Stop talking about marijuana and atom bomb emporiums

If asked I’d normally describe myself as a believe in free markets – radically free markets. For example I think many or all of the services provided by the state such as security, health, welfare and education could and should be provided by the market. I suppose that makes me some kind of market anarchist. I have even used that term to describe my beliefs but you know what? I don’t really give a toss.

I don’t think the kind of free market society that I’d like to see is that different from a minimal state. Stable institutions offering arbitration and justice, long respected agencies providing defence, a network of contracts and ownership. A stable, safe and wealthy place with a people who largely like and believe in the social order. I used to like to get into the details of how this could work. Then I realised that trying to sell this kind of utopian vision is pretty much pointless. Oh, from time to time it’s fun to think through the issues of private ownership of fusion weapons. It’s just a game though. Abstract politics, maybe.

I knew when I was twenty-five (and that’s twenty five years ago) that there will be no attempt to institute a zero state or market anarchy except from within a very minimal state. Further no very minimal state will arise without a not so minimal state transitioning and so on from our present situation.

If a stable market anarchy is possible and desirable then it will be adopted from a social order were large scale non state provision is the norm.

The historical transitions from a small state to a big state are not the result of some inexorable process but the result of a change in the belief system shared by the masses and the elites. Largely religious in nature.

What we need to be doing is to be putting our energy and focus into developing an accessible, simple case for rolling back the state, maybe not even dramatically. John Stossel is doing this kind of thing on Fox in the US and so are others.

Here’s a few of the very few things I’ve realised:

It has to be about the poor. We have to directly address the “poor will die in the streets” meme. We need to clasp the poor to our breast and prove we me mean it.

It has to be about the downtrodden, poor fucks stuck on benefits or stacking shelves or leading some other existence as a tax slave in a call centre. It has to offer meaning and hope.

It has to tap into the religious sentiments of the English psyche so it needs to be about about salvation or stamping out sin or service.

We need to rebuild the language so that it doesn’t sound like Thatcherism in any way. Thatch used the language of the free market to push unpopular efficiency measures in market socialism and in doing so wrecked the narrative of the classical liberals. Move on. No talk of entrepreneurs – build a new narrative.

It has to either ignore the intellectual classes or show them to be the class enemy of the masses.

(this isn’t a good post, but I’m going to stick it up anyway – I need to learn how to communicate)

Sustaining the state

What would make either market anarchy or a minimal state possible is widespread popular support. Just as widespread popular support for market socialism (or whatever it is) makes the big state possible today.

What lead to the increase in the size of the state both here and in the USA was the rise of a religious belief in social action. Uncle Murray talks about the process in the USA:

…Also animating both groups of progressives was a postmillennial pietist Protestantism that had conquered "Yankee" areas of northern Protestantism by the 1830s and had impelled the pietists to use local, state, and finally federal governments to stamp out "sin," to make America and eventually the world holy, and thereby to bring about the Kingdom of God on earth.

Rothbard World War I as Fulfillment: Power and the Intellectuals”

Likewise here in England. It wasn’t so much Engles scribbling in Manchester but John Wesley’s efforts 50 years earlier that gave rise to the justifying narrative of the big state. Religiously motivated attempts to save the poor continued for most of the 19C and eventually the Methodist movement morphs into the English form of Socialism that the Labour movement is rooted in.

The activities of those members of the labour movement who were also Methodists is an important topic for research. Methodism was important in a variety of locations as well as for certain professions and occupations in Australia as it was in Britain. Methodism had many core value systems that were co-extensive with what may be called craft unionism. These values were also widely held throughout professions such as finance, teaching, nursing, police and administration.

‘Not a dictatorship of the proletariat but a comradeship of all’: Methodism and the Newcastle Labour Movement

Sure most of the left see themselves as post-christian: they don’t believe in God or Jesus (nor do I). I think the rise of natural science in the 19C put paid to big old God up in the sky. But they still have the value system of a Methodist towards trade, money and fun. Oh and eliminating poverty (perhaps by eliminating poor people via eugenics and abortion). The big socialist state exists because most people believe it is Good and they believe that it is Good because they have a moral code and value system which is deeply rooted in a specific set of religious beliefs. The only way a minimal state or market anarchy could exist and endure is because people believed that it was morally desirable or Good.

Just how commie was Britain

Really, I thought this was a spoof at first:

Under the Wool Marketing Act of 1950, the BWMB is required to register all producers with four or more sheep (with the exception of Shetland, which has its own arrangement. There are currently 53,000 registered producers.

