Born Again Christian; Biblical Fundamentalist, King James Only, Dispensational
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Right-Wing (Rightist) Anarcho-capitalism is NOT the right-minarchists enemy!!
For as long as right-libertarians have existed there has been an internal fight between right-market anarchists and the right-minarchists. Constantly minarchists on the Right are called Statist by right-market anarchists (anarcho-capitalism). Meanwhile right-minarchists call right-anarchists Utopian.
I want to start off by pointing out that both views are different ways of interpretation of the logical end of supporting the Non-aggression or Non-Initiation of Force principles. Minarchists believe you cannot enforce the NAP without having a minimal state existing; funded Ideally through voluntary or at least pseudo-voluntary means such as a single tax that is as close to a user fee as possible. Best described by the Federal Libertarian Party here in Canada.
"Taxation—such as income, corporate, carbon, and capital gains taxes—are theft, taking justly earned money by force. We aim to eliminate these, replacing them with a voluntary head tax, direct payments for services, and crowdfunding. Keeping earnings in Canadians’ pockets will boost saving, investment, production, and consumption, energizing the economy. During the transition, a 5% GST will fund military, police, and courts, acting as a semi-voluntary tax tied to consumer choice."
Meanwhile right-minarchists misunderstanding anarcho-capitalism think that traditionalist Rothbardian anarcho-capitalism calls for no laws and for privatizing what will be legal or not which it never has. As someone that has been both a Biblical/Christian Anarcho-conservative/Anarcho-Capitalist we did not and do not call for no laws.
Rothbard himself called right wing anarchism a society where all initiation of force is outlawed by an agreed upon libertarian legal code. Once codified that all initiations of force or threats thereof is banished from society. A completely privatized and non monopoly free market in rent a cops, insurance agencies, cooperatives, corporations and mutual aid agencies will take over all things that is currently done by a monopoly on the initiation of force without any force and coercion within society.
I would be happy and feel safe in either a right-minarchist society or a right-anarcho-capitalism society. I also think both are equally welcomed in the broader Biblical/Christian libertarian spectrum of views. As well as are equally moral views of society based on our shared commitment to the non-aggression or non-initiation of force principles. We can discuss and debate which is the correct view, but I will not throw either view off the Christian libertarian bus.
Neo-Libertarianism is consistent right-minarchsm
I wish to put forward that Neo-Libertarianism is consistent right-minarchsm by citing the following from the Neo-Libertarian blog called "Politics and Prosperity." The author uses the term libertarian-conservative now as opposed to neolibertariann, but, he means what I do by Neo-Libertarian.
- R-M reject the non-aggression principle with respect to national defense. They do so not because they favor aggression but because the principle, in its standard interpretation, is a non-action principle. It would not allow a preemptive attack on an antagonistic state that is armed, capable of striking us at any time, and known to be contemplating a strike. R-M, in other words, tend toward hawkishness when it comes to national defense.
- R-M also tend toward a hawkish stance on crime. For example, some R-M have no sympathy for journalists who protect anonymous sources where those sources obtain their information by breaking the law. Other R-M reject the idea that the press should be allowed to print whatever information it may obtain about America’s defense forces, plans, and operation. R-M understand that liberty and the prosperity it brings are unattainable in a lawless, defenseless society.
- R-M are unsympathetic to “political correctness,” arguing that government must not do anything to quell impolite speech or to compensate blacks, women, etc., for the past behavior of those who discriminated against them, because to do so penalizes persons now living who are innocent of discrimination. But more than that, R-M would give individuals and businesses broad latitude in their affairs, penalizing only acts traditionally understood as harmful (e.g., murder, rape, and theft).
- R-M see “rights” like abortion, homosexual “marriage”, euthanasia, "Queer" rights and "gender" ideology as government-imposed social innovations with potentially harmful consequences for civil society. If social custom, as embodied in legislative acts, rejects such things it does so because those things undermine the fabric of society — the bonds of mutual respect, mutual trust, and mutual restraint that enable a people to live and work together in peace.
Romans 13 and Civil Governance
https://mereliberty.com/theology/romans-13-civil-governance-reformed-view/
Preliminaries
First, this view is not about the Libertarian Party and it’s not about any particular political candidate. Rather, what I’m about to outline is a political philosophy or a view of civil governance that’s based on a particular view of what persons are, what property is, inherent rights, and specifically, the legitimate use of coercion.
Second, concerning the legitimate use of coercion: the initiation or ‘first use’ of coercion (sometimes we restrict the word ‘aggression’ to this meaning) against others or their property, for example: murder, rape, assault, theft, fraud, the credible threatening of these things; none of these things are ever legitimate. The initiation of coercion is always illegitimate, and the only legitimate use of coercion is in proportional response to prior initiation of coercion.
