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coercion

Coercion Ain’t Ever Moral

by adam on December 15, 2009 · 2 comments

As long as most people remain insensitive to the basic incompatibility of coercive means with humanitarian ends, societies will be hijacked by manipulative politicians and consumed by destructive power struggles between groups determined to impose their preferences and priorities on others through the force of law.

Having humanitarian aspirations does not make using force to achieve them any less inhumane. Put another way, caring deeply about the education of children or the health care needs of poor people doesn’t justify acting like a careless bully on their behalf.

Furthermore, labeling as “moral” any laws that authorize seizing people’s wealth or exerting control over people’s lives if and when lawmakers’ stated intentions seem sincere and idealistic and are well-received by a majority of citizens is nothing less than an attempt to justify the unjustifiable.

At a minimum, the morality of a law consists of its rejection of coercive uses of force. When laws themselves become instruments of coercion, when people are interfered with or penalized by laws merely for undertaking peaceful and voluntary behavior, when people’s earnings and property are treated by the law as a resource that can be seized or controlled without their consent, then those laws no longer have any moral justification.

This is not to say that humanitarian goals are not worthwhile. Of course, they are. But declaring a noble goal doesn’t result in a moral blank check! No matter how well a bottle of wine goes with a particular meal, you’re not justified in stealing it to make the match. Today’s political partisans typically resist criticisms of their favorite projects by trumpeting the heartlessness of their opponents— “So-and-so doesn’t care about ____, how insensitive so-and-so is!”  But what of their own insensitivity to the dehumanizing havoc wrought by their policies in the service of those about whom they care?

What I’m hoping is that a critical mass of people will conclude in my lifetime that virtuous goals are simply unobtainable via coercive behavior or laws. One is as likely to arrive at a moral accomplishment via murder or rape as via a law that overlooks and undermines the humanity of a single person.

First and foremost and without exception, each and every law in a just society must preserve and uphold the equal claim of all individual human beings to the absolute and inalienable ownership of their bodies, their minds, and their property. Every law must implicitly or explicitly protect individuals as they exercise their free will in the peaceful and voluntary pursuits of their choosing.

Very many people disagree with me about this, profoundly. Their moral premise— “bullying is sometimes necessary”— is the predominant moral premise powering today’s laws. People who would never say that a crime is justified based on the perceived resilience of its victim will nonetheless muster the emotional distance and amorality required to argue that people who earn more should pay greater sums and additional fees and higher rates for no other reasons than that “they can afford it.” People who would never raise their voices to their neighbors will nonetheless vote to imprison neighbors who smoke a plant! People who would never ask to borrow money from their friends will nonetheless vote to increase the amount of their friends’ wealth that is seized under threat. People who would say, “two wrongs don’t make a right” to their children exercise political power in this delusional and hypocritical manner.

Many people tolerate the contradiction involved in helping (or serving) some by penalizing others. Based on their biases and preconceived notions, such people are apparently comfortable picking winners and losers, and using the brute force of law to enforce those preferences. There is a cost to this approach to politics that ought to be borne by those who perpetuate it, but which far too rarely is. That cost should be public shame. Shame not unlike that which tarnished the reputations of self-serving advocates of human slavery generations ago. To be clear, the moment a person supports threatening to fine or imprison people who do not comply with laws that compel them to support projects they would never voluntarily support, they’ve crossed a line that not only denies them the option of honestly claiming a moral high ground, but also should hurt their reputation.

Say what you will, Mr. and Ms. Advocate of Well-Intended, High-Minded Coercive Public Policy, about why you think taking from some to help others will achieve worthwhile goals. But don’t cloak your bullying behavior in some twisted dialect of morality. You surrendered the actual moral high ground as soon as you pulled out the “gun” you’re relying upon to impose your will.

I am sometimes frustrated by the alarming absence of a moral component to the typical libertarian’s critique of contemporary politics. Yes, absolutely, there are empirical data, economic insights, and historical references that support resistance to allowing the State to gain greater control of the economy or intrude in our personal lives. Yes, central planning and regulation and taxation are devastating practical failures for a variety of reasons worth examining and pointing out to others  But they should be expressed in addition to a moral rebuttal, not instead of one.

