Per Bylund

Business Scholarship with a Swedish-Austrian Twist

Politics

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The Profit Motive Drives Government

[ad]When analyzing the State (government) it is often claimed that it has nothing to do with market. In a sense, this is absolutely correct: the State is coercion, force, and violent means whereas the market (in a fundamental way) is the opposite, as it is based on voluntary cooperation and freedom to associate. However, if we take on another point of view it should be fairly obvious that the size of the State is utterly dependent on a market-place incentive: the profit motive.

Of course, the State has no competition – actually, it prohibits competition. Also, it does not work in a market and it does not offer goods and services to customers who have the right not to pay for them. Also, the State isn’t known for making profits – it seems utterly inable even to balance the budget. In this sense, the State doesn’t even behave like a monopolist; even monopolists earn profits, which are maximized through utilizing the influence of the monopolist on the market (also known as “market power”).

It might not even be true that the officials of the State make profits, even though they are sometimes (or always, depending on your philosophical view on government) overpaid. The profits politicians make through accepting bribes (“campaign contributions” from special interests) aren’t really profits made by the State, so in no sense does it provide prosperity to its “shareholders,” the citizenry and those elected for office.

We might even ask: Has there ever been a State that has consistently balanced the budget or had excess funds at the end of the year? The answer is most likely no.

But I would still argue that it is the profit motive that drives the State, or rather that it is the profit motive of those who, according to the myth, control the State. It is the profit motive of voters that drive the State.

People in general seem to believe that the State is a good deal for them. Taxes are paid, but most people tend to think they get more benefits from the State than they pay in dues. In some cultures, like in the Scandinavian Jante based culture, this statement is equivalent to getting benefits for which someone else pays more. You are better off is if you are worse off but someone else is even more worse off.

Most people have adopted the illusion of somebody else paying most of the goods and services provided by the State, and thus they, relative to other people, come out as “winners.” This illusion is supported by the State, which often makes sure to have a system of progressive tax rates, meaning “the rich” pay higher percentages in taxes, while offering loopholes, rebates, and deductions effectively making the tax system regressive rather than progressive.

As my undergrad economics professor Ken Schoolland frequently reminded the class, “there has never been a tax system beneficial for the poor.” The reason for this is simply that the rich have the means to get professional help to find loopholes, and they also have the means to purchase influence through lobbying. And, which is an often disregarded fact, those elected to office are often both rich and influential – why would they tax themselves to have others reap the benefits?

But this illusion of who pays the taxes that finance the goods and services provided by the State seems literally impossible to do away with. People genuinely believe they are better off (or less worse off) than others because of the tax system. And since taxes means there is an enormous pool of resources managed by the State, there is plenty of reason to make sure the benefits granted are granted to you.

The incentive is thus not to lower taxes and also not to decrease State spending – it is to redirect spending in such a way that it benefits you (or to increase spending on the benefits you find most valuable). People in general recognize that a small tax cut for everybody means you get a little more money out of each pay check, whereas a small tax increase could mean you pay a little more but get a lot more benefits (assuming you receive the benefits, of course).

In this sense, it is the profit motive that drives the constant and increasing growth of the State. The individuals in the voting populace correctly identify the chance to make a profit while others (are forced to) pick up the bill. The profit motive, as those of us who are economists know very well, is a very strong motive power (whether it is expressed in monetary terms or not) and it fundamentally affects the political environment.

It is thus the profit motive of individual citizens, suffering from the illusion that benefits handed out by the State are actually to their benefit, that makes for a constant growth in the State’s powers and the size of its budget. It is the same profit motive that gives politicians the opportunity to seize power through outbidding competitors in terms of number and size of State benefits.

Politicians are therefore not guilty of how power politics has come to [not] work, even though they are of course guilty of their actions. The incentive structures or framework of rules making the political system what it is, is the product of individual citizens believing they are acting rationally: asking for [increased] benefits for which they mistakenly think somebody else will pay.

Without exaggeration, it can be claimed that this is the fundamental structure of all political systems of power: they always tend towards increased State budgets and promises of benefits.

It is easy to realize that the continuation of this logic, letting the system of politics have its course, eventually leads to a change of the meaning of taxes in society. From being a “necessary evil” increased taxes will tend towards meaning “increased benefits [at somebody else’s expense]” and thus from negative to positive. This is the case in extreme high tax States such as Sweden, where political parties can get elected through promising to raise taxes. The voting population in such societies have learned to directly associate “higher taxes” with “greater benefits.”

What drives people in such societies is the same motive power as in all people: to maximize utility. The profit motive is one of the human being’s most fundamental instincts; to maximize the outcome of one’s “investments” is a means for survival.

This is a major reason why political systems, like any system of power, are dangerous – to all of us.

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Driven by Fear

[ad]As the frequent reader of this blog has probably noticed, I am fascinated by war. This is not a fascination of war per se, but a fascination for the rhetoric, logic and politics of war. I have previously discussed so-called pro-war libertarians and their contradictory standpoints. However, there is a much more generally accepted view of the war in Iraq, which is also fully applicable on most wars, that I would like to discuss briefly. It is the matter of war for freedom.

It is often argued that the terrible terrorist deeds on 9/11 were carried out by Islamic fundamentalists who despise the Western way of life: they were willing to blow themselves to pieces in order to threaten the Western rights and freedoms. They “attacked us because of our freedoms,” as it is often argued.

In a sense, this argument may very well be valid. There is no reason to assume religious fanatics do not feel such hatred to other cultures and religions that they cannot commit suicide bombings “in the name of god.” There are a lot of crazy people out there, and religion has proven to be a very efficient catalyst of such manias. After all, the crusades were not carried out because the people in the Middle East were a direct threat to the European society, culture, or religion. Europeans traveled thousands of miles to slaughter people of different religious convictions simply because they had other convictions (and sometimes because they lived where Jesus presumably was born).

So there is no doubt a possibility, how big is difficult to say, that the maniacs hijacking airplanes on 9/11 2001 and crashing them into the Twin Towers were motivated by their personal religious beliefs to carry out those terrible deeds. And just as Christians claim to preach the “message of love” through their religion, even though it is responsible for crusades, witch hunts, etc., it is also possible that there are Islamic fundamentalists who celebrate the hijackers as “heroes.”

This is however not the main point of this post; it is but a brief introduction, touching the fact that there are many possible reasons why people act certain ways.

