How to Start a Movement

Fun video from TED with important implications for libertarians:

This Week in Moral Panic

A few stories from New Zealand over the past few days:

Cheap smokes!

“I’m bloody horrified, but not surprised at their tactics,” [Maori Party MP Hone Harawira] said. “There’s now overwhelming support from New Zealanders to get rid of tobacco in this country and companies are doing their best to hook as many people as possible now, so they’re lowering prices and upping nicotine and marketing into places like Aranui and Otara.”

“What they are doing is maximising their profit before their demise and they don’t care that they’re killing New Zealanders to achieve it,” he said.

Gangs!

Local government leaders are seeking a law change to allow other councils to follow Whanganui’s lead and ban gang patches.

Whanganui was given the right to pass a bylaw last year banning all gang insignia except tattoos from public places, but other councils wanting to do the same must get their own enabling law through Parliament.

Party pills!

Police and customs officials are worried a party drug linked to the deaths of two teenagers in Britain is now circulating in New Zealand.

It is feared the banned drug mephedrone, also known as M-cat, meow and plant food, is growing in popularity as a substitute for ecstasy. (…)

Although no cases have turned up at hospital emergency departments as yet, potential side effects of the drug range from vomitting, nausea and nose bleeds, right through to hallucinations, fits, paranoia, anxiety and depression.

The long-term side effects are still not known.

Child sexualization!

“It is time to confront the issue of ‘corporate pedophilia’ and the ‘raunch culture’ which is harming the self-esteem, body image and academic performance of our young people,” says Mr McCoskrie.

Gambling!

The findings were clear – every additional pokie machine in a community results in .8 new problem gamblers. Further, there is no evidence that this plateaus.

Graeme Ramsey, Problem Gambling Foundation CEO, says research such as this should inform gambling policy.

Stand by for regulation.

Libertarian Music Monday: Fuzzbox Edition

Rules and Regulations by We’ve Got a Fuzzbox and We’re Gonna Use It:

There must, indeed, be more to life than rules and regulations to command and obey.

See also their…interesting take on Spirit in the Sky.

Getting it Said

Kevin Carson at C4SS:

In my opinion the best way to change the laws, in practical terms, is through counter-institution building and through counter-economic activity outside the state’s control:  in other words, to render the laws so irrelevant and unenforceable, by our efforts outside the state, that even the state must make concessions to reality.

Yes.

It seems to me that statism will ultimately end, not as the result of any sudden and dramatic failure, but as the cumulative effect of a long series of little things.  The costs of enculturing individuals to the state’s view of the world, and of dissuading a large enough majority of people from disobeying when they’re pretty sure they’re not being watched, will result in a death of a thousand cuts.  More and more of the state’s activities, from the perspective of those running things, will just cost more (in terms not only of money but of just plain mental aggravation) than they’re worth.  IOW, the decay of ideological hegemony and the decreased feasibility of enforcement will do to the state what file-sharing is doing to the RIAA.

Yes!

The most cost-effective “political” effort is simply making people understand that they don’t need anyone’s permission to be free.  Start telling them right now that the law is unenforceable, and disseminating knowledge as widely as possible on the most effective ways of breaking it.  Publicize examples of ways we can live our lives the way we want, with institutions of our own making, under the radar of the state’s enforcement apparatus:   local currency systems, free clinics, ways to protect squatter communities from harrassment, and so on.  Educational efforts to undermine the state’s moral legitimacy, educational campaigns to demonstrate the unenforceability of the law, and efforts to develop and circulate means of circumventing state control, are all things best done on a stigmergic basis.

A thousand times “Yes!”

Me is Mine, You is Yours

Cute, though not completely historically accurate, video [hat tip: MCLA]:

Not quite as good as this classic, of course:

Glenn Beck Suggests Liberalized Medical Marijuana is a Tool of Tyranny

Skip to about the 4-minute mark. What a dick:

Finally, A Candidate I Can Offer My Unqualified Support

I urge all Americans to vote for Nobody in 2010. If you’re outside the States, you can also vote for Nobody in your local election. Nobody runs everywhere, and you don’t even need to turn up to the polling booth in order to vote for Nobody.

Bailouts and Capitalism

The G-20 protesters in Pittsburgh seem to have some interesting political views:

The marchers included small groups of self-described anarchists, some wearing dark clothes and bandanas and carrying black flags. Others wore helmets and safety goggles.

One banner read, “No borders, no banks,” another, “No hope in capitalism.” A few minutes into the march, protesters unfurled a large banner reading “NO BAILOUT NO CAPITALISM” with an encircled “A,” a recognized sign of anarchists.

The “NO BAILOUT NO CAPITALISM” sign raises some interesting questions about the word “capitalism.” Many self-described leftists (some of whom I come very close to agreeing with) see bailouts and other forms of corporate privilege as part and parcel of capitalism. Many non-left libertarians see bailouts as antithetical to capitalism. Both groups are wrong.

The only useful definition of capitalism in line with its historical and contemporary usage is a system which allows the private ownership and alienation of property. This definition can accommodate a wide variety of institutional arrangements, from a market-anarchism to fascism: there are both good and bad forms of capitalism (full book here!).

By that definition, I am completely and utterly pro-capitalist in the sense that I think any system without private property would be irredeemably awful. History hasn’t exhausted the design-space of propertyless social systems (and I, for one, hope it never does), but it teaches some valuable lessons.  At the same time, I’m completely and utterly opposed to some forms of capitalism. Government funds lining the pockets of well-connecting firms is neither essential to nor inconsistent with capitalism. It is essential to some kinds of capitalism and inconsistent with others.

Inside the Mind of a Politician: Taxation is Voluntary

Something about withholding taxes. I don’t get it.

It’s possible to support government without being a complete moron. Denying that government is force is not the way to do it.

Hat tip: The Peace, Freedom and Prosperity Movement.

Women and Drug Legalization

At the risk of reviving the libertarian misogyny bogeyman, I’ll quote an interesting post from Laura Greenback on why women are on average more opposed to the legalization of marijuana:

What could it be? Why would women shy away from this cause? Do men use marijuana more? Do women just hide it better?

When I asked my girlfriends about it, a college roommate suggested that the feminist attitude that got us where we are today works against us when it comes to issues like marijuana policy. We feel the pressure to be seen as strong workers and perfect mothers, so we shy away from getting behind something our coworkers and PTA members might see as “out there.” (…)

Of course, it’s harder for those of us who are role models for children. I’m a mentor of a teenage girl. When I started at MPP, I worried about being a bad influence. But whenever I worry, I think about how empowered she was when I took her to a self-defense class, or how much fun we had riding roller coasters at Six Flags.

When it came up, we talked about how she is too young to try marijuana because her brain is still developing. I told her that medical marijuana helps sick people, and that I am working to keep good people out of jail.

It’s a tougher call for mothers. My own sister told me her husband didn’t want their kids around me at first. But they chilled out, and the kids still call me Aunt Laura and beg me to help them make mini-documentaries on their flip cam.

I think that’s exactly right: women are more likely than men to signal social solidarity through their policy preferences. My guess is that this can be explained with evolutionary theory, but, whatever the reason, it seems to hold empirically.  If women are more communitarian, libertarians would do well to focus on the communitarian aspects of libertarianism. Women aren’t anti-libertarian in any substantive sense; but libertarianism has an understandable but undeserved reputation for antisocial abstract individualism.