Government and Collectivism

The False Premise of Collectivism

1. In the world at large, good seems to be more organized and more in control than evil simply because the popular notion of good is on the surface of the social structure. "Good intentions," greed, and ignorance determine the destiny of nations because they determine collective action. Human nature cannot be changed, but social action can be. Only mass education can accomplish this.

2. Evil operates on the "I only" principle. Good operates on the "I, but also you" principle. Collectivism is evil and is based upon the "I only" principle disguised as the "We" principle and the "We" is always coercive.

3. The only workable first premise in any society is that of absolute individual Liberty. All else must be subordinated to this or the society will slowly degenerate or remain degenerate if it is already. The only truly free and workable system known to man is a Libertarian society with an Capitalist economy.

4. All forms of collectivism are contrary to the laws of evolution and the laws of market. All lasting prosperity and progress that has ever been achieved has been due to the extent to which the society involved has been free. All failure and stagnation have been due to collectivist control of some kind.

5. Lurking at the heart of most false ideas which find popular acceptance is the irony that, in the smaller view of things or in the very short term, they are often "true" ideas.

The Myth of Left and Right

1. "We will produce a new generation of change, and a lot of change for a new generation. We will generate change, and we will change a generation" babbles the pee-wee golden-boy collectivist candidate inanely.

"All this 'gridlock' stuff is horse manure. Both left and right are serving the bankers. Neither side is advocating a return to a precious metal standard. When I was a kid, anyone with a sixth grade education knew that a metal backed currency is necessary to a stable economy. When in Hell are we going to move against these God-damned traitors?" asks Dirk the Sun Warrior as he eagerly fondles a hangman's noose.

2. The only difference between "Socialist" and "Fascist," between "left" and "right," are their respective preferences for collectivist interference in what would otherwise be a naturally ordered and workable society. The term Democracy today has become a mere euphemism for the shared, but endlessly embattled, alternating dictatorship of left and right wing thugs in business suits.

3. In a collectivist society, left and right produce the "see-saw effect." First the left pulls the country down, while the right goes up in public opinion. Then the right pulls the country down while the left goes up in public opinion. Let us observe that the only thing which goes up is public opinion in the short term. The only thing which goes down is the country over the long term. Some have called this the "Decline of Western Civilization." The rate of this decline is accelerating rapidly.

4. Among the general populace, left and right in essence want government henchmen with guns to enforce unjust advantage in their behalf. A Libertarian is simply what any reasonably intelligent left or right wing individual might aspire to be with more education and higher moral development.

5. The fundamental reason most people will support a collectivist government is that they believe it will benefit them individually more than a truly free society. This is always at the expense of others. There is however, the sometimes just idea about getting even financially for past exploitation. If we go Libertarian right now, it is reasoned, money owed from the past won't get paid back, so we have to have a little more of the opposite brand of collectivism to balance accounts. Then it has to go the other way, and then back again. This is another aspect of the "see-saw effect." If cognizant of the long term bad effect of collectivist policies upon even themselves, most people would not support such a system. Education can accomplish Libertarian goals without a complete moral remake of society. Those who have been unduly victimized thus far will ultimately be compensated much more completely, and in an ongoing way, by the advantages of a stable economy.

6. The fact that most who favor economic Liberty want civil slavery, and vice versa, shows us that a person's politics are usually a product of emotion, not of logic. Economic and civil Liberty are not mutually exclusive, but actually work best in conjunction with each another. When people begin to think clearly, rather than just reacting immorally to the equally immoral reactions of their adversaries, then a true ongoing Liberty will be able to flourish, rather than merely a short term partisan illusion of Liberty.

Who Determines Values?

1. Candidates for public office will often try to obscure the real issues by saying things which are admirable and true, but which somehow do not quite ring true coming from their lips.

"All of this 'family values' bullshit makes me sick to my stomach. These parasites don't care about families. They have caused and financed both sides of every war in the past two hundred years" observes Dirk the Sun Warrior as he inspects a big family size bag of quicklime at the local hardware store.

