Rad Geek People's Daily

(Via Catallarchy 2005-03-29.)

Treasury Secretary Snow came to Portland a couple of weeks ago to hawk the Bush administration’s Social Security plan (i.e., inflicting another goddamn government-controlled account on you and calling it freedom); Captain Arbyte attended and stuck him with a tough question that puts the lie to the ownership society rhetoric.. Good show; but it turns out that before he even got the chance to ask, Snow had already let the mask of the State slip, for just a moment, before hurriedly putting it back in place (emphasis mine):

The fourth question asked about potential changes to existing retirement accounts. Snow said that Social Security was never intended to be a person’s only source of retirement income, and that FDR was clear about this when the program was enacted. Snow praised Health Savings Accounts in particular as a savings vehicle. He said that the young are notoriously poor savers, and that it’s an advantage of the President’s system that it forces people to save. Foot in mouth, he quickly rephrased it as an opportunity. (Thanks Steve; I missed the rephrasing.) He finished by saying that he’s in favor of savings — well, at least he’s clearly not a Keynesian.

But, of course, that’s what the Bush plan is, no matter how lovely the mask and no matter how polite the language: it is a plan for forcing people to save for their retirement against their will. And, while we’re at it, so is Social Security: whether you think you have a better use for your money or not, whether you think you can get a better rate of return from your local bank or not, whether you would feel more secure not being dependent on U.S. government entitlements for your retirement income or not, you will be forced to turn the money over to the government’s approved uses, and you will be forced to do so under any Yet Another Damn Account plan that Bush and his gang come up with. Don’t believe me? Try not paying your Social Security tax and see what happens to you.

In the world of State bureau-speak, the State offers opportunities, not threats, and opportunities do not exist until the State creates them. In Snow’s world there are apparently no brokers, no banks, and no mason jars, so young people do not have an opportunity to save unless the government issues an edict forcing them to do it. Just like No Child Left Behind gives schools an opportunity to hire more credentialed teachers and increase standardized testing. Just like jail gives potheads an opportunity to reconsider their dissolute life. Just like the draft gave our boys an opportunity to serve their country. Of course, this is all the polite way of saying that no matter what individual people who know about their own lives better than you do decided the best course of action to be, given their present circumstances and limited resources, you will need to comply with what the government tells you is best and if you do not comply some dude with a gun or a billy-club will come to your house and make you do it, or take you to jail for not doing it, or both. As Ludwig von Mises said:

It is important to remember that government interference always means either violent action or the threat of such action…. Government is in the last resort the employment of armed men, of policemen, gendarmes, soldiers, prison guards, and hangmen. The essential feature of government is the enforcement of its decrees by beating, killing, and imprisoning. Those who are asking for more government interference are asking ultimately for more compulsion and less freedom.

–Ludwig von Mises, Human Action, ch. XXVII, p. 719

Now, let me be clear. The fact that an edict is backed by the threat of force is not a decisive argument against it. There is nothing wrong with using force to stop murder, or slavery, or robbery, or rape. But the point here is that if you are going to go around in favor of this or that government program you had better be clear about what that entails and it had better be something that it’s worth using force to achieve.

So, now, remind me. Why should I be forced to save for my own retirement?

Many people, like Echidne (2005-04-19), have raised questions about the newly appointed Vicar of Christ, Pope Benedict XVI (formerly Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger). Some take some comfort from the fact that he is old. I’m not so sure that will help, though; I have some serious questions about his papacy too:

First Boston, and now New York City. Soon the whole world will be in the long shadow of the Molinari Society. Fortunately, as antiwar anarchists, our imperialism will turn out to be of a rather easy-going kind…

Call for Abstracts

The Molinari Society will be hosting its second symposium in conjunction with the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association in New York City, December 27-30, 2005. We plan a two-hour session, with two papers, and hereby solicit abstracts on the general topic of Libertarianism Through Thick and Thin. Papers should address the general question of whether libertarianism should be thick or thin (thin libertarianism is libertarianism understood as a narrowly political doctrine, while thick libertarianism is libertarianism understood as essentially integrated into some broader set of social or cultural values) and may (but need not) also address the connection between libertarianism and some specific position or set of positions (environmentalism, left-anarchism, Aristotelianism, feminism, egalitarianism, Christianity, secular humanism, the labor movement, etc.).

Send abstracts to Roderick T. Long. (Those interested in being a commentator at the session should do likewise.)

Deadline for receiving abstracts: 5 May 2005
Notification of acceptance / rejection: 15 May 2005
Accepted papers due: 1 November 2005

April is the poet’s month.

I wanted to post something by Andrea Dworkin this weekend; I know that she wrote poetry, but I don’t know where to find most of it. The published works that I’m familiar with are prose: essays, short stories, novels. Her writing is poetic wherever she writes, but I wanted something in verse. Since I couldn’t find anything in print and my resources for really looking for it are limited, I decided to go with this. I don’t know whether this counts as poetry or not, properly speaking; I do know that it is exactly right. This is from Heartbreak (2002), her memoir and the last book that she finished before she died.

IMMORAL

People play life as if it’s a game, whereas each step is a real step. The shock of being unable to control what happens, especially the tragedies, overwhelms one. Someone dies; someone leaves; someone lies. There is sickness, misery, loneliness, betrayal. One is alone not just at the end but all the time. One tries to camouflage pain and failure. One wants to believe that poverty can be cured by wealth, cruelty by kindness; but neither is true. The orphan is always an orphan.

The worst immorality is in apathy, a deadening of caring about others, not because they have some special claim but because they have no claim at all.

The worst immorality is in disinterest, indifference, so that the lone person in pain has no importance; one need not feel an urgency about rescuing the suffering person.

The worst immorality is in dressing up to go out in order not to have to think about those who are hungry, without shelter, without protection.

