Security, Identification, and the State

Immigration, Libertarian Theory, Police Statism, Private Crime, Private Security & Law, Technology, Victimless Crimes
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The fact that the state is deeply imbedded in the production of security and identification makes clear thinking on these matters difficult.

Some people think that since the use of identification cards is ubiquitous in transactions of almost every stripe (rent a car, borrow a book, borrow money or get a credit card, sign a contract, drive a car, rent videos, etc.) that libertarians are just bonkers to insist that people have a right to withhold tendering ID to a police officer. So, let us draw distinctions that matter.

When you provide ID to a private party, you have a choice NOT to provide ID. Since those parties are subject to competition, they only require ID as a condition of doing business if it’s necessary. That’s why you have to provide ID to get credit, to rent something (unless you provide a deposit of money), or when paying by check; but, you don’t have to give ID when buying groceries, eating out at a restaurant, or going to the movies.

The state proclaims ownership over roads, and sets all policies on those roads. For this reason, it was the state that came to be the issuer of drivers’ licenses, which claim to serve as proof that the driver is competent to drive and that the driver has corrected or uncorrected vision of a certain standard. Since almost every adult in the US has a driver’s license, they have also come to be used by many private companies as definitive proof of identification, and are also used by police for the same purpose.

Technological advances in computing and printing have made counterfeiting of IDs less costly and more successful, especially in the last decade. It is well known that just about any 19 year-old college student can get a fake ID to drink.

When the state requires the presentation of identifying documents (or more broadly, an inquiry into the identification of someone), some purposes are legitimate, but most are illegitimate. This is because some of what the state does is legitimate, but most of what it does is illegitimate.

On the legitimate side of the register, it deploys police to patrol to prevent crime, respond to crimes, and nab the bad guys. In the course of nabbing a bad guy, they “book” him, which is a procedure of identification (taking fingerprints and pictures, finding out where he lives by asking for a driver’s license, etc.). Of course, private security can and does nab bad guys, too. They don’t typically do the “booking” of a bad guy because they are required by law to turn him over to the state.

On the illegitimate side of the register, the state enforces a number of malum prohibitum offenses. Among these are the supposed crime of living and/or working in a country without the state’s permission and possessing contraband. Both of these supposed crimes are difficult to enforce, since they are victimless crimes. Because of this, states have evolved low standards of detention and search of people, including the requirement to show ID to officers.

Nowhere is this farce more ludicrous than in the crackdown on security at airports since the September 11, 2001 attacks. IDs are now checked 2, 3, or 4 times in the course of checking in, entering a screening area, passing through a metal detector, and boarding a plane, all with a government-issued ID — either a driver’s license or a passport. Even people as young as me, now 39, can remember a time (before the TWA flight 800 disaster) when showing ID at an airport was not even done once. This hyper-scrutiny of ID documents assumes that the IDs shown are not fakes, which is not at all a credible assumption.

Likewise, with the recent passage of the unjust law Arizona SB 1070, I expect that the industry of producing fake IDs will boom. Who will benefit? Well, some good guys will benefit, being able to evade the state’s crackdown on the non-crime of illegal immigration. But the burgeoning industry will probably cause the cost of fake IDs to fall, giving lots of bad guys these benefits as well.

So, SB1070 will probably cause an increase in “identity theft” and other acts of fraud.

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Left-Libertarians Admit Opposition to “Capitalism” is Substantive

(Austrian) Economics, Libertarian Theory, The Left
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I’ve noted in recent posts that while some left-libertarians seem to oppose standard libertarians’ positive endorsement of “capitalism” for semantic or strategic reasons, for others they actually oppose the substance of what libertarians mean by (non-crony, non-corporatist) capitalism (see, e.g., Capitalism, Socialism, and Libertarianism, and links in that post; see also Wirkman Virkkala’s post A capital ism?). An example of those with a more semantic or strategic concern would be Sheldon Richman, who is concerned about the “baggage” associated with the word, which will hamper our getting our pro-property rights, libertarian message out. Thus he favors using “free market” instead, but as far as I can tell this is similar to what we mean by “capitalism”–a libertarian society with a market based on respect for property rights, which of course includes private ownership of the means of production (and everything else). (See also Sheldon’s comment to Should Libertarians Oppose “Capitalism”?) Another would be Jock Coats, who notes here that while the baggage of the term “capitalism” might have turned him off had he not also seen the term “free-market anti-capitalism,” now that he understands the term he is “quite happy to be identified as an Individualist Anarchist/Mutualist and at times an Anarcho-Caplitalist,” and is “for keeping ‘capitalism’ as a word in our lexicon.”

