Those who see government power and corporate power as being in conflict, and those who seem them as being in cahoots, each have a point. The alliance between government and the corporate elite is like the partnership between church and state in the Middle Ages: each one wants to be the dominant partner, so there’s naturally some pushing and shoving from time to time; but on the other hand the two parties have a common interest in holding down the rest of us, and so the conflict rarely goes too far. The main difference between “left-wing” and “right-wing” versions of statism, as I see it, is that the former generally seek to shift the balance a bit farther in favour of the state (i.e., toward state-socialism) while the latter generally seek to shift the balance a bit farther in favour of corporatism and plutocracy. (In the U.S., the reigning versions of liberalism and conservatism are arguably both more corporatist than state-socialist; but the liberals are still a few notches farther toward state-socialism than the conservatives are.)

But whether the special interests who are the primary beneficiaries of state power are mainly within the state apparatus or mainly outside it, the actual application of state power remains much the same. Hence it is a mistake to suppose that the corporatist-plutocratic version of statism is in any interesting sense less statist than the state-socialist version.

But it is an all-too-common mistake – and this tendency to underestimate the chasm between free markets and corporatism is enormously beneficial to the state, enabling a slick bait-and-switch. When free markets and government grants of privilege to business are conflated, those who are attracted to free markets are easily duped into supporting plutocracy, thus swelling the ranks of statism’s right wing – while those who are turned off by plutocracy are likewise easily duped into opposing free markets, thereby swelling the ranks of statism’s left wing. (These are the two tendencies that Kevin Carson calls “vulgar libertarianism” and “vulgar liberalism,” respectively.)

As one of the villains in The Fountainhead explains in a moment of frankness, talking about the choice Europe was then facing between communism and fascism:

“If you’re sick of one version, we push you in the other. We’ve fixed the coin. Heads – collectivism. Tails – collectivism. Give up your soul to a council – or give it up to a leader. But give it up, give it up, give it up. Offer poison as food and poison as antidote. Go fancy on the trimmings, but hang on to the main objective.

The largely (though not completely) illusory conflict between state-oriented Palpatine and corporate-oriented Dooku in the Star Wars prequels is a nice dramatisation of the same principle.

This dynamic applies in particular to the debate over health care policy. The contrast between, say, the Canadian and American approaches is frequently described – by both sides – as a contrast between a “governmental” or “socialised” system on the one hand, and a “market-based” or “free enterprise” system on the other. But the American health care system bears little resemblance to a free market; instead it represents massive government intervention on behalf of private special interests, from insurance companies to the medical establishment. The choice between the American and Canadian models is simply a choice between different two different flavours of statism – each with somewhat different vices, it’s true (e.g., do you prefer higher prices or longer waits?), but ultimately coming down to a matter of the percentage to which control of your healthcare is exercised by people sitting in government offices as opposed to being exercised by people sitting in governmentally-privileged “private” offices – but in either case by ambitious, avaricious apparatchiks who aren’t you.

So what would a libertarian approach to health care policy look like? At a minimum it would have to include:

1. Repealing laws that have the effect of cartelising the medical industry (e.g., the licensure monopoly granted to the A.M.A.), thus artificially boosting the cost of medical care.

2. Repealing laws that have the effect of rendering the labour market oligopsonistic, thus artificially lowering people’s ability to pay for (and collectively negotiate for) medical care.

3. Repealing laws that shift healthcare funds from the [PDF] 25%-devoured-by-overhead voluntary sector to the 75%-devoured-by-overhead coercive sector, thus decreasing the amount of healthcare that gets to needy recipients.

4. Repealing laws that transfer the power to make medical decisions for individuals from those individuals to centralised bodies, thus increasing the impact and scope of fatally bad decisions and suppressing the competitive signals that allow the identification of better and worse policies.

5. Repealing laws that wiped out the old mutual-insurance systems (basically HMOs run by the patients instead of by corporations) and empowered insurance companies at the expense of patients.

6. Repealing laws that suppress innovation and distribution in the pharmaceutical industry in the name of “intellectual property.”

Until the unlikely day when the Republican Party embraces this program, let’s hear no more of their favouring a free-market approach to health care.

This entry was posted August 28th, 2008.

Translations for this article:

• Portuguese, Veneno como alimento, veneno como antídoto.

The following article is translated into Portuguese from the English original, written by Gary Chartier.

O artigo a seguir foi escrito por Gary Chartier e publicado em Libertários Confrangidos, 13 de novembro de 2012.

Os professores Horwitz e Shapiro suscitam, ambos, perguntas oportunas e bem pensadas acerca da persistência da hierarquia numa sociedade sem estado.

Obviamente não tenho como mostrar de modo inequívoco, praxeologicamente, que haverá muito menos hierarquias nos locais de trabalho de um mercado emancipado—que deveríamos esperar, definitivamente, numa economia livre, mais emprego autônomo e maior proporção de parcerias e cooperativas. Permitam-me, porém, mencionar alguns motivos para achar que isso poderiaacontecer.

Grandes firmas hierárquicas parecem tendentes a serem acossadas por aqueles problemas de incentivo e conhecimento que complicam a vida dos planejadores centrais do estado.

Quanto maior uma organização, mais provável será que os gerentes careçam de informações cruciais. Isso se dá tanto pelo fato de que haverá múltiplas camadas separando vários agentes detentores de informação adequada (com pressões institucionais prejudicando a exatidão) quanto porque não haverá sistema de preços codificando a informação e utilizável para cálculo.

Ademais, o problema do principal-agente acossa grandes empresas em múltiplos níveis, promovendo formas de ineficiência na medida em que os trabalhadores—gerentes de alto nível ou empregados de linha de frente—perseguem suas próprias metas em vez da lucratividade da firma.

Assim, parece razoavelmente claro que, sendo iguais todas as outras coisas, quanto menor e mais horizontal for uma firma, de melhor qualidade será a informação disponível para todos os participantes. Quanto mais as decisões de produção se basearem nos preços reais do mercado em vez de em preços simulados de transferência intrafirma, maior será a probabilidade de elas serem mais eficientes e capazes de reação rápida e positiva à realidade. E quanto mais o trabalhador tiver recursos próprios aplicados no jogo econômico, mais provável será que ele tome decisões precavidas, eficientes e com reação rápida e positiva em relação ao cliente.

Pareceria, assim, poder-se esperar que firmas menores e mais horizontais fossem mais competitivas do que as maiores e mais hierárquicas. Não vemos, porém, muitas firmas menores e mais horizontais no mercado. Significará isso que, contrariamente às expectativas, as firmas maiores em realidade sejam mais eficientes?

Se é assim ou não dependerá, em grande parte, de perguntas empíricas que não podem ser respondidas a priori. Parece, contudo, que diversos fatores em nossa economia poderiam tender a ajudar as grandes firmas a não serem afetadas pelas deseconomias de escala que, de outra forma, as tornariam insustentavelmente ineficientes. Regras e regulamentações tributárias tendem a estimular concentração de capital e portanto aumento do tamanho da firma. Subsídios reduzem custos com os quais firmas ineficientemente grandes, de outra forma, teriam de arcar—e firmas grandes podem mais facilmente mobilizar os recursos necessários para capacitá-las a extrair riqueza do processo político do que firmas pequenas. E os trabalhadores amiúde não têm acesso aos recursos necessários para começar firmas, precisamente por causa do furto sancionado pelo estado e do privilégio garantido pelo estado. Parece provável que a eliminação desses fatores viesse a tornar mais viáveis alternativas à grande firma corporativa.

E se elas forem mais viáveis, pode-se esperar que se tornem mais comuns. A liberdade em relação à autoridade arbitrária é um bem de consumo. Dada a repulsa e a frustração com as quais muitas pessoas veem as tiranias mesquinhas do local de trabalho contemporâneo, suspeito tratar-se aquela de um bem de consumo que muitas pessoas gostariam de comprar. No presente, o preço é alto; há muito poucas oportunidades de trabalhar em parcerias ou cooperativas ou de escolher emprego autônomo. Portanto a pergunta é: o que poderia reduzir esse preço?

Esse preço é parcialmente afetado pela frequência relativa dos locais de trabalho hierárquicos versus não hierárquicos. Portanto, eliminarem-se escoras à hierarquia porá mais alternativas sobre a mesa. Ao mesmo tempo, as pessoas amiúde não escolhem essas alternativas, em virtude dos riscos associados com fazê-lo. Dizer adeus ao emprego corporativo significa assumir responsabilidade pessoal por assistência médica e aposentadoria (se, obviamente, você for trabalhador que, antes de tudo, sequer tenha essas opções, visto que muitos trabalhadores pretensamente de tempo parcial não as têm), requer que a pessoa disponha do capital necessário para tornar possível a criação de uma nova firma, e força a pessoa a encarar o espectro do desemprego se a nova firma que criar falir. Contudo, assistência médica e aposentadoria estão associadas a emprego corporativo precipuamente por causa do atual sistema tributário; e a assistência médica, em particular, seria mais acessível, de longe, na ausência de regulamentação estatal e cartelização promovida pelo estado, de tal modo que o desafio de cuidar da própria saúde em conexão com uma rede de ajuda mútua, digamos, seria muito menos intimidador do que no presente. O capital para nova firma estaria mais disponível se recursos confiscados pelo estado fossem postos no mercado e terra absorvida pelo estado fosse tornada disponível para apropriação/estabelecimento, e seriam menos necessários, de qualquer forma, se as regulamentações do estado não elevassem as exigências de capitalização. E o desemprego seria mais suportável se regulamentações do estado não elevassem o custo mínimo de vida, e poderia ser administrável por meio de apoio proporcionado por ajuda mútua.

Ademais, para mim não fica claro que seria impossível levantar dinheiro em mercados de ações e em bancos de investimento para parcerias, cooperativas e iniciativas de risco individuais. Há maneiras de garantir investimentos que não envolvam participação em governança—e obviamente significativa quantidade de ações à venda, atualmente, não necessariamente é acompanhada de direito a voto.

Portanto, pessoas que desejassem optar por locais de trabalho sem chefes achariam fácil fazê-lo na ausência de escoras para a hieraquia, erigidas pelo estado, e de barreiras ao emprego autônomo e a emprego em parcerias e cooperativas erigidas pelo estado . E o fato de elas fazerem essa opção, de tal maneira que as opções sem chefes se tornassem cada vez mais visíveis e numerosas, teria consequência também para locais de trabalho dominados por chefes. A disponibilidade de alternativas que oferecessem às pessoas mais dignidade, mais previsibilidade, mais segurança e mais oportunidades para participação em tomada de decisões exerceria pressão de mercado sobre as firmas corporativas convencionais, estimulando-as a tornar os locais de trabalho teoricamente dominados por chefes mais parecidos com outros tipos de firmas. As diferenças não desapareceriam, mas poderiam ser significativamente reduzidas.

Além disso, firmas dominadas por chefes poderiam ter a experiência de maior pressão para democratizarem-se em virtude da sindicalização. Na medida em que os acordos do estado com os sindicatos têm sido, todos os fatores considerados, desfavoráveis a ação coletiva no local de trabalho, a eliminação da regulamentação estatal do trabalho poderia abrir oportunidades para ação direta no estilo dos Trabalhadores Industriais do Mundo a qual poderia aumentar a sindicalização e, em decorrência, oferecer aos trabalhadores mais ampla proteção no local de trabalho. Repetindo, mesmo em empresas sem sindicatos, haveria pressão de mercado para reprodução de pelos menos algumas das facetas das firmas com sindicato, tanto para não perderem trabalhadores para aquelas primeiras quanto para conterem preventivamente iniciativas de criação de sindicato.

Persuasão moral normalmente não deve ser vista como provocadora principal de mudança social. Entretanto, apoio ativo público à dignidade e equidade do local de trabalho poderia obviamente levar a mudanças nos padrões e nas expectativas sociais, as quais reduziriam em muito a percepção do chefismo como legítimo, e estimulariam a profusão de alternativas.

Uma sociedade livre não eliminará e não poderá eliminar firmas de propriedade do investidor ou dominadas pelo chefe—nem deveria fazê-lo, não apenas pelo fato de que interferência violenta nesses padrões de propriedade e controle seria injusta mas, também, porque os trabalhadores poderiam amiúde beneficiar-se da faculdado de jogarem o risco para cima dos empregadores e investidores. Entretanto, eliminação do privilégio garantido pelo estado e remoção da agressão sancionada pelo estado poderiam criar oportunidades significativamente maiores para emprego autônomo e trabalho em parcerias e cooperativas.

A pedido dos Libertários Extremados, os comentários serão desligados aqui a fim de poderem ser redirecionados para o artigo original.

Artigo original afixado por Gary Chartier em 5 de novembro de 2012.

Traduzido do inglês por Murilo Otávio Rodrigues Paes Leme.

In an interview with Ezra Klein (“Romney is Wall Street’s worst bet since the bet on subprime,” Washington Post, Nov. 28), Chrystia Freeland — author of The Plutocrats — commented on the sheer level of shock and disbelief among the moneyed classes after Romney’s defeat.

That prompted Klein to ask:

These folks… are purportedly very data focused, very good at assimilating new information. So I find it genuinely scary that neither Romney nor his super-rich backers had any idea he was going to lose. All the polls, all the models, all the betting markets said he was likely to lose. How did a group of people who, in their jobs, have to be willing to read and respond to disappointing data convince themselves to ignore every piece of data we had?

Freeland described it as “astonishing” and “mystifying,” adding that these same people had made the same miscalculation in their roles as managers and investors:

… it was also the case that all the smartest guys in the room managed to lose a lot of money in 2008 and managed to convince themselves of a set of very mistaken beliefs about where the markets where going to go. It was a lot of the same people on the wrong side of both bets.”

But there’s really nothing astonishing about either case. That these people with MBA degrees and long careers climbing management ladders could be so abysmally wrong in their predictions is a textbook example of how power, by its very nature, creates stupidity and irrationality.

As Freeland observes, Romney and his backers have internalized a legitimizing ideology in which all the things that are best for the American economy are — entirely coincidentally — also in their own self-interest. The very act of getting rich (“my success,” as Romney put it) is “an act of civic virtue.” They’re the “job creators,” after all. Billionaires see themselves as a class of the best and brightest — tough thinkers who make the hard, thankless decisions, “having an extremely unique set of skills that sets them apart from everybody else, and it’s partly brainpower, but they all see it as crucially including an ability to judge and take risks and work very hard.”

