Language

The Power To Classify Is The Power To Destroy

by Manuel Lora on February 3, 2011 @ 3:46 pm · 10 comments

The state has a fetish for categorizing and classifying things, as if the label you “officially” stick on things changes reality. Yet that classification has legislative teeth. Lately I have become more aware of this destructive power. Not because it comes from the state–I am already used to that, but because often times government agencies, part of the executive branch, are the ones operating under rather wide legislative powers granted by Congress. None of this is new, of course. It just seems that it is becoming more prominent as the number of bureaucracies and bureaucrats continues to increase.

Instead of private law or contracts or generally accepted, time-honored societal agreements, the state corrupts reason and destroys language, replacing common sense with legislative fiat, all while making us more depending on the state to determine what reality is and how we deal with others.

Examples abound. The state controls the definitions of marriage (and of divorce, of course). The state defines who is an employee, who is an employer, and whether you have had “income.” Is Julian Assange a journalist? If he “is,” then according to the state he is treated in a specific way.

Classificationism goes hand in hand with licensing and other forms of control and regulation. If you want to open a kitchen or restaurant, better have the proper licensing. Usually the state will require licenses if you have a certain number of customers or some other category. Then, legally, you “are not” a “restaurant” if you do not meet the guidelines required for the license. But if you do, then magically you and your property are subject to the state’s magical incantation (also known as legislation). The FCC has recently been trying to reclassify ISPs so that they fall under the agency’s telecommunications category, extending the FCC’s power to control the internet.

A rather egregious and recent example of, in this case, re-classificationism, has to do with Obama’s administration trying to “crack down” on companies that treat workers as independent contractors instead of employees (so that unions do not have access to those workers). The IRS and other agencies can determine if someone is a “contractor” or an “employee.”

Even when it comes to the basic rights that the government is “supposed” to protect, classificationism exists. Is email like regular mail?. Is there an expectation of privacy? It all depends on how the bureaucrats massage language in the political arena.

Should e-cigarrettes be regulated like real cigarettes? What “is” a “firearm” or a “machinegun”? Or an “assault weapon”? Where“is” Emmanuel’s “residence”? What is a “controlled substance”? (A toy soldier “is” a “firearm” in British airports, by the way).

One could point out that the agencies in charge will have to have rules and regulations of their own, as the details of implementing and executing Congressional mandates lies with them. That is certainly correct. However, it is striking to see just how much agencies can control by merely moving from category to category entire industries, peoples, occupation, objects and actions. The power to classify is the power to destroy.

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There’s no room for violence in our political discourse?

by Geoffrey Allan Plauché on January 13, 2011 @ 10:41 pm · 3 comments

in Democracy, Language, Nanny Statism, Police Statism, The Left, The Right, Vulgar Politics, War

There’s no room for violence in our political discourse? But politics is merely war by other means. Political discourse within the state inherently involves the threat of violence and is ultimately backed by it.

[Keep reading…]

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Article: Voluntary Governance

by Editor on November 14, 2010 @ 11:50 pm · 11 comments

in Anti-Statism, Articles, Education, Language, Libertarian Theory

The standard nomenclature of libertarianism and anarchy suffer the double disadvantage of counter-productive cultural baggage and the factual stigma of being at best unclear and at worst inaccurate. Adopting, instead, the language of ‘voluntary governance’ has a triple advantage. It is a convivial language which doesn’t scare people and turn them off of our arguments before we’ve even made them. It is simply a more accurate description of our desired objective. And, given the actual state of affairs, it not only describes our ends, but also points toward the most promising means of getting to the desired outcome. In other words, ‘voluntary governance’ is not only rhetorically more convivial and substantively accurate, but also transitionally facilitating.

Michael McConkey lives in the socialist hotbed of Vancouver, Canada, where the mountains continually remind him of how puny are the grand designs of the state’s social engineers. He has a Ph.D. in communication from McGill University in Montreal and free lances in teaching organizational theory. He’s just finishing a book that aspires to reinvent communications theory through the application of Austrian and libertarian ideas to a discipline that has been painfully positivist and anti-market.

Read the Full Article by Michael McConkey

Afterwards, discuss it below.

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Language Corrupted

by Manuel Lora on September 28, 2010 @ 10:48 am · 4 comments

in Business, Democracy, Language, Vulgar Politics

In my first blog post here I pointed out how statism and monopolies had affected language. There is more to be said about this.

It’s not just candidates who invade our homes with political propaganda and petitions for votes. It’s also the almost exclusively pro-state media and academics. 2010 being an election year, rhetoric is rampant. Indeed, discussions about taxes and spending are all too common (and all too sad). And tax talk, of course, is not free of the very same examples of language corruption that allows the existence of certain ways that we speak about taxes and the desire for them.

Take the statement, “taxes give us roads and police.” Putting aside the monopoly aspects, what seldom gets asked is whether roads and police are needed, how much and of what quality. When someone complains about taxes or government spending, soon enough the reply will have to do about us being able to have bridges and other services. Sure, tax money goes to those and thousands of other projects.

Imagine a similar situation in everyday life. We go to the grocery store with a shopping list. The first item is “apples.” Fine–we need apples. But the list only says that. We do not know how many apples, what size, kind, or how fresh they should be. What about price? Whenever statists speak of roads, schools, bridges, police, education, health care, or anything else “offered” by the state, there is no specific mention of the multitude of aspects that a market entrepreneur would have to figure out (such as quality, quantity, etc.). Society needs such and such. That is all. Maybe there are too many schools. Maybe there aren’t enough. Where should they be located? How many students? What about curricula

One can go on and on about such minutia yet the point remains–the populous is not sold (or offered really, as these are taxes after all) a specific amount or number of goods or services but rather abstract, homogeneous, indistinct, monolithic blobs. While the entrepreneur risks scarce goods (time, labor, capital) trying to determine future market conditions to provide his fellow man with a good or service, the political process promises vacuous public works which are, due to the way they are financed and allocated, necessarily inefficient, for they bear no resemblance to what you and I and everyone else wants. (Not to mention that for every government project there is an army of bureaucrats making decisions “on our behalf,” somehow a) reading the minds of all of society; and b) trying to average out our desires. The result, far from being what “the people want” is rather what the lobbyists and politicians want.)

These days the hot topic is employment, with candidates/potential busybodies-tyrants promising an endless supply of jobs. The next time someone promises “jobs,” be aware of how corrupted (and corrupting) that sounds.

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