Coercion is only legitimately used responsively. This principle or norm of ‘non-initiation of coercion’ is a universal God-given norm, and it’s seen in the sixth and eighth commandments: do not murder, do not steal, as well as in the Bible’s affirmation of the law of proportionate retribution (lex talionis). Interestingly, Proverbs 3:30 also has some implications for this. “Do not contend with a man for no reason, when he has done you no harm.” This proverb has a legal nuance that means do not bring the law (also understood as force or coercion) against someone who has not aggressed against you.
Third, we must distinguish between what is sometimes called ‘vice’ (or things that are imprudent or sinful), and what is ‘crime.’ The realm of morality, which centers in loving your neighbor, this is distinct from what justice is, which has to do with what is ‘due’ to others. In civil matters, failing to give someone what is due to them is always unloving, but not necessarily vice versa. For example, lying and coveting are sinful, violations of the norm of love and morality, but they are not necessarily criminal offenses.
They are not initiations of coercion against others or their property. This distinction between vice and crime helps us understand what is a matter of civil governance and the legitimate use of coercion, and what is not.Fourth, we must also distinguish between, on the one hand, what we own and owe with respect to God, and on the other hand, what we own and owe with respect to other people. We could refer to this in terms of the ‘vertical’ (towards God) and the ‘horizontal’ (towards our fellow persons).
The norm of non-initiation of coercion has to do with the horizontal; what we own and owe with respect to other people. Of course, God owns everything, and we owe everything to God. But with regard to one’s neighbor, there are some things one owns; namely, those things God has given us as stewards, such as one’s life and property. And if a neighbor were to initiate coercion and take those things away, then that would be murder and stealing.
Civil Governance
The most basic distinction involved here (that gets to the heart of what stateless civil governance is about) is between the ‘state,’ as a particular form of political-legal order, and civil governance as such. Civil governance is basically the adjudication of civil disputes involving persons or their property. This has to do with rights. Rights are enforceable normative claims regarding your person or property. And so civil governance has to do, centrally, with the adjudication of disputes over those things, and with the rules and the enforcement that accompanies that adjudication.
Romans 13
Some background on Romans 13
The following historic view of Romans 13 (which might be called the “political resistance” view) is clearly represented in Samuel Rutherford’s Lex Rex (1644). Charles Hodge in his commentary on Romans (1835) —while he didn’t follow through with it consistently— also reflects this view in at least two statements. Hodge says: “Paul, in this passage, is speaking of the legitimate design of government, not the abuse of power by wicked men.”
In other words, Paul is not telling us that we need to submit to tyrants or to any unjust laws. Paul is not talking about de facto rulers, those that are in fact claiming power presently. He’s not talking about God’s ‘providential’ ordination, or institution of government, but rather, of the prescriptive or legitimate design of governance.
Hodge also comments: “No command to do anything morally wrong can be binding, nor can any which transcends the rightful authority of the power whence it emanates.” In other words, it’s not only the command to sin that we don’t have to obey when it’s issued by any would-be authority, but further, we don’t have to obey anything coming from would-be civil authorities beyond the requirements to act justly and submit to justice, because that’s the limit on their God-ordained authority.
The passage of Romans 13 itself
Whatever terms the translations use, “the powers that be” or the “existing” or “governing authorities” in verse 1, to which we must submit, this doesn’t mean the de-facto powers who claim authority. Rather, the meaning here is only those whom God authorizes, ordains, or institutes (whatever word is being used) are actual legitimate authorities. That’s the meaning.
In Scripture, the word ‘ordain’ can sometimes mean God’s providence; that is, whatever takes place in history, whatever actually occurs by God’s determination. But that same word, ordain, is also used for His ‘moral authorization,’ prescription, or requirement. So how do we decide how it’s being used here? The immediate context of the passage shows us that it is about God’s authorization, because the text goes on to specify in verses 3 & 4 that God only authorizes or ordains the use of the sword (coercion) to administer actual civil justice.
So in one translation, it says “not a terror to good conduct, but to bad… approving of the good… God’s servant or minister for your good, a sword-bearing avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer.” In other words, God ordains the punishment of violations of, and the commendation of, civil justice.
To answer a possible objection: when the passage in verses 6 & 7 says: “For this reason you must also pay tribute (or taxes) for they are God’s ministers attending continually upon this very thing” (that is, the administration of justice),”render, therefore, to all their dues. Taxes to whom taxes are due…” and so on, you’ll notice that this passage does not say, and no Scripture actually ever says, that anyone in fact owes a tax. Rather, it says if you owe, then pay what you owe. For example, if we choose to use a toll road, then we would owe the toll.
The broader context on Romans 13
Here’s how this basic interpretation put forward by Samuel Rutherford, and other theologians, really comes to light and makes sense in the context of the whole epistle:
The previous exhortations (in the preceding chapters in Romans) to not conform to the world, to discern and hold fast to what is good, to abhor evil, to avoid vengeance, to live at peace —you could readily conclude, or you can imagine someone might think, “hey, the government is contrary to these things; it’s contrary to God’s revealed moral will, it conforms to the sinful world, they’re doing what’s evil, they’re being vengeful, they’re not supporting peace, etc, etc… and so we should resist all government.”
