The UK Libertarian

Forget all the statist holidays celebrating dead kings or bloody wars; this October 1st we’re celebrating Voluntaryist Day! 

If you haven’t already, join the Voluntaryist Day group on Facebook and spread the world.

Edit: The day has now passed and the Facebook page is no more but keep October 1st in your calendar for 2013 and let’s make this a regular event!

 

I’ve also created wallpaper images of the anarcho-capitalist handshake which you can download:

Edit: these are now flipped to look more natural and in keeping with the flag:

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The 5p “plastic bag charge” (only in effect in Wales… for the time being) is complete and utter insanity. Here are a few reasons, but there are doubtless many more:

1. The purported reason for the tax (which makes it illegal for companies to give away plastic bags at checkout, instead requiring them to charge 5p, the proceeds of which will go to council approved charities or something) is to encourage people to reuse plastic bags and thus help the environment.

I can tell you personally that since the law I have been using, I estimate, about 4 times more total plastic in my bag purchases than before. If plastic bags are bad for the environment my actions in this area are now about 4x as bad as before. Why? Well I’ll explain:

Before, supermarkets would give away the bags for free. They would be very thin and cheap bags that cost a fraction of a penny to produce and supermarkets could afford to give them away. They also offered bags you could pay for, 10p bags which were made of a stronger more durable plastic… these bags were made using much more plastic in total, quite obviously.

Well now because the supermarkets MUST charge at least 5p the crappy plastic bags have disappeared and now ONLY the good quality bags are for sale because the supermarkets (knowing what consumers want) realise that if they’re getting 5-10p for a bag that customers will want a nice bag.

Rather than remembering to bring bags to the supermarket, however, I simply forget every time because the cost is fairly trivial and I end up having to buy 3-4 thick quality plastic bags every time I shop. I GUARANTEE that the total plastic I’m using now is far greater than before. Before I used thin bags which used a small amount of plastic, now I use ones which use waaaaaaaaay more. The net effect? More plastic being produced and used in bags. The other net effect? More money has gone towards the government who were only able to get supermarkets to stop doing the nice thing of giving you free bags by violently threatening them with legislation.

But that’s not all… the law is stupid *on the face of it*…

2. The other day I went into Tescos to purchase plastic pockets for my business. A plastic pocket uses probably slightly more plastic than the old style very thin Tesco carrier bags. I went to the stationary section and I purchased 1000 plastic pockets… One thousand. I then went to the checkout and was forced by law to pay for one additional plastic bag that the supermarket would otherwise have given me. Would this not be considered insanity if aliens were observing our habits? How can I ethically buy 1000 plastic pockets but then need to pay 5p for an unncessarily wieldy plastic bag in order to ‘protect the environment’ … ?!?!?! WHAT?!??!

3. EVERYTHING IN THE SUPERMARKET IS WRAPPED IN PLASTIC. I can’t make this any clearer than it is. Walk around a supermarket. About 80% of the tens of thousands of products they hold are wrapped in plastic. Plastic. Plastic. Plastic. People are overflowing their trollies with things all wrapped in plastic. Some things are so intensely packed in plastic that you have to buy scissors packed in plastic just to get the plsatic off. IT’S ALL PLASTIC. But then a plastic BAG is a symbol of our wasteful society? It’s absurd. It’s legislation for legislation’s sake. It is just a giant inconveneince to customers and businesses and serves only the state and special interests (I’m sure the people who manufacture the thicker plastic bags are LOVING the law).

4. This final one is a little more abstract but it’s kind of true. The law has actually made it HARDER for stores to identify thieves. Especially in clothing stores. Where before everybody leaving would have their purchases in a bag and thus those leaving without one (and holding items) would be naturally suspicious now we have a situation where it’s quite normal for people to decline a bag and walk out carrying their things to save themselves the 5p… thus all things being equal more money will need to be spent on security in every store and more of the costs of shrinkage will be passed onto consumers. This is one of the many unintended consequences which predictably follows ALL government interventions into the marketplace.

These are just a few of my thoughts and observations on this topic. Most people brush the law aside as a silly issue to get worked up on… after all what is 5p? But it’s a metaphor for ALL state actions and without a core libertarian/economic underpinning to your own thinking then stuff like this will get by you all the time.