There is something macabre about engaging in a conversation about the practical problems with government intervention without ever pointing out how morally outrageous it is in the first place. People who believe in the benevolence of increasingly powerful government often respond to technical critiques (“it’ll never work because…”) by falling back on their moral pretenses (“but it’s the right thing to do!”). No, actually, it isn’t. The moral option ain’t ever coercion. That epically mistaken presumption has to be abandoned and the laws derived from it must be abolished.

What other hope is there for a humane world than the widespread adoption, culturally and legally, of the moral premise that initiating force against anyone for any reason is unjustifiable?

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Peculiar Imbecility #1, Embracing Legal Coercion: Regarding Taxation (1/5)

by adam on February 21, 2009 · 5 comments

Most people have so effectively compartmentalized their moral sensibilities that they themselves are unaware of their contradictory stands regarding coercion. On the one hand, most people absolutely do not tolerate, excuse, or justify threatening and bullying behavior in their personal and professional experiences; on the other hand, most of those same people also acquiesce to and even express unabashed enthusiasm for public policies based on that same coercive behavior.

Where is this moral event horizon through which ‘threatening’ and ‘bullying’ pass and emerge as righteous conduct, worthy of encouragement, and mysteriously now immune from the customary requirements of justice? Under what conditions does this transformation of aggressive force from vice to virtue take effect? Does the moral defense of private property cease to matter if seizures of wealth are sanctioned by a government of elected representatives as opposed to a monarchy? Does merely being outnumbered eventually undermine an individual’s claim that her consent is needed to use her earnings?  A single robber holding you up at gunpoint— “Your money or your life!”— is unjustifiable; however, many bureaucrats, working nine-to-five, dressed in suits, sending you a well-written officially sealed notification that requires you to pay them a certain amount of money by a certain date to avoid further financial penalties or (gulp) incarceration are justifiable? How do we acquire the knowledge that a community’s “yes” vote trumps my “no” vote about the disposition of my body or property or earnings?

If an individual is coerced by a group of people in a forest so far from you that you cannot hear the echoes of his or her objections, has something immoral happened? Perhaps the more physically distant people are from instances of coercion the less urgently they feel the need to take a moral stand against them. Perhaps people have grown so accustomed to the threats underlying taxation that they see them the same way I see spiders, as terrifying natural phenomena, aspects of the world in which we live that are better dealt with by evasion than by confrontation. Perhaps most people are so intimidated by the risks they associate with resisting taxation that they would rather comply with it.

Perhaps most people simply don’t see taxation as that big of a problem.

For such cases of hysterical moral blindness, I prescribe calm, focused reflection on the principles of peace underlying people’s everyday social lives. Let yourself think about the realistic, influential presence of those principles in your personal relationships with friends and loved ones and in your professional relationships with coworkers and clients and employers and vendors. It is significant that you and I deal with people as individuals whose consent matters and who must demonstrate consistent respect for our voluntary consent, too. Mutual consent is a moral rule that provides the peaceful basis for all human relationships.

Imagine what would happen to your everyday life experience if laws suddenly enabled people with whom you transact to behave as if your consent were irrelevant, as if they were entitled to some arbitrary amount of your wealth before you had agreed to trade with them, even irrespective of your desire to have anything to do with them. You would immediately view yourself as living in a state of constant conflict with people. You would feel righteously defensive and take measures to protect your body, wealth, and property. Before too long, you would clamor for legal reforms that consistently protect your private property rights and that uphold mutual consent. Why would you stop short of requiring government to restrain itself in accordance with these same moral limitations?

Taxation perverts people’s sense of justice by enticing them to imagine all that might be accomplished by treating people as common resources instead of as individual human beings. On a daily basis, you avoid bumping into people on the street, you exercise the freedom to enter and exit relationships as you see fit, you honor contracts, you respond to changing circumstances and competition by learning, experimenting, and adapting.

All of this you do in accordance with the core principle of justice, specifically, that you are entitled to no more value from people than they are voluntarily willing to trade, or, in other words, that an individual cannot be used as a means to an end without his or her explicit, freely granted consent. If it is not limited by Justice, then government will be unlimited.