This social and political ideology is a powerful form of groupthink that filters what its adherents perceive about the world. It’s just as powerful inside institutional hierarchies like the giant corporation as in the political arena.

One central function of a hierarchy is to filter the upward flow of information — to tell naked emperors how great their new clothes look. Power distorts information flow because, as R. A. Wilson observed, nobody tells the truth to someone with a gun. Authority relations result in one-way information flows, preventing decisionmakers from receiving accurate feedback on the real effects of their decisions. As Kenneth Boulding put it, those at the tops of hierarchies tend to live in almost completely imaginary worlds.

As a result those at the tops of pyramids generally communicate much more effectively with their peers at the tops of other pyramids than with their subordinates in the pyramid below. CEOs tend to make policies based on the “best practices” of other hierarchical institutions in the same industry. They evaluate their effectiveness based on the enthusiastic propaganda from other CEOs about how well it’s working in their own organizations — despite the fact that those other CEOs are equally clueless about the real effects of their policies.

I’ve lost count of the number of columnists and talking heads who observed that Romney visibly bristled when debate moderators like Candy Crowley talked back to him. He was used to being surrounded by subordinates who were afraid to tell him anything he didn’t want to hear. Seriously, how would you like to be the person on Romney’s staff who tells him his proposal is a stupid idea, or why it didn’t work?

How are businesses run by managers like this gang of idiots able to stay in business? The same way Soviet factories and industrial ministries were able to stay “in business”: By playing in a rigged game.

The U.S. economy isn’t a free market. It’s a corporate capitalist market, heavily cartelized and subsidized by the state, so that each industry is dominated by a handful of giant firms sharing the same pathological culture. The system is designed to socialize risk and cost, and privatize profit, so that natural born idjuts (excuse me, “successful job creators”) like Mittens can spend their entire lives living in bubbles, being told exactly what they want to hear, without suffering any ill effects.

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The classic analysis of the contradictions of statism, the ideal of authority, and the attempt to establish social order by imposing social control, by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, the 19th century French radical who became the first political thinker to describe himself as an Anarchist. From Proudhon’s 1851 masterpiece, General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century.

The form under which men first conceived of Order in Society is the patriarchal or hierarchical; that is to say, in principle, Authority; in action, Government. Justice, which afterwards was divided into distributive and commutative justice, appeared at first under the former heading only: a SUPERIOR granting to Inferiors what is coming to each one. . . .

. . . What really is the Social Contract? An agreement of the citizen with the government? No, that would mean but the continuation of the same idea. The social contract is an agreement of man with man; an agreement from which must result what we call society. In this, the notion of commutative justice, first brought forward by the primitive fact of exchange, and defined by the Roman law, is substituted for that of distributive justice, dismissed without appeal by republican criticism. Translate these words, contract, commutative justice, which are the language of the law, into the language of business, and you have Commerce, that is to say, in its highest significance, the act by which man and man declare themselves essentially producers, and abdicate all pretension to govern each other.

Commutative justice, the reign of contract, the industrial or economic system, such are the different synonyms for the idea which by its accession must do away with the old systems of distributive justice, the reign of law, or in more concrete terms, feudal, governmental, or military rule. The future hope of humanity lies in this substitution. . . .

Thus, while the revolutionary tradition of the sixteenth century gave us the idea of the Social Contract as an antithesis to that of Government . . . this great and decisive negation remained not understood, all through the eighteenth century. But an idea cannot perish. It is born again, always from its contradictory. . . .

The sovereignty of Reason having been substituted for that of Revelation,

The notion of Contract succeeding that of Government,

Historic evolution leading Humanity inevitably to a new system,

Economic criticism having shown that political institutions must be lost in industrial organization,

We may conclude without fear that the revolutionary formula cannot be Direct Legislation, nor Direct Government, nor Simplified Government, that it is NO GOVERNMENT.

Neither monarchy, nor aristocracy, nor even democracy itself, in so far as it may imply any government at all, even though acting in the name of the people, and calling itself the people. No authority, no government, not even popular, that is the Revolution.

“It would be interesting to discover how far a seriously critical view of the benefits to society of the law of copyright … would have a chance of being publicly stated in a society in which the channels of expression are so largely controlled by people who have a vested interest in the existing situation.” — Friedrich A. Hayek, “The Intellectuals and Socialism”

A Dispute Among Libertarians

The status of intellectual property rights (copyrights, patents, and the like) is an issue that has long divided libertarians. Such libertarian luminaries as Herbert Spencer, Lysander Spooner, and Ayn Rand have been strong supporters of intellectual property rights. Thomas Jefferson, on the other hand, was ambivalent on the issue, while radical libertarians like Benjamin Tucker in the last century and Tom Palmer in the present one have rejected intellectual property rights altogether.

When libertarians of the first sort come across a purported intellectual property right, they see one more instance of an individual’s rightful claim to the product of his labor. When libertarians of the second sort come across a purported intellectual property right, they see one more instance of undeserved monopoly privilege granted by government.

I used to be in the first group. Now I am in the second. I’d like to explain why I think intellectual property rights are unjustified, and how the legitimate ends currently sought through the expedient of intellectual property rights might be secured by other, voluntary means.

The Historical Argument

Intellectual property rights have a tainted past. Originally, both patents and copyrights were grants of monopoly privilege pure and simple. A printing house might be assigned a “copyright” by royal mandate, meaning that only it was allowed to print books or newspapers in a certain district; there was no presumption that copyright originated with the author. Likewise, those with political pull might be assigned a “patent,” i.e., an exclusive monopoly, over some commodity, regardless of whether they had had anything to do with inventing it. Intellectual property rights had their origin in governmental privilege and governmental protectionism, not in any zeal to protect the rights of creators to the fruits of their efforts. And the abolition of patents was one of the rallying cries of the 17th-century Levellers (arguably the first libertarians).

Now this by itself does not prove that there is anything wrong with intellectual property rights as we know them today. An unsavory past is not a decisive argument against any phenomenon; many worthwhile and valuable things arose from suspect beginnings. (Nietzsche once remarked that there is nothing so marvelous that its past will bear much looking into.) But the fact that intellectual property rights originated in state oppression should at least make us pause and be very cautious before embracing them.

The Ethical Argument

Ethically, property rights of any kind have to be justified as extensions of the right of individuals to control their own lives. Thus any alleged property rights that conflict with this moral basis — like the “right” to own slaves — are invalidated. In my judgment, intellectual property rights also fail to pass this test. To enforce copyright laws and the like is to prevent people from making peaceful use of the information they possess. If you have acquired the information legitimately (say, by buying a book), then on what grounds can you be prevented from using it, reproducing it, trading it? Is this not a violation of the freedom of speech and press?

It may be objected that the person who originated the information deserves ownership rights over it. But information is not a concrete thing an individual can control; it is a universal, existing in other people’s minds and other people’s property, and over these the originator has no legitimate sovereignty. You cannot own information without owning other people.

Suppose I write a poem, and you read it and memorize it. By memorizing it, you have in effect created a “software” duplicate of the poem to be stored in your brain. But clearly I can claim no rights over that copy so long as you remain a free and autonomous individual. That copy in your head is yours and no one else’s.

But now suppose you proceed to transcribe my poem, to make a “hard copy” of the information stored in your brain. The materials you use — pen and ink — are your own property. The information template which you used — that is, the stored memory of the poem — is also your own property. So how can the hard copy you produce from these materials be anything but yours to publish, sell, adapt, or otherwise treat as you please?

An item of intellectual property is a universal. Unless we are to believe in Platonic Forms, universals as such do not exist, except insofar as they are realized in their many particular instances. Accordingly, I do not see how anyone can claim to own, say, the text of Atlas Shrugged unless that amounts to a claim to own every single physical copy of Atlas Shrugged. But the copy of Atlas Shrugged on my bookshelf does not belong to Ayn Rand or to her estate. It belongs to me. I bought it. I paid for it. (Rand presumably got royalties from the sale, and I’m sure it wasn’t sold without her permission!)

The moral case against patents is even clearer. A patent is, in effect, a claim of ownership over a law of nature. What if Newton had claimed to own calculus, or the law of gravity? Would we have to pay a fee to his estate every time we used one of the principles he discovered?

“… the patent monopoly … consists in protecting inventors … against competition for a period long enough to extort from the people a reward enormously in excess of the labor measure of their services, — in other words, in giving certain people a right of property for a term of years in laws and facts of Nature, and the power to exact tribute from others for the use of this natural wealth, which should be open to all.” (Benjamin Tucker, Instead of a Book, By a Man Too Busy to Write One: A Fragmentary Exposition of Philosophical Anarchism (New York: Tucker, 1893), p. 13.)

Defenders of patents claim that patent laws protect ownership only of inventions, not of discoveries. (Likewise, defenders of copyright claim that copyright laws protect only implementations of ideas, not the ideas themselves.) But this distinction is an artificial one. Laws of nature come in varying degrees of generality and specificity; if it is a law of nature that copper conducts electricity, it is no less a law of nature that this much copper, arranged in this configuration, with these other materials arranged so, makes a workable battery. And so on.
Suppose you are trapped at the bottom of a ravine. Sabre-tooth tigers are approaching hungrily. Your only hope is to quickly construct a levitation device I’ve recently invented. You know how it works, because you attended a public lecture I gave on the topic. And it’s easy to construct, quite rapidly, out of materials you see lying around in the ravine.

But there’s a problem. I’ve patented my levitation device. I own it — not just the individual model I built, but the universal. Thus, you can’t construct your means of escape without using my property. And I, mean old skinflint that I am, refuse to give my permission. And so the tigers dine well.

This highlights the moral problem with the notion of intellectual property. By claiming a patent on my levitation device, I’m saying that you are not permitted to use your own knowledge to further your ends. By what right?

Another problem with patents is that, when it comes to laws of nature, even fairly specific ones, the odds are quite good that two people, working independently but drawing on the same background of research, may come up with the same invention (discovery) independently. Yet patent law will arbitrarily grant exclusive rights to the inventor who reaches the patent office first; the second inventor, despite having developed the idea on his own, will be forbidden to market his invention.

Ayn Rand attempts to rebut this objection:

“As an objection to the patent laws, some people cite the fact that two inventors may work independently for years on the same invention, but one will beat the other to the patent office by an hour or a day and will acquire an exclusive monopoly, while the loser’s work will then be totally wasted. This type of objection is based on the error of equating the potential with the actual. The fact that a man might have been first, does not alter the fact that he wasn’t. Since the issue is one of commercial rights, the loser in a case of that kind has to accept the fact that in seeking to trade with others he must face the possibility of a competitor winning the race, which is true of all types of competition.” (Ayn Rand, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (New York: New American Library, 1967), p. 133.)

But this reply will not do. Rand is suggesting that the competition to get to the patent office first is like any other kind of commercial competition. For example, suppose you and I are competing for the same job, and you happen to get hired simply because you got to the employer before I did. In that case, the fact that I might have gotten there first does not give me any rightful claim to the job. But that is because I have no right to the job in the first place. And once you get the job, your rightful claim to that job depends solely on the fact that your employer chose to hire you.

In the case of patents, however, the story is supposed to be different. The basis of an inventor’s claim to a patent on X is supposedly the fact that he has invented X. (Otherwise, why not offer patent rights over X to anyone who stumbles into the patent office, regardless of whether they’ve ever even heard of X?) Registering one’s invention with the patent office is supposed to record one’s right, not to create it. Hence it follows that the person who arrives at the patent office second has just as much right as the one who arrives first — and this is surely a reductio ad absurdum of the whole notion of patents.

The Economic Argument

The economic case for ordinary property rights depends on scarcity. But information is not, technically speaking, a scarce resource in the requisite sense. If A uses some material resource, that makes less of the resource for B, so we need some legal mechanism for determining who gets to use what when. But information is not like that; when A acquires information, that does not decrease B’s share, so property rights are not needed.

Some will say that such rights are needed in order to give artists and inventors the financial incentive to create. But most of the great innovators in history operated without benefit of copyright laws. Indeed, sufficiently stringent copyright laws would have made their achievements impossible: Great playwrights like Euripides and Shakespeare never wrote an original plot in their lives; their masterpieces are all adaptations and improvements of stories written by others. Many of our greatest composers, like Bach, Tchaikovsky, and Ives, incorporated into their work the compositions of others. Such appropriation has long been an integral part of legitimate artistic freedom.

Is it credible that authors will not be motivated to write unless they are given copyright protection? Not very. Consider the hundreds of thousands of articles uploaded onto the Internet by their authors everyday, available to anyone in the world for free.

Is it credible that publishers will not bother to publish uncopyrighted works, for fear that a rival publisher will break in and ruin their monopoly? Not very. Nearly all works written before 1900 are in the public domain, yet pre-1900 works are still published, and still sell.

Is it credible that authors, in a world without copyrights, will be deprived of remuneration for their work? Again, not likely. In the 19th century, British authors had no copyright protection under American law, yet they received royalties from American publishers nonetheless.

In his autobiography, Herbert Spencer tells a story that is supposed to illustrate the need for intellectual property rights. Spencer had invented a new kind of hospital bed. Out of philanthropic motives, he decided to make his invention a gift to mankind rather than claiming a patent on it. To his dismay, this generous plan backfired: no company was willing to manufacture the bed, because in the absence of a guaranteed monopoly they found it too risky to invest money in any product that might be undercut by competition. Doesn’t this show the need for patent laws?

I don’t think so. To begin with, Spencer’s case seems overstated. After all, companies are constantly producing items (beds, chairs, etc.) to which no one holds any exclusive patent. But never mind; let’s grant Spencer’s story without quibbling. What does it prove?

Recall that the companies who rejected Spencer’s bed in favor of other uses for their capital were choosing between producing a commodity in which they would have a monopoly and producing a commodity in which they would not have a monopoly. Faced with that choice, they went for the patented commodity as the less risky option (especially in light of the fact that they had to compete with other companies likewise holding monopolies). So the existence of patent laws, like any other form of protectionist legislation, gave the patented commodity an unfair competitive advantage against its unpatented rival. The situation Spencer describes, then, is simply an artifact of the patent laws themselves! In a society without patent laws, Spencer’s philanthropic bed would have been at no disadvantage in comparison with other products.

