or tried to get the IRS to not rob them, you have all the evidence you need. Yes, the IRS certainly has its share of sadistic, power-happy fruitcakes (Steward Stich in Sarasota, Florida comes to mind). But mostly the IRS is populated by average folk, who are "just following orders." They take no responsibility for their actions, they avoid original thought like the plague, and they are immune to any evidence or logic which goes against what their bosses are telling them to do. In short, they are the Devil's right hand.

It's easy to cheer for the super-villain in any movie to be subject to some horrible death. How about the 20-year-old German kid on the front lines in WW II, who doesn't know what he's doing there, is just trying to do what he is told, and thinks he is somehow nobly serving the Motherland? It's not as easy to hate him, or to wish death upon him.

Unfortunately, as revolting as it is that generally decent folk do horrible things under the direction of some perceived "authority," it gets worse. You have a choice: kill the misguided kid, and thousands like him, or let Hitler rule the world.

Reality bites, doesn't it?

In the fight to end the "income tax" deception, thankfully it has been (at least for the most part) non-violent. However, that uncomfortable choice is still there. You must either intentionally inflict stress and discomfort on that "nice guy," or let him continue to rob your friends and neighbors. There is no other choice. So which is it going to be?

Many of you have already felt the frustration and anger that comes from dealing with the faceless, responsibility-free bureaucracy called the IRS. You can't wait for Darth Vader to show up, so you can lop his head off with your light saber. But he doesn't show. Instead, you're faced with some ignorant paper-pusher whose vast knowledge of law and procedure consists of being able to read "the courts have ruled that to be frivolous" off a form letter that his bosses sent him. He, and 90,000 others like him, are what you are up against. You are not fighting arch-villains; you are fighting cowardly "obeyers."

You have a choice: hurt them or be hurt by them. Which will it be?

No, I don't mean smashing their kneecaps (though in some ways that might be nicer in the long run). I mean making their jobs absolutely miserable, in every legal way you can think of, as long as they refuse to obey their own regulations. If you won't do it, you can rest assured that they will make your friends' and neighbors' lives miserable.

If you examine history, and read "Obedience to Authority," it should be clear what your options are. To be nice, appeal to their reason and rationale once, on the off chance that they are one of the very few capable of thinking and acting on their own, contrary to what "authority" tells them to do. After that, resort to their aversion to discomfort. Train them as you would train a pit bull: "if you hurt me, I will hurt you worse." Unfortunately, as many millions have learned throughout history, there is only one other choice: submit to absolute tyranny.




Who'll Build The Roads? by Bill Malloy

“Without a government, there would be no roads, police, fire department,
schools, or any other services (now financed by extortion).”

Who would finance and maintain roads, without taxes?

First issue: benefits and obligations

Benefitting from something (directly or indirectly) does not create an obligation.

Furthermore, a service being provided in a free market does not require all beneficiaries to pay.

Even-further-more, economic transactions are not isolated and independent events.

When the supermarket across the street gets their electric bill, they don't send me a piece of it. Why not? When I shop there, I benefit from being able to see stuff. I also benefit from it being a nice temperature inside, even if it's $%@*&!# cold outside. How heartless of me to go in, buy some sushi, a hunk of pepperoni, and a bag of candy corn, and only pay for those things! What a freeloader I am.

Start with basics. "Wealth" is stuff people want. Without coercion, there are two ways to gain wealth: make what you want by yourself, or make something someone else wants, and trade with them (and others) to get what you want.

Fred wants his lawn mowed. Two kids are considering the job. One lives three houses away, and the other lives 8 miles away. The second one has additional "expenses" involved in getting Fred's lawn mowed (whether an expense of time and effort, like pushing a mower eight miles, or an expense of paying someone money to drive him).

Fred doesn't give a rat's ass about those expenses. Fred is not obligated to give the kid extra money for a car ride. Fred is not obligated to give either kid anything, until an agreement has been made. If Fred is actually trading, and not being a charitable organization, the only factors in his decision are "What do I get?" and "What do I lose?" That's all. He loses a few bucks; he gains a mowed lawn.

On the flip side, the only thing the kid considers is "What do I get?" and "What do I lose?" The answer to the second question is very different for the second kid, since he loses more in the deal than the first kid. But that's only relevant to his decision, not Fred's.

Back to the supermarket across the street. What does it get, and what does it lose, by making a deal to sell me sushi, pepperoni, and candy corn? It obviously loses the actual physical stuff it gives to me, but it loses a lot more, too. (Yeah, I know "it" is an imagined entity, but for simplicity just pretend one person runs the whole thing.) "It" knows I don't want to shop in some dark, cold cave. So it loses money making a warm, well-lit, orderly, accessible, etc., etc. businessplace.

Accessible? What does that require? Roads. On the supermarket's private property are roads and parking lots (really wide roads). Where did they come from? Why didn't they send me a bill for them? Because it was part of their premeditated loss in the deal to sell me sushi, pepperoni, and candy corns. A parking lot is really damn expensive (compared to a hunk of pepperoni). What if that was all I ever bought there? Would I be freeloading then? No.