2. A lot of high sounding talk about the importance of family values, although perfectly true, is somehow particularly offensive, and does seem to be pushing luck a bit, coming the worst enemies that families have ever known - mere traitors who have served the interests of those responsible for the destruction of more families than anyone else in all of human history.

3. It is not the business of government to instill values in the individual citizen, except a deep and abiding knowledge relative to the natural workability of absolute individual Liberty, and that preferably only by example.

Equality Under Law

1. It is not a legitimate function of government to provide a livelihood for the citizens. The equal chance to succeed guaranteed in a free society should not be confused with the equal "success" guaranteed in some measure by a collectivist society. The former works in the long term, the latter does not. Government is not supposed to "help" people, but to create and preserve an environment within which people can help themselves.

2. Government never generates new wealth, although it almost always coerces wealth away from those who do. It is never a provider of anything, it's victims are. When "benefits" are gained, Liberty is lost. Whatever is subsidized by government will eventually be controlled or regulated by it. Government is at best a necessary evil and the less of it we have, the better. The primary goal of World Libertarian Revolution is simply to privatize as many activities as possible which are now allocated to government.

3. There is absolutely nothing which is immoral for an individual to do, which is not equally or more immoral for government to do. This includes theft and extortion. Government policy is supposed to reflect the calm deliberation of many minds, not dishonesty numerically multiplied behind the shield of unaccountability afforded by power.

4. In today's climate of moral decay, election to political office does not require promising the people a country in which they can have the freedom to work and keep what they earn as it once did. It requires promising to give them what someone else earns. Today if people give their vote they want something "concrete" in return. This is euphemistically called "politics." For a person to give someone a vote on the promise that he will enlist government thugs to coerce money from others, is no different than if the voter were to coerce the money himself. For a person to use his vote to steal, renders him morally no better than the man who would come through a window at three o'clock in the morning with a crowbar and a gunny sack, except that the man with the crowbar has more courage, self knowledge, and personal integrity.

5. Just because an individual feels that the poor "can't help" the way they are, doesn't give him the moral right to use a voting booth to allocate the resources of another to his dream of the way the world "should" be. Observe that the Socialist "loves" everyone, but advocates what seems best for himself in the short term. The Libertarian loves especially those near and dear, but advocates what is workable for all in the long term.

6. If two men are equal, and one by his own efforts "betters" himself, then he becomes "better" than the other man who did nothing, unless there are in this instance, two meanings for the word "better." Equality under law should not be confused with equality of individual human viability. Although all men must receive equal, fair, and impartial treatment under law, it is not government's job to cheat nature or to eliminate the deserved consequences of bad moral character.

7. The single most detrimental assumption which is commonly held by humankind today is that all men are "entitled" to be well fed, regardless of what they do or do not do individually to bring about this condition, and regardless of the detrimental affect upon those who are victimized in their behalf. Augmenting this myth is the idea that it is somehow desirable, obligatory, or moral for productive individuals to provide for ever increasing numbers of unproductive individuals. This in turn, has everywhere led to the further assumption that people have the right to collectively coerce the productive individual in order to bring about this utopian "equality." Such ideas have inevitably led to increasingly unstable war and welfare based economies everywhere.

8. If a person is not being supported financially by others, he is not being kept down. If he objects to such non support, he is seeking to be kept up. Let there be no institutional theft, so that anyone can be kept at the expense of another, and let those who try to gain unjustly what is not theirs be kept neither down, nor up, but simply apart, from those whose behavior has survival value in a free society.

Taxation is Theft

1. Government wealth redistribution for any reason constitutes mandatory charity, and in the long term has the same devolutionary results because it sustains human weakness. Effectively it brings human excellence down to a level of mediocrity in order to elevate human rottenness up to a level of mediocrity.

