Blogging For Liberty

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The Nanny Tax Rap

Posted by swearnoallegiance on May 8, 2009

Love that last line!

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To Whom Do You Belong? Welcome to Class Warfare

Posted by swearnoallegiance on April 29, 2009

America is at that awkward stage; it’s too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards. – Claire Wolfe

Have you ever heard of the Agorist Class Theory? No? That’s alright because I am new to the idea myself. Agorism–simply stated–is “a stateless society of peaceful black markets.” What the Agorist Class Theory does is it reforms Marxim’s idea of the class struggle. Proponents argue that Marx was partly wrong and partly correct in his thinking on class warfare, but that he errs in his identification of the oppressor of the proletariat (the common man). Marxism, in a nutshell, maintains that the relationship between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie (those who own the means of production aka entrepreneurs and the like) is simply a continuation of the ancient practice of slavery.

Agorism and Marxism agree on the following premise: human society can be divided into at least two classes; one class is characterized by its control of the State and its extraction of unearned wealth from the other class.

Thus for the Agorist, the class struggle is not between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, but rather, the producing class (all workers and entrepreneurs) versus the Political class as identified by Charles Comte and Dunoyer some 150 years ago:

The political class is the parasitic class that acquires its livelihood via the “political means”–through “confiscation, taxation, and other forms of coercion.” Their victims are the rest of us–the productive class–those who make their living through peaceful and honest means of any sort, such as a worker and an entrepreneur.

I believe the agorists to be correct in their revision of Marx’s idea on class and a class struggle certainly does exist in society. If you would like to be properly introduced to this idea, then I suggest that you read Agorist Class Theory by Wally Conger. The PDF is only 38 pages in length.

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Vices Are Not Crimes: Part I

Posted by swearnoallegiance on April 27, 2009

Vices Are Not Crimes: A Vindication of Moral Liberty

Vices are those acts by which a man harms himself or his property.

Crimes are those acts by which one man harms the person or property of another.

Vices are simply the errors which a man makes in his search after his own happiness. Unlike crimes, they imply no malice toward others, and no interference with their persons or property.

In vices, the very essence of crime — that is, the design to injure the person or property of another — is wanting.

It is a maxim of the law that there can be no crime without a criminal intent; that is, without the intent to invade the person or property of another. But no one ever practises a vice with any such criminal intent. He practises his vice for his own happiness solely, and not from any malice toward others.

Unless this clear distinction between vices and crimes be made and recognized by the laws, there can be on earth no such thing as individual right, liberty, or property; no such things as the right of one man to the control of his own person and property, and the corresponding and coequal rights of another man to the control of his own person and property.

For a government to declare a vice to be a crime, and to punish it as such, is an attempt to falsify the very nature of things. It is as absurd as it would be to declare truth to be falsehood, or falsehood truth.

These words were penned by Lysander Spooner. While I do not necessarily condone or encourage vice, many of which are sins against God or are personally unhealthy, the ability to practice vice is crucial to individual liberty. It is imperative that society regains a proper understanding of what constitutes a Crime–that is–acts perpetrated by one individual against another, which cause injury to his person or property. If society neglects this cornerstone, then the foundations of liberty will always be weak, and, at some point, everything we have built will come crashing down upon our own heads in the form of statism.

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Throw Me In Jail: I Favor Discrimination

Posted by swearnoallegiance on April 26, 2009

It’s all about private contract and free association. It has everything to do with freedom and is the essence of every decision that we make. Whether that decision be as benign as choosing vanilla over chocolate or something that is far more controversial such has not hiring a Jew, an African-American, or homosexual for the simple reason that you don’t like them. One has nothing to do with ethics and the other has everything to do with it. It is not a moral act to discriminate against someone based on their race, creed, or sexual proclivities, but that does not mean that there should be anti-discrimination laws. Some might call discrimination bad behavior; I call it a core element of freedom.

A private employer should be able to make a contract between himself and his employee, which satisfies both. He should be able to cater to whom anyone he wants or fill whatever niche he wants. There was a restaurant owner in 2006, for example, who refused to serve you unless you spoke English. Another example would be establishments which prohibited blacks from entry. An individual has every right to not associate with anyone whom he finds objectionable.

Advocates of anti-discrimination legislation believe that all people have the right to enter someone’s property and business and demand services from them. They believe that they have the right to restrict speech in the workplace. They engage in the fallacious argument, which says, “be tolerant of all except the intolerant” and would use the law to discriminate against those who hold on to controversial ideologies. By using the power of the jail cell, they will coerce a private business man into hiring someone that he doesn’t want to, serve people that he doesn’t want to, or allow people onto his property even if he doesn’t want them to be there. This is as egregious as the act that they rage against.

Strip people of these rights and you strip them of freedom. You don’t have to like it, but you don’t have to associate with people or businesses like that either.

The fact of the matter is, is that you do not have a right to work for me, a right to buy my product, a right to be on my property, or a right to utilize my services, or not be called a “fag” (for example) if I want to call you one. Is that unfair? Yes. But grow up and get over it. That’s the nature of freedom.

The only “business” that is truly obligated to treat you fairly and blindly is the government; federal or local. For brevity’s sake, we will not go into just how big of a failure government has been in this regard.

I don’t want anybody to experience discrimination. But it does happen, and in a free country or state, should be allowed to happen. There are other avenues available to deal with such behaviors or policies rather than through the law or the jail cell. Public opinion could sway against the business and cause it to go out of business or change its policies. Private avenues are far better than statist anti-discrimination laws.

All that being said, who here would dispute that it is illogical and spiteful to discriminate solely based a person’s race, creed, or orientation? That’s just bad business and bad ethics.

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