Don’t swallow the bullshit.

The dearth of writing over the last few months has been chiefly due to a lack of motivation and general frustration with debating these issues with anybody. However, do not fear, my love of liberty has not been lost. I recently decided to paint as an occasional hobby and almost immediately those familiar black and yellow colours were flowing out of my (highly amateur) brush! If the logical part of my brain has been shying away from expressing my voluntarist ideals of late the creative part was clearly itching to come out and play. Maybe this is a lesson for all of us: if you’re feeling burnt out from always discussing philosophy logically perhaps expressing the things you deeply care about in a creative way will kick-start your passion? I’ve always felt that one of the main things our movement lacks is artistic vision. A movie as well put together as Zeitgeist but putting forth our own (far better–more coherent) ideas would probably have a far greater impact than 1000 talking head videos or blog articles mostly preaching to the converted.

With that said: I am not a painter. I post these because I think it came out okay and people seemed to appreciate my previous an-cap wallpapers. If there are any real artists out there (and I mean that far more broadly than painting, of course) then I strongly urge you to start thinking about ways you can use your talents to get across our message. We are overflowing with engineers and armour-plated logical arguments but in the real world it’s often art (propaganda?) which inspires emotions in people and it’s emotions that give people the reason to really delve into the academics of libertarianism. Saying that, the following painting and wallpaper will be of interest only to the already converted so do as I say, not as I do…

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Some preview pics:

 

NB, I am not Davy.

A common claim made against libertarians is that they “deny” global warming because it would require state powers to deal with it. This is quite a telling assertion and reveals as much, if not more, about statists as it does about libertarians.

What the statists are basically saying with this accusation is that if you accept the Anthropogenic (man-made) Global Warming theory then you have got to accept that the state has to do something about it. A libertarian might simply counter-argue that statists are pushing a global warming agenda in order to claim even more power for the state.

But the statists say that the “science is settled”. So is it?

THE POLITICS

The reason that statists confidently assert that the “science is settled” in the global warming debate is because they can point to a “consensus” of scientists that agree with the theory. That is, all the ones who aren’t either idiots or funded by the oil industry or working for some right wing think-tank. The competent ones without an agenda.

Proof that they are independent comes from the fact that most are working at universities or for the UN or some other publicly funded independent body. This makes them much more reliable of course.

This is where libertarians must beg to differ. We don’t think that the government is a de-facto “independent body”. We tend to be of the opinion that governments want power and that they will be in favour of any theory which gives them more power.

The scientists involved aren’t exactly coy about what they want either. “Let there be no doubt about the conclusions of the scientific community: the threat of global warming is very real and action is needed immediately,” said Nobel laureate Henry Kendall, Chairman of the Union of Concerned Scientists (emphasis added) (source).

Government Agenda

Now, governments have the police, they have the army, they have a virtual monopoly on guns… what’s a theory of global warming going to get them?

Legitimacy. Governments always need perceived legitimacy. The only way they can get decent people to support what would otherwise be criminal acts is by appearing to simply be acting in the “public good”. For voters to be convinced of the need for a government (or a government policy) they have to believe that the government is protecting them from things which only special powers (the initiation of force) can solve. For instance:

• An army to PROTECT us from foreign threats,
• A police force to PROTECT us from criminal activity,
• Financial regulations to PROTECT us from greedy bankers,
• Social security to PROTECT us from poverty,
• Tariffs and subsidies to PROTECT us from foreign markets,

and

• Environmental regulation to PROTECT us from global warming and pollution.

There are many more of course, and it’s not as if all of these threats are entirely invented by the government, but the point is that these perceived or actual dangers are USED in order to LEGITIMISE their use of special powers. Statists would say of course that these threats do in fact legitimise state power, that they illustrate an actual need for the state.

Either way, governments have an agenda. They need legitimacy to function just as much as an oil company needs to be able to sell oil. If you’re going to reject the findings of scientists simply because they are funded by the oil industry then you also have to reject the findings of scientists because they are funded through the government.

That doesn’t get us very far though, so let’s have a little look at the science.

THE SCIENCE

The most damning argument made against the science of anthropogenic global warming isn’t so much that it’s wrong… more that it can’t be wrong because it can’t be right… because it isn’t actually science.