The Information-Based Argument

Though never justified, copyright laws have probably not done too much damage to society so far. But in the Computer Age, they are now becoming increasingly costly shackles on human progress.

Consider, for instance, Project Gutenberg, a marvelous non-profit volunteer effort to transfer as many books as possible to electronic format and make them available over the Internet for free. (For information about Project Gutenberg, contact the project director, Michael S. Hart, at hart@vmd.cso.uiuc.edu.) Unfortunately, most of the works done to date have been pre-20th-century — to avoid the hassles of copyright law. Thus, copyright laws today are working to restrict the availability of information, not to promote it. (And Congress, at the behest of the publishing and recording industries, is currently acting to extend copyright protection to last nearly a century after the creator’s death, thus ensuring that only a tiny fraction of the information in existence will be publicly available.)

More importantly, modern electronic communications are simply beginning to make copyright laws unenforceable; or at least, unenforceable by any means short of a government takeover of the Internet — and such a chilling threat to the future of humankind would clearly be a cure far worse than the disease. Copyright laws, in a world where any individual can instantaneously make thousands of copies of a document and send them out all over the planet, are as obsolete as laws against voyeurs and peeping toms would be in a world where everyone had x-ray vision.

First Tolkien Story

Here’s a story that illustrates some of the needless irritation that intellectual property laws can cause.

Several years ago the avant-garde film animator Ralph Bakshi decided to make a movie of J. R. R. Tolkien’s classic fantasy trilogy The Lord of the Rings. Or rather, he decided to split the trilogy into two movies, since the work is really too long to fit easily into a single film.

So Bakshi started off with Lord of the Rings (Part One). This movie covered the first volume of the trilogy, and part of the second volume. The second movie was to have covered the rest of the second volume, and then the whole of the third volume. To make the first movie, then, Bakshi needed to buy the rights to the first two volumes, and this is what he (or, presumably, his studio) did.

But Bakshi never got around to making the second movie (probably because the first movie turned out to be less successful financially than had been anticipated). Enter Rankin-Bass, another studio. Rankin-Bass had made an animated TV-movie of Tolkien’s earlier novel The Hobbit, and they were interested in doing the same for the second part of Lord of the Rings, left unfilmed by Bakshi.

But there was a problem. Bakshi’s studio had the rights to the first two volumes of the trilogy. Only the rights to the third volume were available. So Rankin-Bass’ sequel (released as The Return of the King) ended up, of necessity, covering only the third volume. Those events from the second volume that Bakshi had left unfilmed were simply lost. (Not even flashbacks to events in the first two volumes were permitted — although flashbacks to The Hobbit were okay, because Rankin-Bass had the rights to that.)

Video catalogues now sell The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Return of the King as a unified package. But viewers unfamiliar with the books will be a bit puzzled. In the Bakshi film, the evil wizard Saruman is a looming force to be reckoned with; in the Rankin-Bass sequel, he is not even mentioned. Likewise, at the end of the Bakshi film, Frodo, Sam, and Gollum are traveling together; at the beginning of the Rankin-Bass sequel we find them split up, without explanation. The answers lie in the unfilmed portion of the second volume, which deals with Saruman’s defeat, Gollum’s betrayal of Frodo, Sam’s battle with Shelob, and Frodo’s capture by the Orcs. Not unimportant events, these. But thanks to intellectual property laws, the viewer is not allowed to know about them.

Is this a catastrophe? I suppose not. The æsthetic unity and continuity of a work of art was mangled, pursuant to the requirements of law. But it was just an animated TV-movie. So what?

So what, perhaps. But my story does serve to cast doubt on the idea that copyright is a bulwark of artistic expression. When a work of art involves reworking material created by others (as most art historically has), copyright laws can place it in a straitjacket.

Alternatives to Intellectual Property Rights: Some Formulations

I may have given the impression, thus far, that intellectual property rights serve no useful function whatever. That is not my position. I think some of the ends to which copyrights and patents have been offered as the means are perfectly legitimate. I believe, however, that those ends would be better served by other means.

Suppose I pirate your work, put my name on it, and market it as mine. Or suppose I revise your work without your permission, and market it as yours. Have I done nothing wrong?

On the contrary, I have definitely committed a rights-violation. The rights I have violated, however, are not yours, but those of my customers. By selling one person’s work as though it were the work of another., I am defrauding those who purchase the work, as surely as I would be if I sold soy steaks as beef steaks or vice versa. All you need to do is buy a copy (so you can claim to be a customer) and then bring a class-action suit against me.

There are other legal options available to the creators of intellectual products. For example, many software manufacturers can and do place copy-protection safeguards on their programs, or require purchasers to sign contracts agreeing not to resell the software. Likewise, pay-TV satellite broadcasters scramble their signal, and then sell descramblers.

None of these techniques is foolproof, of course. A sufficiently ingenious pirater can usually figure out how to get around copy protections or descramble a signal. And conditional-sale contracts place no restriction on third-party users who come by the software in some other way. Still, by making it more difficult to pirate their intellectual products, such companies do manage to decrease the total amount of piracy, and they do stay in business and make profits.

But what if I do go ahead and market your work without your permission, and without offering you any share of the profits? Is there nothing wrong with this? Can nothing be done about this?

In the case described, I don’t think what I’ve done is unjust. That is, it’s not a violation of anyone’s rights. But it’s tacky. Violating someone’s rights is not the only way one can do something wrong; justice is not the only virtue.

But justice is the only virtue that can be legitimately enforced. If I profit from pirating your work, you have a legitimate moral claim against me, but that claim is not a right. Thus, it cannot legitimately use coercion to secure compliance. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be enforced through other, voluntary methods.

A good deal of protection for the creators of intellectual products may be achieved through voluntary compliance alone. Consider the phenomenon of shareware, in which creators of software provide their products free to all comers, but with the request that those who find the program useful send along a nominal fee to the author. Presumably, only a small percentage of shareware users ever pay up; still, that percentage must be large enough to keep the shareware phenomenon going.

There are more organized and effective ways of securing voluntary compliance, however. I have in mind the strategy of boycotting those who fail to respect the legitimate claims of the producers. Research conducted by libertarian scholar Tom Palmer has turned up numerous successful instances of such organized boycotts. In the 1930’s, for example, the Guild of Fashion Originators managed to protect dress styles and the like from piracy by other designers, without any help from the coercive power of government.

A voluntary boycott is actually a much safer tool than government for protecting the claims of intellectual producers, because, in the course of trying to strike a pragmatic balance between the economic power of producers and the economic power of consumers, a private effort is more likely than a government monopoly freed from market incentives to strike an analogous balance between the legitimate moral claims of the two groups — the producers’ moral claim to remuneration, and the consumers’ moral claim to easily accessible information.

Something more formal can easily be imagined. In the late Middle Ages a voluntary court system was created by merchants frustrated with the inadequacies of governmentally-provided commercial law. This system, known as the Law Merchant (“law” being the noun and “merchant” the adjective), enforced its decisions solely by means of boycott, and yet it was enormously effective. Suppose producers of intellectual products — authors, artists, inventors, software designers, etc. — were to set up an analogous court system for protecting copyrights and patent rights — or rather, copyclaims and patent claims (since the moral claims in question, though often legitimate, are not rights in the libertarian sense). Individuals and organizations accused of piracy would have a chance to plead their case at a voluntary court, but if found guilty they would be required to cease and desist, and to compensate the victims of their piracy, on pain of boycott.

What if this system went too far, and began restricting the free flow of information in the same undesirable ways that, I’ve argued, intellectual property laws do?

This is certainly a possibility. But I think the danger is much greater with coercive enforcement than with voluntary enforcement. As Rich Hammer likes to point out: ostracism gets its power from reality, and its power is limited by reality. As a boycotting effort increases in scope, the number and intensity of frustrated desires on the part of those who are being deprived by the boycott of something they want will become greater. As this happens, there will also be a corresponding increase in the number of people who judge that the benefits of meeting those desires (and charging a hefty fee to do so) outweigh the costs of violating the boycott. Too strenuous and restrictive a defense of copyclaims will founder on the rock of consumer preferences; too lax a defense will founder on the rock of producer preferences.

Second Tolkien Story

Let me close with a second story about Tolkien and his famous trilogy. The first edition of The Lord of the Rings to be published in the United States was a pirated edition from Ace Books. For reasons which I now forget, Tolkien could not take legal action against Ace. But when Ballantine came out with its own official author-approved American edition of The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien started a campaign against the Ace edition. The Ballantine edition was released with a notice from Tolkien in a green box on the back cover stating that this was the only authorized edition, and urging any reader with respect for living authors to purchase no other. Moreover, every time he answered a fan letter from an American reader, Tolkien appended a footnote explaining the situation and requesting that the recipient spread the word among Tolkien fans that the Ace edition should be boycotted.

Although the Ace edition was cheaper than the Ballantine, it quickly lost readers and went out of print. The boycott was successful.

It might be objected that Tolkien devotees tend to be more fanatical than the average readers, and so such a strategy of boycott could not be expected to succeed in ensuring such loyalty generally. True enough. But on the other hand, Tolkien’s boycott was entirely unorganized; it simply consisted of a then-obscure British professor of mediæval language and literature scribbling hand-written responses to fan letters. Think how effective an organized boycott might have been!

C4SS has teamed up with the Distro of the Libertarian Left. The Distro produces and distribute zines and booklets on anarchism, market anarchist theory, counter-economics, and other movements for liberation. For every copy of Murray Rothbard’s “All Power to the Soviets!” that you purchase through the Distro, C4SS will receive a percentage. Support C4SS with Murray Rothbard’s “All Power to the Soviets!”

$1.25 for the first copy. $0.75 for every additional copy.

Murray Rothbard is now remembered as the father of Anarcho-Capitalism, but in the 60s he argued for placing market anarchism on the revolutionary Left, and allied with SDS and the Black Panthers. Here he argues that principled libertarianism means defending freedom and genuine, labor-based property — not apologetics for politically-fabricated property titles or state-privileged corporate capitalism — that radical free-market principles support student occupations of universities and workers’ councils seizing factories and property from corporations embedded in the military-industrial complex.

The [homestead] principle applies to nominally ‘private’ property which really comes from the State …. Columbia University, for example, which receives nearly 2/3 of its income from government, is only a ‘private’ college in the most ironic sense. It deserves a similar fate of virtuous homesteading confiscation. But if Columbia University, what of General Dynamics? What of the myriad of corporations which are integral parts of the military-industrial complex, which not only get over half or sometimes virtually all their revenue from the government but also participate in mass murder? What are their credentials to ‘private’ property? Surely less than zero. As … co-founders of the garrison state, they deserve confiscation and reversion of their property to the genuine private sector as rapidly as possible. To say that their ‘private’ property must be respected is to say that the property stolen by the horsethief and the murderer must be ‘respected’.

C4SS Senior Fellow and Trustee Gary Chartier speaks at the 2012 Southern California Students For Liberty Regional Conference.

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

Es el “juego de la gallina” de Rebelde sin Causa que vuelve a repetirse. Pero esta vez están conduciendo TUS autos.

Mientras republicanos y demócratas van a toda velocidad hacia un supuesto “abismo fiscal”, cada uno esperando que el otro salte de su auto primero, sus partidarios guardan la esperanza de que los hechos se pierdan en la palabrería. Repasemos esos hechos.

Primero, el “abismo fiscal” es una fantasía creada por los políticos. No existe un “problema de ingresos”. El “problema” está en el lado del gasto. Los ingresos del gobierno de los Estados Unidos han aumentado 19% desde el 2009. No creo que la mayoría de los lectores de este artículo hayan corrido con la misma suerte. Por alguna razón, los políticos nunca aprenden a gastar menos de lo que les ingresa, independientemente de lo rápido que crezcan esos ingresos.

En segundo lugar, ninguno de los dos partidos propone recortes generales en los gastos del estado. Los pocos recortes reales son discretos y sobre programas específicos, y además son más que compensados por el crecimiento proyectado en otros, gracias al método contable del baseline budgeting usado en Washington para calcular el presupuesto del gobierno federal.

Tercero, todo el discurso sobre “bajar los impuestos” (para quien sea) es ficticio. Si el gasto del gobierno aumenta, los impuestos tienen que aumentar también. Los aumentos impositivos pueden estar escondidos en la devaluación de la moneda emitida por el estado, o puede que los pagos de los aumentos se difieran temporalmente al añadirlos a la “deuda nacional”. Pero no hay almuerzos gratis.

Toda la controversia sobre el “abismo fiscal” es simplemente otra de las tantas telenovelas politiqueras. Obama, Boehner y compañía quieren que tú estés tan preocupado sobre si a uno o al otro se le queda la manga atascada en la manija de la puerta y caiga al vacío hacia una muerte entre las llamas, que se te olvide que son TUS autos (con tu chequera en la guantera) los que fueron robados por los políticos para usarlos en su último despliegue de machismo.

Si a los políticos les importase de verdad evitar el desastre, propondrían recortes verdaderos. Se harían cargo de su adicción al despilfarro, balancearían sus chequeras y no gastarían más que sus enormes ingresos (los ingresos presupuestados del gobierno de Estados Unidos para el 2013 llegan a 5,5 billones de dólares, o 18.000 dólares por cada hombre, mujer y niño del país).

Pero los políticos solo se toman en serio el echarle la culpa a las víctimas. Todo es culpa tuya, por ser tan tacaño… ¿Es que no lo ves? Tú (y todos los demás estadounidenses) ya le regalan a los políticos el equivalente de un sueldo mínimo de tiempo completo todos los años. Pero eso no es suficiente. Tal como diría Jim Stark, “¡Los estás destrozando!”.

Como todos los parásitos, el estado ha evolucionado hacia una y solo una manera de sobrevivir: su instinto es chuparte la sangre, crecer a costas tuyas, hasta dejarte seco por completo. El drama del “abismo fiscal” no es más que el equivalente político de la garrapata que se esconde entre tu vello corporal, o una sanguijuela que excreta un químico analgésico para que no te des cuenta de su presencia y efecto.