Moreover, Paul knew the Old Testament and the teaching of Jesus. Hosea 8:4 says: “They made kings, but not through Me.” That is, not all so-called rulers were according to God’s ordination. And in Mark 10:42, Jesus refers to those who are ‘considered’ to be rulers of the Gentiles. This word ‘considered’ is significant because it means ‘assumed to be, but not actually’ authorities. Paul also lived in the real world and certainly took as granted that some in positions of power, and some forms of power, are obviously evil and illegitimate.
So in light of all this, in Romans 13, Paul sets out to clarify that despite the evil of the empire and the state, God nevertheless has established a legitimate role for civil governance (administration of civil justice), and that our submission to the sort of civil governance that God prescribes or ordains is also in accordance with His moral will.
More Scriptural support
There are other passages that help clarify this understanding of Romans 13; for example, 1 Corinthians 6:1-3. We see that Paul cannot have been referring to the Roman Empire in Romans 13, when he says to the church in Corinth: “When one of you has a grievance against another does he dare go to the law before the unrighteous instead of the saints? Or do you not know that the saints will judge the world, and if the world is to be judged by you, are you incompetent to try trivial cases? Do you not know that you’re going to judge angels? How much more than matters pertaining to this life!”
So, the Roman Empire and its so-called rulers are called unrighteous, i.e., they are unjust, and therefore they are not legitimate authorities to which believers can submit their civil disputes. If the Roman so-called rulers were ministers of God for their good, administering civil justice, then Paul couldn’t have forbidden Christians from seeking adjudication from them.
And further on in 1 Corinthians 8:5-6 Paul says “For although there may be so-called ‘gods’ in heaven or on earth, as indeed there are many ‘gods’, many ‘lords,’ yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things, and for whom we exist, and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and through whom we exist.” And so, among other things, this is to say that many so-called ‘lords’ or rulers have no more genuine civil authority from God than so-called ‘gods’ have genuine deity or divinity.
Summary of Romans 13 and Civil Governance
In summary, according to Scripture, what Romans 13 and other related passages teach, then, is that those who by God’s sovereign control of history may be in positions of power are not necessarily those who have God’s moral authorization or ordination. God’s Word doesn’t require our submission to unjust so-called rulers. The sword-bearing power that is ordained of God, according to Romans 13, is the administration of civil justice: punishing criminals and defending victims of crime.
What is right-libertarianism/right-wing libertarianism?
https://mises.org/mises-daily/left-and-right-within-libertarianism
I have modified my copy of this newsletter removing unneeded incendiary comments about classical laissez-fairists and people in favor of minimal compulsory taxation over complete voluntary taxation. I also removed Rothbards defense of fetuscide (abortion) as the libertarian view. As well as unneeded hatred for people with a more neolibertarian foreign policy over the paleo one.
Recently, a bewildering and seemingly new phenomenon has burst upon the public consciousness, “right-wing libertarianism.” While earlier forms of the movement received brief and scornful attention by professional “extremist”-baiting liberals, present attention is, almost miraculously for veterans of the movement, serious and respectful. The current implication is “maybe they’ve got something here. What, then, have they got?”
Whatever their numerous differences, all “right-wing libertarians” agree on the central core of their thought, briefly, that every individual has the absolute moral right to “self-ownership,” the ownership and control of his own body without aggressive interference by any other person or group. Secondly, libertarians believe that every individual has the right to claim the ownership of whatever goods he has created or found in a natural, unused state: this establishes an absolute property right, not only in his own person but also in the things that he finds or creates. Thirdly, if everyone has such an absolute right to private property, he therefore has the right to exchange such property titles for other titles to property: hence the right to give away such property to whomever he chooses (provided, of course, that the recipient is willing); hence the right of bequest — and the right of the recipient to inherit.
The emphasis on the rights of private property of course locates this libertarian creed as emphatically “right-wing,” as does the right of free contract, implying absolute adherence to freedom of enterprise and the free-market economy. It also means, however, that the right-libertarian stands foursquare for the “civil liberty” of freedom of speech, press, and assembly. It means that he necessarily favors total freedom for pornography, prostitution, and all other forms of personal action that do not themselves aggress against the property of others. And, above all, he regards conscription as slavery pure and simple. All of these latter positions are of course now regarded as “leftist,” and so the right-libertarian is inevitably put in the position of being some form of “left-rightnik,” someone who agrees with conservatives on some issues and with leftists on others.
While others therefore see him as curiously fluctuating and inconsistent, he regards his position as virtually the only one that is truly consistent, consistent on behalf of the liberty of every individual. For how can the leftist be against the violence of war and conscription and morality laws while yet favoring the violence of taxes and government controls? And how can the rightist trumpet his devotion to private property and free enterprise while favoring conscription and the outlawing of activities he deems immoral?
