“Freedom Outlaw.” The term came up here a few days ago. It’ll arise again and again on this blog.

If you’ve been hanging out in my vicinity for a few years, you probably know what I mean by it. If not, you might be puzzled or even offended by the notion that people who believe in freedom are (or should be) criminals. Thought I’d stop this morning and define some terms.

So this is mostly for people who haven’t heard it all before.

A Freedom Outlaw is (loosely) somebody who cares so much about freedom that he or she will go after it regardless of any laws or regulations blocking the way. Will go after it personally. Not petition for it. Not write letters for it. Not vote for it. But GO for it.

Also, a Freedom Outlaw has panache. Think Robin Hood. Think V. Think (not to be self-promotional here, but …) of the swashbuckling fellow on the cover of this book.

Does a Freedom Outlaw really have to be a criminal? Well … yes and no. If the thought of being a criminal offends you, I can only say, “Get over it.” As Kent McManigal states so well, every, single one of us is already a criminal. We violate obscure laws from the time we open our eyes in the morning till the moment we fall exhausted into bed. Three Felonies a Day according to Harvey Silverglate. And the more innocent we are in our hearts when we commit those “crimes,” the riper we are for the plucking by corrupt prosecutors and regulators.

Heck, we probably violate laws, federal or state, even as we snooze. Maybe our PJs flout fireproofing regulations. Perhaps our snoring is regulated somewhere as noise pollution. Maybe our dreams are filled with acts of subversion.

But the simple fact is that we are already criminals, each and every one of us, even if we do our utmost to be “law-abiding citizens.”

There are simply too many laws to abide.

So we might as well embrace and enjoy what we are.

“Outlaw” isn’t an exact synonym for “criminal,” though. Historically, an outlaw was a person placed outside the protection of the law — fair game, in other words. Well, we are not fair game if we’re armed, both physically and mentally. But increasingly, the best people of the world are indeed “outside the protection of the law.” The law, such as it is, exists to fleece, silence, intimidate, and control us — not to protect us.

We’re there. So again, we might as well embrace and enjoy our status.

And that is what a Freedom Outlaw is and does.

I was tempted to call this scrap of prose a Freedom Outlaw’s credo. Or manifesto. But as soon as the thought entered my head, I realized that any true Freedom Outlaw would rip up anybody else’s attempted manifesto — would fire an arrow or slash his sword or put a 230-grain bullet through anyone’s proclaimed credo. Or maybe just step on the thing and ignore it as he strode boldly by. Because whatever else they are, Freedom Outlaws are all different from one another. Nobody can speak for an Outlaw but the Outlaw.

In the past, when proclaiming the Grand Freedom Outlaw Cabal (which I can do because unlike a credo or manifesto, it doesn’t require anybody else’s buy-in; feel free to be a Cabal-of-One, as I am), I’ve sketched out three types of Freedom Outlaw: the Ghost; the Agitator; and the Mole.

• The Ghost slides through the world with minimal visibility. He may live without “official papers” and do all that implies — living outside of databases, credit reports, and forms-in-triplicate. The Ghost lives on the margins, in the spaces where “good little citizens” don’t go.
• The Agitator … well, he makes noise. But not just the polite noise of letters to the editor or participation in rallies. The Agitator may be a trickster. Or a monkeywrencher. Or a leader of factions. Or a Julian Heicklen-style crusader. But in any case, he’s someone who puts his (or her, of course) own life and health on the line to commit direct action for freedom.
• The Mole lives an exemplary life, obeying all possible laws, filing taxes, crossing the street only in crosswalks, holding a respectable job (maybe even a government job) … but on the side and in silence gives help to freedom causes and freedomistas. Or saves herself up for the day when a single act of sabotage or whistleblowing can bring down an enemy of liberty.

Very few people are all one kind of Outlaw. Nobody can or should be squeezed into any one category. The categories are just there to be used if you find them useful.

But since they’re there … To those three (highly flexible, mutable, and very non-exclusive) types of Outlaw, I’m now, a bit reluctantly adding a fourth:

• The Cockapoo. That’s a type I’ve hinted at from my first books. But it’s a last choice — a choice of the tired, beaten, and all-but-defeated. But these strange days, an increasing number of us are tired, beaten, and darned-close-to-defeated. So … when no choice is left to you, when all else has failed, become a Cockapoo. Accept every scrap of “aid” offered by the benevolent but all-consuming state. Be useless. Become the government’s pet — and contribute in your own small, but purposeful, way to sucking it dry.

Don’t tell me about it if you don’t like that — or any other — form of Freedom Outlaw. Just go your own way and be your own kind of Outlaw. Nobody is stopping you except YOU.

But know what you’re doing. And do it with style. And don’t kid yourself that you’re a Freedom Outlaw if you’re actually just going along to get along and you never actually take meaningful, real-world steps to become more free.

We all break laws all the time. We can do it in a vile, truly criminal way by committing acts that are mala in se. Or we can — and do, every day — commit acts of mala prohibita. (Thank you, T., for the reminder.)

We can commit mala prohibita with furtive, creepy, ordinary criminal intent. Or with ignorant innocence, as millions of our stumbling fellow citizens do all the time. Or we can do it with “creative disregard” for the silliness or cruelty of bad laws. We can do it with insouciance, verve, boldness — knowing full well what we do and embracing what we have become in the process — former citizens now “outside the protection of the law.” Above all, we can live with purpose, furthering freedom in our own lives and with our own lives, by our refusal to cower and mindlessly obey.

Freedom Outlaw. It’s not what you do; it’s how you do it. It’s an attitude — from which actions always follow. It’s a do-it-yourself occupation. And a lifetime vocation.

The following article is translated into Portuguese from the English original, written by David D’Amato.

Para muitos estadunidenses, confortavelmente situados no coração do império, 11 de setembro foi rude despertamento, e não apenas da maneira mais óbvia; para aqueles que tomaram tempo para realmente considerar os angustiosos eventos daquele dia há dez anos, aquela cena de morte e destruição amedrontadora acrescentou tons de cinza a suas visões do mundo, a suas ideias acerca do papel dos Estados Unidos no panorama mundial.

Antes daquele dia, era pelo menos mais fácil ver a “Terra dos Livres” como força em prol do bem, disseminando democracia e oferecendo exemplo de liberdade e de abertura para aquelas terras retrógradas do mundo “subdesenvolvido.” E para muita gente o 11/9 confirmou a narrativa dos “Estados Unidos como fanal de esperança” tão exuberantemente alimentada pela classe política e seus porta-vozes da mídia corporativa.

Outro grupo porém, muito menor, talvez de pensamento mais cuidadoso do que suas contrapartes, viu algo surpreendente — e inquietante — no entulho fumegante e nas pilhas de cadáveres. Para ele, embora os bárbaros e sádicos terroristas fossem “vilões” da pior espécie, isso não parecia significar que os Estados Unidos eram o “herói.”

Para ele, não houve “heróis,” não houve cavaleiros vestindo armadura reluzente, apenas malfeitores competindo, cujos delitos se agregavam para tornar a vida uma desgraça para o resto de nós. Em vez da agressão aleatória e sem provocação que os ataques pareceram para tantos, uns poucos os viram como — embora como completa atrocidade moral — muito como consequência de algo que se pretende nós como estadunidenses não estarmos cônscios.

Supõe-se que pensemos na disseminação da democracia e no capitalismo global como coisas boas, e nos Estados Unidos como instrumento virtuoso a serviço deles. E assumindo-se que as versões de democracia e capitalismo global sugeridas pelos Estados Unidos fossem cônsonas com as belas e requintadas campanhas de relações públicas em seu favor, elasseriam coisas boas.

Houve um tempo, não tão antigo, quando a busca sem remorso de império era, ela própria, algo a ser venerada, quando até a palavra“império” era abertamente e sem constrangimentos adotada. Os britânicos, por exemplo, vangloriavam-se de que o sol jamais se punha sobre seu império, e o acréscimo de novas colônias era fonte de ufania.

Hoje, contudo, visto “colonialismo” e “imperialismo” serem termos empregados por estadistas apenas quando de tratamento negativo, sua substância é expressa em linguagem nova e mais inócua. Assim, pois, globalização tomou o lugar de colonização.

Pelo fato de a interconexão econômica mundial ter sido envolta, de maneira tão bem-sucedida, na fraseologia da livre empresa, é fácil deixar de ver quão completamente ela se assenta na intervenção coercitiva do estado. Com efeito, o modelo econômico corporativo que hoje prevalece no mundo é completamente dependende e inseparável de robusto imperialismo militar.

Por mais injustificados, por mais irrazoáveis/desnecessários, os ataques do 11 de setembro foram resultado direto da igualmente irrazoável/desnecessária — porém muito mais disseminada — violência infligida ao mundo árabe pelos Estados Unidos. Durante longos, torturantes anos antes de os locutores mugirem acerca do “islã radical” ou da “ameaça terrorista,” áreas de Turquia a Kuwait e além estavam pontilhadas de bases militares estadunidenses.

As pessoas que moravam nessas regiões se viam como ocupadas por uma potência estrangeira, e assim realmente era. Viam as relações de compensação — a troca de biliões de dólares em ajuda militar por acesso e influência — como mutiladoras de sua soberania e independência. Viam a intromissão e o derramamento de sangue e compreenderam algo acerca do Império Estadunidense para o que o patriotismo e o nacionalismo demasiado frequentemente cegam os próprios estadunidenses.

Nada obstante, em vez de considerar o deplorável assassínio em massa do 11 de setembro como oportunidade para genuína reflexão e análise crítica, a classe política iludiu os estadunidenses levando-os a jingoísmo ainda mais pronunciado. Depois do horror indizível daquele dia, as atitudes prevalecentes tornaram discutir o elo causal entre imperialismo e terrorismo coisa proibida.

Como corretamente observa Glenn Greenwald, a “mentalidade …” posterior ao 11 de setembro  “está perfeitamente projetada (mesmo se não intencionalmente) para assegurar que ataques terroristas contra os Estados Unidos não apenas continuem como, também, entrem em escalada para sempre.” O 11 de setembro, portanto, presenteou a classe dominante de Washington com a ferramenta ideal para perpetuar guerra sem fim.

Os anarquistas de mercado não são apologistas do terrorismo. Exatamente o oposto: ao aplicarmos ao estado o mesmo escrutínio moral aplicado aos sequestradores do 11/9, descobrimos serem os Estados Unidos também uma organização terrorista, que se posta contra comércio e cooperação pacíficos.

A grande maioria das pessoas ao redor do mundo é presa de diversos tipos de coerção arbitrária. Todos os estados são, do mesmo modo que a Al Qaeda é, fundamentalmente criminosos. O anarquismo de mercado é outra opção, a qual defende o caráter indesejável e imoral do monopólio da violência pelo estado. Neste 11/9 vale lembrar que o estado consiste em terrorismo institucionalizado, exatamente aquilo que ele professa combater.

Artigo original afixado por David D’Amato em 11 de setembro de 2011.

Traduzido do inglês por Murilo Otávio Rodrigues Paes Leme.

Business Week columnist Diane Brady wonders whether business leaders might be able to “promote inclusive capitalism.” The premise underlying the question is that if faith in the capitalist system “were to falter, the result could be policies that truly sabotage growth.”

Brady considers the problem of “eroded trust” in terms of restoring the possibility of upward mobility — thereby making capitalism “truly inclusive.” Ultimately, though, she concludes that business “can lobby all it wants, what happens on the policy front is largely out of business leaders’ hands.”

I have to say, that’s news to me. The political-economic reality in this country, confirmed by recent studies as well as well-nigh everything we can observe about the political process, is that big capital keeps American policymakers comfortably and securely in its pockets. And, sad to say, an “inclusive” kind of capitalism — oxymoron that it is — is not and never has been the order of the day.

We should not, however, confuse free markets with capitalism, as Brady does. In his 1825 tract “Labor Defended Against the Claims of Capital,” free market radical and political economist Thomas Hodgskin knew better, and attempted to vindicate the worker on the grounds of economic freedom. In this way, Hodgskin was a precursor to market anarchists (such as myself) who see a stateless free market as the means of liberating and empowering labor.

A libertarian and free marketer, Hodgskin, building from the ideas of classical economists like Adam Smith and David Ricardo, contended that the state’s interventions into the economic realm were harmful to labor and advantageous to capital. Today, many of the so-called libertarians advocating for complete economic freedom (particularly in the United States) have forgotten or consciously disavowed this part of the libertarian tradition.

In its stead, they have taken free market ideas to be the basis of an apology for Big Business, indeed of an ever-growing corporate domination of the world, its natural resources, and of ordinary, working people. And this is a shame, especially so because the older libertarian tradition of people like Hodgskin and market anarchists like Lysander Spooner is more durable in terms of theory, the historical record and economic data.

Contemporary political candidates shy away from talking a whole lot (or at all) about an actual contest between labor and capital. But why should they talk about it? After all, virtually all of our “statesmen” are enthralled to the interests of Big Business, and the few who would ever dare to speak up about the plight of the poor and working class are accused straightaway of “class warfare.”

Well, here’s to the introduction of a bit of well-reasoned, thoughtful class warfare into the public discourse then, something in the vein of Hodgskin’s Defense of Labor. By feeding the mythologies of the God known as Capital, many American libertarians have (probably mostly) unwittingly retarded or decelerated the movement for genuine, consistent liberty, serving rather the opposite by making cases for capitalism.

In conditions of economic freedom — meaning circumstances in which land and opportunities are no coercively monopolized — labor would simply enjoy far more bargaining power, able to maintain self-sufficiency apart from the Big Business economy.

Indeed, the way to fabricate a system wherein the vast majority of individuals are inclined to work for a pittance of a wage at huge, faceless organization is to use the power of legal and regulatory authority to foreclose other options. Calling that a genuine free market is akin to calling Mao’s China or Stalin’s Soviet Union a genuine workers’ paradise. If I were Joe Biden, I might call it “malarkey.”

Politics is a losing game for people who want freedom, and “inclusion” is a chimera when it comes to capitalism. Market anarchists ask for equal freedom and opportunity, and for voluntary trade free from legal privilege, a truly inclusive system that is at once for free markets and against capitalism.

Whenever political talk turns to tax cuts, a primary objection is that such cuts have to be “paid for.”

By whom? And for what?

When you read a headline such as “Romney’s deduction caps don’t pay for tax cuts,” what’s actually being said is that the plan would require government to cut not just taxes, but spending as well (or else add to deficit and debt).

The underlying premise is that all previously contemplated or projected future spending is sacrosanct — the money in question already belongs to the government, and forgoing that money and whatever the politicians want to spend it on is somehow a “payment” from government to the taxpayers from whom they propose to steal the money in the first place.

Sooner or later, the equation balances as “taxes = spending.” Debt is just a way of deferring collection of taxes for awhile (and increasing them due to interest). If there are no spending cuts, there can be no tax cuts.