2. Taxation of any kind is wealth redistribution because it allows use of government services out of proportion to payment for that use. User fees do not have this effect, nor do lotteries of designated purpose. Lotteries are just a more generalized form of user fee, because they are funded voluntarily by those supporting the particular policy paid for by the lottery.

3. Taxation is theft. There is no justification for it whatsoever and there never has been. It was long ago established that all legitimate government services can be paid for directly by those utilizing them, in direct proportion to that use, just as in the private sector. User fees are not theft because they are not taken at gun point the way taxes are.

4. Government has only one legitimate function: to provide redress when people unjustly assault, coerce, defraud, or encroach upon each other or the environment to the detriment of any living thing. This function is performed by military, judicial, and correctional branches at the federal, state, and local levels.

6. To permit taxation in a free society is the exact equivalent of introducing disease into a healthy body. Well informed rational people would never do either.

7. Unlimited power to borrow and tax leads to unlimited spending and growth in the size of government. It becomes like The Blob - "The more it eats, the bigger it gets. The bigger it gets, the more it eats. It's already sniffing after you, an one o' these days it's gonna catch up with ya !"

"It may be very difficult in a collectivist society to disseminate truth without being harassed. In most countries it is smarter for now to pay all of your taxes and keep very clear and simple records. The day will come when we will have it back a thousand fold because those who rob us now, in the end, will shine our shoes" foretells Dirk the Sun Warrior.

8. Government agencies in a collectivist society usually reach a point where they begin to exceed their authority. They develop lives of their own with agendas of their own, often in conflict with each other, usually in conflict with individual Liberty. Only the unlimited flow of stolen funds will allow this.

9. The collectivist individual has an endless faith in the ability of government to make everything better, although he often curses "those crooked politicians" individually. It is power over others which creates all social problems. It never solves them. Other than the organized military, judicial, and correctional defense of individual Liberty, there is no legitimate activity currently allocated to government anywhere that cannot be performed better and more efficiently by free and inspired individuals in the private sector than by regulated and lethargic bureaucrats.

10. It is not government's place to play the puppetmaster by trying to "motivate" people with tax "incentives" or incentives of any kind, except towards the preservation of Liberty. It should be appreciated that any amount of taxation provides a disincentive towards work for the victim, while at the same time providing an increasing incentive for inactivity to the recipient.

11. The equivalent of a naturally balanced ecology in the sphere of human relationships is possible only in a Libertarian republic. Under such a system, all incentives, sanctions, deterrents, and rewards, either of a social or of an economic nature, are determined by the natural laws of supply and demand, rather than by pompous bureaucrats whose only activity is the interference in the activity of others. These agents of impediment usually are what they are simply because they haven't the courage, the character, or in many cases the basic ability necessary to succeed as entrepreneurs.

Protectionism Doesn't Work

1. The collectivist wants us all to be "safe" - at any cost. He has forced manufacturers to make power lawnmowers so safe that retarded children (?) can use them without hurting themselves. The only problem is that they will no longer cut grass unless the owner spends an hour or two with a hammer, chisel, and hack saw removing fifty dollars worth of unnecessary mandatory safety equipment, invalidating his warranty in the process. All of this, multiplied by millions of lawnmowers, is only a minor consideration to be sure, now that we are all "safe."

2. In a perfectly safe society we would all be legally required to remain in bed while being fed intravenously by government, because if we got up and went outside we might "hurt" ourselves. If the world is made perfectly safe, so that the individual never experiences any of the consequences of his own actions, then natural selection is blocked and evolution stops.

3. The next time that you are awakened at two in the morning and can't get back to sleep because of the loud beeping two miles away when the snow plow backs up, just fall upon your knees and give thanks for the fact that the great legions of blind people out walking in the blizzard are "safe."