While of course opposing any private or group aggression against the rights of private property, the right-libertarian unerringly zeroes in on the central, the overriding aggressor upon such rights: the State apparatus. While the leftist tends to regard the State as an evil enforcer of private-property rights, the right-libertarian, on the contrary, regards it as the prime aggressor on such rights.
In contrast to believers in democracy or monarchy or dictatorship, the right-libertarian steadfastly refuses to regard the State as invested with any sort of divine or any other sanction setting it up above the general moral law. If it is criminal for one man or a group of men to aggress against a man’s person or property, then it is equally criminal for an outfit calling itself the “government” or “State” to do the same thing.
Hence the right-libertarian regards “unjust war” as mass murder, “conscription” as slavery, and — for most libertarians — “taxation” as robbery. From such past mentors as Herbert Spencer (The Man vs. the State) and Albert Jay Nock (Our Enemy, the State), the right-libertarian regards the State as the great enemy of the peaceful and productive pursuits of mankind.
On the extreme-right fringe of the movement, there are those who simply believe in old-fashioned, 19th-century laissez-faire; the major laissez-faire group is the Foundation for Economic Education, of Irvington-on-Hudson, New York, for which many of the middle-aged members of the right-libertarian movement have worked at one time or another.
The laissez-fairists believe that a central government must exist, and therefore that taxes must exist, but that taxation should be confined to the prime “governmental” function of defending life and property against attack. Any pressing of government beyond this function is considered illegitimate.
The great bulk of libertarians, especially among the youth, have, however, gone beyond laissez-faire, for they have seen its basic inconsistency: for if taxation is robbery for building dams or steel plants, then it is also robbery when financing such supposedly “governmental” functions as police and the courts.
If it is legitimate for the State to coerce the taxpayer into financing the police, then why is it not equally legitimate to coerce the taxpayer for myriad other activities, including building steel factories, subsidizing favored groups, etc.? If taxation is robbery, surely then it is robbery regardless of the ends, benevolent or malevolent, for which the State proposes to employ these stolen funds.
Moving on, we come to the Randian and neo-Randian movements, those who follow or have been influenced by the novelist Ayn Rand. From the publication of Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged in 1958, the Randian movement developed into what seemed to be destined as a mighty force. For the emotional impact of Rand’s powerfully-plotted novels attracted a vast following of young people into her “Objectivist” movement.
In addition to the emotional drawing power of the novels, Randianism provided the eager acolyte with an integrated philosophical system, a system grounded on Aristotelian epistemology, and blending it with Nietszchean egoism and hero worship, rationalist psychology, laissez-faire economics, and a natural-rights political philosophy, a political philosophy grounded on the libertarian axiom of never aggressing upon the person or property of another.
Even at its peak, however, the effectiveness of the Randian movement was severely limited by two important factors:
One was its extreme and fanatical sectarianism; Randians refused to have anything to do with any person or group, no matter how close in outlook, who deviated by so much as an iota from the entire Randian canon — a canon, by the way, that has a rigid “line” on every conceivable question, from aesthetics to tactics. (An odd exception to this sectarianism, by the way, is the Republican Party and the Nixon administration, which includes several highly placed Randians as advisors.) Particularly hated by the Randians is any former colleague who has deviated from the total line; these people are reviled and personally blacklisted by the faithful. Indeed, Rand’s monthly magazine, The Objectivist, is probably the only magazine in the world that consistently cancels the subscription of anyone on their personal blacklist, including any subscribers who send in what they consider to be unworshipful questions.
The second, associated factor is the totalitarian atmosphere, the cultic atmosphere, of the Randian movement. While the official Randian creed stresses the importance of individuality, self-reliance, and independent judgment, the unofficial but crucial axiom for the faithful is that “Ayn Rand is the greatest person who has ever lived” and, as a practical corollary, that “everything Ayn Rand says is right.” With this sort of ruling mentality, it is no wonder that the turnover in the Randian movement has been exceptionally high: attracted by the credo of individualism, an enormous number of young people were either purged or drifted away in disgust.
The collapse of the Randian movement as an organized force came in the summer of 1968, when an unbelievable bombshell struck the movement: an irrevocable split between Rand and her appointed heir, Nathaniel Branden.
Since then, the Randian movement has happily become polycentric; and Branden repaired to California to set up his own schismatic movement there. But the latter is still a movement confined to psychological theories and publications, and to book reviews in the occasionally appearing Academic Associates News. As an organized movement, Randianism, whatever variant, is a mere shadow of its former self.
But the Randian creed still remains as a vital influence on the thinking of libertarians, so many of whom were former adherents to the cult. Politically, Rand rejected taxation as robbery, and therefore illegitimate.
Randian political theory wishes to preserve the existing unitary state, with its monopoly over coercion and ultimate decision-making; it wishes to define its “government” as an institution which retains its State monopoly but gains its revenue only by voluntary contributions from its citizens. Rand infuses into the political outlook of herself and her charges an emotional devotion to the existing American government and to the American Constitution that totally negates her own libertarian axioms.