Al fin y al cabo, si llegases a ver al parásito y a saber lo que en realidad es, te lo arrancarías, lo tirarías al suelo y lo pisotearías con fuerza. Lo cual es, por supuesto, exactamente lo que deberías hacer.

Deja que Jim y Buzz manejen “sus” autos hacia el despeñadero. No trates de detenerlos. No trates de rescatarlos. Y no vuelvas a dejar tus llaves en el encendido.

Artículo original publicado por Thomas L. Knapp, el 29 de noviembre 2012.

Traducido del inglés por Carlos Clemente.

As the Democrats and Republicans in government race toward an alleged “fiscal cliff,” each hoping the other will leap from his vehicle first, their supporters hope that a few facts will get lost in the trash-talk. Let’s go over those facts.

First, this “fiscal cliff” is entirely of the politicians’ own making. There is no “revenue problem.” The “problem” is entirely on the spending side. The US government’s income has increased by 19% since 2009. Has yours? For some reason, the politicians never can find a way to live within their means, no matter how fast those means grow.

Secondly, neither side is proposing real overall spending cuts. The few real cuts are discrete cuts to specific programs, which will be outweighed by projected “baseline budgeting” growth in others. Most of the cuts are just cuts in that projected growth. Under even the most “draconian” proposals, the size and cost of the federal government will continue to grow indefinitely.

Third, all talk of “tax cuts” — for anyone — is smoke and mirrors. If government spending increases, taxes must increase as well. Those tax increases may be hidden through debasement of the regime’s fiat currency, or payment of the increases may be temporarily deferred by adding them to the “national debt,” but There’s No Such Thing As A Free Dollar.

This whole “fiscal cliff” controversy is just another trumped-up passion play. Obama, Boehner et. al want you to be so concerned that one side or the other might get its jacket sleeve caught on the door handle and plunge to a fiery death that you’ll forget it’s YOUR vehicles — with your paychecks in the glove compartments, by the way — that they stole from the curb and took out for their latest display of machismo.

If the politicians were serious about averting the crash, they’d put real spending cuts on the table. They’d rein in their spending addiction, balance their checkbook, and live within the insanely large means already available to them (budgeted US government revenues for 2013 come to $5.5 trillion, or about $18,000 from every man, woman and child in the United States).

But they aren’t serious about anything except blaming the victim. It’s all your fault, see, for being so stingy. You (and every other American) are already handing over more than the equivalent of a full-time, minimum-wage paycheck to them every year, but that’s just not enough. As Jim Stark might say, “you’re tearing [them] apart!”

Like all parasites, the state is evolved toward one and only one means of survival: It is driven to suck your blood, growing itself at your expense, until it has drained you dry. The “fiscal cliff” drama is just the political class equivalent of a tick hiding in your hairy places, or a leech secreting a pain-killing chemical to keep you from noticing its presence and its effect.

After all, if you see the parasite and know it for what it is, you might tear it off, throw it to the ground and stomp, hard. Which, of course, is exactly what you should do.

Let Jim and Buzz drive “their” cars off the cliff. Don’t try to stop them. Don’t try to rescue them. And don’t leave your keys in the ignition again.

Translations for this article:

• Spanish, El “Abismo Fiscal”: Jim y Buzz Redux.

One major event to watch for today is the release of the Leveson Inquiry Report, a 2,000 page document that is the result of over a year of research into “the culture, practice and ethics” of the British press and which could have major negative effects on it. One outcome of the report, the possible creation of statutory regulations for the British media, has already seen one newspaper, The Spectator, announce it will disregard any implemented rules:

Today, laws intended to stop the worst excesses of the tabloids could end by exerting a chilling effect on the rest of press. Once parliament has granted itself such powers, it can be counted on to expand them later. The language being used by the enemies of press freedom in Britain today is positively Orwellian: the state should merely ‘guarantee independence’ of the press regulator. The idea of benign ‘statutory regulation’ was advocated by MPs in 1952 and The Spectator vigorously opposed it then, too. ‘Everyone who really understands what freedom of the press means and cares about it,’ we argued, ‘must resist such a proposal to the uttermost.’

That is what The Spectator will now do. If the press agrees a new form of self-regulation, perhaps contractually binding this time, we will happily take part. But we would not sign up to anything enforced by government. If such a group is constituted we will not attend its meetings, pay its fines nor heed its menaces. We would still obey the (other) laws of the land. But to join any scheme which subordinates press to parliament would be a betrayal of what this paper has stood for since its inception in 1828.

The report is scheduled to be released at 1:30 p.m. GMT, or 7:30 a.m. US Central Standard Time. Follow the proceedings on Twitter by searching for #leveson.

In his anthology of Liberty, Frank Brooks wondered, given the prevailing system of national banking and its effects on the availability of credit, whether anarchists such as Benjamin Tucker might actually be satisfied. The question is asked on the premise or assumption that many of the outcomes Tucker and his milieu hoped would be accomplished through free, mutual banking have been realized by today’s national, Federal Reserve banking system. Credit is widely available, perhaps too much so, argues Brooks, and it may therefore seem that those who doubted the predictions of Tucker and others on interest under free banking have been vindicated. But have they? While credit is indeed widely available, it was the availability of non-monopoly credit—to be issued at cost—that Tucker, Bilgram and Greene looked forward to, something that doesn’t yet exist today in spite of the existence of, for instance, the credit unions of the present (which Brooks points to as satisfying the goals of Tucker’s free banking). Today’s champions of free banking (e.g., economist George Selgin) argue, much as people like J. Greevz Fisher did in the pages of Liberty, that although free banking was indeed desirable, it would not see the evaporation of all interest on credit.

Monopoly and inordinate accumulation naturally attend one another, the inefficiencies and crises that stem from such a system requiring excessive reliance on debt. Under such a system, then, the commercial bank, trussed, needless to say, to the national banking network, becomes far more important, central to the character and to the functioning of the overall economy. Since the relationships at issue benefit the ruling class, a consequence by design, such institutions enjoy the use of all the easy state-created money they can ingest. Free banking crusaders of the Austrian style should know better than to think that such easy money as we have now is commensurate with the mutual money proposed by the individualist anarchists. Have the monopolistic restrictions on free banking, the privileges that prevent the laborer from capitalizing his wealth, actually been lifted, or have such privileges simply made way for the institutions that Professor Brooks seems to think have effectuated the dream of the anarchists? Are we to think that the existence and abundance of high-interest credit for the working poor is the vision that Tucker and Greene had with regard to credit? Even Rothbard understood that the first one to spend a counterfeit dollar enjoys the greatest boon, the rest finding their money depreciated. It therefore seems absurd to suggest that credit cards and payday advance loans for the working man, offered at a monopoly rate, are proof that widely available credit is incapable of destroying the tribute system called interest. There are hosts of products and services that are quite abundant, but are nevertheless priced far in excess of their true market value due to the interventions of just as abundant privileges.

Rothbard obscured a key argument of the “money-cranks” in ignoring the fact that Greene, Tucker and company did not advocate for inflation for its own sake, for simply splitting in two the money already in people’s hands and calling it doubled. Their argument was that restrictions on banking favored some people and fell disproportionately on others, so that access to credit was obstructed for most of the population. To merely inflate the money supply arbitrarily was not at all the goal, especially when the “easy money” we have under the existing banking system is “easy” only for politically connected institutions, particularly commercial banks—a fact that the Austrian, “End the Fed” crowd has quite right. As Tucker said of the greenback movement over one hundred years ago, national currency takes the money question and “degenerate[s] it into an unprincipled scramble for spoils by which the strongest would profit.”M It is difficult to understand why indeed workers, if allowed, would not offer one another credit at cost under a mutual banking system whereby they would all expect reciprocal treatment in kind somewhere down the line; such an agreement may be thought of as an insurance that credit will be available to the working community, the credit to be secured by all kinds of valuables. That such arrangement are not allowed doesn’t seem to bother those who bizarrely insist that if interest could ever be abolished, it would be so abolished by now. They must suppose that we have the free, competitive banking that Greene and Tucker recommended, which I suppose isn’t all that surprising. If individuals were left free to compete and organize, there’s no telling how many would enter the field of banking, or how many different schematics they would develop for that end. As John Beverley Robinson observed, banking is, after all, a “simple and safe business.”

With the capitalist banking apparatus as it is, crises like that of 2008, will not abate at least not for very long intervals. Capital and credit concentration gives way to complacency in business, to waste, to destitution for the people whose work hours drive industry forward even in spite of its unstable footing on which the economic system stands. That system works for the capitalists—is their great swindle—but only to the extent that it remains at all and doesn’t end up completely in ruins. Why those who defend some version of “free banking” should defend the tax—because that’s really what it is—of interest is utterly beyond my comprehension, but what it means is that it’s all the more important for libertarians to continue in the tradition of William B. Greene and Benjamin R. Tucker.

The following article is translated into Portuguese from the English original, written by Roderick Long.

O artigo a seguir foi escrito por Roderick T. Longe publicado no Libertários Confrangidos, 7 de novembro de 2012.

Os libertários de esquerda diferem da (atual) corrente majoritária libertária tanto em termos de que resultados veem como desejáveis quanto em termos do que acham que um mercado emancipado provavelmente produzirá.

No tocante à última questão, os libertários de esquerda veem a atual dominação do panorama econômico por grandes firmas hierárquicas como produto não de livre competição, e sim de intervenção do governo –  incluindo não apenas subsídios diretos, concessões de privilégio de monopólio e barreiras à entrada no mercado, mas também uma estrutura regulamentadora que permite às firmas socializarem os custos de escala relacionados com crescimento e os custos informacionais relacionados com hierarquia, enquanto embolsam os benefícios – deixando empregados e consumidores com espectro restrito de opções. Na ausência de intervenção do governo, afirmamos nós, poder-se-ia esperar das firmas serem menores, mais horizontais, e mais numerosas, com maior poder dos trabalhadores.

Assim, tendemos a retrair-nos quando libertários (ou muitos deles, em graus variados) acorrem em defesa de corporações de elite e de modelos e práticas prevalecentes de negócios como se eles fossem fenômenos de livre mercado. Primeiro, achamos que isso é factualmente inexato; e segundo, achamos que é algo estrategicamente suicida. As pessoas comuns geralmente conhecem em primeira mão a tirania mesquinha e a incompetência burocrática que com demasiada frequência caracterizam o mundo dos negócios; libertários que tentam romancear esse mundo como um lugar de racionalidade econômica e heroísmo gerencial arriscam-se a ver-se por fim, na melhor das hipóteses, perdidos e, na pior, como garotos-propaganda da classe dominante.

Eis também por que tendemos a não ser nada entusiásticos diante da palavra ”capitalismo” como aplicável a uma sociedade de livre mercado; como observa Friedrich Hayek, essa palavra “é desencaminhadora,” visto “sugerir um sistema que beneficia principalmente os capitalistas,” quando um genuino livre mercado é “um sistema que impõe à empresa uma disciplina sob a qual os gerentes se esfolam e da qual cada um procura escapar.” (Lei, Legislação e Liberdade, vol.1, p. 62.)

Não são, porém, apenas os libertários convencionais (e, obviamente, em muito maior grau, os conservadores) que tendem a fazer equivaler os resultados do corporatismo de compadrio com aqueles dos livres mercados; tal equivalência também é demasiado comum na esquerda tradicional. A diferença é que as avaliações são invertids; onde a versão da direita da equivalência trata as virtudes dos livres mercados como motivo para defesa dos frutos do corporatismo, a versão da esquerda da equivalência trata os objetáveis frutos do corporatismo como motivo para condenar os livres mercados.

Central para ambas as formas de equivalência é o mito de que as grandes empresas e o governo hipertrofiado estão fundamentalmente em desacordo. Como é amiúde o caso, o mito se mantém mediante conter um núcleo de verdade; embora as grandes empresas e o governo hipertrofiado sejam parceiros, cada um servindo para escorar o outro, cada lado gostaria de ser o parceiro dominante (como a igreja e o estado na Idade Média, ou Dooku e Palpatine nas prequelas de Guerra nas Estrelas), e pois muito – embora, penso eu, não a maior parte – do conflito entre eles é genuíno. Não devemos porém permitir que essas querelas entre alas diferentes da classe dominante, essencialmente a propósito de como dividir o botim, obscureça o grau muito maior no qual a elite política e a elite corporativa trabalham juntas. Políticos conservadores, em grande parte agentes da ala corporativa, dissimulam suas políticas com uma retórica de oposição ao governo hipertrofiado, enquanto políticos liberais, em grande parte agentes da ala política, disfarçam suas políticas numa retórica de oposição às grandes empresas; as diferenças de políticas amiúde envolvem deslocar levemente o equilíbrio do poder numa direção ou na outra (será a assistência de saúde controlada principalmente pelo governo diretamente ou, pelo contrário, pelos beneficiários privados do privilégio concedido pelo governo tais como empresas de seguro de saúde e a Associação Médica Estadunidense – AMA?), mas ambas as alas sistematicamente beneficiam-se da maior parte das políticas propostas por cada lado. A presidência de Franklin Delano Roosevelt – FDR, por exemplo, com suas políticas cartelizadoras, deu forte impulso ao poder corporativo, enquanto os três principais índices do poder do estado “impostos, gastos e dívida” todos dispararam na presidência de Reagan.

A equivalência, porém, não é apenas um equívoco acerca do sistema prevalecente; é também meiopelo qual esse sistema se perpetua. Pessoas atraídas pela ideia de livres mercados são enganosamente aliciadas pela equivalência, passando a apoiar as grandes empresas e tornando-se, desse modo, soldados de infantaria da ala corporativa da classe dominante; pessoas que sentem repulsa pelo corporatismo do mundo real são enganosamente aliciadas no sentido de apoiarem o governo hipertrofiado e se tornam, pois, soldados de infantaria da ala política da classe dominante. Assim, graças ao movimento de pinça da equivalência de direita e da equivalência de esquerda, aqueles que buscam opor-se ao sistema prevalecente acabam nas fileiras dos que o defendem – e a possibilidade de contestação radical do sistema como um todo é tornada na prática invisível. É assim que a equivalência funciona.