To be clear, I think the semantical and strategic debate is one we can have, but it’s different than a substantive disagreement–and we can have that discussion too. But these are separate discussions and should not be intermingled. This leads to confusion at best and equivocation and dishonesty (on the part of leftists) at worst.

In my view there is little doubt that libertarians who have concerns about the appropriate words to use or strategic matters are of course libertarians. We just differ on the best way to convey and spread and communicate about our ideas. But those who disagree on substance may simply not be libertarians. This should not be masked by conflating the discussion with more mundane issues of semantics and strategy.

Now some of the left-libertarians more concerned about terminology and strategy deny or downplay the charge that at least some of them have much more than a mere lexical disagreement with us. So it is good that some of them are willing to explicitly admit this. Take, for instance, one Roman Pearah, who writes in Hmmm…No, Sir. I Don’t Like It.: …

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Four questions for “anti-capitalist” libertarians

(Austrian) Economics, Libertarian Theory, Political Correctness, The Left
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Sheldon Richman, one of the best libertarian writers of the last decade and an all around excellent human being (I’m a grateful person and as my teacher at FEE in 2003, I must say he was by far the most fun and persuasive of the lecturers in an already very good set of speakers) has jumped on the wagon of the Left-‘libertarians’ latest initiative to decry and abandon the use of “Capitalism” as a term by our movement.

Hereby I would like to address his post at The Freeman but also his subsequent retorts on Facebook to my objections on such a linguistic and strategic initiative, by asking him and others including Gary Chartier, Roderick Long and Kevin Carson these four questions:

Since words are not doomed to be deformed when born deformed in the same way they are not free from bad usage even if their origin is noble (see “Liberalism”).

  1. Well then, what do we want it to mean from now on?
  2. Is there another word that describes the full and complex system that is the real promise (and hope) behind a free society?
  3. Yet another unanswered question is: why won´t the next term be hijacked or deformed by the (socialist/statist/authentic) Left?
  4. And the last question Sheldon, Chartier, Carson and others haven’t addressed is: how will be keep a word pure when no social system is pure nowadays (if ever) unless we coin a term only when we have a pure system so it corresponds to a pure reality and cannot be misconstrued? Of course we need a term for an ideal so we walk towards it, unless I’m missing something here.

Stephan Kinsella keenly added to the discussion:

“What some left-“libertarians” oppose is the economic order most standard libertarians favor and expect to accompany an advanced free society–whatever word you slap on it. Thus they go on about mutual aid, wildcat strikes, the workers, localism, self-sufficiency, they condemn the division of labor, mass production, factories,employment, firms, corporations, “hierarchy,” international trade, not to mention “distant” ownership, landlordism, “alienation,” industrialism, and the like. Their agenda is not required by libertarianism–most of it is not even compatible with it, I’d say, so is unlibertarian. But this is a debate we can have–it’s on substance. I think this is a large motivation for their hostility to the word “capitalism”–they mean capitalism like we do, and dislike it. I don’t mean crony capitalism–but actual libertarian-compatible laissez-faire capitalism. They want libertarians to stop saying capitalism because they want us to adopt their substantive unlibertarian, Marxian agenda. Yet they pretend it’s just for strategical or lexical concerns–which it’s not. This is yet another reason I think we should dig our heels in and not give in: they will then count it as a substantive victory for unlibertarian, leftist ideas.”

This bit of course is completely relevant when an attempt (some bona fide would be a requisite for it) to answer these four questions is made.

Anti-capitalists: the ball is now on your side of the court.