The worst immorality is in living a trivial life because one is afraid to face any other kind of life–a despairing life or an anguished life or a twisted and difficult life.

The worst immorality is in living a mediocre life, because kindness rises above mediocrity always, and not to be kind locks one into an ethos of boredom and stupidity.

The worst immorality is in imitating those who give nothing.

The worst immorality is in conforming so that one fits in, smart or fashionable, mock-heroic or the very best of the very same.

The worst immorality is accepting the status quo because one is afraid of gossip against oneself.

The worst immorality is in selling out simply because one is afraid.

The worst immorality is a studied ignorance, a purposeful refusal to see or know.

The worst immorality is living without ambition or work or pushing the rest of us along.

The worst immorality is being timid when there is no threat.

The worst immorality is refusing to push oneself where one is afraid to go.

The worst immorality is not to love actively.

The worst immorality is to close down because heartbreak has worn one down.

The worst immorality is to live according to rituals, rites of passage that are predetermined and impersonal.

The worst immorality is to deny someone else dignity.

The worst immorality is to give in, give up.

The worst immorality is to follow a road map of hate drawn by white supremacists and male supremacists.

The worst immorality is to use another person’s body in the passing of time.

The worst immorality is to inflict pain.

The worst immorality is to be careless with another person’s heart and soul.

The worst immorality is to be stupid, because it’s easy.

The worst immorality is to repudiate one’s own uniqueness in order to fit in.

The worst immorality is to set one’s goals so low that one must crawl to meet them.

The worst immorality is to hurt children.

The worst immorality is to use one’s strength to dominate or control.

The worst immorality is to surrender the essence of oneself for love or money.

The worst immorality is to believe in nothing, do nothing, achieve nothing.

The worst immoralities are but one, a single sin of human nothingness and stupidity. “Do no harm” is the counterpoint to apathy, indifference, and passive aggression; it is the fundamental moral imperative. “Do no harm” is the opposite of immoral. One must do something and at the same time do no harm. “Do no harm” remains the hardest ethic.

A week ago over at the Mises Institute, Lee Wishing ran into a touchy ethical dilemma: it turns out that this year he will be netting $646, transferred from other people’s pockets to his, courtesy of the behind-the-scenes number juggling of TurboTax and the IRS’s refundable child tax credit for his family’s four children:

Line 43 of our 1040 shows that the tax on our income is $3,354. Line 51 notes that the child credit is $3,354 making the total credits, line 55, offset our tax liability.

But my zero tax liability isn’t the point of this story. I really have a negative tax liability. The federal government will not only return the money I had withheld during the year, they’ll be kicking in another $646, which is the difference between the total of the child tax credits on line 55, $4,000, and my tax liability of $3,354 on line 43.

Believe it or not, the federal government is going to give me $646 of your money. The formula on Form 8812–the Additional Child Tax Credit form–that determines I get an extra pile of dough is complex. I checked the calculation and it was correct. I called a tax accountant and he said it was correct.

But is it right?

My six-year-old daughter, Mary, asked me what I was writing about.

I explained the concept: I just filled out our tax forms and I learned that the federal government will be giving us money that doesn’t belong to us. They will be taking it from other people and giving it to us.

That’s not right! said my first-grader.

Eight-year-old daughter Sarah was listening. I don’t like that. I mean, I don’t like that the government is going to take money from other people and give it to us, she said sadly.

Gosh, that’s clear thinking. But the tax system blurs clear thinking.

— Lee Wishing, Mises Institute (2005-04-05): 1040 Plunder

Blurs it enough, I guess, that Lee doesn’t come to any resolution by the end of the article, even with young Mary and Sarah’s prodding. However, I wrote my friend Dr. Anarchy for advice, and she pointed out that there is a simple solution to Lee’s problem. Lee’s worried because the federal government took money from other people against their will, and now they’re giving some of it to him. What to about the double burden of a guilty conscience and $646.00 he doesn’t deserve?

Simple. I’ll take it.

I am one of those unfortunate taxpayers out of whose pockets Lee’s $646 was taken. He can solve his problem by sending $646.00 to me, Charles Johnson. I’d be glad to send copies of the 1040s to prove my net liability to the Feds over the past few years: this year I’ll be coughing up $156 in taxes and fees. Last year I paid about $350 all told. My forms for 2002 are back in Auburn, but I am sure that I rendered at least $140 of tribute to the federal government. So by sending me, Charles Johnson, $646, Lee can not only solve his ethical dilemma and save face in front of his young daughters, and help out someone who (as you might guess from the low bills) would be glad to get the money back, he can also make his own contribution to rectifying the injustices of Leviathan.

You might say that any other taxpayer has just as good a claim to Lee’s $646 as I do. True, but Lee can’t afford to pay them all, and $646 is all the restitution he’s on the hook for–the rest of his tax refund is just getting his own money back. Why not try to distribute it evenly between all the net tax recipients? There’s hundreds of millions of them; trying to split $646 between all of them would mean that, effectively, no-one gets any of their expropriated money back on the margin. But by giving it all to me, Charles Johnson, Lee can ensure that two people are restored to a state of libertarian justice: he won’t have his expropriated gains anymore, and by giving the block of money to me I’ll be set back to where I was before I paid out taxes for the past 3 years. What’s so special about me specifically? Well, I could use the money, and it was my idea. The rest of you can find some other net tax recipient with a guilty conscience and homestead a claim to your money from their surplus.

What an opportunity for Lee: he’s just $646 away from libertarian justice. I’m glad to help him out. It won’t take any ballot boxes and it won’t take any political parties; all he needs to do is join a nonviolent direct action against State expropriation. I gladly accept credit cards, cash, or electronic funds transfers.

Happy Tax Day.