oluntary Musings

This is a rotating sample of Mr. Curley's contributions to The Voluntaryist over the years.
We hope you return often to enjoy! - last update : 12 August 1997

from Whole Number 47 - December 1990
• There are a great many things from which the government cannot protect you. From some of them you may not wish to be protected. But the two on top of the list of things from which it cannot protect you are, first, yourself, and second, itself.

  Another thing from which the government cannot protect you is its competition. There were some 2,200 violent crimes in New York City in 1988. That's one every four hours. Not just in New York, not just in Manhattan, not just on 42nd Street, but on one block! This is "the most dangerous street in the world", 42nd Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues. Note that this is in the city with the most stringent gun control laws in the country. In that same year, Washington D.C. had more violent deaths than Sri Lanka - which was then undergoing a civil war, and has twenty times the population. Again, Washington has some pretty stringent gun control laws.
  Meanwhile, the City of Boston, in its zeal to 'protect' us from 'assault rifles', empowered its Police Commissioner to enter businesses and homes to search for prohibited weapons. They also created an "Assault Weapons Board", another quango to be paid for by the taxpayers. Maybe they'll outlaw burglar alarms next.

  Government also won't protect you from other government. Hong Kong has more than 50,000 boat people from Vietnam. The colonial government would like to get rid of them. In its local version of the American and British Operation Keelhaul it talks of "involuntary repatriation" and even "mandatory repatriation." Two Labour politicians, Lord Ennals and Mr. Alf Dubs, suggest calling it an "orderly return programme." After all, as the two politicians put it, "terminology can be crucially important."
  The boat people might disagree, as evidenced by their placards, e.g.: "We'd rather die than be sent back." Unfortunately, the Hong Kong government, backed by the "anti-communist" Tories, may just present the refugees with exactly that choice.
  Hong Kong would be better off if they send the politicians to Vietnam instead.

  Just Say No: Mr. Richard Darman recently evoked howls of rage from his fellow politicians by issuing a 15 page essay explaining the Federal budget non-process from the point of view of a child. There were, of course, great outcries from Congress. These were not because he treated Congress like a bunch of children; they are the largest day care center of overage spoilt brats in the known universe. The real reason for the howls of rage, one suspects, is that he told it like it is.
  Mr. Darman compared the budget non-process to the Cookie Monster, Sesame Street's voracious entity. Personally, I think that a better analogy would be the alien blood-eating plant in the film LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS. They both keep demanding, "Feed me!" and both require the sanction of their victims to keep the victims enslaved. Just Say No to the Federal Budget Monster.

• You should have such problems...

  "Change should be expected. It's good to have a quick change. Those who resist will have problems, like Ceausescu."

  - Hun Sen
  Vietnamese-backed Cambodian PM

• If drugs were legal... Well, not all of them are, especially recreational pharmaceuticals. But in two places it comes pretty close. Legal (and unregulated and untaxed) drugs would presumably sell for a price much lower than their current prices, with government barriers to entry and high taxation by confiscation.

  Hong Kong has historically had a fairly high heroin addict population, and the stuff has become much cheaper there in recent years, declining to $5.00 a gram. This means that an addict can spend $20 per day to maintain a habit, within the reach of a Hong Kong unskilled laborer. This, according to common mythology (promulgated by Mr. Ed Bennett et al.), means that Hong Kong's heroin addict population of about 40,000 should be booming, and riotous crime in the streets should also be booming.
  Not so. "For the past five years, the number of newly reported heroin users has been decreasing slightly, and that's an encouraging sign," according to Hong Kong's commissioner for narcotics, David Weeks. Read carefully the following caveat from Mr. Weeks:

  "But other factors come into play. We've got a booming economy, which means that heroin addicts are finding it easy to get ajob, and therefore are more likely to support their habits and less likely to seek treatment. They're also less likely to turn to crime and get arrested, and come into the net that way."

  
  Notice that Weeks implicitly blasts another chunk of the common mythology: that heroin addicts can't get or hold down a job. Weeks' comments would suggest that the best way to handle the worst external effects of drug addiction (crime to support the habit) is not the Bennett and Co. draconian prohibition, but low drug prices (achieved, say, by legalization), and a booming economy (achieved, say, by massive deregulation). What this economy needs is detax ification.