4. The collectivist wants government to compel hotel owners everywhere to change their hot and cold water faucets to mixing valves so that nobody can get scalded. Any plumber will tell you that on most hot water supply heaters there is one control that will regulate hot water temperature to all the faucets. Is there anywhere a hotel where the water is hot enough to get even a decent shave, let alone to scald collectivists? Underlying all this "concern" for peoples' safety, of course, is the desire to increase deficit spending to fund periodic government inspections of hotels. Recent history has shown us that it's always best whenever possible to view human interactions as contracts between individuals. If we think of the right not to be scalded while showering, as an implied warrantee granted by hotel owners, then someone who is scalded can simply sue for damages. This provides the hotel owner with a natural free market incentive to make the proper temperature adjustments. No deficit spending by government needed here.

5. Countries with no highway speed limits have fewer accidents because the expectation of higher impact on collision increases caution. We can think of bad accidents as contractual relationships between skilled drivers who accept the increased risk of greater speed, and inept individuals who are weeded out by their own stupidity. Those who have to clean up afterwards are paid for what they do, so who can logically object? We understand that in this example that "fast" does not mean reckless. Those who object here are the lazy elements who don't want the added responsibility of extra caution which sometimes comes with increased individual Liberty.

6. Statistics are worthwhile only when they serve truth, not when they allow mediocrity to fester at the expense of excellence. The less time one spends on mundane activities, like going from one place to another, the higher will be this individual's evolutionary expression. Those who attempt to justify low arbitrary speed limits always point to the number of lives saved. Some have even advocated banning automobiles altogether so that no lives will be lost. None have yet computed the total number of man-hours lost with lower speed limits because of individuals having to take longer going from one place to another. This lost time is also lost life, because time is what life is made up of. The amount and quality of this life certainly exceeds that of the few inept sluggards who are culled naturally by an environment with slightly higher risks.

7. Observe the folly of those who take the posture that they are the more patriotic because they advocate protectionism in trade. These individuals feel that the worker is somehow more important than the consumer. Actually, the consumer himself is usually also a worker, and has the right to buy the best product, at the best price, in a competitive free world market. Good intentions are praiseworthy, but if these protectionist elements would simply read a little bit about things first, they could then advocate workable rather than destructive policies. Let us notice that many of these very "hard working" and "patriotic" individuals never seem to want to get rid of the government handouts which necessitate fiat currency, causing the trade deficits which adversely effect workers in the first place.

8. In business, simple greed and the desire for government enforced monopoly often hides behind high sounding rhetoric about "protecting the public." A good example is the real estate business. Years ago any reasonably intelligent person could broker a real estate transaction without any special training at all. Even now attorneys often handle the legalities. Originally the requirement for a license was merely a way of collecting a user fee so that brokers as a group would justly pay for the disproportionate amount of litigation which accrues to real estate practice. Then came the rise of certain "professional" organizations comprised of well established prosperous brokers. First they established special codes of "ethics" in order to seem very moral and public spirited. Next we see them offering their support to politicians who then sponsor legislation enacting strict licensing requirements with ridiculously difficult exams to "protect the public from curbstone brokers" or to protect "leading citizens from unfair outside competition." These exams of course, did not apply retroactively to those already licensed. Some will argue that the increasing complexity of laws renders necessary a higher degree of training for brokers. In actuality this very complexity itself only represents other unjust interferences by government in parallel areas of human endeavor. It is simply not a legitimate function of government in a free society to regulate business in any way other than to outlaw and prosecute clearly fraudulent practices.

9. There has been a lot of phony talk recently about tobacco use. We have always known that nicotine is addictive. It is the only reason people smoke. Since tars do not enhance the pleasure given by nicotine, but are also very unhealthful, then obviously the most "safe" cigarette would be a high nicotine, low tar cigarette, any way that this can be produced. For tobacco companies to be put on the defensive about all this is just another way that government servants of international finance seek to increase deficit spending for government regulation of individual behavior. The only just ban on smoking would be indoors in all public places, at the base of occupied buildings, near gas pumps, around oil refineries, etc.