The official propaganda (all one-sided “information” with a purpose from government should be considered propaganda) says they attacked the Western world because we are free and prosperous. This view makes us assume that freedom and prosperity are not part of normal life in the Middle East. I am not sure this is true – there are wealthy parts in the Middle East, especially in the oil producing countries, and there are also a number of freedoms that the general public (i.e., men – usually not women) enjoys. Terrorists aren’t necessarily poor, ignorant and unfree – Osama bin Laden, e.g., is (was?) an extremely rich and educated man who still developed a very narrow, evil and fundamentalist mindset.

However, let’s have a look at the argument for the anti-terrorism policies adopted by the United States and European governments since 9/11, policies often referred to as the “War on Terrorism.” And indeed this “war” includes real wars, such as the war on Iraq and possible future attacks on Iran and Pakistan.

The argument is based on the official truth (emphasis on official, not truth) that the terrorists attacked us and will continue to attack us because we in the Western world are “free and prosperous.” If this is truly the reason they attacked (and will attack again) there is no way of protecting ourselves – it is the perfect argument in politics: the solution offered to this problem is The Only One. If we are attacked because we are free, there is nothing we can do but kill them first. Since they are fundamentalists they do not care about their earthly lives, they will gladly kill themselves in order to bring our great society to its knees – they would be honored to die in order to make us unfree and poor.

If we take a little time studying this argument it no doubt seems a bit nutty. Why in the world would someone want to travel secretly to the other side of the planet in order to kill people they have never met (and never will) only so that other people they have never met (and never will) will get less wealthy? Well, that’s the reason these people are always referred to as fanatics or religious fundamentalists – if they are not fanatics or fundamentalist they would reason logically and would thus never go through all the trouble only to die (even if it did mean they would be awarded with 72 virgins in the afterlife). So we can clearly see it is necessary that the argument contains both parts – they are fundamentalists (1) and we are “too” free and prosperous (2).

Now we move on to the counter measures, since the argument clearly shows (or is designed to show) that there is no other way out of this mess than to wage war on fundamentalists and terrorists and engage in such a war until all of them are literally wiped out. “If we do not kill them first, they will kill us.”

If we accept the above assumptions and argument as true we would find support to wage wars, even though they would be costly. As long as the wars don’t cost as much as our prosperity it could be argued we are better off spending our money killing these people off so that they cannot kill us. And the sooner we do it the better.

But what about the “security” measures taken here at home? Both in the United States and the European countries the governments have gone a long way to control their peoples and get rid of their rights. In the United States we have the so-called Patriot Act and Military Commissions Act that explicitly reject and nullify a lot of the basic rights of freedom American citizens are guaranteed through the Constitution. They also effectively do away with a lot of the formal limits put on the executive branch of government in order to protect the citizenry from their government. In the European countries the same kind of measures have been taken for the same reasons, even though there is no constitution to protect such citizens’ rights in the way the United States Constitution supposedly does.

It is argued these measures are necessary to fight the “War on Terrorism” and that we need to be loyal and patriotic to our governments during this time of distress. Maybe so, but let’s go back to the reason argued for instating these measures: “they kill us because we are free and prosperous.” With these new policies of government allowing all branches of government seem to have gotten the “right” to spy on its citizens, jail people without trial or suspicion, steal people’s properties without even telling them why, torture them, and keep secret prisons where literally any horrors could be done to anyone who happens to be in the wrong place at the same time. What this means is simply that we are free no longer.

Using the official truth about the reasons for future terrorism, is there reason for the terrorists to attack us? Not really; the freedoms they supposedly hate so much that they could kill others and themselves to stop are not there anymore. The Western world isn’t as free as it was pre 9/11, and it is getting less free every day – through our Western governments making sure to tighten the grip they have on their territories and citizens. In order to protect us from the terrorists, motivated by our freedoms and prosperity, our governments have stripped us of our freedoms and prosperity.

The ultimate effect of the War on Terrorism is thus that we have approached the fundamentalists and agreed to their terms: they don’t like our freedoms, so we have dismantled our rights and freedoms; they don’t like our prosperity, so we are investing large sums of our money in foreign wars and tightening government control of our society. If anyone should be happy with the way things have turned out, and the way things are heading, it should be the people who planned and carried out the attacks. They have won this battle even if they might end up getting killed by the Western war machine governments and their poor and unfree subjects.

Yet the risk of terrorist attacks is claimed to still be there. So we still, they assure us, need to be afraid – very afraid. The question is simply, what else do we need to give up?

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On the “Ron Paul Problem”

[ad]My previous Strike the Root article on libertarianism and Ron Paul’s campaign for the republican nomination for the presidential election (here) has gained some attention. I expected to receive a large number of e-mails from “Ron Paulians” about how Ron Paul and the “rEVOLution” is about to save the world. To my surprise, most e-mails I received were from libertarians sharing my analysis.

This fact should mean, and I am generalizing of course, that the support for Ron Paul is real in the sense that it is not only a libertarian phenomenon. The thousands of people supporting Ron Paul’s campaign are not simply libertarians calling themselves republicans only to vote for “their” candidate. There are no doubt many such people too, but I suspect a large number of his supporters are actually republicans or “independents” in the party political sense. His support is real.

All comments I have received, however, are not positive. In a debate on Strike the Root following the publishing of my article, a number of points have been raised about the analysis in my article and arguments have been articulated to show how I am wrong. I dedicate this post to discuss two such points that I find particularly interesting – and that I think strengthens my view.

Initial remarks

Before beginning the discussion I would like to make one thing very clear in order to avoid confusion. I do not in any way support politics or political means, neither as a possible nor a moral means of change or liberty. In my view, I do not see politics as something that could ever bring about liberty – politics is a game of and for power, and as such it is utterly immoral and evil. This does not, however, mean I do not recognize differences between regimes; I would certainly be better off in one of the fifty united states under the constitution as it is written than in, e.g., Hitler’s Germany or Stalin’s Soviet Union.

But I find those differences only different in degree, not in principle. The American constitutional republic is an oppressive state system of power just as Stalin’s USSR was, it is just that the systems grant their subjects different sets of rights and “freedoms.” Call it what you will, but both are state systems and as such I do not support them. One should not refrain from calling things what they are – and one should certainly not support something that is evil but “less evil” than other possible alternatives.

Some say it is a matter of semantics to not support but be “against but not as much against as other alternatives.” That statement is a mistake: support means action in favor of, whereas I have dislike for Stalin’s and Hitler’s state systems just as I dislike the constitutionalist union (federation). There are degrees to dislike without “less degree of dislike” necessarily transforming into support.

Having said this, I should admit that I would of course rather see Ron Paul as president than any other republican or democrat candidates. It is rather obvious to me that Paul might cause a lot less harm (perhaps even some good) to me than the others. But this doesn’t mean I support him as president – I don’t. Choosing between evils means you choose an evil, and I refuse to take on such responsibility. The fact that the political system is a system for creating a sense of legitimacy for power and rule should make it clear to all libertarians that the involvement in such a system (and thereby support of it) is not compatible with the non-aggression principle.