Therefore, proposals granting a taxing authority should be dismissed as foolishly naive or criminally negligent or fiendishly treasonous. Regardless of its originators’ intentions, as soon as a government gains the authority to tax, its growth into a parasitic, belligerent social structure is only a matter of time. This would not be the case were taxation merely the authority to raise money. (As I will discuss in an upcoming post, there are plenty of peaceful ways for a just government to raise funds.)

Government with the legal authority to tax will develop the coercive Power necessary to enforce the threats underlying its wealth transfer requirements, and will do so vigorously. With the Power to tax, government expands the scope of its operations and severity of its interventionist behavior, as it inexorably abandons its original function (and, by the way, its sole moral justification) as a guarantor of individual liberty and private property rights and a bulwark against coercion.

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More analysis and commentary regarding the essence of taxation, its myriad dangers and practical problems, and alternatives to it will be featured in a series of upcoming posts.

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Peculiar Imbecility #1: Embracing Legal Coercion

by adam on February 3, 2009 · 4 comments

Amidst debates over the practical effectiveness of the involuntary wealth redistribution bill President Obama has defended and praised as a “much-needed” and “urgent” stimulus plan, as the federal government forces gargantuan outlays of taxpayer earnings to banks and automakers, as people wake up in jail today because they were caught three times engaged in nonviolent drug-related behavior that President Obama has confessed even he participated in, I am struck by the terrifying absence of commentary on the moral status of a society that embraces legal coercion.

I elaborated on in an earlier post (“Dear Fellow Anarcho-Capitalists… Yes, I’m Talking To You”), the vast majority of us live our lives as if initiating force were not morally permissible. Most of us not only believe it’s wrong to treat other people’s bodies, minds, or wealth as means to our own ends without their explicit consent, but also choose to act every day in a manner that reflects our confidence in and reliance upon this essential moral principle. Which is to say, this is not a widely accepted but idle belief; the principle of nonaggression is an operative assumption relevant to every relationship in our lives.

If we want others to agree with us, we attempt to persuade. If we want them to work for us, we offer them incentives so that they may voluntarily choose to do so. We don’t resort to threatening people with the loss of their freedom or property, we don’t physically beat them into submission, even when we believe that agreement with our ideas or compliance with our requests is vitally important or involves an issue of tremendous moral significance. There’s a rule that we respect, one we intuitively grasp, which amounts to the idea that no person is or should be obligated against his or her will to act on behalf of others, or, in other words, that we are all equally entitled to be left alone.

It is our shared expectations (1) of not being interfered with when we act peacefully and (2) of not being coerced to act by others that form the moral basis for regulating social living. Before government and before laws, all individuals have the equal right to exist (“Life”), free from being coercively interfered with (“Liberty”), in order to pursue whatever goals each of them determines are worth pursuing. To uphold the right to live, the right to be left alone, the right to peacefully pursue the dictates of their own individuality, people form Governments. And though government always tends to expand its powers over time, its just law making authority is defined solely by the original intent of those who formed it in the first place. In Jefferson’s words:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

One peculiar imbecility of our time is that people who believe that initiating force is never morally justified within the context of their physical experience of the world simultaneously believe that initiating force is morally necessary within the context of public policy. Suddenly, the very concept they consider poisonous in their private, interpersonal, and professional lives becomes an axiomatic and intoxicating prime mover of government action. Indeed, when it comes to politics, many people consider the initiation of force not only necessary, but even preferable to all alternatives.

How is this moral compass switcheroo possible?

People have proved themselves quite capable of adopting diametrically opposed perspectives. Their ability to do so is less of a mystery than it seems at first blush. They compartmentalize. They tend to consistently reject coercion in their lived experiences, and they tend to inconsistently support coercion when it’s committed by government under the banner of accomplishing what they consider to be worthwhile goals. In private, they act as if voluntary behavior and mutual consent are unbreakable moral rules; in public, they act as if there were social goods that (1) only the state can achieve and (2) only by coercive central planning of the economy and by restricting and regulating people’s professional options and recreational opportunities and by bluntly redistributing people’s wealth.

Although I am glad that people who are capable of this kind of compartmentalization are less likely to take it upon themselves to threaten me directly with the loss of my freedom and wealth to realize their utopian ambitions, it’s no consolation that they’re willing to empower the State to effectively do the same. I am oppressed by the brute fact of their insensitivity. I am offended by their deliberate unwillingness to accept responsibility for the costs incurred by all of us on account of their blasé tolerance of coercion. I am disheartened that fellow human beings shamelessly adopt such a fundamentally pessimistic and empirically impotent tactic. I am embarrassed that so many who condemn coercion in their personal lives are so willing to enthusiastically outsource the practice of it to their elected officials.