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How Big Is Your Tent?

Democracy, Libertarian Theory, Political Correctness, The Left, The Right
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“I am not one of ‘those’ types, whatever type you have in mind.”

~ Anna O. Morgenstern

When I was regularly attending church, between the early and late 80’s, way back before becoming a fire-breathing atheist (and thereby damned myself to a life of unfettered and guilt-free joy on earth, followed by an eternity fighting off all manner of demons in a very hot place) I occasionally enjoyed attending church generally, and one church in particular.  It’s not really important for me to identify the specific denomination (although the members of this church would balk at the use of that term) except to say this:  The members of this church spent large portions of every Sunday congratulating themselves on the fact that they were the only people, religious or otherwise—particularly in comparison to the Catholics—who would ever see Heaven.  In retrospect, I reckon many denominations take this approach, although not to the extent of this particular faith.  Paraphrasing the comic, these people took it to a whole…’nother… level!  Never, not once in many stirring and thought-provoking sermons did the pastor—and I heard several different ones—fail to mention this ostensive fact.

Of one thing we can be certain:  They were certain.

That particular (and frankly, somewhat annoying) foible aside, the thing that comes to mind now—and this is an observation I had not previously considered in the context of libertarianism—is that this church was different in one other substantive way from any other church I attended during that approximately 10-year period.  By way of establishing my credentials for making such a comparison, it is worth noting that I grew up in an A.M.E. Zion Church in North Carolina.  I have attended Baptist churches, Methodist churches, predominantly black churches, predominantly white churches, Lutheran churches, churches where they have a professional-quality choir, churches where there is purposely no choir, churches where the pastor preaches for 2 hours, churches where the pastor preaches for 15 minutes, and pretty much everything in between.

As a matter of fact, I have attended churches where the members scream and shout like James Brown and churches where even a modest “Amen!” uttered under one’s breath draws harsh glares.  I’ve been to churches where they pass the offering plate every 10 minutes and churches where they never even bring money up.  (The latter is rare, but I digress.)  I’ve enjoyed church services that employed timing so precise as to engender thoughts of military marching bands and churches so entrenched in the concept of CP Time that the sermon had not begun by 2:30 p.m. even though the service began at 11:00 a.m.   (No, I’m not making that up.  Having had the good fortune to be seated in the balcony, I sneaked out the back around 2:45 p.m., pausing briefly to make eye contact with a girl I had met during Happy Hour the previous Friday night.  Again, I digress.)

Anyway, so I’ve been around when it comes to churches.

What made the particular church of which I speak so different?  And what does that difference have to do with libertarianism generally and anarchism particularly?  Simply this:  that church—like radical libertarianism—seemed to attract and accept all comers.  Wait.  Stop.  Don’t look up my e-mail address yet!  Please, save your card and letters.  I know your church is open-minded.  I know your church loves “all God’s children” and all that.  No, I don’t need any examples from last week’s Volunteer Recognition Dinner.

My point is simply this:  My experience has been that the folks who attend a given church—and who ascribe to a mainstream political ideology—generally tend to “look” the same, inside and out.  Not at the church about which I speak.  What was one major difference?  There were noticeable numbers of interracial couples.  And these weren’t just patrons, but members with responsibility.  Maybe now, in 2010, after the U.S. has elected a black president and we’re all hip-hopped, ride-pimped, and enjoying The Wire together over a bottle of “ultra premium” Ciroc vodka advertised on prime time TV by Puffy—yes, I still call him Puffy—this seems like a small point to notice.  I assure you, it was not.  In the early 80’s in Western New York the number of interracial couples openly walking the streets was already more than I had seen in my entire life growing up in the South.  And the number of interracial couples I saw at this church was still obvious even against that backdrop.  This church seemed to attract and accept those with differences.