Now, to the points raised. The first one is about Ron Paul’s rhetoric and what he can possible do – and why he supports certain things simply because they are in the constitution. I call this argument “He is against the state – but follows the law.” The other argument is more practical and claims Ron Paul as president would make a hell of a change.

He is against the state – but follows the law

It may very well be true that Ron Paul is a man who is strictly opposed to the state. I personally doubt it, but I don’t know him and therefore I won’t say it isn’t true. However troubling the statist libertarian (read: minarchist) view is, I find the supporting argument much more annoying. “Ron Paul follows the law.”

Of course, this argument is usually not stated this way, but rather in terms such as “he has taken an oath to uphold the Constitution” or that “he uses the constitution as an argument against his fellow law-makers.” It is true that presidents and members of Congress alike take an oath to uphold the constitution. But it is equally true that very few throughout history have ever taken that oath seriously. So why would anyone who is against the state take that oath seriously, with the only effect being to restrain one’s possibilities to get rid of the state once and for all?

Since no one else on “the Hill” cares at all about the constitution and they frequently move to enact laws contradicting it only to further the state’s (their own) powers, then what good does the only person opposed to such behavior taking the oath seriously do? If this is really the case, if the libertarian on “the Hill” is really pro liberty, then the oath has only one real effect: it stops moves for liberty while having no effect whatsoever on those working against liberty. That should be reason enough to not care about the oath nor the constitution.

Another reason for working to uphold the constitution while not really believing in it might be that the person in office takes his or her word seriously. This is a ridiculous argument – if the person elected for congress is really for “more liberty” than allowed by the constitution, then being a member of congress itself is so evil and contradictory a position that breaking an oath to uphold something one does not believe in doesn’t change a thing. It only means tying one’s own hands – for what reason?

In either case, the libertarian on Capitol Hill has no reason to obey and uphold the constitution. It could be a strategic move with underlying good intentions, but the road to hell is paved with good intentions. There are no arguments for working politically for the constitution unless one either 1) believes in it or 2) has as [sole] aim to “stop the others” – or both. If one believes in the constitution, which I believe is the case for Ron Paul, one cannot be anti state (and thus the argument above falls). And if one is only trying to stop the ongoing destruction in Washington, DC, then there is no reason to believe this person is at all libertarian – what are the ideals and ideas?

I believe that Ron Paul fits both – he both believes in the constitution (and is thus not anti state) and works mainly to stop the “madness” in the federal government.

Now to the second and final point:

He can and will make some real change

There should be no doubt this statement is only possible to make if one has a fundamental belief that change is, in fact, possible through the system. Without such a belief the statement simply wouldn’t make sense. At all.

It isn’t enough to claim the system has, indeed, been changing – I do admit to the factual statement that the system isn’t perfectly stagnant, it changes all the time. But I realize that the system continuously changes for the worse, not for the better. The system, no matter how “system” is defined, has never worked to strengthen liberty or roll back the powers of the state (these are really synonymous statements).

There are nevertheless events to the benefit of liberty, usually as a result of popular distress and risk of revolution or “losing control” or “chaos” (the latter two are usually used to describe such times when the masses no longer accept the authorities’ oppressive measures). But these events are only temporary setbacks for those with power – they realize they have tried to increase their powers a little too fast, and thus “take it back” only to do the same thing again at a later time when people aren’t watching (or have calmed down or are focused on something else).

The fact is that real change in society to the benefit of liberty only comes about as revolutionary leaps forward rather than gradual change. Such leaps may be the result of a tipping point having been reached, but the change is always great and happens almost all at once. Lady Liberty never approaches taking baby steps.

That said, what could Ron Paul do as president? With George W. Bush having made the U.S. presidency more powerful than admitted in the constitution, there should be some possibilities of change. Setting aside the fact that all such powers are unconstitutional (and thus president Ron Paul, taking the oath seriously, wouldn’t be able to use them – only to abolish them), Paul could make use of the presidential power as commander in chief and stop the slaughter and bring all troops home.

But what about spending? What about the welfare state? Those are matters for Congress and for president Paul to accept Congress’s decisions. Will Congress change because Ron Paul is president? He seems to think so, and maybe it will. But will it change radically? Hardly.

It seems to me what people in general hope for is that Ron Paul as sworn president means something much more than someone taking the oath seriously. It means the whole American society has changed, that the people has gotten sick and tired of government and wishes to abolish most (or all) welfare state programs. With such a change Congress will no doubt change radically as well – the reps and senators love their privileges too much to have ideals, and thus would throw out whatever agendas they have in order to stay in power and keep the people’s “confidence.”

But such a change really has nothing to do with Ron Paul and it has nothing to do with his presidential campaign. Rather, a Ron Paul presidency would then be an effect of a radical change that has already happened. So radical change by president Ron Paul is not an option – radical change would happen anyway, not depending on who is president. And if this is really the case, then why would Ron Paul have to adopt the view that he must restore the constitution (assuming the claim that he is in reality an enemy of the state)?

If there is no such radical change, which to me seems a lot more plausible, then Ron Paul as president would have to work with a lot of resistance – from both the people and Congress. Why anyone would believe such a presidency would mean real and concrete change I do not know. Politics, after all, is a means for oppression and destruction of liberty – not a means for liberation.

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How About Some Honesty?

[ad]In recent discussions with so-called pro-war propagandists I have begun to think about the validity of arguments. This is not validity in a philosophical sense, but rather an assessment of the argument’s validity in terms of the proponent’s honesty. Of course, one shouldn’t “shoot the messenger” even if the message itself is fundamentally offensive or disturbing. But it should be fair to require some honesty from the proponent of certain policies or advocates of certain measures.

Too many people have very clear and convinced positions on issues without making the connection between the view and the values, or the view and their own persons. Is it possible to advocate certain views without also advocating the values necessary for these views? Is it possible to advocate certain views without accepting them if they were applied to one’s self?

I would call such an advocate dishonest, the very opposite of a serious debater. To me, it is obvious and necessary that I myself accept the content and consequences of my views if I advocate them. I cannot advocate what I cannot personally accept; I cannot believe what I cannot personally endorse.

But to most people it seems totally acceptable to advocate something for other people that they would never ever accept if the same happened to themselves. This is where the war issue is interesting – war proponents seem to have no problem with advocating and even calling for war, bombing, and murder on foreign soil, and they have no problem with torture, warrant less searches, phone taps in their own country. The argument is often that is is for their own “security” and that the alternative is worse. Yet none of the war proponents I have discussed this issue with would accept the authorities torturing them, searching their homes without warrant, or listening in on their private phone calls.