The experience of oppressed people is that the living of one’s life is confined and shaped by forces and barriers which are not accidental or occasional and hence avoidable, but are systematically related to each other in such a way as to catch one between and among them and restrict or penalize motion in any direction. It is the experience of being caged in: all avenues, in every direction, are blocked or booby trapped. — Marilyn Frye, “Oppression,” in The Politics of Reality

Governments — local, state, and federal — spend a lot of time wringing their hands about the plight of the urban poor. Look around any government agency and you’ll never fail to find some know-it-all with a suit and a nameplate on his desk who has just the right government program to eliminate or ameliorate, or at least contain, the worst aspects of grinding poverty in American cities — especially as experienced by black people, immigrants, people with disabilities, and everyone else marked for the special observation and solicitude of the state bureaucracy. Depending on the bureaucrat’s frame of mind, his pet programs might focus on doling out conditional charity to “deserving” poor people, or putting more “at-risk” poor people under the surveillance of social workers and medical experts, or beating up recalcitrant poor people and locking them in cages for several years.

But the one thing that the government and its managerial aid workers will never do is just get out of the way and let poor people do the things that poor people naturally do, and always have done, to scratch by.

Government anti-poverty programs are a classic case of the therapeutic state setting out to treat disorders created by the state itself. Urban poverty as we know it is, in fact, exclusively a creature of state intervention in consensual economic dealings. This claim may seem bold, even to most libertarians. But a lot turns on the phrase “as we know it.” Even if absolute laissez faire reigned beginning tomorrow, there would still be people in big cities who are living paycheck to paycheck, heavily in debt, homeless, jobless, or otherwise at the bottom rungs of the socioeconomic ladder. These conditions may be persistent social problems, and it may be that free people in a free society will still have to come up with voluntary institutions and practices for addressing them. But in the state-regimented market that dominates today, the material predicament that poor people find themselves in — and the arrangements they must make within that predicament — are battered into their familiar shape, as if by an invisible fist, through the diffuse effects of pervasive, interlocking interventions.

Consider the commonplace phenomena of urban poverty. Livelihoods in American inner cities are typically extremely precarious: as Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh writes in Off the Books: “Conditions in neighborhoods of concentrated poverty can change quickly and in ways that can leave families unprepared and without much recourse.” Fixed costs of living — rent, food, clothing, and so on — consume most or all of a family’s income, with little or no access to credit, savings, or insurance to safeguard them from unexpected disasters.

Dependent on Others

Their poverty often leaves them dependent on other people. It pervades the lives of the employed and the unemployed alike: the jobless fall back on charity or help from family; those who live paycheck to paycheck, with little chance of finding any work elsewhere, depend on the good graces of a select few bosses and brokers. One woman quoted by Venkatesh explained why she continued to work through an exploitative labor shark rather than leaving for a steady job with a well-to-do family: “And what if that family gets rid of me? Where am I going next? See, I can’t take that chance, you know. . . . All I got is Johnnie and it took me the longest just to get him on my side.”

The daily experience of the urban poor is shaped by geographical concentration in socially and culturally isolated ghetto neighborhoods within the larger city, which have their own characteristic features: housing is concentrated in dilapidated apartments and housing projects, owned by a select few absentee landlords; many abandoned buildings and vacant lots are scattered through the neighborhood, which remain unused for years at a time; the use of outside spaces is affected by large numbers of unemployed or homeless people.

The favorite solutions of the welfare state — government doles and “urban renewal” projects — mark no real improvement. Rather than freeing poor people from dependence on benefactors and bosses, they merely transfer the dependence to the state, leaving the least politically connected people at the mercy of the political process.

But in a free market — a truly free market, where individual poor people are just as free as established formal-economy players to use their own property, their own labor, their own know-how, and the resources that are available to them — the informal, enterprising actions by poor people themselves would do far more to systematically undermine, or completely eliminate, each of the stereotypical conditions that welfare statists deplore. Every day and in every culture from time out of mind, poor people have repeatedly shown remarkable intelligence, courage, persistence, and creativity in finding ways to put food on the table, save money, keep safe, raise families, live full lives, learn, enjoy themselves, and experience beauty, whenever, wherever, and to whatever degree they have been free to do so. The fault for despairing, dilapidated urban ghettoes lies not in the pressures of the market, nor in the character flaws of individual poor people, nor in the characteristics of ghetto subcultures. The fault lies in the state and its persistent interference with poor people’s own efforts to get by through independent work, clever hustling, scratching together resources, and voluntary mutual aid.

Housing Crisis

Progressives routinely deplore the “affordable housing crisis” in American cities. In cities such as New York and Los Angeles, about 20 to 25 percent of low-income renters are spending more than half their incomes just on housing. But it is the very laws that Progressives favor — land-use policies, zoning codes, and building codes — that ratchet up housing costs, stand in the way of alternative housing options, and confine poor people to ghetto neighborhoods. Historically, when they have been free to do so, poor people have happily disregarded the ideals of political humanitarians and found their own ways to cut housing costs, even in bustling cities with tight housing markets.

One way was to get other families, or friends, or strangers, to move in and split the rent. Depending on the number of people sharing a home, this might mean a less-comfortable living situation; it might even mean one that is unhealthy. But decisions about health and comfort are best made by the individual people who bear the costs and reap the benefits. Unfortunately today the decisions are made ahead of time by city governments through zoning laws that prohibit or restrict sharing a home among people not related by blood or marriage, and building codes that limit the number of residents in a building.

Those who cannot make enough money to cover the rent on their own, and cannot split the rent enough due to zoning and building codes, are priced out of the housing market entirely. Once homeless, they are left exposed not only to the elements, but also to harassment or arrest by the police for “loitering” or “vagrancy,” even on public property, in efforts to force them into overcrowded and dangerous institutional shelters. But while government laws make living on the streets even harder than it already is, government intervention also blocks homeless people’s efforts to find themselves shelter outside the conventional housing market. One of the oldest and commonest survival strategies practiced by the urban poor is to find wild or abandoned land and build shanties on it out of salvageable scrap materials. Scrap materials are plentiful, and large portions of land in ghetto neighborhoods are typically left unused as condemned buildings or vacant lots. Formal title is very often seized by the city government or by quasi-governmental “development” corporations through the use of eminent domain. Lots are held out of use, often for years at a time, while they await government public-works projects or developers willing to buy up the land for large-scale building.

Urban Homesteading

In a free market, vacant lots and abandoned buildings could eventually be homesteaded by anyone willing to do the work of occupying and using them. Poor people could use abandoned spaces within their own communities for setting up shop, for gardening, or for living space. In Miami, in October 2006, a group of community organizers and about 35 homeless people built Umoja Village, a shanty town, on an inner-city lot that the local government had kept vacant for years. They publicly stated to the local government that “We have only one demand . . . leave us alone.”

That would be the end of the story in a free market: there would be no eminent domain, no government ownership, and thus also no political process of seizure and redevelopment; once-homeless people could establish property rights to abandoned land through their own sweat equity — without fear of the government’s demolishing their work and selling their land out from under them. But back in Miami, the city attorney and city council took about a month to begin legal efforts to destroy the residents’ homes and force them off the lot. In April 2007 the city police took advantage of an accidental fire to enforce its politically fabricated title to the land, clearing the lot, arresting 11 people, and erecting a fence to safeguard the once-again vacant lot for professional “affordable housing” developers.

Had the city government not made use of its supposed title to the abandoned land, it no doubt could have made use of state and federal building codes to ensure that residents would be forced back into homelessness — for their own safety, of course. That is in fact what a county health commission in Indiana did to a 93-year-old man named Thelmon Green, who lived in his ’86 Chevrolet van, which the local towing company allowed him to keep on its lot. Many people thrown into poverty by a sudden financial catastrophe live out of a car for weeks or months until they get back on their feet. Living in a car is cramped, but it beats living on the streets: a car means a place you can have to yourself, which holds your possessions, with doors you can lock, and sometimes even air conditioning and heating. But staying in a car over the long term is much harder to manage without running afoul of the law. Thelmon Green got by well enough in his van for ten years, but when the Indianapolis Star printed a human-interest story on him last December, the county health commission took notice and promptly ordered Green evicted from his own van, in the name of the local housing code.

Since government housing codes impose detailed requirements on the size, architecture, and building materials for new permanent housing, as well as on specialized and extremely expensive contract work for electricity, plumbing, and other luxuries, they effectively obstruct or destroy most efforts to create transitional, intermediate, or informal sorts of shelter that cost less than rented space in government-approved housing projects, but provide more safety and comfort than living on the street.

Constraints on Making Income

Turning from expenses to income, pervasive government regulation, passed in the so-called “public interest” at the behest of comfortable middle- and upper-class Progressives, creates endless constraints on poor people’s ability to earn a living or make needed money on the side.

There are, to start out, the trades that the state has made entirely illegal: selling drugs outside of a state-authorized pharmacy, prostitution outside of the occasional state-authorized brothel “ranch,” or running small-time gambling operations outside of a state-authorized corporate casino. These trades are often practiced by women and men facing desperate poverty; the state’s efforts add the danger of fines, forfeitures, and lost years in prison.

Poor Shut Out

Beyond the government-created black market, there are also countless jobs that could be done above-ground, but from which the poor are systematically shut out by arbitrary regulation and licensure requirements. In principle, many women in black communities could make money braiding hair, with only their own craft, word of mouth, and the living room of an apartment. But in many states, anyone found braiding hair without having put down hundreds of dollars and days of her life to apply for a government-fabricated cosmetology or hair-care license will be fined hundreds or thousands of dollars.

In principle, anyone who knows how to cook can make money by laying out the cash for ingredients and some insulated containers, and taking the food from his own kitchen to a stand set up on the sidewalk or, with the landlord’s permission, in a parking lot. But then there are business licenses to pay for (often hundreds of dollars) and the costs of complying with health-department regulations and inspections. The latter make it practically impossible to run a food-oriented business without buying or leasing property dedicated to preparing the food, at which point you may as well forget about it unless you already have a lot of start-up capital sitting around.

Every modern urban center has a tremendous demand for taxi cabs. In principle, anyone who needed to make some extra money could start a part-time “gypsy cab” service with a car she already has, a cell phone, and some word of mouth. She can make good money for honest labor, providing a useful service to willing customers — as a single independent worker, without needing to please a boss, who can set her own hours and put as much or as little into it as she wants in order to make the money she needs.

But in the United States, city governments routinely impose massive constraints and controls on taxi service. The worst offenders are often the cities with the highest demand for cabs, like New York City, where the government enforces an arbitrary cap on the number of taxi cabs through a system of government-created licenses, or “medallions.” The total number of medallion taxis is capped at about 13,000 cabs for the entire city, with occasional government auctions for a handful of new medallions. The system requires anyone who wants to become an independent cab driver to purchase a medallion at monopoly prices from an existing holder or wait around for the city to auction off new ones. At the auction last November a total of 63 new medallions were made available for auction with a minimum bidding price of $189,000.

Besides the cost of a medallion, cab owners are also legally required to pay an annual licensing fee of $550 and to pay for three inspections by the city government each year, at a total annual cost of $150. The city government enforces a single fare structure, enforces a common paint job, and now is even forcing all city cabs to upgrade to high-cost, high-tech GPS and payment systems, whether or not the cabbie or her customer happens to want them. The primary beneficiary of this politically imposed squeeze on independent cabbies is VeriFone Holdings, the first firm approved to sell the electronic systems to a captive market. Doug Bergeron, VeriFone’s CEO, crows that “Every year, we find a free ride on a new segment of the economy that is going electronic.” In this case, VeriFone is enjoying a “free ride” indeed.

The practical consequence is that poor people who might otherwise be able to make easy money on their own are legally forced out of driving a taxi, or else forced to hire themselves out to an existing medallion-holder on his own terms. Either way, poor people are shoved out of flexible, independent work, which many would be willing and able to do using one of the few capital goods that they already have on hand. Lots of poor people have cars they could use; not a lot have a couple hundred thousand dollars to spend on a government-created license.

Government regimentation of land, housing, and labor creates and sustains the very structure of urban poverty. Government seizures create and reinforce the dilapidation of ghetto neighborhoods by constricting the housing market to a few landlords and keeping marginal lands out of use. Government regulations create homelessness and artificially make it worse for the homeless by driving up housing costs and by obstructing or destroying any intermediate informal living solutions between renting an apartment and living on the street. And having made the ghetto, government prohibitions keep poor people confined in it, by shutting them out of more affluent neighborhoods where many might be able to live if only they were able to share expenses.

Ratcheting Costs Up and Opportunities Down

Artificially limiting the alternative options for housing ratchets up the fixed costs of living for the urban poor. Artificially limiting the alternative options for independent work ratchets down the opportunities for increasing income. And the squeeze makes poor people dependent on — and thus vulnerable to negligent or unscrupulous treatment from — both landlords and bosses by constraining their ability to find other, better homes, or other, better livelihoods. The same squeeze puts many more poor people into the position of living “one paycheck away” from homelessness and makes that position all the more precarious by harassing and coercing and imposing artificial destitution on those who do end up on the street.

American state corporatism forcibly reshapes the world of work and business on the model of a commercial strip mall: sanitized, centralized, regimented, officious, and dominated by a few powerful proprietors and their short list of favored partners, to whom everyone else relates as either an employee or a consumer. A truly free market, without the pervasive control of state licensure requirements, regulation, inspections, paperwork, taxes, “fees,” and the rest, has much more to do with the traditional image of a bazaar: messy, decentralized, diverse, informal, flexible, pervaded by haggling, and kept together by the spontaneous order of countless small-time independent operators, who quickly and easily shift between the roles of customer, merchant, contract laborer, and more. It is precisely because we have the strip mall rather than the bazaar that people living in poverty find themselves so often confined to ghettoes, caught in precarious situations, and dependent on others — either on the bum or caught in jobs they hate but cannot leave, while barely keeping a barely tolerable roof over their heads.

The poorer you are, the more you need access to informal and flexible alternatives, and the more you need opportunities to apply some creative hustling. When the state shuts that out, it shuts poor people into ghettoized poverty.

The following article is translated into Portuguese from the English original, written by Thomas L. Knapp.

De todos os contra-argumentos padronizados com que me deparo em oposição à ideia anarquista, talvez o mais frustrante seja “bem, sim, concedo haver uma série de problemas no tocante ao governo político, mas como posso saber que o que quer que você proponha em lugar dele não será ainda pior?”

Minha igualmente padronizada resposta de cinco palavras — “como PODERIA algo ser pior?” — obviamente pede alguma elaboração, mas acredito que o rol de motivos pelos quais nada poderia ser pior merece uma analogia à guisa de prefácio:

Suponha que você tenha sofrido, desde a infância, de tosse crônica e que, agora adulto, comece a perceber a tosse ser companhada de expectoração de sangue.

Suponha, ademais, que, durante toda a vida, você tenha visto seus amigos em torno de você sofrerem do mesmo tipo de tosse, do mesmo escarro de sangue, morrendo finalmente em consequência.

Finalmente, suponha que, ao consultar um médico, este decline de tratar a tosse. “Afinal de contas,” pergunta ele, “se acabarmos com a tosse, sabe-se lá o que a substituirá? Seus pés poderão encarquilhar-se. Sua cabeça poderá explodir. Eu sei, a tosse é penosa, não atende a nenhuma finalidade útil e pressagia morte no final, mas a alternativa poderá ser ainda pior! Já pensou se curar essa tosse transformar você num zumbi comedor de cérebros? Sinto muito, mas a menos que eu saiba exatamente o que se seguirá à cura, simplesmente manterei estes antibióticos trancados.”