While Rand opposes the war in Vietnam, for example, she does so on purely tactical reasons as a mistake not in our “national interest”; as a result, she is far more passionate in her hostility to the unpatriotic protestors against the war than she is against the war itself. She advocated the firing of Eugene Genovese from Rutgers, on the grounds that “no man may support the victory of the enemies of his country.” And even though Rand passionately opposes the draft as slavery, she also believes, with Read and the laissez-fairists, that it is illegitimate to disobey the laws of the American State, no matter how unjust — so long as her freedom to protest the laws remains.
Finally, Ayn Rand is a conventional right-winger, as well, in her attitude toward the “international Communist conspiracy.”
Many neo-Randians, devoted as they are to logical analysis, have seen the logical clinker in Randian political theory; that if no man may aggress upon another, then neither may an outfit calling itself “government” presume to exert a coercive monopoly on force and on the making of ultimate judicial decision. Hence, they saw that no government may be coercively preserved, and they therefore took the next crucial step; while retaining devotion to the free market and private property, this legion of youthful neo-Randians have concluded that all services, including police and courts, must become freely marketable. It is morally illegitimate to set up a coercive monopoly of such functions, and then revere it as “government.” Hence, they have become “free-market anarchists,” or “anarchocapitalists,” people who believe that defense, like any other service, should only be provided on the free market and not through monopoly or tax coercion.
Anarchocapitalism is a creed new to the present age. Its closest historical links are with the “individualist anarchism” of Benjamin R. Tucker and Lysander Spooner of the late 19th century, and it shares with Tucker and Spooner a devotion to private property, individualism, and competition. Furthermore, and in contrast to Read and Rand, it shares with Spooner and Tucker their hostility to government officials as a criminal band of robbers and murderers. It is therefore no longer “patriotic.” It differs from the older anarchist in not believing that profits and interest would disappear in a fully free market, in holding the landlord-tenant relationship to be legitimate, and in holding that men can arrive through reason at objective law which does not have to be at the mercy of ad hoc juries. Lysander Spooner’s brilliantly hard-hitting No Treason, one of the masterpieces of antistatism and reprinted by an anarchocapitalist press, has had considerable influence in converting present-day youth to libertarianism.
It is safe to say that the great bulk of right-libertarians are anarchocapitalists, particularly among the youth. Anarchocapitalism, however, also contains within it a large spectrum of differing ideas and attitudes. For one thing, while they have all discarded any traits of devotion to the State and have become anarchists, many of them have retained the simplistic anticommunism, devotion to big business, and even American patriotism of their former creeds.
What we may call “anarchopatriots,” for example, take this sort of line: “Yes, anarchy is the ideal solution. But, in the meanwhile, the American government is the freest on earth,” etc. Much of this sort of attitude permeated the Libertarian Caucus of the Young Americans for Freedom, which split off or were expelled from YAF at the embroiled YAF convention at St. Louis in August, 1969. This split — based on their libertarianism and their refusal to be devoted to such unjust laws as the draft — led to the splitting off from YAF of almost the entire California, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and New Jersey sections of that leading conservative youth organization. These groups then formed “Libertarian Alliances” in the various states.
A group of older anarchocapitalists centered in New York founded the Libertarian Forum as a semimonthly, in early 1969, and formed the Radical Libertarian Alliance (RLA), which had a considerable impact in fueling and sparking the 1969 YAF split in St. Louis. Its ideas were propagated among the youth with particular effect by Roy A. Childs, Jr.
Childs had particular effect in converting Jarret Wollstein from Randianism to anarchocapitalism and then to a realistic view of the American State. Wollstein, an energetic young Marylander, had been ejected from the Randian movement, and had formed his own Society for Rational Individualism, publishing the monthly National Individualist. Finally, at the end of 1969, Wollstein’s SRI merged with the bulk of the old Libertarian Alliance members of YAF to form the Society of Individual Liberty, which has become by far the leading organization of libertarians in this country. SIL has thousands of members, and numerous campus chapters throughout the country, and is loosely affiliated with the California Libertarian Alliance, consisting largely of the ex-YAFers and which itself has over a thousand members within the state.
In many ways, California, with the largest right-libertarian population, differs from the movement in the rest of the country. The movement there is led by the California Libertarian Alliance (CLA), of over a thousand members. Led by youthful former YAFers, the CLA is rightist and neo-Randian in tendency, although over the last year and a half it too has abandoned many of its Randian tenets.