I guess they reason they are not the enemy. After all, they didn’t do anything (except for advocating that these measures should be used on other people).

Sure, I’m not being completely fair. Most of us think murderers should be locked up for decades in jail or even get “the chair” without accepting the state locking us up or frying our brains. We didn’t murder anyone, so the analogy isn’t perfectly valid.

It is however true that advocating torture, even though most people know anyone tortured would willingly tell the torturer whatever he wants to hear (rather than the truth), doesn’t mean only the guilty will be tortured. It doesn’t mean the advocate of torture will not be tortured – there may be coincidences or leads making it “necessary” to torture the torture-advocate sooner or later. So the analogy is also not as bad as you might think.

But there are other arguments that even more clearly show that people generally leave themselves out of the “equation.” And this is, I’m afraid, a thesis that is valid no matter if the person advocating whatever measure is a member of the large number of average Joes, a powerful politician, or a philosophy scholar.

Take for instance the argument for war. I have personally no understanding whatsoever for this position – I cannot understand how anyone can actually argue for such a terrible thing. And I cannot for the world understand how someone could claim the right to argue for something that effectively and violently ends the lives of thousands or even millions.

I could perhaps see the logic if war is argued for as a despicable but “necessary” last resort, that all other means have been tried and it is the only way to not become extinct yourself, to engage in war. But to advocate waging war in order to stop someone from having a weapon that they might be trying to make, which they might then use, and – in that case – perhaps could use against “us”? (Read: USA vs. Iran.)

This is certainly not a last resort kind of argument – this is advocating war.

So what if you advocate war? The argument usually goes something along these lines: It is “necessary” to wage war for “our safety” and [sometimes] “we” have a “responsibility” or “duty” to protect our culture/traditions/values/part of the world/…

Now, if this argument is valid philosophically (and let’s assume it is), then what can we say about the “messenger”? If it is really “our duty” to go to war, then it should be each and every individual’s duty to do so. It should also be the duty of the person using the argument – I would say it is especially this person’s duty, since he or she uses the argument and makes the claim that there is such a duty.

In the case of Iran, or Iraq for that matter, any person advocating the war should have the same duty as any other person using that argument or being included in the “we” used. The duty is his or hers as much as the it is the duty of the people who have signed up with the US Army. Actually, since it is so easy to join – even if you are not an American citizen – practically anyone could do it.

So what about this duty of ours, how many of the advocates for war have joined the Army (or Navy or Air Force or whatever)? It is safe to say most of them haven’t. Now how could this be?

I haven’t found a universally acceptable answer to this question yet, and I’m sure there isn’t one right answer for all of the war advocates. But I would believe the argument would usually include some kind of avoidance of the issue at hand – either the person would claim to be “too important” to leave their current job/community/family/whatever or they have already “done their share” or “fulfilled their duties” (whatever that means). I would also expect most of these arguments are really ways to hide the fact that these people would never go to war themselves, but they all want to “enjoy” watching the slaughter on CNN with their team “winning” while having a few beers.

This is certainly an utterly dishonest position, no matter what made-up argument they use for not enlisting themselves. (By the way, would they support members of their families enlisting? No?)

I have come across a large number of Swedish conservatives and libertarians supporting the war on Iraq and a future war on Iran, but none of them have joined the US Army. Many of them have even managed to avoid the Swedish draft! Is this an honest position? Can you really argue for war yet yourself act to not be part of the war machine and be credible? I doubt it. I find it utterly dishonest.

But this problem of debating, the inability of some people to connect their arguments with their actions, is a general problem in argumentations per se. It is not specifically a war problem, even though it is much more evident in this issue since it so obviously is possible and even rather easy to “do you duty” yourself. This problem of advocating one thing but not doing it yourself is prevalent in discussions on philosophy, morality, and politics. Where does it come from? And, more importantly, why do we accept it?

As far as I am concerned, an American saying pinpoints the problem at hand with these dishonest debaters: they don’t “put their money where their mouths are.” They certainly don’t, they call for certain precautions and actions taken by the anonymous masses while never ever thinking the same argument should be equally applicable to themselves. Actually, the guy next door might very well be arguing for the same thing – having you in mind as front-line trooper for the next “surge.”

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On the Peace Prize and Politics

In my recent Strike the Root article I discuss the true nature of the Nobel Peace Prize. Apart from an apparent error in the beginning of the article (Nobel dedicated most of his fortune to the Prize, not all of it), the article truthfully tells a story of the Prize based on simple economic analysis based on investigating “who benefits”. In a way, the analysis is based on Public Choice, since it necessarily, however indirectly, includes analyzing the Norwegian national parliament and how its interests (rather than those of Alfred Nobel) affect the appointing of members to the Peace Prize Committee.

The problem stressed in the article is general, even though it uses an explicit example: the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize awarded to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and former US Vice President Al Gore. The generality of the problem lies in the fact that politics tend to make things worse rather than guarantee an emphasis on the public good as opposed to private goods (if there is such a conflict at all). Actually, politics always act degenerating while most people tend to believe in political rather than private solutions. Why is this so?

One obvious reason is the common myth of democracy: that the people “rule themselves” and that public officials thus are public servants. There is however no reason to believe this is the case, and there are no empirical facts confirming that guardianship (with respect to individual citizens’ rights and interests) is what guides individual action in the political apparatus or the bureaucracy. It is however prevalent in the rhetoric, which seems to fool even some scientists that there is an unselfish dedication to what is right inherent in public bailieship.

It should be interesting to point out that the latter is a conscious mechanism or means in politics to cause the former. Guardianship rhetoric is often used by public officials in order to make the state appear as a guardian of the common interest, since that is clearly in the interest of the official. (This is however not considered a very interesting fact to analyze in political science.)

Back to the point. What does political action inherently bad as a means compared to any other possible means? It is not the fact that individual interests in the contemporary administration that makes politics itself a bad solution, even though such interests and actions [when not controlled] add costs to the solution. We know that government solutions are often or always more costly than any private enterprise, but that doesn’t necessarily mean all solutions are bad. And it also doesn’t sufficiently show or explain how this is so.

We need to accept the fact that politics is not essentially a construct to achieve certain societal ends, even though many theorists in history, as well as currently, desperately line up unfounded claims that this is in fact the case. Politics is not a means to structure a body so that it efficiently can create value. Politics is also not an arrangement to provide a basis for action or change in an organization. Rather, politics is a construct to satisfy a need for some to control, constrain, and command.