Duvido que você achasse essa resposta satisfatória … mas essa é exatamente a resposta que os partidários do estado oferecem diante de qualquer sugestão de que poderá ser boa hora de suas gangues de rua assassinas hipertrofiadas — “governos” — se aposentarem.

O governo político sempre foi um câncer inútil e doloroso da humanidade. Sua mutação mais plena, o estado-nação westfaliano, espraiou-se ao longo dos últimos 360 anos, cobrindo o globo de tumores de “soberania nacional” que perpetuamente erodem a humanidade que infestam, usando essa humanidade parcialmente como combustível para seu próprio aumento e parcialmente como forragem para guerra a outros tumores análogos.

É difícil apreender a escala dos danos perpetrados pelo governo político, mas a obra do Professor Emério da Universidade do Havaí RJ Rummel — ele próprio não anarquista — é um bom lugar para começar. Só no século 20, de acordo com Rummel, o “democídio” (assassínio pelo governo) resultou em pelo menos 262 milhões de pessoas mortas.

Quando digo que a obra de Rummel é um lugar para começar, é exatamente o que quero dizer. A definição dele de “democídio” abrange apenas “matar com a intenção de fazê-lo.” Mortes acidentais ou incidentais (por exemplo, a morte de dezenas de milhares de pacientes esperando aprovação de regulamentação de medicamentos indispensáveis à sobrevivência, assassínios pela polícia não decorrentes de nenhuma política visante específicamente a tais mortes etc.) não estão incluídas.

A população dos Estados Unidos no final do século 20 situava-se em torno de 280 milhões. Mesmo usando números baixos, podemos estar razoavelmente seguros de que, no século 20, número de seres humanos praticamente equivalente a tal população inteira foi assassinado por governos em todo o mundo.

Meu palpite pessoal no tocante a morte efetivamente infligida pelo estado nacional westfaliano no século 20, quando acrescentemos as mortes acidentais e incidentais, é pelo menos o dobro do número de Rummel, e provavelmente mais. Para efeito de argumentação, situemo-lo em 600 milhões. O que representa 1/10 da população do mundo no ano 2000.

Essa, queridos companheiros humanos, é uma epidemia de escala global sem qualquer outra parecida desde a Peste Negra da Idade Média.

Quando varíola, poliomielite, tuberculose ou gripe matam milhões, nossa reação é isolar ou pôr em quarentena seus vetores, desenvolver tratamentos e vacinas, e fazer o impossível para erradicar tais doenças. Não perdemos nosso tempo preocupando-nos com que novas doenças poderão pulular ou o que se seguirá à cura; damos prioridade total àquilo que nos aflige.

Quando, porém, os anarquistas denunciam a natureza letal do estado, que rotineira e previsivelmente mata pessoas em números da mesma escala de quaisquer daqueles flagelos acima mencionados, os defensores do estado comprimem a doença contra o peito e choramingam que simplesmente não conseguem imaginar o que fariam sem ela.

Ora bem, eu sei o que a maioria de nós faria sem ela: Viveríamos. E, pessoalmente, considero viver melhor do que morrer. E você?

Artigo original afixado por Thomas L. Knapp em 17 de abril de 2012.

Traduzido do inglês por Murilo Otávio Rodrigues Paes Leme.

To the extent that the second debate between US president Barack Obama and aspirant Mitt Romney is generating media punditry buzz, that buzz centers mostly around the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya on September 11: What did Obama know, when did he know it, and so forth.

That’s all very interesting, I guess, but for me the key moment in the debate came early when the two candidates engaged on the subject of energy prices.

Obama pointed out that domestic US oil production has increased during his tenure in office, and that that increase has substantially been a private sector phenomenon.

In response, Mitt Romney — Mister “47% of the people … are dependent on government … feel they are entitled …” — whined that the Obama administration has been insufficiently charitable with “public” land (and taxpayer money) toward the oil companies.

It’s important to understand how such sweetheart “public” land use deals work. This is a subject I started following back in the 1980s when I read an article about leases of national forest land to timber companies. At that time, for every dollar a timber company paid in leasing fees, the US government spent $1.27 on road-building and other projects to enable the exploitation of those timber leases. Or, to put it a different way, the net budget impact was a 27% welfare check to the timber company from Uncle Sugar — prior to and excluding any profits the company might make on the timber itself!

My brief dips into subjects such as the proposed Alaska National Wildlife Refuge drilling kerfuffle indicate that nothing has changed over the intervening decades. So far as I know, the next time a natural resources extraction company offers to cover the entire cost of its own operations on “public” land, let alone deliver a net profit to the US government on the deal, will be the first time.

So now you know why these companies prefer operating on “public” versus “private” property: Taxpayer subsidies make it more profitable. And you know that Mitt Romney’s promise of lower gas prices by opening up more “public” land to drilling is a sleight of hand. He wants to hide some of the cost of gas in your 1040 or on the federal debt ledger instead of letting it be displayed honestly at the pump, so that you pay more while imagining that you pay less.

My point, mind you, is not that Obama is any better than Romney when it comes to corporate welfare. Can you say “individual mandate?” The Affordable Care Act alone is the biggest welfare check to the health insurance industry since Nixon’s HMO Act.

Both candidates are beholden to sets of corporate and special interest benefactors — the bulk of the political class — who expect beaucoup return on their investments. The mission of the state, after all, is to redistribute wealth from the pockets of the productive to the bank accounts of the politically connected. The current presidential contest is just another quadrennial re-appraisal and re-division of the spoils. And it doesn’t really matter that much who wins. They’ll all end up making out like the bandits they are, and you’ll be bled just a little more dry to cover the ever-increasing costs.

For those who oppose “welfare” — be it food stamps which allegedly benefit the poor while actually fueling subsidies to Big Agriculture, or oil leases which allegedly lower gas prices while piping your money to Big Oil via the back door — the only answer is to dispense with political government itself. “Welfare” for the already rich is its raison d’etre.

The following article was written by Jon Matonis and published on The Monetary Future, November 25th, 2011.

No one really sends or receives bitcoin. They merely transfer their ownership and specific control rights to the block chain on the giant public ledger in the cloud. It’s like an air guitar. The bitcoin itself exists because we all say that it exists.

The same can be said of bitcoin’s exchange value – it has value because we all say that it has value. That is both its weakness and its brilliance. Its intangibility prevents its confiscation. Where are your bitcoins Mr. Anarchist? Well sir, they are right over there stacked next to my new air guitar. What, you don’t see them? I swear that they are there. I don’t think governments will ever declare that they can see them too! Because if governments did see them, then bitcoin would be imputed with tremendous legal monetary value and they don’t want to do that. Governments will want to diminish the credibility of bitcoin – not enhance it.

Now, to the exchanges. This is where the enforcement and regulations will hit first. Trading bitcoin in and out of national currencies is currently necessary because many transactions still have to be settled in that manner. Of course, this will adjust over time as more and more bitcoin value can remain in the bitcoin ecosystem for necessary daily transactions. But in the meantime, regulation is increasingly possible in this area due to exchanges requiring a certain degree of jurisdictional presence and centralization. As with buying and selling air guitars on eBay, regulators can exert influence because there is a centralized point of exchange. It matters not what is being exchanged.

Regulatory Bias With Some in the Bitcoin Community

“We are working with the government to make sure indeed the long arm of the government can reach Bitcoin.”
—Jeff Garzik, Bitcoin Developer

“Regulation would allow the proper authorities to find and charge those who use bitcoins for illegal activities.”
—Amir Taaki, Co-founder of Bitcoin Consultancy

“Norman is pushing to bring Bitcoin away from its roots and closer to a traditional currency — he is reaching out to regulators, looking to get legislation to oversee the system.”
—CNBC on Donald Norman, Co-founder of Bitcoin Consultancy

These are the big three bitcoin regulatory proponents within the bitcoin community. There are certainly many more outside of the community. Now, let me see if I can summarize their rationale because these quotes are not isolated incidents and they are not taken out of context. I believe that the rationale is twofold: (1) a reaction to the anonymous online drug company Silk Road tainting the fledgling currency; and (2) a belief that bitcoin exchanges given a regulatory blessing will be in a position of strength for customers exchanging in and out of national currencies.

Both of these rationales are misguided, especially when bootstrapping a decentralized P2P cryptocurrency. Bitcoin was designed from the outset to route around centralized, authoritarian interference. Bitcoin’s designer(s) anticipated regulatory termination and asset confiscation because bitcoin itself is a direct challenge to the privileged money monopoly of the sovereign. The issue is not whether bitcoin as a digital currency embodies libertarian political and economic beliefs – it was simply designed to survive. However, it is supremely naive and daft to think that a government will not soon erect laws and regulations to prevent anonymous and untraceable transactions. Additionally, government tends to tax that which it regulates and a sanctioned bitcoin will soon be transformed into an ‘approved’ and useless digital currency.

Bitcoin exchanges are constantly under attack in various parts around the globe and even with partially-regulated exchanges, laws can always be modified to accomplish the aims of the State. The solution is to create decentralized exchanges and to promote business models and closed-loop paradigms that make fitting into the current institutional structure irrelevant. It is a perpetually losing battle to seek minor legal victories within the confines of an arbitrary, subjective court system.

In differentiating between the fear of punishing coders and the fear of punishing the consumers and merchants that openly choose to transact in bitcoin, James Westlock summed it up nicely in his comment to the “Bitcoin and Agorism” article:

“Everyone here understands that a Bitcoin exchange is nothing to do with Bitcoin clients and the source code that is compiled into them. The imbeciles who run exchanges in police states like the USA will be scrupulously avoided by anyone with a brain cell, and those who set up exchanges in free(er) countries will reap the benefit. Anyone developing a Bitcoin client cannot be charged with conspiracy with regard to the uses that the client is put to, in this case exchanges. The client is neutral, just as browsers are neutral. You can use a browser to commit a crime, but culpability for that criminal act cannot be passed to the people who code the browser (Mozilla, Google, Apple).”

To be sure, David Norman and Amir Taaki have many more pro-regulation references and citations available at their website. For instance, Taaki gives a radio interview with the Katherine Albrecht Show in the U.S. Then, reporting in the Independent, Stephen Foley quotes David Norman on the hackers that brought down the largest bitcoin exchange:

“In the UK, supporters of Bitcoin made an urgent appeal to the Financial Services Authority to regulate the largest London-based exchange, so as to reassure people that using Bitcoin is safe. ‘Unregulated businesses don’t usual cry out for regulation,’ said Donald Norman, co-founder of the exchange Britcoin. ‘But because we are unusual, and because we are dealing with people’s money, and because of all the scary stories around Bitcoin, we would like nothing more than to have a government authority looking into our accounts – especially now.'”

In order to gain legitimacy for a decentralized P2P cryptocurrency that comes with user-defined anonymity and user-defined traceability, the Statist apologists have gone out of their way to seek clear and concise guidelines from the government on what will and will not be permitted with respect to bitcoin activity. They may soon get their wish.

UK Financial Services Authority on Bitcoin Regulation

A response purporting to be from the FSA appeared recently in the Bitcoin Forum. In reading the well-referenced text, it appears obvious that bitcoin itself cannot be regulated as money but that exchangers would fall under the guidelines of FSA regulation because they are deposit takers and holding balances in national money before and after the bitcoin exchange takes place. A bitcoin service that simply provided a matching service, such as bitcoin-otc, where buyers and sellers settled on their own would not therefore fall under the regulation.

This is important because of various claims circulating that there is a coordinated effort on the part of EU-based financial institutions to freeze or impede bank accounts that are acting as agents for bitcoin exchanges or bank accounts of bitcoin exchanges themselves. In August 2011, the French bank CIC froze MtGox client funds and closed the bank account paving the way for a court case and final decision on October 18th, 2011. Then on October 21st, 2011, MtGox released this statement:

“While Bitcoin at a European level is so far not directly impacted by this decision, the Bank de France (France’s central bank) has confirmed that because of European banking rules, monetary transfers (deposits and withdrawals) through a single entity are subject to financial regulation and therefore can only be performed by licensed financial institutions such as banks or Payment Service companies (the European Equivalent to a Money Service Business). This decision has forced us to find other payment processing partners within Europe that will allow us to quickly resume all EUR transactions for our European customers soon.”

Seeking legal opinions and regulatory clarification will only result in more disappointments. Therefore, in order to obtain the ruling that the bitcoin regulation proponents seek, bitcoin exchanges and bitcoin merchant applications will have to be adapted to support the enforcement of AML rules regarding money service businesses and identity verification for prepaid access products, such as the recent FinCEN regulatory changes from the United States.

In the future, we are likely to see regulations and enforcement against the bitcoin exchange infrastructure as well as restrictions on bitcoin transactions at the large online and offline merchants subject to establishment transactional reporting requirements. Both enforcement avenues will be deployed in an effort to undermine the usefulness and acceptance of bitcoin, because quite frankly that will be the only option available to authorities.

Cryptocurrencies are Not Virtual Goods

Vili Lehdonvirta works as a researcher at the Network Society research programme at Helsinki Institute for Information Technology in Finland and he is Visiting Scholar at the Interfaculty Initiative for Information Studies at the University of Tokyo. His research examines the social and economic impact of new information technologies, especially online games, social networks, virtual currencies, and virtual taxation.

He believes that the bitcoin currency goes way too far in providing user-defined anonymity and user-defined transaction traceability. Although he doesn’t mention how the transition to a digital cash society can justifiably deny the very same attributes enjoyed with physical paper cash today, he seems to promote his own “ideal” vision of how the future cashless society should be constructed. This is the most dangerous type of thinking when discussing a cashless society because we are at a critical nexus that will define our relationship with money in the cyberspace frontier. Either we respect individual financial privacy or we restrict it and pave the way for an even more frightening and suffocating vision of the future.

Quoted on the Bitcoin Forum,Vili had this to say:

“I am fascinated by Bitcoin, and I also think I have something of value to contribute to the Bitcoin community. The first is that as a researcher, I have studied payment and digital currency design and user adoption issues, and I think this is an area where the Bitcoin ecosystem could do better. The second is that as a long-time member of Electronic Frontier Finland, I have spent a lot of time thinking and publicly debating about privacy and digital freedom issues. I am worried that Bitcoin is a step too far as it leaves no possibility for even democratic governments to enforce their laws. This is a topic I would love to debate with the community and hear opposing views. I think the end result could be a better understanding for me, but also a better understanding for the Bitcoin community on how to live in harmony with democratic authority.”

In the co-authored 2010 landmark paper, “A New Frontier in Digital Content Policy: Case Studies in the Regulation of Virtual Goods and Artificial Scarcity”, Vili Lehdonvirta states:

“The law has commenced its long course to recognize digital goods as a form of property. One finds it in court decisions concerning the interpretation of criminal law and related damages. The behavior of gamers and other online users has, both in quantity and quality, exceeded the limits of contract law (Fairfield 2008). Other areas of law, including but not limited to those of criminal law, law of damages, defamation, and law of property, will slowly step into play. But the natural inertia of law can sometimes be a good thing in creating the rules that shape behavior (Bohannan 1965).”

For the most part, I respect Vili Lehdonvirta’s academic work on virtual goods ownership, but he harbors confused thoughts on the broader acceptance of bitcoin through dilution of its most beneficial properties, because he mistakenly extends the notion of virtual goods legal recognition to virtual currency legal recognition. While this might be appropriate for a virtual currency that evolved out of a virtual commodity within a proprietary gaming environment, it is wholly inappropriate for a decentralized P2P cryptocurrency that does not depend upon physical property rights for its valuation.