• Worth reading:

  "It just seems to me that the most valuable thing any human has is the ability to educate himself, to find out about the world around him, to program his primary organ of perception - his brain. And that basic, inalienable right should be as independent of external factors as possible. Once a book is printed and acquired, it's yours. Nothing else is needed except a pair of eyes and daylight. Individual books have lasted for hundreds of years - do you really think that you can say the same of your little viewers, or computers, or whatever? If you have a hundred libraries stored on-cube, and your viewer breaks down, you have nothing. Give me an encyclopedia, and if it isn't totally destroyed by fire, I can dig it out, dry it off, piece it together, and still have something of value.
  "There is nothing more important than directing the flow of information into your mind. lt determines all - your attitudes, your actions, your life. You can rely on the visual and audible media all you want - but they should be in addition to reading, not in place of it. If other forms replace reading, then your input is restricted, and much more dependent upon other people, who may or may not have your best interests at heart."

  Steve Barnes
  STREETLETHAL,1983

• Responsible Journalism: Fort Collin's local paper, erroneously labeled THE COLORADOAN, carried an item about the "drug lords" of Columbia offering someone a reward of $30 million for killing George Bush. Well, if the US government is going to have a "war on drugs," I suppose self-defense is fair, But is Bush worth $30 million? Still, I wish the paper had included an address for contributions. (Thank you, Bruce Lockhart.)
  Meanwhile, Congresscritter Rangel of New York has introduced a bill to prohibit the export of semi-automatic weapons, except to governments (e.g. the Chilean), or by the US government. The excuse for this orgy of moralizing is that US weapons are showing up as the "weapons of choice" among the "drug lords", of Columbia. Sure they are: less than 1% of the weapons taken in raids in Columbia are American. Why pay American prices when you can get AK-47s in Cairo for $75? (And they wonder why the balance of payments is so great!)
  But the largest supplier of American weapons to the Columbian government is, of course, the US government. The $60 million of "special assistance" weapons went directly into Columbian Army warehouses. There, they will do exactly what stocks do in army warehouses all over South America do: "shrink" into the black market's hands. Call it informal privatization.

• False Dichotomies: There is a curious false dichotomy alive in the world, one that has caused a lot of grief. This is the "split" between social rights and economic rights. Social rights include such claptrap as the "right" to medical care or the "right" to a forty hour work week. Economic rights may be summed up in the only meaningful social right there can be: the right to bargain in a free marketplace.
  Rights are inherent in the nature of man. Since no other kind of man exists except as convenient bookkeeping figments, rights exist only in the individual man. For example, in some of the law on the Second Amendment, you read about the debate over the "collective right to bear arms" vs. the "individual right to bear arms." How there can possibly be a collective right to do something when no individual in the collective may do it is beyond me.
  This makes the State's claims to certain "rights" dubious in the extreme. How, for example, can the collective have a "right" to kill or maim when the individuals in the collective do not? The State's claim also implies the dubious assumption that it is the embodiment of the collective. Given the State's proclivity to make war on "its" "own" people, this claim is, at best, laughable.
  If such collective rights could exist, then other collectives would have better claim on them than the Universal State: the family, or the clan, or tribe. But these, too, are bookkeeping figments, shorthand for the list of individuals who make up the family, or clan, or tribe.
  If rights are individual, then there can be no right to that which someone else must provide. Thus, a "right" to universal free medical care breaks down, because someone must pay for that medical care. What if all of the doctors went on strike? What if no-one was willing to fund the system? Does one have the right to force some doctor to provide that care? If so, then (s)he is a slave. And do you want a slave for a doctor?

• Alphabet Soup: What with glasnost, perestroika, yachting off Malta and all that, I wonder if Mr. Gorbachev will tell Mr. Bush that KGB now stands for Kinder and Gentler Bolsheviks.

• Speaking of whom, what's the difference between the IRS and the KGB? The KGB doesn't expect you to provide the evidence against you.