I am an abolitionist. I am opposed to all behavior and all laws that consist of or rely upon threats or uses of force.  I am an advocate of individual liberty and a principled defender of all nonviolent enterprises and consensual behaviors.

I am often asked for examples of the practicality of taking this moral position. To me, that’s like asking, “What’s practical about the the moral rule I’ve been living by, and the one rule I expect all people around me to adhere to consistently?”

A logical follow-up to that point consists of noting the consequences of peaceful human action: the tremendous amount of wealth created by people free to innovate and trade products and services, the extraordinary technological progress in health care improving and extending people’s lives, productivity gains that result in the expansion of leisure time options. I want more of this stuff, and so do you. There would be more of this stuff if we abolished the State’s coercive rules and interventions.

To requests for examples of governments that adhere to such an extreme moral standard, all that I can do is ask people to consider how people vote with their feet. The countries whose governments interfere less with private choices, private property, and private capital are places where people from all over the world attempt to relocate, places where profit maximizers produce technological innovations that enable people to live richer, longer and healthier lives, places where the individual’s right to be left alone produces the most expressive and dynamic communities.

Though this is rarely compelling enough, for some it’s a thought-provoking start. You who remain uncomfortable with my uncompromising moral defense of individual liberty usually reply with an avalanche of questions like the following: But we need the government to provide public goods! What about public schools? What about health care for those who can’t pay? What about the negative cultural impact of people freely using drugs? What about paying for abortions for people who can’t afford them? What about preventing corporations from making too much profit? What about bridges and tunnels and roads?

Well, some of those things may be worthy of support. But support given freely, of course, not compelled!

What about the idea that you need my permission to use my life (ie, my time, my energy, my wealth)? What does my right to life mean if you can decide how my time, energy, and earnings will be used without my consent? And who are you or anyone else to do this? If we’re equal, what gives you the right to use me without my consent to serve your ends? If you can do this, does that mean I can do the same to you? And wouldn’t that place us in a constant state of unresolvable conflict based on competitive claims over our preferred uses of each other? If you don’t think we’re equally entitled to be left alone, and further believe that because your values are superior to mine you may treat me like a resource, then you’re an advocate of tyranny and its practical counterpart, slavery.  No list of heart-warming causes justifies overriding my consent and my property rights to have me serve it. There’s no such thing as the virtue of a little slavery some of the time. At least not to the person being used against his or her will!

You may be capable of pretending that your delegation of coercive behavior to the government absolves you of moral culpability for its extortionist policies, but that pretense will be small comfort when you find yourself in the inevitable position of objecting to government’s use of you as a means to its ends.

More on that quandary in an upcoming post.

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A Peaceful Transfer of Power Is a Good Start, But…

by adam on January 20, 2009 · 0 comments

Today, as President Obama takes the oath thingy about upholding the U.S. Constitution— his hand resting not on the Constitution itself, but instead on a book bursting at the seams with befuddling contradictions, cruel prejudices, self-destructive rationales, and death-defying wish-fulfillment fantasies— pundits aplenty will trot out the vapid cliche, “the peaceful transfer of power,” to congratulate the country and its political elites on not resorting to bloody insurrection to install a new president. “America,” cliche-peddlers will propound, “is the envy of the world,” because of this peaceful power transfer business.

Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against peaceful transfers. I was a half-back when I played football in my youth and always appreciated a decent hand-off at the beginning of a play. However, gushing over a peaceful transfer… of power… strikes me as jumping the gun in light of the obvious and pertinent question, the peaceful transfer of power to do what exactly?

Many people argue that a democratically elected president has earned the consent of the people, such consent being the prerequisite for the just exercise of political power. President Obama won the election fair and square, therefore he has the moral right to use his power to pursue the agenda that ostensibly got him elected. That’s an intuition-friendly notion, but it’s deeply flawed.