Lawyers’ Take On Bitcoin Regulation

Just as the economics profession, the legal profession is still struggling to catch up with bitcoin. I expect much more detailed legal research in the coming months. One of the lawyers in the forefront, John William Nelson, had this to say in his article,“Extending real-world laws to virtual worlds is a terrible idea”:

“Government regulation, either directly or indirectly by forcing common law theory into a virtual world setting, will destroy the ability of virtual worlds to create these fundamental characteristics. The game conceit—the imaginative construct upon which the world is based—will, as Dr. Bartle says, ‘evaporates upon contact with . . . reality.’ The world will no longer be free to evolve—its evolution will be constrained by the laws injected into its sphere. The world’s support for the hero’s journey will be conditional upon the rules and regulations of laws from the outside—laws from the real world.”

In a follow-up piece, “Bitcoin Isn’t a Security”, Nelson also concludes that bitcoin in-and-of-itself is not a security that can be regulated under U.S. federal securities law:

“But if currency can be a security, then Bitcoin is a security because it’s a type of currency, right?

Wrong. Bitcoin is not really a type of currency, at least not of the type recognized as securities. No entity or assets back up Bitcoin value. Bitcoin value is entirely virtual—a Bitcoin is only worth what another person thinks its worth. This is different than currency issued by countries.

A country’s currency is backed by that country’s government. This backing can either be by fiat (government regulation or law) or by commodity (such as the gold standard the U.S. used to use). Some compare Bitcoin’s value to the value of fiat money, because like fiat money it is not backed by a commodity, but this is where the similarities between Bitcoin and fiat money end.

Bitcoin is backed by no entity, no commodity, no organization. Bitcoin value is not based on government regulation or law mandating its use in a country. Similarly, it is not backed by a whole bunch of gold sitting in Fort Knox.”

In answering the question of whether bitcoin investors should worry about securities regulations or laws, Nelson emphasizes that securities law is generally broad enough to capture any enterprise where investment for profit is involved, because a common economic scheme exists where a profit is expected based on the efforts of a third party. In “Bitcoin Isn’t a Security”, Nelson states:

“Bitcoin investors should absolutely worry about securities laws. The securities definitions outlined above might not apply to Bitcoins themselves, but they are flexible enough to apply to Bitcoin exchanges that convert a Bitcoin to real-world currencies. Securities law might even apply to exchanges converting Bitcoin to other virtual currencies such as Lindens.”

Ultimately, laws erected to protect the State’s coveted monopoly over the issuance of money will not be slayed through a minor technicality nor will bitcoin suddenly be blessed by a newly-converted regulatory regime. At Yale Law School, Reuben Grinberg writes in “Bitcoin: An Innovative Alternative Digital Currency”:

“Most importantly, Bitcoin currently operates in a legal grey area. The federal government’s supposed monopoly on issuing currency is somewhat narrow and statutes that impose that monopoly do not seem to apply to Bitcoin due to its digital nature. However, a bitcoin may be a ‘security’ within the meaning of the federal securities laws, subjecting bitcoins to a vast regime of regulations, including general antifraud rules. Furthermore, other legal issues that have not been analyzed in this paper are probably significant, including tax evasion, banking without a charter,  state escheat statutes, and money laundering.”

The great promise of a nonpolitical bitcoin lies in what its decentralized nature immune to shutdown actually enables – the ability to maintain financial privacy and to transact with entities that may be despised by the government.

For further reading:
“Why the quoted price of Bitcoin doesn’t matter”, Blogdial, October 17, 2011
“WikiLeaks and the protect-ip Act: A New Public-Private Threat to the Internet Commons”, Yochai Benkler, September 15, 2011
“Precursors to Bitcoin legislation emerge”, Blogdial, September 2, 2011
“On the virtual money?”, Charis Palmer, Banking Review, August 7, 2011
“Bitcoins are Baseball Cards”, Blogdial, August 3, 2011
“Bitcoin: A Bit Too Far?”, Edwin Jacobs, Journal of Internet Banking and Commerce, August 2011
“Innovation and Legal Panic—Bitcoin”, Joseph Skocilich, June 27, 2011
“Is Bitcoin Legal?”, TechnoLlama, June 16, 2011
“Bitcoin exchanges offer anti- money-laundering aid”, Reuters, June 15, 2011
“The Coming Attack On Bitcoin And How To Survive It”, Anthony Freeman, June 7, 2011
“Money Transmitter Legislation and Bitcoin’s Legal Status”, Bitcoin Money, June 2, 2011

The following article is translated into Portuguese from the English original, written by Kevin Carson.

Acabamos de ver outro feriado “patriótico” vir e ir-se, e com ele os mesmos comentários piegas obrigatórios de âncoras do noticiário da TV local acerca de tropas no exterior “defendendo nossa liberdade.” Do mesmo jeito que vimos no Dia da Memória, e do mesmo jeito que veremos de novo no Dia do Veterano.

Classificação AAA, excelente, não adulterada, 99 e 44/100% bobagem, obviamente. Soldados não “defendem nossa liberdade.” Servem ao estado e lutam nas guerras dele, e o estado não está exatamente interessado — o eufemismo do milênio — em nossa liberdade.

As guerras são começadas por estados, na persecução de suas próprias agendas. A guerra é simplesmente outro instrumento da política do estado, como observou Clausewitz há 200 anos. E as políticas do estado estão voltadas para servir à constelação dos interesses das classes que o controlam. Caso você não tenha notado, você e eu não figuramos de maneira muito destacada nessa constelação. As 500 da Fortune, o capital financeiro e o complexo industrial-militar, sim. Nas palavras de George Carlin, é um grande clube, e você e eu não pertencemos a ele.

Assim, pois, as guerras que o governo dos Estados Unidos conduz no exterior — e os soldados que participam da luta na prática, por mais sinceros possam ser os motivos deles — são conduzidas principalmente em benefício da liberdade de Boeing, Monsanto, Cargill, Blackwater, Halliburton, Exxon-Mobil, Sony, Disney e Microsoft. E para esmagar a liberdade onde no mundo ela possa ameaçar os lucros dessas empresas.

Se você acredita que a liberdade é algo concedido pelos estados e outras formas de autoridade, por causa da bondade do coração delas, está lamentavelmente errado. E se você se autodenomina “conservador favorável a um estado enxuto” mas adora a autoridade na roupagem de funcionários do estado armados e de uniforme — exatamente o meio pelo qual o estado faz valer sua autoridade — você está delirando ou coisa pior.

Como argumentou o anarquista Rudolf Rocker, nossa liberdade resulta não do estado, e sim da disposição das pessoas para desafiar a autoridade e resistir a suas invasões de nossa liberdade. Longe de concedidos pelo estado e defendidos por seus funcionários armados, nossos direitos existem porque os impusemos ao estado — muito contra a vontade dele — a partir de baixo. E mantemos esses direitos não porque as tropas estadunidenses arreiam portas a pontapé em Bagdá ou chacinam com aviões teleguiados cerimônias de casamento no Afeganistão, e sim porque as pessoas comuns reclamam com alarido e recusam-se a obedecer ao estado aqui dentro do país.

Em todo feriado “patriótico” colunistas e editores de páginas de editorial exibem a mesma cansativa coluna: “Não é o manifestante que nos dá a liberdade de expressão, e sim o soldado …” É exatamente o contrário. Nenhuma de nossas guerras externas tem qualquer coisa a ver com defender nossa liberdade aqui dentro do país. E se a instituição militar é alguma vez empregada domesticamente, pode apostar seu último dólar que será empregada para suprimir nossa liberdade na ponta de cano de arma.

Cada partícula da liberdade de que gozamos vem dos criadores de caso, dos instigadores, dos párias, das pessoas completamente destituídas de respeitabilidade — os Desprezíveis Hippies Imundos, nas palavras de Nixon — e da disposição delas de dizer coisas que o governo não quer que digam. Nossa liberdade é expandida e defendida exatamente pela espécie de pessoas execradas — e desmoralizadas — pelos “bons cidadãos respeitáveis,” e jogadas na prisão pelos policiais locais. Nossa liberdade vem das pessoas que foram presas por John Adams com base na Lei de Sedição, dos milhares de Trabalhadores Industriais do Mundo que atulharam as cadeias locais durante a Campanha pela Liberdade de Expressão, e por Breanna Manning que é torturado diariamente na prisão por mostrar ao mundo os crimes de guerra do governo estadunidense.

A atitude das pessoas respeitáveis — exatamente as pessoas mais dadas a citar presunçosamente aquela coluna do “não é o manifestante,” na verdade — em relação aos reais defensores de nossa liberdade foi expressada pelo prefeito de uma cidade do meio-oeste nos anos 1920: “Toda vez que ouço alguém falar acerca de liberdade de expressão, ou carta de direitos, penso: ‘Esse aí é um comunista consumado.’ Nenhum bom estadunidense fala desse jeito.”

Portanto, se você ama sua liberdade, não agradeça aos soldados. Agradeça aos desprezíveis hippies imundos.

Artigo original afixado por Kevin Carson em 9 de julho de 2012.

Traduzido do inglês por Murilo Otávio Rodrigues Paes Leme.

In the biblical book of Genesis, Pharaoh is troubled by a dream: “And, behold, there came up out of the river seven well favoured kine and fat-fleshed; and they fed in a meadow. And, behold, seven other kine came up after them out of the river, ill favoured and lean-fleshed; and stood by the other kine upon the brink of the river. And the ill favoured and lean-fleshed kine did eat up the seven well favoured and fat kine.”

As interpreted by Joseph, this dream foretold seven years of plenty, followed by seven years of famine.

Pharaoh’s dream is an excellent metaphor for capitalism — an economic system in which the state intervenes in the market on behalf of privileged classes. Only under capitalism, the dearth results not from natural conditions like drought or blight, but from human-made conditions. And unlike Pharaoh’s dream, which portended misfortune both for his realm and for himself, for capitalists this is a good dream.

You see, capitalists — as opposed to legitimate actors in a free market — make money by obstructing production and reducing productivity. Thorstein Veblen, the founder of institutional economics, observed that most of the revenues accruing to the propertied classes are rents from “capitalized disserviceability.” Most of their so-called “property rights” are property in the right to prevent production taking place except on their terms. A good example is landlordism, the enforcement of absentee title against those who actually first cultivate vacant and unimproved land, and their heirs and assigns. By this means landlords are able to reap where they did not sow.

Sometimes to accomplish this it is necessary to deliberately impair the productivity of new technology in order to make it more amenable to the extraction of rents. Hence Monsanto’s genetically-modified seeds, which are deliberately designed with a built-in terminator gene to prevent them from reproducing — so the farmer always has to buy more seeds from Monsanto (in fact Monsanto attempts to enforce patent rights against seed-savers even beyond the first sale, in cases where the seeds are capable of reproducing). Hence e-books sold to libraries, which are designed to self-destruct after a few readings so the publisher can keep selling replacement copies. And hence, more generally, digital copyright law whose sole purpose is to impose artificial inefficiencies on what would otherwise by nature be the instantaneous replication of information at zero marginal cost.

In the industrial field, the lords of artificial scarcity intend to hobble the potential productivity of 3-D printers by DRMing the CAD/CAM files and criminalizing the production of hardware capable of circumventing DRM.

The good news is that this strategy is futile. As Cory Doctorow pointed out, the computer is a machine for copying bits, without limit, at zero cost. A business strategy based on preventing the copying of bits is doomed to fail. And more generally, the collection of profits by impeding the free flow of information and the copying of improved techniques is doomed to fail. No matter how totalitarian the information lockdown the proprietary content industries attempt to impose through the state, the forces of information freedom are always one step ahead. Such laws simply speed up the mainstreaming of encryption, proxy servers, and the relocation of site hosting to countries like Iceland outside the DRM Curtain.

In the case of industry, a proprietary regime is simply unenforceable. Legally or not, open hardware hackers can easily replicate open-source desktop machine tools using … desktop machine tools. And they can strip CAD/CAM files of DRM as easily as file-sharers currently do from music and movies. Industrial patents are enforceable only in an environment of low transaction costs, like what prevailed under mass production. In the old days, the transaction costs of enforcing patents were low because a handful of oligopoly manufacturers produced a handful of similar designs, and marketed them through a handful of nationwide retail chains. What happens when a garage microfactory in every neighborhood is downloading design files from The Pirate Bay and producing knockoffs of proprietary designs, or making generic spare parts to keep GE and Westinghouse appliances running? What happens when they market their manufactured goods in a hundred thousand Mom-n-Pop stores and neighborhood bazaars?

We’re approaching victory in the five-thousand-year war between natural abundance and artificial scarcity.

Translations for this article:

• Dutch, Kapitalisme: de droom van de Farao.

The following article is translated into Portuguese from the English original, written by Kevin Carson.

Quando ouço alguém dizer que os soldados “defendem nossa liberdade” minha reação imediata é de engulho. Acho que provavelmente a última vez em que soldados estadunidenses realmente lutaram pela liberdade de estadunidenses foi na Guerra Revolucionária — ou talvez na Guerra de 1812, se quisermos ser generosos. Toda guerra desde então foi para nada mais do que manter um sistema de poder e tornar os ricos ainda mais ricos.

Consigo contudo pensar numa única exceção. Se há soldado em algum lugar do mundo que já lutou e sofreu por minha liberdade, é o soldado de primeira classe Bradley Manning.

Manning é amiúde retratado, entre os primatas direitistas de sites de discussões online, como uma espécie de menino mimado ou de ingrato, agindo impelido por capricho adolescente. Não é exatamente isso o que aconteceu, de acordo com Johann Hari (“Os heróis não devidamente valorizados de 2010,” The Independent, 24 de dezembro).

Manning, como muitos soldados jovens, alistou-se na crença ingênua de estar defendendo a liberdade de seus concidadãos estadunidenses. Quando foi para o Iraque, viu-se trabalhando com ordem de “arrebanhar e entregar civis iraquianos aos novos aliados iraquianos dos Estados Unidos, os quais, podia ele ver, então os torturavam com furadeiras elétricas e outros implementos.” As pessoas que ele prendeu e entregou para tortura eram culpadas de “crimes” tais como escrever “críticas acadêmicas” às forças de ocupação dos Estados Unidos e ao governo títere respectivo. Ao Manning expressar suas reservas morais a seu supervisor, “foi-lhe dito que calasse a boca e voltasse ao arrebanhamento de iraquianos.”

As pessoas que Manning viu serem torturadas, a propósito, eram amiúde exatamente as mesmas que haviam sido torturadas por Saddam: sindicalistas, membros do Congresso Iraquiano da Liberdade, e outras pessoas amantes da liberdade que não tinham mais uso para a Halliburton e para a Blackwater do que haviam tido para o Partido Baath.

Por expor os crimes contra a humanidade de seu governo, Manning já passou sete meses em confinamento solitário – forma de tortura deliberadamente calculada para alquebrar a mente humana.

Vemos muitos “pensadores sérios” nas páginas de artigos opinativos e noticiários de televisão, pessoas como David Gergen, Chris Matthews e Michael Kinsley, estendendo-se acerca de todas as coisas que os vazamentos de Manning impediram  “nosso governo” fazer.