Here’s how the scientific method is supposed to work, in case you haven’t had to sit in a science class for a while. First you make a hypothesis, then you make a prediction, then you set up a test for that prediction and then you record the results.

For instance you might make the seemingly reasonable claim that a boulder weighing two tonnes is going to fall to the ground faster than one that only weighs one tonne when dropped at the same time from the same height. But the truth is they will hit the ground at the same time. Even things that appear obvious have to be tested.

The hypothesis of anthropogenic global warming is that as levels of greenhouse gases increase, temperatures will increase (it’s a bit more complicated than that, but that’s the general idea). It’s not a bad hypothesis. It makes sense. Nobody is arguing that carbon dioxide is not a greenhouse gas. Nobody is arguing that burning fossil fuels doesn’t release carbon dioxide in to the air and nobody is arguing that we haven’t burned a lot of fossil fuels since the industrial revolution. Nobody’s even arguing that temperatures haven’t been warmer as of late. So, wouldn’t it make sense that the two things are connected?

Of course it would. But what about the tests, what do they reveal?  Have predictions based on this hypothesis been correct?

Umm… well, no.

But the Earth is so big, the climate is so huge, there are so many factors to consider, how can they possibly be expected to get it right?

Well that’s exactly the point. They can’t. It’s not science. It looks like science because they have graphs and statistics and old men with beards and fancy titles and reports but it’s not science. It’s a hypothesis and a prediction (or many predictions) using fancy computer models. They use disputed computer models as their results.

Here’s another way you can tell it isn’t really science. The fact that there’s a consensus of scientists that support it. Science doesn’t work that way. If it were a proven theory then they wouldn’t be banging the drum about a consensus they’d just say what their theory was, show what their predictions were, and then show the results lining up with the predictions. Everybody would understand that.

What’s more, every scientist who used the hypothesis would have the same predictions and they’d get the same results. There would be one chart and it would show happening exactly what they said would happen. When they can do that, then it’s science. Until then it’s just a hypothesis.

Even proponents of the theory will tell you it’s not about “absolute proof” it’s about probabilities. The UN Panel on Climate Change gives percentage chances that the theory is correct. They say something like it’s 90% sure to be correct. Does that mean there’s a one in ten chance that it’s wrong? No, no, it’s not that simple. Stop being so crude, dissenters are told.

It’s not science. They have a hypothesis that appears to make sense on the surface but they can’t use it to make accurate predictions yet. And that’s because the climate is a huge, complicated system that we do not yet understand.

Here’s a little taster of how complicated and counter-intuitive some of the science actually is.

• Carbon dioxide is only a very small percentage of what makes up the air, and it’s not even a major greenhouse gas. That is not a controversial or “libertarian” statement. In fact water vapour, which human activity has practically nothing to do with, is “the most abundant greenhouse gas”. But water vapour comes and goes quickly, whereas carbon dioxide hangs around a lot longer so even though it makes up a much smaller percentage of greenhouse gases, it is more significant as regards the overall temperature according to the theory.
• There is a certain section of the atmosphere that should heat up first according to the official hypothesis of global warming theory.  Something which hasn’t been seen to happen but doesn’t seem to matter for some reason.
• The Earth goes through warm periods and cold periods. We’re in a warm period right now. The reason you know that is because when you walk out your door you don’t hit a glacier. An Ice Age is a particularly cold period. But they say that right now we are in the hottest period the world has seen for a thousand years. A lot of that belief comes from a “hockey stick graph” which has been proven bogus. But, once more, that doesn’t seem to matter.
• The Sun goes through cycles too. There are times when it’s hotter and times when it’s not so hot. Some think that might have something to do with Earth’s climate, but apparently that has very little to do with the temperature of the Earth either.
• There is a theory that, believe it or not, cosmic rays influence the temperature of the planet because they have a lot to do with cloud formation, and we are just learning about how much effect that has on worldwide temperatures.

Now, to be perfectly frank, I have very little idea of what most of that means.  I have no idea if any of those scientists are deliberately being misleading, and what’s more I never will.  It’s too complicated for me.

But apparently the science is settled and the only reason libertarians aren’t accepting that is because they don’t want to give more power to the state.

THE SOLUTIONS

For the moment though let’s say, for sake of argument, that the anthropogenic theory of global warming is correct. Would that necessitate a (world) government to deal with it? What would have to be done to deal with it?