In political science speak, politics has the purpose and ability to concoct and superficially “create” a common interest from aggregating the interests of many.

As we know, it isn’t possible to measure interests or values and it also isn’t possible to satisfy two distinctly different interests through offering a “middle way” solution. In such a solution both interests are left essentially unsatisfied, rather than only one of them in a winner-takes-it-all game. (In a market solution, of course, no interest need be left unsatisfied, since the market can offer multiple solution to a problem. But this is not the topic of this post.)

The interests that always lose in a game of politics is the the interests of the public. The reason for this is that “the public” isn’t a whole and thus does not ever have one distinct interest in any issue. There are multiple interests, often as many as there are individuals, and they cannot be satisfied at once in the legal framework of a state.

One could argue the duty of public officials is to find the solution that is “best” according to a certain set of values arranged hierarchically. The best way of doing this would of course to simply enforce majority rule: satisfy the interests of the majority in every issue and thus maximize the number of satisfied interests in society.

The problem of this approach is of course the well-known problem of utilitarianism: what if interests are not equally valued by the individuals holding them? Utilitarianism cannot be subjected to a game of statistics since a person could feel very strongly about a certain issue whereas a lot people may have a slight disinterest in that very issue. Do you judge in favor of the single person at the “expense” of the others? Or do you add the “slight disinterest” of many people together and claim this is “more” than the “strong interest” of the individual? What ration needs to be satisfied in order to make this conclusion? And perhaps more importantly:

How do you measure interest?

The utilitarian solution is simply not a solution, which leaves us with the “middle way” solution. In a two-interest world the task should be fairly simply; just document the interests and offer a solution where parts of both interests are satisfy, and make sure advocates of both parties accept the solution as “better than status quo.”

But the simplicity of this solution is deceiving. Even if we assume that the interests can easily be documented and measured (which is a requirement here too!), the solution doesn’t apply to politics. Many great minds have mistakenly assumed the state takes on the role of objective negotiator between interests, and that the state’s [negotiator’s] job is simply to find a “best fit” solution. This is not the case.

In a real negotiation the parties generally agree on who is to negotiate for them. Also, the parties pay the negotiator(s) for his or her services – they might even pay him or her for successfully suggesting a solution acceptable to both parties. This is certainly not the case for the state: it doesn’t get paid for taking on certain conflicts of interest and it also doesn’t have an interest in being objective.

Also, the state shouldn’t be denoted “it”- it is not a person or a tight organization dedicated to achieving a certain goal. Rather, “it” consists of a number of people with interest in satisfying their own interests first, be it the power of their formal position or their personal wealth. Thus, adding the state in this case simply adds an interest to the equation – our two-interest game is suddenly, in the simplest possible case, a three-interest game after adding the state!

It should be much more difficult finding an acceptable solution to a three-interest conflict, especially if the third interest is added after the conflict already exists! Adding to this that the third interest gets veto power to any suggested solution, and that it effectively has the power to force all other interests to comply with the solution of its choice, makes it impossible to find a winner among the original conflicting parties.

And what about the incentives of payment? The state, again talking of it as “an it,” has the power to charge whatever it wants actually supplying whatever it wants. This is called taxation – there is no connection between payment and delivery.

This is a major reason why the state tends to make things worse rather than offer a solution to problems. A market solution would presumably offer a wide range of negotiation and arbitration services (in fact it already does) by companies and individuals that make profits through supplying non-biased solutions to conflicting interests. And it isn’t difficult to assume some of them may even choose to charge the parties only for accepted solutions.

The Norwegian parliament represents 169 individual sets of interests (not counting interests of parties, special interest groups, etc.) that will affect who will be appointed to the Nobel Peace Prize Committee, and the individuals in the committee will have further opportunities to satisfy their own interests when awarding the Prize.

As is asked in the article, Is there really no one in the world who has done a better job for peace during the last year? There should be many. But the right question to ask is: who can be awarded the Prize in order to maximize the satisfaction of the interests of the individuals in the committee and the Norwegian parliament? The choice to award the IPCC and Al Gore suddenly makes a lot more sense.

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Power and the Death of Man

When writing this it is exactly one year since the murder of the outspoken Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya. It is also the 55th birthday of the Russian former KGB agent and current dictator-calling-himself-president Vladimir Putin. The events seem to be the perfect set of contradictions, not in any sense supplying grounds for a Hegelian synthesis.

Rather, we get the feeling that evil has not only prevailed, it has essentially won. At least in Russia. Putin seems, judging from western reporting, to have had something to do with the murder of Politkovskaya. At least, he had a lot to gain from her death. She was essentially what made the Russian army’s slaughter of innocent people in Chechnya look like a slaughter rather than, as Putin would have preferred, a heroic and patriotic yet merciless hunt for the people posing a “threat” to the unity of Great Russia.

Whereas the Russian “campaign” in Chechnya was done openly and therefore was condemned in global news media, the slaughter is but one example of many. It is one clearly recognizable symptom of a disease having haunted humankind for millennia: the mercilessness of power, and the death and suffering it inevitably leads to.

Another such example has been going on for years now, but it is obviously not as easy to recognize. As a matter of fact, many of the people condemning the slaughter in Chechnya are whole-heartedly supporting the same kind of slaughter in another country. The difference? Rhetoric.

The Russian slaughter in Chechnya was clearly a matter of David being attacked by the horrible Russian Goliath. David wanted his freedom, and for this reason he was slaughtered. “Goliath has no right,” we heard in the media.

People tend to identify with the less powerful in a fight, and this is exactly what happened in the Russia vs. Chechnya case. If there is no reason to directly identify with either of the parties – and for the western public this was the case in this conflict – people support the one they “feel sorry for.” Goliath has no right if people feel sorry for David.

An example of the opposite is the ongoing American war on Iraq. Literally thousands of innocent people have been slaughtered in the now occupied territory, by both state mercenaries and private Blackwater USA “law enforcement,” but this slaughter is justified by so-called libertarians in Europe and so-called conservatives in America. The United States’ occupation of Iraq, after the dethroning of Saddam Hussein, is a clear case of Goliath assaulting David. But in this case the people slaughtered are “not like us” whereas the guy in the White House looks kind of like “us.”

Both cases, even though they are approached and assessed in completely different ways, are symptoms of the same thing. Especially in taking the violations of domestic rights in the United States as an effect of the ongoing occupation, it is obvious that these are symptoms of power and the struggle for more power.

“Freedom” is in these cases only a word used for propaganda purposes (and it obviously works), but has nothing to do with what is really going on. If freedom is really the driving force behind the American occupation of Iraq (NB, the occupation) it doesn’t make sense to kill innocent civilians. It also doesn’t make sense to use the occupation as an argument to increase the state’s ongoing confiscation of people’s private properties in the United States and further restricting American citizens’ “constitutionally guaranteed” rights.