Ele prejudicou a capacidade do governo dos Estados Unidos de conduzir a diplomacia na persecução de algum fictício “interesse nacional” que pretensamente tenho em comum com Microsoft, Wal-Mart e Disney. Ele pôs em risco número indizível de vidas inocentes, de acordo com exatamente as mesmas pessoas que ordenaram a morte de indizíveis milhares de pessoas inocentes.    Conforme o Secretário de Imprensa da Casa Branca Robert Gibbs, a exposição, por Manning, do conluio secreto dos Estados Unidos com governos autoritários do Oriente Médio, para promover políticas que os povos respectivos considerariam abomináveis, solapa a capacidade dos Estados Unidos de promover “democracia, governo transparente e sociedades livres e transparentes.”

Eu, porém, direi a vocês quais são as capacidades de fazer do governo que Manning realmente prejudicou.

Ele prejudicou a capacidade de o governo dos Estados Unidos mentir levando-nos a guerras onde milhares de estadunidenses e dezenas de milhares de estrangeiros são assassinados.

Ele prejudicou a capacidade do governo de usar essas guerras — à guisa de promover a “democracia” — para colocar no poder governos títeres tais como a Autoridade Provisória da Coalizão, chanceladores de acordos neoliberais de “livre comércio” (incluindo rígidas cláusulas de “propriedade intelectual” escritas pelas indústrias de conteúdo patenteado) e signatários de acordos especiais com compadres capitalistas estadunidenses.

Ele prejudicou a capacidade de o governo prender pessoas boas e decentes que — diferentemente da maioria dos soldados — estão realmente lutando pela liberdade, e de entregá-las a governos brutais para tortura com ferramentas elétricas.

Deixemos claro o seguinte. Bradley Manning pode ser criminoso pelos padrões do estado estadunidense. Contudo, por todos os padrões humanos de moralidade, o governo e seus funcionários, que Manning expôs à luz do dia, são criminosos. E Manning é um herói da liberdade por fazê-lo.

Assim, se você é um desses adoradores do estado autoritário, um desses sicofantas servis do poder que torcem pela punição de Manning e preconizam tratamento ainda mais duro para ele, tudo o que posso dizer é que você teria estado provavelmente na crucifixão instando Pôncio Pilatos a descer o açoite um pouco mais forte. Você teria dito aos nazistas onde Anne Frank estava escondida. Você não faz jus à liberdade pela qual tantos heróis e mártires ao longo da história — heróis como Bradley Manning — lutaram para dar a você.

Artigo original afixado por Kevin Carson em 30 de dezembro de 2010.

Traduzido do inglês por Murilo Otávio Rodrigues Paes Leme.

From the Indiana University broadcast website:

Elinor and Vincent Ostrom were world renowned for their original and influential research on resource management and democratic governance. Indiana University administrators, faculty and students will celebrate their lives at 3 p.m. Monday, Oct. 15, in the IU Auditorium in Bloomington.

Elinor Ostrom, Distinguished Professor and Arthur F. Bentley Professor of Political Science and the only woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, died June 12. Vincent Ostrom, Arthur F. Bentley Professor Emeritus of Political Science, died June 29.

“The U.N. Security Council,” CNN reports, “approved a resolution that gives regional leaders 45 days to provide specific plans for an international military intervention to oust rebels in northern Mali.” The western African nation, one of the poorest in the world, has been immersed in violence since the end of March, when a group within Mali’s military mutinied, opposing the government of then-President Amadou Toumani Touré.

The commitments of the U.N. are widely considered to be products of careful and measured deliberation, to account for the complexities and interrelationships of regional and global security. The process, it is thought, gives legitimacy to sweeping actions like, for instance, military intervention and regime change.

But the process is a mere simulation from the start, enthralled to the overriding interests of the American Empire and its satellites, lacking in all legitimacy. The Security Council is nothing more than another paternalistic, authoritarian malignancy, a successor to a tradition of empires that stretches as far and wide as the whole history of the state’s attacks on human society for thousands of years.

The suggestions, heard often, that the U.N. has promoted peace, pluralism and opportunities for diplomacy are belied at every turn by the institution’s complicity, indeed active fostering, of a new colonialism.

Colonialism, is it true, has manifested itself differently in its 21st century embodiment than it has in the past. Its hallmarks, however, are as constant, as familiar and unchanged by time, as ever before, with cultural and economic domination just as real.

Market anarchists see empire and subjugation as a piece of the broader picture of statism, of coercive authority over the lives of otherwise free people. We suggest, in its place, a society in which each individual is a sovereign unto herself, with equal freedom among all human beings.

By way of contrast, today’s imperialism is a hollow, insipid American culture of utter corporate mastery that the U.N. helps impose on the world. The “independence,” “self-determination” and “sovereignty” that U.N. apparatchiks bellow about proceed only up to the point where they come into conflict with this globalization, a system of world monopoly for Big Business.

As Professors Peter McLaren and Ramin Farahmandpur forthrightly put it, “In addition to our description of globalization as imperialism, we might add … the submission of internationalist organizations like the United Nations to the social and economic demands of imperialist conquest.” The Security Council in particular acts as a rubber stamp to the interests of the most powerful states, atop of which sits the United States.

Even the briefest glance through the Security Council’s resolutions since the inception of the U.N. confirms that they have served the brutal homogenization of the world under the management of American interests. Governments around the world are jostled into line to be puppets of a very distinct world system, enrolled in international bodies like the IMF and the World Bank.

American military bases become the price of the “economic development” promised by global capitalism. But development it is most certainly not. It is merely the system, like the old mercantile one, whereby favored companies are granted preferential access to land and other resources, wealth stolen under the imprimatur of law.

The free competition that market anarchists advocate for is entirely opposed to that system. The trade we want abides no special, coercive privilege; the society we want countenances no arbitrary, political authority. Our anarchism disapproves of rulers, not necessarily rules.

But even at that, the sovereignty of the individual and the law of equal freedom are guiding principles more than they are rules. Real global stability and peace will spring up only when the world is rid of states. We can start by calling empire and a worldwide system of corporate robbery what they are.

There’s been some concern lately in the open-source micromanufacturing community that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is interested in financing hackerspaces and Fab Labs. The concern is that such funding might coopt and domesticate what otherwise promises to be an industrial revolution based on liberatory technologies.

But let’s put this in perspective. In Cory Doctorow’s “Makers,” traditional American industrial corporations come up against a situation in which cheapening, distributed means of production means no profitable outlet for all the investment capital sitting around. “Capitalism is eating itself …. The days of companies with names like General Electric and General Mills and General Motors are over.” Desperate Fortune 500 corporations, selling off corporate jets and other assets at fire sale prices, attempt to buy into garage micromanufacturing operations as a Hail Mary pass to stave off irrelevancy and bankruptcy.

The corporations ruthlessly liquidate most of their surviving mass-production capacity, and their investment arms use cash on hand as something like a Grameen bank for hardware hackers, to fund thousands of micromanufacturing startups. Eventually players ranging from GMAC and Westinghouse to the investment arm of the AFL-CIO have their own microfinance programs investing in garage startups and trying to cash in on the “New Work” industrial revolution.

But this approach fails. The New Work boom goes bust, not because i’s a failure, but because it’s too successful. The micromanufacturing technologies of the New Work, after the bust, are if anything even more ubiquitous than during the boom. The collapse of the New Work boom doesn’t mean the micromanufacturing technology it’s based on disappears; rather, the technology becomes so cheap and common that it’s impossible for venture capitalists to make money off it. Micromanufacturing is so productive it destroys all the opportunities to enclose it as a source of rents.

DARPA is trying to do essentially the same thing in the real world.

DARPA was created as a research organization with a free hand to scatter lots of money among lots of promising little projects, in the hope that a few of them would pay off and become fundamental technologies of the future. But DARPA’s scheme will fail for the same reason. It’s impossible to enclose a new production process and capitalize it as a source of rents when the technology is cheap and replicable.

Rentiers can attempt to do so through enforcing legal monopolies — building DRM into CAD/CAM files, marketing proprietary printers that refuse to recognize files without DRM, and criminalizing the technical means of circumventing DRM — but they will fail. There are all sorts of open-source 3D printer projects already out there, with moving parts that can be replicated in a well-equipped garage shop, and open-source hardware hackers will keep replicating 3D printers whether American manufacturing corporations want them to or not. Any attempt to suppress the people’s distributed, open-source industrial revolution will result in the same humiliating failure the record companies have experienced with file-sharing.

For thousands of years, parasitic rentier classes have used the state to exact tribute from the labor of the producing classes. The rentiers have imposed one toll-gate after another between labor and consumption, inserting themselves as middlemen and skimming off tribute in return for “allowing” the producers to exchange the products of their peaceful labor. They enclosed vacant land and demanded rent from those who would cultivate it, they conquered already-occupied land and exacted rent from the cultivators, even reducing those who worked the land to serfdom or slavery. Since then they have refined this extortion process, resorting to one monopoly or entry barrier after another — up to the present day, when copyrights and patents are the primary monopoly that empower corporate “vampire squids” to squeeze the earth dry.

For thousands of years, economic ruling classes acting through the state have warred upon the forces of abundance, creating artificial scarcity in order to compel the producing classes to work to feed the rentiers in addition to themselves. But we’ve reached a threshold where the forces of abundance are growing too fast for the rentiers to enclose. Humanity is nearing the end of its millennia-long war between production and parasitism, between natural abundance and artificial scarcity. And now the rentiers will face the same choice we’ve been presented with for all these years: either work or starve.

The following article is translated into Portuguese from the English original, written by Kevin Carson.

Em recente discurso dirigido à Veteranos de Guerras no Exterior, o aspirante Republicano à presidência Mitt Romney denunciou propostas de assim chamados cortes na “defesa” como motivados por desejo de tornar os Estados Unidos uma “potência menor”  — o que, por sua vez, “emana da convicção de que, se formos fracos, os tiranos também optarão por ser fracos; de que, se pudermos simplesmente falar mais, envolver-nos mais, fazer aprovar mais resoluções das Nações Unidas, essa paz será quebrada. Isso pode ser o que eles pensam naquele saguão do corpo docente de Harvard, mas não é o que eles sabem no campo de batalha!”

A ouvir Mitt, você pensaria que a política externa estadunidense nos últimos setenta anos dirigiu-se para “defender a paz e a liberdade” e dissuadir “agressores”  — os Estados Unidos como criança perdida na floresta, cuidando da própria vida, forçada a defender-se contra “tiranos” que “nos odeiam” porque, bem, por eles serem simplesmente perversos. Isso está errado em tantos níveis, quando a gente submete o ponto de vista da aula de educação cívica do sexto ao oitavo grau a respeito do papel dos Estados Unidos no mundo a algum exame crítico, que é difícil saber por onde começar.

Primeiro, a política externa estadunidense não diz respeito a conciliações de interesses. E sim acerca de promover interesses. As políticas do governo estadunidense, como aquelas de todos os estados, servem aos interesses da coalizão da classe dominante que controla o estado. Isso se aplica à política tanto externa quanto doméstica. A política externa estadunidense, como a de todos os outros estados, funciona no interesse de um sistema doméstico de poder.

Nas palavras de Noam Chomsky, a Guerra Fria era — como primeira aproximação — uma guerra dos Estados Unidos contra o Terceiro Mundo e uma guerra da União Soviética contra seus satélites. Em 1984, Orwell usou a imagem de três gavelas de trigo apoiadas umas nas outras para descrever a dependência mútua de Oceania, Eurásia e Lestásia. As três superpotências usavam o conflito perpétuo entre si para justificar seu controle e exploração de suas populações domésticas.

O propósito precípuo da política externa estadunidense desde a Segunda Guerra Mundial tem sido o de escorar uma ordem mundial corporativa e disciplinar países renegados que tentem desertar dessa ordem. E na escora desse sistema global de poder os Estados Unidos têm sido, usualmente, o agressor, nas ações que têm empreendido. Os Estados Unidos, desde 1945, vêm mantendo guarnições militares em dezenas de países, e provavelmente já derrubaram e instalaram no poder mais governos do que qualquer outro império na história. E o fizeram não precipuamente em defesa própria contra a “ameaça soviética,” mas como herdeiros da túnica da Pax Britannica como garantidores de uma ordem mundial.

Os países que os Estados Unidos atacaram em décadas recentes, na maioria, não representavam “ameaças,” por incapazes de atacar os Estados Unidos. Foram países do outro lado do mundo, com forças militares de terceira categoria, sem capacidade logística para projetar força militar além de umas poucas centenas de milhas além das próprias fronteiras. Se os Estados Unidos não tivessem tanto espírito esportivo no tocante a enfrentar países como esses percorrendo mais da metade do caminho, nunca teríamos tantas guerras.

Mais que isso, há muito boa probabilidade de os assim chamados “tiranos” lá de fora terem, antes de tudo, sido colocados no poder pelos Estados Unidos, para protegerem os interesses dos círculos dominantes dos Estados Unidos contra as pessoas comuns dos outros países. Os Aliados Ocidentais, depois de “libertarem” território do Eixo, furtaram aos movimentos de resistência de esquerda seus ganhos locais e colocaram no poder governos provisórios sob colaboradores anteriores do Eixo. Começando com Arbenz em 1954, continuando com a deposição de Goulart, do Brasil, nos anos 1960, e culminando na Operação Condor e na deposição de Allende na América do Sul, os Estados Unidos instalaram juntas militares ou apoiaram esquadrões da morte na maioria dos países do hemisfério ocidental. No resto do mundo, país após país, a história: Mossadeq, Sukarno, Lumumba … para tomar de empréstimo uma frase da The Clash: “Outra vez aquelas balas de Washington.”

Quando os Estados Unidos têm problema com um “tirano,” tão frequentemente quanto não trata-se de ex-cliente do Pentágono e da CIA que parou de aceitar ordens e tornou-se um problema. Como, por exemplo, quando Saddam “deflagrou guerras de agressão contra seus vizinhos” e “usou armas de destruição em massa contra seu próprio povo.”  Os sujeitos de Washington deviam saber que Saddam tinha armas de destruição em massa — afinal, haviam guardado os recibos. E na maior guerra de agressão de Saddam, a administração Reagan teve assento de primeira fila, aplaudindo-o e fornecendo ajuda e apoio contra a assim chamada “ameaça iraniana.”

Sinto muito, Mitt. O governo dos Estados Unidos é que precisa ser dissuadido.  Romney assevera ser “conservador favorável a governo enxuto.” Afirma não confiar no governo. É, porém, ou estúpido ou mentiroso. Um governo não pára de ser governo na linha da fronteira.

Artigo original afixado por Kevin Carson em 10 de setembro de 2011.

Traduzido do inglês por Murilo Otávio Rodrigues Paes Leme.

Writing at Forbes.com, Todd Ganos observes something important and far too seldom commented upon by writers in the elite media — that is, the very concrete facts of the practical, working relationship between capital/Big Business and the state. Ganos offers us a study conducted by no less a stronghold of radicalism than the National Bureau of Economic Research, which set out to see just how consistently our lawmakers in the upper house could be relied upon to come through for the powerful rich. Looking at 6,000+ Senate votes over two decades, the report found — shock! — that, in Ganos’ words, you guessed it, “our senators’ votes are influenced.” Imagine that. The study thus stands to bear out the consistent refrain of market anarchism throughout its history in the United States, that rather than restraining big business for the common good, the state is what enables and sustains its continued domination of economic life. You can find the rest of Ganos’ piece here.