As with the rest of this debate, opinions differ. Proposed solutions range from personal choice (e.g. walking or bicycling instead of driving), to carbon credits and taxes, to government regulation (e.g. increased emission standards for business), to alternative energy sources (nuclear and/or renewable), to more efficient products (e.g. electric cars).  To name just a few.  Usually a range of these solutions are proposed, depending on the outlook and preferences of the person or party involved. These are just tactics though, what’s the aim?

The UK government committed itself to make sure “net UK carbon account for the year 2050 is at least 80% lower than the 1990 baseline” (Climate Change Act 2008).  However experts say we have already reached a tipping point, the logical conclusion of which is that we must reduce the amount of carbon dioxide emitted as soon as we can and by as much as humanly possible.

The extreme environmentalists on this issue have at least got one thing right: that what has been proposed in the mainstream is not anywhere near enough to solve the problem.

If you’re serious about global warming, if you think the science is correct and the predictions made by the scientists involved are likely to be correct, then you have to be serious about what the solution has got to be as well.

Total economic meltdown.

Economic activity is the enemy.  Economic activity requires energy and (beyond nuclear energy and the tiny percentage that makes up renewable energy) that means burning fossil fuels.  This needs to stop.  Period.  The 2008 financial crisis was not bad, it was timely.   We are talking about the very survival of the human race here as well as quite a few other species.  We may already be too late.  If we don’t do whatever is necessary now then our planet will soon become uninhabitable.  This is a war and has to be treated as such.  If we fail in this, we’re quite simply going to be dead.

Therefore we should produce only what we absolutely need to survive. Food, water, medicine, shelter. The basics, nothing more. We need to shut down as many carbon-emitting power plants as possible, all unnecessary factories, we have to ground all airplanes and leave cars idle by the side of the road, we need to burn as little fossil fuel as possible.

We have to face the fact that it might be necessary to go back to a pre-industrial way of life.  Which, unfortunately, would almost certainly mean a pre-industrial population as well.

A state, of course, could make all of this happen.

A state could shut down all economic activity if it had to.  A state could put a 100% tax on carbon emissions, making it completely impractical for anyone to burn fossil fuels anymore.  A state could make it illegal to drive a car or turn on a light.  Of course nobody is actually advocating that but that’s just because they are not taking global warming seriously enough, they are not taking it through to its logical conclusion.  An 80% reduction in carbon emission by 2050 simply won’t be enough, it all has to stop.  Right Now.

Nobody wants to say this because it’s not nice to think that billions of people are going to have to die all over the world for the human race as a whole to survive.  But global warming is the biggest threat the world has ever seen and we can’t be an appeaser like Chamberlain, we need to be a warrior like Churchill.  There is no negotiating with the laws of physics.

And a state could do it.  A state could nationalise every industry if it had to.  A state could ground airplanes and blockade docks to prevent all carbon-emitting travel.  A state can do anything in the name of the public good.  A state could save the world.  All they need is perceived legitimacy.

How Would it Work in a Libertarian Society?

In a libertarian society that would not be possible. A single entity couldn’t get a whole industry to shut down, it couldn’t make all economic activity come to a halt.  What would happen instead?

Well, first proponents of the theory would have to try to get the word out, they would have to try to convince other people that the way they have been consuming goods is destroying the planet. They would have to try to convince everyone to stop driving, to stop flying, to stop watching television, to stop buying things (including food) from abroad, and generally to not stop using energy unless it comes from a renewable source.  They could use any dirty propaganda trick in the book in order to achieve this if they wanted to.  They could even tell people that a “consensus” of scientists agreed with their theory and that anyone who questioned the science was a “denier” just as bad as holocaust deniers.

And then individuals would have to decide for themselves what they believed and how they wanted to respond.

If everyone agreed and was completely committed to this, refusing to buy food from abroad even if there was no other food available, if they decided to stop doing anything which caused any greenhouse gases to be released in to the atmosphere, then the human race would be saved.  Yes, people would still die of starvation but they would do so willingly, a conscious decision to act in the greater good.