BWMB

The BWMB is the British Wool Marketing Board. And all your sheep are belong to us. No, really, if you have sheep you have to register with these tools. And sell your wool to them. Then they market it for you. Isn’t that great?

A farmer run organisation, the BWMB was established in 1950 to operate a central marketing system for UK fleece wool, with the aim of achieving the best possible net return for producers.

None of that stinky free market chaos here. Oh no:

The Board of 9 elected producer members, representing 9 different areas of the UK, and 2 Independent Members, meets eight times a year and reports back to nine regionally elected committees.

It wasn’t so long ago when we had the Milk Marketing Board and Gas Board and the Electricity Board and hosts of other boards too. Still at least we have some grounds for hope:

It is the only organisation in the world that collects, grades, sells and promotes fleece wool and the only remaining agricultural commodity board in the UK.

UK Libertarian asks…

“How do controlling bureaucrats get the way they are?”

Uk Libertarian

Firstly, senior controlling bureaucrats constitute the ruling elite of the state. Head teacher’s, Chief cops, upper management of Local Education Authorities, University Vice Chancellor’s, senior civil servants, army offices, heads of PCT’s or hospitals, CPO’s – you name it.

There’s real social and financial reward for being a controlling bureaucrat. They have secure, well paid roles in the state, some measure of (constructed) social approval for those roles and subordinates who respect their authority – or a least who act as if they do. All the rewards of a privileged elite flow to them: Power, security, influence, status, prestige and money.

Typically the controlling bureaucrat is the product of a state’s educational system. From the earliest years he or she has been taught by state employees (controlling bureaucrats called teachers) operating inside state institutions run by more controlling bureaucrats.

The state uses the education system to manufacture the appearance of legitimacy by using every means it has to advance the prevailing justifying ideology (or narrative) of the state. At the moment that’s a kind of Market Socialism plus Methodism minus God. So the controlling bureaucrat believes he’s doing the right things for the right reasons – or at worst is only obeying orders from those who so believe.

In addition to pushing statism in education the state also deals with (though employment) the intellectual classes who might otherwise develop some kind of critique of the state. (I’d also suggest that the state’s schools are ignorance, boredom and compliance factories which seek to crush free sprints and inquiring minds.)

That whole statist world view of the controlling bureaucratic elite is shared by the media elite too – that’s another bureaucratic power structure used to used to advance the state’s justifying ideology, soak up the intellectuals and distract the masses.

An agent of the state

Oh please, spare me.

Nic Coome …

… He started on British Rail as a sixteen year-old school leaver in 1973 as a Signal and Telecommunications Department Trainee Technician, and went through that department for several years before becoming a commercially-minded manager with Network South-East. Since then he has worked for Eurostar and the Office of the Rail Regulator, before joining Railtrack in 2000. He has worked there since, going through the trauma of the demise of Railtrack and the birth of Network Rail. He currently works in the Planning and Regulation directorate on projects for the reform of Network Rail and the wider industry. 

…

 Nic had been a member of the Conservatives in Swindon for around three years and stood for the then Thamesdown Borough Council on two occasions. He was then, very briefly, a member of UKIP and stood essentially as a paper candidate for Kennet District Council in 2007.

…

 Nic Coome has been a member of Chilton Foliat Parish Council for around fourteen years and Chairman of the council for the last six

…

<A HREF=”http://www.lpuk.org/”>LPUK pure comedy gold</a>

One question – do you thing that someone who has spent their entire life as an agent of the state is actually a libertarian? I certainly don’t. At best this guy is a collaborator.

A very stupid idea

Let me say that I am no bleeding hearted liberal. I’d do away with the welfare state and let the poor starve in the streets, I’d nuke enemy cities – oh yeah! I argue that fire bombing (Nazi) German cities with the specific aim of killing civilians was moral, proper and just. I’d personally put a pistol to the head of some people; shoot them; then sleepy a happy sleep. I used to argue in favour of a First Strike at the USSR. Get the idea? I’m trying to tell you I’m not very fluffy.

But, but, but… this idea:

nobody has the faintest idea how to rehabilitate the criminal classes. It simply can’t be done – or at least it can’t be done with enough certainty to make the rest of us safe. Locking them up is all we can do, and I’m just amazed we don’t insist on it.

…the mother was a drug addict, the father a violent alcoholic, and they lived entirely on benefits – benefits, I might add, that have been hugely boosted by this brainless socialist government of yours. It is literally insane that we actually pay the criminal classes to have kids. Is it any wonder we get things like this happening?” He fixed me intently with his good eye. “I’ve said it before – we need to stop them breeding… by all means at our disposal.”

Burning our money – (it’s an imaginary character “The Major” speaking)

Back the fuck up from the eugenics program. Were this leads is here:

Those are used canisters of Zyklon B.