One has to be ignorant of reality to believe freedom has anything to do with it, unless we are talking of the freedom of the ruler to use his (or her) powers. One also has to be ignorant of how the people of power has acted throughout history – always at the cost, often the death of the people, only for the aim to increase and consolidate power.

Randolph Bourne wrote in an essay by the turn of the 19th century that “war is the health of the state.” That is certainly the case, and it has been proved frequently throughout the 20th century and it seems to continue in the 21st. The reason war is the health of the state can easily be shown using the Hegelian triad thesis, antithesis, and synthesis.

The triad suggests conflict between two contradictory theses can be solved through reconciling their common truths in a new proposition. War and the State obviously seem to be contradictions through war generally being waged by one state on another. War, it thus seems, means, apart from the destruction, that one of the states in a conflict will be defeated and thus it should be in the interest of states to not engage in war unless victory is guaranteed (which, of course, never is the case). And people generally turn to the state in order to avoid war – the state offers protection and defense against foreign aggressors.

Trying to find a synthesis between the State and war we quickly find that the difference between the two is but an illusion. There seems to be an overlap in their definitions; the State being a system of aggression with a monopoly of violence, and war being the use (by states) of such aggression directed at foreign peoples and states.

When investigated in detail we realize war is the essence of the State. Or, if you like, the State is the essence of war. Both are means for power and both rely solely on physical and psychological violence as well as the use of aggression, force, and merciless killings to achieve certain aims:

The purpose of the State is to secure power through a war on the people. The purpose of war is to defeat a people in order to establish a [new] State.

Trying to find the synthesis, in this case, removes the “veil of ignorance” under which we have been hiding, and allows us to see what is the true nature and purpose of the State. And what is the true nature and purpose of war. The two are inseparable and the same; they are two sides of a coin – two names for the same thing. They differ only in how the enemy is defined, a definition itself necessarily based on state-enforced artificial “nationalities,” and in their temporal stretch. The State is a never ending war on the domestic population; war is a temporary aggression on a foreign people.

In the light of this “Bournian” truth, the differences vanish between the Russian attack on Chechnya, as well as the murder of Politkovskaya, and the American war on, and occupation of Iraq. They are essentially the same, they share both motive, means, and aim. The difference is but the name of the murderer-in-charge and how well he (or she) manages public opinion through propaganda.

What we are seeing is truly a David vs. Goliath, but we fail to realize who is who. And we fail to see that the Davids are dying by the thousands. If we recognize this fact we might be able to do something about it. And then the illusion is no more.

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The Nuremberg Trials, Heraclitus, and Morality

They say history tends to repeat itself. In a sense this is probably true, people do tend to identify similarities of events in the now with events experienced in the past. But, on the other hand, human knowledge is based only on experience – never on what we will learn in the future. So how could it ever be differently? History repeats itself, at least to a great degree, simply because people have nothing but historic experience to base their assessment on when figuring out what is going on in the now.

But in another sense history does repeat itself. We are but human, and in this sense human action is forever repeated. Also, a society based on the kind of hierarchy that we are currently experiencing, which is really the same as the kind of hierarchy we’ve experienced at least since the stone age, must repeat the same mistakes over and over again.

Some things should however not be the same. As Heraclitus identified already a century before the birth of Socrates, everything is “in flux”:

Everything flows and nothing is left unchanged

This basic knowledge, that nothing is constant except change, is easily applied on the theory of morality behind the well-known Nuremberg Trials after World War II. At least, applying what Heraclitus taught more than 2,500 years ago on the Nuremberg Trials makes an interesting point: public morality has fundamentally changed in the last 50-60 years.

The Nuremberg Trials, for those of you who are not familiar with them, were held after the end of World War II. The trials were officially a way of finding justice through trying those who were suspected of horrific war-crimes. Of course, the true purpose of the trials was really nothing but a way for the victorious “Allies” to legitimize the punishment (in many times death) of German war-criminals.

The interesting things with these trials, however, is how personal responsibility was defined, and what importance the courts gave obviously difficult circumstances. This tells us a lot of what morality was thought to be around this time, i.e. the general understanding of morality.

For instance, security guards of the concentration camps during World War II would be held guilty of their actions – even if the very actions were carried out on direct orders from their superiors. All individuals were simply assumed to have a rather big amount of moral courage. If a superior officer ordered you to do something that you found utterly immoral, you should have refused.

The first of the so-called Nuremberg Principles states exactly this, that the individual is fully responsible for his or her actions:

Any person who commits an act which constitutes a crime under international law is responsible therefore and liable to punishment.

The interesting thing here is that this should, of course, always be the case. But it also shows obvious double standards at the time: the ones retroactively claiming war criminals should have refused to carry out immoral deeds are presumably the same people who demanded obedience of inferiors during the war. What is the standard approach at one time obviously isn’t the standard approach at another.

But this contradiction set aside, what if the Nuremberg Trials were held today? The public morality has changed in such a way with the welfare state that it would probably be acceptable to have carried out horrible deeds if they were ordered by someone of higher rank. As we can see everywhere in contemporary society, claiming non-responsibility due to “someone else” having ordered/asked you to do it is more than common. It is not only a commonly claimed reason for doing bad things, it is also very often considered an acceptable excuse. This was likely not the case in the 1940s.

This change does of course mean that the conflict that existed between first demanding obedience and then demanding moral courage has been wiped out. But it also means that the real morality of people, which has nothing to do with the morality of courts established to deal with actions already made, has changed. Heraclitus would have anticipated and accepted a change, but he would not have anticipated (or accepted?) what kind of change or how quickly it came about. After all, one does not easily change the morality of a whole world in half a century.

It is likely that modern-day Nuremberg Trials would not, at least not to the same extent as the real Nuremberg Trials, find the war criminals guilty. Instead, responsibility would be pushed up to the highest level – whoever actually gave the order resulting in the deed would be held responsible.

In a way this is partly justified, since whoever gave the order is responsible. But that responsibility ends with actually giving the order while assuming it will be carried out – ordering your inferiors to kill in war-time means the exact same thing as making someone carry out a murder on your behalf.

But it does however not mean the one(s) to actually carry out the murder cannot be held responsible. Responsibility, indeed a complex concept, must fall on all those involved to the extent they knowingly acted to do harm. Simply “following orders” is no real excuse to do harm, there is no “licence to kill” and from the perspective of the individual there never can be such a licence. There is also no licence to order someone to do the killing.