Minha menção a “funcionamento” não pretende implicar que a equivalência seja propagada deliberadamente para canalizar potenciais inimigos do sistema para as fileiras dos que o defendem (embora, naturalmente, às vezes isso ocorra).

Num sentido mais amplo, sempre que alguma característica A de um sistema B tenda a seguramente produzir certo resultado C, e A seja tal que produzir C ajude a explicar a existência e/ou a persistência de B, e portanto de A, então poderemos dizer que a função de A é produzir C.  Assim, o fato de espinhos tenderem a proteger rosas de serem comidas explica por que rosas, com seus espinhos, existem e persistem. É nesse sentido que digo que a função da equivalência dentro do sistema estado/corporação prevalecente é desnortear opositores do sistema, levando-os a tornarem-se apoiadores, e tornar invisíveis alternativas. A equivalência é um exemplo de ordem espontânea perversa.

O filósofo da ciência Thomas Kuhn descreve interessante experimento:

Bruner e Postman pediram a sujeitos do experimento que identificassem, em exposições curtas e controladas, uma série de cartas de baralho. Muitas das cartas eram normais, mas algumas foram tornadas anômalas, por exemplo um seis de espadas vermelho, e um quatro de copas preto. … Nos casos de cartas normais, as identificações foram usualmente corretas, mas as cartas anômalas foram quase sempre identificadas, sem aparente hesitação ou confusão, como normais. O quatro de copas preto poderia, por exemplo, ser identificado como o quatro ou de espadas ou de copas. Sem qualquer consciência ou problema, ele era imediatamente encaixado numa das categorias conceptuais preparadas pela experiência anterior. … Com posterior aumento de exposição das cartas anômalas, os sujeitos começaram a hesitar e a mostrar consciência da anomalia. Expostos, por exemplo, ao seis de espadas vermelho, alguns diriam: Este é o seis de espadas, mas há algo de errado nele – o preto tem borda vermelha. … Alguns sujeitos … não foram capazes de proceder ao ajuste necessário de suas categorias. (Estrutura das Revoluções Científicas, pp. 62-63)

Em suma, as pessoas tendem não apenas a não ter dificuldade em, mas a ter até aversão a, reconhecerem algo que não se encaixe em suas categorias estabelecidas. Isso cria um problemas para os libertários em geral; para muitas pessoas da política convencional, o primeiro impulso é assimilar os libertários a uma categoria, que lhes é mais familiar, de “contrários ao governo,” isto é, conservadores. Quando, depois de longa exposição, as pessoas da política convencional percebem que os libertários não são muito conservadores afinal de contas, começam a vê-los como o equivalente de “espadas pretas com bordas vermelhas” – convencionalmente conservadores em algumas questões, convencionalmente liberais em outras, em vez de vê-los como representando uma alternativa radical às ideologias existentes. (O uso, pelos libertários, do Diagrama de Nolan como ferramenta de divulgação pode contribuir para essa tendência.)

O que é verdade a respeito dos libertários de modo geral é ainda mais verdade no tocante aos libertários de esquerda. A prevalência da equivalência tende a reforçar a impressão de que qualquer pessoa que ataque (aquilo que consideramos) os frutos do corporatismo só pode ser contra o livre mercado, e de que qualquer pessoa que defenda os livres mercados só pode estar empreendendo defesa daquilo (que consideramos) os frutos do corporatismo. Assim, esquerdistas não libertários tendem a ver-nos como apologistas das corporações camuflados de esquerdistas, enquanto os libertários não esquerdistas tendem a ver-nos como comunas disfarçados de libertários.

Mesmo quando libertários convencionais reconhecem a existência (e o mal) do corporatismo, como a maioria faz, a comunicação com os libertários de esquerda ainda assim tende a fracassar. Os libertários de esquerda ficam perplexos quando libertários convencionais reconhecem o compadrio num momento só para, no momento seguinte, resvalarem de volta tratando críticas às grandes empresas como críticas ao livre mercado. Libertários mais convencionais, por sua vez, ficam atônitos perguntando-se por que os libertários de esquerda continuam a suscitar a questão do corporatismo quando os libertários convencionais já reconheceram sua existência e o mal que representa.

Kuhn também aqui é de valia:

Desde a antiguidade remota a maioria das pessoas já viu um ou outro corpo pesado balançando-se na ponta de cordel ou cadeia até finalmente atingir estado de repouso. Para os aristotélicos, que acreditavam que um corpo pesado é movido por sua própria natureza de uma posição mais alta para um estado de repouso natural em posição mais baixa, o corpo balouçante estava simplesmente caindo com dificuldade. Restringido pela cadeia, só conseguia obter repouso em seu ponto mais baixo depois de tortuoso movimento e tempo considerável. Galileu, por outro lado, olhando o corpo balouçante, via um pêndulo, um corpo que quase conseguia repetir o mesmo movimento outra e outra vez ad infinitum. … [Q]uando Aristóteles e Galileu olhavam para pedras balouçantes, o primeiro via queda restringida, o segundo via um pêndulo …. (Ibid., pp. 118-121)

Aristóteles e Galileu observaram os mesmos dois fatos: a pedra continua a balançar de um lado para outro por algum tempo e, depois, finalmente, pende diretamente embaixo. Para Galileu, porém, o balanço era essencial e a cessação final era acidental, fenômeno de “fricção;” enquanto que, para Aristóteles, o progresso rumo a um estado de repouso era essencial, e as perturbações laterais eram acidentais.

Analogamente, para aqueles que funcionam com uma estrutura conceptual que vê a oposição conservadora ao governo hipertrofiado e a oposição liberal às grandes empresas como essenciais e desvios desses padrões como acidentais, a evidência de que as políticas conservadoras promovem o governo hipertrofiado ou de que as políticas liberais promovem as grandes empresas será descartada como não essencial ou anômala ou como algo desculpável. (Ver, por exemplo, este vídeo no qual partidários de Obama condenam políticas que soam como direitistas quando eles as supõem provenientes deRomney, mas ou as desculpam ou entram em negação quando lhes é dito que as políticas são realmente de Obama.)

Similarmente, para muitos libertários convencionais, livre intercâmbio é o que essencialmente caracteriza a economia existente, enquanto as políticas corporatistas são apenas fricção; e visto simplesmente não haver necessidade de constantes referências à fricção quando se fala acerca do como um mecanismo funciona, tais libertários convencionais não trazem constantemente o corporatismo à tona quando discutem o funcionamento da economia existente. Para os libertários de esquerda, em contraste, o corporatismo é característica muito mais central da economia existente, e deixá-lo de fora distorce radicalmente nosso entendimento. Em tais casos os libertários de esquerda e os libertários mais convencionais argumentam de lados opostos da mudança de Gestalt, onde o que parece essencial para um lado parece acidental para o outro.

Não pretendo, contudo, sugerir que essas disputas sejam racionalmente irresolúveis. Nos experimentos com cartas de baralho, os sujeitos, por fim, conseguiram ver as cartas corretamente após exposição suficientemente longa. E exposição suficiente à evidência apresentada pelos libertários de esquerda pode induzir a adequada mudança da Gestalt, como de fato amiúde faz; os libertários de esquerda, em sua maioria, começaram no passado ou como menos esquerdistas ou menos libertários ou ambos. Contudo, a estrutura conceptual prevalecente, através da qual tantas pessoas (tanto libertárias quanto não) olham para a economia sem ver o que vemos, não é, penso eu, acidente; é parte dos meios pelos quais a parceria governo hipertrofiado/grandes empresas mantém-se.

A pedido dos Libertários Extremados, os comentários serão desligados aqui a fim de poderem ser redirecionados para o artigo original.

Artigo original afixado por Roderick Long em 7 de novembro de 2012.

Traduzido do inglês por Murilo Otávio Rodrigues Paes Leme.

“The cops aren’t protecting us so we have to figure out ways to protect ourselves.”

The BBC article “Apps that protect you from police brutality” highlights three smart phone applications designed to hold government officials accountable, or at least put the fear of public scrutiny and rebuke in their hearts.

1. ACLU-NJ Police Tape
2. Stop and Frisk Watch
3. FlyRights

Public or Private?

Libertarians often assume that a free society will be one in which all (or nearly all) property is private. I have previously expressed my dissent from this consensus, arguing that libertarian principles instead support a substantial role for public property. (“In Defense of Public Space,” Formulations, Vol. III, No. 3 (Spring 1996).) In this article I develop this heretical position further.

Let me specify once again what sort of public property I am defending. To most people, “public property” means “government property,” on the (dubious) theory that governments hold their property in trust for the public, and administer such property with an eye to the public interest. As an anarchist, I do not regard government as a legitimate institution, and so do not advocate government property of any sort. But this is not the only kind of public property. As I wrote in my earlier article:

“Throughout history, legal doctrine has recognized, alongside property owned by the organized public (that is, the public as organized into a state and represented by government officials), an additional category of property owned by the unorganized public. This was property that the public at large was deemed to have a right of access to, but without any presumption that government would be involved in the matter at all.”

It is public property in this sense that I am defending.

I want to stress, however, that in defending public property I do not mean to be criticizing private property. I am a strong proponent of private property. But what I am maintaining is that the very features that make private property valuable are also possessed, in certain contexts, by public property, and so public property can be valuable for the same reasons.

First I shall consider three common libertarian arguments for private property, and I shall try to show that each of these arguments also supports a role for public property. Second, I shall consider several objections I have encountered to my position, and I shall attempt to meet them.

The Natural-Rights Argument for Private Property

The standard libertarian natural-rights argument for private property goes back to John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government, and rests on two basic claims: a normative claim about how we should treat other people, and a descriptive claim about the boundaries of the person.

The normative claim we may call the Respect Principle. This principle says that it is morally wrong to subject other people to one’s own ends without their consent, except as a response to aggression by those others. (There is disagreement as to what deeper moral truths, if any, provide the grounding for this principle, but that question lies beyond my present topic.)

The descriptive claim we may call the Incorporation Principle. This principle says that once I “mix my labor” with an external object—i.e., alter it so as to make it an instrument of my ongoing projects—that object becomes part of me. The case for this principle is that it explains why the matter I’m made of is part of me. After all, I wasn’t born with it; living organisms survive through constant replacement of material. The difference between an apple I eat (whose matter becomes part of my cellular composition) and a wooden branch that I carve into a spear (a detachable extension of my hand) is only one of degree. [1]

When we put the Respect Principle and the Incorporation Principle together, the result is that it is wrong to appropriate the products of other people’s labor; for if your spear is a part of you, then I cannot subject your spear to my ends without thereby subjecting you to my ends. In the words of the 19th-century French libertarians Leon Wolowski and Émile Levasseur:

“The producer has left a fragment of his own person in the thing which has thus become valuable, and may hence be regarded as a prolongation of the faculties of man acting upon external nature. As a free being he belongs to himself; now the cause, that is to say, the productive force, is himself; the effect, that is to say, the wealth produced, is still himself. … Property, made manifest by labor, participates in the rights of the person whose emanation it is; like him, it is inviolable so long as it does not extend so far as to come into collision with another right….” [2]

The Incorporation Principle transforms the Respect Principle from a simple right to personal security into a general right to private property.

How Natural Rights Support Public Property Too

But this Lockean argument for private property rights can be adapted to support public property rights as well. Lockeans hold that individuals have a property right to the products of their labor (so long as they trespass on no one else’s rights in producing them); they also typically hold that individuals have a property right to any goods that they receive by voluntary transfer from their legitimate owners (since to deny such a right would be to interfere with the right of the givers to dispose of their property as they choose). But the public at large can acquire property rights in both these ways. To quote once more from “In Defense of Public Space“:

“Consider a village near a lake. It is common for the villagers to walk down to the lake to go fishing. In the early days of the community it’s hard to get to the lake because of all the bushes and fallen branches in the way. But over time, the way is cleared and a path forms—not through any centrally coordinated effort, but simply as a result of all the individuals walking that way day after day.

The cleared path is the product of labor—not any individual’s labor, but of all of them together. If one villager decided to take advantage of the now-created path by setting up a gate and charging tolls, he would be violating the collective property right that the villagers together have earned.

Public property can also be the product of gift. In 19th-century England, it was common for roads to be built privately and then donated to the public for free use. This was done not out of altruism but because the roadbuilders owned land and businesses alongside the site of the new road, and they knew that having a road there would increase the value of their land and attract more customers to their businesses.”

Since collectives, like individuals, can mix their labor with unowned resources to make those resources more useful to their purposes, collectives, too can claim property rights by homestead. And since collectives, like individuals, can be the beneficiaries of free voluntary transfer, collectives too can claim property rights by bequest.

I should note one important difference between the homesteading case and the bequest case. In the homesteading case, it is presumably not the human race at large, but only the inhabitants of the village, that acquire a collective property right in the cleared path; since it would be difficult for humankind as a whole, or even a substantial portion thereof, to mix its labor with a single resource, and so the homesteading argument places an upper limit on the size of property-owning collectives. But there seems to be no analogous limit to the size of the collective to which one can freely give one’s property, so here the recipient might well be the human race as a whole.

I have argued that the Lockean argument does not specify private property as the only justifiable option, but makes a place for public property as well. It should also be noted that in at least one case, the Lockean argument positively forbids private property: namely, the case of intellectual property.

This fact is not always recognized by Lockeans. But consider: suppose Proprius, a defender of protectionist legislation, were to invoke Lockean principles, saying, “Well, surely private property is a good thing, right? So the market for widgets should be my private property; no one else should be allowed to enter that market without my permission. I demand a government-granted monopoly in widget production.” No Lockean would take this argument seriously, for a market consists in the freely chosen interactions of individuals—so Proprius cannot own a market without owning people, and ownership of other people is forbidden by the Respect Principle.

Suppose, however, that Proprius, our would-be monopolist, is also the inventor of the widget. Is his plea for exclusive control of the widget market now justified? Many Lockeans would think so, because we have a right to control the products of our labor, and if the product of Proprius’ labor is the idea of the widget, then no one should be able to use or implement that idea without Proprius’ permission.