According to Rudolf Höss, commandant of Auschwitz, bunker 1 held 800 people, and bunker 2 held 1,200.^[9] Once the chamber was full, the doors were screwed shut and solid pellets of Zyklon B were dropped into the chambers through vents in the side walls, releasing the cyanide gas. Those inside died within 20 minutes; the speed of death depended on how close the inmate was standing to a gas vent, according to Höss, who estimated that about one third of the victims died immediately.^[10][11] Johann Kremer, an SS doctor who oversaw the gassings, testified that: “Shouting and screaming of the victims could be heard through the opening and it was clear that they fought for their lives.”^[12] When they were removed, if the chamber had been very congested, as they often were, the victims were found half-squatting, their skin colored pink with red and green spots, some foaming at the mouth or bleeding from the ears.^[11]

^{Wikipedia (a leftist source)}

Don’t go there, Wat.

The clouds of leaders

Below are tag clouds – wordles of 2009 conference speeches given by the respective leaders of the Conservative and Labour parties of the UK

Gordon Brown and David Cameron.  Can you tell which is which?

 

The rise of the state

Let’s take a look at the UK public spending and debt. First of all lets take a long view in the rise of spending and debt – I’m also going to assume that looking at these two number together gives us a fair metric for the scale or size of the state:

 

That’s a pretty fair representation of the growth of the state over the last two centuries. Things to notice:

• For the first 115 years the state stayed pretty much the same size
• Small rises in spending cause massive debt
• The upticks from the two major wars in the first half of 20C
• The relentless growth of the state after WWII
• Debt remains largely constant after WWII until near the end of the century
• Although spending continues to climb
• Thatcher’s government made no detectable cuts
• At some point in the late nineties debt skyrockets
• It looks to be in runaway now

Let’s take a different view and look at the size of the state as a percentage of GDP:

See the debt caused by the Napoleonic wars – as a fraction of the productivity of Britain it was huge. How did the government pay it off? They didn’t really. The strong downward slope is actually caused by a strong growth in GDP caused by theIndustrial Revolution/s. The same thing is true or partly true about the down trend after WWII; your looking at the effect of growth (and inflation) making the debt appear to shrink as Britain’s post war economic growth occurs.

I hope the people who run the state of whatever stripe (LabCon or ConLab) have a better plan than praying for a new Industrial Revolution.

Next time we’ll look at what the money is buying.

Freedom ‘n Democracy

Great post over at The UK Libertarian talking about democracy and making a sharp distinction between State Democracy and Democracy (the process used in reaching a decision by taking a vote). Go read it. I’ll wait for you.

It tool me years of confusion to reject “State Democracy”. I believed very strongly in “Freedom ‘n Democracy” and it took me such a long time to realise that democracy has nothing directly to do with freedom.

In fact some of the ideas that I’ve heard from bits of the conservative party concerning direct democracy – essentially dis-intermediation of control of local government, the health service and much else by technological means (the inter webs) – scare the shit out of me precisely because I think they will strengthen democracy. I refer to The Plan.

Making the state more efficient, effective and (seem) more legitimate is not a good thing. What it means is less freedom and more effective state power.

There are few checks on state power. One important check is that it as to expend a fair bit of effort to be manufacture some semblance of legitimacy for its actions or at least propagate a legitimatising narrative. If it was genuinely democratic in its actions it would have the legitimatising narrative to end all legitimatising narratives – “it’s the will of the people”. Sure all fascist states make that claim, but typically most people know that it’s a lie. Imagine if it was true though. You really could end up going to jail for drinking coffee or being denied medical treatment because you don’t fit in with your neighbours. I’ll bet you can make your own nightmares.

it wouldn’t actually be legit, however direct or democratic. As Bastiat points out in “The Law” (paraphrasing) there is no process or means by which a collective or group comes to acquire moral rights to action which not held by individuals.

The lack of actual legitimacy doesn’t matter to the state. It employs almost all the intellectuals in society and uses them to manufacture the appearance of legitimacy – by the repetition of state doctrine and the soft suppression of alternative thought.

Last two points:

What do we put in place if not democracy? My answer – we do without government altogether eventually.

The important question is how do we get there from here. My answer – in steps. When we’ve got to the very small state we can work out where and how to move further. The real battle is to try and move from a place where ~50% of GDP is stolen by the state and spent with what appears to be the objective of destroying civil society. Making a case to reduce government theft by even a small amount seems to be tough sell.

Blogging suspended

I shan’t be blogging here for a while. It’s my intention to explore video as a communication tool for a bit.