The process by which politicians are elected is separate and distinct from the source of an elected official’s moral legitimacy. The democratic means by which an American politician gains power do not justify the ends to which he purposes that power, just as the technical processes by which a bill becomes a law do not magically confer on that law the quality of being just. Tragically, we live in a time when the Constitution is treated primarily as an instructions manual for electing officials and passing laws. But it is fraudulent to assert that laws passed in a “constitutionally” adequate manner are necessarily constitutional. Substance matters, people!

How should elected officials morally justify their use of power?

In America, which is a republic not a democracy, each citizen’s freedom to act and our government’s latitude for passing and enforcing laws should be substantively limited (1) by the inherent value of individual human life and (2) by the concept that no one is above the law (ie, the rule of law). Doesn’t get more basic than this. Every person must be treated as the sole owner of his/her life; no person can be used against his/her will as a means to the ends of others; all laws apply equally to all people.

Another way of saying this is that in a free society, an individual’s actions and a legislature’s laws are justified by their consistent respect for private property rights, that is, each individual’s inviolable right to the use of his/her body, mind, labor, land, and belongings.

The most profound stimulus program that our government could possibly undertake would be based on (1) repealing all laws that regulate, tax, or punish nonviolent behavior, entrepreneurial activity, and voluntary trades and (2) repealing all laws that confer advantages and/or wealth on some at the involuntary expense of others. Respecting individual liberty and the rule of law would result in government we can afford and a sustainable, dynamic, wealth and innovation producing economy. And here’s the thing: President Obama has the power to advance this approach to our country’s dismal economic situation, which is itself a product of disrespecting individual liberty and undermining the rule of law.  Alas, don’t hold your breath. President Obama is launching his first term with politics-as-usual, nearly a trillion dollars worth of “stimulus” spending, using money he’ll borrow from ours and future generations’ earnings. Moreover, Obama promises more trillions in deficit spending to come. Audaciously, I hope that he’ll change his mind, give me something I can believe in, like real change, for example. Otherwise, I hope he’ll be thwarted by sensible opponents, though the ranks of the sensible are thin.

A peaceful transfer of power is a good start, but President Obama will be judged on what he did with the ball after the hand-off.  Here’s some of what I’ll be paying attention to over the next four years.

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• To what extent will President Obama use his power to repeal/weaken/affirm/strengthen laws that interfere with my freedom to make decisions about the use and treatment of my body? In medical, recreational, reproductive, and sexual contexts, will President Obama leave me free to make choices and pursue options on my own, or intervene in ways that criminalize peaceful options or increase the costs of legal ones? Will he interfere with the market processes that generate more and less costly health care options, or will he wedge more bureaucracy between me and health care professionals? Will he set free people who are wasting away in jail for simple drug possession/drug use/or selling to adults?

• To what extent will President Obama interfere with my freedom and ability to make money, invest capital, hire employees, grow my business. Will he restrict nonviolent career options? Will he reject the bullying techniques of unions? Will he support or reject price floors on labor, tariffs, wealth transfers to groups of people or industries? Will he eliminate/decrease/increase taxes on capital gains? Will he use the tax code to discriminate against levels of success? Will he abolish the Department of Agriculture, or at the very least eliminate the sinful practice of paying farmers not to grow (or even to destroy) crops? Will he downsize or upsize the federal government? Will he get the government out of the retirement insurance business or raise taxes to meet shortfalls?

* To what extent will President Obama expand or reduce the global U.S. military presence? Will he repeal the Patriot Act? Will he engage in preemptive interventions? Will he only engage in foreign military actions after a proper declaration of war by Congress?

My libertylovin’ fingers are crossed on both hands.

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Obama… Professional Politician or Magician?

by adam on January 5, 2009 · 0 comments

Check this out from Politico:

Obama plans to ask Congress for a stimulus package of $675 billion to $775 billion, so the planned tax cuts will total about $270 billion to $310 billion.

So Bush gave us tax cuts and record spending, and now Obama’s going to do the same damn thing. Government spending in excess of its revenue as a path to economic prosperity. Does anybody believe that this is possible? That wealth has ever been created in this way?  It’s preposterous, but will anyone in the mainstream media dare to say as much? Of course, Russell Roberts over at cafehayek has quickly identified the fundamental lie at the heart of this proposal:

An increase in spending coupled with lower tax collections is an INCREASE in taxes. AN INCREASE in taxes. NOT A TAX CUT. If I spend more money and collect less, the government is promising to collect more taxes in the future. It is not a tax cut. Not a tax cut. Not a tax cut. And when you don’t cut rates but rather give people a lump sum of $500, there are no incentive effects other than to increase the probability that the US Treasury will be unable to honor its obligations in the future.