10. What smart people should not do, and what government should outlaw, are two very different things. It is not a legitimate function of government in a free society to dictate to anybody about what they can ingest into their own body. The one exception would be any substance taken in any amount expected from experience to always make the user likely to endanger others. There are very few such substances. All potentially unhealthful products of course, should proclaim themselves with proper labels.

11. A person cannot effectively love others if he does not first love himself. Using government coercion to keep adults from reaping the just consequences of their own weakness is a direct and unforgivable interference with evolutionary destiny because it interferes with natural selection. It is better to let these weak elements destroy themselves any way they can, so that those left will be the stronger, more rational elements truly capable of loving both themselves and others.

Liberty Differentiated from Democracy

1. Nine bums in an alley can democratically reach a majority decision to relieve an approaching wage earner of his wallet, but that doesn't make it right or just. Somewhere along the way the terms Liberty and Democracy became thought of as synonymous. They are not. Democracy is only majority rule. If most people in a Democracy want slavery, then everybody will have to suffer under it. The fear of Liberty is cowardice. The prevention of Liberty is criminal despite "intent." A Democracy not based upon Libertarian principals is nothing more than a dictatorship of the morally inferior.

2. Implementation of natural order cannot occur unless the average individual in society has at least a rudimentary understanding of what works in the long term and what does not. Democracy can succeed in the long term only if there is a strong base of constitutional law based on Libertarian Capitalist principles. Such constitution must be the supreme law of the land and subject to none but literal interpretation. Without this there is only the immoral consensus of the mob.

3. "The only way that majority rule will be workable, is if the majority, as a rule, are willing to work." A Libertarian republic is essentially a Democracy enhanced by a Libertarian constitution, and functions with people being exactly what they are, in precisely the same way that a Democracy without such a constitution would function if most of the people were of the highest moral character.

4. In a totally free society the right to vote allows one to indicate his choice as to who can best manage things in accordance with known Libertarian principles. In a non-Libertarian Democracy the right to vote allows one to indicate his opinion as to how things might best be mismanaged in accordance with any of several competing unworkable collectivist theories. In a Libertarian society a vote is an expression of trust in a candidate's competence and honesty, rather than an expression of the voter's ideas about how to make policy, which would almost always be spoiled by ignorance.

5. Representatives in a Democracy rule only by popular consent. It is important to vote Libertarian. The individual can at this stage however, do more to promote Libertarian revolution with an occasional letter to an incumbent representative than he can ever do merely by voting. Politicians know that for every dissatisfied voter who writes, there are five hundred who don't. Act now. In the USA: "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil liberals and conservatives is that good Libertarians do nothing."(1)

6. Among the profane it is proclaimed that "If you are not liberal when you are young, you have no heart. If you are not conservative when you are old, you have no brain." Among the Wise it is remarked that "If you are not Libertarian when both young and old, you have neither a heart nor a brain."

7. It is power over others which results in unworkable societies. The true Libertarian candidate is not seeking power either for himself or for "the people," He is seeking to put an end to anyone having unjust or unnecessary power over anybody else.

The Atavistic Berserker, Dirk the Sun Warrior, yearns now only for the final conflict, that he may perish heroically after drenching himself in the blood of the vile enemies of our lives and Liberty. "If I can't have total individual Liberty by Democratic means, then I will have it any way I can get it, even if it has to be over the dead bodies of all those who serve darkness!" Let us hope that the founding of Libertarian societies by democratic means will soon relieve Dirk of these feelings.

8. The short term vested interests now opposing worldwide Liberty will eventually fall because their ideologies have no internal coherency or long term workability, and as such, constitute mere technical elements to be eliminated before the inevitable triumph of truth and justice. Because of the rapidly escalating consequences accruing to past mistakes however, we do not have the luxury of patiently waiting for people to slowly awaken. Conditions necessitate their immediate awakening. The one and only thing that can accomplish this is for courageous people to develop an active and imaginative commitment to the principles of World Libertarian Revolution, right now.