Or let’s say that people wouldn’t be quite so selfless.  Let’s say that not everyone would be willing to die for the cause, that they would do everything necessary to survive, but nothing more.  Then the ingenuity of the free market would go to work in this new direction. We wouldn’t need a state to order factories to shut down, we wouldn’t even need benevolent business owners to comply voluntarily, the factories would shut down because people wouldn’t be buying what they were producing anymore.

Would there be death, starvation? There shouldn’t be. The essentials would soar in price of course.  They should.  That discourages hoarding. It also means that entrepreneurs would see a profit to be made in food, in shelter, in the essentials and there would soon be more suppliers, more competition, and the prices would come down again. There would be an adjustment. Not completely painless of course, but the free market responds to what people want. Consumers are king in an anarcho-capitalist society.

But what if global warming, or some other planet-destroying theory is right and people don’t listen? What if they carried on as usual? Then the world would come to an end.

Does this mean we really should have a state?  Does this give a moral justification for the initiation of force?

Initiation of force…

Now, you might say that the people releasing the carbon dioxide in to the air are initiating force because they are ruining your planet, making it uninhabitable for you.  And, in a libertarian society, if you can prove that, then you will have a legal case. If you can prove that a factory half way around the Earth is making the temperature in your house go up and that is harmful to you, you will be able to prosecute them criminally. Or if you’re a farmer and you can prove that specific factories are causing the temperature to rise meaning that you can’t grow food anymore then you’ll have a case to be heard.

Oh, something like that can’t be proved?

Okay. Then the science isn’t settled. It’s not an objective fact. And if it’s not an objective fact, if it’s only an opinion, then in a libertarian society the full force of the law will not be behind you.

You’re still free to try to convince as many people as you can to stop the practices that you think are leading to the problems but if people are too stupid or unwilling to listen, if they’re too stuck in their ways, then yes you are going to fail. And yes, the world may come to an end. If that’s what happens though the reason is going to be because people were too stupid, too cowardly, too inert to take the necessary actions to save themselves.

But if that’s what people are really like, why are they going to elect a government that is going to force them to do what they are unwilling to do voluntarily?

In other words, if you are making an argument that a government is necessary because it forces people to do things they wouldn’t do voluntarily then are you not, in fact, arguing in favour of a totalitarian state?

The truth is, the issue of global warming does not justify a state any more than any other issue that statists claim give the state legitimacy.  Libertarians can concede the science if they wish and still fight the statist solutions on moral and practical grounds, as we do with every other issue.

So why do we tend to question the science of global warming, and not just the proposed solutions?

A MESSAGE TO STATISTS

The reason is because we can.

Statists, as long as you are going to use “science” to bolster more power for the state, libertarians have got to fight it whether it is true or not.

Yes, whether it is true or not.

Now, is this an admission that libertarians “know” the science to be correct and are just fighting it as a political tactic?  Absolutely not. I’ve already given a host of, to me, perfectly valid reasons to question the theory.

But in a way the claim made against libertarians probably contains a half truth.  We don’t care that much about the science because we’re looking behind that to what happens if the science is accepted.

For example, if you show someone a piece of paper that says 2+2=5 and tell them that if they AGREE they’re going to be tortured and killed, they’re probably NOT going to agree.  Clearly it’s wrong anyway, but the point is that’s not WHY they’re not agreeing.  If you showed them a piece of paper that said 2+2=4 and told them, again, if they agreed they’d be tortured and killed, they probably wouldn’t agree with that either even though it is true.  The numbers don’t matter at that point, in fact for many people the emotion is going to blur the numbers to the extent that they can’t tell what’s right or wrong anyway (which goes for the person with the gun too).

And it’s not as if climate science is that simple to begin with.

This is the situation we face.  If libertarians don’t fight global warming “science” then you are going to use it as another reason for government action, another reason to point guns at everyone.  You’ve made that abundently clear.

If you want to have a reasoned scientific debate you have to remove the gun from behind the science. Ideally you should stop name-calling as well but you really have to put the guns down.  Otherwise we’re going to do whatever we can to keep that piece of paper between your gun and our head.

It’s up to scientists to debate science and it’s up to each individual to choose which scientist they want to believe; which theory, if any, they wish to adhere to. People can believe that a chariot pulls the Sun across the sky if they like, they should have that freedom. But put the guns down and there’ll be a chance for a reasoned debate. Until you do, it’s not science. It’s not science when there’s a gun behind it. It’s not science, it’s assault.