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Every Crime Needs a Victim By Laurence M. Vance Campaign for Liberty May 21, 2010
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2010/05/laurence-m-vance/if-its-a-crime-it-has-a-victim/
Just as every husband needs a wife, every child needs a parent, and every teacher needs a pupil, so every crime needs a victim. Not a potential victim or possible victim or a supposed victim, but an actual victim. There are a myriad of federal, state, and local laws on an incalculable number of subjects. The result of this is that the United States — the land of the free — has one of the highest per-capita prison populations in the world. With less than 5 percent of the world’s population, the United States has almost a quarter of the world’s prisoners. The volume and scope of federal laws are especially distressing because very few of them are authorized by the Constitution. Congress and the federal agencies it has created have federalized a host of ordinary street crimes already covered by state criminal codes. Things like arson, carjacking, and gun possession by felons. The federal criminal code has over 4,000 separate offenses, including such violent crimes as transporting birds across state lines to engage in fights and interstate transport of unlicensed dentures. Sometimes the federal government also pressures the states to enact laws. Thus, the National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984 required states to raise their drinking ages to twenty-one or lose 10 percent of their federal highway funds. The most senseless category of what governments — federal, state, or local — have labeled crimes is victimless crimes. These are crimes like not wearing a seatbelt, not wearing a motorcycle or bicycle helmet, texting while driving, doing business on Sunday, charging an excessive interest rate, price gouging, and that great crime against humanity — ticket scalping. New Hampshire is the only state that has no adult seat belt law. This makes me a law breaker in forty-nine states. Many of the same people who say that what you do or don’t do in your own car is your business make an exception when it comes to seat belt laws. Is it a good idea to wear a seatbelt? Certainly. Is it a good idea for kids to be securely fastened in? Most definitely. But the idea that we need the state to protect us by forcing us to wear seatbelts is ludicrous. Whatever happened to the ideas of individual responsibility and parental responsibility? This is something that could easily be handled on the free market. Insurance companies could charge higher premiums to those drivers who forego wearing a seatbelt. Drivers should want to ensure that everyone in their car arrives at their destination safely, but they don’t need the threat of a ticket to do so. And is there any doubt that governments are more interested in revenue than safety? Check Amazon for Pricing.
Only three states (Illinois, Iowa and New Hampshire) have absolutely no motorcycle helmet requirement. The other states require helmets for everyone or just for adults. Twenty-one states require bicyclists below a certain age to wear helmets. New Hampshire even requires a bicycle helmet for riders under sixteen even though no one who rides an obviously more dangerous motorcycle is required to wear one. Should advocates of liberty be in favor of state governments requiring riders of motorcycles and bicycles to wear helmets? Not if they want to be consistent. Is it foolish to ride a motorcycle without a helmet? I think so. But I think it’s foolish to ride a motorcycle without a full suit of armor. The issue of motorcycle helmets is also something that could easily be handled on the free market in the form of higher insurance premiums to those motorcycle riders who forego wearing a helmet. Families and friends should be the ones persuading motorcycle riders to wear helmets — not the state. Wisconsin just became the twenty-fifth state to ban texting while driving. The problem with these laws, in addition to the obvious — that they grossly infringe upon personal liberty and criminalize an otherwise harmless activity because it might cause a driver to be distracted and perhaps have an accident — is their selectiveness. What about eating and drinking while driving? What about women applying makeup while driving? What about men shaving with an electric razor while driving? What about people reading a map while driving? What about people glancing too long at billboards or blinking while driving? Drivers should be held accountable for actual accidents, not potential ones. Seat belt, helmet, and texting laws are predicated on the idea that we need the state to protect us from doing something stupid. But it is families and friends that should be the ones persuading people to buckle up, wear a helmet, or turn off their cell phone, not the state. But they won’t do it, some say, and therefore the state has to do it. But this presupposes that the state cares more about an individual than does his family and friends — a very dubious proposition. Too many Americans are willing to surrender their liberty without a whimper at the slightest whisper by the state of “safety” or “children.” Blue laws — laws that forbid the sale of all or certain goods at most stores on Sunday — are some of the most laughable victimless crime legislation ever concocted. In some states it is illegal to not just purchase alcohol on Sunday, but to buy a car from a dealer. And it’s not just Sunday. In Massachusetts, all stores (except convenience stores and gas stations) have to remain closed on Thanksgiving and Christmas Day. But why should those who attend church on Sunday (as I do, and as many of you do) care if those who don’t attend church want to do their shopping? Church goers who have such a problem with the repeal of a blue law that prevents beer from being sold on Sunday don’t seem to mind restaurants being open so they have somewhere to eat after church. Some victimless crimes relate to economics. This would be things like usury laws, price gouging, and ticket scalping. Best Price: $2.55Buy New $22.99(as of 07:50 UTC - Details)Ethically, usury is an exorbitant interest rate. Legally, usury is an illegal interest rate. But in what is now viewed as its archaic or obsolete sense, usury is simply the price of interest charged on a loan for the lack of use of the money and the risk of loss. So, based on this artificial distinction between usury and interest, we have the victimless crime of usury in all fifty states. Usurers — that is, moneylenders, have