August 23, 2007 – I Quit My Day Job in the Movement

I resigned my gig as Tuesday guest editor at STR yesterday. Partly for political reasons and partly for health considerations.

My liver disease and kidney problems are putting a great strain on my body and I require frequent medical treatment, which takes up a lot of my time and energy. And so something had to give, and the STR gig was one of things I had to let go of. It takes a least four hours to put together a good daily edition and that fours hours is a bitch when I am groggy and weak from treatment and when I just want to lay down and take a nap. But if you have an edition to get ready you can’t rest when you feel like it without compromising the quality of your edition, which was something I was loathe to do.

The political considerations were an issue too. I believe that oppression is what it is, and I see no distinction as to whether you are being squashed down directly by a state entity (i.e., courts, cops, bureaucrats, and politicians) or by some “private” entity (monopolists, rent-seekers, special interest groups and such ilk) who influence the state with money-bought political clout.

Microsoft, the RIAA, Mayors Against Illegal Guns, and similar groups and wealthy individuals should have no means to do what they do to assert their views on us. Foisting an unpopular agenda without a state provided system of law courts and judges (who are all ultimately backed up by armed police) to make us conform to their will is what the state-privileged sorts do. They use force without actual violence, (at first anyhow) to repress and dominate us, but my friends the anarcho-capitalists and the big and small “L” libertarians just don’t see it that way.

But as I said yesterday, some see “private” coercion, (that is, special interests using the state as a catspaw for their own ends) as somehow different and somehow acceptable because see, it’s supposedly “private” and “voluntary.” Which of course any rational analysis shows to be false. There is nothing “private” about a cop arresting you, or “voluntary” about being sued. I really don’t question the anarcho-capitalists and libertarians sincerity of belief, but I do reject their dismissal of my critique of their idea of what constitutes liberty.

And so there you have it.

oppression libertarian anarcho-capitalist special_interest_groups, gun_control liberty class_struggle rent_seeking

June 08_2007 - Zog and Mr. Poop

Here is a short column I wrote for Strike_the_Root.com on my theory as to why liberal democracies eventually evolve into nanny-cratic authoritarian states over time.

The Origins of Authoritarianism in the Democratic State

"In a democracy however, the reverse is the case; the public’s every wish must be accommodated and acted upon instantly. And so laws are passed, regulations, specifications, and instructions are published, and are continually added to. And of course Zogs must be hired and armed in order to make it all work. And there’s the rub. The problems that all these rules, laws, and red tape address are minor and usually temporary; but the government-approved solution is nearly always permanent. And so the boil of public opinion reduces our natural and abundant liberty to steam which then disappears into the wind and then is gone. Permanently gone."

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