What makes this level of basic deceit palatable to fellow citizens? Why are so few outraged by the essential dishonesty involved in a public policy that promises prosperity today at the expense of prosperity tomorrow?

I think it’s because many would prefer to believe the lie. They prefer the comfortable feelings that arise from their faith in the virtuous intent of the State and in its power to make good on its promises. And the quantification of that faith is the national debt and what it affords us.

Currently, the U.S. debt is over $50,000,000,000,000.00 (trillion!). One extraordinary leap of faith after another, and for what? Has the quality of health care improved? Is public education better today than it was two decades ago? Is our society better off with prisons swelling from drug use/possession arrests?

Obama’s asking us to tolerate another leap of faith with his proposed stimulus program. People seem eager to extend to him and his fellow professional pols more faith. They seem to think they can afford to do this as if their per capita share of the national debt is not ~$180,000.

Accepting propositions as true for which no evidence is demonstrable is the essence of faith. It is an evasion of reality to suppose that Obama is a magician instead of a professional politician, that wealth is created by targeted subsidies instead of voluntary trade. It is our culture’s thick-headed reliance on faith-based public policy that produces the success of our current batch of elected officials. Their power is a consequence not a cause of most American voters’ preference for fairy tales instead of facts.

What I wouldn’t do for a public policy approach guided by science instead of the whims of self-interested politicians. Though Democrats have always tacitly prided themselves on their secular sensibilities, in truth their faith in big government is as illogical and destructive as faith in the supernatural, if not moreso.

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Big Failures Aren’t Helped By Big Subsidies

by adam on January 2, 2009 · 0 comments

Lost in the incessant jabber about the dismal events that *would* unfold if massive banks or car companies were to go out of business are the bright inescapable facts that (1) these firms are insolvent and (2) the U.S. federal government is also insolvent.

Insolvency means that they do not have the means to pay for their maturing obligations.

Politicians assert that the federal government “must act now”, “must do something,” and their insistence on this binary conceptual framework (ie, good comes from government action, bad comes from government inaction) has taken hold, which is no surprise in light of mainstream journalists’ difficulties with critical, skeptical, investigative reporting. Quoted hourly about the importance of “being practical” and “saving the economy”, such politicians have succeeded in producing a raging debate in America about whether the federal government should “rescue” Detroit’s automakers and various Wall St. firms or allow the entire economy to fail.

The premise of such a debate is that our federal government both has the means to carry out such a rescue and that it is its proper role to pick which players in which industries will succeed and which will fail. Reject this premise! In fact, economic growth is not a function of government intervention. In fact, our government does not have such means (ie, it is broke). The government’s role with respect to the economy is to enforce laws against coercion and fraud. Profits and losses result from freely chosen, mutually beneficial, voluntary human action. Picking AIG and Citibank over Lehman Bros?  Pretty sure that’s not what anyone but the lobbying firms for those companies (and recipients of donations from them) believe the government should be spending tax dollars on.

Some will say that this is no time to allow principles (ie “ideology”) to influence policy decisions. Certainly there’s never a good time for ill-conceived principles to hold sway over anyone. What freaks me out about Obama is that he has gone to great lengths to depict himself as a nonideological practical man, but has thus far signaled his intent to massively expand W’s initiatives. Indeed, he intends to somehow spend us out of the crisis on a scale that will dwarf the initial $700,000,000,000.00 expenditure.

Big failures become bigger failures when they’re subsidized. And the notion that public works programs will create economic growth is wishful thinking on steroids. Who will be paying for these programs? What would that money have otherwise been used for? The government is basically a massive wealth transfer machine. If it creates in one place, it destroys in another. Obama aligns himself with legions of impractical, ideologically distracted public policy makers when he urges you to believe that the economic activity that the government creates by spending your money is somehow more valuable than the economic activity created when you save or spend your money.

We’re going to get changes under Obama. But changes in degree of government action instead of what we need, changes in kind of government action.

And so ends my first political blog post. :-)

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