Dear C4SS supporters,

Over the past two weeks, I’ve submitted 10,866 Center op-eds to 2,763 publications worldwide, and have identified six pickups of Center content:

• Kevin Carson’s “The Regulatory State: Behind the Myth” ran in the Deming, New Mexico Headlight on September 30.
• Also on September 30, Florida’s Hernando Today published David D’Amato’s “Reconsidering Redistribution: One Libertarian’s View.”
• The Batesville, Arkansas Guard published Kevin Carson’s “Primitive Accumulation in the News” [link leads to paywall] on October 4.
• Kevin Carson’s “The Joke of Democratic Accountability” appeared in Hernando Today on October 4 and the Carroll County, Maryland Standard on October 11.
• My own “Election 2012: Mitt Romney’s ‘Free Economy” ran in the Deming, New Mexico Headlight on October 8.

Have a great weekend!

Yours in liberty,
Tom Knapp
Media Coordinator
Center for a Stateless Society

Seemingly out of nowhere, Glenn Greenwald burst into the blogosphere in October of 2005 at his former blogspot site, Unclaimed Territory. As a lawyer having practiced law in Manhattan for a decade, including litigating constitutional issues, he was well-equipped to analyze and eviscerate defenders of President George Bush’s ordering the National Security Agency (NSA) to secretly engage in warrantless interception of telephone calls and emails of U.S. persons, in blatant violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Indeed, when the New York Times broke the NSA story in December of ’05, Greenwald quickly emerged as the go-to guy for explaining, in readable terms, what FISA requires and why the Bush Administration’s extreme arguments for presidential “inherent authority” to violate any law the Executive doesn’t like – including FISA or bans on torture — were not only meritless, but virtually limitless and radically un-American.

Since establishing himself online as a premier expert on FISA, Greenwald has written three books: How Would a Patriot Act?, A Tragic Legacy, and the just-released Great American Hypocrites — all of which shot up to number one or close to it at Amazon. In February of 2007 he was invited to write at Salon, where he continues to blog. Greenwald has appeared on C-Span several times, such as when the Cato Institute sponsored him to discuss his second book, and also was a panelist addressing the state of the media at YearlyKos 2007. Additionally, he has written several articles for American Conservative magazine, and most recently a piece for The National Interest — The Perilous Punditocracy. He has discussed Bush’s FISA law-breaking, foreign policy and the rancid state of the American establishment media on radio shows too numerous to list. Currently, Greenwald is completing a study of Portugal’s drug-policy reforms for The Cato Institute.

Lately, Greenwald’s blogging has largely focused on the media and its slavish devotion to GOP-peddled narratives and trivialities, as well as the astonishing fact that various neoconservatives whose views have been demonstrated to have disastrous consequences, continue to hold respectable positions in the elite media. Greenwald pounds home the absurd reality that neoconservatives remain a staple as interview subjects on news programs and treated as if they are Serious foreign policy experts, notwithstanding their incredible track records of being wrong — Iraq! — and that they often agitate – explicitly or implicitly — for yet more wars.

He lives most often in Brazil with his domestic partner, because that nation recognizes their same-sex relationship as a legal basis for Greenwald’s residing there. The reciprocal is not true of the United States, where Greenwald’s Brazilian life partner could not qualify to reside here based “merely” on their domestic partnership.

[Editor’s note: Any links to Greenwald’s Salon posts above or below will require a BRIEF, quickly by-passable ad click-though the first time one such link is clicked. It is worth it.]

******

AoTP: Glenn Greenwald, welcome and thank you for agreeing to this interview. To begin, we’d like to know how optimistic you are that The Way Things Are vis-a-vis imperialistic foreign policy holding nearly unquestioned status by an approving media — and even by most in both major political parties — can be changed so that the more humble foreign policy envisioned by the Founders could gain some traction?

GG: I’m relatively optimistic about this for one reason: Iraq. The extent of the occupation’s unpopularity can’t really be overstated. Huge numbers of Americans believe the invasion was a mistake, that they were misled into supporting the war, that it has made us less safe, etc. Those perceptions can’t but undermine the reflexive support Americans have had for invasions, bombings and wars. It has eroded the underlying premises that the Government espouses to convince citizens to support imperialistic policies. It has made Americans even more distrustful of official pronouncements from both the Government and establishment press. All of this has worked to erode the tools used to convince the citizenry to support our ongoing imperial project.

At the same time, none of this is going to be uprooted overnight. Our abandonment of our republican origins and pursuit of empire has developed over decades. Many of the concepts used to justify it are embedded in our political culture. Change is happening inexorably, but structural change of this sort, absent violent upheaval, is necessarily incremental.

AoTP: You are Jewish. Therefore, aren’t you “supposed to” advocate that the United States’ foreign policy interests and Israel’s are identical, and thus endorse extensive U.S. military intervention in the Middle East?

GG: There’s a misconception that American Jews largely support the neoconservative agenda. They simply don’t. Polling data on this question is unequivocally clear. A recent poll from the American Jewish Committee, surveying American Jewish opinion, found that in large numbers, they disapprove of the way the U.S. is handling its “campaign against terrorism” (59-31); overwhelmingly believe the U.S. should have stayed out of Iraq (67-27); believe that things are going “somewhat badly” or “very badly” in Iraq (76-23); and believe that the “surge” has either made things worse or has had no impact (68-30).

More strikingly, when asked whether they would support or oppose the United States taking military action against Iran, a large majority — 57-35% — say they would oppose such action, even if it were being undertaken “to prevent [Iran] from developing nuclear weapons.” While Jews hold views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict which are quite pessimistic about the prospects for Israel’s ability to achieve a lasting peace with its “Arab neighbors,” even there, a plurality (46-43) supports the establishment of a Palestinian state.

People like Bill Kristol and Joe Lieberman are not only a small minority among Americans generally, they represent a minority of American Jews. Another recent poll, this one from the nonpartisan Israel Project, found that the vast majority of American Jewish voters have priorities that are indistinguishable from American voters generally, and it is only a small minority of those voters for whom Israel is a top priority: “Three quarters of the American Jewish community say that there are other issues more important than Israel,” . . .only 23 percent of the Jewish population listed Israel as a top issue. . .While 51% of the respondents acknowledged that the economy and jobs were their major concern, only 7% cited the Middle East conflict between Israel and the Palestinians and the threat of Iran.”

AoTP: In your second book, A Tragic Legacy, you lay the blame for U.S. war-mongering, especially in the Middle East, largely at the feet of neconservatives, while allowing that there are also some “garden variety hawks” involved in the equation. Many neoconservatives hold elite positions in the Establishment media and are regularly consulted on cable news. What do you think motivates neoconservatives, and why do they remain so popular in “high places?”

GG: The term “neoconservatives” now encompasses a large group of people, so it’s difficult to describe “their” motives as though they’re a monolith. Some believe generally that the U.S. should be a militaristic society and ought to dominate the world by military force, and thus have as their top priority the building up of an Enemy to justify those policies. Others, of course, have deep — really primary — allegiances to Israel, and perceive that endless domination of the Middle East by the U.S. is in the interests of Israel.

They are able to occupy high positions because the central premise of our political culture is that those who favor war and militarism are strong and patriotic, while those who oppose it are weak and subversive. Until that premise is uprooted, neoconservatives will have a place at the table of power, no matter how discredited and radical they are exposed to be.

AoTP: Your blogger profile rose exponentially when you became arguably the best source for understanding FISA, and the implications of the Bush’s claimed authorities for years of violating it. You were absolutely dogged on the matter, both in your legal analyses and insistence that the issue should be an important scandal. Do you take satisfaction from your work in that regard, and to what extent do you think some justice and correctives have resulted?

GG: I absolutely think that the work of bloggers (and their readers), along with related activist groups, changed the outcome of the FISA and surveillance debates. There was a long period of time after the NSA story was first revealed by the NYT when there was almost nobody other than a small handful of people writing about the NSA lawbreaking specifically and especially the theories of the omnipotent Executive underlying all of it.

And the recent victory in the House, where House Democrats finally refused to comply with the President’s orders and refused to give him vast new warrantless eavesdropping powers and telecom amnesty, would not have happened without the work of bloggers and their readers. There just wasn’t anyone else interested in those issues, and the usually invulnerable bipartisan cast of Beltway lobbyists, pundits and other assorted operatives were all lined up in unison to make sure those measures passed. That’s a small victory, but I think it reveals a template for how these battles can be waged with increasing potency.

AoTP: You very seldom, if ever, write about gay and lesbian issues per se. Yet discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation directly affects where you live, since you and your domestic partner — who is Brazilian — cannot be together on any regular basis in the U.S. Do you hold strong views about anti-gay laws in your own country?

GG: The state of American law with regard to same-sex couples is an ongoing disgrace. America is one of the very few countries in the world — along side countries such as China and Yemen — to continue to ban HIV-positive individuals from immigrating. And the Defense of Marriage Act, which prohibits the federal government from extending any benefits (including immigration rights) to same-sex couples means that we put our gay citizens whose partners are foreign nationals in the excruciating predicament of being forced either to live apart from their life partner or live outside of their own country. That is reprehensible.

Most civilized countries, even those that don’t yet recognize same-sex marriage, refuse to put their citizens in that situation. Brazil was a military dictatorship until 1985. It has the largest Catholic population of any country in the world. And yet I’m able to obtain from the Brazilian government a permanent visa because my Brazilian partner’s government recognizes our relationship for immigration purposes, while the government of my supposedly “free,” liberty-loving country enacted a law explicitly barring such recognition.

AoTP: You’ve done an enormous amount of valuable, original investigative work at your blog, in magazine articles and in your books exposing the corruption of the Establishment media; it’s willingness to obediently spew GOP talking points and narratives about domestic and foreign policy, and to focus on petty and inane trivialities such as Obama’s bowling score or how much John Edwards pays for his haircuts. Some feel a resurrection of the Fairness Doctrine is at least a partial answer to our media malaise. Do you?

GG: I tend to be a First Amendment absolutist and cringe at the prospect of government regulation over our means of expression. I understand the sentiment behind the Fairness Doctrine. I believe that media consolidation under the control of an ever-shrinking number of large, homogeneous corporations is a serious threat to free political discourse and investigative journalism.

But I believe that developing alternatives to that monolith — such as those developing on the Internet and elsewhere — is a far more attractive solution to that problem. I don’t understand how anyone, after watching the abuses of the Bush administration for the last eight years, would want to vest in government officials the power to judge the content of what goes over the airwaves. One of the biggest mistakes we can make is to assume competence and benign intent on the part of political officials when deciding how much power to give them. We ought to assume the worst about them — about their abilities, integrity and motives — and only then, based on those suppositions, should we decide how much power, and what specific powers, we’re willing to vest in them.

AoTP: You’ve been holding up various mainstream media figures to contemptuous examination: WaPo’s Fred Hiatt, Joe Klein, Mark Halperin (former Political Director of ABC News and now a political analyst for Time Magazine and editor at large), John Harris (former National Political Editor of The Washington Post), Brian Williams and Peggy Noonan are just a few examples. Do you envision that your focus on the media’s sins will continue?

GG: The subversion of our Republic, its political values and our constitutional framework could not have occurred without the full-scale complicity of a corrupt and vapid establishment media, so it’s vital that the focus remain on them. I think there are two vital goals to pursue — (1) revealing what that establishment is and the function it fulfills in order to shame and discredit its members as much as possible (so as to modify their behavior and lessen their influence), and (2) building alternatives so that ideas and information can be disseminated widely without having to rely on those corrupt media institutions.

AoTP: During a recent blogging heads debate you had with Megan McArdle, she repeatedly insisted that the Founders saw no special role for the press, and that including freedom of the press in the First Amendment did not signify otherwise. Yet Thomas Jefferson said: “Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.” Could you expand on why you disagree with McArdle about the role a free press was and is supposed to play in our republic?

GG: Many of the Founders themselves used a free press to achieve all sorts of political goals. Their writings were rambunctious, adversarial, harsh, and even hostile. For obvious reasons, their primary concern was to create as many checks as possible on abuse of government power, and a vibrant press that would serve as a watchdog over the political class was — as both their actions and words conclusively prove — a key instrument in achieving that. They didn’t protect press freedoms in the First Amendment because they thought it was unimportant. Anyone with even a basic understanding of the dynamic the Founders envisioned for preserving liberty knows the central role they envisioned for a free press.

AoTP: Are there contemporary journalists whose work you do admire?

GG: Yes. There are many journalists, even in the establishment press, who do superb work. The Boston Globe’s Charlie Savage almost single-handedly cast light on the administration’s use of signing statements to proclaim a presidential right to float above the law. The Washington Post’s Dana Priest engaged in exemplary investigative journalism to reveal the existence of CIA Black Sites throughout Eastern Europe where we disappear our detainees beyond even the monitoring of international human rights agencies. Reporters at McClatchy (formerly Knight-Ridder) did an enormous amount of work, in obscurity, to debunk key administration claims prior to the invasion of Iraq. And there are all sorts of great investigative journalists working independently, on blogs, and in other venues.

The problems of the establishment media, the reason it exists as a propaganda amplifier for the government, are systemic. But there are absolutely individual reporters devoted to fulfilling the most noble functions of journalism. They’re just far too small in number to affect the overall impact that the establishment media has.

AoTP: With reference to your being nearly a First Amendment absolutist, when you you were practicing law you defended the extremely racist and anti-Semitic Matt Hale in several civil cases prior to his criminal conviction, and you’ve blogged rather extensively in opposition to “hate speech” crimes. Was free speech imperiled in the Hale civil cases, as you saw it?

GG: Absolutely. Very well-funded groups were trying to create new precedent where groups with unpopular views could be held liable for the actions they “inspired” with their words. They were trying to subject Matthew Hale and his Church to bankruptcy-inducing civil liability based on the theory that the expression of his White Supremacist ideas led others to go and commit acts of violence against minorities.

The threat to free speech from such pernicious theories is manifest. If you give a speech about the domestic threat posed by Islamic groups inside the U.S. and someone hears you and goes and kills a Muslim — of if you give a speech on the evils of corporate power and someone hears you and is inspired to go kill a CEO — these theories would mean you could be liable for those acts. It would render free speech a nullity.

That has been tried before. In the South, in the 1960s and 1970s, there were attempts to bankrupt the NAACP and various chapters by claiming that boycotts they sponsored inspired people to commit violence in order to enforce them. The Supreme Court unanimously ruled that such theories of liability are barred by the First Amendment. But, as always, people don’t care much when the same efforts are made to whatever group happens to be the one expressing the Hated Ideas of the day. That’s why the Founders barred attempts like that with the guarantees enshrined in the First Amendment.

AoTP: The About page at our site describes how we are pursuing a dialogue between, on the one hand, liberals, and on the other, libertarians who have been made unwelcome by a GOP/neocon-dominated-conservative-movement which many libertarians cannot support. Do you find value in such a project — which has antecedents in liberal blogger’s Markos Moulitsas arguing the case for “libertarian Democrats” at Cato Unbound, and calling for an alignment between libertarians and Democrats? (Kos’s argument was met with mixed reactions on both sides of the proposed ideological hook-up.)