Even if we, as a society, haven’t degenerated as far as to not finding anyone at all except for Adolf Hitler himself guilty were the Nuremberg Trials repeated, we are surely heading that way. And this is not a pleasant thought.

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The Importance of Illusions

After having spent 28 hours traveling I seem to remember most things in a kind of blur – they blend with each other in a haze, making it almost impossible to separate one event from another. One thing is however very clear, and that is, I’m afraid, the only memory that will remain weeks or months from now: security checks.

Copenhagen’s international airport Kastrup, where my journey started, is incredibly “secure” in the “many annoying checks of people and their properties” sense. I do not remember how many times I was checked or “sweeped,” my identity was in question, or my luggage was searched – but I know this happened many, many times.

Arriving at Atlanta international airport meant a few more checks, and to get to my connecting flight to St. Louis I, like everybody else, had to take off my belt and shoes to have them x-rayed. I reckon my carry-on was x-rayed four or five times going from Copenhagen in Denmark to St. Louis, my papers were checked five times, and I had to stand in line for hours (literally) only to get harassed by grumpy men and women in uniform.

The costs of this bid to make flying safe and secure can be nothing but enormous. It is, in a sense, flattering that so much time and money is invested to make my traveling between two cities safe. And with such extensive security one would have to feel safe and secure, wouldn’t one?

No.

The problem with these checks is that they are very costly while they at the same time are likely to be quite worthless. It does feel like security is “tight” when flying, but that is nothing but an illusion caused by the great number of stops where passengers and their luggage is checked.

There is no reason whatsoever to presume more terrorists (I assume terrorism is what they are trying to stifle with these check-ups) are stopped from carrying out their heinous deeds just because passengers’ luggage is check three or four times instead of one. Things don’t change simply because you decide to have another look at them – if there wasn’t a bomb in my bag a minute ago there won’t be one there two hours later either if I was in a controlled environment where it isn’t possible to find bombs. Also, my papers will be the same when checked by security officer #3 as they were when checked by security officers #1 and #2.

The only reason for having repeated checks is that the environment cannot be trusted – if someone is likely to get a bomb into the airport and give it to me, I would be able to have a bomb at security check #2 even if I had no bomb at security check #1. But this would also mean there is no reason to have security checks at all, since someone could pass a bomb to anyone at any time if this was the case.

So the security checks are really worthless unless the environment, in this case the airport, can be fully trusted to always be free of bombs (or whatever they are trying to be free of).

But this isn’t the only problem of these security checks – the real problem is that as soon as the checks are established, the real “bad guys” (whoever they are) will try other ways of accomplishing their goals (whatever they may be). It isn’t reasonable to assume a would-be hijacker will try to get a knife through the x-rays to hijack a plane – he or she would, if hijacking the plane is important enough (and I assume it is, otherwise they wouldn’t risk it), try other strategies.

If making a plane crash is the goal, getting explosives onto the aircraft might be a first thing to try. When it becomes harder to do this, other ways are tried. It might be easier to get a pilot and a fighter jet to shoot down the aircraft instead. And if that is too difficult one might try to shoot it down from the ground. Or the engines can be tampered with. Or the pilots can be fed a poison that will cause certain death in a certain time. If that doesn’t work, then one or many passengers could be infected with a virus causing nasty symptoms in a certain time frame that will cause panic on the aircraft.

The simple truth is: if there is a will, there is a way. Repeating the same procedure doesn’t make the procedure itself less likely to fail – it is rather the opposite: if a certain kind of control procedure is repeated, those wanting to avoid being spotted will have greater incentives to try other methods.

So what are the repeated security checks at airports really about – what or who are they for?

I think the increasing harassment of people traveling by air is nothing but a very expensive way of making people believe someone is doing something. There is fear involved in this issue on two levels: passengers’ fear of terrorism and the government’s fear of being accused for not doing enough.

Passengers’ fear of terrorism is based on the media’s over-reporting on the terror threats (you are, after all, many times more likely to die from a car accident or cancer than from terrorism), and this fear ultimately makes people call for security. Since airplanes were used in the terrorist attacks on 9/11, it is easy to think airplanes may be used in another such attack. This, in turn, makes the air transportation industry very exposed to threats that under normal circumstances could and should be ruled off. But if a greater part of the market fears there is a lack of security when flying great losses can result but from ill-founded rumors that “something” might happen. There is simply a lot at stake; a whole industry can die out.

This risk is of course of importance to those running and profiting from the airlines. But it is at least as important for the government, since a sudden drop in market demand for airline services means a huge technological retrogression in society (which means bad publicity for “the nation”) as well as increased unemployment creating a basis for increased social conflict and causing greater pressure on public finances.

It should thus be concluded that from the point of view of government and airline capital “something” must be done. It should also be concluded that it doesn’t really matter, at least not to the two interests mentioned, that this something is effective, but it must at least create a feeling of security when flying.

If everybody about to board an aircraft is stopped once and asked for papers, they will realize that something is done. But if they are stopped multiple times, when entering the airport, when approaching and entering the gate, and when boarding the plane, then the apprehension of these controls is not that the one and same thing happens over and over – what most people will feel as a result of repeated checks is that security is tighter than if they were stopped only once.

Looking at this from a different point of view, it becomes obvious that the “tightened security” at our airports is nothing but a costly attempt to create an illusion of security rather than a real strategy to make flying safe. The fact is that government-enforced security at airports is fundamentally a reaction to an event that has already taken place. There is no reason to believe the crooks will use the same method again even though it was, in their eyes, successful; they should be more likely to use another – and thus less expected – strategy next time.

What is needed is thus a proactive approach where intelligence efforts and knowledge of what these groups might do next should be important. Doing the same kind of routine multiple times at airports should have minimal effect on security.

But the illusion does serve a purpose: it creates an alibi for the government and the airline corporations. The latter could lose everything from another such attack while the former can gain a whole lot if people’s fears are translated into support for increased powers to “do something,” which means abolished limitations on government powers and restricted or repealed political rights of the citizenry.

The illusion of tighter security at airports is thus a result of mainly two things: the airline corporations playing on the defense to keep the industry alive, and government playing on the offense to gain powers. The costs of this are paid for by passengers spending hours having their bodies and bags searched and their privacy intruded, and taxpayers having to pick up the bill.

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Politics vs. Reality in Education

In one of my essays on LewRockwell.com this year, I discussed the fact that the Swedish government finances foreigners’ academic degrees. This is not to say that the government lets foreigners benefit from the tuition-less, i.e., taxpayer-financed, monopolized state university education. The student financing schemes available to Swedish citizens, which consists of a grant and a very beneficential “student loan,” is also available to all foreigners. There is no limit to what non-Swedish students get from Swedish taxpayers.