But the Lockean view is not that we come to own whatever we mix our labor with; rather, we come to own whatever previously unowned item we mix our labor with. My plowing a field does not make it mine, if the field was yours to begin with. Likewise, the fact that my labor is the causal origin of the widget-idea in your mind may mean that in some sense I have mixed my labor with your mind; but it was your mind to begin with, so you, not I, am the legitimate owner of any improvements I make in it. (For a fuller discussion, see my “The Libertarian Case Against Intellectual Property Rights,” Formulations, Vol. III, No. 1 (Autumn 1995).)

The Autonomy Argument for Private Property

A somewhat different libertarian argument for private property focuses on the human need for autonomy: the ability to control one’s own life without interference from others. Without private property, I have no place to stand that I can call my own; I have no protected sphere within which I can make decisions unhampered by the will of others. If autonomy (in this sense) is valuable, then we need private property for its realization and protection.

How Autonomy Supports Public Property Too

It is true that private property provides a protected sphere of free decision-making—for the property’s owners. But what is the position of those who are not property owners (specifically, those who do not own land)? A system of exclusively private property certainly does not guarantee them a “place to stand.” If I am evicted from private plot A, where can I go, except adjoining private plot B, if there is no public highway or parkland connecting the various private spaces? If everywhere I can stand is a place where I have no right to stand without permission, then, it seems, I exist only by the sufferance of the “Lords of the Earth” (in Herbert Spencer’s memorable phrase).

Far from providing a sphere of independence, a society in which all property is private thus renders the propertyless completely dependent on those who own property. This strikes me as a dangerous situation, given the human propensity to abuse power when power is available. [3]

It may be argued in response that a libertarian society will be so economically prosperous that those who own no land will easily acquire sufficient resources either to purchase land or to guarantee favorable treatment from existing land owners. This is true enough in the long run, if the society remains a genuinely libertarian one. But in the short run, while the landless are struggling to better their condition, the land owners might be able to exploit them in such a way as to turn the society into something other than a free nation.

The Rivalry Argument for Private Property

For many libertarians, the most important argument for private property is what Garret Hardin has labeled “the tragedy of the commons” (though the basic idea goes back to Aristotle). Most resources are rivalrous—that is to say, the use of the resource by one person diminishes the amount, or the value, of that resource for others. If a rivalrous resource is also public property, meaning that no member of the public may be excluded from its use, there will be no incentive to conserve or improve the resource (why bother to sow what others may freely reap?); on the contrary, the resource will be overused and swiftly exhausted, since the inability to exclude other users makes it risky to defer consumption (why bother to save what others may freely spend?). Hence private property is needed in order to prevent depletion of resources.

How Rivalry Supports Public Property Too

The rivalry argument is quite correct as far as it goes. But how far is that?

First, let’s notice that the argument only applies to goods that are in fact rivalrous. So once again it doesn’t apply to intellectual property; my use of the idea of the widget doesn’t make less available for others. Nor does it make others’ widgets less valuable; on the contrary, the more widgets there are, the more uses for widgets are likely to be discovered or developed, and so the value of each widget increases. Ideas are public property, in that no one may be legitimately excluded from their use.

Another example of a largely nonrivalrous good is the Internet. I say largely nonrivalrous, because the Internet does have a physical basis, which, though constantly expanding, is finite at any given time, and an increase in users can cause delays for everyone. But this rivalrous aspect is offset by the reverse effect: the value of the Internet to any one user increases as the volume of available information, potential correspondents, etc., increases; so additional users on balance increase the value of the good as a whole.

It might be argued that this the-more-the-merrier effect occurs only with goods that are wholly or largely nonphysical, but could never apply to more concrete resources like land. As Carol Rose and David Schmidtz have shown, [4] however, although any physical resource is finite and so inevitably has some tragedy-of-the-commons aspects, many resources have “comedy-of-the-commons” aspects as well, and in some cases the latter may outweigh the former, thus making public property more efficient than private property.

For instance (to adapt one of Carol Rose’s examples), suppose that a public fair is a comedy-of-the-commons good; the more people who participate, the better (within certain limits, at any rate). Imagine two such fairs, one held on private property and the other on public. The private owner has an incentive to exclude all participants who do not pay him a certain fee; thus the fair is deprived of all the participants who cannot afford the fee. (I am assuming that the purpose of the fair is primarily social rather than commercial, so that impecunious participants would bring as much value to the fair as wealthy ones.) The fair held on public property will thus be more successful than the one held on private property.

Yet, it may be objected, so long as a comedy-of-the-commons good still has some rivalrous, tragedy-of-the-commons aspects, it will be depleted, and thus the comedy-of-the-commons benefits will be lost anyway. But this assumes that privatization is the only way to prevent overuse. In fact, however, most societies throughout history have had common areas whose users were successfully restrained by social mores, peer pressure, and the like.

Objection One: The Coherence of Public Property

One common libertarian objection to public property—and particularly, public ownership of land—is that the whole idea makes no sense: a resource cannot be collectively owned unless every part of the resource admits of simultaneous use by all members of the collective. This objection has been forcefully stated by Isabel Paterson:

“Two bodies cannot occupy the same place at the same time. … Ten men may be legally equal owners of one field, but none of them can get any good of it unless its occupancy and use is allotted among them by measures of time and space. … If all ten wished to do exactly the same thing at the same time in the same spot, it would be physically impossible …. [G]roup ownership necessarily resolves into management by one person ….” [5]

Paterson does, however, offer the following qualification to her claim that public property is inherently impossible:

“[I]t is practicable—whether or not it is necessary or advisable—to make roads public property, because the use of a road is to traverse it. Though the user does in fact occupy a given space at a given moment, the duration is negligible, so that there is no need to take time and space into account except by negation, a prohibition: the passenger is not allowed to remain as of right indefinitely on any one spot in the road. The same rule applies to parks and public buildings. The arrangement is sufficiently practicable in those conditions to admit the fiction of ‘public ownership.’ To be sure, even in the use of a road, if too many members of the public try to move along it at once, the rule reverts to first come, first served (allotment in time and space), or the authorities may close the road. The public has not the essential property right of continuous and final occupancy. … Public property then admits of use by the public only in transit, not for production, exchange, consumption, or for security as standing ground.” [6]

Note that here Paterson actually points out three ways in which public property can be feasible. First, it may be the case that not enough people are competing for use of the same portion of the property to cause a conflict. Paterson assumes this will only happen in cases where any one user’s occupancy of a given area is of minimal duration; but clearly the same result could be achieved when the total volume of users is low enough, and the resource itself is homogeneous enough, that a lengthier occupancy of any particular portion of the resource is no inconvenience to anyone else.

Second and third, in cases where use is becoming rivalrous, Paterson offers two different possible solutions. One solution is to require frequent turnover, so that no one member of the public is allowed to monopolize any portion of the resource for longer than a certain time period; the other solution is to adopt “first come, first served,” meaning that those who currently occupy portions of the property may stay there and exclude newcomers. Paterson thinks that both of these options take away from the genuinely “public” nature of the property. But do they?

According to Paterson, the turnover requirement takes away from the publicness of the property because the public then lacks “the essential property right of continuous and final occupancy.” But is this true? If no individual member of the public has “the essential property right of continuous and final occupancy,” it hardly follows that the public as such lacks this right; in fact, the turnover requirement is precisely a means of implementing that right.

What about the first-come-first-served rule? Paterson may think that this ends the publicness of the property because it gives individuals the right to exclude others from the particular portions they have claimed. But this falls short of a full private property right. If I have private ownership of a portion of land, then that land remains mine, off limits to others, even when I am away from the land. But if I leave the particular area of a public park that I’ve been squatting in, I lose all rights to it; in that respect, what I have a “right” to is more like a place in line than it is like freehold property.

Which is preferable, the turnover rule or the first-come-first-served rule? Presumably it depends on the function of the resource in question. In the case of a road, it is in the interest of the owners—the public—that the turnover rule be applied, because a road loses its usefulness if it cannot be traversed. However, the autonomy argument suggests that not all public property should be subject to the turnover rule, so in some cases the first-come-first-served rule is appropriate.

Suppose a conflict arises between two users of the property, one who thinks it should be governed by the turnover rule, and another who thinks it should be governed by the first-come-first-served rule. What happens?

Well, ideally the decision should be made by the owner: the public. But only a unanimous decision could count as the will of the public, and unanimous decisions are hard to come by. (Putting the matter to a vote would reveal only the will of a majority faction of the public.) In that case, the public is in the same situation as an infant, a lunatic, a missing person, or a person in a coma: the public has the right to decide the matter, but is currently incapable of making a coherent decision, and so the decision must be made for them by a court which attempts (presumably in response to a class-action suit) to determine what is in the best interest of the rights-holder.

Objection Two: Policing Public Property

As Rich Hammer is fond of pointing out, shopping malls are generally safer than city streets. As Rich notes, this is so for two reasons. First, the owners of the malls have a financial incentive to police their premises so as to avoid losing customers, while government police face much weaker incentives. Second, mall owners can set higher standards for what is permissible behavior on their premises, and can exclude undesirable persons more or less at will, while the police have less power to kick people off the city streets. Does this mean that public property in a libertarian society will be under-policed?

Not necessarily. Consider the incentive issue first. Since the property is public, everyone has an equal right to police it. But some will have stronger motives for policing than others. Consider the case mentioned earlier, of the road built for and donated to the public by those who owned property alongside the road and hoped the road’s proximity would raise their property values and bring increased traffic to their businesses. The same incentives that led the owners to build this road would also lead them to police it, since property values will be higher and customers will be more plentiful if the road is safe.

Moreover, the unsafeness of city streets results not only from the fact that they are public but from the fact that the police enjoy a monopoly on protection services. A competitive market in security would probably find some way to offer its customers protection while on public property. For example, public parks might be patrolled by a consortium of insurance companies, if a substantial number of their customers enjoy visiting public parks.

As for the higher-standards issue, it is true that users of public property face a somewhat greater risk from their fellow users than users of private property do. A private mall (particularly in a libertarian society where the right to control access to one’s private property is legally protected) can exclude users who simply appear to pose a threat to other users, even if they have committed no overt act (or can admit them only if they post a bond, disarm themselves, show proof of insurance or a letter from their pastor, etc.). Public property, by contrast, must be open to anyone whose conduct so far is peaceful. By the same token, however, public property allows more freedom. That is why the best option is a society that makes room for both public and private property. Those who place a high value on security, and are willing to put up with some burdensome restrictions in order to get it (call them the Little Old Ladies), will be free to patronize private property, while those who seek self-expression, are averse to restrictions, and are willing to put up with more risk from others (call them the Gun-Toting Pot-Smoking Nudist Bikers), will likewise be free to patronize public property.

Objection Three: Liability and Public Property

In a free society, people are liable for harm that they cause. Now suppose I own the road that runs past your house, and I decide to donate that road to the general public. Now it is no longer possible to exclude undesirables from the road. There used to be guards at the toll gate who checked drivers’ IDs, but now they are gone, and one day some loony who in the old days would have been excluded takes the public road to your house and massacres your family. Since the loss to your security was caused by my decision, it has been suggested to me (by Rich Hammer) that I should be legally liable for the result. And if this is so, then public property would not be tolerated in a free nation, because the liability costs would simply be too high.

But surely a libertarian legal system will not hold people liable for every harm to which they merely made a causal contribution. The current statist trend of holding gun manufacturers liable for the use of guns by criminals, and so forth, flies in the face of the libertarian principle of personal responsibility. An owner is not obligated to check out the background of everyone he gives or sells property to.

Objection Four: Reversion of Public Property

Once property becomes public, how can it ever become private again? In a free-market economy, property tends to be assigned to its highest-valued use, because those who value the property more will purchase it from those who value it less. But if I value Central Park more than the public at large does, how do I go about purchasing it from the public? The dispersed, disorganized, and divided public lacks the ability to consent to the sale.

This is a difficult problem, to which I do not have a full solution. But let me try out a few possibilities.

There are two ways I can lose my claim to property. I can give or sell it, or I can abandon it. The public is not in a position to give or sell its property, [7] but perhaps it is capable of abandoning it.

What counts as the public’s having abandoned a piece of property? Well, the easiest case would be if no one has used it for a very long time. (How long? Well, the length of time should presumably be the same as whatever is accepted in the case of abandoning private property.) But what if only a few people have used it? Does that count as the public’s using it (given that the property has never been used by the entire public)?

Or suppose I privatize some portion of the property, claiming it for my own use, fencing it in and so forth. Perhaps it then counts as mine so long as no one protests. (How widely do I have to advertise the fact that I’ve done this?) But again, what if just a few people protest—does that count?

Ultimately these problems will have to be resolved by a libertarian legal system, through evolving common-law precedents. That’s fine with me. What I would want to insist on, though, is that some role for public property is important for a libertarian society. An all-private system can be oppressive, just as an all-public one can be; but a system that allows networks of private spaces and public spaces to compete against each other offers the greatest scope for individual freedom.

Notes:

[1] For a fuller defense of this claim, see Samuel C. Wheeler III, “Natural Property Rights as Body Rights,” in Tibor R. Machan, ed., The Main Debate:  Communism versus Capitalism (New York:  Random House, 1987), pp. 272–289.

[2] Cited in Murray N. Rothbard, For A New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto, Revised Edition (San Francisco:  Fox & Wilkes, 1994), pp. 36–37.

[3] This is a reason for my reservations about the proprietary-community model for a free nation, in which all land in the nation is held by a central agency and leased to its inhabitants.  See my “The Return of Leviathan:  Can We Prevent It?,” Formulations, Vol. III, No. 3 (Spring 1996).

[4] Carol Rose, “The Comedy of the Commons:  Custom, Commerce, and Inherently Public Property,” University of Chicago Law Review, Vol. 53, No. 3 (Summer 1986), pp. 711–781; David Schmidtz, “The Institution of Property,” Social Philosophy & Policy, Vol. 11 (1994), pp. 42–62.

[5] Isabel Paterson, The God of the Machine (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1993), pp. 180–181.

[6] Paterson, pp. 181–182.