been despised throughout history. In Dante’s The Divine Comedy, usurers are in the seventh circle of hell along with blasphemers and sodomites. But as the late economist Murray Rothbard pointed out, moneylending is a business in the market like any other business: “If the number of usurers multiplies, the price of money or interest will be driven down by the competition. So that if one doesn’t like high interest rates, the more usurers the better!” Although it might be immoral to charge above a certain rate of interest in some circumstances, it should certainly not be illegal. How could anyone possibly calculate what the maximum rate of interest should be and then apply that to every situation? And what should be the basis of the rate? Should it be the prime rate, the federal funds rate, the discount rate, or the LIBOR rate? The common-sense approach is simple: If you don’t want to borrow a sum of money at what you believe is a usurious rate of interest, then don’t borrow the money. But, some will say, we need the state to regulate interest rates to protect consumers. But how is preventing a willing lender and a willing borrower from doing business helping consumers? Price-gouging laws are predicated on the fallacy that there is a just price for every good and service, and even more so during bad weather or some government-declared state of emergency. The U.S. Department of Energy even maintains a “Gas Price Watch Reporting Form” where people who know nothing about supply and demand, refinery capacity, gasoline futures, world surplus production capacity, and the price of a barrel of crude oil can report price gouging by gas stations. These laws are very similar to usury laws. In some circumstances, it might be immoral to charge above a particular price, but it should certainly not be illegal. There is no such thing as a just price. One cannot support price-gouging laws without ascribing omniscience to the state. How else could the state determine what the correct price should be? From an economic standpoint, we know that what is called price gouging is simply nothing more than charging what the market will bear. Price-gouging laws violate the property rights of resource owners, they hinder the price system’s signaling ability, they contribute to the misallocation of resources, and they cause shortages. Once again, the common-sense approach is the simplest: If you don’t like what you think is the inflated price of an item, then don’t buy it. The crime of ticket scalping has got to be one of the most ridiculous examples of a victimless act ever labeled as a crime. What precept of any ethical system would frown upon a willing seller and a willing buyer exchanging tickets for cash, as long as it was not violating the property rights of the owner of the ground where they made their exchange? Ticket scalpers perform a valuable service and should be applauded not condemned. The nanny state is at its prime when it comes to monitoring illicit substances and consensual behavior that some people find objectionable, e.g., gambling, prostitution, and drug use. Thus, the most widely accepted victimless crimes are those that involve what is considered to be immoral activity. Here is where even believers in a free society acquiesce to the state. And religious people in particular look to the state to enforce their morality when it comes to these issues. The problem with the moral crusades of the nanny state against gambling, prostitution, and drug use is that they fail to distinguish between vices and crimes. As the 19th-century classical-liberal political philosopher Lysander Spooner explained it: Vices are those acts by which a man harms himself or his property. Crimes are those acts by which one man harms the person or property of another. Vices are simply the errors which a man makes in his search after his own happiness. Unlike crimes, they imply no malice toward others, and no interference with their persons or property. Best Price: $2.49Buy New $23.80(as of 03:05 UTC - Details)Unless this clear distinction between vices and crimes be made and recognized by the laws, there can be on earth no such thing as individual right, liberty, or property — no such things as the right of one man to the control of his own person and property, and the corresponding and coequal rights of another man to the control of his own person and property. To be a crime, adds Spooner, there must exist criminal intent to invade the person or property of another. But vices are not engaged in with criminal intent. A man practices a vice “for his own happiness solely, and not from any malice toward others.” This reminds me of H. L. Mencken’s famous definition of Puritanism: “The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.” According to John Stossel: “Americans bet a hundred million dollars every day, and that’s just at legal places like Las Vegas and Indian reservations. Much more is bet illegally.” No one should be deceived into thinking that the state is really concerned about the immorality of gambling. It is only illegal gambling — gambling in which the government does not get a cut of the action — that the government is concerned about. State lotteries, which have odds worse than any casino, are marketed to the poor with tax dollars. If an individual is genuinely concerned about the negatives associated with gambling, then the answer is personal persuasion, not government prosecution. Is it anyone’s business if people want to throw their money away? Prostitution isn’t just the world’s oldest profession, it’s also the world’s oldest victimless crime. But if adultery or fornication should not be crimes, then why should prostitution be one? They are all consensual acts between two or more parties. Forced prostitution, of course, is a crime because it has a victim. And prostitutes who trespass by plying their trade without permission on private property are themselves committing a crime. But sex between two consenting adults without dinner and a movie should not be the business of government or anyone else. Again, if an individual is genuinely concerned about what he sees as the plight of prostitutes, then he should resort to persuasion or provide an employment alternative instead of looking to the government to outlaw immoral activity. Best Price: $3.35Buy New $65.85(as of 02:10 UTC - Details)The state’s war on drugs, like its war on poverty is a failure, unless you consider turning hundreds of thousands of otherwise law-abiding people into criminals a success. Out of the 847,863 arrests for marijuana in 2008, 754,224 were for