  ---

  ---

  ---

  ---

  ---

  

  from Whole Number 27 - August 1987

• Recipe for Empire:
  

  "There is nothing perhaps more adverse to nature and reason than to hold in obedience remote countries and foreign nations, in opposition to their inclination and interest. A torrent of barbarians may pass over the earth, but an extensive empire must be supported by a refined system of policy and oppression: in the centre, an absolute power, prompt in action and rich in resources; a swift and easy communication with the extreme parts; fortifications to check the first effort of rebellion; a regular administration to protect and punish; and a well-disciplined army to inspire fear, without provoking discontent and despair."

  Edward Gibbon
  DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE
  p.1710

  
  

• The Politicisation of Pensions:
  U. S. public pension funds now run to some $500 billion. California's alone is some $36 billion. This is out of some $1.5 trillion in total U.S. pension funds, or $2.4 trillion world wide. Question. What happens when pension funds get political?

  The recent spate of holier than thou disinvestments in South Africa has a bear trap in it for the unwary fund trustees. The idea is to unload stocks of companies which do business in South Africa, to force them to pull out of South Africa.

  Under the current U.S. laws for pension funds, investments must be ones that a "prudent man" would make. Would a prudent man disinvest in South Africa? Just as the choice of disinvestment is a political one, so the outcome will be decided partially by political forces as well as investment ones.

  The bear trap is this: what if the funds which do not divest out perform those which do? Under current U.S. investment law, the trustees who disinvested could well be sued, and for megabuck amounts. Or suppose the divested funds outperform the others? It could be worse. Does the "prudent man" make investment decisions based on political criteria? If so, by what criteria? The opportunities for abuse of that $500 billion abound. To give one possibility, suppose a fund's trustees refused to invest in corporations doing business with the Soviet Union. It is certainly a high moral stance, but is it a prudent investment? What about funds that refuse to invest in companies that oppose big government?

  
  

• New Drugs:
  Have you heard about the new mind altering drug? It's called "MBA". It makes you want to buy a BMW.

  
  

• Roman Rothbardians?
  Latin libertarians? Italian individualists? In his DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE, Gibbon described the municipal government of Rome in the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries. From that description, the following sentence is taken:

  ..... their frequent trials of robberies, rapes and murders are attested by the laws; and the weakness of these laws connives at the licentiousness of private feuds and armed associations for mutual defense." (p. 2419, emphasis added.)

  Gibbon, not having voluntaryist leanings, does not note that the private feuds are inherent in human nature, the weakness of the laws inherent in the nature of the state, and the associations for mutual defense a natural response to both of the former.

  
  

• Oxymoron Collection:
  I have made a minor hobby of late of collecting oxymorons. These are self contradictory phrases, usually a noun and an adjective. The classic in this area is, of course, "military intelligence". (Why do you think they're so interested in artificial intelligence?) Add to this "punk music", "civil lawyer", "honest politician", "television writer", "tax reform", "Justice Department", "modern war", "Government Ethics Committee", and "civil servant".

  Then there are phrases redolent with redundancy, like "criminal lawyer". Further nominations in both categories are welcome.

  
  

• Farm prices:
  With some $3.2 billion in foreign aid the U.S. government has secured the Pakistani government's aid in its "war on drugs". In November of 1986, the Pakistani government offered farmers in one district of Frontier Province free seed and fertilizer, low interest loans, 600 visas to work in the Arabian Gulf area, new jobs in forestry projects and just plain handouts. No dice, said the farmers. First, they don't trust the government, and second, they are currently making some 12,000 rupees ($910) an acre growing poppies, which is more than they would have gotten from the government, or anyone else.

  Meanwhile, an Iowa acre of federally subsidized corn is good for $375 per annum. Who says markets don't work?

  
  

• Thought for Today:
  

  "Our managers and chief engineers don't know how to organize an industry, the deputy minister doesn't know, and neither does the minister."

  
  

  Fidel Castro, 1986

---

---

---

Explore The Home Page

Thanks for visiting! and please come again.

---

---

---

---

---

---

---

---

---

---

---

---

---

---

---