Some try to raise a discussion on this through advocating the instating of tuitions for students who are not Swedish citizens (and, since Sweden is a member of the E.U., citizens of other E.U. countries), but it seems the political establishment isn’t interested in this issue.

The reason there is no discussion, as I argue in my essay, is the fact that people advocating the high tax welfare state do not want to even discuss this matter. The main underlying reason for this is that if a discussion on tuitions for foreigners emerges, the rather ignorant “no one can afford to pay for the great Swedish education” goes down the drain. If foreigners are allowed, well: required, to pay for their education at Swedish universities quite a few things will become apparent:

  1. Very few will choose to attend Swedish universities to get a degree (they are only there because it is “free”), which will prove to the public Swedish university education isn’t the best in the world;
  2. Some will, no doubt, attend Swedish universities (for whatever reason) and thus obviously be able to afford 1) paying tuion and 2) living expenses. This will prove the fact that education can be paid for privately, and possibly that ordinary people (not only the filthily rich) can afford it.

These two points show very clearly that the Swedish state system of education is fundamentally based in two “welfarist legends”: that the domestic education system is the best in the world, and that such great education is too costly for people to pay themselves (and thus it needs to be “collectively” financed through levying taxes).

It is easy to understand the underlying reasons for these myths. If Swedish education isn’t the best in the world, i.e., if people from all corners of the earth didn’t choose to attend Swedish universities rather than American or British, there is no reason to accept the fact that it is extremely expensive. Also, if it isn’t a world class educational system there is no reason to prohibit private universities (except for the very few, very old private institutions like the Stockholm School of Economics, which is, by the way, dependent on government subsidies), since the public good universities obviously aren’t better than everything else.

The fact that Swedish universities aren’t the best in the world also means paying tuition to cover the real costs of running the universities would make education mediocre yet expensive. Thousands of students would simply choose to go to better universities abroad, while other would-be students would choose not to get an education at all. This would in turn put an end to the Swedish government’s plan to make everybody equal through supplying everybody with a university degree.

The economics of reality would thus call the great Swedish bluff and reality would then barge in havocing the glorious illusion of the superior Swedish way of doing things. Seeing it this way makes it rather “rational” for the political pushers and pullers to not want to discuss tuition for foreigners. It is, from their point of view, much better to let Swedish taxpayers finance everybody’s education than facing reality and risk smiting the political construction earning them a living.

What is interesting here is that this analysis, even though many may find it provocative and perhaps “too radical,” is very rational in how the incentives of political actors are analyzed. It is in the interest of the so-called “political class” to not let anyone publicly or authoritatively question the “public truths” about Swedish education. There is simply a lot – too much! – at stake here. A discussion on the educational system – no matter the outcome of it – would risk the whole system.

The analysis is, I agree, somewhat limited and seems very “simple” in the way I propose it. Yet there is reason to believe the excuses for not wanting to discuss an educational system falling apart are based in something else – something of greater value to the those refusing to discuss the issue at hand than the quality of public education. The question I am asking is simply: what could that value be?

Even though I might err to some degree in this analysis it is fairly obvious that what is happening is a typical “politics vs. reality” dispute. The choice is either politics or reality – the options are mutually exclusive.

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An Immigration Conundrum?

I just got an invitation from the Libertarian Party in Illinois to speak at their October convention on the immigration issue. This should probably be an effect of my Mises Daily Article on the Libertarian Immigration Conundrum. I still don’t know whether I will be able to fit the “LPI” into my schedule, but it is a very hot and very interesting topic – especially from a libertarian point of view (and, no doubt, in the libertarian movement).

In the article I describe the two main libertarian approaches to immigration: open borders, i.e., free migration, and border and immigration control as a legitimate means of protecting private property and securing the value of it. These two views seem to be each other’s very opposites: the former champions no borders at all and thus seems to imply there is no stopping of foreign invasions of immigrants; the latter makes use of the existing state and its violence to protect domestic private property from foreigners.

But as I argue in the article mentioned above, there is no real contradiction. The former doesn’t imply all sorts of invasions are welcome – there would still be property rights and the protection of those rights are at the very core of what a legitimate state (according to the minarchist argument) or the freed market for security and protection (the anarchist argument) would do. Does anyone really believe that libertarian proponents of the “open border” argument really mean immigrants should be allowed to live off other people’s property?

The latter utilizes the artificial, but existing, territorial borders of the state, and the fact that those very borders are “protected” by the state, as a first defense for private property, and thus refuses to accept foreigners into the realm of protected private property. This may sound strange, but the argument takes into account the history of the state as well as the current distribution of private property.

What this means is that the argument against open borders considers the effect of government over time: that the state for centuries has stolen “the people’s” property, thus the “property” of the state belongs to the people and should not be available to immigrants. It is not unowned property for the grabs, but property temporarily controlled by the state that should be returned to the rightful owners, who are definitely “citizens” (not foreigners).

These two approaches do emphasize different facts, but it does not necessarily make them opposite views. The “open borders” argument, for instance, stresses the fact that people (no matter their nationality) have the right to travel freely as long as they do not violate the rights to private property. The “controlled borders” argument clearly identifies the right of property owners to not have their property involuntarily seized or claimed by immigrants.

But the fact is that the conflict between these two approaches exists only if our point of departure is the welfare state: when the state hands out alms to whoever it deems “in need.” As long as there is a welfare state, the libertarian “controlled borders” argument has a point in saying foreigners are likely to be parasites on the property stolen from the citizenry by the state. Also, state laws limiting the right to people’s property through letting “everybody” make use of it also means foreigners get “something” out of “nothing” (they haven’t been oppressed by the state and thus have no legitimate claim on it, but still gain from the “benefits” or privileges handed out by it).

However, it should be equally troublesome to make use of that same state to enforce border controls and keep people out (and thereby violating their rights) of the “country” simply because the state has already stolen so much property. It is like allying with your mugger in order to make sure he or she doesn’t pass on your property to someone else.

The two approaches are both troublesome in that they are somewhat limited in their perspective. Where adherents of the “open borders” argument tend to discuss immigration from a macro perspective, “controlled borders” proponents discuss the topic from a very micro perspective. The problem exists in that the individual gets lost in a macro perspective, whereas immigration doesn’t exist in the micro view and thus cannot be discussed at all if that perspective is chosen (since immigration is an abstract and thus macro concept).

This discussion is likely to go on, perhaps forever. I elaborate on these points in the article mentioned at the beginning of this post: The Libertarian Immigration Conundrum. And I will further discuss the illusion of conflict at the LP Illinois convention, if I get there.

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