GG: I think that many liberals have become much more skeptical of government power and the notion of trusting government leaders as a result of the abuses of the last eight years. Obviously, there are some of them who will quickly lose that skepticism and distrust if there is a Democrat in the White House, but — while recognizing this is just speculation — I honestly believe that’s a minority. I think the radicalism of the last eight years in terms of expansive government power has engendered a real political realignment and made liberals and libertarians far more natural allies than libertarians and those on the Right.

AoTP: You eschew all political labels yourself, even as many have seen fit to tag you as something. But many of your views — such as on the individual’s right to own a firearm, anti-drug-war (Update I), and even criticism of the prescription drug system in which one may not secure a drug without permission from an MD — would fit comfortably within a libertarian worldview, although those positions alone would not necessarily put you in that camp. Do you see value in some parts of libertarian philosophy?

GG: I eschew labels and the act of embracing or rejecting them because they mean too many different things to too many people to have value. They create more confusion than clarity. And, as I just indicated, I think there has been a political realignment over the past eight years that has made those labels even less useful. Worse, labels are often used as shorthand to relieve people of the burden of thinking about someone’s argument (”Oh, he’s just X, so of course he believes that.”) I prefer to advocate my views on an issue-by-issue basis and let others decide what labels they think apply.

AoTP: What do you envision you will be doing five years from now? Is blogging a long-term commitment, and if so, what would you like to able to add to it?

GG: I am extremely passionate about the work I’m doing, which — purely on a personal level — is the most important consideration for me in deciding what I want to do. Daily blogging is an extremely demanding activity, because its demands are so constant and relentless. So while I can’t say how long I expect to continue to blog on a daily basis — and, for now, I still love it and intend to do so indefinitely — it’s impossible for me to envision a full-scale cessation of political writing. The issues that I care about require a long-term battle and they’re ones I’m very devoted to pursuing.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 5th, 2008.

The following article is translated into Portuguese from the English original, written by Kevin Carson.

TROCAS MULTILATERAIS

Trocas multilaterais são o objetivo do Centro em dois sentidos — somos a favor de uma sociedade fundamentada em cooperação pacífica e voluntária, e buscamos fomentar o entendimento por meio de diálogo permanente.

Eis porque estamos inaugurando esta nova parte de nosso site. Trocas Multilaterais – Mutual Exchange proporcionará oportunidades para trocas de ideias de interesse dos diversos públicos do Centro. Um ensaio de abertura, deliberadamente provocativo, será seguido de respostas vindas de dentro e de fora do C4SS. Contribuições e comentários de leitores são entusiasticamente encorajados.

Começamos com o ensaio de Anthony Gregory “Contra Kevin Carson quanto à Humanidade de Corporações e Professores do Governo,” o qual suscita alguma questões críticas acerca de aspectos do projeto de Kevin Carson. Seguir-se-ão respostas de Carson, Gary Chartier e outros.

*  *  *

Permitam-me começar dizendo que sou, de longa data, admirador dos escritos de Anthony Gregory, e estou tão surpreso quanto ele com o fato disto ter-se transformado em desacordo de maiores proporções. Francamente, dadas nossas consideráveis áreas de acordo, é-me difícil imaginar por que meu texto de comentário (“Corporações são Pessoas? Hitler Também Era”) o terá acionado.

A primeira objeção de Gregory, em “Contra Kevin Carson,” é a minha asserção de que os lucros das grandes corporações são desproporcionalmente o resultado de trocas desiguais forçadas pelo estado (monopólios, direitos artificiais de propriedade, barreiras à entrada no mercado etc.).

De imediato, Carson assume a premissa de que os lucros corporativos geralmente resultam de “trocas desiguais forçadas pelo estado.” Certamente trabalhadores e consumidores amiúde enfrentam ônus impostos pelo estado que reduzem suas probabilidades de trocas otimamente benéficas. Significará isso, porém, que os autores dos lucros corporativos beneficiam-se a expensas deles? Não será possível para ambos os lados até em uma transação “desigual” ficarem em pior situação, na margem, por causa do envolvimento do estado, e no entanto ficarem em situação melhor por haver sido feita a troca?

Na maioria dos casos, contudo, não acho ser questão de “ambos os lados” ficarem em pior situação como resultado de intervenção do estado. No caso das corporações dominantes em nossa economia, elas ficam em melhor situação do que teriam ficado numa troca numa economia de livre mercado. Um rent, por definição, é a diferença entre o preço que teria sido incentivo suficiente para o vendedor levar um bem ao mercado e o preço que o consumidor ainda estivesse disposto a pagar pela utilidade líquida de receber o bem. Por definição esse rent, quando resulte de escassez ou barreiras à entrada no mercado forçadas/feitas valer pelo estado tem natureza de exploração.

O que dizer dos muitos empresários que lucram em certo ano e têm grandes prejuízos no outro? Foi a expensas deles que consumidores e trabalhadores tiveram lucro?

Não estou seguro acerca de que relevância terão esses empresários para minha coluna. Não contesto por um minuto haver empresários genuínos no setor competitivo da economia. O que eles têm a ver com a gestão das corporações gigantescas envolvidas nos preços administrados, nos mercados de oligopólio onde duas ou três empresas controlam metade do mercado — e cujo padrão está usualmente mais próximo de enormes lucros em determinado ano, grandes lucros no ano seguinte, e redução de impostos no seguinte — não está claro para mim.

Aqui tenho de concordar com a visão austríaca segundo a qual se duas partes vêm a fazer negócio, especialmente se ambas saírem satisfeitas, a preferência demonstrada(*) delas é a de que o negócio não foi feito a suas expensas, e sim a bem da melhora geral de sua situação, e isso não deveria ser invalidado por terceiros observadores. (* Para a ideia de preferência demonstrada, de Rothbard, e o contraste com a ideia de preferência revelada, de Samuelson ver, por exemplo,http://rationalargumentator.com/Rothbard_demonstratedpreference.html)

Bem, com certeza. Pode-se dizer que mesmo o consumidor que compra um produto de um fornecedor monopolista — em base de preferência demonstrada — atribui maior utilidade a engajar-se na transação do que a abster-se dela. Mas essa é toda a questão referente a estar-se numa posição de monopólio: você pode definir o preço num nível tal que o consumidor mal pense na escolha de comprar como preferível à de não comprar — em vez de engajar-se em um mercado competitivo onde o preço tenderá a caminhar rumo ao custo real do fornecimento do bem ou prestação do serviço. Quando alguém compra um copo de água no meio do Saara por $1000 dólares, considera ser essa transação benefício positivo líquido em comparação com morrer de sede — mas e daí? A questão é qual das partes da transação está em posição dominante, e como isso afeta os termos da troca — e os retornos dela para a parte dominante.

E se a demonstração de preferência de uma parte por troca em vez de não troca for suficiente para comprovar que a natureza não é de exploração, sugiro tratar-se de um critério muito rasteiro. Eu, porém, nego que seja suficiente. A exploração, ou privilégio — por definição — é o uso de poder coercitivo para restringir o leque de alternativas disponíveis para uma parte em desvantagem, de tal modo que ela é forçada a escolher uma alternativa muito inferior à que teria estado disponível não fora tal restrição. Quando um consumidor compra um CD ou DVD pagando margem de copyright de 1000% por ser ilegal um competidor reproduzir o conteúdo para venda, o consumidor poderá considerar um positivo líquido pagar a enorme margem em comparação com não ter acesso nenhum àquele conteúdo. Trata-se, entretanto, claramente, de exploração. Um camponês medieval poderia considerar constituir positivo líquido pagar ao senhor da herdade um terço de sua produção como rent em espécie, em troca do acesso à terra, em vez de morrer de inanição. E daí?

Se o fato de o consumidor receber maior utilidade ao se engajar numa transação do que ao não fazê-lo for prova de que uma troca não tem caráter de exploração, então nenhum monopólio na história jamais se qualificou como exploração, por esse padrão. O monopolista engaja-se em segmentação de preços e dumping de maneira a calibrar o preço de acordo com a capacidade de pagamento do consumidor, e este ainda recebe utilidade líquida despojada acima e além do preço que paga(*). Pela própria natureza do monopólio, o monopolista tem de permitir alguma utilidade líquida do comprar em relação ao não comprar a fim de conseguir vender.’ (* Enrolei-me na tradução mas felizmente o autor veio em meu socorro: ‘It’s the consumer who pays and receives a bare net utility over the price – that’s how monopolist’s targeting pricing works. The monopolist charges as much as possible for it to still be worth it to the consumer to buy.’)

Para lucrar com aumentos de produtividade resultantes do progresso tecnológico o monopolista tem de permitir ao consumidor receber pequena parcela daqueles, para fazer com que valha a pena pagar por eles, mesmo em condições de monopólio. Isso significa que o ganho líquido de produtividade tem de ser dividido (digamos) 9-1 em favor do monopolista em vez de o monopolista açambarcar o bolo inteiro — mas o ganho inteiro acabaria indo parar no consumidor se fosse permitido a competição desimpedida socializar os benefícios, nas condições de um livre mercado.

Tipicamente, é verdade, as trocas de trabalhadores e consumidores teriam sido ainda mais frutíferas para eles não fora o estado. Por vezes o estado inclusive cria trabalho cativo e mercados consumidores para as corporações. Contudo, a pura produtividade, mesmo na economia de mercado tolhida, por meio da qual trabalhadores e consumidores melhoraram sua situação ao longo dos anos, mesmo se não tanto quanto deveriam tê-lo feito, pareceria indicar que nem todas as suas interações com as corporações se fazem a expensas deles, liquidamente. Eles poderão beneficiar-se muito menos do que deveriam, por causa do estado, mas seguramente a experiência típica de consumidores ou trabalhadores envolvidos mesmo num sistema corporatista não é uma experiência de vitimização cabal….

Gregory não é o primeiro a suscitar essa objeção a minha crítica do capitalismo de estado. É um argumento muito engenhoso. Stephan Kinsella, por exemplo, já argumentou repetidamente que o modelo estadunidense de capitalismo corporativo só pode incluir significativa dose de elementos de livre mercado porque, em vez de tornar-se paralisado por problemas de cálculo, resultou em aumento de produtividade e padrões crescentes de vida que testemunhamos nos anos recentes.

Por mais aparentemente engenhoso que seja, não acredito, contudo, que esse argumento possa resistir a análise. Se prova algo, prova em demasia. Mesmo a economia feudal da Idade Média, mesmo a economia planificada da antiga União Soviética, alcançaram níveis significativos de progresso técnico. Parece que uma levedura extremamente modesta de liberdade, mesmo em sociedades bastante  autoritárias ou totalitárias, é suficiente para permitir significativa quantidade de progresso econômico e tecnológico a despeito do nível de estatismo.

Eu argumentaria também que as medidas convencionais de padrão de vida nos Estados Unidos deveriam ser vistas com certa reserva. A economia corporativa produz carros, geladeiras, televisores e computadores que os consumidores certamente consideram preferíveis aos de há dez anos, e a grande maioria dos consumidores prefere comprá-los nas condições disponíveis em vez de ficar sem eles. Contudo, os preços pelos quais esses bens são vendidos são provavelmente diversas vezes maiores do que seriam num livre mercado, porque eles são produzidos por indústrias fortemente cartelizadas que podem repassar o custo de desperdício de insumos e de overhead burocrático para o consumidor por meio de preços administrados, e nas quais a cultura interna das firmas dominantes é esmagadoramente caracterizada por caos calculacional. Os componentes de hardware e de software são patenteados, e portanto exibem margem de diversas centenas por cento.

Como ocorre no caso do preço de bens e serviços, também medidas de crescimento econômico e PIB essencialmente definem o consumo de insumos como constituindo criação de valor. Assim, temos uma economia na qual a qualidade de bens e serviços parece estar melhorando significativamente, e os consumidores preferem tê-los a não tê-los. Todavia, temos também uma economia na qual não há maneira de determinar se os insumos desperdiçados para criar essas coisas valeram a pena, ou se as pessoas os adquiririam deliberadamente face a um espectro de alternativas de livre mercado. Há certa espécie de valor de uso, e até significativo progresso na criação de valor de uso, mas uma atmosfera geral de caos calculacional — exatamente como na antiga URSS. E sugiro que, na medida em que os consumidores aceitam menor nível de utilidade do que aceitariam num livre mercado, e pagam preço maior por sua utilidade, em horas de trabalho, do que pagariam num livre mercado, o déficit que experimentam é — nas palavras de Benjamin Tucker — igualado por éficit(*) equivalente por parte das classes dominantes no capitalismo de estado. (* O artigo original diz, equivocadamente, deficit. Consultei o autor citando a sugestão de um leitor que propunha ‘surplus’, e o autor me esclareceu que de fato há equívoco, e mais: Tucker usa o termo ‘efficit’, obviamente por oposição a ‘deficit’. Adotei ‘éficit’.)

O uso que fiz de Hitler parece irritar particularmente Gregory.

…[T]odo sistema de exploração de classes da história humana serviu aos interesses de algum grupo de seres humanos. Em toda sociedade da história, não importa quão brutalmente exploradora, obviamente o ganho ilícito foi consumido por “pessoas.” Os patrícios romanos que viviam do suor dos escravos eram pessoas, e bem assim o eram os senhores feudais que extorquiam rents dos camponeses. Suspeito de terem sido “pessoas” — pessoas perversas — quem se aproveitou dos dentes de ouro extraídos em Auschwitz.

Ele retruca:

Pois bem, quanto a mim, sempre gosto de uma boa comparação com os nazistas, e tenho posição explícita de oposição à Lei de Godwin. Essa comparação, contudo, parece muito irrazoável. Se a ideia é a de haver paralelo sensato a ser traçado entre aqueles que fazem as corporações lucrar e aqueles que prosperam em estados escravos e campos de concentração, encontro aqui muita coisa contra a qual protestar. Sei ser esse um argumento de reductio ad absurdum, mas ele parece fatalmente falho mesmo em sua concepção fundamental. Um consumidor que entra num Wal-Mart e compra um novo estéreo e CD poderia estar em situação muito melhor se o estado não impusesse barreiras protecionistas a fabricantes estrangeiros de eletrônicos, não aumentasse, por meio do copyright, o custo das músicas gravadas, e não impusesse uma centena de outros custos ao comprador. Entretanto, dificilmente este é vítima da troca ela própria. Ele pode escolher não comprar esses bens em absoluto, e ainda assim passar muito bem no mundo. Ele está realmente escolhendo dar seu dinheiro para as corporações, por mais falha a estrutura subjacente da economia. Além disso, embora qualquer dada corporação possa beneficiar-se de intervenção do estado, pode igualmente sofrer.

Para aplicar a analogia de Carson, se o cliente do Wal-Mart é o homem cujos dentes estão sendo extraídos em Auschwitz, o Wal-Mart não é o sádico nazista que está procedendo à extração – é o negociante que vendeu-lhe os dentes.

