The government shut down! The government shut down!
Don't get too excited, it's not for good. But, have you noticed a difference? Has your life changed? Did you have tickets for Army-Navy?
All "non-essential workers" have been sent home. Only in government would you even have a non-essential worker. In the private market they are just called unemployed.
Want to join in the discourse? Send your questions, comments, queries, and concerns to tdv@dollarvigilante.com, comment on a post, or get on the forums.
On to the feedback…
ISN'T ULBRICHT JUST AN UNPRINCIPLED THUG?
(A response to Gary's article, "The Shut Down That Really Matters: The End of the Silk Road")
Hi Gary,
I hope you know I typically love your writing. Today, however, I’d like to offer a bit of a critique…but not so much on writing as on topic.
I had trouble after this part:
“Now that we've established how morally sound Silk Road was and how thuggish its detractors and persecutors are, let's take a look at how it all came apart. Ulbricht was arrested yesterday in San Francisco. While some of the charges against him are for operating a vast, underground online exchange for illicit substances, it was Ulbricht's attempts to have a thieving former employee beaten and a blackmailer assassinated that let the feds build a case against him. But it was the feds who lured him in, much like they lure patsy mosque attendees into the terrorist plots the feds themselves concoct in an effort to produce bad guys for their terrorism security theatre.”
First, I didn’t think you established the morality of the Silk Road. You really only pointed at the immorality of the people who shut it down, an immorality that you/we have established over and over again in previous pieces. I personally scarcely even knew about the Silk Road, or what it was before this happened. Forgive my ignorance about that. I think I had heard of it, but never gave it much thought, nor checked it out, etc. When I got the point above it occurred to me that you may be unwittingly defending people who are no more moral than the drug lords who control the black markets. Yes, prohibition is bad, I agree; but the people who control the black markets are often just as murderous as the state. And this case seems only to prove that much is true. Maybe it’s not. Maybe Ulbricht is a saint.
Also, I don’t know that a place that “required” me to pay in bitcoin is really an example of voluntarism.
If the silk road is a place where practically only black market goods get traded, and you have to pay with bitcoin –I dunno if I would defend that, even if they sold stuff I wanted, anymore than I would defend the morality of the criminals who make sure I get the candy that I like to eat.
Also, I’m not sure I understood how Ulbricht was played. If he actually agreed to beat up or murder someone, doesn’t that just prove what I’m saying above? Why would we defend such a guy, even if it was the Feds who lured him into the act. He still agreed to beat and murder someone. Did he? I don’t know the story well.
“I see Ulbricht as protecting the lives of thousands of his customers as well as his own interests as best he could in the black market conditions created by prohibition”
Really? By murdering someone who was going to tell on him? You can make the same defense for El Chapo.
Cheers,
Ed Bugos
Gary's Response:
Hi, Ed! Always great to hash things out with you here in FF.
First of all, the Silk Road didn't "force" people to use bitcoin. Like any other service, they set the terms for the form of payment they would accept. For their purposes, accepting cash was suicidal. So if you dealt with them, you had to deal with the crypto-currency that they wanted. It's no different than any other merchant insisting on the local currency instead of gold, silver, bitcoin, other currencies or seashells. If you didn't want to deal with bitcoin, Silk Road had no problem with you finding another venue that would take US cash. You can't make merchants accept a form of payment they don't want, especially when only one form of payment helps keep them up and running despite the state's wishes. Again, if you think what they are asking is unreasonable or you just don't want to deal with them for any reason — price, selection, quality or goods and services, method of payment, the way they dress, their ethnic background, the fact that they hire darkies and homosexuals, the garlic on the salesman's breath — there's the door!
Secondly, Ulbricht is no saint. But I think you'll agree that we believe in anarchy precisely because men are not saints. Further, anarchism and its derivative non-aggression axiom aren't about non-violence. They're about owning oneself and one's action and about non-aggression. And in an ideal, state-free world, most of the time aggression in the form of theft and other property violations would be handled with private arbitration and econonomic shunning. Those whom several levels of private arbitration deemed in the wrong would either make the offended party whole…or they would get a bad reputation and credit rating that made others less likely to deal with them economically, thus exiling themselves from the benefits of the division of labor.