possession alone. According to the Sentencing Project, over half of the federal prison population is the result of drug charges. Twenty percent of the state prison population and 25 percent of the local jail population is due to drug charges. There are currently about half a million drug offenders in prison or jail, an increase of 1,100 percent since 1980. Not only has the unconstitutional drug war had virtually no impact on the use or availability of most drugs in the United States, it has destroyed civil liberties and financial privacy. The costs of drug prohibition far outweigh any possible benefits. Proof that people are not thinking when it comes to drugs is the subject of alcohol. There is no reason why getting high on drugs in the privacy of one’s home should be treated differently from getting drunk on alcohol in the privacy of one’s home. And not only is it simply not the purpose of government to protect people from abusing drugs, government intervention begets more government intervention. As the late economist Ludwig von Mises explained: Opium and morphine are certainly dangerous, habit-forming drugs. But once the principle is admitted that it is the duty of government to protect the individual against his own foolishness, no serious objections can be advanced against further encroachments. . . . And why limit the government’s benevolent providence to the protection of the individual’s body only? Is not the harm a man can inflict on his mind and soul even more disastrous than any bodily evils? Why not prevent him from reading bad books and seeing bad plays, from looking at bad paintings and statues and from hearing bad music? The mischief done by bad ideologies, surely, is much more pernicious, both for the individual and for the whole society, than that done by narcotic drugs. There should be no DEA agents, no undercover sting operations, and no jail time for growing a plant. Every crime needs a victim. Not wearing a seatbelt, not wearing helmet, texting while driving, doing business on Sunday, usurious lending practices, price gouging, ticket scalping, gambling without the state’s permission, using the services of a prostitute, abusing drugs, and a host of other “crimes” that I have not mentioned are not crimes at all. They may be immoral, they may be vices, they may be bad habits, they may be dangerous, they may be foolish, they may be addictive, they may harm those who willingly participant in them, they may have no redeeming value whatsoever, but as long as those who engage in them are not harming or violating the personal or property rights of non-participants, they should not be crimes. There are two reasons that no one should look to the government as a nanny to enforce morality and micro-manage the behavior of its citizens. Buy New $5.95(as of 12:45 UTC - Details)First, the purpose of government is supposed to be to protect life, liberty, and property from violence or fraud. It is simply not the business of government to prohibit the advertising, sale, and use of what it deems to be harmful substances. Likewise, the government should not be concerned with keeping people from vice or bad habits and regulating or prohibiting activities that take place between consenting adults. A government with the power to outlaw harmful substances and immoral practices is a government with the power to ban any substance and any practice. A nanny state is a perversion of government. Second, all governments — the U.S. government included — eventually degenerate into the greatest violators of the life, liberty, and property they are supposed to protect. As former Foundation for Economic Education president Richard Ebeling has said: There has been no greater threat to life, liberty, and property throughout the ages than government. Even the most violent and brutal private individuals have been able to inflict only a mere fraction of the harm and destruction that have been caused by the use of power by political authorities. And as C. S. Lewis remarked: Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. Religious people in particular make a grave mistake when they look to the state to enforce their morality. The actions of the state are typically the greatest examples of immoral behavior that one could possibly think of. Yet, many religious people not only look to the state to enforce a moral code, they defend, support, and make excuses for the state, its politicians, its legislation, and its wars. Some victimless crimes may indeed be sins, but it is not the purpose of religion to use force or the threat of force to keep people from sinning. Rebuke, persuasion, and instruction are certainly more biblical methods than using the power of the state to change or restrict people’s behavior. As Mises again explains: Best Price: $3.46Buy New $5.96(as of 12:30 UTC - Details)He who wants to reform his countrymen must take recourse to persuasion. This alone is the democratic way of bringing about changes. If a man fails in his endeavors to convince other people of the soundness of his ideas, he should blame his own disabilities. He should not ask for a law, that is, for compulsion and coercion by the police. Many people support legislation against victimless crimes only as long as it stops short of their particular vice. But vice or no vice, no advocate of liberty and a free society should seek legislation that would criminalize any victimless crimes. Liberty means liberty for everyone, even those who use substances and engage in practices that others in society don’t use or find offensive. Our liberty is compromised and society is made worse off when we deprive a select few of liberty who are not themselves violating anyone’s liberty. In closing, I refer first to Mises and then to John Stuart Mill: A free man must be able to endure it when his fellow men act and live otherwise than he considers proper. He must free himself from the habit, just as soon as something does not please him, of calling for the police. The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it. Each is the proper guardian of his own health, whether bodily, or mental and spiritual. Mankind are greater gainers by suffering each other to live as seems good to themselves, than by compelling each to live as seems good to the rest. Victimless crime legislation requires a nanny state to enforce it. A nanny state must of necessity be a police state and therefore hostile to liberty. Real crimes that violate personal or property rights should be enforced to the fullest extent of the law; victimless crimes should be opposed root and branch.