And so it is with freedom.  Libertarianism, at its core, is about individualism, full-bodied, raw, thick and chewy, leave-me-the-hell-alone, individualism.  One does not need to understand methodological individualism to “get” this truth.  One just needs to be unique himself, while he also understands and accepts uniqueness in others.  (Diversity is the current buzzword, isn’t it?)  That’s how one can tell that the neocons or the Moral Majority members or Rush Limbaugh’s ditto heads are not libertarians, no matter if they attempt to steal the nomenclature.  When one is trying to get elected and/or take over the tools of coercion for himself, it requires that he appeal to an audience.  (This is also why voting cannot be a libertarian exploit.)  There is a reason why every presidential candidate wears a suit and tie that looks like they were purchased at the same store.  They were.  Not (necessarily) so with radical libertarianism!  If you’re not worried about forming a coalition for the express purpose of imposing your beliefs on everyone else, it frees you to just be yourself.  And with that freedom will come this inevitability:  Anyone who could not find true acceptance in one of the mainstream clubs will eventually find his way to yours.

Good for them!  Welcome.  Have a seat.  (Or stand.  It’s up to you, and always will be.)

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“Socialism,” the Tea Partiers, and Slate’s Political Gabfest

Anti-Statism, Libertarian Theory, Statism, The Left, The Right
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On today’s Slate Political Gabfest the hosts criticized Tea Partiers for misusing the word “socialism.” David Plotz said it’s “stunning” that Tea Partiers would say Obama is leading the country into socialism. After all, the Obamacare legislation benefited corporations such as insurance companies. The hosts accuse the Tea Partiers of basically engaging in equivocation: using the pejorative potency of “socialism” because of its traditional technical meaning but using the word in a looser sense to refer to “big government.”

But of course the Tea Partiers have a point. It is true that socialism in a technical sense has been used to denote economic or political systems in which the means of production are publicly owned–basically, the state owns land and factories, as under communism. But fascism and corporatism can be seen as variants of this basic idea: instead of directly and explicitly owning the means of production, the state indirectly controls such resources by its control and regulation of corporations, who nominally own capital. This was done under fascism in Hitler’s Germany, for example, which was of course socialistic–the word Nazi means “national socialist”. Thus, the Slate Political Gabfest pundits, while a bit condescendingly chastising the Tea Partiers for their naivety, are themselves a bit naive in contrasting fascism from socialism, as if they are totally distinct or opposed.

As I noted in What Libertarianism Is, Austrian economist and libertarian philosopher Hans-Hermann Hoppe, in his treatise A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism (chapters 3–6), provides a systematic analysis of various forms of socialism: Socialism Russian-Style, Socialism Social-Democratic Style, the Socialism of Conservatism, and the Socialism of Social Engineering. In fact, recognizing the common elements of various forms of socialism and their distinction from libertarianism (capitalism), Hoppe incisively defines socialism as “an institutionalized interference with or aggression against private property and private property claims.” Ibid., p. 2 (emphasis added). He goes on:

If … an action is performed that uninvitedly invades or changes the physical integrity of another person’s body and puts this body to a use that is not to this very person’s own liking, this action … is called aggression … Next to the concept of action, property is the most basic category in the social sciences. As a matter of fact, all other concepts to be introduced in this chapter — aggression, contract, capitalism and socialism — are definable in terms of property: aggression being aggression against property, contract being a nonaggressive relationship between property owners, socialism being an institutionalized policy of aggression against property, and capitalism being an institutionalized policy of the recognition of property and contractualism. [pp. 12, 7]

In other words, although the term socialism is usually narrowly restricted to public ownership of the means of production, from a political or ethical standpoint there is nothing special about “capital”; what is important about it is that it is a type of private property. Thus the essence of socialism is simply institutionalized aggression against private property. In this broader sense, any state action that infringes on property rights is socialistic. The Tea Partiers are right to sense the socialism of Obamacare, for it most certainly involves institutionalized, massive, and widespread interference with private property rights–e.g., the taxes that fund it are theft of private property; the economic regulations imposed on businesses and individuals are trespass. Where the Tea Partiers go wrong is in not realizing that Republican and conservative polices are also socialistic in this broader sense–from the drug war to the war in Iraq. (See also Friedman and Socialism.)

Yet again, we have an illustration of the fact that only libertarians oppose the state, aggression, slavery, and socialism in a principled, consistent way.

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