In the state-free world, we wouldn't need armed goons to go kidnap and cage those who had done wrong. We'd simply count on economic shunning to provide the incentive for people not to violate the property of others and to make those whole against whom they've trespassed whether intentionally or not. But there are going to be times, even in the state-free world, where defensive violence will be necessary, when there simply won't be time to let the threat of economic shunning convince an assailant not to harm you or a loved one. The markets will decrease the poverty that the state feeds and which breeds crime. And there would be no prohibition to incentivize organized crime. The instances where private, defensive violence is necessary would be almost too rare to mention. But it would still be morally okay should the need arise.
In a free world, there would be no state to which blackmailing snitches could threaten to go. But you have a very good point. Ulbricht's was exactly the kind of gansta violence that turns the stomach of those who understand that prohibition is the real problem. Maybe it's Ulbricht's anarcho-libertarian stance (check out these pages of quotes from Ulbricht about liberty, Austrian economics and the Silk Road from Forbes) that makes me see him in a kinder light than I would, say, Pablo Escobar. Drug lords actually thrive on prohibition and don't take a particularly principled stand against those who enforce it and make drug running so damned profitable. Ulbricht made a fortune running the Road, but I'm sure he would have handed over penny he had if he thought it would end the absurdity of the central monopoly on violence in his lifetime. Ulbricht is a well-versed techy anarcho-capitalist. from what I've read of him. He knows his Mises and Rothbard and openly calls the state out as the bunch of aggressive thugs it is while championing the right of the individual to live as he chooses.
But let me put it this way. What if Ulbricht had been harboring a family of Jews in the basement of his home in a small German town in 1942? And then one of is neighbors found out and threatened to expose him and the family to the state unless a certain sum were paid? Would we blame Ulbricht for planning to end this neighbor's life to protect both himself and those under his care? The neighbor is indirectly holding a gun to all their heads, after all. To my mind, Ulbricht was applying anarchist and libertarian principle consistently in the circumstances. I'm not saying I would have done as he did (though who knows?), but I'm not offended by it nor do I think it makes him unprincipled and not an anarcho-libertarian.
We aren't pacifists. We just don't initiate violence. We accept that violence is justified in the face of aggression. Just so long as we don't force other people to fund our retaliation, we're in the clear. If an extortionist literally is holding thousands of people hostage and threatening to ruin their ability to earn a living at best and condemn them to a lifetime of getting raped in a cage at worst…in a very real sense pointing the gun of the state at all their heads…and the state inhibits the gentle market mechanisms from defusing the situation and in fact provides the gun…then I don't think it's a violation of the non-aggression principle to meet this armed aggression with lethal force if you think you can get away with it (the important part which keeps most of us from attacking cops and tax collectors).
GOVERNMENT CRIME PREVENTION
I love how people assume the only thing standing between them and a grisly robbery/rape/murder is an overpaid fatass, in a state-owned building, issuing arbitrary decrees and edicts. Government never prevents crime from taking place (and we all know that they commit a colossal number of crimes themselves). Best case scenario, they may (MAY) arrest the person responsible for the crime after the fact.
This is why anarchists say things like, "You exist in a state of anarchy, for most of your life, already."
Adam H.
Jeff’s Response:
Hi Adam,
I, of course, agree. It never ceases to me amaze me that people still believe police prevent crime. In the first place, though, let's define crime. A crime is when someone steals from, assaults or murders a victim. Therefore if there is no victim it is certainly not a crime. In the cases where police harass, kidnap or kill people who have done no crime with a victim (such as a drug user, for example) there is a crime being committed, but it is by the police upon the peaceful person.
Michael Suede, of Libertarian News, showed that 86% of the prison population in the US are there for victimless crimes. In 2008, there were 7.3 million in the US "corrections" system. That means that more than 5 million of those who have been kidnapped and sitting in a cage were actually the victims of a crime not the criminals themselves.
And that doesn't include people who were also the victims of crimes by the police but who weren't convicted. When you add in police doing crimes to people everyday such as extorting money from them if they were deemed to have broken some driving rule with no victims and the amount of total crime in the US is beyond epidemic. It is, by far, the most dangerous place in the world.
Do you know anyone in the US who hasn't had a crime committed on them by the police in their lives? I would go so far as to hazard a guess that every single person in the US has, at least once (and many countless times), had a crime committed on them by the police who have either extorted money from them or physically accosted them or kidnapped them.
I know I have. Numerous times.
Here is a photo of a crime being committed against me and I was kidnapped and held against my will by a gang in Palm Springs last year.