Second issue: free choice and mutual agreement versus coercion or threat of violence.

There are many stores between my house and Okefenokee Swamp which I have only been to once, and only spent $10 or so at. However, they each cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to build, maintain, keep stocked, etc. Hardly seems fair . . .unless you understand economics.

The fact that I benefit from something in no way obligates me to pay for it. (While this sounds a bit commie-ish, it ain't.) I only acquire an obligation to pay when there is an agreement that I will pay something for something. If this were not so, I would be the Freeloader King on my way down to Okefenokee. I hear a cool song that I didn't pay for, while looking at nifty scenery I didn't pay for, driving down a road I didn't pay for (state roads not in my state), while munching on circus peanuts I didn't pay for (but my buddy did).

"But, HOW WILL THE ROADS WORK?!?!?!? WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!"

Damned if I know. It ain't mine to fret about, not because I don't want roads, but because I'm not the one who will be making and maintaining them. The problem with collectivists is that they have such a fetish for micromanaging everything that they think they neeeeeeeeeeeeeed to know every detail about how something will work. It never occurs to them that it isn't that way now. Here is statist logic as applied to lunch: "How can I be sure someone will make me a sandwich for my lunch? I neeeeeeeeed lunch! How will they get the grain to make the bread? How will they transport it? Who will pay for the building and equipment to make bread? What if they make bad bread? What if they charge $1000 for one sandwich? What if they decide not to bother selling sandwiches anywhere near me? I neeeeeeeeed lunch! What if they just do nothing??!?!? I'll die!!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!"

As idiotic as this is, it is precisely the same logic that statist have regarding the concept of roads without the omnipotent state running the show. ("What if no one makes roads? What if they charge too much? What if they don't make a road for me? . . .") What if you get a grip and stop pretending the world should be, or could be micromanaged?

The usual result of collectivist crises such as this is to advocate state coercion to solve the problem. Trouble is, it never solves the problem, it removes the incentives to do the job well, and it is immoral. (Other than that, it's a good idea.)

Back to Fred. Politicians decide that a Fred neeeeeds a mowed lawn, so they create the Department of Lawn Mowing. While there is no true economic link between what Fred gets from the Department, and what is stolen from him, the supposed "benefit" makes him tolerate the robbery . . .and when he is being particularly idiotic, makes him grateful that he is being robbed. "After all, if there were no Department, and nobody was willing to mow my lawn
< . . .evolves into control-freak crisis> . . ."

Adding coercion is immoral. I don't give a rodent's behind if you think Fred benefits from something; the deals in which he gets stuff and loses stuff are his to make, not yours. You have no right to force him to pay for something he did not agree to pay for, any more than my buddy can send me a bill for the circus peanuts he gave as a gift. (And if he tried, he wouldn't be my buddy.) Fred's benefit is irrelevant. However, Fred cannot use other people's stuff without their permission. If he has permission, it doesn't matter whether he had to pay for that permission or not.

But we neeeeeeeeed roads! So let's starting robbing everyone. A road is not a right. In fact, nothing is a right if someone else has to make it for you. Luckily, when the control freaks stay out of the way, self-interest does a marvelous job of making the customers rich. This is something that most people are pitifully clueless about. The big meany evil corporations do not rob their customers; they make them rich. When Fred is in a store, he is still thinking "What do I lose?" and "What do I get?" Without coercion (like the state uses), the business has to make sure Fred gets something he wants. This is true even if Fred isn't paying for that particular thing (like heating in the store).

I have stuff, and produce stuff, and people want it. That, plus an understanding of economics, puts me in real good shape when it comes to stuff I want. I like roads. They are easier to drive on than rocks and trees. Without the state, someone will make them for me. How can I be so sure? I can be sure for the same reason I can be sure that I can walk across the street and get lunch tomorrow, without any politician forcing anyone to make it for me.

As a side note, lots of people like roads. Examining the conclusion of the statists' predicted crisis regarding roads is very telling. The control-freaks must really and truly believe that without the state, hundreds of millions of people would be sitting in their houses, wishing they could get places . . .and no one would take the opportunity to make lots of money fulfilling that desire. If someone will go to the effort to make it so that I can buy a hunk of pepperoni, then someone will damn well make sure I can get there to buy it.

I could guess at who will build the roads, even without a toll system where the users pay directly. I might guess oil companies; I might guess supermarkets; I might guess tire companies, car companies, restaurants, etc. But it is slightly pointless for me to guess, and only eggs the collectivists on for their desire to have everything pre-ordained by threat of force.

What I do know is that adding coercion to the problem reduces all the factors that make it likely the job will be done well (as well as being friggin evil). Consider Fred's decision about getting his lawn mowed, if he was the state. "What do I lose? Whatever I choose to give. What do I gain? Whatever I choose to take." And if the boy was the state, the same thing applies. Coercion reduces the incentive to give the other guy a deal he wants (since you don't need his agreement any more). This is so obvious, and so basic, and yet so foreign to most people. Gack.