[7] At least I don’t think so.  Someone could argue that the court could act on behalf of the people’s interests, authorizing the transfer of ownership from the collective to me, in exchange for the “price” of my doing something judged to be of general benefit to the public.  But I am wary of heading too far down that path.  For one thing, if the court acquires too much power to administer the property of the “disorganized public,” we start to move back toward the “organized public” model of government property, and the whole idea of free access is replaced by access-in-the-interests-of-the-public-as-determined-by-some-official.  For another, the value of public property is severely undermined if it can be unpredictably privatized on some judge’s say-so.

The following article is translated into Spanish from the English Original, written by Kevin Carson.

Gracias a un amigo de Twitter, acabo de encontrarme con unos comentarios del año 2005 de Lee Scott, CEO de Walmart, pidiéndole al congreso que aprobara un aumento del sueldo mínimo:

“El sueldo mínimo de 5,15 dólares en los Estados Unidos no ha subido en casi una década y creemos que está fuera de sintonía con los tiempos que vivimos. En Wal-Mart podemos ver directamente como muchos de nuestros clientes tienen dificultades para llegar a fin de mes. Nuestros clientes simplemente no tienen el dinero para comprar artículos de primera necesidad”.

A primera vista estos comentarios parecen sumamente extraños, pues la fuente es el máximo ejecutivo de una empresa que, tal como usted sabrá si ha seguido las noticias durante el Viernes Negro, se caracteriza por mantener los sueldos de sus trabajadores tan bajos como sea humanamente posible.

Pero si lo piensa bien, en realidad no existe contradicción alguna. Existe un fundamental dilema del priosionero en el corazón mismo del capitalismo. A las grandes corporaciones les interesa garantizar colectivamente un nivel suficientemente alto de poder adquisitivo que permita que los camiones se sigan moviendo y que los inventarios sigan rotando.

Dicho de otra manera, el interés de un empleador individual es pagar solo lo necesario para mantener a los empleados en un nivel de subsistencia mientras trabajan, sin excedente suficiente para cubrir perídos de enfermedad o desempleo. Pero el interés colectivo de todos los empleadores es que se pague lo suficiente a los trabajadores para cubrir el costo de reproducción de la fuerza de trabajo.

El propósito fundamental del estado capitalista es resolver estos dilemas del prisionero. Cuando el estado impone un sueldo mínimo suficienemente alto para facilitar la reproducción de la fuerza de trabajo (aunque este no sea el objetivo explícito fuera del modelo socialdemócrata europeo), los costos recaen igualitariamente sobre todos los empleadores de una industria determinada. Y al contrario del caso de un cártel privado y voluntario, ningún empleador puede violar el acuerdo con sus competidores para obtener una ventaja cortoplacista. De esta manera, el financiamento del costo de reproducción de la fuerza de trabajo deja de ser un motivo de competencia de costos entre empleadores; se conveirte en un costo colectivo de la industria entera que puede ser pasado completamente a los consumidores como un recargo vía precios administrados.

Marx tuvo mucho que decir sobre este fenómeno, ilustrado por el Acta de las Diez Horas de Trabajo en Gran Bretaña (El Capital, vol. 1, cap. 10).

“Estas actas limitan la pasión del capital por un drenaje ilimitado de la fuerza de trabajo, limitando forzosamente la duración del día de trabajo a travez de regulaciones estatales, hechas por un estado regido por capitalista y latifundista. … La limitación impuesta sobre la mano de obra de las fábricas se debió a la misma necesidad que exparció el guano sobre los campos ingleses. El mismo entusiasmo ciego por el saqueo que en un caso drenó los suelos, en el otro arrancó de raíz la fuerza vital de la nación”.

Marx argumentaba que este interés común en prevenir “el drenaje de los suelos” era lo que explicaba el apoyo que muchos capitalistas (como por ejemplo el empleador Josiah Wedgwood) dieron al Acta de las Diez Horas.

El estado funciona de manera polifacética como el comité ejecutivo de la clase económica regente, llevando a cabo muchas funciones que a sus miembros no les interesa llevar a cabo individualmente.

Los salarios mínimos, la negociación colectiva y los esquemas de cobertura médica universal pueden ser percibidas individualmente por los capitalistas como restricciones o imposiciones. Pero en general son apoyadas por los capitalistas más iluminados, especialmente por aquellos en las industrias que más se benefician de estas medidas. Considérese, por ejemplo, el rol de Gerard Swope, CEO de General Electric, en la coalición empresarial que respaldó al New Deal.

El salario mínimo aumenta el poder adquisitivo agregado de la clase trabajadora, y ayuda a los empleadores a asegurarse una fuente confiable de fuerza de trabajo de manera sostenible. El estado del bienestar impide que el desempleo, el hambre y la damnificación lleguen a niveles políticamente desestabilizadores que derrumbarían al capitalismo desde abajo. La cobertura médica universal bajo el modelo británico o el canadiense externaliza los costos laborales que de otro modo serían sufragados por los empleadores (como se hace en países como Estados Unidos), que proveen seguro de salud como beneficio a sus empleados.

Cada vez que usted oiga retórica de ama de casa acerca de “nuestras familias trabajadoras”, o declaraciones auto-congratulatorias como “a los demócratas le importa”, trate de ir más allá de lo que dice la voz y échele un vistazo a lo que hacen las manos. En un mercado liberado (sin el estado para velar por los intereses de los capitalistas) el capitalismo corporativo se marchitaría como un caracol de jardín al que se le echa sal en la espalda. El estado trabaja para los capitalistas. No trabaja para usted.

Artículo oroginal publicado por Kevin Carson, el 26 de noviembre 2012.

Traducido del inglés por Carlos Clemente.

My latest blog post here at C4SS dealt with violence against women. One commenter seemed puzzled. He argued that in some significant areas men face greater amounts of state violence than women, and then asked “Why the focus on women? If you’re not an evil sexist pig, you’re just against violence, no matter the victim.”

Many, perhaps most, victims of state violence are men, and that state violence is worth opposing. Why is raising the issue of state violence against women relevant, in that case?

Violence against women has a particular oppressive role in our society. First, let’s address the violence that is committed in a decentralized manner by non-state actors. In America, violence against women in the domestic sphere has largely been made invisible, been ignored by the state’s justice system, and has in some cases even been explicitly aided and abetted by the state. Meanwhile, decentralized violence against women in more public spaces has served to keep women as a group in a state of fear and to consequently limit their freedom of movement and their sexual autonomy. Ask a group of women and men what they do to protect themselves when they walk at night, and the vastly different responses along gender lines will show the type of gender biased fear of violence that exists in this society.

Furthermore, both in the past and in some other societies today, violence against women has been institutionalized to keep women in a state of subordination. This can be seen with things like witch hunts, violence against feminist protesters, and bans on adultery. This is overt state violence against women, and it is crucial to understanding both sexism and state violence.

However, because cultural norms surrounding violence against women primarily address violence in public spaces by strangers, and Western feminists have focused the bulk of our consciousness raising efforts on violence in the private sphere, state violence against women is largely invisible in our society. While it may be less prevalent than state violence against men (And considering under-reporting I don’t think we can know that it is), state violence against women remains a serious problem that ought to be addressed.

There are myriad examples of state violence against women. In the immigration detention system, women are sexually assaulted and guards use their power over detainees to cover it up. Sex workers and suspected sex workers, mostly women, face harassment, threats, and sexual violence from police officers. Often, their possession of condoms is treated as a sufficient basis for harassing and caging them, as a recent report from Human Rights Watch revealed. Sexual assaults by police officers have been documented in a variety of detailed reports, including Driving While Female. This piece from INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence documents and analyzes some particularly appalling cases of sexual violence by police officers. Women in prison often face sexual violence, with this violence made invisible by calling it a “strip search” rather than what it is: sexual assault. This is why Angela Davis argues that strip searches constitute the “routinization of sexual assault.”

I could continue to list off and document examples, but I don’t think I need to. The reality is that state violence against women happens and that gender and sex play a role in the structure of that violence. Pointing this out does not make you a “sexist pig.” But being outraged when people attempt to fight it does.

Recently the progressive blogosphere was abuzz with approving links to billionaire investor Warren Buffett’s latest New York Times op-ed, “Stop Coddling the Super Rich.”  In this piece, Buffett concisely exposes the various loopholes that allow the wealthiest Americans to pay far fewer taxes than their middle class, working class, and poor counterparts. While the tax code in all its complexity certainly privileges the wealthy at the expense of most Americans, this barely scratches the surface of the ways the state oppresses poor and working people to line the pockets of the opulent.  Buffett’s article never mentions direct corporate welfare or the numerous privileges that the wealthy hold thanks to intellectual property, the land monopoly, regulatory barriers to entry, suppression of labor movements, and imperialism, to name a few.  To illustrate the extent to which government intervention privileges the super rich at the expense of everyone else, I will examine Warren Buffett’s stock portfolio and expose how his wealth stems from violence, coercion, imperialism, and statism.

Coca Cola, Human Rights, and Labor Suppression

According to http://warren-buffett-portfolio.com/, the #1 corporation in Warren Buffet’s stock portfolio is Coca Cola.  Coca Cola has an abysmal human rights record, most noteworthy thanks to its colorful history of repressing labor organizing.  According to an article by Jeremy Rayner for the John F. Henning Center for International Labor Relations:

There is mounting evidence that American companies are complicit in the persecution of trade unionists at their Colombian operations. In the case of the Coca-Cola bottling plant in Carepa, where Isídro Segundo Gil was murdered, the union Sinaltrainal argues that Coca-Cola knowingly stood by and allowed the plant’s manager to bring in paramilitaries to destroy the union. The workers at the Carepa plant had been asking both Coca-Cola and its bottler, Bebidas y Alimentos, to intervene on their behalf for two months before Isídro Segundo Gil’s murder. The plant manager, Ariosto Milan Mosquera had announced publicly that he had asked the paramilitaries to destroy the union. His declaration had been followed by a series of death threats from the paramilitaries, which had prompted the union to send letters to both Coca-Cola and Bebidas y Alimentos asking that they intervene to secure their workers’ safety. And this was not the first time that threats against workers had been carried out. Just two years before, in 1994, the paramilitaries had killed two trade unionists at the same plant. It should have surprised no one when two and a half months after the union’s plea for help, Isídro Segundo Gil was murdered and the union busted.

Unionists have also been assassinated at other Coca-Cola bottling plants in Colombia, both before and after the incident at Carepa. One unionist, José Avelino Chicano, was killed at a Coca-Cola plant in Pasto in 1989. In 2002, despite the limited publicity surrounding the events at Carepa, a union leader named Oscar Dario Soto Polo was killed during the course of contract negotiations at the plant in Bucaramanga. Despite the remarkable courage and perseverance of Colombia’s labor activists, the campaign of intimidation has necessarily taken its toll on worker organizing. The president of Sinaltrainal, Javier Correa, reported last year that the number of unionized workers at Coca-Cola plants had dropped by more than two thirds since 1993-from 1,300 workers to only 450.

Such campaigns of violent intimidation have been aided and abetted by US tax dollars.  Many of those involved with these anti-union campaigns of violence were graduates of the Defense Department’s infamous School of the Americas.  The right wing paramilitaries which regularly slaughter labor organizers are closely connected to the Colombian military, which receives huge amounts of aid from the US government so as to fight the drug war as well as a dirty war against the anti-capitalist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Thus, even if Warren Buffett were to pay more in taxes, at least some of that money would go to violence against labor organizers.

In addition to brutality in Colombia, Coca Cola has been implicated in violence and intimidation against unionists in Guatemala. These and other Coca Cola human rights violations are profiled in detail at http://killercoke.org/.

Note that, contrary to Buffett’s progressive image, he profits immensely off of Coca Cola’s human rights violations.  If Buffett really wants to “get serious about shared sacrifice,” he should sacrifice the profits he has gained through the corrupt tactics of Coca Cola and use some of his immense wealth to help the Coca Cola workers suffering throughout the globe thanks to those tactics.  He should also repudiate the US government’s military aid and imperialist intervention in countries like Colombia.

Wells Fargo and the Prison Industrial Complex

The number two corporation in Warren Buffet’s stock portfolio is Wells Fargo.   Wells Fargo is a major beneficiary of corporate welfare.  For instance, they received $43.7 billion in federal taxpayer bailout money. But far more destructive is Wells Fargo’s investment in prison profiteers.  Wells Fargo owns 4 million shares in the Geo Group, the second largest private prison corporation in America, and 50,000 shares in the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the largest private prison corporation in the country.  These shares combined are valued at more than $120 million (Source: http://www.cjjc.org/en/news/50-immigrant-rights/215-wells-fargo-divest-from-prisons).

Companies such as the Geo Group and CCA do not earn their money by providing goods or services to customers.  Rather, they make their money solely from the government, and solely for locking human beings in cages, mostly for non-violent offenses.  Further, these companies actively lobby for unjust laws, largely using the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a corporatist conservative political group.  As Bob Sloan and Mike Elk wrote in a recent article for The Nation:

ALEC helped pioneer some of the toughest sentencing laws on the books today, like mandatory minimums for non-violent drug offenders, “three strikes” laws, and “truth in sentencing” laws. In 1995 alone, ALEC’s Truth in Sentencing Act was signed into law in twenty-five states. (Then State Rep. Scott Walker was an ALEC member when he sponsored Wisconsin’s truth-in-sentencing laws and, according to PR Watch, used its statistics to make the case for the law.) More recently, ALEC has proposed innovative “solutions” to the overcrowding it helped create, such as privatizing the parole process through “the proven success of the private bail bond industry,” as it recommended in 2007. (The American Bail Coalition is an executive member of ALEC’s Public Safety and Elections Task Force.) ALEC has also worked to pass state laws to create private for-profit prisons, a boon to two of its major corporate sponsors: Corrections Corporation of America and Geo Group (formerly Wackenhut Corrections), the largest private prison firms in the country. An In These Timesinvestigation last summer revealed that ALEC arranged secret meetings between Arizona’s state legislators and CCA to draft what became SB 1070, Arizona’s notorious immigration law, to keep CCA prisons flush with immigrant detainees. ALEC has proven expertly capable of devising endless ways to help private corporations benefit from the country’s massive prison population.