This gang told me that the reason they were kidnapping me was because I looked drunk. They are a strange, crazy gang, seeming to make up all sorts of bizarre excuses for their behavior and crimes.
A year before that I was again kidnapped in Phoenix by numerous gangmembers.
That time they told me the reason they accosted me was because they saw me walk outside of a bar with a drink.
The US has, by far, the largest prison population per capita on Earth. No one even comes close.
The strange thing is that more than 80% "serving time" are actually the victims of a crime and the actual perpetrators of the crime are constantly on the loose committing more crimes every day… and they get paid, often over $100,000 per year, from other stolen proceeds of crime (taxes) to do it.
And still many people in the US think the police are protecting them. Sigh.
MORAL JUSTIFICATION
Suppose I am a very smart cryptologist, mathematician, computer jock, and entrepreneur. For discussion purposes ignore the fact I am actually none of these. But, continuing the hypothesis, let's say that I am also an ardent freedom lover and hater of tyranny. Do I act in morally justifiable self-defense if I create an anonymous black-market exchange in which wagers can be made on the date of death of given individuals like fraudulent financiers or murderous tyrants who have caused great harm, said exchange facilitating a lucrative and anonymous payoff via Bitcoin to the party who accurately “predicted" the date, thereby "incentivising" assassinations of bad people?
SR
Jeff’s Response:
Hi SR,
Those kind of markets will happen… and won't it be beautiful! Many people might read what you said and think, "that's terrible, people will just be killing people for money." But I see it as being another beauty of the free market! If someone started such an exchange, no one would think to put wagers down on a certain date for people they like, like Shakira. Especially if they knew there was any chance that their harmless wager could possibly cause her death. Plus you also have to remember there has to be another party taking the other side of the wager… so if it started to become commonplace for a few people to be killed once the winnings get high enough, then not many people would take the other side of the wager. Or, if they did, funnily, they might be incentivized to do everything they can to protect some vile person, like Dick Cheney, for example. This is the fun of what the free markets can bring… the possibilities are endless.
In fact, you could even see some of the people who get a lot of wagers actually betting against those dates and locking themselves in some airtight vault for that day to win a large amount of money. But, having things like a market like that would actually cause better behavior in people.. by the markets. No one would want to see their name near the top of the bettings so they would act a lot better. The market is always self-regulating!
That said, if a market or exchange anonymously betting on a date of someone's death were launched, it absolutely would not be immoral. You'd just be providing a service to people who want to bet on those things.
Things like that already exist, albeit not necessarily anonymously. Libertarian comedian, Doug Stanhope, has his own "Celebrity Death Pool". Although I believe it is in the rules that you can't win if the person you chose was murdered. No one had Tom Clancy for a nice pay-off this week, but the bets are currently going up for Casey Kasem.
Gary's Two Cents:
I think anarchism has gotten a little too huggy-feely in the past few years. Yes, there is that very important part about non-aggression. But this isn't pacifism. This isn't a shunning of violence when necessary in the face of aggression. To me non-aggression is a derivative of self-ownership and ownership of one's actions. This is whence property rights come. I own the effects of my actions whether they be my labor (property) or my offenses and trespasses. I like the way Doug Casey puts it: "The whole of the law shall be this; do as thou wilt…but accept the consequences."
The stateless world as I see it would incentivize non-aggression and peace. There would be violence, but it wouldn't get anywhere near the level of the wars in the statist world because free markets reward people who build things and make customers happy, not blow them and their stuff up. There would also still be drug use and prostitution and gambling, but they wouldn't be the desperate, dirty and sad things laced with violent black market "regulation" that they tend to be in the statist world where the attempts to curtail them with the aggression of the law just makes things worse.
But to answer your question, as I said in response to Ed, if you want to incentivize assassination of known murderous and theiving aggressors using market forces and money not stolen from anyone…then I say you are morally justified. Some folks just need killin' (especially the psychopaths who tend to rise to the top of the state monopoly on aggression). And bravo if we can use the market to sort out who those folks are and make sure their deaths are funded only with honest money. As Jeff pointed out, there simply wouldn't be much financial incentive to kill people that most people liked. So viva la death pool! You want to take out some tinpot dictator? Anarchist/voluntaryist phiosophy has no problem with you pooling resources with like-minded people and taking him out, as long as you coerce no one into helping fund your activities. Sure trumps the state's method of stealing money to kill a few million of their target's innocent neighbors.
