The Power To Classify Is The Power To Destroy

Classificationism
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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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Zero Tolerance = 100% Totalitarianism

Education, Firearms, Police Statism, Political Correctness, Totalitarianism, Victimless Crimes, Vulgar Politics
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How else could one explain this?

A 7-year-old child allegedly shot a Nerf-style toy gun in his Hammonton, N.J., school Jan. 18. No one was hurt, but the pint-size softshooter now faces misdemeanor criminal charges.

Dr. Dan Blachford, the Hammonton Board of Education superintendent, said the school has a zero tolerance policy.

“We are just very vigilant and we feel that if we draw a very strict line then we have much less worry about someone bringing in something dangerous,” said Blachford.

I bet “school boards” also have zero tolerance even against non-mainstream views (that is, against any view that dares to criticize the establishment’s views on everything, especially on the state).

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Clean Our Society* of Guns!

Firearms, Vulgar Politics
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* but surely not the guns of the state, that is. That’s the jive I get from RFK’s daughter’s comments on further limiting gun freedom:

Townsend said she believes the Justice Department and “this country have got to do a better job on gun regulation and on gun control and making our citizens safe.”

“As my father said, we glorify killing on movies and on television screens and call it entertainment,” she said. “We make it easy for men of all shades and sanity to acquire weapons, and violence breeds violence. Repression brings retaliation, and only a cleaning of our whole society can remove this sickness from our soul.”

Repression brings retaliation? Gosh, sounds also like an argument against foreign invasions and wars and the imposition of various kinds of legislation on other countries. If we want to be coherent about banning guns, should we not start with the military?

(Cross-posted on LRC.)

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Tina Fey Sucks (Politically)

Imperialism, Political Correctness, Pop Culture, The Left, Vulgar Politics, War
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This is why:

“I would be a liar and an idiot if I didn’t thank Sarah Palin for helping get me here tonight. My partial resemblance and her crazy voice are the two luckiest things that have ever happened to me. Politics aside, the success of Sarah Palin and women like her is good for all women…unless you’re a gay woman who wants to marry your partner of 20 years — whatever. But for most women, the success of conservative women is good for all of us. Unless you believe in evolution. You know, actually, I take it back. The whole thing’s a disaster.”

What a silly liberal! The disaster is that you and your kind continue to support Bush III’s empire of death, and have elevated the presidency even more after you claimed to hate the previous tenant. Sure, institutionalized prevention (and even support, because of the legislative baggage) of same sex marriages is indeed a problem, and not one to take lightly. Yet compared with the atrocities of war and empire, this rant is worthless, “Tina.”

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Entrepreneurial Knowledge And IP

IP Law
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Lately the issue of intellectual property has popped up to near the top of issues in libertarian circles, especially as it related to information, emulation and society. Though the emphasis appears to be on the side of the consumer (and of society), it is worth noting that whenever and wherever the state intervenes in the spread of information though IP legislation, the effect reaches entrepreneurs and managers and even venture capitalists and other investors. Entire areas of “common knowledge” can be wiped.

The mere existence of the state provides us with the most extreme example: there are no true markets–much less developed markets–for private courts and restitution companies. Sure, there is private police and mediation and arbitration but those still operate under the watchful eye of the state. Because the state has completely monopolized these “services,” there is no incentive for innovators and researchers to enter this field and offer services in a competitive environment. Thus, the result is literally a completely atrophied field of human knowledge (not counting armchair theorizers).

Prohibition gives us another perhaps less dramatic example. What sort of innovations could have been openly tested when alcohol was banned in the US? (When I mean innovation I am being very broad and want to include things beyond the actual product such as marketing campaigns, managerial developments in particular product development, distribution strategies and so on). One has to remember that prohibitions eliminate not just the actual product from the market. It also eliminates acting on the knowledge that surrounds all of the market operations of that product.

Some years ago a European friend of mine told me that because firearms are near completely banned in most places, there is no “gun culture.” When homeschooling is banned, fewer people think about homeschooling. Given enough time, most folks will probably think it normal for the state to handle education and will frown upon those who want to consider other options.

IP legislation bans certain patterns and processes from being freely used by non-authorized agents. It bans actual products, but it more explicitly bans information to be used for similar or other purposes. Like prohibition, IP legislation reduces the quality and amount of information that would have been otherwise available for other entrepreneurs to use. Indeed, imagine that you are on the floor of a stock exchange and it’s your first day. You learn that there exists a government-granted monopoly on the idea that “a forecast of drought in the midwest can increase the price of corn.” You are a commodities trader in charge of corn but it’s illegal for you to trade based on that knowledge. You look at the latest forecast and looks like a drought might hit this year. As a trader, you are now forbidden to act on that knowledge. Intellectual property legislation has a similar stifling effect on ideas and entrepreneurial knowledge. If affects end users of course, but also those in charge of providing humanity with the endless number of goods and services that we desire.

Patent law hinders building on existing efforts, forcing us to bypass the patent (thereby drawing resources otherwise available elsewhere) or to license it (adding a cost to the product or service), or finding other routes (again, incurring a cost). Like all state intervention in the market, IP legislation bans not just the proverbial wheel but also disrupts the knowledge transfer mechanisms which are essential to civilization itself.

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