These laws increase the number of peaceful people locked in cages, as well as the lengths of their sentences.  Those they lock up are almost without exception members of the working class, and they are disproportionately people of color.  Meanwhile, Geo Group and CCA gather obscene profits from these racist and classist laws.   Wells Fargo then profits by investing in these firms, and Warren Buffett profits by investing heavily in Wells Fargo.  If Warren Buffett were to pay more in taxes, at least some of those taxes would go to the prison industrial complex and then head straight back to Warren Buffett’s unfathomably large bank account.

Warren Buffett the War Profiteer

Never does the government “coddle the super rich” more than in times of war.  In war, poor and working people are sent to fight and die in a foreign land.   They are sent to kill the populations of poor countries, and those killed disproportionately represent the country’s working class.  Meanwhile, corporate executives and investors profit heavily by selling the weapons, vehicles, and other devices used to murder poor people in a distant land.   It should not surprise you to learn that Warren Buffett is among the investors profiting off of the American military industrial complex.

According to http://warren-buffett-portfolio.com/, Buffett owns 7.8 million shares of General Electric stock.   GE produces a wide variety of products, and their war profiteering portfolio is no less diverse.  General Electric has sold the US military aircraft, missiles, bombs, and battlefield computer systems, to name a few.  Further, GE has been charged multiple times with defrauding the US government in relation to their defense contracts.

Warren Buffett also owns 34.2 million shares in ConocoPhilips and 0.4 million shares in Exxon Mobil, both of which are oil companies which have profited from the invasion of Iraq.  Earlier this year Buffett seriously considered investing in General Dynamics, a company which earns all of its revenue through military contracts.

An increase in Warren Buffett’s tax burden would not change this dynamic in the slightest.  Indeed, the bulk of tax dollars go to so called “defense spending,” which amounts to nothing more than blood stained subsidies to these and other military industrial complex corporations.

Monsanto and the Patent Monopoly

CNN Money reported in 2010 that Warren Buffett owned stock in Monsanto.  Monsanto is a controversial agribusiness and biotechnology firm, best known for developing genetically modified organism (GMO) crops. For this reason, they have been strongly opposed by many environmental groups.  The impact of GMO crops is a topic for scientific debate which I will not discuss here.  However, it is incredibly noteworthy that Monsanto has enlisted patent law to crush small producers, in a dramatic illustration of the “patent monopoly” long written about by individualist anarchists such as Benjamin Tucker.

Monsanto’s genetically modified seeds are all patented, granting the company monopoly privileges and the ability to use state violence to harass any farmers who save seeds, or even those whose fields are cross pollinated by Monsanto’s GMO crops.  Monsanto has filed over 100 patent lawsuits against farmers.  One, Kem Ralph, has had to pay $3 million dollars and serve prison time, simply for saving seeds, a common agricultural practice.   Such aggressive tactics from Monsanto have prompted a group of farmers represented by the Public Patent Foundation to fight back:

On behalf of 22 agricultural organisations, 12 seed businesses and 26 farms and farmers, the Public Patent Foundation (PUBPAT) is suing the biotech company in the federal district court in Manhattan and assigned to Judge Naomi Buchwald.

The organic plaintiffs had to pre-emptively protect themselves from potential patent infringement in case of accidental contamination of their crops by genetically modified organisms (GMOs), said PUBPAT.

“This case asks whether Monsanto has the right to sue organic farmers for patent infringement if Monsanto’s transgenic seed should land on their property,” said Dan Ravicher, PUBPAT’s executive director and a law professor at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York. PUBPAT is a non-profit legal services organisation based at Cardozo law school. Its stated mission is “to protect freedom in the patent system.”

“It seems quite perverse that an organic farmer contaminated by transgenic seed could be accused of patent infringement, but Monsanto has made such accusations before and is notorious for having sued hundreds of farmers for patent infringement, so we had to act to protect the interests of our clients,” he said in a press release.

It is disturbing that such a lawsuit is necessary. It is disturbing that a corporation can use the state to exercise this sort of control and intimidation against small farmers. It is perhaps more disturbing that a billionaire who invests in and profits from these coercive business practices is being held up as a progressive icon.

Time to Fight Back in the Class War

Warren Buffett famously said “There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”  Buffett was talking about the tax code, but that barely scratches the surface of the violent and rapacious class warfare the super-rich are waging against ordinary people.   It becomes a bit difficult to make tax law your top priority when you realize that labor leaders are being murdered, unnecessary wars are being fought, peaceful people are put in prison, and farmers are coerced into bankruptcy, all for the sake of corporate profits.  Changes to the tax code will never fix that.  So what will?

Every problem I have identified here stems from the same source: Unaccountable centralized power.   When a centralized state is granted the power to wage war, its killings are presumed to be “policy” rather than crimes, and corporations can influence state policy, wars for profit are the inevitable result.   When a centralized state is given the power to lock up peaceful people in cages, it will.  When businesses are owned and controlled by a few wealthy investors and CEO’s rather than through workers’ self management, the workers will see their material conditions suffer and their free association under vicious assault.  People should have control over their own lives, rather than seeing their most important decisions made from Washington, DC or some corporate board rooms.  It’s time to build a real resistance to coercive power and authority.  It’s time to resist wars and prisons, to stand up for workers, to build networks of mutual aid, to create grassroots alternatives to government programs and capitalist corporations.  It’s time to build a new society in the shell of the old.

This is a message you won’t receive from Warren Buffett.  Surface changes to the tax code would give him a slightly more stable society with a happier population.  But he would still be able to profit from rapacious violence and coercion against poor and working people.  A real revolution, a society in which people organize from the bottom up and reject institutional violence, would be disastrous for Warren Buffett.  Because in a free society, billionaires like Buffett might have to learn to work for a living.

Translations for this article:

• Spanish, No Grave a los Ricos, Rompa su Privilegio: Una Respuesta a Warren Buffett.

The following article is translated into Russian from the English Original, written by Kevin Carson.

По данным недавнего опроса на сайте ZeroHedge.com, американцы 18-29 лет в целом негативно реагируют на слово «капитализм» (47/46), в противовес более благоприятной (49/43) реакции на слово «социализм».

Большую часть ответственности за это несут сами капиталисты. Как я уже говорил много раз, если «свободный рынок» — это то, что имеют в виду апологеты капитализма, то я тоже его ненавижу. Молодёжь постоянно слышит словосочетание «свободно-рыночный капитализм», употребляемое так, как если бы оно было одним словом. И наблюдает политиков, корпоративных пресс-секретарей и дикторов СМИ, объясняющих, что такие вещи как патентная инфляция цен на лекарства, стремительный рост заработной платы всяких гендиректоров при нищенских доходах прочего населения, грязное корпоративное благосостояние на основе Keystone XL [Прим. пер.: Keystone XL — проект нефтепровода в США, критикуемый экологами] и стрип-шопы капитализма по модели Bain Capital — всё это части «нашей системы свободного предпринимательства».

Молодёжь от двадцати до тридцати, по-видимому, реагирует на коннотации: «капитализм» — «всех обманывают, чтобы богачи становились ещё богаче», а «социализм» — «к людям относятся по-человечески». Этим коннотациям способствуют обе основные группировки в нашем обществе, с той лишь разницей, что такие люди как Ромни говорят: «А разве это что-то плохое, когда всех обманывают и богатые становятся ещё богаче?»

Однако, маленький грязный секрет демократической стороны заключается в том, что все эти «прогрессисты», защищающие государственное вмешательство, чтобы сделать капитализм менее обременительным для тех, кто под его игом (т.н. «помощь работающим семьям») — по сути просто другое крыло того же самого капиталистического правящего класса. Основная причина их действий, она же основная причина расширения сети социальной безопасности от Франклина Рузвельта и Линдона Джонсона, заключается в стабилизации капитализма — чтобы дать ему возможность извлекать прибыль на более устойчивой основе в долгосрочной перспективе.

Как говорил Маркс в статье «Закон о десятичасовом рабочем дне в Великобритании», основной функцией «прогрессивных» законов капиталистического государства является преодоление «дилеммы заключенного» между отдельными капиталистами и принуждение их к действиям в общих интересах капитала — другими словами, прийти к соглашению насчёт удобрения своих полей так, чтобы отдельные фермеры не лишились земли во имя краткосрочной прибыли.

Давайте представим консерваторов и либералов как фермеров. Фермер-консерватор думает, что добьётся успеха, держа свою скотину на голодном пайке, заставляя её работать до смерти, а потом заменяя её новой. Фермер-либерал думает, что в долгосрочной перспективе получит более высокие показатели, заботясь о своей скотине и не перетруждая её. То что и демократы и республиканцы не говорят нам, что они представляют интересы различных капиталистических групп — лучше всего доказывает, что мы им нужны исключительно в качестве рабочей скотины.

И это даёт громадные возможности либертарным левым для пропаганды идеи свободных рынков как общей для всех платформы против сил корпоративной плутократии.

Эта целевая аудитория последние недели смотрит видео на YouTube, постоянно прерываемые Томасом Петерфи, в приторном ужасе от идеи равенства, как будто она монстр из глубин Манифеста Коммунистической Партии. Эти люди уже готовы узнать правду: нынешний уровень неравенства поддерживается из-за того, что миллиардеры, гендиректора и прочие корпоративные королевы вэлфера — главные бенефициары государственного вмешательства в рынок.

Случилось так, что поколение 18-29-летних заразил мем, гласящий что всё то, что мы имеем сейчас (корпоративная плутократия и т.д.) есть якобы результат «государственного невмешательства в рынок». И поскольку ни у демократов, ни у республиканцев нет никакой заинтересованности в развенчании данного заблуждения, вся молодёжь вполне ожидаемо сочла, что восточноевропейская социал-демократия не так уж плоха на этом фоне. Естественно! Если бы единственной альтернативой «банановой республике», которую хотят Том Дилей и Дик Арми, я знал лишь требования «достойной продолжительности рабочего дня и социальной справедливости» на немецкий манер, то я бы и сам предпочёл социал-демократию.

И поэтому мы должны расказать стольким людям, скольким сможем, что это не единственная альтернатива. Нам нужно изо всех сил продвигать свой собственный мем — который для большинства людей будет откровением — что государство это главный виновник системы корпоративной плутократии, которую мы имеем сейчас. Мы должны рассказать ту правду, которую скрывают и Обама и Ромни — правду, что это государство капиталистов.

Статья впервые опубликована Кевином Карсоном, 14 ноября 2012.

Перевод с английского Tau Demetrious.

Thanks to a Twitter friend, I just stumbled across remarks from 2005 in which Walmart CEO Lee Scott called on Congress to pass a higher minimum wage:

“The U.S. minimum wage of $5.15 an hour has not been raised in nearly a decade and we believe it is out of date with the times. We can see first-hand at Wal-Mart how many of our customers are struggling to get by. Our customers simply don’t have the money to buy basic necessities between pay checks.”

At first glance this seems decidedly odd, coming as it does from the CEO of a company which — as you know if you’ve been following the Black Friday news — is notorious for keeping its workers’ pay as low as humanly possible.

But if you think about it, there’s really no contradiction at all. There’s a fundamental prisoner’s dilemma at the heart of capitalism. It’s in the interest of large corporations collectively to guarantee sufficient purchasing power to keep the trucks moving and the inventories turning over. But it’s in the interest of individual large corporations to keep labor costs as low as possible.

Likewise, it’s in individual employers’ interests to pay only enough to maintain employees in subsistence while they’re actually working, without enough of a surplus to save against periods of sickness or unemployment. But it’s in the collective interest of employers to pay enough to cover the minimum reproduction cost of labor power.

Overcoming such prisoners’ dilemmas is the main purpose of the capitalists’ state. When the state mandates a minimum wage sufficient to facilitate the reproduction of the workforce (of course it doesn’t in practice, outside the European “social democratic” model of capitalism), the cost falls on all employers in a given industry equally. And unlike the case of a private, voluntary cartel, individual employers are unable to defect for the sake of a short-term advantage from double-crossing their competitors. So funding the minimum reproduction cost of labor-power is no longer an issue of cost competition among employers; it’s a collective cost of an entire industry that can be passed on to consumers as a cost-plus markup, via administered pricing.

Marx had a lot to say about this phenomenon, as illustrated by the Ten-Hours Act in Britain (Capital, vol. 1 ch. 10).

“These acts curb the passion of capital for a limitless draining of labour-power, by forcibly limiting the working-day by state regulations, made by a state that is ruled by capitalist-and landlord. … [T]he limiting of factory labour was dictated by the same necessity which spread guano over the English fields. The same blind eagerness for plunder that in the one case exhausted the soil, had, in the other, torn up by the roots the living force of the nation.”

This common interest in preventing “exhaustion of the soil,” Marx argued, explained the counterintuitive support of many capitalists — as exemplified by employer Josiah Wedgwood — for the Ten-Hours Bill.

The state, in many ways, functions as an executive committee of the economic ruling class, carrying out for them in common many necessary functions it’s not in their interest to carry out individually. The state, in short, cleans up the capitalists’ messes for them.

Things like the minimum wage, collective bargaining, and universal healthcare may be perceived by individual capitalists as a restraint or an imposition. But they’re supported by the smarter capitalists — especially those in the industries that benefit most from them. Just consider the role of General Electric CEO Gerard Swope in the business coalition behind the New Deal.

The minimum wage increases aggregate purchasing power among the working class at large, and helps secure employers a reliable pool of labor power on a sustainable basis. The welfare state keeps unemployment, hunger and homelessness from reaching politically destabilizing levels that — without the state cleaning up the capitalists’ mess at taxpayer expense — might result in capitalism being torn down from below. Universal healthcare, whether on the British or Canadian model, externalizes labor costs on the taxpayer which would otherwise be (and are, in countries like the U.S.) borne by employers who provide health insurance as a benefit.

Any time you hear soccer mom rhetoric about “our working families,” or self-congratulatory platitudes to the effect that “Democrats care,” look behind the voice and take a look at what the hands are actually doing. In a freed market — without the state to do the capitalists’ bidding — corporate capitalism would wither like a garden slug with salt on its back. The state works for the capitalists, not for you.

Translations for this article:

• Spanish, La Función Fundamental del Estado del Bienestar es el Bienestar Corporativo.
• Dutch, De Hoofdfunctie van de Verzorgingsstaat is het Verzorgen van Grote Bedrijven.

From the Markets Not Capitalism audiobook read by C4SS fellow Stephanie Murphy.