Aqui ele deixa escapar a questão substantiva. Não se tratou, em absoluto, de uma “analogia.” Foi — como ele próprio reconhece logo num parágrafo antes — reductio ad absurdum. São duas coisas muito diferentes. Meu intento foi destacar a estupidez da implicação de Romney de que um sistema não é explorador caso os beneficiários dele sejam seres humanos. Todo sistema de exploração da história humana, por definição, beneficiou seres humanos. A classe dominante, em todo sistema de exploração, era composta de seres humanos. Pode-se demolir a tentativa de Romney de argumentar que as corporações são boas porque “o dinheiro vai para pessoas” mediante simplesmente listar-se as piores pessoas da história; se um sistema não for explorador por seus beneficiários serem todos pessoas, por mais corrompidas, então nenhum sistema na história foi jamais explorador.

Quanto aos outros pontos ensanduichados nessa citação, já questionei a importância que Gregory atribui ao fato de os consumidores escolherem “livremente” o mal menor num um âmbito restrito de alternativas.

E a asserção finória de que dada corporação poderia sofrer tanto quanto beneficiar-se da intervenção do estado é notável prestidigitação para impingir uma ideia cambeta. Uma formiga pode em tese chicotear um elefante. Eu porém aposto meu dinheiro no elefante.

Concordo com que a personalidade corporativa possa colocar problemas e que apenas indivíduos têm direitos…. Carson, porém, parece estar indo muito além em sua crítica, não simplesmente questionando a categorização de ficções corporativas como “pessoas,” mas em realidade concordando com que elas constituem pessoas quando julga com severidade a condição ética e o papel produtivo dessas pessoas objeto de discussão.

Em realidade, não assumo posição, nem num sentido nem no outro, no tocante à questão da personalidade corporativa — isto é, quanto ao fato da corporação ser legalmente considerada uma pessoa separada e distinta dos acionistas separada ou coletivamente — na coluna que Gregory critica. A tirada de Romney de que “corporações são pessoas,” a despeito de toda a importância atribuída a essas palavras na blogosfera liberal/progressista, nada teve a ver com a questão da personalidade corporativa. Ele estava, antes, aludindo à tese — popular nos anos noventa — do “capitalismo do povo” ou “socialismo de fundos de pensão.”  O dinheiro que as corporações ganham é bom, disse Romney, porque ele todo vai para pessoas. Esse — e apenas esse — foi o sentido em que ataquei a declaração de que “corporações são pessoas.”

Dependem lucros corporativos amiúde de intervenção do estado? Claro que sim. Eles não têm, contudo, necessariamente caráter de exploração. Eles certamente não se fazem sempre a expensas de consumidores e trabalhadores. Nós atores do mercado, mesmo um mercado corrompido pelo envolvimento do estado, nem sempre recaímos nitidamente nessas categorias de sermos consumidores e trabalhadores ou beneficiários corporativos. E muitas pessoas que lucram de empreendimentos corporativos fazem-no correndo grande risco, colocando tudo o que têm em jogo, sem o que o empreendendorismo e portanto crescimento econômico e portanto a própria civilização seriam impossíveis. Seguramente as grandes empresas têm prosperado graças ao estado. Eu próprio já expus essa ideia muitas vezes…. Contudo, o apoio do estado não é elemento indispensável dos lucros corporativos, nem são todas as corporações, mesmo em nosso mundo, tomando tudo em consideração, instituições predatórias cujos ganhos vêm sempre a expensas de trabalhadores e consumidores.

Acredito que a grande maioria das corporações oligopolistas, em mercados onde um punhado de firmas controla mais da metade da fatia de mercado, em verdade ganha a expensas de trabalhadores e consumidores.

O apoio do estado poderá não ser indispensável para que ocorra lucro enquanto tal. Haveria seguramente lucro empresarial do tipo que Gregory descreve, advindo àqueles que recebem retornos maiores do que marginais mediante serem os primeiros a perceber e atender a alguma necessidade não atendida, ou os primeiros a chegar ao mercado com alguma inovação. Tais lucros, porém, seriam efêmeros, e estariam sempre num processo de serem levados a zero por novos entrantes no mercado.

E na medida em que a taxa de retorno sobre o capital e a terra no mercado é maior do que seu valor natural, em decorrência de escassez artificial e direitos artificiais de propriedade feitos valer pelo estado, toda empresa que goza de taxa de retorno mais elevada como resultado de privilégio coercitivamente imposto é objetivamente exploradora. Na medida em que as firmas de negócios nos setores dominantes da economia são maiores e em menor número, e os preços mais inelásticos do que seriam em situação diferente, os superlucros extraídos dos consumidores por meio de trocas iníquas têm objetivamente caráter de exploração.

No final, as pessoas que optam por comprar das corporações ou por trabalhar para elas, quando de fato há alternativas disponíveis, fazem-no porque estão interessadas em beneficiar-se a si próprias. Num mercado verdadeiramente livre, certamente muito mais boas alternativas estariam disponíveis. Isso não significa, porém, que as escolhas econômicas que as pessoas realmente fazem em nosso falho mundo tenham caráter de exploração ou de opressão.

Claro que significa. Se o leque de alternativas é menor do que seria num livre mercado e as alternativas mais satisfatórias do ponto de vista dos trabalhadores e consumidores forem tiradas da mesa, e os lucros corporativos e os salários dos gerentes forem maiores do que seriam em outra situação como resultado desse leque restrito, então — independentemente de existirem ou não ainda algumas alternativas — a utilidade reduzida que resulta de trabalhadores e consumidores escolherem menos do que alternativas ótimas tem caráter de exploração e de opressão.

Uma pessoa pode melhorar de situação graças a uma troca e, ainda assim, estar sendo explorada. Por sua própria natureza, repetindo, o preço de monopólio alcança a mais alta quantia que o consumidor tem condição de pagar e ainda obter utilidade bastante para que a troca valha a pena.

Gregory realça muito minha defesa (defesa que considerei bastante insatisfatória à época) dos professores de escola pública no contexto da controvérsia de Scott Walker em Wisconsin.

Contudo, mesmo sem saber exatamente como seria uma sociedade livre, é difícil para mim ver com que base libertária Carson se mostra mais disposto a humanizar professores de escolas públicas do que beneficiários corporativos…. A quantidade de privilégio estatal envolvida em escorar a mamata da doutrinação das crianças é seguramente comparável, se não exceder de longe, à implicada no caso da corporação média.

Vejo a aliança entre as grandes empresas e o governo hipertrofiado como estruturalmente central, como característica definidora, de nosso sistema político-econômico. A “Elite de Poder” que gere a conexão de estado, capital financeiro e gerência corporativa ocupa a mesma posição, no presente sistema, que os senhores de terras ocupavam há setecentos anos. O sistema de educação pública é em grande parte um componente de segundo nível desse sistema.

A diferença é a seguinte: Os professores de escola pública estão desempenhando uma função — educação — que, pelo menos sob alguns aspectos, existiriam mesmo numa sociedade livre. E estão desempenhando-a num contexto no qual o estado em grande parte açambarcou a função e cerceou alternativas. Numa sociedade na qual o maior tributo local que a maioria das pessoas paga é um tributo sobre a propriedade para financiar as escolas, a maioria das pessoas mandará os filhos para escolas públicas como opção padrão. Assim, aqueles que desejem ensinar mas gostariam de fazê-lo numa estrutura não estatal deparam-se com seu leque de alternativas grande e artificialmente reduzido, em comparação com as oportunidades no sistema de propriedade do estado. Embora a redução de alternativas não seja tão grande em grau, é a mesma, em espécie, que a enfrentada por trabalhadores em empresas estatais no antigo bloco soviético.

Vejo professores e bombeiros, em considerável medida, como pessoas que desempenham funções que seriam legítimas em alguma forma de sociedade sem estado, e desempenhando-as diante da necessidade de tornar o melhor possível o sistema estatista. As profissões deles podem ser formalmente privilegiadas, mas é uma posição de priilégio secundária, subordinada e útil.

Em contraste, os rentistas e gerentes graduados que vivem de lucros corporativos não estão tornando a melhor possível uma situação ruim que não criaram, nem se encontram em posição de privilégio secundária. Encontram-se no cerne de uma classe dominante corporativa, e a classe dominante corporativa tem condições antes de criar do que de utilizar o leque de alternativas. O sistema escolar público foi criado como meio visante a um fim determinado pela natureza da classe dominante: desde seus primeiros dias, foi delineado precipuamente pelas necessidades dos empregadores de trabalhadores dóceis, obedientes e treinados.

Gregory poderia igualmente argumentar que o padre da paróquia era tão privilegiado quanto o nobre que vivia à custa de rents de províncias inteiras, porque era pago com dízimos. O privilégio, contudo, recebido pelo pároco da vila era, do mesmo modo que o do professor de escola pública, secundário e útil. Em ambos os casos, o recebedor recebe algumas migalhas da mesa em troca de ajudar a promover os privilégios principais do primeiro nível da classe dominante — a classe para benefício da qual o sistema existe.

Acho que Gregory é muito mais pluralista do que eu quando o assunto é análise de classes. Assim como David Friedman, ele vê a classe dominante como um feixe fortuito de interesses que por acaso se vinculou ao estado, em vez de ver uma coalização coerente. Como escreveu Friedman em O Maquinário da Liberdade (PDF):

Parece mais razoável supor não existir nenhuma classe dominante, e sermos governados, antes, por uma miríade de quadrilhas em conflito, constantemente engajadas em furtar umas das outras para grande empobrecimento de seus próprios membros, bem como do restante de nós.

Assim somos todos, tanto o camponês quanto o senhorio, vítimas do estatismo, e deveríamos simplesmente esquecer o passado. Ou, como poderia dizer Homer Simpson, “…podemos postar-nos aqui e ficar para sempre tentando descobrir… quem se esqueceu de apanhar quem. Vamos, porém, simplesmente dizer que estávamos ambos errados, e pronto. E agora, que tal um abraço?”

Murray Rothbard, por outro lado, acreditava — na descrição de Roderick Long — que a classe dominante era

um grupo principal que conseguiu uma posição de hegemonia estrutural, um grupo fundamental para a consolidação e a crise de classes na economia política contemporânea. A abordagem de Rothbard do problema é, de fato, altamente dialética em sua compreensão da dinâmica histórica, política, econômica e social de classes.

Gregory também objeta a esta passagem de minha coluna.

[L]ogo antes de eu ouvir falar da última mancada de Romney, estava lendo a respeito de um estudo do psicólogo Dacher Keltner. A experiência de vida dos ricos, diz ele, torna-os menos empáticos e mais egoístas do que as pessoas comuns. Parte disso é obtusidade deliberada; legitimar ideologias é algo que não apenas habitua os explorados a levar na cabeça como também permite que os exploradores durmam à noite dizendo para si próprios que os pobres realmente merecem.

Os ricos justificam suas relações com outras classes sociais com a ajuda da ideologia estadunidensista, por meio da qual exalçam a percepção de seu próprio entranhado individualismo e veem sua riqueza como resultado de caráter: “Eles acham que o sucesso econômico e resultados políticos, e resultados pessoais, têm a ver com comportamento individual, com uma boa ética de trabalho….”

Em outras palavras, a ideologia espúria de “livre mercado” — por oposição à genuína — é o ópio das elites.

Ele objeta a essa passagem, primeiro, com base em ela guardar alguma semelhança com “o polilogismo marxista que Ludwig von Mises refuta cabalmente em suas brilhantes obras, inclusive Ação Humana.”

“A ideologia estadunidensista,” argumenta Carson, repercute nas pessoas com base na classe, em vez de em princípios filosóficos de apelo potencialmente universal. Ele não diz que a classe determina o raciocínio filosófico de uma pessoa, mas passa perto.

Não acho que passe perto em absoluto, a menos que qualquer sugestão de que grupos com experiências sociais comuns tendam a filtrar a realidade de maneiras comuns seja “polilogista.” Isso me bate como algo do tipo reação automática, afim de apelos reflexivos a “individualismo metodológico” evocados a partir de certos arraiais quando me engajo em análise de classes. Não acredito que Gregory, ou qualquer outra pessoa, aplique monologismo e individualismo metodológico tão estritamente de alto a baixo quanto o faz nos casos que seleciona para atenção negativa. Uma pessoa pensante simplesmente não poderia fazer isso sem desvincular-se completamente do pensamento de senso comum.

De minha parte, acho que Carson não é preciso, isso se não estiver totalmente errado. Muitos estadunidenses mais pobres compram ideologia vulgar de livre mercado, muitas pessoas ricas denunciam o livre mercado — ou o genuíno ou sua contrafação — o tempo todo. Pessoas pobres votam nos Republicanos para protegerem-se do “socialismo.” E há aqueles, inclusive eu, que se opõem veementemente ao corporatismo e apesar disso ainda o preferem ao socialismo de estado amiúde advogado pela maioria das facções da esquerda. Enquanto isso, há cerca de meia dúzia de anarquistas profusamente ricos que me vêm à mente cujo radicalismo de mercado é positivamente genuíno. E então há os socialistas ricos, e os socialistas pobres, e tudo o que vem no meio. Ademais, Romney, se formos ler o pensamento dele como Carson parece estar fazendo, provavelmente não acredita em nada de sua própria retórica. Ele não está defendendo “ideologia espúria de ‘livre mercado’” para dormir melhor à noite — e sim para ganhar votos.

Sem dúvida. Eis porque eu disse que “legitimar ideologias é algo que não apenas habitua os explorados a levar na cabeça como também permite que os exploradores durmam à noite dizendo para si próprios que os pobres realmente merecem.[ênfase acrescentada].” A mesma ideologia hegemônica pode desempenhar diferentes funções para diferentes classes. Já citei — muitas vezes — o dito de Stephen Biko segundo o qual a mais poderosa arma nas mãos do opressor é a mente do oprimido.

Mais importante, porém: é um equívoco tomar esse caminho ao criticar os pontos de vista de alguém. Se Romney está errado em humanizar corporações do modo como o fez, e não acredito que o ponto de vista dele seja nem de perto tão trivial quanto Carson acha, isso não é necessariamente um reflexo da classe à qual pertence Romney. Essa maneira marxiana de olhar o mundo é análise teórica pobre. Já ouvi pessoas de todos os pontos do espectro econômico parecerem com Romney falando acerca das corporações.

De novo, sem dúvida. Não seria lá grande ideologia legitimadora se não tapeasse os dominados para aceitarem os interesses de seus dominadores como legítimos, além de renovar a confiança dos dominantes em sua própria legitimidade. Eis porque podem-se ver turbas sagradas uivantes de membros do Partido do Chá arrebanhadas em considerável proporção a partir dos trabalhadores pobres, as quais sinceramente acreditam estar sendo exploradas principalmente pela ACORN(*) e seu eleitorado de pessoas que “nem sequer pagam quaisquer tributos.” (* Sociedade de proteção a famílias de baixa renda. Ver Wikipedia.)

Não faz tanto tempo que o sistema de racismo dividir-para-dominar, que servia precipuamente ao propósito principal de tornar tanto pretos pobres quanto brancos pobres mais fáceis de explorar, era entusiasticamente apoiado por caipiras brancos miseráveis na crença sincera de que tinham interesse compartilhado na “pureza racial” em comum com o cara da mansão sobre a colina dono de metade do condado. Enquanto isso, o sujeito da mansão e seus amigos da pequena nobreza local bebericavam seus drinques com hortelã morrendo de rir da ingenuidade do capira vestido com camiseta sem manga.

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Artigo original afixado por Kevin Carson em 30 de agosto de 2011.

Traduzido do inglês por Murilo Otávio Rodrigues Paes Leme.