-Chris Paddock

N.B. I am not Davy

Many people will often uphold democracy as true freedom. They will say democracy is representative of “the people”, that it is for “the people” and that it reflects the needs of “the people”. Some “libertarians”, who disagree, may say that democracy is 51% or more of the population against 49% or less of the population. These “libertarians” suggest the view that democracy reflects the majority but is against the minority. Perhaps both views are incorrect in the understanding of democracy. What does the mirror of democracy really reflect?

Firstly in a representative democracy, candidates for political positions win if they get more votes than any other candidate. This is not necessarily a majority of the votes because, for instance, A, the winner, could only get 40% of the vote while B and C get 30% each. Everyone that voted for another candidate did not receive the politician they voted for.

Secondly the elected legislators only have a vote in passing laws, and often the laws will be passed against any given politician’s particular preference on the issue. Political parties often pool together votes so that people can vote for the political parties they want as opposed to individuals. They hope that, if their party is elected, the party will have control over the legislature and perhaps executive/cabinet positions. People do not realise this acts to further limit the choice from individual politicians down to fewer parties. With first past the post systems, an elected politician may not have any real power at all which excludes entire groups of voters.

Thirdly, your vote is individually worthless and makes no difference. Any party could be voted in and you have no direct control over that through a single vote. Never in history has a single vote made a difference. If you think voting is “making your voice heard”, think again.

Fourthly, when you wish for your life decisions to be delegated to a politician, you are giving up individual sovereignty. Democracy does not give you freedom, it takes it away. A slave that votes for masters is still a slave. You can only vote for who you think will make the decisions that will best effect yourself. People will often vote in an attempt to receive privileges granted by the removal of other people’s freedoms. In the end everyone loses their freedom. Democracy isn’t the majority against the minority, it’s everybody against everybody.

People actually do think that delegating their life away is beneficial. The politicians that get into power are the ones that are the most successful at convincing people that the people’s lives are best run at the hands of those politicians. Hence those in government are good at lies, propaganda and seduction. Those that worship democracy say that government is a reflection of the people. I say democracy is a reflection of the stupidity of people; the stupidity to buy into the propaganda instead of thinking for one’s self.

It amazes me that people ignore the obvious example of the Nazis. The Nazis used propaganda very effectively to seduce the German’s into giving them power. The propaganda used by the Nazi’s included a sense of national pride and fear-mongering that you can see in modern day propaganda. The Nazi’s kept many parts of the ideology secret and moved more and more evil into the German’s lives over time. It demonstrates if you tolerate the small things, bigger evils are sure to follow, by which time it is too late.

Always remember that the Hitler rose to power in a democratic system!

People often say “but only the Germans were that stupid”. Nope, I say democracy is a reflection of the stupidity of the majority of people and it doesn’t matter where those people reside. Take a look into the mirror and then shatter it; shatter the idea of democracy.

Author: Matthew Mitchell
matthewmitchell@thelibertyportal.com

 

For those who don’t know, Ben Lowrey is a prolific and enthusiastic video blogger from the UK who only fully discovered and embraced the ideas of voluntarysim in the last year. Since then, however, he’s been spreading the message all guns blazing and interviewing (and being interviewed by) a host of interesting figures from the movement.

Kal Molinet I had not heard of before but after watching this interview I’m convinced he’s going to become a significant figure in the movement. He’s a rare breed: ex-military and yet embracing the philosophy of anarcho-capitalism almost immediately and actively apologising for ever joining in the first place. He even goes as far as to burn his uniform on camera; proving in action what he says in the interview: “I’m not a coward”. He’s articulate, has a friendly and warm way about him and, perhaps most importantly, possesses a unique style and voice. In my opinion both Lowrey and Molinet deserve more attention than they’ve so far received. Throw them your subscriptions and share the interview around the community!

Tom woods delivers a speech aimed at people who haven’t heard libertarian ideas before. The speech he would like to deliver to the nation if he had the platform. As usual it’s articulate, passionate, sometimes mesmerising. He doesn’t have the platform without us so let’s spread this far and wide. Send it to anybody you believe might listen for 5 minutes, as that’s all you need with Tom Woods in my opinion, anybody remotely interested will be compelled to listen on. This is a very good introductory video in my opinion: